Security?

RIP Charlie Ennis

Security?

Where to begin? Peace Corps Guatemala has gone through many changes over the past month. The security of volunteers in the Northern Triangle of Central America (Guate, Honduras and El Salvador) has been under review in Washington for over a year...which makes you wonder why they continued to send volunteers here in the first place. At the end of January we had an all volunteer security conference where they confirmed many of the rumors that had been circling around the PC community. PC Guatemala is cutting its volunteer population in half in order to make security more manageable, and they are relocating the majority of the remaining volunteers to a more centralized location. 

How are they doing this? The next two groups of volunteers due to COS (Close of Service) in 4-6 months are being forced to COS in the next 3 weeks. They also offered every volunteer the opportunity to COS right now with full benefits, as if they had served their full 2 years. Although it is very tempting to return back to the comfort of family, friends and health, having served only 6.5 months, I don´t feel as if I have earned it yet. Luckily, I am not one of the many people who have to relocate. A lot of the volunteers who are being forced to change their site have decided to go home because of the lack of time that they would have in their new site. It takes an incredible amount of time and energy to adjust to a new site and to gain the trust of the people living there, which is one of the reasons volunteers serve for 2 years. 

This being said, PC Honduras recently shutdown and it looks as if PC El Salvador is on the same path, so I am lucky to have the opportunity to stay in country. 

These security issues have resulted in many of my friends returning to the states, which isn´t very fun for me. In the beginning of January there were 225 volunteers serving in Guatemala. The suit from Washington who came to speak to us at the conference told us that their aim was to get that number down to 100, which has been a blow to morale for the PC community that has decided to stay.

Anyway, these PC security rumors/issues are all I have heard about for the past month, so I don´t want to dwell on it anymore. 

This past Monday I taught one of my women´s groups how to make homemade soap using water, vegetable oil and caustic soda. Obviously, I had no idea how to do this before last Friday. I got in touch with another volunteer who does know how to do this and she gave me some good advice. 

1. You should add an aroma which can be done cheaply by using flower pedals, lemon peels or cinnamon sticks 
2. The color of the soap is bland, so I suggest adding a color dye to the mixture 
3. Instead of buying a gallon of fresh vegetable oil you should go to a fried chicken joint and buy their used oil, I promise there is no odor

Taking her advice I decided to use lemon peels to give the soap a nice fresh scent. What color goes best with lemons? You guessed it- I bought two packs of yellow dye. Lastly I went to a street vendor and tried to buy his used vegetable oil, he thought I was crazy, but before long I found a vendor who didn’t care how crazy I was as long as he could take my money. 

Lemon peels from 15 lemons didn´t quite have the effect I was hoping for, neither did the yellow food dye. And the fried chicken vegetable oil… well, that turned out pretty much exactly how I expected, although I was hoping against my own judgment that the other volunteer was right and that used oil would be odorless. Our mixture resulted in a large bucket of what looks like something I am far too familiar with now, diarrhea, and has an overwhelming odor of fried chicken. But don’t listen to me, you be the judge…

 

 

 

Stirring up some soap

First time wearing goggles and latex gloves

Palin with my girls

 until next time...

Christmas and New Years 2011

It has been a while since I last updated and I’ve been all over the place since. Unfortunately a death in the family brought me back to the U.S. Even though it was a terrible reason to have to return the states it was a great surprise to be able to spend Christmas with the family. On Saturday the 17^th Sean and Beth (with the help of my other siblings) bought me a ticket to return back to the states on the following Monday. Keeping with the Christmas mood, we decided to make it a surprise and didn’t tell my parents. Unluckily, Mom and Dad were not too impressed with my trumpet playing outside of their bedroom door when I arrived home at 2:30a.m., in my defense it has been years since I have practiced. The announcement of my homecoming was met with a shrill yell coming from my dad’s side of the bed, “WILL YOU JUST GOT TO BED!!”  After a couple more toots on the ol’ horn we decided it would be best to reveal myself before we gave dad a heart attack. A couple hugs later and everybody was back down in the kitchen to celebrate my homecoming with a nice cheap bottle of bubbly. 

Mom and I, after waking her up at 2:30a.m.

After trying to get over the fact that I probably wouldn’t see most of my family and friends for a little over two years, I was thrilled to be able to return after only 5 months. It was great to see all my nieces and nephews before they doubled in size and didn’t recognize me, although Christopher was convinced that I was still “in the jungle with the dinosaurs” and that both me and Sean were “Uncle Sean”. I was lucky to be able to see a lot of my cousins, aunt and uncles and all of my siblings, parents and some good friends. Chris, Pat, Myles and I spent a day in the city, soaking up as much of America as I could, we all proudly wore “I <3 NY” T- shirts. 

Pat, Me, Borat, Myles and Chris. 

Me, Kiera, Pat, Sean, Xavi, Emma, Tim, Tina Brian. 

