Life is for living- it really is!

When Audrey first proposed the title for the blog “Life is for living Guatemala”, I had my doubts. ‘Pretentious’ and ‘cheesy’ were the first thoughts that came to my mind. However, the name slowly grew on me, and within the last few weeks I have realized that it is the perfect idea for the months we spent in Guatemala and our approach towards life.

For us, selling everything we owned, moving far away from our families and friends, leaving steady jobs, and the comfortable lifestyle we knew to be together, serve a new community and broaden our perspective of the world, seemed risky but worth the trouble. As Audrey was trying to decide whether she should come and join me in SMT, a friend asked her how she would feel

when she was 80 if she hadn’t gone. The thought made her nauseous and she knew that although it was unconventional, taking this risk was the right decision for her. Throughout the time in Guatemala, both on my own and with Audrey, I always knew it to be the right decision for me, too. There may have been tarantulas and scorpions, bathing with buckets, carrying drinking water a quarter of a mile, and washing clothes by hand, but we felt invigorated by the challenges of life and the lessons we learned.

The blog title has now developed a deeper meaning in the last month as we have experienced the ending of several people’s lives. In September, there were two deaths in the Santa Maria Tzeja community. The first was an elderly woman, Magdalena, who suffered from cirrhosis and had been ill for many months. Two weeks later, a four year old girl, Jennifer, drowned as she was bathing. While both deaths were very sad, Audrey and I were given a new perspective of death, grieving and the importance of community through the lens of Guatemalan culture.

In each of these stories, we were struck by how the entire community came together to grieve and celebrate the lives of those who passed, for example those who gathered at Magdalena's house, above. Wakes in Santa Maria Tzeja are truly all night celebrations with the majority of the community present. Church musicians play and sing, and members of the community read spiritual texts and lead prayers. The day of the funeral, nearly the entire community forms a procession to accompany the family to the cemetery and lay the deceased to rest. In subsequent nights, community members join the family for the novena, a devotion consisting of prayer that lasts nine days. We found the entire experience to be a beautiful reflection of how a community is an extension of family and how important it is to support each other as we laugh, cry, grow and learn.

On October 9^th, I received news that my grandmother Ruth had passed away unexpectedly. After talking with my mother and Audrey, it was an obvious decision for us to return home to Pittsburgh to be with my family in this time of grieving. As we started to pack our things, we initially talked about coming back in a few weeks but as we kept packing, we realized that it would be unrealistic to return this fall so we gathered our most important things. We had one hour to pack and say good-bye to some of our students, like Domingo and Selvin, and our Guatemalan family – Randall, Juana, Kristina, Phoebe, Aida and Randall Jr. – with whom we shared meals and had become very, very close. Then we hopped on the bus out of town, knowing that we would maintain a relationship with this community for years to come.

Despite the twelve hours of bus rides and ten hours of flight, slightly jet-lagged and culture shocked, Audrey and I were able to make it back in time for my Grandmother’s memorial service and funeral. The memorial service was a beautiful celebration of Ruth’s life and how she shared her love of life and of God with everyone she knew, especially with her family. Through all the tears and sadness of losing someone so loved and so loving, we were repeatedly reminded by Ruth’s example of how important it is to live life as fully as possible with those you love.

Stripping away all the differences between the US and Guatemala that we encountered, we found that the resounding desire, the human desire, to unite with others and share the joy that is life, crossed cultural boundaries. This blog has given us the opportunity to process and share our experiences with all of you, friends and family around the world, as we grew and learned. You have helped us to live life more fully and we hope that you share our feeling that life, wherever we are, really is for living!

Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work I go…

In a summer theatre program in elementary school, I was a dwarf in a spin-off of Snow White, though that’s not what this blog post is about. During my four months here in Guatemala, I have yet to write a blog post about what I am actually doing here. Allow me to explain.

