I Live in a Doll House

I’ve been in my new house for 5 weeks now, and I love it. We call it La Casa de Muñecas (The Doll House) and you can see why:

It also reminds me of the gingerbread house in Hansel and Gretel. Not quite what I pictured when I imagined my life in the Peace Corps!

At first it was a little scary moving out of the family life, but I’ve grown accustomed to it and am by no means lonely. My roommate and I are getting along fabulously, although it is at times difficult with the cultural differences and personality differences. We have constant visits from the neighbor children. Instead of sitting around and chatting about the same things (my dog, the weather, the gunshots), I’ve started doing arts and crafts projects with them. The kids that visit us are three sisters, Veronica, 14, Blanca, 10, and Flori, 5, and are just wonderful. They are going to be one of my secondary projects while I’m here. They moved to Chahal with their mom about when I did to be closer to their dad and his first family. The dad comes to visit a few times a week, but the four women are on their own. They have no friends here except for our other neighbor, Juliana, and her two children. (The first family is a ladina family and the second is Q’eqchi’ but they get along wonderfully, which is rare here.) Thus, these girls are going to be my secondary project – teach them new things and just simply be their friend.

The other family – Juliana and her kids – is also a marvelous family. Juliana is from one of the villages and splits her time between there and the town. When I have time, I’m going to spend a few days with her in the village. I’ve visited communities, but just short planned visits with the muni; with Juliana I will be able to really get to know the everyday life and the people in a rural village. Also, if at some point my roommate leaves and I can’t afford the Doll House alone, Juliana said I can move in with them – another experience that I would like to have: living with an indigenous family. It would be quite a change from living alone, but it would be something I would never forget. And it would keep my life interesting.

I don’t know how I was so oblivious to this my first eight months here, but the racism is extreme in this pueblo. It’s quite interesting because the ladinos are the minority. The demographic is in the favor of the indigenous (94% indigenous in the municipality as a whole, with a slightly lower percentage in the “urban” area), yet they are the marginalized group. Typically the discrimination isn’t overt, but it is there in the form of bigoted remarks and general poor treatment in stores and offices. I’ve noticed that many ladinos will use usted (second person formal, shows respect) with other ladinos that come into their shops or into the muni and will use vos (very informal second person, used for close friends/family or can be used to show you think you are above the other) with the indigenous that come in for the same services. It bothers me a lot, but I can’t change people’s attitudes and behaviors. What I can do, at least, is become friends with Q’eqchi’ people and treat them with respect and maybe someone will notice that I don’t feel that I am above them. I already made the first step toward that by moving to the neighborhood I am now in.

Santo Domingo is nearly all Q’eqchi’ whereas my old neighborhood, El Centro, was nearly all ladino. Many people told me not to move to Santo Domingo, that it is dangerous with all the indigenous people there, but I find it to be a very friendly, tranquil neighborhood. And now it will be easier to get to know their culture and learn their language. I will still keep the friendships I already made with ladinos (I’m not about to practice reverse discrimination), but I will keep a little bit more distance than I had. I don’t want to feel like I am condoning their behaviors by being too close with them.

With respect to work, it’s going well. The ball is finally rolling. I would say it’s a snowball rolling down a hill gradually growing larger, but that wouldn’t make sense in the jungle. Perhaps a mud ball? Anyway, the first six months were passed with little tangible progress. Being the first volunteer here, it took me awhile to get to know the project and how to develop it. Not to mention, to learn to live and work in this culture. As well, support was lacking from the muni at the beginning. At six months in site, I felt like the work finally started flowing. We wrote a large grant proposal for basic infrastructure in the park (the response will come next month… cross your fingers!) and the communication improved markedly with the mayor. At eight months, we finally made visible progress in the park. We hacked at the trails with pick axes to create better drainage and are now in the process of defining new trails to our current infrastructure. Tomorrow we will begin planting native plants and flowers. Slowly but surely we are making progress. The mayor, however, commented today that nothing has changed there since I’ve been here. I’m not about to make excuses to him, but it takes time, support and money; the latter two of the three were not present at the beginning. Additionally, planning has to happen before action. But he’s not upset, just a little disappointed and is encouraging us to get working. Our relationship has developed quite nicely in fact (if you remember, in the beginning we didn’t get along very well) – when I mentioned that my family is coming, he asked if my dad likes whiskey. Although they don’t speak the same language, they should get along just fine.