Me, Ira and Tim.

My time home flew by and I was back in Guatemala before I was ready. It took me about 24 hours to get back to my site after landing, mostly because I had to stay in the city for a night. I got back to my site and was feeling pretty lonely and depressed after spending so much time with everyone at home. I was quickly greeted with my host siblings Denealson 5 and Brian 9 who asked me if they could have my used toothbrush. It was good to see them but didn’t help much with the loneliness. I had plans to visit with friends for New Years, but couldn’t wait. I called them and we planned to meet up a day early, which meant I would only be staying in site for about 12 hours before taking off again to meet up with friends. The one night I had in site met me with a pretty nice earthquake. The biggest one I’ve felt down here, or ever for that matter. There was no structural damage that I know of to my house, but it did sound like there was a Mack Truck doing donuts around my bed. I was out of here by 7:30 in the morning. 

I met up with 6 other PC volunteers and 4 of their visiting friends at Lake Atitlan for New Years. The lake is unreal. It only took about 3.5 hours to reach the lake which is in the mountains of western Guatemala and is surrounded by 3 enormous volcanoes, which make for a beautiful view. New Years was great, lots of fireworks being set off by everyone in town right in the middle of the street (which at times was pretty scary). This seemingly tropical atmosphere was a great change for most of us who are located in high mountain towns and needed a break from the freezing nights and piles of blankets we need to sleep.

Lake Atitlan

Kayaking with Christine and Adriana.

Friends and I watching the sunset.

Sunset behind the volcano

Adorable.

Adorable.

Adorable.

Today was my second day being back and since I was feeling so lonely and bored I thought going for a run might cheer me up a bit. Running in the mountains is not easy and the whole ‘cheering me up’ thing wasn’t working too well. But on my way back to my place I was stopped by 3 kids who grabbed me and wanted to play soccer. The soccer game gave me a laugh and made me feel better. Later in the night Brian and Denealson were in my room and I gave them Hershey kisses that my mom so kindly mailed to me. Denealson wasn’t sure if he wanted to eat it since it looked like “Popocito” (a little poop) in his hand. He then ran upstairs to show his parents. (He did eat it and loved it. He comes back about every ten minutes to ask for another one). Well I’ve got lots of work to do so I better get going. I’ll try to update more frequently in the future…

Brian and Denilson with their popocito

Thanksgiving 2011

Well Thanksgiving has now come and gone. It was weird not to be with the family, but we made the best of it. Nine out of the ten people in my training group got together to celebrate, some of them traveling up to 14 hours by chicken bus over two days. Every person was in charge of one dish of food, so clearly I volunteered to make the stuffing. A couple people in the group are very conscious of what they eat and try to stay clear of anything that comes in a box and requires that you ¨Just add water¨. My selfless offering to make the dressing was received by skeptical minds who didn’t think I had what it takes to make a batch of top notch dressing.  But with a little reassurance from my mom´s ¨secret family recipe¨, that has been passed down for generations, the group agreed to let me take the helm. It took us all day to cook up our feast on the one tiny gas stove we had at hand, but our meal was complete with roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, spinach dip, homemade sweet potato pie, apple pie, apple cider, roasted vegetables and, of course, mom´s stuffing. To nobody´s surprise the stuffing, and mom´s recipe, received a barrage of compliments. 

We still had 3 days together after the celebration on Thursday and wanted to make the best of them. On my way into town the taxi driver could not tell me enough about El Prado, the lake that is just outside of San Jose. For most of the hour and a half drive we could see Volcan Tajumulco, the tallest volcano in all of Central America, but still Marco went on about El Prado. When we drove into town, a large sign was visible confirming the popularity of El Prado. This popularity was reconfirmed by each and every taxi driver that drove my fellow volunteers. Having seen the sign, having heard all the recommendations and after ousting the tallest volcano in Central America as the topic of conversation I knew this lake had to be pretty special. On Saturday morning we layered up, filled our thermos and set out on our ever exciting journey to El Prado. As we got closer we were eager to see what awaited us and were excited to watch the sunset over the lake and behind the volcanoes. When we finally arrived, we could not believe our eyes. Awaiting us was a green, man-made pond about fifty yards long and thirty yards wide...but at least we were able to rent rowboats. Unfortunately it was rather difficult to navigate the boats around all the floating dead fish, especially when your paddle scrapped the concrete bottom with each stroke. 

Somehow this picture makes El Prado look good...and not green. 

 I returned to site the Sunday after Thanksgiving and uploaded some pictures onto facebook that week. The truth about the stuffing was out...

My friend commented on the picture:

Kelly:  Matt you are such a liar. 'My mom's secret recipe' my ass. I'll never forgive you.

In other news I received 3 marriage proposals during the trainning I gave yesterday. 

Couple pics from my home visits in Chuasiguan 11-18-11

Pimpin out the chicken coop with 22 inch rims.

