My host family and I can kick it with K’iche’ slang. Do not get me wrong, they are respectful, dignified and hard-working women, but from time to time we like to say things that elicit the expression of the sly emoji. You know, the one where the mouth is tilted to one side.

These ladies have been my rock. They do little things I’ve never asked them or expected them to, like save enough tortilla dough to make fresh ones for me while they reheat the others for themselves. They worry over my flea bites, my hard days and laugh when I dance in the kitchen. But I’ve noticed over the many months I’ve lived here (22), that there are just certain days where I am off, or they are off, or we are all off, and nothing lands quite as comfortably as the fresh tortillas. I remember once I sat and cried over my 184th plate of eggs that year. There was a misunderstanding and I was particularly exhausted. But moments like that are few and far between. Lately things have been consistent and nothing has ruffled the maize crop. Maybe it’s because we know that the months left are precious.

But I’ve learned to be prepared for what I can’t be prepared. The tiniest, buzziest little insect bites can irritate you the most. Además I can’t recognize the things I still don’t know. Just on Friday I learned that Abuelita washes her hair with lime, desde siempre, and with jabón de coche. I asked: “Pig soap?” but apparently it’s only called that. It’s actually made out of fire ash. I’ve always wondered what those black spheres were that look like avocados that Nan Nil always sells in the market. I’ve always wondered what those chibolitos were in Abuelita’s hair: lime pulp. Who knew? 660 days in and I am learning about something as basic as hygiene.

Before I get into the story, I want to mention that I respect the personal lives of my host family. Their names are extremely common where we live, and every detail I share is meant to provide perspective on what stressors, challenges and values look like in rural Guatemala. They know that I write about Peace Corps and that I share about them. The other thing I want to clarify is that Peace Corps, as a measure of good faith I believe, pays our host families well. It isn’t exorbitant but I think it is a little more than Guatemalans would typically pay (or there would be more of them in the same amount of space one volunteer occupies). For that reason, hosting a Peace Corps Volunteer can be a huge financial help to the family. In some cases, this can lead to the PCV feeling like a paycheck. Thankfully I have not ever encountered this sort of feeling or treatment. Moving on: 

In the campo, lime is everything. Upset stomach? Brew really strong coffee and add lime. What do they put on avocado? Lime. Beans? Lime. Pasta? Lime. Tomato sauce? Lime. Tamalitos? Lime. Ensalada de pepino y rábano: Lime. Hair? Lime.

And yesterday wasn’t normal. Abuelita didn’t feel well. She was working like usual, sitting on her wooden chair and sorting the maize kernels separating the unadulterated ones from the podridos, while my host sister and host mom were unraveling the thin hilos together on the wooden frame, the first step of weaving. Another note here: This process takes so much time. I often wonder, oh-so-quietly-and-capitalistically, when the pueblo populations will stop weaving these fabrics by hand and give way to machines. The amount of time it takes to weave a single napkin is mind-numbing to me. But it’s also what makes it beautiful and unique. This is my cultural influence and privilege speaking: anything repetitive and mentally unstimulating is not worthy of my time, unless it’s a hobby and not a vocation.

Abuelita got up and went to the kitchen, looking for a knife in the knife drawer. She had left the drawer, given up, and I pulled one out for her. She stood by the window for better light, all 92 years of her, positioning the little knife toward the clove of garlic. Clara I whispered out to the corridor. Abuelita might hurt herself with the knife. But then the clove moved from the head of garlic and I said: never mind, never mind. Clara said: “She doesn’t feel well. She says her stomach hurts.”

Nu Wati’t. Mi Abueliiiiita. I hate it when she feels bad. She is so strong, persistent, delightful and considerate. We don’t speak much of the same language but we get along just fine. Laughter is universal. She was still laughing today, but not as much.

Clara explains that garlic is used as remedio to help with stomach discomfort. I look over at Abuelita, cutting the tiny clove open showing it’s green and white insides. For Pedro’s sake, give this woman an Advil. But I know they’ve been doing this all their lives. Who am I to push pills? (Answer: An Estadounidense).

I comment that in The States garlic is use purely for sabor, well I guess we use it for it’s medicinal properties también, but I’ve never done it. I told her about how I’ve heard that garlic enters your lungs and then emanates from your pores and that is why the odor sticks for so long. I thought about my former boss. Once he said his wife ate garlic and because of her skin pigmentation he told her: “You can’t eat garlic anymore because it makes you stink!” He told us (his staff) this story jovially, like it was an anecdote in their marriage. If a man tells me what I can and can’t eat, that will be a famous interaction.

