El Doctor y La Doctora

July 27, 2010 Tuesday
On the scale of relative awesomeness, Dr. and Dra. Velilla are in the category of “defies description.” They are SO COOL!!!! They were born and educated in Spain, then decided that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives in the field of medical missions. They’ve been to France, Honduras, Rwanda (during the civil war) and finally settled in Guatemala, where they’ve lived for the past seven years. They have five children, a psychologist, criminologist, reporter, medical student, and one more (I forgot what she does, but it’s pretty cool), and they toted the kids with them when they traveled around. They said today that their youngest was something like 4 months old when they visited Guatemala the first time.
I haven’t had too much of an opportunity to talk to Dra. Velilla, but her husband, Luis, is the doctor that I’ve been tailing for the past week and a half, and occasionally we get the chance to talk between patients. As previously stated, he is a gynecologist, which, for a guy, is practically taboo in Latin America. Evidently when they first showed up, he had a lot of trouble getting the lady patients to trust him and unveil their private bits. But it helped that the town we’re in, San Pedro, is situated in an area of relatively open-minded people. Across the lake, it’s a completely different story. There’s also a fair amount of “quacks” that practice medicine on the lake, and evidently they’re real idiots. We had a woman in yesterday who was pregnant, but one of these nincompoops told her that the baby died, so she came to us to have another look. Her baby was fine, alive and bouncing around in her uterus like a jumping bean. Evidently cases like this are far too common.
The maternal mortality rate in Guatemala is the second-highest in Latin America, after Haiti, since many women give birth in the home after days and days of labor with the aid of a midwife, or with one of these quacks on hand. Sarah told me that all of her cousins had been to other doctors, and had had a horrible birth experience, but that my other sister, Manuela, had gone to Dr. Velilla and it had been a much pleasanter experience (as pleasant as it can possibly be to squeeze something that size out of something that size, anyway). At the office in San Juan, they told us that the clinic had dropped the maternal mortality rate to almost zero. That’s hope, right there.
Suffice it to say, Dr. and Dra. Velilla are living the life, one day, I hope to lead. Except for the children. Five is a lot.

Santiago y La Primer Iglesia Bautista

July 24, 2010, Saturday
The San Pedro girls (Brittany, Menan, Alisha, me) visited Santiago this morning, meeting up with the Santiago girls (Angela, Chelsea), and later joined by two EMU nursing graduates (Steph, Libby) who were down from the City for the weekend. Once again, we got stiffed on the price of a lancha ride (We know full well that it’s Q8, but the tourist price [which applies to us] is Q20), and even though we tried to argue (for like, 10 minutes) we still ended up paying a round-trip of Q30, which is still almost double, though marginally better, I guess. We rode on the top of the boat, and the scenery was gorgeous. It was a rare clear day in Guatemala, and the sky was SO blue.
This weekend was the anniversary celebration for Santiago, so there was a big celebration in the center of the city. It was like Taste of Newton (or for you CC readers, Piotique) and a county fair combined, with a dash of Mardi Gras for pizzazz – Ferris wheels, carousels (powered by hand), arcade games, markets (tourist and local), ice cream vendors, and brightly-dressed indigenous men, women, and children running everywhere in a state of high excitement. It was great. We met Chelsea and Angela at the big Catholic church, and then ate dinner with them at a small “comedor,” where it took an ungodly amount of time to get our food ordered. For dessert, we retraced our steps a bit and had some chocolate layer cake and carrot cake (yes, Dad, I thought of you) at a tiny little restaurant. The other girls decided to walk through the market a bit more, but I decided to go back to the church and creep on people with my camera (can’t resist a good excuse to indulge my inner National Geographic photographer!). So I hung out in the churchyard for quite awhile, taking pictures of the dances, parades, and the general hubbub of it all. There was a dance that dramatized the conquest of Latin America by the Spaniards, danced by a bunch of men and boys who wore masks and gold clothing. Inexplicably, there were also cow masks. A few times, a short parade wound through the square, women holding candles, men playing instruments, and four men at the back carrying an effigy of Saint James (patron saint of the town) on a frame. And periodically, a cannon would go off, telling the whole world “WE’RE THE MOST AWESOME TOWN EVER AND WE’RE HAVING A FREAKIN’ PARTY RIGHT NOW AND DON’T YOU WISH YOU WERE US?!??!!!!!!!!” Magical.
Sarah took me to a church service for youth (15-25) tonight. It was great. We started by singing a few hymns, the louder and more off-key, the better. Bonhoeffer would have turned over in his grave, I’m sure. Then they prayed a bit, sang a bit more, and then the youth pastor (I think?) stood up and delivered a message. It was from Matthew, when Jesus healed the leper. And I could understand it all! Except I had to pay REALLY close attention – if I spaced off for even a second, or a truck went by in the street outside, or something or other occupied my attention, I would lose an entire sentence or important piece of information, and have to start all over again! Afterwards, we all had coffee and “pan dulce” (sweet bread) and talked. Well, THEY talked, anyway. And laughed, and teased each other. I couldn’t understand a word of it, it was all in Tzu’tujil, but it made me miss the camaraderie of my Bethel friends. And the service was so nice – no one was screaming “IN THE NAME OF JEE-ZUS!!!” or casting out demons willy-nilly, no one was falling on the floor in ecstasy, and everyone remained calm and collected for the duration of the service. A nice change, for sure.