Last Friday, Don Juan and I walked about three hours to one of the aldeas, Chuasiguan, to do home visits so that I could meet the women in his group and check on their chicken coops. The walk should not have been nearly that long but he knew a ¨short-cut¨ through the mountains using the trails that the gorrillas made during the civil war...

Just thought this was pretty.

Their mother forgot to teach them how to smile.

Don Juan right before we started out on his short-cut.

Couple random pictures

I only have these 4 pictures with me at the office. I´ll try to add more tonight, or this week sometime.

(L-R) Maria Jose (22), Migdalia Amparo (24), Me, Monica Marissa (15), Veronica Gabriela (18)- My host sisters in Magdalena.

Cementary for Day of the Dead

Dawn, Sasha, Eduardo, Adriana, Christine in the PC van

Another picture from the cementary

2nd week in site

I have fleas. Mom can you mail me some of Emma´s frontline?

In other news, I met one of my women´s groups for the first time this past Friday. It is the biggest group I have and out of the 120 women that are in the group, about 75 showed up, and all of them with at least one baby/child and most with 2 or 3. The majority of the women don´t speak Spanish so my counterpart´s dad played the part of translator. The meeting started off pretty well I thought. All of the women sitting on the floor in front of me and my counterpart, his dad, and I standing at the front of the room. After I introduced myself the father translated what I had said into K´iche but was talking for much longer than I had talked. I asked my counterpart what he was saying, and he told me that his dad was trying to convince the women that I was not there to steal their children. Took about thirty minutes to get most of them to believe him. I´m off to a good start.

Right now things are pretty slow. I will be working with 7 women´s groups for the next three months until the schools open up again and then I will be working with 5 schools and a few additional women´s groups. Now I am just meeting the women and doing house visits to see how everything looks and decide what I will focus our meetings on. I think a lot of it will be infant nutrition. Most mothers put coke and coffee in their baby bottles. Yikes.

Don´t know if I wrote about this previously, but in my training town there was a guy who wasn´t all there in the head and he used to call me Santa, and every time I walked by his house he would yell ¨HOHOHO¨. My new town is much more religious than my old town and I have been told by 3 different families and one pastor that I have the face of Jesus Christ. Make sure Grandma hears about that one. Guatemalans can´t really grow facial hair so I am quite the anomaly. During both of the women´s group meetings that I have had so far, little kids have come up to me and pet my face. Even my counterpart asked if he could touch it.

Things are going pretty well in my new house. I live on the first floor and a family of four lives above me. There are two boys, 5 and 9 years old. The boys standing on chairs so that they can watch me through my window is about the extent of my interaction with the family. They especially like to watch when I´m sitting on my bed reading. Those little guys could watch me for hours.

I´ve been trying to put pictures up but the internet is too slow here. Gonna try to do it from my computer later tonight.

Welp, see ya later.

Totonicapan

Hi All,

Sorry I haven´t updated in a while. I just moved to my new site and home for the next two years in Totonicapan. Apparently I am now living in the poorest town in the poorest department of the third poorest country in the world, but I´m sure there are lots of different studies with conflicting statistics...nevertheless it´s pretty poor down here.

Last friday we swore in as Peace Corps volunteers, said bye to our host families and moved out to our new sites all over the country. My first host family in Magdalena Milpas Altas was amazing. We had a great time together and it was hard to say goodbye, lots of tears.

I arrived in my new site, a small town in Totonicapan, on Friday and it´s been a bit rough. My host family does not compare to my first family in the least. I live on the 1st floor of a 2 story house and the whole family lives upstairs. There is no reason for me to go up there nor for them to come down so it´s been pretty awkward. I asked them two nights ago if I could eat dinner with them one night this week becasue I want to get to know the family and they said that would be great and that the next night we are having tomales. So the next night came and there were balloons all over the place and lots of people coming into the house..I was getting a little overwhelmed casue I thought you were going to have a welcome party for me but about an hour later the father came downstairs to my room and gave me a tomale and a cup of coffee..I asked what was going on upstairs and it was a birthday party for their 5yr old son. Unlucky.

It has been getting a little better each day. Yesterday a girl from my work invited me to accompany her family for the celebrations for Todos Santos/Dia de los Muertos. So last night I sat on the top of the mountain in a graveyard ontop of mounts of dirt that were covering bodies with a Mayan family. The girl from my work was the only one in the family that spoke Spanish and we spent about 2 hours translating different things between english, spanish and k´iche. It was really amazing to spend some time with a Mayan family and to celebrate such an important day in their culture. They said a couple Mayan prayers and lit tons of candles and we ate in the graveyard with their deceased family.

On another note I have had bananas, tortillas and avacados for my past 4 meals. Down to my last belt loop already.
Anyway I´ve got to run for now, but I´m going to try to post some pictures online soon from the last nights with my previous host family and hopefully a couple from the graveyard.

Matt