El Vocabulario Y El Fin del Viaje.

I have loved learning a language in a foreign country. It is so much more satisfying and enriching than learning in a classroom with a book. Granted, it has really helped me to do both here. I think what is most rewarding, are the memories that are attatched to learninga particular word or phrase. Here are some that stick out in my mind as I have attempted to learn the Spanish language in Xela, Guatemala.

¨No Se Preocupe¨: (Translation: Don´t Worry.) As I worked in the clinic, and would see very poor women come in with blood pressure that was through the roof, I would tell them the bad news, with the helpful phrase... don´t worry. They would perk up and smile and it made the moment less heavy. There is medication, there are dietary changes you can make, there are things you can do.

I also heard this phrase said to me by my teacher, when I would feel hopeless at learning the difference between the Imperfect and Preterite tenses. ¨Don´t Worry¨ seems to also be the approach that Xelan´s take to living difficult and what seems often insurmountable obstacles of poverty. The human spirit here is immense, and to be able to approach one´s neighbors, and strangers on the street with a friendly gaze, a friendly hello, is nothing short of inspiring.

¨La Lluvia¨ (The Rain): It is the rainy season in Xela, and it is raining like cats and dogs in the afternoon. Sometimes the electricity goes out, sometimes it looks like the city will be washed away, but it always stops. And now, the mornings are sunny and hot as the clouds wrap themselves warmly around the surrounding volcanoes. It can keep you up at night because the tin roofs on the houses echo the sounds of drops like a tin can. It washes the soot away from the pollution.

I bought a yellow rain coat like the one Gene Kelly has in ¨Singing in the Rain¨. I bought it at the mall, where the first floor is occupied by a wall mart. The gun shop was the only store with reasonably priced rain coats and I purchased it while a dozen men stood in the shop next to the gun display watching the football game. The rain washes away the old and gives birth to the new. But it also washes away communities like Xeabas in 2005 during Hurricane Stan. It can be strong and powerful, and unforgiving when it wants to be.

¨Dar la Luz¨ (To give birth). But its direct translation is to give light. The Mayans believe that light comes from darkness, and life comes at night. This is why babies are born at night. Dona Ana was quite possible one of the most fascinating characters I have ever met in my life. She herself is a force of light, hope in a sea of poverty and dispair. She cares about her community deeply, but is also a business woman. She is a contradiction. She gives life every day by her boundless energy and dedication and I was deeply inspired by her, but also wished there were accessible medications to her poor clients...

¨Vamos A Ver¨ (Let´s See). I would like to come back and do work here with the school, bring back a computer that they could do some video on to promote their projects, and help expand work in the clinic. Perhaps I can bring some students down from SSU, or return when I graduate. I guess I will have to see what the future holds.

I catch a shuttle to Antigua tomorrow and fly out on Thursday. It has been a really great experience, and if anyone ever wants to come down and learn some Spanish, let´s talk, and maybe I can send some things down (ie medications etc) on your trip. It´s a tremendously effective way to learn the language, and I finally feel like I can understand people who are speaking to me in Spanish. Granted, I have a long way to go, and a lot more vocabulary to learn. But I am definately more confident with the language. Thanks all for reading my little blog while I have been down here. It is nice to know folks have been following me along on the trip.

La Clinica, Palmar, Y la semana tercera.

Just returned from a really great morning with the other students at Pop Wuj, and Oscar, one of the teachers. Oscar, bless him, crammed 8 people into his small truck. Granted, if we were all tiny Guatemalans, that would have been enough space for an elephant. But we are huge Americans and Canadians. He took us about an hour outside Xela to the coastal region. In the region called, Palmar, is one of three coffee cooperatives. Here men and women work for decent wages, by Guatemalan standards, at about 5 dollars a day.

The coffee plantations in Guatemala have a history of exploitation, beginning with Germans coming to the country in about 1874. They bought huge plantations where people worked for nothing to grow the coffee bean. Only two contries in the world have mountains high enough to grow gold coffee, Colombia and Guatemala. After world War II, The Americans kicked out the Germans and took over huge plantations. Now, about two dozen families own most of the land, and the workers are severely exploited.

Men, on average in a coffee plantation work for about 25 quetzales a day, where women work for about 15. Children work for between 8 to 10 quetzales, which is about a dollar. Even though child labor is illegal in Guatemala, it is still rampant. The coffee plantations control every aspect of the worker's lives, much like the sharecroppers of the restoration period, and early twentieth century in the US. Think "The Grapes of Wrath". Workers will work all day, and when they bring in their harvest, be told that they owe the plantation money for food, rent, water etc. At the end, many workers find themselves in more debt than if they had not worked at all. It is, in essence a system of slavery. There are a few cooperatives in Guatemala, and some plantations are trying to become organic, but Oscar pointed out that, it doesn't solve the poverty problem to just buy fair trade organic, because the majority of workers rely on the work of the major plantations to feed their families. Coffee prices have plummeted in recent years due to a flood of coffee from Vietnam and Brazil. Now, plantations are needing to diversify their crops to bananas, fruits and vegetables.

