not much time to write as i´m on the office computer at casa guatemala. that´s starting to be a theme... there weren´t enough people signed up to take the boat to town on wednesday so it didn´t go - if it´s not worth the gasoline then it doesn´t happen and that´s pretty much a rule of thumb around here.
my first days at the casa have been expectedly difficult and exciting. i finally got my work assignment and i´m happy with it. i am an orientadora for the niñas grandes - girls from 10 to 17. i live in the dorms with another orientadora, jasmine from australia. we get great help from a third orientadora, chini from españa, who doubles as a nurse in the clinic and sleeps there. we wake the girls up at 4.45 in the morning. it´s still dark, but we are lucky enough to get electricity in the mornings from then until about 6 - the lights begin to go off every 23 seconds for the last 40 minutes of breakfast, chores and teethbrushing. without the lights we would never get the girls out of bed - or ourselves either! they do full chores before breakfast on a rotating schedule - bathrooms, bedrooms, living area, terrace, front office, laundry area, front porch. they also take (cold!) showers and help prepare meals in the kitchen all before 6 a.m. it seems like a pretty intense life to outsiders but it´s a typical schedule for girls their age in guatemala. we have a break once they go to school from 7-ish to 10.45 when we quickly eat our lunch. seems early for lunch, but believe me, we´re hungry by then! we are around for their lunch and break before it´s back to school at 12.40. then we´re on break again from 1 to 4 when we get them for activities before dinner at 6. other volunteers do activities after dinner until 7.30 when we get them to shower and in bed by 8. trying to get 32 girls in bed and stop chatting is not easy...
the meals since i´ve gotten here have been stellar compared to what i hear is normal. they butchered some chickens and had a green bean harvest the day before i arrived so we had diced green beans with shredded chicken twice, with black beans and tortillas tortillas tortillas! also, they recently increased the number of eggs that go towards the kids´meals so we´ve had fried and hard-boiled eggs for several meals. also white rice and spaghetti in a tasty red sauce, and one day a desert-like dough in sugar syrup. we did run out of food one day before everyone got seconds. one of the volunteers had a benefit in his home town in france. he raised $1800 dollars and asked that they buy fruit and vegetables for the kids each week. we haven´t heard anything about it for two and a half weeks and we´re all a bit worried. i should say hopeful. optimism is always a plus here. turn that frown upside down.
the young kids are instantly loving and adorable which makes everything easier here. it´s interesting though, to see how 20-something people differ on child-rearing. almost always, the discussions are about safety versus guatemalan custom. should the kids have to wear sandals in the river for safety when most guatemalans have no problem walking everywhere without shoes? should they be allowed to have knives when lots of kids grow up using machetes and even guns? big questions with myriad opinions from volunteers hailing from españa, germany, australia, portugal, south africa, and the u.s.
i´ve been so busy adjusting, learning, being super-sassed by teenagers in spanish (i´m sure i don´t know the half of what they´re calling me - always my response is no me importa), that i completely forgot to be excited about my first descans (rest). i leave for costa rica to see my brother´s mom and my friend ms. lacey on the 24th. a six-hour bus-ride to guatemala city and an hour and half plane to san jose will be made much easier by my guatemaltecan friend pepin driving me in the city between the bus and the airport both ways. i´ll return to guate on the 2nd of march. i realized a few hours ago how exciting it is that i´m going to costa rica!!! if i were in the states living my normal life i would have been coming out of my skin with anticipation. instead i had to actually remind myself to go on vacation... totally different life!
having trouble posting pics but hopefully will be able to put some up when i´m at the internet cafe in town on monday night. also will be on skype sometime that afternoon - misshess38.
no time to edit this - con permiso - activities are starting and i need to take a group of our girls to the park while the others swim in the river
paz a tí!
s
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
a hefty entry (con fotos)
holy guacamole, it took a long time to post those pictures. thankfully internet is working at backpackers today and i´m shamelessly hogging the computer. the pics posted in reverse order so start at the bottom and work your way up. the pic of the older woman is Señora Wilma with Dalila, who is very pregnant. Señora is manager of the restaurant, helping Señora Raquel keep us all in line. the so-called top of the heap is Señora Angie, who took over the orphanage from a couple of canadians who were not providing proper nutrition. she generally stays in guate (how everyone refers to guatemala city) but is here for a few days, so i have the unique opportunity to chat with her, and receive my assignment from her, as opposed to sebastien, the frenchman who is the official coordinator of jobs at the casa. it sounds like i will be a refuerzo, giving extra help and individual attention to kids during their english classes. i won´t actually know until i start, though. she´s got the only non-street-dog pet i´ve seen yet. a shaggy white hair-ball named mandu, like, kat mandu, pero perro. picture the sassy girl dog in the pound of "lady and the tramp" who tells lady what´s up. lots of personality, and so nice to be able to actually pet one of the hundreds of dogs around here.