July 25, 2010 Sunday
I washed my clothes today and hung them to dry on the upstairs porch. That was fine when I was just living with a pair of old people, but now I have a brother. It’s like, “Hello, brother-who-is-the-same-age-as-me, I’m just going to hang my brightly colored panties on your porch, ok?” Yep. Oh, and it was just Sarah and Domingo and me at the house this Sunday – turns out my dad is a pastor at a church on the coast, 3 hours away, and he and my mom won’t be back until Monday.
We drove to a beach near San Juan for a baptism service today. We ended up sitting like 3’ from the edge of the lake, where the ground was like a sponge. It took a wet backside for me to figure out that sitting on my sandals was a good idea. They sing a LOT here – like 10 songs, no joke. Anyway, once they dunked the three candidates, the service was over, and Sarah was like, “Ok, nos vamos!” And we left. No standing around and talking, no “fellowshipping,” just “let’s go.” It was a bit strange – I’m used to hanging out at church for at least 20 minutes after the service has ended.
I laid in the hammock on the porch (beneath the clothesline containing my brightly-colored panties) and read Dante’s Divine Comedy for a couple of hours. I’m pretty sure that I don’t agree with that guy’s theology AT ALL, but it’s an interesting historical read, for sure. In the afternoon, Alisha and I kayaked across a section of the lake, maybe a mile both ways, I’m not sure. It was really gorgeous – a few clouds, the lake surrounded by mountains and volcanoes, scenery one always sees in magazines, but never actually visits. Well guess WHAT?! I’m visiting it.
The standard church service was at night. Again, lots of singing, lots of prayer, but no shouting or demons. The other churches in San Pedro say that the Baptist church is “frio” because they don’t applaud or shout or anything like what the Pentecostals do. I’ll take “frio” over mass hysteria any day. They had several choirs of children, young people, women, and a choir (who made an attempt at four-part!) who sang several more songs. The sermon was over the Lord’s Supper and life after death… I think so, anyway. To be quite honest, I was thinking about how to arrange my dorm room at Bethel.

Dos Meses en Guatemala

It´s been two months since I arrived in Guatemala. When I first arrived, I could speak Spanish, but only enough to articulate my most basic needs, and even then it was a stretch. However, I thought that after a summer, I would be fluent in Spanish, though. That hasn´t happened. I still have trouble understanding a few things in conversation, and oftentimes have to ask the speaker to restate the question or use different words. In the clinic, I can understand very nearly everything that the patients say, even if I don´t understand the physiological or medical reason behind it. I can also respond in a fairly coherent manner when asked a question, or some such. I´ve learned a lot about the culture, too. The history, the culture and dress of the individual groups of indigenous, the Latin American culture in general, religious expression, justice, peace, and violence in Guatemala in particular, and most importantly - how to choke down food that is gross!
This morning, there was another birth in the clinic! It was a lot quicker and less bloody than the previous one, and I didn´t have to leave or anything! It was so exciting. And I talked to the lady a bit, too, and was able to help with a few things, mostly just handing the nurses things, but still, I´m being useful! The gynecologist has also started letting me write out the lab orders for some of the tests we do, which is interesting, and forces me to pay attention a bit more.
Two months down. 3 weeks to go.

