Our World

This week I spent three days in Tajumulco, and incredibly poor municipal of San Marcos. Tajumulco is one of the poorest municipals in San Marcos, but is an incredibly interesting place.

Pastoral de la Mujer recently started a new scholorship program in Tajumulco. We give scholorships to certain young students, male and female, to continue studying until they finish their version of high school. At the same time we work with older women who have either never studied, or never finished their básico studies. I would básico is the equivalent of our middle school. The women of each community meet every 15 days for a class, but also work with an educational radio program in Guatemala called, IGER.

The Guatemlan school year runs from January until November, so we were in Tajumulco signing new contracts with all the scholarship recipients. Tajumulco is an incredibly underdeveloped municipal, there is not a single paved road in the entire municipal, and many of the communities are unreachable by either car or motorcycle. On Tuesday I went with one of the padres of Tajumulco to a tiny community. We had walk for one and a half hours to the community where the padre would give a special mass in honor of Isquipulas, the namesake of the community. The walk was incredibly beautiful, down the side of a mountain, to cross a ravine, to walk up the other side of ravine. Tajumulco is as green as can be, and one of the few places in Guatemala with an abundant water supply.

While right now Tajumulco looks like a paradise, I also know it is being affected by climate change, and the people of Tajumulco are being affected, and will continue to be affected in the future. Already the people see changes in the weather patters, in the rainy and dry seasons, in the dying vegetation due to pollution, and the affect this has on their crops. The people of Tajumulco are subsistence farmers, who try to supplement their incomes by picking coffee. Tradionally they have grown enough to survive for a year, but with changing weather patterns their crops are not growing appropriately. Then there is the water supply. Tradionally people have been able to drink from the rivers, without any problems. With our contaminated air, and the contamination of the soil, the water is not longer safe to drink, but people don´t have the infrastructure, or resources to change how they get their water. So they are left with unsafe water that they can boil and hope will not make them sick. With failing crops they are forced to pick more coffee, in incredibly dangerous situations. Tajumulco is a mountainous region, on the side of the largest volcano in Central America. So the coffee is grown on the sides of mountains, contributing to environmental degregation. The people tie themselves up to a tree and use ropes to climb down the sides of the moutains to pick hundreds of pounds of coffee they have strapped to their waists. So many people die every year trying to survive because they are no longer able to grow enough to survive. While the poverty of Tajumulco is not soley due to environmental degregation, the situation is much more complicated, it is a huge contributuing factor.

Here, I am seeing first hand the devestating effects of climate change or global warming. I don´t care what you want to call it, but we are responsible for our world, and the effects it has on everybody. In developed nations we don´t see the everyday effects, and it is easy to ignore. Sometimes we don´t recycle our plastic bottle because the trash can is right there, and we don´t want to carry the bottle around until we find a place to recycle it. We don´t buy recycled products. We waste gallons and gallons of water everyday. We buy prepackaged products because they are easier. When we have a party we use paper and plastic products because we don´t want to deal with the clean up. We want our lives to be simpler, but by making our lives simpler we are complicating the lives of others.

We can close our eyes and tell ourselves it is not as bad as everyone is saying. We can tell ourselves there is still more time. In reality we are out of time. The changes have come, and people are dying. People are dying because of our irresponsiblity. I am not trying to offend anyone, I am guilty of not being environmentally responsible also. But I also recognize the dire need to change our habits, and I am seeing the effects climate change is having on the most vulunerable population of the world. I also know there are other communities around the world that are more affected than Tajumulco. And no longer can I close my eyes to what we are doing to our world, and no longer can I be silent.

And so, for my friends in Tajumulco, for everyone in the world, I am begging everyone who reads this blog to make an effort to change too. Maybe you do try to be environmentally responsbile, but I am also sure there is more you can do. And you can also encourage others to change

Christmas and New Years

Luckily, I did not find myself as homesick as I would have expected for Christmas. The build up and craze of Christmas is much less here, so when Christmas arrived I was a little surprised. While talking with my host sister in law, I realized while the traditions are different and everything feels very different, the basis of Christmas is exactly the same. We get togther with family and loved ones, eat special foods, and some families exchange gifts, although it is more common to only give presents to small children.