my spanish is improving with the help of Edi, a server in the restaurant with me. he´s a wonderful guy. 19 years-old and his baby just turned 2 months. the culture is one of very young parents and many many children. (something the orphanage tries to educate appropriate aged kids about). Edin is another employee who is working on his english with me, and helping my spanish along. Daniel is 17, works in the kitchen, and the best kind of trouble-maker - you can see it in his smile! we have plans to fish together this week and cook our catch. there is also a young guy, Ivan, who i think is somewhere around 13, but seems well beyond his years, both in experience and thoughtfulness. his family moved to rio dulce from guate because their neighborhood became too dangerous. he hangs out here, practicing his english with the volunteers, and hoping that Señora Raquel will make good on the scholarship she hopes to get him, so that he can go to highschool. he´s an excellent artist and a commission usually takes 20 minutes or less - i´m waiting for my picture of animals of the region. he´s in the pic with me and dark-haired rita from portugal, and red-headed claudine from south africa. (the other pic of rita is with jason, a crab-fisherman from alaska (he was on the first season of "deadliest catch!"), and the other of claudine is with our israeli friend nerri).
spent the last couple days with a great girl, jessica, a nurse from missouri. she unexpectedly was forced to travel alone for the first time at age 22 after she had begun her trip and is doing a great job of it. she bravely continued on this morning, and i´ll miss her. i spoke with her about the casa, so she and i and Raymundo from italy went for the tour yesterday - my first time there. it´s pretty crazy great and exactly what i had anticipated and hoped for, if a little muddy and buggy (big surprise in the jungle, right?).
i served a group of doctors from the states, and found out they were here for a week of checkups. they did all 220 kids in one day, then all the workers, their families, and the volunteers in another, then spent the rest of the time hiking into smaller villages from the river. they said compared to the surrounding villages, the casa kids seemed better nourished. guatemalans are short in stature in general, but part of that is attributed to mal-nourishment. of the 220, about 50 are genuine orphans, and the rest are divided between kids who come to stay at the casa for school most of the year, and the kids from the surrounding villages who are able to walk from home.
the casa looks pretty close to the website´s portrayal, with the exception that the farmland definitely does not provide as much support as implied. my first night here, i met a volunteer who told me that the environmental aspects of the casa that i was so excited to take part in are mostly untrue. i hesitated to report that until i saw for myself. es la verdad, unfortunamente. it was a hard pill to take on my first night, and had me pretty depressed, actually. however, ONE look at the kids, and any reservations i had were out the ventana. it´s all about them, whether we´re burning plastic garbage, eating mostly beans and rice, or not. Señora Angie came to the hostel to complete the adoption of a little girl, i think by a dutch couple. manuel, the volunteer who showed us around, said that it usually takes around 2 years for the government to get around to approving an adoption. a previous volunteer is currently trying to adopt 3 brothers and a sister to new york, and having a heck of a time trying to get anything moving. it´s hard to think of kids spending more than 50% of their young lives waiting to be adopted by people who already want them.
i´ve made a couple of guatemaltecan friends: Wagner( in the picture with me) Juan, and Arnulfo. Arnulfo is an older gentleman - mom, you´d love him, he´s a real cowboy! el rrrrancho! he has invited me to dinner with his wife and 5 year-old son for some authentic food. we talk a lot about the importance of valuing each life, and the environment, and he and his friends already don´t throw their garbage on the ground or in the river.... when i´m around. they are making plans to come to the casa for a visit to see the kids.
life here feels right, and more so each day. it´s not all peaches, certainly not glamorous, and definitely not the paradise of volunteering i was hoping for. but i´m also finding that that was a pretty naive wish. best that can be done is to learn and enjoy the culture, which is more than satisfying, until i can be with the kids full-time. the constant and unceasing slap slap of ladies making tortillas; the "buenos dias" to everyone you pass in the street, on the bridge, or in the store; the universal love of bob marley! when we taste things, we put a dollop in the center of the palm and slurp it up. toilet paper goes in garbage, a habit hard to break, as my Ham family cousins warned me. guatemaltecans asking me not what i´m reading, but why. that always leads to a slightly confused but great conversation!