San Pedro de la Laguna

July 19, Monday
Oh my goodness guys, I am SO EXCITED!!! My host family in San Pedro, Atitlán is SUPER awesome!!!
Ok, so our day began less than well – we all had to say goodbye to each other before we left for our different service locations, and that kind of sucked, because it was like a prequel of the goodbye that we would have to say at the end of the summer. Then about half the group piled into the van (no sitting four-across this time!) and drove to the bus station, where we got on a “chicken bus” (reincarnated Blue Bird) for a four hour, extremely bumpy, I-had-to-go-to-the-bathroom-the-entire-time, very uncomfortable trip. It was pouring down rain when we arrived in Santiago, and we promptly disembarked into an ankle-deep puddle. Then we needed to get down to the docks for a “lancha” (ferry) ride to the other side of the lake. So Alisha and I took a tuk-tuk (taxi sort of thing) for Q20, and Menan and Brittany took one for Q6. Guess who just got ripped off? When we arrived at the docks, the next lancha to San Pedro was chock-full of people. The pilot kept trying to get us to ride, saying that there was room, but there certainly wasn’t, not for four gringas and their bags. So we waited for an hour and a half for the next one. They charged us Q20 each. The indigenous ladies looked scandalized when the pilot told us that, but we couldn’t really argue – what choice did we have? The lake is miles and miles wide, and none of us are great swimmers.
We arrived in San Pedro and waited in a little restaurant for someone from the clinic to show up and claim us, which eventually, they did. They took us to our houses, introduced us a bit, and then left. I was super terrified – what if I got a weird family? But they are so nice! They’re indigenous Tz’utujuil, so their Spanish is SO much easier to understand, since they learned it as a second language, same as I. Makes me feel like I’m absolutely AWESOME at Spanish, like my ability to communicate has risen exponentially in the last 36 hours. The mother, Maria, hangs out at home (and sews stuff with a TREADLE machine! How cool is that?!) and the father is a pastor (not Pentecostal, I hope. Had enough of that). They have three children – Manuela (She is married, with a little 3-year-old boy, Mofito (?)), Sarah (23 and awesome, studying piano on the weekends), and Domingo (15 days older than me. So far, he hangs out and watches CNN in Spanish. Better than Fox, I guess. He’s also just graduated as a music teacher. They don’t waste time here). Sarah and I went up to the second story, and they have the most incredible view of the lake ever. They’re on a bit of a hill at the back of town, so we could see the majority of the town. We talked up there for 20 minutes or so, and then walked around town for about an hour. She took me to the clinic, which is in a church basement, and then we went to the very top of the belfry (except there isn’t a bell. I don’t know what you call it, then), from which we could see an AMAZING panorama of practically the entire lake, surrounded by 3 volcanoes, a jillion mountains, and clouds EVERYWHERE. It is so beautiful here, just gorgeous.
Supper was great – Manuela came by with her son, and everyone was there except for Domingo. The first question Manuela asked me, after my name, was “How do you like the Arizona law?” Haha. Awesome. My Spanish vocabulary is not adequately advanced to be able to express just exactly what I thought about the law. They talked at great length about violence and such at supper, half in Tz’utujuil, half in Spanish, oftentimes switching languages mid-sentence. I’m not sure if they did it on purpose or not, but it sure was funny. I felt kind of bad, about to burst out laughing as they talked about all the horrible things that are happening in the city. They also taught me a few words in Tz’utujuil. Turns out that “moon,” “sun,” and “chili” sound exactly the same. They don’t think so, but I certainly do.
Their house is nice, too. I wasn’t really afraid of roughing it – pit toilet, bucket shower, whatever, I can deal for 3.5 weeks – but I am definitely not roughing it here. I have my own room, with my own bathroom (!!!!!) and HOT WATER!!!!! And there is no parrot here. Thank God. And they make their own tortillas here, how awesome is that? Suffice it to say, I am very, very happy with my current situation.
We’ll be visiting the clinic tomorrow. I have no idea what I’ll be doing, but I hope it involves scrubs, because I’d rather not have bought them for nothing. Plus, scrubs are just cool, though they lend a bit of an androgynous air to the wearer.