None of the gold level of coffee stays in Guatemala. All of it is shipped abroad. The lowest level of coffee stays here, which is why the majority of Guatemalan's drink instant Nescafe. Oscar walked with us throug the Coffee processing area of the farm, which is one of the few that does not use chemicals to cure the coffee. They ferment it, as they did in the middle east thousands of years ago.

Just above the plantation was a volcano which erupts every 30 minutes. It has done so for 80 years, and 10 years ago, displaced a village when ash blocked a river and cause the small town to flood and wash away. The river is not permanently redirected through what not too long ago was a thriving town.

We walked to a small lagoon that is fed by a natural spring and took a break before coming back and stopping at a very touristy attraction...a zipline!! It was fun, but I kind of wish it didn't go over a major overpass where cars spewed black smoke into the air. Granted, it was really beautiful and fun to fly over the trees. It was well worth 7 dollars!

I worked in the clinic yesterday with Dr. Vanessa who is a Guatemalan Doctor. She was super sweet and allowd me to perform a pregnancy test and several glucose tests on patients. We had a lot of people with diabetes come in as well as hypertension. One woman had such high blood pressure she couldn't stand. She began crying when she explained she needed to work, and is scared at what is going to happen to her. Dr Vanessa and I tried to explain to her that the medication will help, and it did...within 10 minutes. She walked home after we took her blood pressure again, and it fell. It was really great to see the medication work, and I was so glad it could help this woman. She was really terrified.

We did a clinic at Dona Ana's with the medical Brigades on Wednesday as well, which was amazing. About 100 people waited outside patiently at Dona Ana's for medical care. People are so patient and amazing here. I've learned a lot from the people of Guatemala and I hope to learn more.

I had a great conversation with my teacher, Minor. He is one of the founders of Pop Wuj. I asked him what were his favorite Guatemalan filmmakers, and he said there are no Guatemalan filmmakers....at all. The only films coming from Guatemala, are terrible racist stereotypical anti campesino films called "Nito and Nieto", which he made me swear that I would never ever watch. He went on to say there are no film schools in Guatemala, no culture of filmmaking because it is so poor. That's not to say that people don't watch films, they just watch films from Mexico, South America, Europe or the US. There are filmhouses here in Xela, but they are not well attended because they are expensive and it's cheaper to buy bootleg DVDs.

I suggested to him that maybe Pop Wuj could have a film school, or a documentary project to make docs about current struggles and Guatemalan history. All it would take is a computer and a video camera. He was REALLY interested in the idea. I promised him I would try to get a descent computer with some software on it to Pop Wuj in the future. I told him he could have my old Apple G4, then realized, they would need one with a DVD burner. I want to keep that promise. If anyone knows of someone who wants to get rid of a G5 or newer computer with a DVD Burner, let me know. I could maybe throw in a little money. I would like to come back and train folks on how to use final cut pro and make films. It is important that countries like Guatemala have access to these technologies so that stories like that of Dona Ana are recorded and shared with the world. It is about recording history, and Guatemala has for too long had its history erased.

Xeabas, Lago de Chicabal y El camino a ruina

Sorry I haven´t written much this week. The medical program went in full swing last week and I´m catching up on sleep at the moment. Last week I spent two days in the Pop Wuj clinic doing triage (vitals etc) and two days shadowing Dona Ana. This week, there is a foundation that is sponsoring a Medical Brigade. The foundation helps fund the Pop Wuj clinic, and the brigades consist of about 25 pre med students and doctors. We are going to various villages around Xela this week to provide medical care to some of the poorest communities in Guatemala.

One such community, Xeaba, was hit hard by hurricane Stan back in 2005. It is recovering, but just received running water this week. The village is an indiginous community that speaks Kitsche, just one of the several Mayan native languages. We arrived this morning after an hours drive high into the mountains. The volcanos in the distance pierced the clouds as the morning was unusually sunny for the rainy season. We drove into the village in four buses, and the locals stared at us as if to say, ¨here come the gringos¨. The brigades make their way to the village here several times a year, so we are a common site.

We set up the clinic in the school as kids played basketball outside. Little girls ran around, shooting hoops in their native dress against a backdrom of hillside farms and volcanos. We were about 8,000 feet above sea level. I helped Laura and Josef (the German husband of Pop Wuj´s Doctor) do intake of patients. The interesting thing was, however, that just about every person in the village has the same last name of ¨Guachiac¨. We would ask, what is your name?, and we would get the response ¨Antonia Maria, Guachiac Guachiac¨. In Indiginous Guatemalan society, each person holds the same last name of their father and mother. In this case, all are pretty much named Guachiac¨. This goes back to when the Spanish conquered this village hundreds of years ago, and named everyone Guachiac. I guess it makes for a close community, but boy was it hard to figure out people´s medical history and charts. To make matters even more entertaining, some were named ¨Gaurchiaj¨, which sounded exactly the same when pronounced in Kitscen.

Many of the locals spoke no Spanish, so we needed translators to translate from Kitsche to Spanish. Most of the people who came were women and children. They loved to crowd around the table and really wanted to look at the charts, some of which had people´s pictures in them from the previous visit. At times they helped me find people´s names, but most of the time they were laughing at how badly we spelled the name ¨Guarchiaj¨ and the first names of their friends and family. It made for a good laugh.