Here Christmas Eve is a much bigger deal than Christmas. I spent the afternoon with Elvia´s parents in Santa Teresea. We ate the traditional tamales, which tasted good at first, but now I am so sick of them, and I think one literally made me sick on New Year´s Day. Then we all sunbathed ontop of the corn that was drying on the patio and I wish I had rememebered my camera. I apologize that I am really bad about taking pictures here, and find myself unable to post them on my blog anyway. The corn was suprisingly comfortable for corn. Then we went into the living room where they had there tree and all the children got really excited showing me each plastic animal they had displayed under the tree. There were 5 children, and each one showed me each animal, I think I got some of my animal names down now. Elvia came in and was concerned that her parents had covered over half a window with concrete blocks. Her mom said it was too big, which I found strange. I don´t think the blocks make the room any warmer, but maybe they do. Then Elvia said next year she would bring them her fake tree, because they had this pine bush they had cut down. Then her mom said she thinks real is better, and I agree. Then we all danced a bit and ate marshmallows. I have never liked marshmallows before, not alone at least. But here we eat them all the time, and sometimes I almost find myself craving them. It is weird.

Then we went back home and spent the evening with Gloria, the aunt who lives across the street. There were a ton of people coming in and out all evening but it was a fun night. They kept making me drink tequila becuase I had a cold and they told me it would quit my cold. It does not work, just so you know. Karla, who is married to Elvia´s cousin Victor, told me I had to wear a dress, so I wore a long skirt and I was the only person not in pants, besides Elvira who wears corte.

The children opened their presents around 11, and then at 12 everyone exchanges hugs and Elvia said a little prayer and talked about Christmas Eve and the birth of Jesus. Then they pulled out three dolls, signifying the three children in the house that night and we all kissed the dolls heads to bless the children. I don´t know why we could not kiss the real kids heads and bless them directly, but it was a new tradition I got to experience. Then we ate tamales and drank more tequila. Then Leonardo, another cousin, asked me if I wanted to go climb Tacana Volcano with him and his friend Pollo (Chicken) at 2 in the morning. I said no, but we made plans to go the 26, which endede up not happening, but hopefully we will do it another time.

Christmas Day I went to the coast with Judy, the American Marynoll nun who is the director of Pastoral, and spent the day with all the Catholic nuns and priests from the department of San Marcos. It was fun because it was a mix of English and Spanish, with everyone going in and out of both languages. At first I felt like I should spend the day with Elvia, even though she just sleeps mostly, but then I realized that Judy and nuns and priests are a big part of my family here too. I hang out with them a lot and love them too. So I was glad I went and met some new people too. Then we went home around 5 and I spent the evening with Elvia, her sister, Terry, nephew, Josedavit, and her parents, Witcha and Enrique, who al stayed the night in our tiny apartment.

Emily, another YAV, and I went to the beach for three days after Christmas. We get to this tiny island called Tilapa, and there is only one hotel, and it is bare bones. There is a bathroom, but there is no door, two beds, but one was a real mattress and the other a straw mattress, so Emily and I shared a bed. There were no towels provided, so we had to air dry after showers. Luckily it was really warm there! At first we though we would leave after one day, but then we really liked the tranquility of the place. There are beautiful mangrove forests around the island and we took a boat tour around with our new Italian friend. We did not see as many animals as I would have liked, but the mangrove forest was beautiful enough and our ¨guide¨ was very friendly and I think excited we all spoke enough Spanish to converse with him and ask questions. Our Italian friend was very interesting. He has traveled all over the world and lived in Tanzania for 7 years and studied in India. He has had a very interesting life and we spent a lot of time talking with him. We also met a couple from Poland, who left right away, two sisters from France who drink and smoke a lot, and a hippie family from Canada. I don´t usually talk to other travelers in hotels, but it was the type of place where it would be weird not to talk to the other people, and I really enjoyed myself. then we went home on the 31 and I spent New Years with emily´s family, which is a fairly traditional Quiche family.

Emily´s family oftne asks her to wear corte on special occasions, so both Emily and I were dressed in corte to go to Betty´s (Emily´s host mother)mother in law´s house for New Years eve. We set off fireworks and then ate at 1 in the morning. I don´t really like eating late, but it is a common theme in Guatemala. We spent the night there and the next morning we served tamales for breakfast, which is the one I think made me sick. I ended up being stuck in Cantel, a pueblo outside of Xela were Emily lives, because there were no buses running to take me home. We spent the 1st day at Betty´s mom´s house, Carmelina. Carmelina works with La Fraternidad, Emily´s placement, and I stayed with Carmelina last March for one night while visiting with my University for a week. It was fun because they remembered me and pulled out the polaroid picutre of us and I could actually communicate with them this time and we talked about my work with Pastoral de la Mujer.

I finally made it back to San Marcos on the second because Judy was in Xela for a meeting, so I was able to catch a ride back with her, although the buses were running too, but all of them were incredibly full. I am glad to be back and home and plan to rest for a few days before we head back to work.

Merry Chrismas and a Happy New Year!