July 20, 2010
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I watched a birth today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was crazy. A lot more blood than I had expected. The response of my treacherous body was to start sweating a lot and get light-headed, gosh darn-it. But I saw the most important parts, and that’s all that matters. I’ve also seen more vaginas today than I ever have in my life.
My work at the clinic started today. There are two doctors, husband-wife duo, that work there – one is a Gynecologist, one is a General Practitioner. They’re both from Spain, so they have that sort of lispy, spitty Spanish. I’m working with the gynae for now, and he is super cool. He takes the time to explain the cases to me afterwards, and is really great with the patients. We started at 9 or so, and finished up at almost 2. Alisha and I spent a good half hour wandering around San Pedro, looking for a place to eat. After we found one, we took a tuk-tuk to San Juan, a 10 minute drive away, and spent another 20 minutes looking for the doctor’s office there. Then we met the other two girls, and got everything straightened out. After we arrived at the office, we were told that there was nothing to do there at the moment, but we’re having a meeting with some schoolchildren, want to come? We didn’t have any better ideas, so we took another tuk-tuk BACK to San Pedro. We visited a school and talked to 8 children, ages 13-17 or so about sexuality. Whole-body sexuality, what makes a person who they are, not just the private bits. The kids were so great, very mature about the whole thing. We were VERY impressed. Sounds like this will be more or less the norm – clinic in the morning, office in the afternoon.
Sarah and I went to a church service in the evening. There was a lot of singing at the beginning (the louder, the better!), then a message, in which the pastor would say something, and then translate it into Tz’utujil, which made the service really hard to follow, because there’s still a couple seconds of disconnect in my brain following a change in language. Then we prayed for about 20 minutes, corporate prayer, which is really interesting to listen to.
On the way home, Sarah and I talked about the Tz’utujil in San Pedro. The entire town (13,000) is indigenous, with the exception of 100 or so tourists at any given time. The vast majority speak Tz’utujil and Spanish, with only the very oldest speaking only Tz’utujil, and only the very youngest children (younger than 6) speaking only Spanish. Quite a few also speak English out of necessity, due to the large number of tourists here.

Voy a Salir a la Ciudad!

Today is my last day with my host family. Tonight will be spent with the CASAS students, watching a movie and eating pizza, I believe. Then on Monday, we’ll all be splitting into small groups and heading out to different service placements in Guatemala and El Salvador. I will be in San Juan, Atitlán, very close to the town that we visited last weekend. It is beautiful there, and I am looking forward to it very much. Three other girls will be joining me, and we will be working with a local health clinic. I’m ready for a change of scenery. A month and a half spent with a family who is not your own, with parents who are not your own, in a house that is not your own, with no siblings, is just a bit of a stretch. And the city is getting a bit old. Cities aren’t really my thing - too crowded, too many black clouds of exhaust.

Our last day of classes was Friday. It’s wonderful to have everything over and done with. Each language/literature class presented a small project – a song, a comic drama, readings, etc. In the afternoon, we all spoke for about 5 minutes on a selected topic that we had each written a paper about. We went to get ice cream to celebrate.

Church this morning was pretty rockin’. For 2½ hours. There were about 25 people there, an increase of at least 25%. Another Sunday, a few more spirits cast out. Turns out it’s practically requisite to fall on the ground if one has had a demon cast out. I still don’t know what to think about that. Is it legit? Or is it a placebo effect, a result of the high level of energy and social expectations stemming from a guy shouting prayers in your face and throwing purified water and vegetable oil all over you? Does one have to believe in evil spirits and/or the casting out of such before the casting out actually “works”? Or can anyone and their dog have a demon cast out of them, whether they like it or not? The sermon was about Jesus as a sacrifice, and how various OT ideas related to him. The scriptures actually formed a coherent idea, which is kind of rare.

I may or may not be incommunicado for the next several weeks. I don't know the Internet situation in San Juan, but I almost certainly won't have regular access. But don't worry - I haven't fallen into a sinkhole, drowned in a tropical storm, or been fried by a volcano... yet.

Que Paso' con los Seres Humanos?!

What is WRONG with the human race?! Seriously, who decided way-back-when that it was ok to kill another person in vengeance, subjugate women, and dominate “strange” cultures? As a Biology major, I realize that there is an evolutionary reason for all of this – survival of the best fit, and all. But as a Religion major, I feel like there should be some sort of philosophical counter-argument. I feel like violence can’t possibly be the best way to solve problems, and cannot understand what could possibly cause someone to raise a hand in violence against another person. Is there any hope for humanity, or are we all just going to kill each other for inane, asinine reasons?

