Un Viaje Pequeño

This Sunday, I wanted to take a trip to some of the smaller villages around the lake. Considering how long I've been here, I figured it was a little embarrassing that I had not yet visited the villages closest to my town. Of course, I wanted to bring Angel with me for company and added security. I invited Flor, but she had to help some friends that day, and instead I decided to take Yenifer. Yeni is the 9 year old daughter of one of Angel's younger sisters, and likes to spend time with me when I'm in the house. Recently, we've been working with her on English and weaving (see future post on Tejiendo). She has never been to the villages we were visiting, so she wanted to come along.

The first village was San Antonio Palopo. It is the closest one to San Lucas and you can see it across the lake. Generally, its a hard village to get to from San Lucas because there is no good road between the two towns. On market day (Sunday), however, there is a public lancha that runs a few times a day, and you can catch a nice boat ride to get there directly. Like most of the smaller towns around the lake, San Antonio is built up the hill from the dock, with all the streets running at very steep angles upward. It's a very small village and much more traditional than San Lucas, with few visitors or tourists. The gente there still dress in traditional garb (blue stripped quipiles (shirts) and dark blue cortes (skirts)), and people are pretty surprised to see visitors. I was caught a little off guard when I realized that the fabric of my blue purse was actually the traditional print of San Antonio!

Up a precarious street from the dock stands San Antonio's claim to fame: an old church with an amazing view of the lake below. This is a central point of the town. All pickups going to/from Panajachel and the surrounding villages, as well as the people themselves, meet in this overlook. On the way to the church, we came across a ceramic factory--another unexpected surprise for me. It turns out that this is the second famous symbol of the town--all types of ceramics decorated with blue flower patterns of different shades. The shop, covered in these blue wares, mirrored the beautiful traditional dress of the people in San Antonio itself. Needless to say, I had to buy a sample!

After San Antonio, we hopped on a pick-up heading towards our next destination: Santa Catarina Palopo. This is a larger village a few kilometers away. Despite its bigger size, it is still off the tourist path and has retained most of its traditional charm. The people generally don't speak Spanish and dress in their traditional garb of blue decorated quipiles with blue headties. Luckily, I was able to snatch a picture of some women selling wares by the lake!

One sad thing about Santa Catarina is that here you can see the contamination of Lago Atitlan. Recently, there has been a lot of talk on the news about the growing problem of cyanobacteria in the lake. The contamination has gotten so bad that the government has now made it illegal to fish or swim in the lake, taking away many people's livelihood and method of bathing and washing their clothes. In San Lucas, you can't really see the change in the water, but in Santa Catarina it's obvious. Dark green waves of thick sludge coat all the water. The swampy smell makes it difficult to walk along the shore. It's really a sad thing to see.

After exploring Santa Catarina, we caught another pick-up to take us to Panajachel. This is the typical tourist destination of the lake--also jokingly called "Gringotenango"--and is filled with stores selling Guatemalan wares to tourists. This is my choice of shopping destinations around the lake, and since I had some presents to buy I decided to take advantage of passing through. By the time I had bargained my way to all my compras, the tree of us were starving! As a tourist heaven, Pana has a lot of good restaurants, and we weren't going to miss out. We finished our trip with a nice lunch in a small restaurant overlooking the lake. Angel and I feasted on fish and Yennifer (of course) had a hamburger. Full and tired, we finally made our slow path back to San Lucas.

La Capital

This weekend, I traveled to Guatemala City. Although I've passed through La Capital multiple times (at least twice per trip: arrival and departure at the airport), I've never really been in the city. This is mostly because the city has a pretty bad reputation. Supposed to be huge, dirty, and very unsafe, its not generally a tourist destination. In fact, most tourists, like me, get out of Guate as quickly as humanely possible. This time, however, I had some errands to do in the city and I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to look around!

Before you start thinking of me as crazy for venturing into the city, I have to say I wasn't traveling alone. Flor was with me the whole time. In fact, since half the family study or work in the city, they have an apartment there and are pretty familiar with the place. So I was never unsafe, or without my Guatemalan body guards.