Tomorrow, my counterpart and I will be presenting the Annual Operating Plan for the park for 2009 to the mayor and his council. I expect they will approve it and we will buckle down and begin to make a dent in the park. Although in the next few weeks we won’t get much done – my family’s coming to visit in 10 days! It has been over 11 months since I have seen them. The park can wait for a few more weeks.

And I can't forget to mention my puppy, Patita (little foot). She is an adorable pain. She's almost four months old and just loves to chew on everything, especially me! I love having her in the house, and we brought her home just in time -- she was about two days away from death due to malnutrition. But now she's chubby and happy!

Here are links to pictures I just put up. They're from a few months ago when Allison, Eefje, Jeanne and Erin came to visit, but I just now managed to upload them.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2030331&l=bd75b&id=27500355

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2030332&l=88479&id=27500355

My friend, the scorpion

Have you ever wondered what it feels like to be stung by a scorpion? Well, if you don’t want to go find out for yourself, I’ll describe it.

First, you may be wondering how I managed to be stung by a scorpion. They abound in this area, first off. I was moving a concrete block in my kitchen on Monday night so that we could put the stove on top of it and felt a sting on the inside of my left wrist. Luckily, it didn’t cause me to drop the block on my feet! I set it down and saw the evil thing stuck to the back of the block. I freaked out not knowing how serious the sting is. We actually were having a little party at the house that night for my housemate’s birthday, and some of the guests just laughed at me and said there’s nothing I can do. They said it would hurt where it stung me and that my tongue would fall asleep. They were right … at first.

I felt like my arm was broken. But it wasn’t unbearable. It was a couple hours later when I got up and walked around that I started feeling weak and a bit dizzy. I quickly did what I needed to do to get ready for bed and laid down. I was at the point where, if I kept on walking, I would collapse. At this point, my whole body fell asleep, but not just that. I felt very heavy. I took some Benadryl at this point, but my throat had swollen up or something, and the pills did not go down easily.

Laying flat on my back was the best, but if I rolled to a side, there would be extreme pressure on the part of my body that I had moved – like a fat man were sitting on me. So I laid as flat as possible, but I couldn’t sleep like that. I think eventually I fell asleep, but I set my alarm for 2am so that I would wake up and make sure I was still alive. I had no idea how serious this could be and thus was admittedly a bit freaked out.

In the morning I still couldn’t move. I sat up for a second and felt as if a ton of rock were pushing down on me, so I laid back down. My big problem, however, was that I needed to pee. I actually thought I would have to wet my bed because I didn’t think I could walk to the bathroom. I eventually gave it a shot and managed to shuffle there while clutching the wall. Once my body became acclimated to moving, it began to flush out this weird sensation, but not completely. I returned to bed and slept all morning. When I finally got up and went out, I moved sluggishly. However, I had been invited to play in a basketball tournament in the evening. I decided I’d give it a shot. The first couple times up and down the court I became dizzy and thought I’d collapse. Luckily, that passed quickly. I had breathing problems also – I felt as if I had just smoked a pack of cigarettes and was trying to exercise at altitude (not that I would know what that feels like). In the end, the exercise was good to flush out the poison.

Today, I feel fine, except for a sore arm. So now it’s funny, but at the time I was pretty freaked out. Now I wonder, what will bite/sting me next? I do have some wonderful luck. Dog, check. Scorpion, check. Next?? Monkey? Jaguar?


New House

I’ve been in my new house for just over three weeks now, and I’m really content with the move. As I’ve mentioned before, the house is adorable and has a flushing toilet inside. The neighbors have turned out to be quite friendly, and are both Q’eqchi’ and Ladino so that I can continue getting to know both cultures. My roommate, Jacqueline, and I are getting along really well. We make dinner together and hang out and have intelligent conversations in Spanish (which is something I was lacking here). We went and played basketball the other night. And we have our puppy, Patita. First she was Cacao, which turned out to be a masculine name; then Canela (Spanish for Cinnamon) but that was too cutesy; now I’ve named her Patita (little foot) because she had a problem with her foot. She is adorable. So very playful. I’m so glad I have her.

On Monday (as I mentioned above), we had our first little dinner party. It was Jacque’s birthday, so I made dinner and a cake and we invited a couple of people over. Although we only have one fork, it was fantastic … until I was stung by the scorpion!