Fire on the Mountain

I woke early in the morning to the sounds of roosters crowing and what I presume is a daily pre-dawn breakdancing party enjoyed by rats on my tin roof. After eating my breakfast and chatting with Luvia a bit, I grabbed my backpack and dashed up the hill to the primary school, where I met my colleague and trainer to conduct earthquake drills. San Miguel is situated over a geological fault, and I have felt a good many tremors in my two months here, so seismic preparedness is something we have been working on with the kids.

Earthquake drills could be quite boring, especially when we make the kids repeat them a few times in a row, so we never call them 'simulacros' (Spanish for drills), but a game called 'Temblor!' (Tremors!). It is remarkable how popular the game has become, to the extent that children want to play with me even when we aren't in the school and there are no desks to hide under. Basically, I bang on the blackboard as hard as I can, screaming, 'Tremors! Tremors!'. The kids then have to hide under their desks covering their heads, until the the tremor stops and the teacher tells them to evacuate in a semi-orderly fashion. This particular day we did a drill with the whole school, and they cleared the building in less than three minutes--not bad for two hundred kids between the ages of four and ten.

After the fun had ended Melinda and I scooted off for a Spanish class with our new teacher, Sandra. It is an election year here in Guatemala and Sandra did us the favor of explaining the major political parties, their platforms and leadership, and a little about recent political history. It is noteworthy that the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize-winning indigenous female Rigoberta Menchu is running as the presidential candidate for an alliance of two leftist parties, and has an excellent chance of making it to the run-off. It is conventional wisdom among some down this way that Bush's recent visit to Guate was nothing more than a feeble attempt to discourage people from voting for her. Of course, I am not so cynical;).

In the afternoon our Spanish class ended and I was back at home, stretching out and preparing to go for a run. I go jogging about three or four times a week, and every time it is a major ordeal. The landscape is so mountainous that in order to run a loop of five or six miles, I have to climb close to one thousand vertical feet. At least my calves aren't atrophying. I was about to leave when I heard a bullhorn out in the street. I couldn't make out the words, but it didn't sound like the fruit guy hawking pineapples and plantains. Chepe has just returned from the woodshop, and he came pounding on my door: "Juan! There is a fire on the mountain! Let's go!"

We grabbed a machete and azadon (a large hoe) and raced up through the town, through the fields of corn and snow peas, up to the pines where we saw smoke pouring from the forest. There were already two guys up there working to put the fire out. We climbed on to the steep slope and worked furiously to clear a meter-wide lane from brush and pine needles, then light the undergrowth to burn it back towards the fire. In this way we stopped the fire before it could do serious damage, and only a couple acres were burned.

Afterwards we stood around with the other men, joking and talking about what had happened. It was the first fire in San Miguel in over ten years. It was pretty cool to get to help put it out!

I got my site assignment this week. I will visit the town in a few days, so tune in later to find out more about where I will spend the next two years of my life!

Love to you all...

Bits and Pieces

San Miguel is a small town. Actual estimates of the population vary widely, but I don't think there are more than two thousand people living there. And I have noticed this past week, they all know who I am. Every last one of them.

"Buenas tardes", I say to people as I pass by walking. "Buenas tardes, Juan" comes the reply. Do I know this person? Heck no, I've never met them. But being the only gringo in town, in fact the only gringo who has ever lived there, in effect makes you a celebrity. Now everybody knows my name. I imagine them talking to each other, in the corner store, the corn mill, after church: 'Have you seen these three gringos that live here now?' 'Yes, we have gringos among us.' 'The children say they are teaching in the schools.' 'My kids say the man is named Juan, perhaps I can invite him to dinner and he will marry my daughter and take her to America.' 'Ah, but Doña Octavia is already trying to get him to marry her daughter.'

Ok, ok, maybe it isn't exactly like that, but they must be talking, because all the sudden they all know my name. And I ain't lying when I say that multiple women in the community are manuevring to try to entice me into wedding their daughters. Such is the life of an American in a poor country. It's kind of like being a rock star, but you have to crap in a latrine.

****************************************************************

I haven't gotten a chance to write about Carneval, which is what they call Mardi Gras in Latin America. It was a blast. First of all, Chepe and Luvia dressed me up like a woman. People, meet Juanita. She's a mighty fine looking gal, eh?

Ok, so I should have shaved...I actually went on to don a scary mask, so it didn't really matter. Then I went to the house in town where all the participants were congregating in their costumes. Men dress like women, and women like men, though actually only one woman came with us. (Apparently there is danger of getting your bum pinched.) Finally we went out into the streets and danced following a sound truck for hours. People throw confetti and eggs and flour, so you get junk all over you, and it's a lot of fun. There was a costume contest at the school as well, and the Peace Corps volunteers got to be the judges. It was an honor, and a tough job, as all the kids looked terrific. Costuming at Halloween is not common in Guatemala, so Carneval is the time when folks pull out all the stops!

***************************************************************

Some of you who went to view the photos I posted (if you couldn't view them previously, you should be able to now: http://new.photos.yahoo.com/jengler7/) asked me what the heck is this?

It is a pila, an important part of any Guatemalan home. In the middle there is a basin where the water is stored. On the sides are lavaderos, or wash boards, for doing laundry and dirty dishes. I recently had a clothes washing lesson from Luvia--it turns out that despite the fact that I washed my own clothes all six of the months I spent in Central America prior to coming on Peace Corps, I have been doing it all wrong. Hopefully I'll improve my technique before I head out on my own in a month--or I'll have to marry a muchacha to keep me in clean clothes for the next two years!

Love to you all...

Road Trip

Ooof, it has been a few weeks since my last entry...So I owe you guys big time now! I am half-way done with training, and will be swearing in at the U.S. Embassy as a volunteer in just five weeks (if I don't first give them a reason to put me on a plane home, that is). The next three weeks will be crunch time for grant writing and the emergency action plan, and after that I will be visiting my future site for a week (I still don't know where it is). So time will be flying!

Speaking of flying, I hardly slept a wink last night for fear that my corrugated metal roof would be taken off in an impressive windstorm. The thing was straining and buckling all night long, what a racket! My neighbor Edy lost his T.V. antennae, and I lost a pair of boxers from the line, but other than that no damage done. There was a tremor as well around 2AM...one of those nights when it really felt like Nature was trying to do us in!

In other news my fellow Environmental Education trainees and I just returned from a week-long Field-Based Training. We zipped around the shores of the beautiful Lago de Atitlan in a microbus with our tech trainer David and Spanish teacher Oscar...it was fantastic! (Some of you who followed my prior Guatemalan travels will recall that I spent a month studying Spanish on the Lago in 2005.)

Some highlights of the trip:
-We visited the site of a tragic landslide that occurred during the heavy rains of Hurricane Stan in 2005 and killed hundreds of people as they slept in their homes. We went to the 'temporary' shelter village where most of the survivors still live, as well as interviewed the fire chief who led the rescue effort. It was very interesting to learn how a disaster scenario might play out in Guatemala.
-We conducted earthquake drills in a school with several hundred students. It went alright, but I imagine in case of the real thing it would be utter chaos.
-We conducted a workshop with 45 Magisterio students training to be teachers. The workshop focused on participative educational techniques and designing effective lesson plans. Though my assignment is to be an Environmental Educator, most volunteers in my program spend a lot of time trying to get teachers to use instructional techniques beyond dictation.
-We found time to take a speedboat to a remote part of the lake for some cliff jumping, and the last night of the trip we hit the disco in the tourist town on Panajachel and shook our booties. So there was time for fun too.

I have some photos to post but I can't do it on this terminal, but they are coming soon! Love to all, take care!