Usually, the way to get to la capital is on a bus (see future post on camionetas). This time, however, we got lucky and were able to get a viaje privado from a friend who was driving down that day. So like royalty (or scared tourists), we got door-to-door service from our house to the family's apartment in the city.

Flor, Edy and Quebin (the two oldest boys) live in the city during the week and commute the 4 hr trip back to San Lucas every weekend. This is because there are no medical schools around the lake (for Flor) and no good accounting jobs (for the boys) outside of the city. They have a medium sized 2 bedroom apartment in a safe part of town. Considering this is Guatemala City and everything is super expensive, I have to say their place isn't so bad. Flor has her own room with her work desk, where she spends days and days learning biology/chemistry/etc. Near the apartment are small stores that sell tortillas, fruits and vegetables, which makes life easier for the family.

After dropping off our stuff, Flor and I decided to go on our first mission. The reason I was actually in the capital was that I needed to buy scales (to weigh people) for the promoters. Like most things in Guatemala, you can't really get these outside of Guatemala City. We were prepared with a large bag for the scales (I needed 3 for adults and 3 for children) and an address of where to go. The idea was to go to a branch of the store (Technipesa) which was located in Zona 9 of the city, a calm and safe area. There was supposedly another branch in Zona 4, next to the bus station--not a good place to be, ever. To get there, we took one of the city buses--small, wooden seats and very crowded. One of the safety issues in the city is that bus drivers keep getting murdered by gangsters for not paying the "protection tax", and now most buses have two policemen on board, one in front and one in back. Since out bus had these, we felt a lot safer.

We got off the bus somewhere near where we thought the store was and started walking. Neither of us really knew where we were going, so we had to keep asking for directions. The closer we got, the more busy the streets became. Lots and lots of people milled about, buying and selling their goods, some clearly up to no good. We realized we were really close to the bus terminal! Feeling pretty unsafe but almost at our destination, we decided to keep going. This part of the city has stores specializing in pretty much everything--specific tools, gears, metal parts, etc. Each store has its own specific array of items, and if you don't know in which store the stuff you need is located, you could spend all day trying to find a hammer. Thankfully, we had an address and a phone number.

Finally, we found Technipesa! It turns out that the store was at the boarder between Zona 4 and 9, so instead of 2 stores it was actually one. Definitely not a nice area to be wandering around with a bunch of money. The store itself was pretty interesting--all sorts of scales for stores and for weighing people. I've never seen so many different scales in one place! Luckily, they had exactly what we needed, and even for a lower price than I expected. We loaded our goods into my bag and hopped into a cab--escaping from the terminal unharmed!

Our first mission of the day completed, we decided to go and do some sightseeing in the city. Since la capital is not much visited by tourists, there is definitely a limited supply of things to do. The main attraction is el Parque Central, where the main Catedral of the city and the Palacio Nacional are. Since Guatemala City itself is not the original capital of Guatemala (Antigua was until multiple earthquakes scared the Spaniards further inland), not many of the buildings in the city are old. There is, however, some pretty interesting architecture in the older part of the city. The church is very traditional and beautiful. Apparently, a lot of the paintings and sculptures inside are from the original church in Antigua (which got destroyed by an earthquake), and so are pretty ancient. The blue domes on the church were a great accent and made it look even more interesting.

To the right of the church is the palace, which is the main government building in Guatemala. Despite looking pretty old, it was only built in 1938, in the style of colonial architecture. Interestingly, its green from the fact that the builders mixed bronze with the cement when they made the stones. Inside there are a number of murals which discuss the war between the Mayan and Spanish people and the mixture of the culture that ended up making Guatemala. I think its a nice touch that so much of Mayan culture is included in the architecture of the palace itself, although it doesn't really translate to a similar mindedness in the government. I also particularly liked the monument commemorating the signing of the peace accords in 1996 after 36 years of civil war. The monument is two left hands, one for each the guerrillas and the army (left because they are closer to the heart), and has a white rose in the center representing 24 hours of peace. The rose is changed every day in order to continue the peace.

