Running it back

If I haven't kept you up via email, I'm including some of the emails I've sent out...those I could find anyway. In case I reference something from these emails, or you're just interested...

So, I´ve been here for four days now and am settling in nicely. No bug or spider bites yet. That would be a record for me. You should see how wrapped up I am before I go to bed so as to hide any biteable skin. haha.

This whole week is Semana Santa, a time of fiestas and procesiones for easter and Christ´s resurrection, and all that biblical stuff I know embarrassingly little about. It´s pretty crazy. Everyone lines the streets with colored wood chips and beautiful flowers--birds of paradise, lilies, roses, tulips, carnations--stunning presentation. People dress up in what I think are supposed to represent the outfits of the Hebrews, the Roman soldiers, and other related important people. All the kids are out of school so they can participate in the processions and help their families make the alfombras (the ¨rugs¨of wood chips and flowers) that decorate the street. Yesterday, we took the fam to Antigua, my favorite city in Guatemala. It´s generally really touristy, but this time the locals dominated because of the Semana Santa festivities. We watched as hundreds of purple-robed ¨Hebrews¨marched down the quaint cobblestone streets, shouldering a massive float of sorts, upon which Jesus and other important religious figures sat.

an example of the alfombras in Antigua

Chris, a close fam friend, was visiting, too

Jesus (I think) carrying the cross

 Afterwards, we ate at my favorite Antigua cafe--Cafe Condesa--so named because legend has it that the building used to be a national palace of sorts where an important count lived. One day he returned early from a trip to find his wife (la condesa) in bed with the butler. Enraged, the count buried the butler in the walls of the palace. Several years later, after the earthquakes left Antigua in ruins, workers found the skeleton of the butler (or so they say) standing upright in the walls of what had been the pantry. Good story, I know. Anyway, the restaurant has these gorgeous gardens with fountains and colorful flowers. And of course, the food is great. They make the best Rosa de Jamaica. If you ever set foot in Antigua, this should definitely be a stop.

Today, we got up at 6 with the roosters (damn, those things are loud in the morning). San Lucas is settled on the shores of Lafe Atitlan, amidst several volcanoes, some still active. There´s one volcano that has a bit of a plateu-ish top. It sits next to a much smaller, pointier hill. The locals call the hill Cerro de Oro (Hill of Gold), and say that it is the top of the larger flattened volcano that´s been blown off.

We rented a little boat and went across the lake (gorgeous), and visited some of the surrounding cities. Some of these looked a lot like Capri, an old town built right into the slopes of the mountains, on the coast. We also stopped to swim in these natural hot springs on the edge of the lake. The volcanic rock heats up the water, which is pretty cool.

San Lucas has been pretty busy with the craziness of Semana Santa. The family I live with occupies about a quarter of a block, so our alfombra was pretty large. We spent all day Thursday separating flower petals, and different kinds of plants that I had never seen before. The colors were stunning when put together in the huge stencils made of wood. I´ll send pictures when I get back to the states.

It was really fun putting it together, because the entire family comes out--grandfathers, cousins, nephews, and nieces, with an age range spanning from 65 to 2 years. Other families put alfombras together made of fruit, colored sawdust, and various plants. The whole pueblo was so festive. The processions lasted from about 8pm til about 2:30 in the morning. I don´t know how they stay up all night, two nights in a row. It´s an interesting tradition. Kids walk out in front, waving some sort of metal container with this crazy-smelling incense in it. Lots of smoke, and a scent I can associate with nothing else but Semana Santa. Epic music blares from random speakers, making the reeealllyyy sloowww procession seem a bit magnanimous. 

Chico (Francisco), born with a cleft palate, but had reconstructive surgery

Today´s procession was a bit more upbeat, though. With Christ´s resurrection, I suppose the paraders are allowed to be a bit more excited about life. haha. I´m glad I was able to be here for the week, though. I´ve never seen anything like it. All the Evangelical churches (or any non-Catholic churches) play their music really loud during all of the semana santa business. It´s sorta like they´re competing with the craziness of the Catholic party. haha.

Other than that, I´ve just been out swimming in the lake, kayaking, and running. I was actually running up this one path yesterday that leads up to the volcano...accidentally scraped against some barbed wire. Haha. The perils of running in Guate...Every morning, we go for a walk with Don Angel...he´s 60 some years but doesn´t look a day over 50. Whenever we hike anywhere, he always leads (partly because he knows the way, partly because I hate running into the spiderwebs, and partly because he´s in amazing shape). It´s neat to hear all his random stories about different places and people.