speaking of reading, i just finished a great book. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Kingsolver, about the benefits and importance of eating food from close to home. that´s one thing i´m definitely doing, even if it doesn´t come from the farm here. the luxuries of america are pretty weird when you think about it, which we know already. but this book does a nice job of articulating those weird things and outlining their impact. she´s pretty darn funny too. for instance, did you know that the butterballs we get for thanksgiving make up 99.5% of turkeys in the u.s., but that they are so big-breasted they can´t stand or mate? shanahan fam - what do you think of trying an heirloom turkey for thanksgiving? could be a cool experiment. uncle bob could roast some shoe leather and it would be great, so what´s to lose? (slow food international takes orders in april) hope that wasn´t too preachy.
i´m looking for a ticket now to take me to costa rica at the end of the month. i´ll meet up with dear friend ms. lacey and her boyfriend from minneapolis, and spend some time with Judy, my brother´s mom, who lives in san jose. looking forward to sun and hopefully some beach. people in chicago talk about the cold all the time (ahem, caitlin) but imagine what guatemaltecans are obsessed with when it´s cold and raining and they´re used to jungle heat. Señora Wilma said "que frio" to me no less than 17 times the other day.
i´m treating this as a journal mostly, but i´d love to know who my readers are. you don´t have to register to post an anonymous comment, so just say hola, what up, or hi, and let me know who´s out there.
paz a ti
s
my spanish is improving with the help of Edi, a server in the restaurant with me. he´s a wonderful guy. 19 years-old and his baby just turned 2 months. the culture is one of very young parents and many many children. (something the orphanage tries to educate appropriate aged kids about). Edin is another employee who is working on his english with me, and helping my spanish along. Daniel is 17, works in the kitchen, and the best kind of trouble-maker - you can see it in his smile! we have plans to fish together this week and cook our catch. there is also a young guy, Ivan, who i think is somewhere around 13, but seems well beyond his years, both in experience and thoughtfulness. his family moved to rio dulce from guate because their neighborhood became too dangerous. he hangs out here, practicing his english with the volunteers, and hoping that Señora Raquel will make good on the scholarship she hopes to get him, so that he can go to highschool. he´s an excellent artist and a commission usually takes 20 minutes or less - i´m waiting for my picture of animals of the region. he´s in the pic with me and dark-haired rita from portugal, and red-headed claudine from south africa. (the other pic of rita is with jason, a crab-fisherman from alaska (he was on the first season of "deadliest catch!"), and the other of claudine is with our israeli friend nerri).
spent the last couple days with a great girl, jessica, a nurse from missouri. she unexpectedly was forced to travel alone for the first time at age 22 after she had begun her trip and is doing a great job of it. she bravely continued on this morning, and i´ll miss her. i spoke with her about the casa, so she and i and Raymundo from italy went for the tour yesterday - my first time there. it´s pretty crazy great and exactly what i had anticipated and hoped for, if a little muddy and buggy (big surprise in the jungle, right?).
i served a group of doctors from the states, and found out they were here for a week of checkups. they did all 220 kids in one day, then all the workers, their families, and the volunteers in another, then spent the rest of the time hiking into smaller villages from the river. they said compared to the surrounding villages, the casa kids seemed better nourished. guatemalans are short in stature in general, but part of that is attributed to mal-nourishment. of the 220, about 50 are genuine orphans, and the rest are divided between kids who come to stay at the casa for school most of the year, and the kids from the surrounding villages who are able to walk from home.
the casa looks pretty close to the website´s portrayal, with the exception that the farmland definitely does not provide as much support as implied. my first night here, i met a volunteer who told me that the environmental aspects of the casa that i was so excited to take part in are mostly untrue. i hesitated to report that until i saw for myself. es la verdad, unfortunamente. it was a hard pill to take on my first night, and had me pretty depressed, actually. however, ONE look at the kids, and any reservations i had were out the ventana. it´s all about them, whether we´re burning plastic garbage, eating mostly beans and rice, or not. Señora Angie came to the hostel to complete the adoption of a little girl, i think by a dutch couple. manuel, the volunteer who showed us around, said that it usually takes around 2 years for the government to get around to approving an adoption. a previous volunteer is currently trying to adopt 3 brothers and a sister to new york, and having a heck of a time trying to get anything moving. it´s hard to think of kids spending more than 50% of their young lives waiting to be adopted by people who already want them.
