I won’t lie… the past few weeks have been the hardest so far. This is the first time I had ever been away from my family for Christmas, and it ended up being a little harder than I thought. I never felt overwhelmingly homesick, I would just have waves of longing for the familiarity of holiday traditions from home and time spent with my North American family. But I also really enjoyed spending the holidays with my Guatemalan family… I guess I really just wanted to be in two places at once, but as that is not possible, I spent the holidays here in Guatemala learning different traditions, practicing the familiar tradition of overeating for about two weeks straight, and enjoying my time off from work.
Starting the 22 or 23rd of December my grandparents, aunts Norma, Rosa, Carmen, and uncle Checo, along with various combinations of cousins spent two days at my family’s house to make paches, a traditional food made from rice or potato with meat and sometimes chili, raisins, or prunes, wrapped in huge leaves and cooked over a fire. At home lots of families trade plates of cookies or other Christmas sweets, but here, every family who can makes paches and trades them with family and friends. My family made over 500 paches in two days. I tried to pay attention so I can make them next Christmas when I’m back in the North, but there are lots of ingredients and back-aching grinding on a traditional grinding stone that I will have to find substitutes for if I make them when I return home. I did, however, learn how to fold the leaves around the paches to prepare them to be cooked, and my four year old cousin Cristel and I made happy faces in the paches we were wrapping with raisins for eyes, prunes for noses, and pepper and chilies for mouths. Paches felices, we called them… “happy paches” that made our tummies happy when we ate them.
And we ate a lot of them… for breakfast, lunch, and dinner from December 23 until I left for the beach on the 28th. Typcially, Guatemalans eat paches at midnight on Christmas Eve, but my family was tired of paches so each family brought a different type of meat for a very carnivorous midnight meal after setting off fireworks. We spent Christmas Eve night with Betty’s (my mom) sister Norma with all the cousins and aunts and uncles on my mom’s side.
Before we went to Norma’s at 11:30, though, we went to a three and a half hour church service. I normally like going to church, but I am used to sitting on cushioned pews and looking disapprovingly at my watch when the service passes the one hour mark. Here, though, things are a little different. We didn’t sing Christmas hymns, either, which was disappointing. We listened to Christmas hymns sung by various groups within the church… several Bible study groups, the women’s society, the men’s society, the youth group, and the children’s group in a Christmas tree formation. Then there was a sermon, which is the most frustrating part of the service for me, partly because I would get restless during any 45 minute sermon, but I get especially restless because I can’t understand most of it as the minister switches between Quiche and Spanish constantly, usually mid-sentence. So even though I understand the majority of what he says in Spanish I don’t understand the other half of the sentence. It also makes me not feel so bad because a lot of the Guatemalans lose attention during the sermon. I can always tell when everyone has reached that point because they start passing around the babies that are there. I do really like how relaxed the services are here, with the older kids running in and out of the church to the store to buy gum or candy and the younger kids playing in the aisle. And when one of the younger ones starts crying somebody carries the kid back to the mom and she nurses it until it’s happy again. Guatemalans are also very enthusiastic if not always incredibly in tune singers. It drove me crazy at first that there’s almost never a discernable pitch, but I’m starting to get used to it and even like it a little, because it means that anyone who wants to can get up and lead a hymn and nobody is self-conscious of their singing abilities because the rest of the congregation doesn’t think twice about pitch. Even though I think I ultimately prefer the musicality of the services at New Providence, it is also refreshing to hear the enthusiastic and uninhibited singing in La Iglesia Presbyteriana Getsamane. And I have a sneaking suspicion the psalmist might have had more in mind the Guatemalan style of singing hymns when writing “make a joyful noise unto the Lord.”