Upon deciding to move down to Guatemala, I spoke with community leaders about work with which SMT needed some help. It seemed that I would be working with various groups and members of the community on entrepreneurial initiatives, possibly focused on microfinance. In my first month here, I did indeed meet with several people involved with various projects:
-Emiliano – an engineer, the town’s first university graduate and former mayor of the community who is interested in starting a sustainable forestry business to maximize the resources of the area.
-Aurelio – a near-university grad working with a honey project in its second year of development whose members are interested in expanding the viability of their (delicious!) honey on the market.
-Marta – the 2009 director of the women’s committee, which has their own microlending program that they administer every year to women who want to earn extra money through small projects like a chicken farm or string for weaving.

After those initial conversations, which seemed to go very well, I heard little to nothing from those individuals, even after following up and leaving detailed project notes. Instead, I have been primarily planning and teaching the English classes with Edd. I really enjoy teaching but I have also felt frustrated about not going anywhere with these projects I that I thought would be working with. I sent my friend Katie a message explaining my frustration and here is an excerpt of what she sent back; it’s a concise statement about the complicated nature “helping”.

“On the one hand, you don't want to impose your own ideas of what the community needs, so you want to be responsive to what the community asks for. On the other hand, if the community doesn't ask you for anything, you're a bump on a log and feel useless. Then, there you are, feeling useless, and your own needs (to be useful, needed, relied on for something) have creeped back into the picture! Your scrupulous, conscientious efforts to be selfless are totally backfiring! This is a serious quandary. The ideal is to respond to the needs of the community. But there are two problems associated with that approach- (1) what if the community thinks it doesn't need you (or worse, what if they're right)? and (2) what if you can't provide what the community thinks it needs? Both of these possibilities can be scary. Very possibly risks worth taking, but scary.”

So, in the midst of my altruistic quest in moving to SMT, I have actually been confronted with far more challenges and perspectives than I anticipated. I expected scorpions, tarantulas, latrines and candles, but feeling sometimes like a waste of space, I did not. A Frederick Douglass quote I learned from some of the JA Fellows last year seems very appropriate now: “Without struggle, there is no progress.” In this time, I have done a great deal of personal reflection and growth about how I define myself as well as thinking a lot about culture and connection with others. While I have been working in the school and spending more time in the community in general, I have been able to develop relationships with different people. The ability to connect with people on a personal level has been really meaningful for me especially as I have not had defined projects in which to work. Now, in the last few months of my time here, new projects have come up and I am working in several areas that the community has requested. It seems that some of these opportunities became available because I have gotten to know people better and they can trust that I am here to help.

-As the community prepares to bring a high school into town in 2011, I have been working with the high school planning committee to disaggregate data about how to best construct the school and attract students.

-After speaking with the leaders of the elementary and middle schools here and in the neighboring community of Santa Maria Dolores, I suggested using Junior Achievement economics curriculum to work with the students. They were excited about this new resource and this week, we finally started the programs teaching The Basics of Business, Advantages of Staying in School and Personal Economics. The students have not had the opportunity to reflect much on their personal or professional goals prior to this, so they are really engaged in the curriculum.

-I am also working on a young women’s workshop series with a long time middle school teacher, Maurilia, to focus on self-esteem. Through my work in the classroom, I have been really impressed with how smart and proactive the young women are in making their grades but I have also noticed that there is a disconnect between their work on paper and their willingness to speak up in the classroom and define their future goals. Maurilia agrees that this is a challenge for many of the girls and after talking about it together, we decided that we would do something to provide girls with a safe and open space to build their self-esteem and broaden their horizons.

-Finally, I just reconnected with Marta and the women’s group and shared with them that I would like to support at least two more loans of 1,000 quetzales each ($125) for subsequent years. The women pay back a 10% at the end of every loan cycle, which is a year, and therefore the loan pool continues to grow.

I am grateful to all of the folks who have already donated to support the causes here. The funds that are raised will go towards the women’s loans, to purchase resources for the new girls program, and to provide scholarships to local students who are furthering their education beyond the middle school level. Overall, we have set a fundraising goal of $1,000 to provide these opportunities and resources to the villages. If you are interested in supporting these causes, the communities of Santa Maria Tzeja and Santa Maria Dolores will benefit from your generosity.

