Monday, March 10, 2008

All is Well Here

Namibia is getting tons of rain at the moment (to the point of severe flooding in some parts) -- with the result that our desert-like surroundings have never before looked so green. Sergio reports he is well in the USA -- getting settled in the care of our good friends Denauvo and Jan Robinson, and still practicing for his entry exam to the military. And Elsita just posted her first blog: it's all about her trip to Guatemala before starting her World Fellows' internship with the American Jewish World Service. You can read the entry below (or see the photos that go with it at Elsita's Blog).

So here comes the first entry of many concerning my travels in Central America. A fitting beginning, I start my journey with 3 weeks travel in Guatemala. As many of you know, this means back to my country of origin, a place I had visited once since adoption at age 6 months. I’ve been working on an appropriate blog response ever since I left but the words haven’t been working for me. My brain has been very busy adapting to Central America in general, so simply recognizing the process has been important and often difficult. As you can imagine, throughout my Guatemalan journey all of the ‘what if’ questions and the ‘who am I’ questions were crowding my brain quite a lot. Sitting in a bus heading out of Guatemala City, it suddenly occurred to me that any given person I saw might possibly be a relative.

I really wanted this first entry to be a well-written piece of art, but I haven’t sorted out all of my questions from the answers yet so I’m not at the right place to write anything nearly that well-composed at the moment. My sincere apologies for not sending this out sooner. I do have some great stories though, so I hope you enjoy some favorites….

My trip was both epic and unplanned. I arrived with reservations for one night at a hostel in Guatemala city and 3 largely unscheduled goals: visit friends, take Spanish classes and travel. My favorite immediate observations were (1) that I was no longer short in height and on the contrary pretty average height for a woman. It was a happy shock, and despite my non-traditional clothing and touristy backpack I blended in extremely well. (2) The beautiful buses – known as chicken buses, part of an elaborate and cheap public transport system that converted old American yellow school buses by repainting and decorating them completely so that they are now brilliantly colored and generally sport a lot of Christian paraphernalia. (3) Phone technology. As in much of the rest of the world, cellphones have become more and more popular in Guatemala. This might not seem so strange except that even in the most remote areas that I visited where residents still don’t have piped water, I witnessed people talking on cellphones. A technological jump!

A small world story: Two American friends of mine, with whom I studied abroad in Ecuador in 2006 (see much earlier blog posts for details), are both now living in Guatemala as Peace Corps volunteers. Sarah and Lupe are both involved in the broad Peace Corps theme of “food security”, and it was my great fortune that both invited me to visit them at their sites and stay with their homestay families, a chance that also allowed me to get off the beaten gringo trail. To visit Lupe I traveled out into what felt like the middle of nowhere in the Guatemalan region of Jalapa. I found myself in a mountainous area of “el campo” - the rural areas. I shadowed Lupe in her everyday work – helping local women farmers “campesinas” to build compost heaps in their backyards, taking long walks along gravel roads to get to their farms, experimenting with collection of amaranth seeds for possible consumption and learning more about worm-agriculture eg using worms to make fertilizer from cow dung. I also enjoyed tortilla meals with her homestay family and showing the children pictures of Namibia from a tourist magazine I had brought with me. The African animal pictures were a big hit. The thing I was least prepared for was the cold at night, and this gave me the realization that the lack of central heating makes all the difference. Also, lack of running water 24 hours a day plus bucket showers only.

Sarah’s homestay family lives a short busride from SololĂ„, a bustling market town north of Lake Atitlan. In this area, live many indigenous Guatemalans – descendents of the Mayan Indians, that still wear beautiful hand-woven traditional clothing and speak 1 of 23 different indigenous languages. A fun fact: Guatemala has an indigenous population of about 60%, much higher than any other Central American country. Sarah is in the process of learning Cakchikel, a rather guttural language that I attempted (pitifully) to learn some words of during my visit. The night I stayed with her, Sarah and I made and cooked pizza and salad from scratch for her homestay family using their simple wood-burning stove, which turned out very tasty. Sarah’s homestay mother insisted on making tortillas to go along with it. It was a cultural experience, and also truly wonderful to be taken in so hospitably by both Sarah and Lupe’s families.

I spent a week in Antigua, a beautiful old colonial town in central Guatemala flanked by volcanoes, where I took Spanish classes in the afternoons while in the mornings, I volunteered for a coffee cooperative that produces fair-trade coffee. During my time there, I took a day trip to volcano Pacaya. It had erupted the night before I hiked to it (with guide and group), thereby stopping us from being able to climb all the way to the top, but on the bright side, we got to see a lot of lava. The stuff literally glows red-hot and it gives off a lot of heat, what luck! I do have to say a word or two about coffee production as well which fascinated me during my short volunteer time – making coffee is not as easy as it might seem. It is quite a detailed process involving harvesting the coffee fruit, separating the bean from outer fruit flesh and later an outer shell, fermenting and drying as well as the actual roasting which has to be timed perfectly. Don’t take Starbucks for granted!!!!!

My last paragraph is dedicated to two wonderful families that are part of my personal Guatemalan history. The first is that of Gladys – Sergio’s foster family mother prior to his adoption – with whom I was able to visit for a weekend in Guatemala City. I thank Galdys and her her daughter Fabiola for their generous hospitality and the royal food treatment – huge lunches! I also thank Ena and Ramon and family for a very special dinner together. They were the lawyers responsible for allowing me to be able to be adopted legally, and what a gift to still be in touch with them and meet their son and daughters. It is heartwarming to know that when I visit Guatemala again I’ll have family there.

So in the interest of not writing too too much, I’ll cut off this entry here. Feel free to comment on my blog anytime or just add a “hello there!” :-)