i´ve made a couple of guatemaltecan friends: Wagner( in the picture with me) Juan, and Arnulfo. Arnulfo is an older gentleman - mom, you´d love him, he´s a real cowboy! el rrrrancho! he has invited me to dinner with his wife and 5 year-old son for some authentic food. we talk a lot about the importance of valuing each life, and the environment, and he and his friends already don´t throw their garbage on the ground or in the river.... when i´m around. they are making plans to come to the casa for a visit to see the kids.
life here feels right, and more so each day. it´s not all peaches, certainly not glamorous, and definitely not the paradise of volunteering i was hoping for. but i´m also finding that that was a pretty naive wish. best that can be done is to learn and enjoy the culture, which is more than satisfying, until i can be with the kids full-time. the constant and unceasing slap slap of ladies making tortillas; the "buenos dias" to everyone you pass in the street, on the bridge, or in the store; the universal love of bob marley! when we taste things, we put a dollop in the center of the palm and slurp it up. toilet paper goes in garbage, a habit hard to break, as my Ham family cousins warned me. guatemaltecans asking me not what i´m reading, but why. that always leads to a slightly confused but great conversation!
speaking of reading, i just finished a great book. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Kingsolver, about the benefits and importance of eating food from close to home. that´s one thing i´m definitely doing, even if it doesn´t come from the farm here. the luxuries of america are pretty weird when you think about it, which we know already. but this book does a nice job of articulating those weird things and outlining their impact. she´s pretty darn funny too. for instance, did you know that the butterballs we get for thanksgiving make up 99.5% of turkeys in the u.s., but that they are so big-breasted they can´t stand or mate? shanahan fam - what do you think of trying an heirloom turkey for thanksgiving? could be a cool experiment. uncle bob could roast some shoe leather and it would be great, so what´s to lose? (slow food international takes orders in april) hope that wasn´t too preachy.
i´m looking for a ticket now to take me to costa rica at the end of the month. i´ll meet up with dear friend ms. lacey and her boyfriend from minneapolis, and spend some time with Judy, my brother´s mom, who lives in san jose. looking forward to sun and hopefully some beach. people in chicago talk about the cold all the time (ahem, caitlin) but imagine what guatemaltecans are obsessed with when it´s cold and raining and they´re used to jungle heat. Señora Wilma said "que frio" to me no less than 17 times the other day.
i´m treating this as a journal mostly, but i´d love to know who my readers are. you don´t have to register to post an anonymous comment, so just say hola, what up, or hi, and let me know who´s out there.
paz a ti
s
Friday, February 6, 2009
trabajo en el hotel
Not much time to write as I am working in the restaurant right now, technically. We have only one set of customers, though, so Iºm making the most of it. They hail from Kalamazoo and South Haven, Michigan - go figure - very devoted to backpacking the authentic way and must be in their sixties, though you wouldnºt know it. Life, while fairly relaxed, has not been easy the first few days. Working in the restaurant with very little spanish has been hard, and the manager, senora raquel, is no picnic. There is very little instruction so iºm learning by making mistakes, and being scolded in rapid-fire spanish for anything else that goes wrong around here: wrong orders, missing food, dirty dishes, you name it. Iºm not letting it get to me though - restaurants are the same everywhere. This may be a developing nation, but the pride people take in running a business es la misma... switching into spanish without knowing it is my new favorite surprise...
The picture of the Rio Dulce is straight out from the restaurant which is on a dock over the river, and the shot from the top of the bridge is half way between Hotel Backpackers and Fronteras, the small town nearby. Today, Rita, a volunteer, and Nerri, a traveler from Israel, and I went to Finca Paraiso. An hour by bus and a short hike opens to a gorge with icy water, and a waterfall fed by super hot! hot springs. It was phenomenally beautiful and exhilarating, and very nice to be away from the hostel for a few hours. The other two volunteers, Claudine from South Africa is the other, both head to the casa to begin work tomorrow. Iºm hoping someone new comes soon, but if not, the wonderful thing about travel is that people are always interested in making new friends. It was wonderful to arrive and immediately meet a dozen or more people who donºt think this is a crazy adventure, just normal. Iºm usually the least travelled of everyone I meet!
Iºve got some amazing pictures to share already, but as the internet only works occasionally, I wasnºt able to upload them today. More to come...
Despite the boredom of working in a restuarant and feeling confined to the hostel, Iºm appreciating the time i have for reflection before the craziness of 250 kids happens - but i canºt wait!!!
