Momos Feria

Yesterday my buddy, Casey, and I went to the feria in Momostenango, a nearby municipio. Most towns celebrate a feria, or carnival-like-thing, once a year to celebrate the feast of their patron saint. Carnivals here in Guatemala can be surprisingly similar to carnivals at home in the states. Usually one can find a smorgasbord of terrible boardwalk games, food vendors, loud music, and, in the case of Momostenango, you even have the opportunity to take a ride on a Ferris Wheel… a man powered Ferris Wheel. No chains, no belts, no motors; just good ol’ fashioned men struggling to spin you to the top of the world, or in this case, about twenty feet off the ground.

However enjoyable, the above mentioned are not the main attraction of the Momo’s feria. A huge crowd gathers in front of the Catholic Church at the center of town, where a live, symbolic show is performed before the masses.  (I don’t know the true meaning of the act, I don’t know that anyone actually knows what’s going on, but the following is Casey and my interpretation.) First a tree as tall as the church is erected and tied to the façade of the church. Next, in front of the church there are men dressed in costume with Spanish masks (conquistadors?) who are ever so abusively whipping their counterparts who are dressed in different animal costumes; monkeys, jaguars and lions (the native Mayans?). As the whipping down below is going on, the crowd suddenly averts their attention to the sky where one of the men in animal costume is dancing on the roof of the church. From the tree, tied to the church, descends a rope which is secured about 30 yards out from the front of the church. I say ‘secured’ but both ends of the rope look like have been tied down by a Brownie, recently graduated to Girl Scout. The man on the roof of the church then ‘dances’ his way down the rope, without the use of any equipment, he is not even tied to the rope. He descends about 15 feet before he starts swinging his body around the not-so-taut rope like a gymnast on the uneven bars… except he’s on a rope, about 4 times as high as the gymnast and instead of foam pads he has asphalt to cushion his fall. Let’s take a look.

Balancing on his stomach on top of the tree.. sorry, but the site doesn't let me roatate pictures.

Lion dancing on top of the church.

Doing some flips

The band. The guy on the right is playing the  Marimba, which is the national instrument of Guatemala.

Lion in cowboy boots?

He still hasn't touched the ground.

Spanish mid-whip.

Thank you so much for the vacation mom and dad!!! You’re the best!

I just got back from the best vacation ever. Mom and dad flew me out to St. John in the US Virgin Islands. It was so nice to spend some time with my family (we missed you Ira, Carrie, ira, Claire, Noah, Erin, Ray, rayray, Christopher, Biz, Marie, Tim, Tina and Kiera!!!). I was lucky enough to spend a whole week with my parents, most of my siblings, the Grangers, Aunt Liz, the Ennis' and Corrigans in a beautiful tropical paradise.  We had a nice breakfast every morning in the outdoor kitchen, then split the rest of the morning between the pool and trying to hit/feed the iguanas with vegetables. After the iguana feeding, we made lunch and headed out to one of the many beaches on the islands where we spent the rest of the day snorkeling, playing kan-jam and practicing our handstands (Patrick is a champ). I don’t really feel like writing too much right now so I’m going let the pictures do the talking. All in all we had an amazing week; lots of family meals, family beach time, family snorkeling, family cards, family hikes, family drinking, only one family hospital trip and best of all family Umbros…

I was flying back to Guatemala the night before my birthday and was feeling pretty depressed about leaving my family, coming back to my reality of poor Guatemala, and having to spend my birthday alone in a hostel near the airport. Luckily, I have some pretty good friends who surprised me and met in the city to have a little birthday celebration, which made the transition back to Guatemalan life much smoother. I have been back in Chiquimula for about 4 days now and have been keeping busy. I finished planting one garden in la Escuela Urbana today and tomorrow, weather permitting, will finish planting at my schools in Patzam and Chicaxul. Well that’s all for now. Enjoy the pictures.

Oh and happy birthday Claire, Beth, rayray, Sean, Myles, Dad and Uncle Peter

view from the driveway

Beth and I

Daly's and Ennis'

picture from outdoor kitchen towards the main house

umbros and snorkeling

Dad and I whooping Pat and Mom

Brian, Sean, Me, Patrick, Beth

turtle

everyone

sitting with dad, practicing my fish face

coupl'a pals cathin fish

sitting co-pilot from St. Thomas to Puerto Rico

I was working at a school in Patzam and I told the director that they chose a bad spot for the garden becasue there wasn't enough sun. I suggested we move over about 20 feet. He thought that was stupid, so he climbed the tree with a machete and cut down all the branches. Guatemala, where any problem can be solved with a machete.