I lent some kids my camera to take pictures of the girls playing basketball. It quickly created a commotion, and one of the boys was having a real blast snapping the camera every 5 seconds. A small boy, about 2 years old kept jumping in front of the camera to get his picture taken...

The volunteers were all really great, though I couldn´t help but get a little creaped out when one doctor started pushing his Christianity on a patient by saying ¨when you have anxiety or are scared, just pray to Christ¨. Granted, most of the people in the village are either Evangelicals or Catholics, but I still felt like I wanted to throw up on the guy. I don´t really believe that one´s own religious beliefs belong in a clinical or hospital setting....

Overall it was a great day, and a lot of fun. I really love doing relief work and working with communities like the one in Xeabas.

Tomorrow we are going back to Dona Ana´s community to bring the brigades to her area. It is really needed as Dona Ana does so much work and really needs the medical support. Last week when I visited her for a second time, I came back on the bus to Xela. I thought I was lucky to catch one of the fancy mini buses with a video inside. These buses usually have a Mexican singer that is dressed like Liberace singing with a 200 piece orchestra. The bus driver was really into the video programming, and kept strategically changing the channels to make sure our videos suited his tastes. As we turned a corner, he changed the channel, and as a result lost control of the bus. The bus started screeching, and suddently hit the center divider (which is only about a foot of the ground). Luckily the bus got stuck on the center divider, preventing us from driving into oncoming traffic and off a very steep cliff. As we all sat there completely stunned as to what had just happened, I turned to the guy behind me and said (Tuvimos Suerte) Translation: We were lucky. His response was ¨Si, too much cerveza!¨(referring to the driver).. We laughed. I got off that bus and started walking down the freeway till another bus picked me up. Everyone on the bus was fine, except the bus driver, who I am assuming will lose his job for being too addicted to Mexican music videos....

On Saturday the shool organized a trip to San Martin, a small village at the base of a volcano where a sacred lake sits (Lago Chicabal). This village has lots of new construction of fairly big houses by Guatemalan standards. Considering 30% of the GDP in Guatemala comes from workers who go to the US and send money back, it´s easy to see what the economic dynamics in this village are. Most of the men go to the US and send money back to the families to build houses and buy land. The difference with this village, is that many of the older men who have stayed, still dress in traditional Mayan dress (which consists of a white skirt like robe and embroidery).

We hiked up the volcano which was probably one of the most difficult walks I´ve ever done. The air was thin due to the altitude, and it becomes exponentially hard to hike up hill as your body gasps for oxygen. We reached the top to the lake where a ritual was being performed. The lake is one of the most sacred spots to Mayan culture. It is prohibited to swim in the lake, and legend has it, that if you do, you will disappear. My teacher said that once two young men from Xela disappeared while swimming in the lake. He think that probably some Mayans killed him for disrespecting such a sacred place. Mist covers and lifts from this magical place. It sits at the top of a a body of water that feels like it is disappearing. As we slogged our way up and down the hill back to San Martin, we would pass small children carrying 50 lbs of wood on their backs (a common site in these mountains). People were trying to cultivate the land, cutting down the forest for firewood, and causing major landslides as a result. Considering the average indiginous woman has between 5 to 8 children, it is no surpise that Guatemala has one of the densest populations in Central America. It is a country the size of Lousiana but with a population of 13 million. The land really reflects it. Wherever there is a road, there are deforested plantations of clutivated fields, landslides, or mines. Multinationals have come in, but also, locals are largely responsible for the deforestation of the hills for wood burning.

Laura, who works with Pop Wuj, was talking this morning, that whenever she goes and does the stove project (a project that Pop Wuj does to help local people use less wood and therefore take the pressure off of forests), she asks the women if they want more children. One woman she asked, actually ended up getting birth control because of her conversation with her. She said that it´s really just about having one-on-one conversations with women here. Many of these women don´t want a ton of kids, especially the ones that aren´t super religious. Their economic and educational situation has meant that they haven´t had a lot of choices. It really is just a matter of education about birth control etc. Ronnie, one of my teachers, also said that when given options, women will choose to have fewer children because the economic impact is so great otherwise. I think when I come back, I´d like to do work in this area with the local women, so that they may find they have some options.

I volunteered in the clinic last week as well, which was really enlightening. Clinics like the one Pop Wuj run are really important, because the only other free option is the public hospital in Xela. Laura gave a talk last night about the statistics with the public hospitals and they were nothing short of horrifying. On average, one nurse has 100 patients in a ward. Basically, if you are poor in Guatemala, you do not want to end up in a public hospital. I couldn´t imagine what it would be like to be that 1 nurse with 100 critical care patients on a ward. That would have to be the worst job in the world.

We had a lot of patients come in with respiratory and gastrointestinal problems. There were a few with diabetes, and others who had been hit by cars! One poor guy hadn´t gotten any medical help since a car hit him a month ago. He could barely move. His neck and left torso were so stiff I had to help him take his jacket off to get his blood pressure. Being poor in the third world is no piece of cake. You are vulnerable to every element from hurricanes to cars, and very few people are going to help you. That´s what makes these free clinics, and the work of people like Dona Ana so important....

