Wrapping Up

This entire Guatemala experience has been one that is challenging in a lot of ways. I needed to let go of my suppositions about how people should live, the pace of progress, how much one person can accomplish, and the best way to help people.

So, I’ve been a little homesick the last few days. I have more mosquito bites than I care to count and they keep coming. I’m tired of shooing bugs in the bathroom and shower. And more than anything, I miss people in the United States.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I’m doing when I come back to the States. I think about what foods I will eat, how long my first shower will be, and washing my clothes in a machine with hot water. I think about using an indoor bathroom that I don’t have to shoo mosquitoes while I’m doing my business. I also think about all the clothes I left in NYC and how I have to throw out some of the stuff I have with me.

I have been having trouble with these emotions though. On one hand, it’s perfectly normal to miss home. On the other, I feel a little like a spoiled brat because I’m “roughing” it and don’t want to anymore. The fact is, that for most of the families we work with, my version of “roughing” is nothing compared to their lives.


Maybe I’m a spoiled brat. Maybe I’m not cut out for development work in the Third World. But, this experience has helped me appreciate the conveniences that I enjoy.

Perhaps, it is just that I know that this is temporary. The people who live here don’t see these things as inconveniences, but the way things are. They don’t know what its like to live a life that is different.

Folks here slaughter their own meat (chicken, ducks, etc), grow their own beans and corn, and other vegetables. In that sense, the small town feel is something that I like. I like being able to purchase produce direct from farmers. I like knowing that my purchase goes directly into the hands of the people who grew the plant, tended their land, and harvested it. I also like supporting small independent farmers, when the growing trend, even in Guatemala, is to shop at mega supermarkets.

Even though it’s a pain in the neck sometimes, I like that I’m living in the same town as the farmers. Unlike others, I’m not living in the city and coming to the town to work. I like that we’re viewed as a resource here—that families ask us questions they might not ask others. I appreciate that folks in Filiberto’s family have gotten so comfortable with us that, the other day, Filiberto’s daughter Marta whipped out her boob and started breastfeeding in front of us.

All that said, I think that my experience has been well worth the trip. I’m still going to be happy to come back to the States. I expect that some things, like shopping at farmer’s markets instead of mega stores, will be easy to continue at home. There are other things that will be very difficult to continue in New York. My neighbors are not going to come to me to help with their English, teach me to make tortillas, or tell me their stories. I won’t be able to round up neighborhood girls for soccer on Sunday afternoons.

So, as I continue to wrap things up this week, I’m going to be thinking about how grateful I am that I got to spend quality time here.

Less than 2 weeks left...

I'm in the home stretch of this experience. But, in the process, I've been much less consistent with posting on this here blog.

This week is about tying up loose ends. Our last English classes are Tuesday and Thursday this week. Our last girl's soccer game is on Sunday. The girls will continue to play without us though. As Green As It Gets has our Sunday soccer game as a feature on the home page. The photos are mine!

I have mixed feelings about leaving. On the one hand, I'm excited to see family and friends in the States. On the other hand, I'm really going to miss the people here. And come December, I'm really going to miss the weather.

Will write more soon-I promise!

Calamity Jen and Mundo Perdido

So, this past Thursday and Friday, I went to Tikal with Oriana and her mom.

The way the trip was organized differed greatly from how we’ve previously been traveling—it was planned. We left very early on Thursday morning, 4 AM, on a shuttle to the airport in Guatemala City. We flew in a very small plane to Tikal-Flores. Once we arrived at the airport we were met by our hotel shuttle driver and tour guide. We hopped in the transport bus with the shuttle driver and he dropped us off to get some breakfast at a local stop while he collected people from the bus station. The local breakfast place was good. Most of the locals in this place were large men, armed with flashy and very unnecessary handguns, much like what we saw in Zacapa and Izabal. We finished and then boarded the shuttle bus again for the 45 minute ride to our hotel and the Tikal National Park.

Tikal’s National Park is 15 square kilometers of protected lands. It’s a real sight to see.

A note, Tikal is in Peten, the district in the panhandle of Guatemala that borders the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. Peten is mostly made up of jungle and rainforest, very few people actually live there.

You’ve seen my pictures of Quirigua. There are about 5 stelae and 3 larger boulders with one building/large plaza area. We covered that area in a little more than an hour. This was nothing compared to Tikal’s structures. The websites and guidebooks for Tikal show the same two pictures—I didn’t have a very good grasp on the scale of what we would see.

It was very hot, very humid, and I was just getting over a pretty bad sinus infection. So, I was a mess. It just got better when you add the sweat, many many mosquitoes, and heat rash. Yes, it was so hot, I got heat rash on my arms. I think the best explanation is that I experienced nature-overload. My superhero name is going to be Calamity Jen.