After being tourists, we decided to go get dinner at the fancy Guatemala mall, Miraflores. Unlike most every other place I've been in Guatemala, Miraflores looks exactly like the US. It has the same stores (Abercrombie, Zara, Puma, etc) and people look about the same (mostly light-skinned, wealthy ladinos). The only real difference is that wealthy women in Guatemala like to wear clothes about 2 sizes too small and walk around on 5 inch heels. Not surprisingly, people watching was pretty amusing. I invited the family (Flor, Edy and Quebin) to have dinner with me, and they chose a restaurant across from the Chilly's (that's right!), which pretty much had the same kind of American-inspired food. I wasn't so impressed, but they seemed to like it a lot, which is more important. Also, it was happy hour, so at least I was very happy by the end!

After passing out exhausted from our day of travels, we woke up early in the morning to go to the National Museum of Archeology and Ethnography. This is a huge museum of lots of Mayan artifacts from Guatemala and good explanations (in Spanish) about Mayan civilization and culture. Although the technical language was a little hard for me, I definitely learned a lot about the history of these people. Also, the collection of artifacts is pretty impressive and I really respect how developed the culture was 2000 years ago!

Having explored most of Guatemala City (and in hopes of escaping the rain), we decided to pick up our bag of scales and head back to San Lucas. Having survived the bus trip back, I have to say it felt good to be back home! Although Guatemala City has a lot to offer in terms of culture, food and night-life, the city is too big, dirty and impersonal for me. Now I definitely understand why the kids come back to San Lucas every weekend!

Continuing Medical Education

For all you medical folks out there:

Thought I would share some of the medical cases I've seen here with the promoters to you guys. This is visual diagnosis!

This is a 26yo F with a chronic disease. Guess the disease and the complication she has from her treatment (leave a comment with your answer)!




Scroll down to see hint below (if you need one....) . I'll post the answer soon in another post!

















HINT: She has chronic joint pain.

Los Promotores de Salud

Considering it's been a week since I came down here, I should probably explain a little about my work in Guatemala. I first came to San Lucas 2.5 years ago in order to do my Master's in Public Health research project. The idea was to do a survey of childhood malnutrition in the Mayan communities around our village. Guatemala is itself a very poor country, and the Mayan people are underserved within it. The Maya, who make up about 60% of the population, have been historically discriminated against by the Ladinos (Spanish descendants). Although things have begun to change over the past few years and many Maya are able to get an education and find work in the cities, the majority still live in very poor, rural settings. Diseases of poverty, including malnutrition, are rampant in this population, and are generally ignored by the Guatemalan, Ladino-run government.

The original project both looked at risk factors for malnutrition in our population, as well as began to examine the effect of land redistribution on child growth. The communities we worked in have recently been moved from local fincas (plantations), where they worked effectively as indentured servants, to their own land. Land is a huge issue in Guatemala, and the source of much conflict and war. Currently, most of the arable land in Guatemala is owned by non-Guatemalas (for those of you who know the history, by the fragmented descendants of the United Fruit Company). The lack of land ownership among the Maya is one of the greatest sources of poverty and allows them to be discriminated against and controlled by the land-owning Ladinos.

For my project, I worked with local health promoters of our survey communities. Health promoters, promotores de salud, are members of the communities who undergo a 3-year traing on providing basic medical care and triage to their people. Normally, the promoters do preventive work in the communities, as well as make home visits to sick patients. They also conduct follow-up on chronic disease patients and screen for problems such as anemia, diabetes, and hypertension. Working with a group of these promoters, went door-to-door in our five communities, surveying every child under 5 years old. By going to every house, we were able to discover a lot of the hidden morbidity in the community--illness that did not get brought to the local clinics or the health promoters themselves. This survey revealed high level of malnutrition and many previously unidentified problems.

After my summer in San Lucas, I fell in love with the town and my family, as well as the communities where I worked. I kept coming back to work with the healthy promoters. After the success of our first study, the promoters wanted to expand the survey to encompass all the communities in the area, creating a nutritional surveillance system. Having finished my required medical school classes, I am finally able to come down to San Lucas for an extended time to help them realize this wish.

