felicidad

Happiness! Hola amigos! I haven’t written to you since Monday and this time I really have A LOT to catch you up on. Up until this week I would say that my experience here in Guatemala could be described with mixed feelings. At times I loved exploring the city, hanging out with new friends, and chatting with the women I work with; at other times I felt extremely lonely and seriously questioned whether my work here was what I had expected. Yes, I even had a mental break down of sorts…which after the fact I suppose I can appreciate and regard as a character building experience. However, yesterday, as I walked a little dirt road to Xeabaj II with Katy (looking out over an amazing mountainous landscape), I couldn’t help but think, “This is why I came to Guatemala!” In other words, the past few days have been amazing.

Monday morning at 6am I left for Pacutama, a community about an hour from Xela. There was a team of med school students from MCV working in a clinic there and I stayed in the bunks and ate meals with them, but during the day traveled to different communities with Katy to conduct activities and interviews with the women’s circles that AMA has set up. Monday, I visited Chiquisis and Chajuab. It’s much colder that far up in the mountains so I had to wear yoga pants under my blue jeans and like three layers on top. The meetings with the women’s circles went surprisingly well. All of the women in these communities spoke Quiche so I would speak in Spanish to Katy, who would then translate to everyone else. It feels pretty cool to have conducted a whole meeting/interview in Spanish; even my notes are in Spanish haha. Anyways, I’m finding it really hard to describe everything I want to because there is just so much and I would end up writing a novel, so I’ll have to do some summarizing. Over the next two days I visited four more communities – Chicuatama, Pacutama, Xeabaj I, and Xeabaj II. In each community I had the women draw a map of the community while Katy and I conducted individual interviews. These communities are pretty small so in most cases the women legitimately knew how many families lived there. Some of the communities are literally only a stones throw away from each other and yet they are considered completely separate.

Short anecdote: As I finished up talking with the women’s circle in Chicuatama, the women started asking Katy a few questions about me in Quiche and then went on to say that they thought I was pretty yada yada. Here’s the kicker though – Karsten, you’re gonna love this – they told Katy that they liked my chin. I immediately started laughing and then went on to explain in Spanish that my brother frequently makes jokes about my chin. Karsten, you win – even a group of indigenous Mayan women in Guatemala thought my chin was worth mentioning.

Also, for any of you that didn’t know, tortillar (to make tortillas) is actually a verb. I made tortillas twice this week and, let’s be real, it’s harder than it looks. These women make tortillas three times a day though so it’s expected that mine shouldn’t be as perfectly round and flat. In Xeabaj I, I ate lunch with a family in their little cinderblock kitchen. The family was incredibly nice and hospitable; they waited for Katy and I to finish eating before they served themselves. The dad asked me a lot of questions about school, my U.S., my hometown. It was almost a little embarrassing to have to say that my house is two stories when theirs is obviously like two rooms. Nevertheless, lunch was really nice and the dad even made a joke about me marrying his son and buying him a visa haha (totally think I flipped the switch, Kelsey).

I’m going to write a completely separate post to describe the interviews and activities I’ve been doing and to of course offer my inspirational/sentimental/women’s empowerment thoughts that you are all probably expecting to hear from me (Polina, this is probably where you laugh and say “you would”), but for now I’ll just mention a few of the other interesting things that happened in the community. Since we were living in a community I had to say goodbye to toilets, mirrors and showers for a few days. Yea haha I didn’t bathe from midday Saturday until Tuesday night. And when I finally did get to clean up, I got to try teamascal (probably spelled that wrong) – basically you heat several buckets of hot water and put them in a small wooden house (kind of like a giant dog house) outside where you essentially just give yourself a sponge bath. That description makes it sound really weird but it’s actually pretty nice because the water is super warm and there are rocks inside that you can pour water on and it makes the whole little house steam up.

I haven’t mentioned this before but there are tons of dogs in Guatemala and Pacutama was no exception. Normally I wouldn’t be scared of dogs but they definitely made the idea of walking outside, by yourself, at night, to use the bathroom much more frightening. The girls from MCV thus created the pee bucket, which yes, I most definitely used. Last, but not least, (and sorry to be throwing this in after a pee bucket story) I want to say how super freaking proud I am of my brother for making it to the final election for Governor at Boys State…you don’t need the title, Karsten, you’ll still always be much cooler than me. Well, this is adios for now…this post really only covers through Wednesday so be expecting another one very soon!