I had hoped this would be a better entry, had jotted some interesting things down to share with you all, but wasnºt able to get my book, and time is limited. Itºs also partly the terrible cold Iºve been fighting for a couple days clouding my head - itºs cold here! Nearly everyone is underprepared for the wind and rain and I definitely should have brought a blanket!
Iºm certainly making due, though, and very very glad to be experiencing Guatemala - a truly wonderful country with very open and caring people. Some of those people are the employees here at the hostel, who work with us everyday on our spanish, with a few english lessons for them. People are beginning to understand me and enter willingly into conversation, love it!
Canºt possibly get into words how much i miss friends and family, but also canºt get away from the feeling that Iºm doing the right thing with my life right now.
love and peace to you
s
Sunday, February 1, 2009
first moments
hola!
i´m safely at the hotel backpackers - a youth hostel 20 minutes up the river from the orphanage. i flew out of chicago at 5.30 am yesterday, stopped in houston, arrived in guatemala city at 1 pm. my first glimpse of the country side from the plain was breath-taking, literally. the clouds parted for a moment and lush greens and raw browns showed amazingly dynamic mountains with small towns on their tops looking like silver icing. taxi to bus stop and 6 hours later i was dropped at the huge bridge that spans the rio dulce (that´s the "sweet river" for non-spanish amigos). great friend patty McC recorded my favorite guitar riff that he composed and i listened to it as i began the trip - it was a wonderful moment combining home and adventure. the bus ride was beautiful, the terrain here is all the more enthralling because darling chicago is so flat! we stopped for a meal and i had roast chicken with rice and salsa, and fried plantains with creme fraiche. pretty great for a truck stop - i think i´m going to like it here...
i arrived in the pouring rain and they quickly brought a volunteer down who speaks english. there are 3 other girls who have started over the last 10 days. we all work 2 weeks at the hostel in the restaurant/bar before we move over to the casa. volunteers from the casa come to the hostel for after-dinner drinks on wednesdays and saturdays so i met a couple of them last night - of course, very nice people.
i´m about to head across the bridge into "town" - fronteras or el relleno - not sure which. my first shift will be at 3 this afternoon and go to 11. already i´ve begun to experience the latin culture so working tonight will be fun. within moments of sitting down last night i was shaken hands with, kissed, told i was beautiful, complimented on my teeth, and invited to go dancing. friendly doesn´t begin to cover it!
apparently the internet doesn´t always work so i will be posting as often as possible.
i´m already missing home, but as i fell asleep to the sound of the rain hitting the tin roof above my head, and the breeze blowing through the screens that serve as walls, i was and still am, very hopeful.
love and peace to you
s
i´m safely at the hotel backpackers - a youth hostel 20 minutes up the river from the orphanage. i flew out of chicago at 5.30 am yesterday, stopped in houston, arrived in guatemala city at 1 pm. my first glimpse of the country side from the plain was breath-taking, literally. the clouds parted for a moment and lush greens and raw browns showed amazingly dynamic mountains with small towns on their tops looking like silver icing. taxi to bus stop and 6 hours later i was dropped at the huge bridge that spans the rio dulce (that´s the "sweet river" for non-spanish amigos). great friend patty McC recorded my favorite guitar riff that he composed and i listened to it as i began the trip - it was a wonderful moment combining home and adventure. the bus ride was beautiful, the terrain here is all the more enthralling because darling chicago is so flat! we stopped for a meal and i had roast chicken with rice and salsa, and fried plantains with creme fraiche. pretty great for a truck stop - i think i´m going to like it here...
i arrived in the pouring rain and they quickly brought a volunteer down who speaks english. there are 3 other girls who have started over the last 10 days. we all work 2 weeks at the hostel in the restaurant/bar before we move over to the casa. volunteers from the casa come to the hostel for after-dinner drinks on wednesdays and saturdays so i met a couple of them last night - of course, very nice people.
i´m about to head across the bridge into "town" - fronteras or el relleno - not sure which. my first shift will be at 3 this afternoon and go to 11. already i´ve begun to experience the latin culture so working tonight will be fun. within moments of sitting down last night i was shaken hands with, kissed, told i was beautiful, complimented on my teeth, and invited to go dancing. friendly doesn´t begin to cover it!
apparently the internet doesn´t always work so i will be posting as often as possible.
i´m already missing home, but as i fell asleep to the sound of the rain hitting the tin roof above my head, and the breeze blowing through the screens that serve as walls, i was and still am, very hopeful.
love and peace to you
s
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