The process of taking my smaller study and expanding it to a promoter-run surveillence system is not an easy one. For the past week, we've been meeting and discussing the project. It's a pretty painful process that moves a lot slower than I would like, but to be effective in this community I know that I need to play by their own rules. There's a lot of bureaucracy that needs to be dealt with and a lot of people's permission we need to go ahead with the project. Today we finally met with Vicente, the head health promoter, Dominga, his second in command, and Rogelio, a promoter in one of our communities who I've worked with in the past. Flor was also there to help out and serve as a cultural bridge between me and the promoters. We spent a long time going over and modifying our survey and planning our work for the next few weeks (hard at work in the picture below!). Hopefully, after a lot of meetings and waiting, we will start the training and survey process tomorrow!

Dia de Todos Santos

Not surprisingly, Guatemala (and most of Latin America) celebrates the days around Halloween differently than we do in the States. October 31st itself, officially Dia de las Brujas, is not widely celebrated. My family here is a little different, because the husband of one aunt is currently in the states. Following American tradition, he sent us lots of costumes for the kids. Since no one goes out trick-or-treating (and the rain in the evening prevents anyone from going out at all), everyone got dressed up and danced around in the house. Our own Halloween party was pretty funny and colorful!

The real holiday here is November 1st, Dia de Todos Santos (All Saint's Day). This is a day to remember the dead and to visit them in their resting place in the cemetery. Before the coming of the Spaniards, Mayan religion believed in the after-life and reincarnation, so that the dead were never really gone far from their loved ones. With the coming of Catholicism, the idea of reincarnation was not encouraged, but the Catholic idea of heaven merged with the original Mayan belief of life after death. Religion in Guatemala is always a mix of Mayan and Catholic beliefs, and this holiday is no different.

Cemeteries in Guatemala are made up of mausoleums, with the dead entombed above ground. The mausoleum becomes a symbol of the loved one's final resting place, a physical and metaphorical home. On Dia de Todos Santos, the families visit the cemetery to decorate these homes and to spend time with their dead. This is not a sad or mournful holiday--instead, families remember their loved ones and celebrate their memories. They paint their tombs, generally with the same color as their own house, use flowers and pine needles to decorate, and spend the day next to their resting place. The whole village is filled with flowers in preparation for this fiesta. Many families have at least one meal in the cemetery, leaving out a plate of their loved one's favorite food. This is also a day famous for the flying of kites, as a symbol of souls going up to their resting place. The sky is filled with kites of all shapes and sizes, most of which, due to the winds this time of year, generally end up in the lake.

For my family, Dia de Todos Santos has for the past few years taken on a special meaning. Catarina, the mother of the family, passed away at the age of 44 a few years ago. Visiting and decorating her tomb has become a tradition in the family, as it has for many others who have lost loved ones. In preparation, we frequently visited the market to buy flowers of all shapes and sizes for the occasion. We made coronas, flower crowns to hang over the graves. David, the youngest boy in the family, went to paint re-paint and clean up his mom's mausoleum, so that it would be ready for the big day. At dawn on the morning of November 1st, we carried our flowers and pine needles to the cemetery. Even this early, the streets were packed, and there was a human traffic jam at the single entrance. Hundreds of villagers were doing the same thing--visiting their loved ones and decorating their homes in this world.

We decorated Catarina's tomb carefully, making sure the flowers were distributed symmetrically and that the little orange and brown mausoleum looked beautiful for her. The children would touch the tombs and whisper to their relatives. Angel, and recovering alcoholic, returned to pour a beer at Catarina's grave (a symbol of both his disease and Catarina's love of a cerveza). Throughout the day, we would return to the cemetery, to look around for graves of people we knew. The process of decorating Catarina's grave was intimate and loving. Despite never having met her, by the end of the day I felt a connection with her, as if she was somehow there with us, among the flowers and colors of the cemetery. I think this is why Dia de Todos Santos is such an important holiday here--it is a way to remember your loved ones, and to feel their presence every year.