I´m here for another week, and hoping to learn more Spanish so that when I go back and start nursing school, I can be of better service to the amazing immigrant community that makes its way up from Central and South America to work the fields, clean the hotel rooms, and do all the dirty work that most Americans don´t want to do. All this, while they provide for their poverty stricken communities back home. It really is amazing when one considers the level of stress and responsibility hanging on immigrants in the US. With a little luck, I´ll end up back here in Guatemala some day. I´ve really loved it here.

Major protests expected around the country.

There is a major political crisis going on in Guatemala right now. The country´s first democratically elected left wing president in 50 years is being accused of murdering a prominent right wing attorney who threatened to expose goverment corruption. There is massive corruption throughout the government, whether it is left wing or right wing in this country. Here is the dead Attorney´s final accusations. Translation is written next to it.

A few days ago, I was speaking to a young man in a cafe who asked me what I thought of all this. Having been so involved in school, etc, I haven´t really been keeping up on current politics. He asked me what he should do. I told him that probably the best thing would be to get the news out to international sources. He said he wanted to organize a protest.

I saw him again today and he thanked me for supporting him. He has organized a protest against the government tomorrow. I don´t really know how I feel about it, as I´m really not well read on the situation. I understand there is massive government corruption, as well as disappearences still, but this is the first democratically elected left wing government in 50 years, and I am wondering about how complex the dynamics of this incident truly are. The president has ordered an international and independent investagation to the murder. There is a very big chance that he could be deposed over this. It will be interesting to see....

Here´s the lawyer, who was murdered, in a video where he accuses the president of killing him. There is a translation of his speech next to the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=243X1pI6-I8

Here´s an article about the situation.
http://newsfeedresearcher.com/data/articles_w20/colom-rosenberg-president.html#hdng1

La Tierra y La Conmadrona

I've been really busy this week, and haven't had a lot of time to write on the blog. I've started volunteering in the clinic, where I help triage, and have also been shadowing an indiginous midwife who works in the outskirts of Xela outside of a town called San Juan Chamelco. Her name is Dona Ana, and she has delivered 12,000 babies at her house since 1996. All of her patients are poor indiginous women. Dona Ana is a force to say the least. She never sleeps, and when I met her on monday, she had delivered 3 babies the night before in her house, while she saw dozens of women during the day. In Guatemala, midwives don't just deliver babies, but also prescribe medications and perform the role of doctor. In the rural areas, there are no doctors or hospitals that are within reach, and the midwife is one of the only sources of medical care.

Dona Ana perscribes a mixture of western and traditional medicines and is highly competent considering the circumstances. She really is amazing.

As I take the bus from the polluted smog filled air of Xela to Aldea Buena Vista where she lives, the landscape tranforms into heavily deforested land. Whole bunches of pine trees are dead, presumably from some kind of pine beatle courtesy of global warming. The few trees that are left that line the valleys are sickly and lonely, waiting for their final days before they are chopped down for firewood by locals. 80% of arable land in Guatemala is owned by 24 families. Land is expensive to the poor, and the little that they have, they build on or cultivate for food. Sides of hills are scarred with landslides that people attempted to cultivate. This does not bode well for the forests, and it is safe to say that the majority of rainforests in Guatemala are going, going, or are gone. To make matters worse, cars are shipped from the US that would never pass a smog test in a million years, so they are sent down here at twice the cost, to belch black smoke and acid rain into the air. The air quality is lousy, and when the rains come in the afternoon, it is a welcome relief as it washes the soot away.

The land in Guatemala to Dona Ana's house looks like a sad neglected dog with mange, who no one really cares about. Dogs run across the road, dodging crazy drivers. Most make it, but some casualties line the road. It makes me think of the precarious nature of life in the third world. Poor people here are like dogs trying to cross the street before a car hits them. No one really slows down to let them cross as they desperately try to cross. It's purely a game of chance if you survive. Small children perform juggling acts for drivers on the streets for a quetzal. This is life in the third world.

A young woman had a baby last night at Dona Ana´s house. It was premature. When I arrived at Dona Ana's, her family was sitting around her in a bed just outside the waiting room. There are bunks next to the waiting room where women can rest after a birth. Later, Dona Ana spoke to her in her native language, and helped her relieve some of the fluid in her pelvis by having her squat over a bowl. We changed her bloody sheets while Dona Ana gave her antiseptic for a tear that happened during the birth. The walls were lined with mold, and during all of this, there was a minor earthquake as the single lightbulb flickered precariously as it was about to go out. Dona Ana didn´t blink.....I asked her if she ever rested, and she said who has time to rest when there are so many patients to see?

She let me feel the head in the mother's stomach during each prenatal exam. All of the women looked like they were about 15, this being a common age for new mothers in rural Guatemala. Indiginous women can have anywhere between 5 and 8 children. I met one woman at the clinic on Tuesday who had 14. Some of the women had potential breach babies at 8 months, and Dona Ana would move the baby around with her hand to move them in the right position. This woman really knew what she was doing. She would ask me, "Do you feel the head?", as she would place my hand on the woman´s pelvis. And I would say, yeah! And she would say "No, it's the foot!". I finally got the hang of finding the head when she would ask me "How many months and weeks?" and I would say "seven". She would say "no, it's 8 and one week!". She could tell how old the fetus was by feeling the stomach for half a minute!