All in all, the experience is turning out to be different than I expected but much richer in terms of how I have personally developed and built relationships with people. I now realize that the connection with others is the foundation that I needed to find and complete meaningful work. Because of these relationships, I know that I will maintain a connection to these communities for years to come.

Memo RE: internet access

Dear friends and family,

Now that we're in early September, I'm sure you're asking yourself, where has the Holla been in Guatemala? Let me assure you, it's been dying to get out but just hasn't been able to.

We haven't posted a blog in a while because here in the jungle of rural Guatemala, our internet and computer access hasn't been as easy as you'd expect. Last month, the computer was infected with the Trojan Horse virus and though I myself am a proud Troy Trojan, I have no affiliation with this *%!@?/! virus. We weren't able to use it for about three weeks and finally got it fixed by a computer guru who worked on it for two days, reformatting it and reinstalling all of our programs. How much did we pay for this computer work? 25 Quetzales or $3.25. We thought that was a pretty fair price.

But the computer drama doesn't end there. Around the same time that the computer was infected, a tiny piece broke off the computer where the battery connects in, leaving the battery a little loose. This has resulted in a short that forces the computer to shut off at random intervals. And also at about that same time, the computer stopped recognizing that it has a DVD drive so we're no longer able to watch all the romantic comedies I brought down (Edd's really disappointed about that last one).

Finally, the last two weeks in Tzeja and continuing still, there hasn´t been internet access and no one seems to know why. I suppose waiting for internet access is relative when people have been waiting years for electricity and running water to come to the village.

All of this is certainly has made us appreciate the ease of technology and access to information that we have available all the time in the US. It has also taught us great lessons in patience and in the ability to not get so caught up in what we thought we HAD to do.

We´ve felt pretty disconnected from the outside world for the last month or so. In light of all of this, we hope you´ll excuse the tardiness of this and our subsequent posts.

Sincerely,
Audrey and Edd

RIP JIF

Audrey and I presented ourselves with a math equation when we first got to Guatemala: 2 people, 6 months, and 4 jars of peanut butter @ 2 pounds 8 ounces each. The question we asked ourselves was, “How long will 10 pounds of peanut butter last us?”

We each made a guess, folded it up, and taped it to the last jar of peanut butter, to be revealed when the final spoonful of creamy JIF was consumed. The date of final consumption turned out to be Saturday, July 18th almost exactly six weeks after we got here to Tzeja. (Which leads to some other equations of pounds of peanut butter consumed each week per person that we’ve agreed not to explore too deeply.)

Audrey’s approach to her guess was a practical ‘we’ll want to ration this out so it lasts’ hence her date of September 28th; a good guess at just over the half way point in our six month adventure here.

Before I reveal my guess I’d like to add several factors that were unknowns to me at the time of my prediction:
1) Unlike most people, I’ve never made a serious guess at how long it would take two individuals to eat, what appeared at first sight, to be an extremely large amount of peanut butter. This was a new experience for me and there was a bit of a learning curve.

2) I also assumed that at some point between the second and third jar we would tire of the taste of peanut butter. We’ve got fresh fruit and some vegetables all around us. Why would be want to continue to eat this sterile tasting snack?

3) But really what threw my guess off was that Audrey started working on the bee project in town and was given a giant container of fresh honey. This honey is not only one of the most delicious things I have ever tasted in my life, (it’s really mind-blowing how sweet and delicious it is; the honey tastes like blueberries mixed with what I imagine a flower tastes like. See video.) but it is a perfect compliment to the salty peanut taste. The three or four spoonfuls of peanut butter dipped in fresh gooey honey before class or basketball practice was the biggest “unknown” that led to my guess being so far off.

Here is exactly what I wrote. I’ve explained away why my guess was skewed. What I fail to explain, to myself or Audrey, is why I would take such an amazingly arrogant approach to my guess. Did I really have to declare “Today’s date is…” or the even more ridiculous line “Suck it!” as if I was a world champion peanut butter consummation estimator up against a rookie and my total victory was guaranteed. All the power, and fame that comes from guessing the correct date was in my hands, I knew it was. But it wasn’t.

