Surprisingly, the rain seems to have stopped sometime last night. I'm currently stuck in my room, on 'Standfast'--meaning I can't leave my site-- after peace corps activated the emergency action plan yesterday in response to tropical storm Agatha hitting the Pacific coast. It rained constantly yesterday and the day before, and I was starting to get worried when my walls started getting damp. There have been reports of people killed by landslides, and there is a risk of more flooding and landslides until at least tomorrow. By pure coincidence, Agatha, the first tropical storm of this hurricane season, hit only a few days after a major volcanic eruption last week of the Pacaya Volcano. At least 3 people were killed by falling debris, the international airport has been closed due to ash in the sky, and Guatemala city has been covered with several inches of a sand/ash mixture. It's apparently quite difficult to clean up, especially when mixed with all the rain we've received. Being cooped in my room, I've felt a mixture of boredom and excitement with everything, but I guess it's a good, past-due opportunity to update my blog.
The past few days leave little doubt that the Guatemalan rainy season has begun in earnest. The great thing about the rainy season is that, after the last 5 months or so of everything being brown, dry and dusty, all the fields and hillsides are green again, and things are starting to look more alive. The corn (milpa in Spanish, ixim in K'iche) is starting to come up all around. The small green parrots I first noticed last year, but hadn't seen in many months, are back in town, and I've greatly enjoyed watching and listening to them while biking to work. Another random experience happened to me the other day when, while on my way home from school, a guy tried to sell me a LIVE SKUNK he had trapped inside of a burlap sack. Judging from the smell coming from the bag, I think the skunk was quite unhappy with its situation, and I politely declined the purchase.
A few days ago my friend Anibel invited me to go see his family plot. While only a short distance out of town, I saw all sorts of things I'd never seen before. We descended a steep path into a small canyon, where he showed me a natural spring where his aunt and uncle walked 45 minutes round trip, down and back up the steep stairs, to get water. He also showed me several plants I didn't know existed in the area. While I'd seen local crops of corn, beans, and chiles as well as orange, lime, and avocado trees, I didn't know there were also coffee, papaya, bananas, guiscil (a type of squash) also grown within a 10 minute walk from my front door. Everything was green and beautiful, and the whole time Anibel gave me lots of new insights and perspectives about the life of local people here—agricultural and economic activities, and also things him and his friends do such as hunting squirrels, birds, and armadillos at night. It made me realize that despite all of my education and experience in Guatemala, there's still such an enormous cultural and knowledge gap that I don't think I'd ever fill even if I lived here my whole life.
Earlier this week I co-facilitated an HIV-AIDS workshop at the middle school here in town with 2 of the teachers. It was a lot of fun to get to work with the older kids. I live right next door to the school, and lots of the students come talk to me when I sit out in my doorway and read in the afternoons, and I've been wanting to work with them formally for a long time now. I think the workshop went pretty well for my first one. Despite the normal challenges of working with teenagers, in addition to lots of loud rain pelting the roof, they seemed to listen to the information pretty well. We'll do the workshop again with the other class on monday.
A few weeks ago I had a very adventurous vacation with my friend Aaron, traveling through remote jungles and on to the Caribbean Coast, stopping in between to run the Coban half marathon for my second year.
We met up in Coban, one of Guatemala's larger cities up in the tropical department of Alta Verapaz 5 hours north of Guatemala City. From there we traveled in a long, sweaty, crammed chicken bus to Laguna Lachua, a perfectly round, pristine lake in the middle of the jungle near the border with Mexico. There is no road to the lake, so after getting dropped off at the park entrance we had to hike 45 minutes through the jungle to get to the laguna, where we slept in a small park lodge in beds under mosquito nets. It was well worth the hike as soon as we went swimming in the warm, crystal clear turquoise water.
Aaron brought his mask and snorkel, and there were all sorts of tropical fish in the water—more than I'd ever seen in fresh water. There were also crocodiles, so we were advised to stay in the swimming area and not go in the water at night. We went out to the dock our first evening and shined our flashlights to see a baby crocodile, not more than a foot long, swimming in the shallow water. We spent 2 nights at Lachua, and during our second day we met up with 2 peace corps volunteers in the area to go hiking in another nearby park, where we saw a bunch of howler monkeys, iguanas, and lots of birds. We walked to several other lagunas, including one small pond that was bright red for mysterious reasons.
We were told these lagunas were also inhabited by crocodile populations, and we did see one dark green back swimming slowly through murky water at one point. We also passed by an old abandoned oil drilling operation, including a large metal pump, and climbed a hill and saw a panorama of the largely deforested surrounding landscape.
Heading back to Laguna Luchua, the chicken bus didn't have any room inside, so we climbed up onto the roof—it seemed like a good idea at the time, and was a lot of fun. Unfortunately I wasn't paying attention, and during the bumpy ride both my cell phone flew out of my pocket AND my beloved digital camera of almost 5 years somehow got it's screen smashed. RIP. And to top it off, my supposedly waterproof watch got condensation inside. On to happier things.
From Lachua we headed back to Coban for the half marathon the following day. There were about 10 or so other peace corps volunteers running, and we met up with some of my friends for a pasta dinner for runners the night before.