She finally took a short break, and sat in her courtyard in the sun. Her son is a healthy looking 16 year old who wears western clothes, while Dona Ana wears traditional clothing, and has a hat that says "Nike" on it. He wears his new jeans low, like a hip hopper in the US. Midwifery is solely a women´s domain in this country. Men are not allowed in during exams or birth, and many local women work at Dona Ana´s home as her assistant. Considering many indiginous women are treated as second class citizens in Guatemala, it´s quite amazing to see this commaraderie. Dona Ana is building an extension to her house, and provides well for her family. She's not rich, but she also isn't poor. She charges her patients, and the medicines are really really expensive because, as in all of Guatemala, the pharmeceuticals make money. I was shocked to find out Ibuprofin cost $14 for 50 capsules. Considering many people make less than $1 a day, that´s a fortune. A pharmeceutical representative just happened to pay us a visit as we were seeing patients. He had nice clothes, a nice new cell phone, and was probably just trying to provide for his family like anyone else. I asked him what company he worked for. He worked on commission. It was all in a day´s work. Selling medications in bulk that would later be paid by a poor peasant who may or may not be able to save their child´s life with an antibiotic...

After a crazy night and morning, Dona Ana relaxed in the sun as she put her sweater on her head to cover her face from the rays, as all the Maya women do. Her grandmother sat and weaved some cloth in the courtyard. She was missing an eye and told me she couldn't see very well. She was probably 70 or 80 years old. Dona Ana's son put his white baseball cap on the stairs, and the most amazing butterfly sat on it, as if it was looking for food. It probably thought the white cap was a flower. I stared at if for atleast 5 minutes and it just kind of sat there, touching the cap with it´s long, tentacle tongue. I have never seen a butterfly with silver wings before, and I tried to show the old woman, but I don't think she could see it, or navigate my terrible Spanish as I tried to explain. It made me think of the contradiction of that moment, of the old ways and the new, of traditional Guatemala, and the exploited, globalized Guatemala... of the disappearing forests and the lonely loss of that butterfly´s existance.

Another woman came in later who was carrying a large child on her back. The woman seemed very upset, and the girl, who was about 5 years old, was listless. Dona Ana diagnosed her as having parasites, and gave her some medication. The cost of the medications for this woman, who barely had shoes on her feet, was $10. She gave Dona Ana all her money. When the child was outside about to go home, she threw up most of the medication.

Child mortality in this country is through the roof, and this girl obviously needed to get to a hospital. I felt really in an awkward situation as I am not a doctor, and Dona Ana has a lot of experience. Also, the mother of this child has no money and is miles from a Hospital. She walked away from Dona Ana´s house before I could interrupt Dona Ana´s exam of another patient. I don´t honestly know if that little girl is going to make it...

I am hoping that the medical brigades that are coming next week will be stopping near Dona Ana´s village. But as in all of Guatemala, with its 13,000,000 people, there is a huge need for qualified medical personnel. It feels overwhelming for someone with no current qualifications, but a deep desire to help. It´s a somewhat painful position to be in.

I brought Dona Ana some Ibuprofin from the city, as I felt that was the least I could do....

Anyway, that´s all for now. Studies are going well, though I need more time here if I am really going to know Spanish well. I hope to return some summer during or after nursing school when I have more medical training. I really love the people here.

La dia de la Madre.

Sandra told me earlier in the week that there would be a lot of celebrations surrounding Mother´s Day starting friday. Guatemalan´s love an excuse for a party, and Mother´s day is no exception.

I hardly see Wilifred, her husband as he works all the time. I asked her if he works a lot, and she said he works on average 12 hours a day at two different jobs. Even though he is a skilled worker (he´s a radiological technician at a hospital), the pay is lousy, and his meagre salary is barely enough to pay for their small house and four kids. They also supplement their income by rentiing rooms to students through the Pop Wuj school, hence why I inhabit what would normally be Axel´s humble little room. Every morning I wake to brown particle board walls and a smiling sticker of the main character in the Pixar cartoon ¨Cars¨. It´s the only thing, outside the football curtains that suggests it is a child´s room. The rivera´s live simply, and modestly, but they definately do not reflect the poorest of Guatemala. The poorest live in the villages and slums outside the cities. In the case of Xela, they are among the 6 indiginous villages that line the base of the Volcanoes.