So, we get started on the tour, not a whole lot of an incline (thank goodness) because just walking in that heat was enough. We finally come up to the map of the grounds of the park. And it hits us. There are 5 large temples, a plaza with multiple royal buildings, and other smaller buildings. This was a lot more ruins than we thought. The tour guide mentions that it’s estimated that only 20 have to wait until other countries help them finance the archeological expeditions to uncover more. Given the tourist attraction that Tikal already is, it seems silly percent of what is at Tikal has been uncovered—leaving 80 percent still to be uncovered. She also mentioned that for lack of funds, Guatemala will that there aren’t plans to for further archeological projects to move forward there.

The buildings are thought to have been built between 600-800 CE. Although for a few structures, archeologists disagree on the dates. The structures at Tikal are just amazing both in size and architecture. For me, the most interesting part was how they even found these ruins because they were all covered by jungle vegetation. They call part of the site Mundo Perdido—Lost World. I think that’s a pretty apt name for the entire Tikal area. It felt very much like a lost world to me—especially because so much of Mayan history still remains a bit mysterious.

While the structures at Tikal were much more interesting, the stelae with Mayan glyphs were much more visible and better preserved at Quirigua. It seems that the stelae at Tikal were excavated and then left to erode in the rain over time. Had they been left until later, they might have been better preserved under all the vegetation. Limestone doesn’t hold up very well in rainy weather.

Since I didn’t have a guide book—and wasn’t going to buy one at the various tourist traps there—it was difficult to glean from our tour guide’s broken English the significances of each building. So, I won’t even attempt to explain stuff—I just don’t know enough to do it. But here are some pictures…

Sounds of Guatemala (and Mexico)

Over the last 6 weeks, it’s been very difficult to get used to the amount of noise in our little town. Let me first say that there are no noise ordinances in San Miguel Escobar or Antigua. There are some sounds that I think are worth explaining—and this may prove an interesting snippet of cultural study.

Zeta Gas—The gas company here is very thorough about advertising the availability of their product. People don’t have stoves and heating so instead they buy 25 lb tanks of gas. The truck goes around the town starting around 6 AM and there’s a megaphone that belts out “Zeta Gassssssssss.” That is the cue for anyone who needs a tank of gas to walk out of their house and flag down the truck. I once told Filiberto that I thought it was annoying, he said yea, but it’s a great service—if they need gas, they know the guy is coming. This goes on most days until 11 PM. I have become accustomed to sing along with the megaphone recording as it passes by. Guatemalans think it’s really weird that I do that.

Cuetes—Cuetes are firecrackers or fireworks. Here in San Miguel, and in Guatemala in general, they love their cuetes. They are cheaper than most food here. People shoot off cuetes for a birthday, for mother’s day and father’s day, for Christmas. The best part about this is that these are most popularly done in the very early morning 3 AM – 5 AM. The juvenile delinquents that live across the street from us seem to light them just for shits and giggles. I get scared every single time I hear them. The first time I heard a big one at 4 AM, I actually started so much that I was standing in the doorway between my room and Oriana’s to make sure that the place didn’t blow up. The noise carries so well in this area, and particularly in our house that sometimes they sound like they are going off in our rooms. The other problem—aside from the noise—is the fact that kids are mostly dumb here and will light them near houses that are not made of concrete. I just hope that it doesn’t take houses burning down before they stop.

Roosters—Unlike the myth believed by me, and I’m sure many other city dwellers, roosters do not crow just in the morning. Roosters here crow at all hours, their most popular hours are from 12 AM-5 AM. At first I thought the roosters here were just dumb, but Filiberto tells me that they don’t sleep hardly at all, and crow when they want to. They are clearly not catering to my sleep schedule.

Music—We hear the same 4-5 songs played over and over and over. Finally, we bought compilation CDs in the market and we can actually understand the words. Now, it would be one thing if the music was played at reasonable volumes—but we are not so lucky. The worst is when both of our neighbors play music at ear drum shaking volume. One neighbor will sing (VERY BADLY) a different song that is actually blasting. The thing is that most of the music that is popular here comes from Mexico. The marimba (traditional Guatemalan music) an instrument with a big xylophone, often doesn’t have words, and therefore would be super-annoying if they blasted it.

Dogs—Last, but certainly not least, dogs here are like vermin in the big cities. There are loads of stray dogs, they are not spayed or neutered and always looking for food. PITA and Human Society would have a field day trying to deal with the situation here. It’s really sad, but, it’s an unfortunate reality. Anyhow, but there are dogs barking all the time. Sometimes it sounds like the scene in 101 Dalmatians where they are barking to notify one another about Cruella DeVille. I’m not so sure the dogs here are that smart, but they sure do bark a lot.