In hindsight, it may not have been the best idea to do so much hiking in the 2 days before a long running event, but I felt pretty good the morning of the race. I'd been training hard since january and felt pretty confident, so I started off with a pretty quick pace. Again in hindsight, this may or may not have been the best strategy, because by the last third of the race I was REALLY hurting. The climate in Coban is very different from up in the highlands where I live and train, and it was HOT and only got hotter as the sun got higher in the sky. I think the different environment from what I was used to really affected me, because I was greatly struggling, both mentally and physically by the end. Every step was a struggle, and I had to continuously tell myself to keep going, to resist the urge to stop and rest, because I knew once I stopped running I would not be able to start again. Finally, after what seemed like the longest last half hour of my life at the end, I crossed the finish line in 1 hour, 50 minutes-- 6 minutes faster than my time from last year. I staggered out with the other finishing runners, not even able to walk in a straight line, picked up my metal and a bottle of cold water, and almost collapsed to rest with my friends.
Wanting to take advantage of the limited vacation days we had, Aaron headed out on another long, sweaty chicken bus ride that same afternoon headed east. We had a great time meeting and joking around with our fellow passengers, who randomly enough included a group of clowns—still in complete makeup— who'd been performing in Coban.
The scenery along the way was some of the most spectacular I'd seen in Guatemala. That geology of that part of the country, extending far north into the Yucatan penninsula, is largely comprised of calcium limestone deposits, and as we traveled the long dirt roads through spectacular jungle scenery, huge freestanding limestone pinnacles jutted abruptly from the ground, often shrouded in mist at the top and beautifully lit in the late afternoon light.
The following day Aaron and I visited a park called Las Conchas (the shells), a river with a series of spectacular rapids and waterfalls culminating in a sheer drop off of water, probably 30 feet high and 100-200 feet wide. We spent the morning exploring the area, swimming, and taking pictures of each other jumping off the big waterfall. It felt like the tropical version of our favorite winter past time of taking pictures of each other skiing off cliffs into the waist-deep snow in Colorado.
The next morning we caught a ride in the back of a truck and continued east—through even more incredible jungle scenery— to Rio Dulce, the freshwater river connecting Guatemala's largest lake, Izabal, to the Caribbean. We took a boat ride down the river, where the marinas we passed reminded me of my Gramma Judy. When I told her I was going to Guatemala a year and a half ago, the first thing she told me was about how she used to ride out hurricane season with her boat on the very same river I was now on myself. I thought about her as we went along the water past more incredible jungle and limestone cliffs.
We spent 2 nights on a small tributary of the river in a very cool hostel in the middle of the jungle. We had a great time relaxing in the hammocks, jumping off the rope swing into the river, meeting other travelers, and kayaking up the river to check out some natural hot springs and caves.
Our final destination was Livingston, at the end of the river on the coast of the Caribbean. Livingston is known for being the center of Guatemala's Garifuna culture and language. Comprised of descendants of escaped slaves from St. Vincent hundreds of years ago, the garifunas are spread across the Caribbean coast of Honduras, Guatemala, and Belize. Walking the streets felt a little strange to me after having lived the last 16 months in the highlands. While the Caribbean influence was very strong, I could also tell we were still in Guatemala. I'd been wanting to visit this unique corner of Guatemala for a long time, and was very happy to finally get the chance. That afternoon we had a good time walking along the beach a few km out of town to swim in some natural pools and waterfalls called “siete altares”. We stayed in a quiet hotel with bungalows on the water, where we had a nice dinner and chatted with the Guatemalan/Belgian owners.
The next day we took a boat ride on the Caribbean to Puerto Barrios, and from there another long bus ride back to Guatemala City (fortunately this time more comfortable with AC), then on to Antigua, where we went out dancing for a bit that night. Aaron headed back to the states early the following morning, after a great vacation with great times and great friends!
The only other experience I wanted to write about was the opportunity I had to translate last month for a group of American surgeons in Guatemala on a medical mission. They were doing operations to repair things like cleft palates, hernias, and tumor removals. It was a really amazing experience! I was mainly helping organize and prepare things with people before the surgery, but I also had the opportunity to translate a few times during the actual procedure when it was only local anesthesia. A lot of “does this hurt? Tell us if it hurts?” A lot of the people were from remote indigenous areas and didn't even speak Spanish, so we actually needed 2 translators to communicate with the patient. It made things tougher and I'm sure a lot of words were lost, but in the end we were able to get the essentials across-- “Ouch” is pretty universal!
The most amazing thing about the experience, however, was what I realized about one of the surgeons the first day. When I first met the group, I immediately thought that one of the surgeons in charge of the group looked strangely familiar. “Are you a plastic surgeon?”, I asked. “Yes”, he responded. “From Baltimore?” I continued. Again, he answered in the affirmative. It turns out he was the same surgeon who had removed my melanoma 5 years ago to the month! I truly couldn't believe the coincidence, I was literally shaking at first from the shock. I had a great time catching up with my former surgeon, and the experience of re-uniting with him really brought my peace corps experience full circle for me, reminding me of how much I had gone through to be here. The last time I had seen him, 5 years ago, I had been going through what was undoubtedly the hardest time in my life. All I'd wanted to do after graduating college was to go in to the Peace Corps, and was so frustrated that my cancer made me medically ineligible for 3 years. Now, 5 years later I had finally achieved my dream. Despite the frustrations, boredom, loneliness, and many other challenges I face here, that reminder from the past gave me great inspiration to keep going. As I write these words, I now have less than 10 months to go until finishing my service. I hope I can make them good ones.