This afternoon I went to a village outside of town called llano de la pinaal that Pop Wuj builds stoves for, and runs a day care center in. It is a modest village about 20 minutes out of town on a chicken bus. My teacher and 5 other students, along with a really awesome volunteer, Dan (who is also a Dr.), helped at the guardaria (day care center) that Pop Wuj school helps run. It was la Dia de la Madre, and the school needed our help to celebrate the mothers of the village. All of the villagers are of Mayan descent, and the families live entirely off the land as their ancestors have for thousands of years. The mothers and young girls were all dressed in their traditional clothing, but the young boys were wearing shirts with logos like ¨Old Navy¨ When we arrived after a hairy ride on a chicken bus, the teacher, a young vibrant woman who lives in the city with her husband who is also a teacher at Pop Wuj, had us put balloons and streamers on the ceilings with the kid´s help. The children loved being lifted into the air and sticking the balloons with tape to the ceiling. The boys started wrestling, and one boy, was particularly aggressive with the smaller kids. I and some others kind of jokingly sauced him out as the ¨bad boy¨ of the school, not really knowing his history. Later, we were informed by Dan the voluneer, that this boy´s mother had to abandon him to work in the States. His father went and married another woman, and rejected him, so now the poor kid is kind of on his own. The community however looks after him, and when children were giving their mom´s presents during the celebration, the young teacher stepped in and accepted a gift from the young boy so he wouldn´t feel excluded. He was really a great kid, always wanting to contribute, and helped serve food to the mothers and their children. It was clear that the community was his family, and I was confident that he was going to be OK, as long as the day care center was there, and as long as the rest of the community didn´t let him slip through the cracks. It was apparent they weren´t going to let that happen.

The party at the guarderia was the wildest Mother´s Day I´ve ever experienced. We arrived and help decorate, as well as stuffed the ¨duck¨baskets that the children had made with donated goods like toothbrushes, lotions, soaps, etc. for the mothers. The duck baskets were ingenously made out of plastic milk cartons, and were, I have to say, simply stunning pieces of art. I´ll try to post some pictures of them if I can.

Then, the children put on a show of dance and singing for their moms. The teacher then had the moms do contests to win prizes. Some of the contests included ¨the best orange peeler¨, where two moms would compete at peeling an orange with a huge knife. My favorite was the best bottle feeder for a baby. Where two pairs of moms would simulate bottle feeding a baby with a pepsi bottle, spilling pepsi all over eachother´s beautifully made handwoven clothes. The whole room of 50 adults and kids were in hysterics. Oscar brought an awesome sound system (that rivaled anything the outdoor screenings have) and we had a dancing contest with the moms. It was all in good fun, and at the end, we ate Guatemalan tamales cooked in Banana leaves in a giant metal bucket from a fire in the back of the building. The stray dog would make his way into the building and steel the banana leaves to eat. Man, does Mr. Sophie have it easy in California. Dogs have a hard time here, but the community is vibrant and alive!! God definatley is in everything, as the Maya would say.

Sandra and the kids celebrated Mother´s day at their school too, and she proudly showed me a beautiful box that Axel made with silk flowers, paints and a cookie tin. She was so happy, and I can tell she really loves being a mom. They are such a wonderful family the Rivera´s, and I hope Wilifred can find a way to provide as well as spend more time with them. They are all so tremendous!

My teacher for the medical program concluded his lecture on cultural sensitivity today. All week he has been giving me amazing lectures on Mayan culture, philosophy, medicine, and Guatemalan politics. He is a medical anthropologist who specializes in indiginous medicinal practice in Guatemala. He told me that the majority of mortalities in Guatemala occcur among babies 0 to 1 year of age. Ninety percent of the fatalities are infants. The context of Mayan culture is important to understand in regards to this. Much of indiginous medicine is based on a philosophy of maintaining a balance of energy, not only with the land, but in your life, in your relationship with others, in your relationship with community, and with the spiritual realm. There is a supersitious element to indiginous Guatemalan society that is often in conflict with the modern world, and it is this element that can help explain the high infant mortality rate.

When a Guatemalan baby is sick, sometimes in indiginous culture, it is blamed on what my teacher calls ¨the evil eye¨. It is the belief that the baby was subjected to an imbalanced energy. For instance, if someone does not like the baby, a parent, or neighbor, the baby may become sick from ¨the evil eye¨. Likewise, if a parent is tired and not happy with the baby, the baby can get sick with colic from ¨the evil eye¨. Typically if the baby has colic, the parents or grandparents will take an egg, and place on on the points of the baby´s body that represent all the corners of the land, and the universe. They include, the head, hand, feet, elbows, and knees. When done, they will break the egg, and look to see if there are points in the yolk that are visible. If they see points, or discoleration, it is the ¨evil eye¨, if not, then the baby needs to go to the doctor. The problem is, that if the baby continues to have diarrhea, and loses too much fluid, it can become deathly ill. My teacher has studied over 50 rituals that were to determine the ¨evil eye¨ diagonisis. He said in about 6 of them he could not see the ¨points¨of discoleration that they were claiming they say. So he took the egg to another Mayan house and haphazardly would place it on a kitchen counter. In all the cases, a grandmother (or usually the woman of the house) would immediately recognize the points and tell him to get the egg out of the house. He doesn´t fully understand how this can be, that they can perhaps see something he cant, but in all the cases of his experiment, the women could recongnize the points of the tarnished egg...


