K´iche

Xsaqarik. Utz wach laa?
Utz maltiox. E le laa?
Jawi’ k’o le b’anib’alchulaj?

Good morning. How are you?
Good thanks. And you?
Where is the bathroom?

That was your first lesson in K’iche. I have many more to come. This language is mind-boggling. In population, it falls into the top 5 largest of the 23 Mayan languages spoken here in Guatemala.
There are 31 letters in the alphabet. There are 8 forms of conjugation. There are different conjugations for words that begin with consonants and for vowels. The conjugation may be in the beginning, middle or end of the word, depending on the form. To indicate present, past or future you change the first letter of the verb. If you use a conjugated verb in a sentence it is spelled differently than if you only use the conjugated verb alone.
It is an impressive language to hear spoken, and even more impressive once I was given a three hour lesson.
The majority of the people I am to work with at my site only speak K’cihe. I have heard that even attempting to speak an indigenous language makes huge steps towards building confianza with the women. Peace Corps will pay for me to have up to 160 hours of K’iche lessons. I want to give it my best shot. I mean, I’m already on my way with Good morning, how are you and my name is.

A Week Later...

This should have been posted a week ago. Apoligies.

Friday
I just returned from the market in Chimaltenango with Marta. I wish I could describe all the things that pass before my eyes here. More so, I wish I could remember all the things that pass before my eyes; pigs being tied to the tops of buses, women balancing immaculate birthday cakes on their heads, the stunning amount of produce and variety of fruits and vegetables, buses squeezing through streets the size of allies, turning corners you never thought a bus could take and then stopping only to be surrounded by a funeral procession. Life is stimulating here for certain, sometimes in the most incredible of ways, and sometimes in the strangest of ways.

Wednesday
Benancio had 5-year old Hendrick by the hand, and Ela had 5-month old Elkin wrapped around her back. We got off the camioneta at km 172, Chirijox. It was raining and socked in, preventing the mountains from welcoming me to my future home.
There is not much to see there in Chirijox. It is a sleepy community stretching into the foothills. Patched into the community are large corn fields. There is no market, no hotel, no restaurant but a bakery just opened. There has to be a tortarilla somewhere.
The next day the core women of the committee gathered in the cool air and wind outside my counterpart’s home to welcome me; about 30 women strong. Ela had to translate all that I said in my broken Spanish to K’iche. Ela said the women there probably understand about as much Spanish as I do right now. This will be a major challenge for certain, but certainly not one that will hinder all work. The women are enthusiastic and interested in learning, and there are around 90 in total. I will focus on nutrition, as Nic, the current volunteer hasn’t work with that at all. This will also be important because nearly all that grows at this chilly location is milpa; corn. I will be able to work with the schools, and the community is in the process of applying for a grant to create a library. There is certainly no shortage of work that could be done here.
Ela and Benancio are wonderful people. I am apart of their family now, they told me. Hendrick is a hilarious, well-spoken and polite, although on a constant sugar-high, 5-year old. The rest of Benancio’s family lives on the property as well; two sisters, one with a one-year-old son and his parents. I will live about 25 yards behind Benancio and Ela’s house, down a path through the milpa and sharing a wall with Don Juan, Benancio’s father. It’s a one-room place and with a fresh coat of paint it will do just fine. I have a small porch with a hammock, a pila (sink) outside and a latrine 30 feet, again, through the milpa. Nic tells me that Don Juan just stays in his room and prays for hours on end. I also have a guard dog that sleeps on my porch. But maybe the craziest part in all this is the fact that in a one-room adobe house, in the middle of a corn field, in the middle of an aldea, in the middle of Guatemala, I will have wireless internet.

Thursday
I returned to Santa Maria Cauque a day and a half early because there is a forecast of heavy rains, which undoubtedly equal landslides here in Guatemala. Talk about natural hazard mitigation; someone needs to talk about slope stability around here. So I arrived home to coffee and sweet bread and three lovely mayan ladies and one chata (a person with a flat nose, this is what they call Stefani) around the table. I told them about my site and how I didn’t want to leave them. Together we devised plans for me to stay with them in Santa Maria Cauque for the next two years. Irma said she would simply tie me to the bed. I suggested a Mayan ceremony to ask for rain, causing mudslides and preventing me from leaving the community. Marta said to just tell Peace Corps I don’t speak Spanish and need to stay for more classes (she’s actually got a point there). Steafni simply added the occasional scream as she dipped her bread, and whole hand, in her coffee.