While I continue to discern and ponder what it is I would like to do when I return to the States in 4 months, I have given up my dreams of a profession in guessing the termination date of food, or any other position in the psychic field for that matter. After coming to the realization that I will not become a food psychic and as Audrey continues to gloat over her victory, what is truly crushing for me is that I don’t even the solace of a giant spoonful of peanut butter, dipped in honey, to console me. RIP JIF.

Take your vitamins

One of the great things about living in Guatemala is knowing where the majority of our food comes from. If we're having chicken soup for lunch, we know that the chicken was just running around the yard this morning. It can´t get much fresher. All of the food is grown locally and recently - corn comes from fields nearby and we have a variety of fresh, tropical fruit. But one of the challenges to living here is also the lack of variety in things that we had grown accustomed to in the States, specifically vegetables.

Cabbage here is common but it´s rare to see lettuce and so we haven´t had a salad in the traditional sense in quite some time. Sporadically, we have cucumbers, carrots, squash and other vegetables but it´s unpredictable when those will be available. We eat a lot of corn (tortillas with every meal!) and eggs, beans, and rice. The food is delicious, and pretty predictable.

Knowing this, I wrote to my favorite Atlanta health food store, Return to Eden. I shared what Edd and I are doing in Guatemala and asked if they would be willing to sponsor us by providing 6 months of vitamins for each of us while we are here. Peter, Patrick and the other folks at Return to Eden eagerly complied and we are truly grateful to have these vitamins every day.

So take note: if you are living in Atlanta, shop at Return to Eden! They have a helpful staff, all organic produce, lots of supplements AND the best gluten-free food selection in Atlanta. They also offer several health seminars throughout the year. Thank you, Return to Eden, for sponsoring our wellness in Guatemala!

Cultural connections

Anyone who has ever traveled abroad knows the experience of learning how to navigate through a new set of cultural brackets. As much as one tries not to step on cultural sensitivities, they surely pop up at one time or another. Whether it is an error at the diner table, crossing gender roles, or general etiquette in the street, no book or intensive course can explain every possible situation and response that etiquette in a new culture would dictate.

While in Guatemala, I am aware that I am a representative of not only myself but also the United States. Without forgetting the values that I keep from my own background, I also want to respectfully participate as an active member in Tzeja’s society. I am constantly dancing with the cultural expectations of Guatemala and my own ingrained understanding of appropriateness.

After seven months here in Santa Maria Tzeja I still find myself overstepping boundaries and exposing unknown cultural standards in a way that leaves me kicking myself for days. The hardest part for me in living here is balancing my own cultural understandings with the community’s understood cultural norms – we each have them and expect that everyone else shares them, when in fact, they can be very different.

Many people have shown surprise that I continue to wash my own clothes even after Audrey has come down to be with me. What was at first a curiosity about a man washing his own clothes has become doubly curious, for many, on why the woman wouldn’t fulfill her role in the relationship. Because women here have a much more defined and rigid role then the men, many cultural differences are emphasized much more quickly by Audrey’s presence than my own. When Audrey runs to excercise, talks with men, and the fact that she doesn’t know how to make tortillas on an open fire, the community’s expectations of what it means to be a woman are brought into view for all to see.

Here are a few situations in which I have found myself - you’re welcome to try your hand in navigating the cultural gymnastics:

1) I am eating dinner at my boss’s house. About 30 minutes after dinner, my boss’s wife begins to breastfeed the 3 month old baby at the dinner table. I should

a. excuse myself because I’ve clearly overstayed my welcome.

b. not be weird since she’s just feeding her child.

c. feel comfortable staying but I should be very careful not to focus any attention in her direction.

2) My host mother is busy one morning and I have the day off of school so I take her 9month and 3 year old down to the town center to buy some household products such as toilet paper and diapers. Because it is my day off, I am wearing a dirty t-shirt and shorts. Several people make comments that it’s funny that I’m:

a. watching children, let alone carrying a baby in my arms.

b. buying things for the family.

c. wearing shorts and a dirty shirt in public.