This sounds strange, but in the context of Mayan culture, where balance, and emotion are one with everything, where men and women both have masculinity and feminity, where there is no past or present or future, where God is in everything, it does actually makes sense. I can´t really attempt to convey what I learned from my teacher, because it took him 15 hours to explain it all to me. It´s a lot of information, and to understand Guatemalan indiginous society takes a lot more time than the week that I´ve spent here, so I won´t even try to explain it. But what he did say, was that this belief in ¨the evil eye¨, along with the obvious financial difficulties of indiginous parents, can delay bringing the child to a doctor. What can start out as colic for a baby, can turn into severe dehydration and eventual kidney failure. He said a lot of education needs to be done, but also Western medical practitioners need to have a sensitivity to this perspective and not just treat indiginous people as superstitious ignorant people who accidentally kill their children. When western doctor´s treat Mayan culture with respect, then perhaps there can be some middle ground, and both can learn from eachother (as well as save some lives).

That said, Pop Wuj is doing amazing work. Their day care center is amazing, and so is their clinic. I will start working there next week, along with helping ¨comadrona¨ or midwives deliver babies in the villages. As the Mayan´s believed, everything is possible at night. Babies are always born at night, so I probably won´t be getting much sleep next week. If any of you know of how to get a hold of a van or a car for Pop Wuj, please let me know. They are in desperate need of a car down here as the communities they work with are the poorest that live outside the city. My teacher´s car just died a horrible death, and it was the main form of transportation that they used for the clinic and the midwives. It´s much cheaper to buy a car in the states than it is here (it costs less than half). If you want to drive down to Guatemala, I can guarantee you would be treated with warmth, open arms, and a hospitality that you have never experienced before. Also, if anyone needs to learn Spanish, I can´t recommend this place enough. Tell people to quit locking themselves in their houses for fear of the Swine Flue, and to get down to Guatemala. If you are feeling depressed and sick of American culture, Xela will definately cure you. This place is truly amazing.

Pop Wuj

I started school three days ago, and my brain is a mishmash of broken Spanish words and ambivalent english. I feel like I am walking through soup when I speak, and have a new found understanding and compassion for non native English speakers in the US. The only difference here, is that I have a feeling that I am being treated with much more compassion, understanding and patience than they would in the States.

I was placed with my family on Sunday. Sandra, her husband Wilifred, and four children, Jason (14), Axel (8), Brian (7) and Michelle (5). They have welcomed me into their humble home with open arms and a warmth that I find astounding. My early introduction to Xela on Saturday was a huge procession of Guatemalan evangelicals through the city. Loud music, 20,000 people and preachers on megaphones were all it took to scare the living bejesus out of me. I was worried my family was going to be one of those people and that I´d find a bible on my pillow when I went to bed.

When I met Sandra, she brought me to her home and handed me a key with a key chain that says "Smile, Jesus loves you". But the popularity of evangelism in this country reflects a complex dynamic of colonialism, political, economic instability, and popular culture. I tried to keep an open mind while I was a little concerned about what lay ahead. But Sandra was warm and friendly, as were the kids, with a propensity of shyness. Her husband works as a radiological technician at the hospital, and they have hosted students for 16 years. Their extended family has hosted students for 25 years. The Pop Wuj school is well respected in the community, and the Riveras (my family) only houses students who do the medical program. My room and the house in general is very small. My room is about the size of a closet, with barely room for a bed, but the house is well cared for and the bathroom is really nice and clean. Sandra takes a lot of pride in being a mom and homemaker, and her kids really reflect it. When we eat, she makes sure everyone is fed first, then sits and prays with a white scarf on her head, after we have begun eating.

She has been soo amazingly patient and gracious with my broken Spanish. There is no pressure from her or her family about religion or politics. The School makes it a requirement that students and families stay away from such hot topics and I think it is a really good idea. My Spanish is so bad, that I doubt I could have an intelligent conversation about it anyway. I have been treated with extraordinary warmth by the Riveras and am really enjoying my stay. Jason, the oldest is an amazing artist, who showed me his drawing yesterday. He wants to be an architect. Michelle likes Mr Sophie, as I showed her pictures on my camera. The kids love Chihuahuas and really liked taking pictures a lot, so I had them take photos of themselve, their mom an their home. They were laughing the whole time...

Political discussion may not be occurring in the house, but it is definately apparent in the school. It's really a pleasure to speak with teachers about the history of the region and its current government as well as relationship with the United States. All of the teachers are very highly educated. My one teacher travels internationally and lectures on the current situation in Guatemala. He says that there is suppression by the government against those who speak out. I was reading that thousands disappear every year in this country due to their resistance agains government suppression. I worry about what the future holds for these amazing people who run this school.

Im so thankful I am at Pop Wuj school. It is a teacher´s cooperative that was founded two decades http://www.pop-wuj.org/. Four of the school´s founders still are a part of the cooperative today. The school was named after the ancient Mayan mytho-historical text "pop wuj". One of the school´s founders gave us an amazing lecture last night about the history of the book and the town of Xela.

Firstly, if you want to read up on the Maya, you can check out http://wsu.edu/~dee/CIVAMRCA/MAYAS.HTM.