Birthday Weekend

Ima, Marta and I sat under the florescent lights in the dining room. We slowly ate our dinners, a mixture of leftovers from the previous two days of festivities; refried beans, tostadas, bread, hot fruit punch and candied sweet potatoes. Birthday cake was waiting in the fridge. We recalled the events of the last 48 hours and enjoyed the warm evening that was free of rain.
We talked about the rats that live just above the thin sheets of fabric that separate me from the tin roof who I can track by the footprints I see imprinted through the fabric every evening. We talked about how Lupe thought I said semen when I said salmon. We talked (again) about the new fruits and vegetable I’ve tried since arriving in Guatemala. We laughed over the giant fly that joined our party this afternoon (everything was going fine, people were chatting and laughing when Marta said, “Look! Look at this giant fly!” Indeed, that was a large fly on the napkin package, but there were plenty of other flies everywhere else as well. Chaos ensued. Gasps of air were taken in and released, hands were raised in the air in disbelieve and then guarded grimacing faces as the fly circled the table. “Where’s the flyswatter?” someone asked in a panic. Marta, never moving quickly, casually got up from the table and found the flyswatter. “It’s on the window, look!” Lupe blurted with arm outstretched, hand ending with a pointed finger. Marta got the fly in her first try, something new for the nonchalant woman. It fell behind the cabinet. Marta got on her knees and coerced the corpse toward her with the yellow, plastic netting of the swatter. “It died”, she pronounced. She stood over the table and mandated, straight-faced: “No big flies are permitted here. Only regular sized flies”). We laughed about the kids who first covered their faces with the beans we ate at lunch, and then later with the icing from the cake. Marta marveled over how I had eaten two and a half tamales, 6 pieces of bread and three cups of punch the night before and was still able to eat a tamale for breakfast today. They teased me over how little Spanish I knew when I arrived, and reminded them of how little Spanish I know still.
These five people and two little ones have become friends and family in a way I haven’t experienced before. It is amazing to me, to be able to sit, sometimes in silence and sometimes in laughter, and pass time and care for and be cared for and share lives with people when I can only stammer out a broken sentence in their language.

I have another blog entry written out from my site visit this last week. It will be posted soon.

My Site

Lake Atitlan as viewed from Solola. The clouds are covering the volcanoes that surround the lake, but you get the idea. It is a huge, beautiful lake, and it is in fact in my back yard. More teasers to come next week when I return from my site visit.

Photos!

Okay, I have figured out how to upload pictures in a better way now! To your left is the central park and view of mountains in Xela, the second largest city in Guate. Here, Aron and I are enjoying dark beer and cheesecake with some unflavored jell-o topping after our individual site visits.

Here is my family again, sister Irma, Guatemadre Marta, other sister Veronica with Irma's daughter Stefani, Lupe with son Danny and husband, my brother Edwin.

Jessica, Nic's host sister's 9th birthday and the pinata that everyone said looks like me in before and after shots.