 

There´s one spot on the main road called Paso Misterioso. If you stop the car in the right spot, or pour some liquid there, it´ll begin to roll uphill on its own. Que extraño. I´m still tryna figure out why it does that. Haha

Oh! I saw my first shooting star the other night! It was really exciting. haha. Jenny (my little sister´s Spanish-speaking counterpart), Chris, and I were lying out on the dock down by the lake, trying to find constellations and stay awake during the procession...then a bright light streaked across the sky and we all turned to each other: Lo viste?? Haha. pretty cool. Speaking of Jenny, I might get to be her madrina, or godmother. That would be pretty neat...I´m honored they thought of me. Makes me feel special. haha. She´s a great kid who´s been through a lot. When she talks to me about her kind of abusive dad and stepmom, I forget she´s only ten years old. The kids here are all so much more mature than I´m used to seeing in the states. It´s like they fastforward through development out of a necessity to survive and help out the family. It´s...interesting and eye-opening.

Wórk´s going well so far. We found a woman the other day who might have TB. Went to see her, figured out she´s been coughing for seven months now, has a newborn, and can´t breastfeed. So, we brought some formula for the baby, and ended up bringing her up to the parish clinic. When we left this morning, she was looking a lot better, able to speak in sentences and such. Hopefully, when the doctors come back tomorrow, we´ll figure out whether or not it is TB. She´s from a community where that hasn´t been TB, so I´m crossing my fingers that the tests´ll come back negative. Otherwise, we´re gonna have some damage control to do, public-health-wise.

Tomorrow, we´ll start going out to the pueblos, working on the follow-up surveys. We were doing some data entry last night (dull), and realized that there are a lot of kids suffering from third degree malnutrition. So, we´re going to track them down asap and get some supplementary nutrition to them...try to pull them back up. Hopefully, we can help a bit.

Judging from the emails, I should probably back up a few steps and provide you with some background. This is my fourth time in Guatemala, working on various public health issues. This time, I´ll be here until May 4, working with a medical student on a child malnutrition project. She´s just graduated from Stanford Med and will be starting her residency program in Boston in June. So, I´m here to learn everything about the project because I´ll be taking it over once she leaves. The project is a surveillance and intervention program aimed at children under 5 (who have higher risk of death from malnutrition). We work with health promoters (a group of local volunteers set up by the parroquia--parish--to serve as community leaders, promoting the health of their neighbors and such), walking house to house, weighing children and measuring their height, along with gathering other information regarding their health and health environment. All this data eventually ends up back at Stanford for complex statistical analysis that I know nothing about. This month, we´re working with the promoters to conduct the first 2-month seguimiento, or follow-up. We had a couple meetings this week with them...more about that later.

While in Guatemala, Asya (the med student) and I live with Don Angel and his family in San Lucas Toliman. Angel is a long-time friend of Paul Wise, who some of you may know. Paul has sort of taken me under his wing because for some odd reason, he sees potential in me. Anyway, Angel´s crib is pretty posh for rural Guatemala. We have running water, a flushing toilet that´s not in the dark, and a water heater in the shower that works most of the time. Angel´s kids are all grown up, working as accountants and such (a popular field for educated guatemaltecos). His youngest is 19 and lives here in San Lucas. The rest work in Guatemala city and come home on the weekends. Flor, his youngest daughter is going to med school in the city, which is pretty cool, given that she´s of Mayan descent. Á sort of rift persists in Guatemala between the Ladinos and the indigenous Mayan population, with the Mayans often being discriminated against. Flor says that on the few occasions that she has worn the traditional Mayan outfit in the city, people look at her weird and she´s treated differently. So, props to flor for getting through med school. Angel has several nieces and nephews as well. One, Jenny, is exactly like my little sister, Cassie. Her mannerisms and everything. She´s promised to fill in for Cassie while I´m here cuz I miss her so much. haha.

San Lucas is a pretty comfortable, quiet little town, and owes much of its development to the parroquia. Several volunteers come throughout the year through the church. This is both good and bad--it brings in a lot of money for the community and allows programs like the promotores de salud and the clinic to keep functioning, but it also brings in a lot of people who know little about the culture and can often be condescending, whether inadvertently or not. But you know, everyone wants to feel fulfilled by doing their part, so as long as the benefits (aka money) they bring outweigh the harms, I´m not one to criticize.