Another thing that I really liked here, specifically about Christmas, is that my family doesn’t exchange gifts, just paches. Although this made Christmas feel really different, I also actually really liked it, not just because that’s what I’m supposed to say. They still bought plenty of stuff, mostly food and fireworks, but Christmas had a very different feel without presents and I like it. I kinda missed the Christmas shopping, which is something I enjoy doing every year, but I also appreciated here that the weeks leading up to Christmas weren’t very stressful. Pretty much all of Guatemala takes a Christmas holiday… the schools are out from mid October to beginning of January, and many jobs (including mine) have a month-long holiday break, so we spent a lot of time hanging out, making paches, and visiting family.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
xmas retreat and posada
December 16-19 we had a very relaxing Christmas retreat with the other YAVs. We went back to Casa San Jose, a guest house at a Catholic seminary in Xela, because they have a good space to meet and a kitchen where we could make a US-style Christmas dinner. We talked about the books we had read for this retreat… Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger and Reading the Bible Through Third World Eyes, cooked, baked, ate lots of what we cooked and baked, decorated a little Christmas tree Marcia brought, had a small gift exchange, and even sang Christmas carold a capella. The only bad part about it was that my body is no longer used to buttery, creamy casseroles and other US Christmas-y foods, so the day after our Christmas dinner was a little rough. But it was really nice to be around the other YAVs… everyone is a little more settled in since the last retreat and we told stories and laughed and complained about minor things while making s’mores in the fireplace.
The evening that I got back from the retreat I went with my family to a posada at the house of one of Betty’s cousins, named Elica. (Elica is the mother of the bride of the wedding I went to in October). For about a week or so before Christmas the Catholic churches here have Posadas each night where they carry a Mary and Joseph to a different person’s house each night, carrying candles. When they get to the house there is a conversation by singing between the people inside the house and the people outside the house who have just arrived. The people outside ask if they can come in and the people inside say there isn’t any room in the inn and this goes on three or four times til finally everyone comes in, there’s a mass, and then some kind of food afterward (for us it was hot chocolate and sweet bread).
We didn’t sing any Christmas hymns, even though it was December 19, but I really enjoyed the priest’s sermon. He preached from a very obvious liberation theology position, and he also talked about current world events, which was refreshingly political after spending most of my church time in the very non-political evangelical churches. After the mass was over we all went to look at the very European-looking Mary and Joseph dressed in typical Guatemalan indigenous clothing and took pictures with them.
Elica’s husband also has two grown kids in Los Angeles and they were making a video to send to them and I got to say hello and Merry Christmas to some Guatemalans living in the States, which was kinda neat
The evening that I got back from the retreat I went with my family to a posada at the house of one of Betty’s cousins, named Elica. (Elica is the mother of the bride of the wedding I went to in October). For about a week or so before Christmas the Catholic churches here have Posadas each night where they carry a Mary and Joseph to a different person’s house each night, carrying candles. When they get to the house there is a conversation by singing between the people inside the house and the people outside the house who have just arrived. The people outside ask if they can come in and the people inside say there isn’t any room in the inn and this goes on three or four times til finally everyone comes in, there’s a mass, and then some kind of food afterward (for us it was hot chocolate and sweet bread).
We didn’t sing any Christmas hymns, even though it was December 19, but I really enjoyed the priest’s sermon. He preached from a very obvious liberation theology position, and he also talked about current world events, which was refreshingly political after spending most of my church time in the very non-political evangelical churches. After the mass was over we all went to look at the very European-looking Mary and Joseph dressed in typical Guatemalan indigenous clothing and took pictures with them.
Elica’s husband also has two grown kids in Los Angeles and they were making a video to send to them and I got to say hello and Merry Christmas to some Guatemalans living in the States, which was kinda neat
End of Work
Work officially ended on December 17 for the month-long holiday break, but my last day was on December 15, because we had our Christmas Retreat with the other volunteers beginning on the 16th. The last couple of days at work, though, were pretty uneventful as far as I could tell, because the end-of-the-year General Assembly happened the week before. The first day of the assembly was just the people who work in the office, the board of directors, and a few other people. There were lots of reports and presentations that day, but the second day two women from each of the 30 or so community groups came. I also had to preach…in Spanish…the second day, which was the scariest thing I’ve done here (besides maybe the first time I rode in the back of a pickup up the mountain with about 15 other people in the back).
