Estudiantes

I can't remember if I've written yet about the group of Estudiantes de Educacción Integral (Students of Integral Education) that meets here in the office every two weeks or not, but I thought I should write about them, because they are my favorite part of work, and I just realized yesterday that I only have one more meeting with them!

Most of our group meetins are held in the communities, but this group meets in the office, because it is a mix of women who have been picked from the groups because they show potential and/or interest in pursuing more and deeper theological studies and more leadership roles in their churches or communities. This year we have been working every other Wednesday with the group of 7 women over the topic of "What is Pastoral Accompaniment?" We just finished working through a book about being more aware of the needs of people with physical limitations and are now starting a course on how to prepare and deliver a Bible study or sermon.

Since these women have been picked for being "above average" they typically also tend to be the ones who would talk more in the communitiy group meetings, so sometimes these Wednesday meetings can get a little long, because they loooove to talk. But, I generally like them and I love listening to the women's stories and struggles in their lives (well, I don't love that they have struggles, but I like that they feel like they have a place to talk about them, and it helps me better understand the situation of Guatemalan women).

I am amazed sometimes at the difficulties they face--one has a husband who has been in jail for the past 5 years whom she goes to visit every week to pick up the weavings he makes so that she can sell them to pay for her 2 daughters' school fees. She is also taking care of her aging mother (who just moved in with her when her own house was destroyed by Agatha) and is dealing with some form of illness herself, which they say is cancer, but she hasn't been to a doctor. She has also only missed one class this year (which is a really good attendance record for here!) She loves the classes and always says how appreciative she is to the Frater for helping her.

Another woman in the group is trying to take care of two alcoholic sons (one 17 and the other 22) while being very involved in her church, and worrying about her husband and other children because, she says, they don't know God. She's also usually the one who interrupts the meeting by coming in 45 minutes late and then greeting everyone individually before she proceeds to tell us why she was late and why she almost didn't come :)

Yet another is a very quiet woman, and the only one in this group who cannot read or write, so I think it is pretty amazing that she shows up regularly (and always five minutes early, which is practically unheard of) with her materials that she gets her daughter to read aloud to her. Here the stigma against illiteracy is not nearly what it is in the States, but it is still difficult for her, especially in a group of others who can all read and write (at least at a basic level). Although she cannot read or write, she does have some interesting stories to share (when prompted) about her experiences as a midwife in a community where most women do not go to a hospital to give birth.

So Wednesday was my second-to-last course with the Estudiantes (there are actually two more, but I will be traveling with a group from Nashville for one of those classes) before I leave, which makes me realize just how quickly my time has gone and how very quickly these last few weeks will go. More, though, it makes me realize how much I will really miss some of the women the Frater works with. I wont't exaggerate and say I'll miss all of them. Some days when we get back from a community I am so tired and discouraged I just want to cry, but these meetings with the Estudiantes help me feel like I'm connecting with some women, and I have really grown to respect and care about them and I know that I will miss seeing them and hearing their stories when I leave.

Salsa anyone?

Grace (a girl here from the States for 6 weeks doing senior research thesis who is living with Bethi's sister, thus making her my cousin) and I decided a night in the city was in order last night, so we stayed in Xela last night to take advantage of the free salsa lessons offered at one of the salsa clubs downtown.

First of all, that whole wiggly-hip thing does not happen very naturally for me, but it was still a lot of fun until the electricity went out at the club for about 30 minutes, which is very typical here. The lights go out all the time, and usually are out either for 30 seconds or 8 hours. Luckily, last night, it was just over a half-hour, so we just waited around and watched guys have an impromptu break-dance competition by the blue glow of cell phone backlights until the music came back on, at which point I continued spastically trying to salsa and getting stepped on by all the really good dancers. But, it was a fun night, and a part of Guatemala I don't usually experience, since my family lives so far away, but more because they are Evangelicals (only the sin-loving Catholics are allowed to dance here) .

Current Events

So much has been going on in the past month or so here in Guatemala... You probably all know about Volcán Pacaya exploding the last week of May, as well as the devastating Tropical Storm Agatha that killed over 150 Guatemalans and destroyed even more houses, and the sink hole in the capital. Just those natural disasters alone are enough to shake a small country like Guatemala, but there have also been a lot of political current events going on (especially in the last ten days or so) that are unsettling.

First, the head of the UN committee CICIG (International Committee Against Impunity)named Carlos Castresana resigned, partly out of frustration over the recent appointment of the new Attorney General, Conrado Reyes (who, as you'll read shortly, is the former attorney general). Reyes apparently has ties to narcotraffickers and illegal adpotion rings (international adoptions from Guatemala just recently reopened due to widespread corruption). Then consitutional court un-appointed Reyes as attorney general last week.