Despite the celebration, this day has another, more sinister significance. Not all of the spirits that come out on this day are considered to be friendly. For this reason people do not like to leave their homes or make any trips. Many believe that the spirits are out on the lake and the highways, and one can be caught up if they stray too far. People who pass away on this day are thought to be killed by the spirits. At night, groups of masked and cloaked men run through the streets. It is a night of mischief, and people do not stray outside of the safety of their houses.

Cerro de Oro

This morning we decided to take a trip to Cerro de Oro, literally "hill of gold." This is a baby volcano located between our town, San Lucas Toliman, and the nearest larger town, Santiago Atitlan. Cerro is a green volcano covered in cafetal, coffee plantations, and natural flowers. It sits between Volcan Toliman (a real volcano) and the lake. The whole area is like a volcano family, since behind Toliman is Volcan Atitlan, the big daddy of the group standing 11.5K feet tall. In stepwise fashion, these lead down to our baby, el Cerro, which stands on the edge of the volcanic Lago de Atitlan.

Geographically speaking, Cerro is a mini-volcano formed when Toliman erupted thousands of years ago, with lava finding a path of least resistance to emerge not out of Toliman itself but at its feet closer to the lake. Within the local culture, however, Cerro has other foundations. Some say that Cerro is the head of Toliman (which itself is a little flat and headless) that was beheaded and dropped in its new place by an angry god. People also say that Cerro is filled with gold on the inside, giving it its' name. However it was formed, Cerro is a place of worship within the Mayan religion. On top of the mountain is an old altar where incense is burned and offerings given to the local gods. It is a holy place but also frequently visited by tourists for its great views of the lake and the surrounding villages.

Despite the fact that Angel lives practically next to Cerro, he has never visited it. Before I get too critical, I have to point out that Angel has climbed Volcan Atitlan dozens of times, which I certainly have not (and may never, depending on whether I can find someone to carry me up 8 hours to the top). That being said, Cerro, being small, less scary, and conveniently situated, was a worthy weekend morning pursuit. So Angel, Flor (his youngest daughter, also a medical student) and I decided to give it a try.

Prepared with water, energy bars (from the US) and a camera, we were dropped off in the family car at the base of the path up to Cerro. We had been told that we could find a local guide at the path's entrance, but when we arrived no one was there to greet us. We decided to go up ourselves. Given that none of us have ever been here, this may not have been the wisest decision.

Initially, the path is well maintained with cleared stones and even wooden railings, leading straight up the hill. At this altitude, and in our poor level of physical shape, Flor and I were huffing and puffing pretty much from the first minute. The going is steep and you have to scramble up most of the time, not leaving much opportunity to look around. Along with making me pretty embarrassed about how out of shape I am, this trek up reminded me why I have not yet gone up our city's largest volcano.

After about 45 minutes (but seamed a lot longer), we arrived at the altar, a large vertical stone colored black from decades (centuries?) of burning incense. It's a quiet place and I can understand why the local people consider it to be holy. We looked around and decided to continue up to look for the mirador, the view over the lake we had heard about. This is where things got a little more delicate. The previously well maintained path ran into multiple working paths going into the surrounding cafetal. Every path we took seemed to lead to some dead end, and certainly not to any mirador. Finally, Angel heard some kids chattering, and the sound took us to the viewpoint--the top of the mountain facing the lake. The local children, out collecting firewood, scampered away from us down another path. From our vista, the view expands over the whole lake, showing its multiple villages and the rim of its volcanic crater container. This is Lago Atitlan, one of the most beautiful areas in Guatemala. Definitely worth the trip!

After a good look around and our snack of Trio bars (which Angel, uncharacteristically, enjoyed), we began to make our way down. Having wandered around so much before, we had a difficult time finding the main path. By the time we realized we were heading down the wrong way, we were too far down Cerro to climb back up. No worries--we were going to end up in the town at the bottom of Cerro, named after its prominent landmark.

Cerro de Oro, the town, is smaller than San Lucas but still big enough to have brick houses, paved streets and many stores. The main Catholic church is fairly new (built in 1991), but looks over the lake and has a wonderful view of its own. Inside the large but scantily outfitted church, we found a group of local women arranging flower vases for the upcoming holiday, Dia de los Santos. The locals here speak a different Mayan language than my family, making it particularly difficult for any of us to communicate with them. Still, we found our way around and finally caught a pick-up truck heading back to San Lucas.

