Recently I visited my host family from training, the Chiroys’, whose photos are on the right hand side of this page. I really enjoyed this family in those first three months in Guatemala and try to keep up communication with them. Since I had to be around the Peace Corps office for mid-service training, I decided to spend a night with them.
I always felt a connection with this family even though my Spanish was limited (but improving) while I was living with them. I think I enjoyed most that the house was filled with women: Marta, whose husband died the year before, her daughters Irma and Vero (although Vero lived just around the corner with her husband and kids, she was always in our house) and Marta’s daughter-in-law, Lupe. I came to love each of these women for different reasons, and all of them for their sense of humor and their strength.
I loved Marta because she was consistent and although prone to spells of sadness she always kept her wits about her and sometimes slipped in a dirty joke. Vero because she was round and soft and always smiled, and also because one time I saw her simultaneously breast feeding her 1-year-old son and 2-year-old niece. Lupe because she was a firecracker. Lupe would laugh when her 2-year-old would call her a puta (bitch) and in the same minute turn around and raise her voice to a pitch that made yours ears hurt and yell at her husband (Marta’s son, Edwin) in a string of words I had no hope of comprehending. Then she would plop down at the table with a beautiful smile and tell me what she had observed about my personality or my appearance that day (for example, this day, the day that I visited, as Lupe looked me over she said,”You’ve changed a lot, Katie.””I have?” I answered curiously. “How?” “You’ve gotten fatter.”)
Irma I loved the most. She, like her mother, was a rock. She worked day and night (literally, nights at the hospital and days at the house), had a mediocre husband, a beautiful and funny 2-year-old daughter and the spirit of a champ. Maybe it was my and Irmas’ relative closeness in age that connected us (she 28, me 26) or maybe it was purely out of kindness on her part, but I felt the buds of a real friendship between us.
Nine months later I am returning, even if for one night, to this family. I am excited (if not soaked from the rain) as I walk the streets of Santa Maria Cauque towards the fields and their house. I am excited to spend more time with them, to have more conversations and get to know them more, now that my Spanish has improved (even if it is still limited).
I am welcomed in byVero, still round and soft and smiling. She seats me at the table and puts a cup of tea in front of me and pushes the Tupperware of sweet bread my way. Irma is already at the table and Lupe soon joins. Marta, as always, is on her feet, meaningfully and steadily working at keeping the home and it’s occupants but occasionally stopping to stand over the table to listen to the conversation. We pass a few hours here, catching up, laughing, cracking dirty jokes. The young kids are passed from lap to lap and the older ones laugh at the dirty jokes too, even though we all know they don’t understand them.
Through the evening I learn that Vero and her two kids have moved into the house too, that her husband was having an affair. I learned that Irma, who had also bought a car and is going back to school to become a graduated nurse, had a nervous breakdown; that her husband drove her car drunk the first week she had it and crunched the back rear bumper. I also learned that Irma’s husband had a wife and kids before Irma, and that he sometimes goes to be with his ex wife.
Irma cooks dinner in her house now; she also bought herself an oven. So after I ate with the rest of the family I dodged the lime trees in the dark, crossing the yard to knock on Irma’s door. She invited me in to her two-room house and we sat on her bed while her daughter slept soundly on the other bed. We had a real conversation about life and relationships and family. It felt so good to connect with her, to be able to communicate and understand. And it felt like I wasn’t just the gringa in the house anymore, I was a friend.
After saying goodnight to Irma and kissing her sleeping daughter’s head, I went to bed too. I slept in the big bedroom, Marta’s room. It has three beds; two full beds pushed together, a slight space and then a twin bead. Marta and Celeste, Vero’s 9-year-old daughter slept in one, Vero and her 2-year-old son Josue in the other and then me, after the slight space. We settled in together and Celeste, not being able to control her 9-year-old exuberance, wished me that I sleep well about 6 times and popped up to check that I was okay about 12.
The rain tapped on the tin roof all night and even fell to the cement floor in a spot near my bed.
I awoke to the sound of cartoons and the sight of Celeste and Josue eagerly staring at the screen on top of the dresser near the foot of their bed. When they saw that I was awake it became a game of winks and smiles. At one point Celeste wrestled Josue down, pulled up his shirt to reveal his pudgy belly. Around his belly button were dark marks that almost looked like bruises from my distance. “Look”, Celeste said with enthusiasm. “Chickle!”They both fell backwards on the bed in giggles. What looked like bruises was indeed gum that had somehow managed to stick itself to the soft belly skin of happy Josue.
When I entered the dinning room it was morning: Vero frying eggs in the next room, kids running around babbling, Irma and Marta gone for the day and Lupe bolting in and out of the house, stopping to look me up and down and say good morning. I, too, had to run. I had to get back to the Peace Corps center for another day of trainings. As I ate my fried egg and drank instant coffee Vero, standing in front of me, round and soft with a plastic bag over one hand, asked me how much bread I wanted for my lunch. “Uh, two please.”And with that, my lunch, without even asking for one, was made and placed before me on the table.