Also, sermons here are typically about 45 minutes, but the director of my organization, La Fraternidad, said mine could just be 30. I barely made it to 15 minutes. But I think people mostly actually listened, partly because it was short, and partly because of my accent they probably had to concentrate harder to understand what I was saying. I was given the topic of “our responsibility as Christians” and I preached on Micah 6:8 (do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God). I didn’t feel really great about it…it felt pretty simple and formulaic, but I was going on very little and trying to write in a foreign language that I had only been speaking for three and half months so it’s still difficult to express ideas sometimes.
However, I felt better about my message after I heard a woman that morning giving a talk about our responsibility as Christian women… our first responsibility is to our husbands, second to our kids, and third I think to the church. It was pretty shocking, especially because the director of our organization is pretty progressive, but once the woman was talking it’s not like someone could just go tackle her to the ground, even though that’s really what I wanted to do to keep her from telling the women stuff they really don’t need to hear.
I’ve had to adjust my tolerance level for machismo here… even the very kind, gentle men like my grandfather and uncle still tell their wives, sisters, or mothers when they want more drink or another serving of food, and she un-begrudgingly, even happily, gets up from the table to serve them. I don’t want to say “that’s just the way things are here” because that implies that I don’t there is the possibility of change, or that equality is a completely culturally relative term, but I guess I just have had to decide what will bother me so that I don’t go crazy. I’ve decided that what really infuriates me is the high level of domestic abuse that is not seen as acceptable exactly, but neither is divorce acceptable. So if you married a dud, it just kinda sucks, and people (like the wife’s parents and the godparents from the wedding) can try to intervene, but if nothing changes, divorce is pretty unlikely.
At least, though, people are starting to have conversations about domestic abuse, which is a step in the right direction, and, while the women are the topic of gossip, some women do leave their husbands and go back to live with their parents, so maybe by the time I bring my kids to visit my Guatemalan family things will be different...
Also, sermons here are typically about 45 minutes, but the director of my organization, La Fraternidad, said mine could just be 30. I barely made it to 15 minutes. But I think people mostly actually listened, partly because it was short, and partly because of my accent they probably had to concentrate harder to understand what I was saying. I was given the topic of “our responsibility as Christians” and I preached on Micah 6:8 (do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God). I didn’t feel really great about it…it felt pretty simple and formulaic, but I was going on very little and trying to write in a foreign language that I had only been speaking for three and half months so it’s still difficult to express ideas sometimes.
However, I felt better about my message after I heard a woman that morning giving a talk about our responsibility as Christian women… our first responsibility is to our husbands, second to our kids, and third I think to the church. It was pretty shocking, especially because the director of our organization is pretty progressive, but once the woman was talking it’s not like someone could just go tackle her to the ground, even though that’s really what I wanted to do to keep her from telling the women stuff they really don’t need to hear.
I’ve had to adjust my tolerance level for machismo here… even the very kind, gentle men like my grandfather and uncle still tell their wives, sisters, or mothers when they want more drink or another serving of food, and she un-begrudgingly, even happily, gets up from the table to serve them. I don’t want to say “that’s just the way things are here” because that implies that I don’t there is the possibility of change, or that equality is a completely culturally relative term, but I guess I just have had to decide what will bother me so that I don’t go crazy. I’ve decided that what really infuriates me is the high level of domestic abuse that is not seen as acceptable exactly, but neither is divorce acceptable. So if you married a dud, it just kinda sucks, and people (like the wife’s parents and the godparents from the wedding) can try to intervene, but if nothing changes, divorce is pretty unlikely.
At least, though, people are starting to have conversations about domestic abuse, which is a step in the right direction, and, while the women are the topic of gossip, some women do leave their husbands and go back to live with their parents, so maybe by the time I bring my kids to visit my Guatemalan family things will be different...
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Thanksgiving Away From Home
I took off work for Thanksgiving (I only have to work 4 days a week, so I picked Thursday as my day last week). I hadn´t even really felt that sad about missing Thanksgiving until Wednesday night. It´s hard to get in holiday mode here when the seasons don’t really change. It´s getting colder here, but it´s still warm during the day and everything stays green all year. Maybe if I had grown up on a farm I would count the corn harvest 2 weeks ago as a sign that the season was changing and holidays approaching. However, I did not grow up on a farm, so when the 30 workers showed up from somewhere on the other side of the mountain to stay at our house for 5 days and harvest the corn it just signaled to me that I´m really lazy and have a very easy life. Nothing about holidays.