As for the meetings we´ve had with the promoteres, they´ve been mostly successful. There´s this cultural thing that drives me insane. Most of you probably know how OCD I can be about making things efficient. Well, these meetings are anything but. The first meeting we had on Monday was with the two head promoters, Dominga and Vicente. They´re both great people who have dedicated a lot of time and effort into improving the health of their communities. (Side note: these communities are made up of many of the indigineous families that used to work on the fincas--coffee plantations--but have now moved onto plots of land bought by the parroquia. Good: they have a decent home in which to live and aren´t overpowered by the finca owners. Bad: everything done here becomes a power struggle with the parroquia, including our nutrition project. Families are often poor, but somehow, make it through) Anyway, Asya and I met with D and V to talk about the plan for this month. It took us 3 hours to figure out our agenda for our Tuesday meeting with all the promoters, and the budget for the next year. three. hours. Every point made is made in a roundabout manner, often beginning with a compliment of sorts, some sort of brief apology, and then the point. Maybe. And given that Spanish is not my first language, it takes an impressive amount of concentration for me to stay in the conversation. That, together with my already spotty attention span in English, doesn´t bode well. I´ll have to work on that attention span thing. Anyway, on Tuesday, we met with all the promoters, covering 6 points over five hours. Four people reiterated how important it was to have this follow-up surveillance project, and three others thanked us for actually doing something about the malnutrition issue, instead of just talking about ideas. En realidad, it´s the promoters who are making this all possible, which we of course said....Anyway, they´re a hardworking group of people, but they can talk and repetition of talking points is a regular occurrence. I´m supposed to lead the next meeting, and am worried that I won´t be able to gracefully walk the line between being culturally sensitive yet efficient, and being rude and pushy. haha. especially with my not so suave spanish. I have to confess, I´m a little nervous about taking this project over. It´s a huge program, affecting a lot of families (we work with about 1200), and involves a lot of coordination between moneybanks in the states, the parroquia, the doctors here, and the health promoters. When Asya was introducing me as her replacement for next year, explaining all that I would be doing, I was intimidated by the simple job description. So, wish me luck! ha.

Other than those meetings, what we´ve been doing is a lot of data entry of the surveys done while we were gone so that they can be included in the analysis at Stanford. In a word, dull. But that´s what undergrads are for, right? haha. Next week, after Semana Santa, we´ll be starting the village visits for the seguimiento. Should be interesting

On a more fun note...after that long five hour meeting, Chris and I rented kayaks and went out on the lago for a couple hours. (Chris is another dude staying with Angel. He lived here in San Lucas for 8 months a couple years ago. He´s been in Thailand and Korea since, but is originally from Minnesota...I think. Pretty cool guy. Nice to have someone to speak English with when my brain esta cansada.) The lake is absolutely gorgeous. There are all these little chalets tucked away into
little corners of the volcanoes and mountains. Maybe one day I´ll come back and buy one. haha. It was pretty hot yesterday, so despite the risk of getting amoebas from the water, we went for a delicious swim. The water´s really clear, but I have yet to find the bottom. Maybe by May...

Guatemala´s a lot like Maui, but a Maui undiscovered and thus largely untouched by commercialism and tourism. There are definitely areas that cater to gringos with gringo-friendly restaurants, many internet cafes, lots of English signs, and tour coordinators. But many of these tend to be directed to tourists on smaller budgets than those in Maui--mostly students, your average hippie, and children of the world...or whatever they call themselves. An interesting bunch of people. But Guate is still gorgeous. So much greenery everywhere you go. The coffee plants are all in bloom right now. Dark green leafy plants with little white flowers. Later on, green coffee seeds will grow, and eventually turn bright red when ready for picking. These are then dried and deshelled, roasted, and ground up for your coffee-drinking pleasure.

