SPA in Chimu

I have a student named Emelia that always lights up my days. This is the student I took to the Encuentro Juvenil. She's one of the top students in the school. She's a bit older than the other students. I'm not sure if she started school late or flunked at some point in primaria. Everytime I see her she gives me this huge hug or pokes my stomach and grabs my hand. Today she came up to me and we started talking about proyects for our school. This is another thing that sets her apart. Ever since we went to the Encuentro Juvenil, she has it transfixed that we have to do something about the garbage problem in Huehue. We've had to postpone any kind of activities because of the big problem with the mayor and the garbage. Oscar the Grouch, why did you have to screw everything up so badly? Lining our streets with trash. Baby diapers. Orange peels. Tamale leaves. We wanted to put up garbage cans in the community and signs with thought-provoking messages. But no one was picking up the garbage for months so it was useless to organize clean-up days, make garbage cans and paint signs if the garbage was just gonna overflow and pile up next to the garbage cans. Recently the EU with the help of some government agency put trash bins all over the casco urbano. A nice little duo of organic and inorganic. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if they were supposed to capacitar people in what the differences are. Because if you run into one of these in Huehue you'll see that people are using them but are putting the trash in whichever bin is closest. Today I went to lunch at my friend's house and her husband, our town's carpenter, started suggesting we do a project to clean up the community. There is a clear need for it. We are divided by the Interamerican Highway. People driving by fling out their garbage, making our town its new home. I've never been super proactive about the environment. I rather try to build a community center to bring this town together. Even though everyone in my town are the descendants of 3 main families, there's a lot of division. They need some conflict-res and team-building charlas. Too much division over creencias religiosas and infidelity. I fantasize about a small building with a computer room, a library and a salon. Tables for students to do their homework. To spend time together in a positive and safe setting. But there's no time. Unless...I extend. If we were to do this garbage project though, we'd need a SPA grant. There needs to be a community organization in charge of the project and the PCV is just there for apoyo. So I wouldn't be able to say...let's do this. But rather, I'd have to see what their needs are and what will actually benefit the community, principally the youth. And, will it work. In the words of Tim Gunn, "make it work." Gotta make it work. Gotta be sustainable. Or else, when its all over... nothing was done.

I'm sitting here, drinking a little bit of what was left of a bottle of some cheap Chilean wine I bought at the Paiz. I'm feeling a lot but I'm kind of just numb. It's very probable that in 6 months I will no longer have the life I've grown accoustomed. I was talking to a friend and we started talking about me leaving. I started to explain that life would be completely different. He's a 21 year old kid. And he asks me the same questions over and over again. I swear he's asked me at least 4 times where I'm from in the states. But, yeah. I can't get a grasp on it. I've been surprisingly productive since the new year started. I've surprised myself. Maybe its cus I know I have to get all this sustainability shit down before I take off and leave my kiddies. God, I'm going to miss some people. I'm going to miss walking to the bus stop and riding on the bus. Seeing their little faces with the spiked up hair or the lips loaded with lipgloss. I'm going to miss going on walks with Amiga. Drives with Profe. Everything with Profe. I'm going to miss Cristian and I whistling to get each other's to come up or down the stairs. My Bebes...and crazy Capulina. Don Hugo's cool and amazing chill self. Doing stupid things with Jane. Going into Huehue to buy school supplies. Saying Buenos dias to everyone I see. Tamilitos. Chuchitos. Tears. PS, I'm not depressed. Just getting sad.

To New Beginnings

I'm not too sure that most Guatemalans make New Year's resolutions. Who came up with the idea anyway? Saber. The internet says it was the Babylonians. Parece que los Babylonians would make resolutions to get in with the gods. If a resolution was not cumplido, it was considered bad luck so one should be wise when choosing what exactly was gonna be different about this year. Someone mentioned that Guatemalans don't make resolutions because they are much more focused on survival than changing their behavior. But since I'm American, I do have some. I was talking to Profe last night and he said the whole generic New Year's bit, although I know he is very sincere. In everything he says. Que Dios le traiga muchas bendiciones a ud y su familia. I told him, well I know it will already be different. I will more than likely be home for half of this year and Phillip will no longer be at war or in the army. Just those two things will make life drastically different than 2009. Crazy to think that 10 years have passed. I was fourteen when this decade started. A little freshmen/sophomore in love with Dan Flores, long-haired pot head. I was super skinny, and getting those fabulous grades in school. Now, PC volunteer in another country far, far away from my family. By the end of this next decade, I will more than likely be an aunt of at least two little ones from Perla and Alberto, I may even be married and have my little ones. Scary. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's focus on 2010. Resolutions for this year are:

• Be healthy (typical)
• Get a fabulous job that pays well
• Have more fun
• Love my family more, as well as my friends and students
• Be more organized
• Travel to Chile and Brazil (maybe Costa Rica)
• Start drawing again

El Chacal

El Chacal de las trompetas on Don Francisco's "Sabado Gigante" is this man (maybe woman) dressed in a black satin cloak,covering his entire body except for two holes around his eyes lined with gold. Sounding the trumpet on the singing contest when someone uber sucks at singing. Although if the person singing is a good-looking woman with tight-fitting clothes, she will probably pass on to the next round just to appease Don Francisco's machista ass. That man has always been gross. I like him cus he's Chilean but he's sleezy and he turned way too Mexican to try appeal to his audience. He even came out with a ranchero album. Seriously? Anywho...in Huehue, there is a man they call El Chacal. I know him as Jorge. That's the way he introduced himself to me. He sells newspapers. The first time I saw him was on the camioneta to my town. He gets on and starts his bit, "Les traigo Nuestro Diario..." then towards the end, he ends a joke with something like this, "el hombre que no trabajoa es porque tiene una mujer gorda que lo mantiene...pero no va a pensar mal, no gorda de peso si no de billete...gorda de billete." Then everyone giggles. Its the same joke every time. He always offers me the Prensa Libre which is the newspaper that actually has articles and not just pictures of homicides. He always says hi to me and we've talked many times when I'm waiting for the bus. He used to be an alcoholic and now attends AA meetings. Yesterday, coming home from La Reforma, San Marcos, I waited for my bus for about an hour. The buses were running sporatically. Then el Chacal walks up and sits next to me underneath the pasarela. I asked him how was New Year's Eve. He tells me, well, I was sober, so that was good. Continues telling me that this year life was kinda tough for his family but that is life. We started talking about the violence in Huehue (#1 department in the entire country for lynchings and burnings...we're #1, we're #1...). In one of the aldeas I work in, they found a dead man in his taxi. Sigh. I like talking to Jorge. He's nice. Some people have told me some bad things about him, but I think this man has just had a really hard life, partially because of the way he grew up and partially because of bad decisions. Oh, and people call him Chacal because he's really dark.

That Ain't Right

Last week, one of my dearest students missed camp for a day because her mom's cousin had passed away. Thirty-one year old man found dead on the side of the new road going through Piedras Negras at 3 in the morning. And absolutely no one new what happened. If you dig deeper, if you snitch more, you can always get to the bottom of things. It must be that suppresed desire to become a homicide detective coming out in me. Actually, it wasn't that hard to find out what happend, or what supposedly happened. Another student's dad is also related to the guy and says that he was driving his motorcyle at that time, and of course, we are in the hills so there's tons of fog at that time. Apparently there was a truck parked on the side of the road and he smacked straight into it. Sigh. He was supposed to be getting married in a few weeks. The mom of my student told me she saw her (fiance) on the bus the other day (her boyfriend used to pick her up from work everyday so now she was riding the bus) and she was crying and crying. Poor lady.

Yesterday, Profe tells me that his friend's sister "la iban a pedir," which is the formality of the boyfriend asking the parents' for the daughter's hand in marriage. The tradition was that the boyfriend and his family would go to the girlfriend's house with all kinds of food (tamales, bread, fruit, sometimes alcohol) as a gift to the family. Many ladino families don't follow that tradition anymore, but its more common for the indigenous. So this man was supposed to go propose yesterday. He gets into an accident on Thursday on his way out of Huehue to another city and dies. Days away. And, come to find out, the girlfriend is pregnant.