For the past 6 weeks, the CASAS students have undergone a crash course in the long history of violence and conflict in Guatemala, including (but certainly not limited to) massacres of the indigenous by the Spanish in the 1600s, subsequent repression and destruction of the Mayan way of life and spirituality by the Catholic Church, continuing discrimination against the Maya that culminated (and supposedly ended) in the 30-year civil war between the 70s and 90s, and increased violence in the last few years. Today’s lecture capped it all off, though. We were visited by two women lawyers from the organization “Sobrevivia” (Survival). Their pro-bono lawyers work primarily on behalf of victims of sexual violence, both of men and women. Machismo and violence against women is ridiculously high in Guatemala. “Femicide” is the term usually used – crimes against women simply because they are women. Women have been killed, beaten, raped, tortured, beheaded, nearly 2,000 cases of murder last year, all filed under “crimes of passion.” The lawyers gave us several examples of cases – three little girls, one raped, all with their throats cut with machetes; a woman beaten nearly to death with a rock and with all major facial landmarks cut off, simply because she filed for a monthly $75 in child support; an American missionary who sexually abused 40 indigenous 8-10 year old boys – that they had fought and won in the last several years. It was disgusting. I wanted to cry. WHAT WOULD COMPEL SOMEONE TO DO THAT?! I know that there are shining examples of kind, gentle, compassionate individuals who have touched the lives of thousands of people, but sometimes, I’m just so overwhelmed by the amount of violence by human beings against other human beings. I don’t understand. I will never understand.

Humanity is overrated. I’m going to be a rainbow.

Lago Atitlan

July 11, 2010

This weekend we visited the towns of Santiago and Panajachel, both on the shores of Lake Atitlán. The lake is beautiful, completely beyond description, in the most non-cliché way possible. It is absolutely gorgeous, in an absolutely non-Kansas way. Kansas has its wheat fields, its ruler-straight roads, its grain elevators, and its wonderful farming culture. Lake Atitlán and the surrounding area has a huge, beautiful lake surrounded on all sides by rounded mountains, completely covered in trees and tiny “campesinos,” where families use terraces to their best effect, and grow a huge variety of vegetables in an impossibly small space. Atitlán has several different Mayan cultures, each with their distinctive dress and language. Santiago contains the largest population of indigenous Tzutuhil, but across the lake in Panajachel are the indigenous Cakchiquel, and twenty miles up the road lives still another group of Maya, and all of them are completely different from the Q’iche that we met in Chichicastenango. The cultural diversity is astounding.

We visited Panajachel on Sunday morning, and wandered through the market. At this point in our trip, the only difference between the markets are in the names of the towns on the woven bracelets and in the styles of guipiles (women’s traditional blouses) available for sale. The vast majority of Guatemalan (or indeed, Latin American) markets are the same. There are a couple of simple rules for all of them:

1 1. It is best to not look or act like a tourist. Inquiring loudly about an object in English is the surest way to look like a tourist. So is blond hair, blue eyes, pale (and/or sunburnt) skin, and a large camera. Unfortunately, I am stuck with the last four characteristics.

2 2. Don’t look interested in anything unless you actually plan to seriously consider purchasing it. Pointing at merchandise is a strict no-no. If a vendor begins to show you their merchandise, decide as soon as possible whether or not you really want it, as to avoid a long and awkward trail of “no, gracias, no, gracias, si, es muy bonito, pero no quiero” (no thank you, no thank you, yes, it’s very pretty, but I don’t want it) as you try to make a hasty but graceful exit.

Gringo spotting” is also a really fun game. Gringo spotting entails trying to spot the most obviously obnoxious tourist in the whole market. Whether it’s the inappropriately dressed young American teenage girl (short denim skirt, belly-baring top, flip-flops, Paris Hilton sunglasses), the church mission group (every last one wearing homologous, brightly colored t-shirts with cute Spanish slogans or Bible verses), the vacationing family (the parents, loud and sunburnt, the mother wearing a tank top [not what the designer had in mind], the father wearing a “Gallo” t-shirt, dragging their whining son behind them, taking rude, personal-space invading photos of “the locals,” and inquiring in loud English [for better comprehension, obviously] “how much does this cost?”), gringo spotting is a good way to pass the time, and a great way to see the most stereotypical American culture.