Also last week, 4 human heads were found in Guatemala City in different places. They're still not sure exactly who is behind it, but notes were left with each head with messagaes apparently meant for reforms in the prisons. This article from BBC claims that the murders are linked to drug cases, but other sources I've read says they're not sure.

Anyway, a lot of stuff going on, and none of it too happy... Just thought I would share some links, because I know sometimes it is hard to get a handle on what is going on and overwhelming to try and sift through the news articles, so hopefully these will help if you're interested!

More Rain

(I wrote this post a while ago, but haven't had time to post it... it's about Friday June 4)

The Friday after Agatha I went with my host mom, Bethi, twice to deliver food to Chicovix, a community down the road that was almost completely destroyed by Tropical Storm Agatha. One of the other YAVs, Bettina, went with us.

Bethi had organized the other teachers at her school to prepare and take a meal at lunch (let me correct myself—the female teachers prepared and took a meal; the male teachers watched and ate) and my extended family on Bethi’s side prepared dinner to take. We also took some clothes and toothbrushes and toothpaste.

There were only about 3 houses left standing in Chicovix after Agatha, so most of the people (about 200) are living in an orphanage building or a church. We first went to the orphanage to drop off food since it’s closer to our town and then at lunch went on to the church, where the majority of the families are.

People fought over the clothes and toothpaste when we took it Friday evening with dinner, but not so much over the food. There was a story about this community on TV a few days ago, and I think since then they’ve pretty much been inundated with food. When we went to take lunch there were 3 other groups there also dropping off food, and at dinner we could see that some of the kids were still working on some other food that had been dropped off earlier. But better too much than not enough. I think we may go back again in a couple of weeks when people probably will have gone on with their lives, but the people of Chicovix will most likely still be living in the church or orphanage or some other temporary housing.

There is also some government support, but mostly in the form of sending corn and rice and beans and soap, not help with rebuilding and subsidizing building materials so people can begin to move back into their homes. The local government was also in charge of cleaning up the roads where landslides had fallen, but they didn’t do a good job of it, as we saw Friday night.

It had already begun to rain steadily when we left my grandparents house around 6:20 on Friday evening, and we arrived (already soaking wet from riding in the back of the pickup) at the orphanage about 6:30 to pass out chow mein (or however you spell that). We passed out dinner to the families there and then went back out into the rain to drive to the church to leave the rest of the food. Just as we were getting ready to pull out onto the highway, a man on a bike came up the road yelling “no hay paso!” There had been another landslide on the highway before the church and the road was no longer passable.

So we left the rest of the tamales with the families at the orphanage and headed home in the increasingly stronger rain. After a couple of minutes we got to a part in the road that, when we came, had been one lane with mud piled up about 3 or 4 feet on either side from where they had cleared a landslide caused by Agatha. We stopped because there was a big cargo truck stuck in the mud in the road and uncle Checo, who was driving, was going to pass on the side. All of us in the back of the pickup got down to walk so that the truck could pass more easily through the mud, when we saw about the top 6 inches of the cab of a pickup. Apparently, somebody else had tried to pass where Checo was planning to pass only about five minutes before we got there, and the truck was already almost entirely buried in the mud.

A river from the mountain had overflowed and come down the side of the mountain, carrying with it mud from the mountain and then mixed with the mud that was already on the highway to form a quick-sand-like area where this truck had gotten stuck.

It was, needless to say, very sobering to see. It was still raining really hard, and the pickup was not-so-slowly continuing to be buried before our eyes (we found out later that the people in it did get out in time) and we decided it would be best to get out of there ASAP, but we were still about 2 miles from the entrance to our town. So we began to walk along the edge of the highway where the mud was still packed enough to support our weight and walked up the highway until we got to the house of a sister of a sister-in-law of my grandmother’s (which is a pretty close relation here) where we could wait for the rest of our group. Checo had to go find somewhere to leave his car for the night since there was no way to get through, and Bethi, Enrique, and another cousin went with him to help carry the dishes we had taken with us.

It eventually stopped raining at about 8 a.m. and Checo was able to get his car back the next day, but the people in the orphanage had to evacuate from there and walk down the highway (and over the landslide) to the church, which is built up very high. It was a scary night for us, and we still had a semi-warm and (mostly) dry house to go back to, unlike the many people who had already been displaced from their homes the week before.

After the Storm

So the rain did stop Saturday in the night and it’s pretty much been sunny since then. The only thing left now is to rebuild and clean up. In the Prensa Libre newspaper this morning they said that 156 Guatemalans died as a result of Tropical Storm Agatha and 103 are still missing. The numbers of displaced (or, in Spanish, “damnificados”) are in the thousands. And there doesn’t seem to be a huge government response or action plan. I have heard an ad on the radio about 25 times that says that President Colom is helping Guatemala through this crisis, but I haven’t really seen the results of it.