I talked to my dad on the phone for a while on Wednesday night, which I enjoyed, but I still didn´t feel that homesick. Then that night I thought I would cheat and listen to some Christmas music on my iPod even though it wasn´t after Thanksgiving yet, and I got pretty homesick--not just for my family, but for the familiarity and comfort of Thanksgiving and Christmas traditions at home and the whole feeling of the holiday season. I had plans, though, to go to Xela to celebrate Thanksgiving with one of the other YAVs, though, so I went to sleep comforted by the fact that at least I would be celebrating Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving morning my family and I went to a nearby town where there are hot baths. I´m not sure if the water is naturally hot or not, but there were several rooms with hot-tub type things and then another little space where you can bathe before you get in the hot-tub. The girls got a room and then my brother got a room to himself. We soaked til we were pruney, then got back on the bus to come home for lunch. It was “rico,” as they say here; I cherish moments when I feel hot now.
In the afternoon I went to Xela to meet Dana to cook Thanksgiving dinner for us, her family, and about 8 of their friends…I think we were 16 people total. We started cooking at about 2:30 and finished at 7:30 (dinner was supposed to be at 7, but it didn´t matter because 3 of the people didn´t show up til 8:15). We cooked deviled eggs, green bean casserole, corn casserole, mashed potatoes, and chicken (turkey is really expensive here). Dana had also made brownies and banana cake ahead of time and bought a pumpkin pie from a Mennonite bake shop in Xela.
It went over really well… they told us the only thing that was missing was chile, but they had some, so all the Guatemalans added chile to their Thanksgiving dinner, but they didn´t comment on the fact that we didn´t have tortillas. It wasn´t quite like Thanksgiving at home, but it was a good substitute.
I talked to my dad on the phone for a while on Wednesday night, which I enjoyed, but I still didn´t feel that homesick. Then that night I thought I would cheat and listen to some Christmas music on my iPod even though it wasn´t after Thanksgiving yet, and I got pretty homesick--not just for my family, but for the familiarity and comfort of Thanksgiving and Christmas traditions at home and the whole feeling of the holiday season. I had plans, though, to go to Xela to celebrate Thanksgiving with one of the other YAVs, though, so I went to sleep comforted by the fact that at least I would be celebrating Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving morning my family and I went to a nearby town where there are hot baths. I´m not sure if the water is naturally hot or not, but there were several rooms with hot-tub type things and then another little space where you can bathe before you get in the hot-tub. The girls got a room and then my brother got a room to himself. We soaked til we were pruney, then got back on the bus to come home for lunch. It was “rico,” as they say here; I cherish moments when I feel hot now.
In the afternoon I went to Xela to meet Dana to cook Thanksgiving dinner for us, her family, and about 8 of their friends…I think we were 16 people total. We started cooking at about 2:30 and finished at 7:30 (dinner was supposed to be at 7, but it didn´t matter because 3 of the people didn´t show up til 8:15). We cooked deviled eggs, green bean casserole, corn casserole, mashed potatoes, and chicken (turkey is really expensive here). Dana had also made brownies and banana cake ahead of time and bought a pumpkin pie from a Mennonite bake shop in Xela.
It went over really well… they told us the only thing that was missing was chile, but they had some, so all the Guatemalans added chile to their Thanksgiving dinner, but they didn´t comment on the fact that we didn´t have tortillas. It wasn´t quite like Thanksgiving at home, but it was a good substitute.
Thanksgiving Retreat w/ other YAVs
Each 4-6 weeks, all the YAVs here in Guatemala meet for a 3 night retreat with our coordinator, Marcia. Our first one was November 18-20 and it was at a coffee finca called Finca Santa Elena on the coast, where one of the YAVs works.
It was really nice to be able to speak lots of English and be around the other YAVs and hear their stories. Oh, and we even ate lasagna one night (the husband of the owner is from France and the US). We also got to go on a hike to see a lot of the finca, which was really fun. I liked pretty much everything about the retreat (especially the warmth of being near the coast) except the giant mosquitoes.