We learn tomorrow what our service placements will be. We’re all a little stressed over it – we leave in a week, and have only a vague idea of what our destinations will be. That also means that the “school” portion of our summer is almost over, and we’re pretty happy about that – we’re getting just a tad bit burnt out on classes. Unfortunately, every class has at least one fairly good-sized project due in the next five days, and we’re all scrambling to finish them in time and still do the topic justice. We’ve also been pretty nostalgic, remembering when we first all met each other, the first time we met our host families, “that one time when…”, and the fact that many of us will probably not see each other again, despite the fact that we have all grown so close over the past 6 weeks through our shared experiences. It’ll be a pretty charged week, I think. Very full. Of everything.

Los Autobuses

Guatemalan buses are the craziest thing you’ll ever see here. Except for four people and a baby on a motorbike, speeding down the main highway. But buses are the more prevalent. There are a whole bunch of numbered buses (retired Blue Birds for the most part) that run up and down the main highways and circle all of the zones. I take one bus to and from school, #203, a trip that lasts about 20 minutes if there’s no traffic, but several of the CASAS students take two buses, with a trip totaling over an hour.

On every bus, there’s a driver and the man who shouts. The driver squeezes into impossible spaces and drives erratically with jolts and sudden stops. The man who shouts does just that – shouts. At the top of his voice. At each stop, he shouts about the next stop, or the main stops on the line. As people get on, its “Al fondo, al fondo, vamos por atras, por fav, por fav!” “To the back, let’s fill the middle, please, get going!” The man who shouts also collects our money and shoves people onto the bus if necessary. Nearly every morning, the buses are packed. Jam packed. People are packed in like the overused sardine cliché. There are usually people hanging out both exits, sometimes with only one foot and one hand actually attached to the bus. Picture an ordinary school bus with two people in each seat, and three people wide in the aisle. In the aisle, that’s right. In that 2.5’ wide aisle. Three people across. If one is sitting, there’s usually a man’s crotch pinned to one’s shoulder. If one is standing, there’s usually a tiny indigenous woman that comes up to one’s armpit clinging desperately to the seat back, and/or one’s backpack is precariously close to giving another passenger a nosebleed or black eye. Woe betides if one needs to get off at the next stop and one is in the middle of the bus. That requires extensive maneuvering, rude shoving, cursory “permiso, permiso”s, and finally, nearly falling off the bus as everyone shoves everyone else to get off. As a result of riding the buses every day, twice a day, I have a highly altered sense of personal space. It’s at about zero. There are a lot of legitimately good-looking guys on the buses, though, and that’s a plus.

This weekend, our group is taking a much-anticipated (and very tardy) trip to Lake Atitlán, a famously beautiful place south of the city. The following week will be our last with our host families before we move on to the service component of our time here. We haven’t been assigned yet, but my two choices are a medical clinic in Santiago, Atitlán and a medical clinic in San Salvador, El Salvador. Medicine in Spanish. It doesn’t get any better.

Venio' Cassidy McFadden!!!

Cassidy McFadden, one of my friends from Bethel visited Roxanne, Ruthi and I at the seminary yesterday! She’s staying in Huehuetenango with an indigenous family, and decided to come see us in the City for a few days. It was wonderful to see her again. We ate supper together tonight and last night, and she got to see some of the sights in the city before she leaves tomorrow morning.

This afternoon the CASAS group visited the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFGA). The foundation’s primary work is to disinter many of the mass graves of the people killed by the government during the civil war in the 70s and 80s. Before they can dig up any of the graves, a formal complaint must be launched by the families of the victims, which often leads to court testimonies. Once they figure out where the graves are, they begin excavations. Sometimes the bodies are laid out nicely, with clothes and shoes and all limbs intact. Sometimes the bodies are simply tossed into the hole, with bullet or machete wounds or bone breaks or fractures or obvious signs of pre-mortem torture. Sometimes body parts are found in big plastic bags full of disarticulated bones. It can take anywhere from 2 months to 6 months to figure out the identity of a victim, using dental records, DNA from family members, and matching the missing people with government “kill squad” records.

Once the victim has been properly identified, there is a lengthy government court case, which make take years, before the remains can be returned to the family and given a proper burial, with all of the accompanying ceremonies, much to the relief and sadness of the families. Often, the families didn’t know what happened to their husbands, wives, or children – they only knew that one day, the army swept down on their town, and that was the last they saw of them. One of the saddest things I have ever seen was the rows and rows and rows of cardboard boxes filled with bones of the victims of government violence. Rows and stacks and rooms full. Hundreds of boxes, all with a name, a town, a processing date, and an FAFGA identification number, just waiting for their court cases to come through.