Escuela Urbana

I went back to la Escuela Urbana today to continue working on the garden. Today we finished the fence and finished forming the rows where we are going to plant. Now we're just waiting to get our seeds. Hopefully we'll have them by next week.

Workin it.

Pretending to work, but really just posing for the camera.

Everybody chipping in to clear out all of the rocks.

Almost done.

New House, Brothers and School Garden

I was finally able to move about 4/5 weeks ago to a new place closer to the center of town. The family in my old place was great but my room was always very dark and damp and kind of depressing. I now live in a much busier part of town, closer to my office, the market and the soccer field which is where I spend most of time. My room is now very bright and I even have a little patio where I am planting a garden.

About a week after moving in I was beginning to grow suspicious of some disappearing food. At first I thought mice but then decided that the missing food was too big for a mouse to carry off. My second thought was rats. A couple nights in a row I could hear something moving around in the kitchen and got up to check it out but was never able to find the culprit. Finally, I decided to put out some bait and see what I could find. I made a peanut butter sandwich, put it on the table and left the room. Within two minutes I heard something moving the plate around and ran into the kitchen to find a couple stray cats fighting over the food. When they saw me they snatched up the sandwich, jumped out the window and climbed the ladder I had built leading up to the roof. I now keep my window closed and usually throw whatever I don’t eat up on the roof.. it seems to be keeping them at bay. 

Bedroom.

Kitchen.

Kitchen.

Bedroom.

 

Two weeks ago I was the lucky recipient of two visitors, Sean and Tim. The first thing on our to-do list was to get them their first ever shoe shine. The little shoe shine boys didn’t really know what to do when they were presented with Sean and Tim’s converse sneakers but after a little running around they came back with some white polish that they rubbed onto the sole of their shoes. After getting their shoes shined Sean and Tim were feeling pretty bad for the little boys and decided it was time to take them to their first restaurant and buy them so good ol’ American Hamburgers. Unfortunately, there were no golden arches in site so we took the boys (which quickly grew from 2 to 6) to a nearby restaurant where we ordered a round of hamburgers, put it on Sean’s tab and left the waiters to figure out the rest. 

Shoe shine.

 

On Friday we met up with a couple of my friends and hiked up a volcano outside of town. Volcan Pacaya has been active in recent years and is known to frequently spit lava which can be seen at night. Hoping to see the spitting lava, we took the afternoon tour which turned out to be a pretty poor choice. While climbing up the volcano the tour guide stopped us 6 or 7 times to take in the beautiful vistas over lagoons, forests, other volcano peaks and distant cities but because we took the afternoon tour all we saw were clouds, fog and rain. What started out as a disappointing tour due to the clouds turned out to be pretty cool once we reached the top of the volcano where we were walking in a desert of volcanic rock.

After Antigua we headed towards Lago Atitlan where we stayed for two nights. The first night we stayed in a nature reserve a couple hundred yards away from the lake and the second night we stayed in a nice hotel on the side of a cliff, right up against the water. The hotel, La Casa del Mundo, was built about twenty years ago and since then the water level has risen 18 meters leaving balconies and flights of stairs submerged in the lake, which makes for a pretty neat scene… It was so nice to be able to pal around with Sean and Tim, I can’t wait for my next opportunity to see family and friends from home. 

Brothers on Pacaya.

Sean in the chicken bus.

Underwater balconies.

Palin around.

 I recently started working with one of the local schools to build and plant a garden, but the only land that the school had available for us to use is the spot where they have been burning trash for the past 15 years. We started clearing the trash last week and it took us five hours to dig out all of the melted trash. There are 36 kids in the class and they are pretty amazing. They have worked for the whole school day and then stayed an hour after school ended two days in a row to keep working on the garden. We started with the bamboo fence today, but ended up being about two bamboo shoots short. Here are some pictures.. 

Trash.

Clearing trash.

After we cleared the trash and leveled the ground.

Everyone brought their own bamboo.

First couple posts.

In America you get suspended for bringing a knife to school. In Guatemala you are encouraged to bring a machete to school.

Going to leave with a quick story. Yesterday I was digging a garden in my friend’s backyard when I felt a stinging in my hand, kind of like a bee sting, but when I looked at my hand I didn’t see anything. After digging for about five minutes I started to feel more stings all over my body, on my legs, arms, back and stomach. I didn’t see anything on my shirt but when I looked at my lighter colored pants I noticed that I was covered in ants. They were everywhere and they were biting relentlessly. I started pinching them off and swatting them but it wasn’t enough. I ended up having to strip all of my clothes off and run inside to the shower to get them off my body. I now have pretty good sized bites all over my body. I miss the nice ants in New Jersey.