Site Placement

Wednesday was a day we had been expecting for two months. We waited on Nicole’s porch, sitting on small plastic stools and bundled because it was extra cool that morning. They were about 15 minutes late, which is pretty good for Guatemalan time. Salvador, Zaira, David and Jacobo filled in through the doorway, big smiles on their faces and papers tucked under arm.
Site placement.
I will be headed to an aldea (village) in the department of Solola. The head of the municipality is called Santa Catarina Ixtahaucan. I will be working with an organization called Women for a New Dawn. Of the seven officials, four are named Catarina. I think the only reason PC is sending me there is because me name is Kathryn; I’ll fit right in.
I will be living at nearly 7,000 feet in a community with just over 3,000 people. It is totally indigenous Maya in population. Although most people speak basic Spanish, the native tongue is K’iche. I will have the opportunity to be tutored in K’iche. I will work with this organization, Women for a New Dawn focusing on family gardens, compost and vermicompost, soil conservation and nutrition. The second group I will work with is the Committee for Potable Water
The location is great as well. Three hours to the capital, one to Xela, the second largest city next to the capital, three to Antigua and less than an hour to Panajachel and Lake Atitlan. If you have never seen Lake Atitlan, do yourself a favor and google it. After you google it, you will immediately book your ticket to Guate for a visit to your local PC volunteer, yours truly, because the lake is stunning.
Although I am very excited to move to my site, I will be sad to leave training behind. My family is great and I will miss the fun (at lunch today, Danny was dancing to the ranchero music with, yes, a small drawer drawn to his chest. Currently my family is preparing the temascal (sauna) for me to bathe in on this rainy afternoon). I will also miss my fellow PCVs that have been in Sta. Maria Cauque with me. I will miss our Spanish teacher, who not only patiently corrects our repetitive mistakes but also teaches us the traditions and mysteries of the Maya (today for class we hiked into the mountains outside of town. He taught us how the Maya believe the nose is the guide for the body and about birthing rituals. Philipe raced us to bottom of a clay-soil slope. He won.).
I could not be more pleased with my placement and know that November 3 is just around the corner. Until then I will enjoy the duration of my time here with the Chiroy family in sleepy Santa Maria Cauque and speaking English during Spanish class breaks.

Comitancillo

We arrived in San Marcos after an 8 hour bus ride. Meeting currently serving volunteers, they quickly escorted us to Red Chayna, the Chinese restaurant famous for pizza. Not only was it two for one day but it was also the anniversary of the opening of the restaurant. Pine needles were scattered across the floor, balloons clung to the ceiling and TV and radio crews bounced from table to table. Each of us had our turn at the microphone, boasting the glories of the pizza topped with hot dogs. Aron was even wearing his Mao shirt.
I parted ways with the municipal development volunteers and ventured to meet with my own kind, the aggies. Kelly, who would be hosting me for the coming 3 days, lives in Comitancillo, San Marcos. Comi is the poorest community in Guatemala according to a UN report. It is an hour and a half bus ride from the city of San Marcos down a dirt road that precariously winds up, over and through high rolling hills. As we capped the final hill and the city of Comi came into view, my initial reaction was that it looked like the pictures I have seen of the Holy City of Tibet, Lhasa. Perched on a hilltop, big cement buildings with arched balconies dominating the small houses surrounding. The gorges gave way to muddy swiftly flowing rivers and the clouds hovered in the gorges.
The next morning Kelly and I took a 15-minute bus ride back into the mountains to meet with a group of women she has been working with. We arrived at the house of la promotora only to hear that she was visiting another town for their feria. We opted to walk back to Comi via a road that had been closed due to landslides. About an hour into the walk, we encountered the slide. Massive boulders splintered and fell from the mountainside by the 50 foot waterfall draining from the foliage above. About 20 men worked slowly breaking the boulders down to manageable pieces with sledgehammers. We were still an hours’ walk from the nearest village.
The next morning we took a bus to another village in the hills to visit another group of women. We brought worms with us and helped the women construct a vermiculture box. They are going to use the fertilizer from the worms in the tree nursery project they already have going. The trees are pines and cypress and will help prevent soil erosion, a serious problem in this area of Guatemala. After a snack of eggs and tortillas provided by the women, again we decided to trek home. This time we wandered down footpaths through the woods. Pine, madrone and cedar sheltered our path on the slopes while bananas and brightly colored flowers lined the riverbanks. We stumbled into a small settlement of homes and found women hand-forming beautiful chocolate colored pottery from clay they had dug from the hillside. The last leg of the walk we were accompanied by the afternoon rains and we arrived home soaking wet after 2 and a half hours of walking.
As the bus climbed the windy hills away from Comi early the next day the clouds hovered on the shoulders on the slopes. The sun broke the clouds for the first time since I had arrived forming a rainbow over the valley. I was sipping chocolate con leche and my boots were still wet from the hike the day before.