A bit of background – in the 1970s, there was a series of governmental overthrows, which began a series of guerilla attacks. The guerillas often hid in indigenous mountain towns because it was safer there. When the army figured that out, they began carpet-bombing the little towns, staking out, conducting random sweeps, trying to kill all of the guerillas. The guerilla force was about ten times smaller than the national army, but due to a long-standing racism against the indigenous people, the army had “lots of trouble” controlling the guerillas, giving them a reason to continue their genocide against the Maya. Kidnappings, murders, torture, rape, massacres became part of daily life. This lasted for about twenty years, and continues on a lesser, more hidden scale today. The majority of the Guatemalan people know little, if anything, about the civil war. It was “way up north,” and citizens who didn’t live there knew nothing of it, since the government controls most of the media outlets here. My Spanish professor didn’t hear about it until she went to college in 2003, twenty years after the fact! Tens of thousands were killed, and almost no one knows anything about it. Sometimes I feel like I know more Guatemalan history than the average high school educated Guatemalan, which is really sad for both parties.

Mercados de Guatemala

July 4, 2010

I was going to get on Skype tonight and talk to people, but no one was on. It took me five or ten minutes to realize that it was the 4^th, and that everyone was out watching fireworks and roasting hotdogs. Oh yeah…

My host father took me to a market yesterday to get some vegetables and such for dinner. Guatemalan markets are super awesome. Not the stupid touristy ones, where all you can buy is blankets made in Chinese sweatshops and shipped over and/or shirts that say “I Heart Guatemala.” Those don’t count. I mean REAL Guatemalan markets, the ones where candy-colored bras and superhero-patterned underpants are sold next to piles of strawberries and bundles of cilantro and bags of herbs and spices with neatly rolled tops. Markets where one can find anything under the sun except for condoms, and I’m sure that if one looked long and hard enough (immature snicker, sorry Mom), those could be found as well. Markets where the best (and only) way to sell ones wares is to SHOUT AT THE TOP OF YOUR VOICE ABOUT JUST HOW FRIGGIN’ AWESOME THEY ARE!!!!! Markets where raw meat is just hanging out, minding its own business in the window of a tiny butcher shop, live chickens are for sale, everybody haggles for everything and nobody really gives in on the price. Markets are awesome.

We also went to a mall. That was a change. They’re super proud of their malls here, and it shows – there are like 10 in one square mile, and that is only a bit of an exaggeration. One of the stores that we visited was called “Carrion.” Contrary to its name (which would signify a sporting-goods store), it was a clothing store. My parents didn’t get my sarcasm when I told them that “dead animals” is a great name for a clothing store. Sarcasm doesn’t translate very well. Couple that with my utter lack of facial expressions and monotone voice, and my personality falls flat a LOT. I’m pretty sure they think I’m the most boring person ever.

On a completely unrelated note, my host father’s uncle died this weekend. I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do about that. “Sorry your uncle died?” I’m not good with the comforting-people thing, or the empathy thing, and in situations like this, that is more than a bit of a problem.

Tikal y Belice

June 30, 2010

This past 7 days has been our week of free travel, a bit of a break between the first and second months of classes. It was great. Roxanne and I were joined by Ben Hoover (Goshen) and Joseph Spory (EMU/Hesston) for our trip. We left the City on the 23^rd at 9pm, taking a night bus to Flores, where we took another bus to the Mayan ruins at Tikal. Tikal is amazing, 3,000 years old, abandoned for unknown reasons long before the Spanish showed up. There are 6 major temples, each over 100 feet tall, as well as numerous marketplaces, plazas, dwellings, etc. Two of the tallest temples were “subir-able” (climbable), and emerged above the canopy, giving a spectacular view for 10, 15, 20 miles of absolutely flat Guatemalan rainforest. We also saw lots of wildlife – toucans, two kinds of monkeys, coatis, parakeets, and lots of others. It was SO hot though – we’ve been spoiled by the beautiful weather in the City (nearly never more than 75F). It was probably 90F there, and humid as all-get-out. We were all pretty gross by the time we got back to our hotel (Gringo Perdido [Lost Gringo – wonderful name]), so we hopped in the lake for a bit.