We also talked a lot about the books we had read for this retreat. Each retreat we have a theme to study, and for this one it was Guatemalan history, namely the armed conflict that just ended 13 years ago. I still don´t feel like I have a great idea of the historical sequence of events, but I do know that a bunch of people here were slaughtered in an almost 30 year act of genocide against indigenous persons, and we knew and did nothing. No, actually the US government did do something—we funneled money and weapons to the army (via Israel after we promised not to support the military dictatorship anymore) and trained many of their leaders at the School of the Americas in Georgia. Much of it in the name of fighting communism.
The two books we read were Silence on the Mountain and ¡Nunca Mas! (in English, Never Again!). If you´re interested, Silence on the Mountain is a well written account by a man from the US who came here to try and get some people´s stories about the violence. He writes that he felt that he had to do what he did because he could always leave if he was in danger. The people here couldn´t leave and so they couldn´t go around trying to interview people about their experiences. Actually, some Guatemalans did do just that, but they were very quickly murdered.
Even now, efforts are still being made to try to give justice to some of the victims and their families (exhumations, going through army documents from the time, etc.) and the UN had to come in with a special task force because when people from within the country try to do this they get killed. The government apparently knows, though, that there are harsher repercussions (as in, there are repercussions) if from the UN group shows up mysteriously dead with signs of torture on his/her body.
Nunca Mas is also really good, but less of a narrative, so I found it a little harder to get through, but it has lots of really good information. It was the first attempt to really catalogue all of the human rights violations—the tortures, massacres, rapes and disappearances.
It was really nice to be able to speak lots of English and be around the other YAVs and hear their stories. Oh, and we even ate lasagna one night (the husband of the owner is from France and the US). We also got to go on a hike to see a lot of the finca, which was really fun. I liked pretty much everything about the retreat (especially the warmth of being near the coast) except the giant mosquitoes.
We also talked a lot about the books we had read for this retreat. Each retreat we have a theme to study, and for this one it was Guatemalan history, namely the armed conflict that just ended 13 years ago. I still don´t feel like I have a great idea of the historical sequence of events, but I do know that a bunch of people here were slaughtered in an almost 30 year act of genocide against indigenous persons, and we knew and did nothing. No, actually the US government did do something—we funneled money and weapons to the army (via Israel after we promised not to support the military dictatorship anymore) and trained many of their leaders at the School of the Americas in Georgia. Much of it in the name of fighting communism.
The two books we read were Silence on the Mountain and ¡Nunca Mas! (in English, Never Again!). If you´re interested, Silence on the Mountain is a well written account by a man from the US who came here to try and get some people´s stories about the violence. He writes that he felt that he had to do what he did because he could always leave if he was in danger. The people here couldn´t leave and so they couldn´t go around trying to interview people about their experiences. Actually, some Guatemalans did do just that, but they were very quickly murdered.
Even now, efforts are still being made to try to give justice to some of the victims and their families (exhumations, going through army documents from the time, etc.) and the UN had to come in with a special task force because when people from within the country try to do this they get killed. The government apparently knows, though, that there are harsher repercussions (as in, there are repercussions) if from the UN group shows up mysteriously dead with signs of torture on his/her body.
Nunca Mas is also really good, but less of a narrative, so I found it a little harder to get through, but it has lots of really good information. It was the first attempt to really catalogue all of the human rights violations—the tortures, massacres, rapes and disappearances.
¡Quinceñera!
November 2 was my oldest sister´s 16th birthday, and that morning at breakfast my family told me excitedly that to celebrate we were going to have chicken for dinner. And that afternoon, we killed one of the chickens that had been running around the yard since I had arrived. Now in theory, I´m all for this…I mean, the chicken has lived a full life I guess, as far as chickens go. She had another chicken friend with whom she shared her rooster boyfriend with, and she ran around all day eating dirt. Sometimes she would even sneak into the house to eat food off the floor and poop in the kitchen. I don´t guess it gets much better than that for a chicken. In actuality, though, I was not okay with eating something I had seen killed about 4 hours before. I did eat it, but the whole time I just kept thinking to myself “I can´t wait to go back home and be vegetarian again. Hell, maybe I´ll be a vegan when I go back” (don´t worry Mom-it was just a passing thought).