3) Another teacher invites me over for lunch on a Sunday afternoon. I bring a watermelon and show up at the exact hour of the invitation. During the meal, I attempt to converse with my hosts but things feel slightly strained. Which of my actions was most likely causing anxiety for my hosts?

a. As the guest, I didn’t need to bring any additional food.

b. My hosts were not expecting me to show up at the exact hour, but half an hour to an hour later than the time stated.

c. It’s not natural to speak at the dinner table during the meal; conversations begin when the meal is complete.

No matter how different our cultural backgrounds may seem I am reminded of a deeper connection we, as humans, share. Watching young boys and girls play seems to be of little difference around the world. I enjoy watching the girls here raid their mother’s jewelry box, and play with their dolls at tea parties. The boys here in Tzeja are just as focused on wrestling and picking up toads they find as I was when I was their age. So, as much as I kick myself for unintentionally stepping on cultural toes, I am reminded of how much of my interactions far transcend all cultural differences. Smiles, warm handshakes, helping others, and heartfelt laughs far outpace the other misunderstanding of our cultural standards.

Above is a video that I caught of some boys playing outside the elementary school during recess the other morning. Besides it illustrating my ideas that cultural differences are transcended, it makes me smile with the joy and excitement that radiates from them when they play.

Also, here is a link to an interview with Stuart Brown from the program “Speaking of Faith”. Stuart Brown is a physician and director of the National Institute for Play and he has studied the importance of play in the development of morals and ethics in humans. He does a good job of articulating the universality of play and its importance worldwide.

Quiz answers: Question 1. B: She was just feeding the baby and it would be rude for me to pull away and leave or exclude her in the conversation by turning away.

Question 2. A: It is very uncommon to see men carrying children.

Question 3 C: While bringing additional items to the house and showing up that the exact hour would seem odd, conversation is reserved for after the meal is complete. It’s ok to just pay attention to your food during the meal.

We´re not in Kansas anymore

When you got up first thing this morning and went into the bathroom with sleep still in your eyes, what did you find? Perhaps an ant, maybe a cockroach if you live in the South, maybe one of those skinny little spiders in the corner. You probably didn’t find anything of note and so you continued your day without any thought of what an adventure it might be to go to the bathroom. Let me tell you what I found last week when I went down to the latrine; perhaps your experience was somewhat like mine.

It was early morning on Saturday and with that sleep still in my eye, I walked through the dewy grass to the latrine. I was going to sweep out the latrine and behind the broom was this Hairy-Hoo-Hoo just hanging out. I told Edd but by the time he got down there, it was gone. Naïve us thought that meant the enormous tarantula had rationally decided to move to other haunts. Not so. Two days later, I again found Hairy in the latrine first thing in the morning and this time booked it up to the house to tell Edd. Though he didn’t say it, I knew he thought I was overreacting. In fact, he reminded me that people keep tarantulas as pets. So he grabbed the giant size can of bug spray (the brand is Baygon which in Spanish is pronounced “bygone” as in, “Let big hairy tarantulas the size of my fist be bygones”) and headed down. Hairy was waiting and, Edd says, was running towards him at the door when he opened it. Hairy proceeded to play some hide-and-seek, scuttling around the corner of the latrine and peeking out every time Edd made a move. Finally, he sprayed Hairy and down he went. We thought that was the end of it. Edd came up to tell me that it was the largest tarantula he’s ever seen. This time, I decided to join him (after all, Hairy was dead now) and we headed back down to the latrine to sweep out his furry corpse. But when we opened the door, Hairy was waiting around the corner - he was still alive! Edd grabbed a log and clubbed him twice, finally putting Hairy to rest. Edd swept him out of the latrine, leaving his body on the side of the stairs. Later that day, I went to the bathroom and looked for Hairy’s body but it was not there nor in the immediate vicinity. I mentioned this to Edd, who had also noticed Hairy’s absence and provided the explanation that cutter ants had probably already carried off his body. I’m skeptical.

