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.