Pop wuj was written at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Maya, circa 1524. The Spanish specifically attacked the town of Xela before the offical capital of Mayan civilization because Xela was the symbolic cultural capital of the Maya. When they attacked, 10,000 Maya were waiting to defend the city. Approximately 250 Spaniards and 2000 allies attacked. at 7am on February 20th, 1524, there were already 2000 Mayan casualties. By 5pm, the Maya forces had been completely destroyed. They were no match for the technology of the Spaniards. By 9 pm, the Spaniards were taking control of the country, raping women and taking slaves. This was the first of the Mestizo lineage (mixed race) which now makes up the majority of the population of Guatemala. As one of my instructors stated the Mestizo is the villain of this country because of this sad history. He also said that this event exists in the heart of this country and manifests itself in a purely functional reality, where people just accept what is given to them by the government or church. The centre of Xela is a beautiful parque de centro America, and the surrounding area is a mish mash of cobbled streets with potholes and brick buildings. The farther you get from the center, the more the buildings leave a Spanish splendor to a shack like functionality of brick and sheet metal. This is the reflection of colonialsim. The European center of the parque de centro is stable, set. Its banks, church, and government buildings don´t change in their architectural majesty. But everything else does. The community of Maya is always in flux, in change, unstable, and only functional in its existance. It is at the whim of colonialism still.

Xela, in the mid 1800´s, was the capital of Central America. A resistance movement formed, and to my understanding (I need to read more on this), Chiapas and the highlands of Guatemala attempted to achieve independence from colonial rule, with Xela as the capital. Chiapas and the Guatemalan highlands share much of the same Mayan culture and experience. The two were split by Mexico and Guatemala and Xela becamed disarmed from its Chiapas brethren. Chiapas continues in its struggle, but Xela and the surrounding region has not shared that particular struggle.

But back to Pop Wuj, the book. It was written sometime during the Spanish conquest, here in Xela, by quite possibly an academic at one of the Mayan colleges (but no one really knows, more about that Mayan college later) in the Mayan language. It was a history of the Maya, that the writer recognized was in danger of disappearing- Over the next 400 years, the book was mis translated and the orignal was destroyed. However, a copy of the original transcription appeared in a Chicago library in the 1800´s and was properly translated from the Mayan quitsche language by an author by the name of Chavez in 1960. Chavez could not get the book published because there was no money or interest and the book still lies in obscurity. He did however do lectures at Universities as an academic and those students who heard him speak took a tremendous interest in seeing the correct version of pop wuj published. Those students also decided to open a language school for "gringos" to help pay for the publication of the book, and also to begin various socially conscious projects around Xela. So the Pop Wuj school was born, and it continues with its accessible medical clinic, stove building broject, and a day care center for the poor.

The book was published in Costa Rica, and today is only available in Spanish. Those very students who studied the book with Chavez are some of the current instructors at Pop Wuj today. One of my instructors was one of those students. He is a professor of Antrhopology and has been giving me morning lectures on the history and culture of the Maya before I begin volunteering in the clinic.

The medical program here is really highly regarded. UCSF and many other medical schools actually accept academic credit from their program. There are students here from UCLA, UCSF, and fancy med schools back East.

Evidently, there have been problems at the school with medical students coming from the states and being really arrogant and culturally insensitive with the local indiginous population. Many people in the outlying rural communities still use traditional medicines and some of the younger medical students don´t respect these methods. They also don´t reflect on the colonial nature of their presence, and how westerners and western medicine is perceived. I´ve been spending my mornings with cultural sensitivity training and am the only one, as there are no other new students in the program. There are several other medical students who are about to leave and they are all from California. I feel really lucky to be taught one on one by an academic expert in Mayan anthropology.

Farther down the street is another school. It is a school for Guatemalan children and it is only a couple of blocks away from Pop wuj school. It is also the school where Jacobo Arbenz Guzman studied as a young boy. Arbenz would eventually become president in 1951, assuming leadership for the first time in Guatemalan history where there was no violence. He was elected peacefully. His government was a leftist government with a strong intent to re empower the indiginous population. He was much like Bolivia's Evo Morales. He proposed a redistribution of land to the poor where there was an unprecedented inequality against peasants by the small percentage of well connected elites. It was estimated only 2 percent of the population controlled 72 percent of the arable land until 1951, but only 12 percent of the land was being utilized. Much of this land was owned by powerful US corporations like the United Fruit Company, now known as Chiquita Banana. With the help of the famous Dulles brothers, a.k.a. for their orchestrated overthrow of Musadech in Iran, and the airport in DC, the US invaded Guatemala and overthrew Arbenz. The school that Arbenz attended in Xela, sits on the EXACT site that the ancient Mayan University sat before European conquest, the Mayan school where academics wrote and recorded history. It is quite possible that the book, pop wuj was written by an academic at that school. When my instructor told me this, I began to cry. He told me that Arbenz grew up in Xela and was born here, in this cultural center of Maya. I asked if I could see his house and if there is a museum. He said that the history of Arbenz has been erased and that the house is now a Bank.

I will try to upload some photos, but my cheapo camera is not plug and play and need to download software. The computers here are old and slow, so I do not think I will have much luck, but who knows. People here are so kind and open, and willing to help. I may have some luck.