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

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