My host mom, Bethi, however, isn’t really waiting around for the government to help her neighbors. Yesterday, she invited her sisters over and they began preparing chuchitos (a pastry with meat in the middle) and hot coffee at 4:45 a.m. to take to Chicobix, a community near mine that was almost completely destroyed. Today, she was at the school taking donations of clothing from local community members, and when she wasn’t getting enough, she apparently went around knocking on doors. She’s also organizing the teachers at her school to make a huge lunch to take on Friday, and her extended family (well, the women anyway) are preparing dinner for Friday night. She’s also talking about getting some of the neighbors together to take breakfast on Saturday.

In Xela this morning, I went with Bettina to a used clothing store to see Dana try on a wedding dress (her boyfriend proposed when he came to visit in March) that she had found, and I also bought some kids’ shoes and clothes to take Friday when we go. When I told the store owner what I was buying them for he sold me the two pairs of shoes, 3 jackets and a sweater for about $11 and then gave me a HUGE bag of other clothes he wanted to donate. Bettina had to ride the bus home with me to help me carry it. I was really touched by his generosity and that he trusted me enough to take the donation and not just take the clothes for myself.

Just goes to show that there are Good Samaratins (like Bethi who doesn’t wait for an organization to tell her what to do) and innkeepers (like the store owner who just needed someone to ask for help) everywhere.

(The picture is of me carrying the bag of clothes back to my house from the bus)

Tropical Storm Agatha

As most of you probably already now, Guatemala was hit pretty hard on Saturday (May 29) by Tropical Storm Agatha. I started to write a blog entry about the actual day of the storm, but since it’s already passed and I am now safe, it is kinda hard to remember what it felt like that day as we were getting scary news reports and the rain would not let up. So I’ve included a part of my Journal entry from Saturday evening.

We`re in the sixth consecutive day of rain now, and the third consecutive day of non-stop heavy rain. At first it was mainly a nuisance, but now it’s kinda scary. It’s a tropical storm, they’re saying on the radio that we can’t listen to any more since the power went out about an hour ago.

When Guatemala got hit by hurricane Stan a few years ago (which was really mostly qualified as a tropical storm by the time it hit land) Bethi says they were without light for four days and without water for longer.


There are landslides—the radio said the highway to Xela is already atapado (closed off), and a relative of Norma’s (my mom’s sister) died this morning becuase a landslide fell on her house with her in it. 6 people drowned this morning in Xela in the rotunda where I pass every day going to and from work.

Karin and I went up to the tienda around 2 p.m. to buy eggs and coffee and when we left the house the middle of the road was clear—we had to jump the rivers down the sides of the road, but that was it. But when we walked back, the whole street was under water—past my ankles on the edges—in less than five minutes!

People were also calling in to the radio to send out “help” messages. One señor was calling in asking for someone to come and rescue him because the river was rising and rising closer to his home. My mom knows him because he is the caretaker at the hot baths in Chicobix where we went several times in December.

It’s horrible to hear about people dying right down the road and calling for help becuase they’re afraid they will drown, but I feel powerless to do anything. I feel stuck, trapped, in a way I’ve never felt before. Cars can’t get through the street outside our house now, and even if we could get down to the highway, there are landslides blocking us from most other communities. It’s like when it snows at home and everyone stays inside and everything shuts down and people go and buy all the food they can, but this is a lot scarier. Water is scarier than snow (I realize I’m saying that having never been in a true snow storm)—it’s so powerful. At least I’m at home and not traveling or stuck at work in Xela, unable to get back.

I’m also not sure we have enough food in the house for more than a couple of days, and since the roads are blocked I don’t know how we’d get more once the tiendas here run out, and they don’t usually have much. But I’m really not too worried about the food—Norma lives close by and we can share with here, and besides, going without a meal or two won’t kill us. People do it every day.

I’m also grateful for the temperature here. It’s chilly (about 60 in my room), but nothing dangerous. As long as you can be inside and dry, that is.

I feel like I should pray or something, but that seems futile. God doesn’t want all these people to die, either, but clearly it’s not really up to God. So what would I pray for ?

just checking in

Just a note to say that my family was pretty much aunaffected by the tropical storm that hit Guatemala on Saturday. A lot of families near us lost homes or had homes destroyed either by water or landslides, but my family and close extended family are fine. It was pretty scary Saturday, especially when we were hearing the storm might last til Tuesday, but, luckily, it let up Saturday night and Sunday began the cleaning up process. More later on the storm, just wanted to let you know the other volunteers and I all escpaed the worst of it.