Cowboys, Chickens, Knives, & Aggies

Man have I been bad about updating my thing. I’m curled up in bed right now because my stomach is being difficult. It’s raining outside (shocking) and I’m listening to Mule Variations because Tom Waits feels right. This is the perfect environment for writing and it has definitely been wayyyyyy too long since I’ve updated this thing. Two weeks ago was our field based training. We spent the week visiting towns and volunteer sites in the state of Jalapa, in the eastern part of the country. The Oriente (as they call the east) is populated with Ladinos. People are much more open compared to the people of the Occcidente (the west) which has a more conservative, indigenous (Mayan) presence. Probably my favorite part about the east is that all the men wear cowboy hats. They are worn all over the country but they’re much more prevalent out east. You’d see a group of four men talking in the park all gathered around wearing their white cowboy hats, jeans, and boots. I bought a cowboy hat in Antigua and I can’t wait to wear it to work.


I'm a baaaaad man


Our base was Mataquescuintla, the pronunciation of which I butchered continually throughout the trip much to the chagrin of my Spanish instructor. We stayed in Mataquescuintla but during the day we would travel up into the scenic mountains that surround it to visit smaller communities. Our first day we visited a volunteer (that one of us will be replacing) in her beautiful mountainside village. They grow a lot of coffee there. I don’t drink coffee, I made it through college without drinking coffee, but something tells me I’ll be a coffee drinker before I leave Guatemala. It’s seriously like water here. Babies begin drinking coffee at 6 months which is absurd to me. I tried to explain to my family that I don’t drink it but they just can’t wrap their heads around it. On numerous occasions they’ve brought up how weird it is for someone not to drink coffee. We’ll see what happens. Right now my only vice here is Coca-Cola. It’s so delicious because they use real sugar here, not artificial like in the U.S. Anyways, I digress. It felt so nice to be in a rural area. The slower, friendlier lifestyle.

I’d say there were two real highlights of the trip. The first would be our presentations and how much of a disaster mine was. A women's group had requested presentations on certain agriculture related topics. My topic was tire gardening. There are really only two difficult parts of teaching tire gardening: cutting and then flipping the tire inside out. My presentation went relatively well until we got to those two steps. I had a nice icebreaker and a group activity that conveyed the theme but then came the hands on part. The cutting of the tire part wasn’t too terrible. Tires destroy knives and when I cut into it my knife’s locking blade collapsed on my hand (cuts #1 & #2). The real problem came when I flipped the tire inside out. I had practiced and knew that flipping a tire inside out isn’t exactly easy so I grabbed the tire and immediately threw my strength into it. It worked but it was an old tire and in my haste I had failed to avoid the exposed steel cords that reinforce the sidewall. This resulted in patchy cuts #3-6 on my left hand and slitting my right thumb open (cut #7). At first I didn’t notice the cuts but when I touched my one of my posters as I was presenting it left some blood. The cuts weren’t serious but I was worried about my thumb. Needless to say the end of my presentation was accompanied with nervous laughter from the audience which wasn’t sure how bad the cuts were. I finished presenting and immediately doused my hands in antiseptic. Tires tend to be a little dirty. With the exception of the scene I created, I was pleased with my presentation. The women responded well and got involved in the cutting process.


Tire flippin'


The second highlight of the trip was our vaccination session. I’ve received probably 20 + shots in the past two years and it felt nice to dish out some of my own even if it was just to chickens. I have to say they are much better patients than humans. If someone tried to give me a shot on the back of my neck with a needle almost as long as my face you’d probably hear something close to Steve Martin’s car rental outburst in the Planes, Trains and Automobiles.


No he didn't get a sucker or a bouncy ball.


Speaking of doctors and shots, I don’t know how much press it got stateside but last week’s release of the Guatemalan Syphilis experiments in 1940s certainly got a lot of press here. If you don’t know what I’m talking about it was recently revealed that as part of a U.S. government sponsored medical experiment U.S. public health doctors deliberately infected Guatemalan prisoners, mental patients and soldiers with syphilis in the mid-1940s. Not surprisingly it was carried out by the same immoral doctor who was in charge of the Tuskegee Experiments. Terrible, terrible stuff. Anyways, I hope that this recent revelation will not complicate my service here as an American volunteer.

On a lighter note, we were translating our résumés into Spanish today and I came across something funny. On my résumé I have “farmhand” written as my position at Poplar Ridge Farm where I worked during the summer of 2007. According to my dictionary the word for “farmhand” in Spanish is “peón” from which the English “peon” is derived. I will not be listing my job title as “peon.”

Hmm what else has happened? We went to the city to see a speaker from Texas A&M give a presentation on adult education methods in agriculture. That was pretty neat but sitting there with a name tag that had the Texas A&M logo above my name I couldn’t help but think of my mom and how she would feel if she saw me wearing that. I’m sure the Longhorn in her would not approve. Our tech trainer is a Texas A&M grad and I think he just enjoys calling us all Aggies. The rain got so bad that I finally bought some rain boots. My BluBlockers are making my world a brighter place, I feel like I’m walking around in bizarro world whenever I put them on, Zach. We had our last school presentation today which comes with some relief. Our class was quite a handful.

Training is winding down; we swear in as volunteers on the 29th and then it’s off to our sites for the next two years. We find out where we’ll be serving next Thursday so count on a post about that. If you’re interested and you happen to have a map of Guatemala handy I can tell you this much about our potential sites: 3 sites are located in the state of Quiché (not pronounced like the French cuisine), 2 in Jalapa, 1 in Chimaltenango, 1 in San Marcos, 1 in Sololá, and 1 in Zacapa. So I will be living in one of those states for the next two years.