Monday, January 26, 2009

Looking for things to do..

In the last few weeks, I’ve been dealing with a little bit of guilt at not having accomplished much so far. I feel like having been in site for almost three months now, I should have seen more progress in the work area, but I consistently come up disappointed. Adhering to Peace Corps rules, I’ve had to rearrange the structure of my work, mainly for not being allowed to ride on a motorcycle for safety reasons. Luckily, my counterpart Marvin was very understanding, and helped me to find several other outlets for work within my site and the surrounding villages. I now have four commitments to which I’m promised; two community organizations in the villages surrounding my site, a women’s group looking to commercialize in site and the co-op of the local coffee producers that’s just getting off the ground. Unfortunately I find myself planning more than actually doing. Hopefully that will soon change.

In the meantime, in order to cope with that guilt, I’ve started to engage in more tangible activities, like giving English class and receiving more Kaqchikel class. As of right now I have two consistent English students and will soon start to give weekly classes to a group of interested students at the school where my Kaqchikel teacher gives classes. While I’m excited to begin actually giving back, after having received so much in terms of cultural learning and language practice, I’m nervous to begin teaching something in which I can’t call myself an expert. If I’ve learned one thing about languages while being here, it’s that speaking a language from birth does not necessarily qualify you to teach it. If anything, it’s completely the opposite. With the seldom opportunity to speak English lately, I’ve been more observant of my own grammar in speech and I have to say, my high school teachers would be ashamed.

With that on the horizon, I’ve begun to plan a basic curriculum along with small activities I can conduct in class to help the students. With the two willing subjects I have right now I began by saying, “look, I know what it’s like to think you sound funny when you speak another language, but it’s part of learning that language” because I most certainly do. For the first 20 hours of Kaqchikel class I could not pronounce certain words that end in ‘l’ because when I heard myself making that specific sound, I sounded like I had a serious speech impediment. I’m just now getting over it, much to the relief of my teacher.

Hopefully work will pick up soon. I’m having daydreams that one day someone will knock on my door and say, “Come now, I have a project that will consume 8 hours a day of every work week until November 2010. It’s urgent, and we need your help!” But I’ve started to realize that the chances of that happening are about as high as me making the Guatemalan Soccer team. I’m going to continue finding my own work and identifying needs on my own in the meantime, and in the offchance that someone actually does come to me with that urgent need, I’ll always have the weekends :)

Until next time…

Monday, January 19, 2009

Nebaj and the Cheese Hike

This past weekend I had the chance to visit a few friends in Nebaj, a city in the department of El Quiche, made famous by 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu and her work during the war. Before leaving I was little apprehensive about what kind of a reception we would get there, having heard rumors of people in the area strongly disliking Americans after such tumultuous times during the internal conflict. Located in the middle of an area many still refer to by its military name – the Ixil triangle - the municipality of Nebaj was hit very hard by the war and hard feelings still remain. Although I haven’t substantiated this rumor, nor have I heard of it happening to any of my acquaintances, I heard that it isn’t uncommon for children and/or adults to throw rocks and sticks at gringos in some areas around Nebaj.

The trip up there took about 5 hours from my site, but I met up with another volunteer on the way, so luckily I didn’t have to do it alone. We caught a bus to get to the capital city of the department, Santa Cruz del Quiche, but as soon as we boarded, we wished we had waited. Not only was every seat full – 3 people deep, with people crowding 75% of the aisles as well – but vendors were boarding the bus as we stalled at the bus stop for about 5 minutes, offering food, drinks and snacks, knowing that the bus had come from the capital and the people aboard were a captive market for such things. Standing in the aisle while a bigger lady trying to sell Chuchitos (Milled corn with tomato sauce steamed in a corn leaf) from an oversized basket attempted and eventually succeeded to squeeze through, my friend Kate and I looked at each other with the familiar, “Oh, Guatemala” expression that has come to represent resignation to some of the quirks of the culture down here.

After standing for two hours as the bus spun around tight curves and steep ascents and declines, we finally got to sit down about half an hour outside of Santa Cruz del Quiche, but we quickly got off and boarded a Microbus for Nebaj, which was still another 2 hours away via foggy mountain roads. Luckily we made a stop for gas along the way, during which vendors raced up to the microbus to peddle their various offerings through the windows. Kate and I broke down and indulged in a bag of neon colored popcorn balls, which I won’t admit to liking. Once we arrived, we met up with a friend whose site is Nebaj and went out to dinner at an ex-pat’s restaurant.

The following day we set out early to hike to a nearby village that boasts a cheese farm with some of the best cheese in Guatemala. Obviously, this was one of my main reasons for wanting to visit Nebaj – the chance to taste some fresh, well made cheese. After the two and a half hour hike through mud and spitting rain, we arrived at the cheese farm and sat down to enjoy gourmet grilled cheese and coffee – complete with fresh cream that was rich enough to eat by itself. We ate overlooking the pastures of the farm, and found ourselves constantly wondering how we had stumbled upon this strange oasis in the middle of the most war- torn region of Guatemala.

After lunch at the cheese farm we caught a ride back to Nebaj proper in a pickup truck and met up with more friends later that night. We ended up eating almost every meal at the same restaurant, mainly because he had fresh pickles (which I hadn’t had since before I left the states), peanut butter and a mean apple pie.

Although the weather was cold and miserable, it was nice to see a different part of the country and see another site. I hope to go back soon, if not to see my friends again that for the cheese alone. I bought some to take home, but as you can imagine, that didn’t last me very long.

Until next time..