This morning, we actually took a boat across the lake to Pana, and hiked for four hours around the lake. The miradas were stunning. Blue water, lots of lush greenery, and no insects. Well, I did get one bite, but that doesn´t really count. It was a sunny day, and the hike was awesome. We went through ten lakeside pueblos, some more touristy than others. After our hike, we took a boat back to San Lucas from our last stop in San Pedro...or I think it was San pedro. haha. I fell asleep on the roof of the boat, and will probably wake up sore and burned tomorrow. But it was well worth the hike. I only wish the pictures could capture the grandeur of the volcanoes and the lake. Speaking of which, I plan to hike up one of the volcanoes before I leave. It´s a two day hike, so I´m working on convincing Asya to do it with me...the views are supposed to be some of the best in Guatemala. I also plan on hiking up Cerro de Oro, which is shaped like an elephant...should be fun.

 

Semana Santa´s about to get crazy here in San Lucas. Everyone´s out in the streets building the alfombras and various arcas to hang in the streets. Last night, there was some celebration for Mashimon, a saint (I think) that is a sort of amalgam of Catholic and Mayan religions. He´s this life-sized figure that has a bed, a wardrobe, and his own little house (with caretakers). He likes liquor, cigarettes, and other unchurchly things...strange, I know. People come to him when they want someone to get better from an illness, make more money, want revenge on someone...all kinds of things....Some of their donations go toward funding this party they have every year, where they actually pour moonshine down Mashimon´s chest, I guess...put a cigarette in his mouth, dance and just engage in various acts of debauchery. I can´t dance, especially not marimba and the other popular dances of Latin America, so I was trying really hard to stay on the sidelines. But the tias in the family eventually dragged me out on the dance floor, mostly to keep the borrachos from talking to me. Marimba´s actually not as hard as I thought. But I still deny the ability to dance.

Anyway, it´s about time I get back to the house. We´re putting together the family´s alfombra today and tomorrow, in time for the processions which will start tomorrow afternoon. The kids will do one at 2pm, and the adults will start at 8pm, ending at 3am. This will happen again on Friday and Saturday night. No, they don´t sleep around here during Semana Santa. Should be interesting.

San Lucas is great. Gorgeous, quiet (sometimes), and very family-oriented. Every time I come back to guate, I fall in love with it all over again. Hopefully that won´t change when I take over this project. haha

I´ve been pretty busy here in Guatemala. The other weekend, we traveled out to Santa Lucia, a coast town. There were some pretty cool centuries old ruins. Some of the massive stone carvings were only partially unearthed. There was also this neat old church in a really old, sorta creepy cemetery. Very Tomb Raideresque. Minus Angelina. 

 Chicken buses still amaze me. Aside from the driver, there's usually one other dude who sits up front (he collects the money) on an overturned `paint bucket (the really big, 10 gallon ones...or something like it). The doors never close (Id be surprised if they weren't stuck open), but surprisingly, I have yet to see one of them dudes tip over and out the bus headlong. Given the way the drivers haul ass up the carretera, they must have some crazy core strength.

As for foods, I´ve gotten a little braver (or a little careless) and have tried a whole bunch of fruits and veggies ive never seen before. There are at least 4 types of mangoes here, all of which are eaten differently (I think I already talked about them, though). There are also mutilple types of bananas. Bananitos (aka bananos de oro) are these pint sized things (about 1/3 the size of a regular one), much sweeter, and awesome. There´s also this other fruit that I can´t remember the name
of, but it tastes like a bunch of different fruits put together. Interesting. Yesterday, I had ceviche at the market too...Ive heard bad things about ceviche off the street, but it looked so good I couldn't resist. So far, so good. No Cipro for me. Yet.

The market here, btw, is crazy. If there´s anything that would make me go vegetarian, it would be the mercado. I decided to accompany Flore to help her carry all the goods (all the women walk around with these little plastic wicker-looking baskets, filled with all kinds of freshish goods) so I was there for the purchasing of our chicken. The woman she bought it from grabbed the chicken, broke it in half with a big crack, then started whacking at it with this huge butcher knife. Blood dripping
down her arms, baby chicks running around at her feet (apparently, someone else was selling live chickens and some had escaped), blobs of chicken in the scale. ew. Good thing I didn´t see her buy the carne for the amazing carne asada we had the other day.

To balance out how much I´ve been eating...haha...Angel and I have been running a bit. While Asya was gone, we had the chance to run more than usual. Angel. puchicas. Even at the age of 60something, he owns me on those hills. We´ve been running out on the carretera that leads to the volcano. It´s really green and pretty, with lots of cafe growing, the lake and pueblo on one side, the volcanoes on the other. But, it´s all uphill. There are some downhill bits, but they´re an all too infrequent respite. Nonetheless, its an awesome run.