About 30 minutes after the early morning tarantula slaying, I reached up on the shelf to grab the water filter. I checked inside the filter by sticking my finger inside to see if it was dry and a scorpion about 3 inches long flew out and landed on the wall. Fortunately, Baygon actually does a quick job of killing scorpions and in a matter of seconds, this teenager was dead. Once you kill a scorpion, you still have to be careful because their stingers are potent for a few hours after they’re dead. Alternately, you could cut off the stinger and let the scorpion limp away in shame. Recently while we were having lunch at a neighbor’s house, we learned that if you are stung by a scorpion, you eat sugar. Good to know.

In addition to my recent encounters with these creepies, I’ve also had some neat interactions with or observations of animals that are apart from my experience with animals in the US. I watched a chicken with a frog in its mouth be chased by another chicken, a baby cow walked up close to check me out (a little freaky), we found rows of cutter ants carrying pieces of leaves twice their size, we watched two hummingbirds take turns drinking from a waterfall, in our yard giant toads come out when it rains, and there are lots of pretty butterflies everywhere. Living in the Guatemalan jungle is not all scary, crawly things and it has been fun to experience life so close to nature.

However, we still have a few questions and I’m hoping some of our friends and family can help us out. We’ve really had trouble getting on the internet lately for long periods of time and haven’t had a chance to look up information about some of these new “friends”. Here are some of our questions:
-Do tarantulas lay eggs? If so, is it likely that Hairy is actually a she-Hairy and babies will soon abound in the latrine?
-Are tarantulas in Guatemala poisonous or do they bite? How high can they jump?
-Would cutter ants want to carry away and eat a tarantula?
-Are the black scorpions in Guatemala poisonous?
-If a tarantula and a scorpion got in a fight, who would win?

Spanish vocabulary:
Tarantula – tarantula
Scorpion – alecran
Butterfly – mariposa
Frog – sapo
Oh my God! – Dios mio!
Get the spray! – Traiga el espray!
I thought you said you killed it! - Pensé que me dijiste que lo mataste!

Bonus! Creepy that we found while exploring caves last week!

Life, in general

Santa Maria Tzeja is a small rural community in northern Guatemala about 30km from the Mexican border. A little more then 1,000 people live here in the village. Last month SMT celebrated its 39th anniversary of foundation. In the late 70s and early 80s, SMT was caught in the middle of the Guatemalan Civil War. This sad history of SMT is well documented in the book “Paradise in Ashes” by Beatriz Manz, an anthropologist working in the community during the years of the war. If you would like to learn more about that time period in SMT’s history, I strongly recommend it.

Santa Maria Tzeja currently has no running water or electricity, however there are plans to bring both to the village (“It’s easy to say, harder to do” is the most common phrase whenever this subject is brought up.) We’ll see what things look like by the time we leave in November. Most families have “pilas” or cement pools that collect the rain water off their houses for washing and bathing. In the dry season (read: so ridiculously hot I want to cry season), water must be carried from the “pozos” or wells dug out of the side of the hills that are spread around the village. At first not having running water at my instant disposal was my greatest annoyance but I have come to appreciate the time visiting with people as I fill my water jug at the pozo and the appreciation I have for the water I use.

I joined the community soccer team thinking it would be a one game friendly inter-community get to know you. I was unprepared for the 14 week regular season, punches being thrown at the ref, drunks throwing rocks at me as I tend goal, and kicks to the face that it has actually turned out to be. My sitting the bench on my high school team did not prepare me for this.

By now you must be asking yourself, "So what’s there to do on a Saturday night for a hip twenty something couple 45min from the nearest town of any size?" I want to know the same thing. Once a month or so there tends to be a dance of somekind; usually Marimba music. Otherwise people tend to hang out around the 6 general stores at the town center. Typically one of the stores will run a small generator and play a Spanish dubbed kung-fu movie which have begun to grow on me. Other then catching up on the latest soccer scores and town gossip, weekends tend to be a bit slow. (I thought growing up in rural Ohio was boring).

That said, life here tends to feel a lot like a paradise vacation for me most days. The stars are indescribable and I have read more in the last six monthes than the six years prior. People have been extreamly friendly and forgiving of my social blunders. As my Spanish improves, so does my ability to connect with the other teachers, soccer players, my students and the community in general. Living in Santa Maria Tzeja and teaching English these last six months have been the most significant experience of my life.