Monday, January 5, 2009

Christmas In Site

Yet another experience I acquired while religiously not writing: Christmas Eve and Christmas Day celebrations in site.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to celebrate Christmas with the family in my site and that has graciously taken me under its wing. With two women in the family (mother and daughter) who have spent time abroad to study, we can easily relate.
So, having been invited, I headed over on Christmas Eve -¨Noche Buena¨ in Spanish- in the afternoon and found several women hard at work preparing the tamales for our dinner (and subsequent breakfast, lunch and dinner, again, to be exact). They had a sort of assmebly line working to get the job done - tamales are made from a varying amount of corn mash and milled rice, allotted a small piece of meat and tomato sauce ladled into a banana leaf and wrapped with small pieces of twine or plant fibers. While it seems pretty simple to me, each family claims to have their own recipe, involving different proportions of rice and corn mash, tomato sauce and the secret ingredient: pig fat. Appetizing, I know - but I constantly have to remind myself that a lot of the stuff we love as Americans probably looks less-than-scrumptious to them as well. For example: when offered stuffing, two Guatemalan friends cringed, but graciously accepted a small spoonful. I don’t know about you, but stuffing is my favorite dish at holiday meals.

Two women in my host family worked for almost an entire day to prepare all the tamales. To cook them they’re piled into a huge pot and steamed over a wood fire for an hour or two – another component that makes each family’s tamales different;cooking time and method.

After praying and giving thanks for the joy and impending meal of Noche Buena, each person was handed a plate with the unwrapped tamales and a mug of the Guatemalan version of hot chocolate. Everyone ate between two and four tamales, accompanied by nothing more than bread, salt and hot sauce, while eagerly looking forward to the next meal of the same thing. I could only manage one.

Once we finished eating, we had a small gift exchange between the ten people who chose to participate. Everyone bought a gift worth around ten quetzals (about $1.30) and gave it to their designated recipient. I bought a decorative basket for an aunt of the family and one of the siblings bought me a woven cloth that I’m now using to spruce up my kitchen table.

And, of course, there were plenty of fireworks. Speaking of which, I tried to spread a rumor with another American friend in a futile attempt to curb the noise in my area. Interpret this as you may, but desperate times call for desperate measures. The rumor goes like this: the famous reindeer that carry Santa Claus all over the world on Christmas eve are deathly afraid of fireworks. Therefore, if you light fireworks, especially the loud kind, the reindeer won’t bring Santa Claus anywhere near your house.

As you can imagine, this rumor was unsuccessful. Seeing as Santa Claus is not a well known visitor in the area, kids only laughed when they heard it (see for yourself the smug expression on one of the cousins’ face as she lights a violent sparkler in the street).
My Kaqchikel teacher suggested that next year, to more effectively scare the kids away from fireworks, I should spread a rumor claiming that they interfere with the production of tamales on Christmas Eve…which would be much more frightening.

Friday, January 2, 2009

Coffee Trainings

So, having been traveling frequently the last few weeks for various holiday celebrations and visits, I haven’t had much time to write anything coherent to share with you, but on the bright side, I’ve had plenty of time to collect observations and experiences that you might find interesting.

I’ll start with the two huge coffee trainings we had scheduled for the week before Christmas. The main objective of these trainings (of which we’re having three more) was to relay the steps of the coffee processing which we are promoting to the small coffee producers in order for them to sell their coffee at a later stage in the procedure, thus making more money per pound from their coffee beans. So, as I mentioned, the steps that transform the coffee fruit into a mouth watering cappuccino (my preference) are much more complicated than just picking beans and roasting them, something I’ve noticed of many things I absent mindedly consume. While I can’t imagine I could make it worthy of an episode of How Things are Made, I’ll break it down into the steps we’re teaching the attendees:

First, the coffee fruits, which look a little like small, red grapes, are picked once they’ve matured to a point where they are firm and a consistent deep red. All together, they go through a process to weed out any stained or apparently ‘bad’ fruit, which ensures the quality of the beans later in the process – which is crucial to an even, uniform quality in the subsequent steps.

Once sifted through, the fruit must go through a de-pulping machine on the same day it is picked. These machines can be as simple as the one I’ve shown here or as intricate as the industrial sized, motored-powered ones that the large exporters use. The machine we use removes the peel and flesh of the coffee fruit at a rate of 100 pounds of fruit through the machine per 15 minutes, if being cranked manually.

After the peel and pulp are removed from the bean, the naked beans are washed with clean water (preferably not from a river or contaminated water source) and stored in sacks in a cool, dry storage place for up to 48 hours to encourage fermentation. The fermentation, I’m told, cements the indigenous flavor of the bean.

Once thoroughly fermented, the beans are laid out to dry on any readily available, clean, flat surface. This could mean a homemade drying rack or a metal roof, if otherwise unoccupied. Depending on the weather (and this can only be done in the dry season, which is a complication for some) it can take between 8 and 36 hours to fully dry.

Once dry, the beans are stored in a cool, dry place free of other plants with strong odors, such as bananas or onions, in order to preserve its delicate aroma until it is sold to an exporter or sent in for the final steps of the processing.

All this, before it is roasted and ground, the two steps which I imagined comprised the entire process from exotic coffee plant to steaming coffee mug.

At each of the trainings we had about 60 attendees. At the second training, I worked up the nerve to present myself in Kaqchikel, with the little knowledge and few phrases that I’ve acquired thus far. While I didn’t get very far, I did get a round of applause for the effort which has given me a bit of encouragement to continue with lessons – I’ve had about 25 hours of class up till now.

Ch’oyan chik. Until later, that is..