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.
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.
posted by Mr. Sophie at 5:10 PM
2 Comments:
I had no idea Mother's day is internationally celebrated...and I have had homemade "Guatemalan" tamales - made here in the states.
thank you for conveying as much as you have.
Wonderful stories! So glad to hear you are inspired and being treated well by a wonderful community! Good luck with the midwifery!!
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