The next day it rained off-and-on all day. Turns out Tropical Storm Alex was making an appearance. We walked down to a nearby restaurant to watch the U.S. lose to Ghana in the Cup. We viewed the game with an Argentinean, two Guatemalans, and an absolutely gorgeous Belgian girl who were all for Ghana. Very multicultural. We swam in the lake more or less for the rest of the afternoon. We had met a Mennonite couple earlier in the day, also staying at the hotel, so we hung out in the lake and talked to them and their children while it absolutely flat-out POURED. Their names are Rob and Tara Cayhill, with children Nathan, Peter, Jonathan, and Ruth, all between the ages of 12 and 18. They were very helpful, and ultimately caused us to change our lodging in Belize, in favor of cheaper accommodations, which ended up being a good choice. They work in the Coban rainforest, protecting quetzals and such, and invited us up to see some. We are SO going.

Sunday was a definite low point. We had to get up at 4:15, but due to the storm, there was no electricity, and EVERYTHING was wet. Roxanne and I gathered our things by the light of my iPod nano screen. We took a bus through Belmopan, Belize, to Belize City, then hopped on another bus and backtracked back through Belmopan to Dangriga, where we waited an hour for a water taxi for a 45 minute ride to Tobacco Caye. It was very hot and humid and we were all pretty tired and quite grumpy. The first thing I noticed about Belize was “the men are so TALL!” The people in Belize, on the coast anyway, are descendents of African slaves brought by the English, and while they aren’t any taller than guys in the U.S., I’ve been used to the short little Guatemalan guys here, with whom I can usually see eye-to-eye. They are known as the Garifuna, and they speak Kriol, a mixture of several African languages, French, Spanish, and English. As it turns out, Belize was colonized by the English, much to the chagrin of the Spanish and the Guatemalans (who still kind of consider Belize “theirs”). They declared independence in the 70s or something, but remain a commonwealth of Britain.

Tobacco Caye is about 25 miles off the coast of Belize (we don’t know for sure, just taking the approximate speed of the boat and the approximate commute time and figuring it). It’s about the size of a football field, all less than 10 feet above sea level, and squashed full of no fewer than 8 little resorts, beach chairs, docks, palm trees and hammocks. But we were practically the only people there, which was kind of awesome. We stayed at a little hotel called “Lana’s on the Reef,” recommended by the Cayhills, and run by Lana herself, a sweet little Garifuna lady who may or may not have been slightly off her rocker. We shared a room with the boys to save $20/night. The fan only worked for about 2 hours during the night, which sucked, but the food was good and there was chocolate cake, and that’s really all that matters.

The next morning we rented snorkel gear and messed around inside the reef, just off the shore of the caye. It was like watching “Finding Nemo” (except without the talking fish and the sea turtles) or a National Geographic documentary (without the helpful droning of the narrator). We saw all sorts of fish, brain coral, fan coral, normal knobbly coral, and a spotted MANTA RAY!!! I was like “please don’t stab me with your tail-thing! My name isn’t Steve Irwin, don’t hurt me!” Turns out it was harmless, according to a Garifuna guy cleaning a fish on the dock, who overheard my excited/panicked shouting to Ben. I also poked a sea anemone and swam through huge schools of tiny fingerlings. We all got fantastically sunburnt (yes Mom, I did put on sunscreen. SPF 50). We decided to go home the next day, mostly because we ran out of money, but that was really pretty ok. We felt like we’d gotten our money’s worth out of the trip.

We left the Caye at 5am on Tuesday, hopped on a bus to Belize City, barely made the 9:30 bus to Flores, and arrived in Flores at about 2:30, with the bus to the City leaving at 9pm. It was a fairly doable wait. We ate dinner, played cards, learned card tricks from a Guatemalan policeman, and chatted for a couple of hours with Cassondra, a GLBTQ protestor from the Pilson District in Chicago (last year’s Interterm class visited Pilson). It somehow came up that we were all Mennonites, so there were the standard Amish/Mennonite/ideology questions, which helped pass 3 hours or so quite easily. We arrived back in the City at about 6:15, and Joseph and I got sort of a bit lost trying to find our way from Zone 1 to our stops on the Periferico, but we made it, so that’s all right. It’s pretty hard to recognize my bus stop coming from the other direction. But I got it right and Joseph didn’t, so the poor guy had to wander around on the wrong highway in the rain for 45 minutes, trying to find a house that didn’t exist. Oops.