Despite getting lost, we found our mirador and even got to see the town. Overall, a successful trip! Flor and I decided that Angel had earned his keep as a tour guide and now could embark on a new profession!

Feliz Cumpleaños, Reina!

During my previous visits to San Lucas, I spent a lot of time learning how to do traditional Mayan weaving with my teacher, Goya. She lives with the family of her husband, Israel, and has a daughter, Reina. Reina is an only child because Goya could not have children of her own. Reina is also adopted, which is incredibly rare in my area of Guatemala. As an only child, she gets everything she wants and is pretty spoiled. She also likes to play at being the baby, and will sometimes refuse to walk without being carried or demand help with things she definitely knows how to do. That being said, she's a pretty awesome, very cute little girl. When I visited the family yesterday, I found out that Reina was turning four and Goya was throwing a big birthday party for her extended family. The grandfather of the family also had a birthday--81 years old. I was invited for birthday lunch!

Reina lives with her two parents, two of Israel's brothers, their families, and their grandfather. The whole family, however, is much bigger. Israel's family has 10 children, each of which is now an adult and has many children of their own. In total, there are about 100 members of the immediate family, and this is only on Reina's fathers' side. So when I was invited to a "family birthday party," it wasn't as intimate as one would imagine.

First, we began almuerzo with a traditional dish, caldo de pollo or chicken stew. The chickens were their own, grown in the house and killed the day before in preparation. There are also local vegetables, pasta and herbs. The soup is served with tamalitos, little maize patties. Its one of my favorite traditional Mayan foods, so I was really excited about being invited. I also got a lecture on the difference between pollo de granja, grown on a farm, and pollo grown in the house. Apparently they are a totally different species of chicken and people argue about which is better. House chicken meat is darker and they survive easier in the "wild" by eating whatever is around. Farm chicken is more what we are used to in the US and apparently is very difficult to grow at home because they are picky eaters and die easily. Pretty much, this is the chicken version of gringos and Guatemalans. Personally, I can't tell the difference, but everyone here swears by one or the other and refuses to eat the competitor.

After lunch, the family whipped out a piñata. I have to be honest--I have never seen a party with one in the States, but I'm pretty sure this is very different. The adults constructed a complex pulley system with the piñata in the middle, so that two people could pull it around and keep it out of reach of the children. One child at a time gets to beat at it with a stick. Little kids get a big stick and can go without a blindfold, the larger kids aren't so lucky. I've never seen two-year-olds be so violent! They chase the prised object around, sometimes coming dangerously close to the spectators who are busy yelling out instructions. Eventually someone, usually a 10-year-old boy, really rams the thing and it begins to explode. At this point, everyone dives to the ground for the candy, the adults pushing the kids out of the way or simply rolling on top of them. How no one got hurt is amazing. After the candy was all grabbed up, they pulled out another piñata the size of the birthday girl and in the shape of her favorite cartoon character. The next victim lasted a little longer in battle, and has to lose a few appendages before being torn to shreds by the candy-hungry crowd. All in all, it was pretty amusing.

After torturing the piñata, two huge cakes (blue for abuelo and pink for Reina) were brought out. Everyone sang happy birthday (in English) to grandpa, but Reina, who decided this was a good time for a tantrum, locked herself in her room and refused to come out for her moment in the spotlight. After blowing out the candles, grandpa took a bight of the cake and someone (per ceremony) pushed his face in to everyone's amusement. Cake was served with sweet tea and corn tostadas covered in beans and salsa. Way too much food, but yum!
I gave Reina a pair of new leather shoes (per her parent's request) and gave abuelo some money. I was so full after the day that I couldn't eat dinner! Reina, who used to be afraid of me and all other gringos, now decided I was her best friend and wanted to be hugged the whole day. This made her four-year-old cousin, Erica, very jealous, and I had the two of them glued to me the whole time. All in all it was a pretty awesome birthday!