So that was just the family celebration… on November 7 was the huge Quinceñera party. She was turning 16 but they celebrated her “completing” 15 years… even though when you turn 16 you´ve completed 16 years. Don´t get me started.
The week of the party was lots of fun for me and lots of work for my mom. I only had to work 2 days in the office because my mom wanted me around the house to help and to see what all was going on, and the director at work agreed because these quinceñeras are such a huge deal. It´s basically like a wedding without a guy, but I´ll get to that later. So the week before was lots of cooking and cleaning (my family painted the house one day while I was at work). Then Friday, like at the wedding we went to, all the female relatives came over to help cook and decorate the house. Some men come too, but they mostly just sit around.
I got to help arrange the baskets of gifts and food for the padrinos. I think I wrote about padrinos in the entry about weddings, but they are kidna like godparents that are chosen for special events/ceremonies like baptisms, weddings, and quinceñeras. Normally for a quiceñera the padrinos also buy the señorita´s huipil, but my sister´s padrinos bought her whole traje, which probably cost about 1000 or more quetzales, or over $80 (a secretary here earns about Q1300 a month).
Anyway, Friday night my aunts carried baskets of food and gifts on their heads to the padrinos, and I helped prepare and arrange the baskets with my mom and a great uncle.
The preparing entailed a lot of trying to figure out how much everything in the basket cost and if they´d spent enough and we also prayed over the baskets about 3 times. When we went to deliver the baskets we were served food, and the great uncle talked a lot in Quiché, then each of the grandparents got to talk and the padrinos each talked for a while. Then we came back home and ate more food.
The party didn´t start til about 1:30 (it was supposed to start at 12), so Saturday morning was more cooking, and I got to help with the cuchitos… balls of masa with meat inside and wrapped in corn husks. All of my sister´s attendants (14 of them) were getting their hair done and stuff so there were lots of little girls running around with fancy hair and moms, aunts, grandmothers, and other female relatives warning them not to mess it up.
After lunch was served we went to the church for a two and half hour service that was very much like a wedding. All the attendants filed in and lined the center aisle. Then the grandparents, padrinos, and mom processed in. Finally my sister, escorted by her brother, came in and processed down the aisle. After an unnecessarily long sermon, my mom presented Karin with her quinceñera ring and a porcelain doll-her last toy. A lot like a wedding.
Then afterwards we all ate cake and the chuchitos I helped make. When we finally got back home we all sat around and watched Karin open all her presents… several cortes (the traditional skirt type thing), towels, dishes, wall clocks, and lots more. This is why I say it´s pretty much like a wedding without a guy.
It was pretty fun, though… and the even better part was that the next morning we got to eat all the leftovers and we had cake for breakfast.
Día de los Santos
November 1 is “Day of the Dead” or “All Saints Day,” and we celebrated by waking up early and eating tradition Día de los Muertos food—boiled sweet potatoes and some kind of mushy pumpkin thing. Then we went to the cemetery in another town nearby in the back of an aunt and uncle´s “piccop.” My mom had already bought bunches and bunches of flowers in Xela a couple of days before, so when we got to the town we didn´t have to go to the market. We just parked the piccop and my sister and mom carried the bundles of flowers on their heads up the huge hill to the cemetery where we ate more sweet potatoes and they cleaned and decorated the grave of their father. Then some other relatives shows up and we hung out with them while they were cleaning and decorating other graves of other family members. The graveyard was beautiful with all the flowers and kids were flying kites and outside the cemetery there was all kinds of delicious foods--paches, roasted peanuts, chocobananos (frozen bananas dipped in chocolate), tostados, and chuchitos.
In the afternoon we went to the pastor´s house for lunch and Bible study (I napped their bed during the Bible study) and then we went to church for a really long time.
In the afternoon we went to the pastor´s house for lunch and Bible study (I napped their bed during the Bible study) and then we went to church for a really long time.
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