I make Abuelita tea. While the water boils I put mint leaves in a fish-shaped tea strainer, rest a bag of green tea on the edge of the mug and squirt a dollop of honey at the base. After I pour in the boiling water I bring the mug downstairs and show the contents to Doña Rosario and Clara, weaving, patiently, hilo por hilo. They chulear, ooh and ahh, over the metal fish strainer, Clara commenting (as always) that it must be from allá: The Land of Opportunity and Nice Things. I think that will never not bother me, though she’s not wrong. Yes the US has nice things. I make sure to tell her that the loose leaf tea is a La Torre purchase, made in Guatemala and purchased by me, here. After the tea cools down she gives Abuelita the mug and she drinks it down. Clara tells me they brew loose leaf tea but they use a strainer afterwards to remove the contents. This reminds me, I should buy them strainers when I am in the US per their request. Maybe I’ll get them a cute little tea strainer too. Clara and Rosario sip up the rest so I make them a second cup. I am bored upstairs studying for my Spanish exam and procrastinating the final edits for the Drugs and Alcohol manual.

In an hour Abuelita says she feels better. If the cure is a matter of making green tea, I think they can make that happen pero bueno, garlic it is. Clara says that Abuelita attributes the discomfort to the corn she ate. My host mom says it’s for the cold air (which I don’t buy). We live in a very temperate climate and I just don’t think that barely brisk air causes stomach pain. Pero bueno, the corn and the cold it is.

At dinner we hover around the wood-burning oven and Clara calentars tortillas they made at breakfast. My host cousin, Clara, is in the kitchen talking to them about something. I don’t understand it, it is K’iche’. I wash my vegetables with soap and water, rinse, chop on the wooden chopping board. Eventually cousin Clara nos despide, says goodbye and leaves, I bring my ingredients to the wooden stove and transfer them to the sartén. The flames make the ingredients hiss. My host mom is exclaiming something in K’iche’ but I wait because I don’t understand. I imagine Clara will explain to me later. I add water so the potato slices cook faster and I put a top of over the frying pan. My host mom looks bothered, whatever they are discussing is unsettling. I say to my host mom: Kat bisontaj Nan/ Don’t be sad Señora but my words prick the surface tension and she starts to cry. I feel bad, walk over to her, lean over, put my arms around her shoulders. I don’t think that hugging is particularly common in this culture when someone is crying, but I AM A HUGGER AND SO IT SHALL BE. I stroke her long pony tail and set it in place, I know her tears are unusual, but I have yet to learn what caused them. Clara begins to explain to me the situation as I return to my vegetables.

Maybe laughter doesn’t beg for translation but crying does. No one reaches for garlic, ibuprofen or green tea to cure emotional wounds.

I’ve seen my host mom cry about 7 times in 22 months. I reckon this makes a ratio of 64:1, laughter to tears. Most of the time my host mom’s tears are not about the vast hardships she has suffered, when she cries it is about her sister who died. Once she cried when I left for EIST (Early In-Service Training) because she feared I wouldn’t come back, another time when I sprained my ankle. But the root of those tears were still connected to her sister, my departure reminding her of when she left and my fall of when she suffered.

The source of these tears, this night, is complicated: Host Cousin Clara (the one who was just in the kitchen) offered a job to my Host Sister. Sounds good, right? Well, sí y no. This offer is fraught with compunction for My Host Mom Rosario and for My Host Sister Clara. Clara needs work, the main source of income right now is hosting the aforementioned ankle-sprainer, but for her to go to work everyday means leaving Abuelita alone. And Abuelita, per her stomach pains green-tea-curable or no, is better not left alone. And then it made my host mom think of Rosario, the Other Rosario, her sister who died in 2013. It used to be that Abuelita still went to work in the campo and my host mom went, too. They are both analfabeta, illiterate, and the field is their work, their livelihood. Other Rosario used to work in the field, too, until her heart condition made her too sick to work, and she had to be left alone in the house. Now Abuelita is in the same position as Other Rosario was, rendered by age as unfit to work. And the thought of leaving Abuelita alone reminded my host mom and my host sister of Other Rosario: in the house, alone.

Being a foreigner, I can often understand something without being able to relate. And that was this moment. The reality in the US is that elderly people get left alone more than they should. And I think of my own grandmother: her children were more invested in her life than most situations in the US. And yet, her children lived on the other side of the country and in other states from where she spent the last two years of her life. Even though they visited, my Aunt even moved in with her for a long time and others managed many logistics of Nana’s estate, the family was (is) spread out. So when I consider that all of Abuelita’s children, many of her grandchildren, her brother, nieces and nephews, live within walking distance, I have trouble with the concept of ‘alone.’ And certainly if she is left alone, there must be an easy solution here…

But family is complicated, even under the best of circumstances, even in walking distance.

Clara won’t accept, she says. She has her sewing projects that people have hired her to complete. She helps her Mom in the field. She has her avocado sales in December/January/February. What they didn’t say: “We have your rent money now, Natalie. But only until April.”

If I had to guess, my upcoming departure is part of the cause for concern. If I were staying another year, another lifetime, they would have the financial flexibility to keep things as they are. But they have to be prepared for when things change. I know that, they know that, but tonight we don’t discuss it.

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The tone changed when I showed my host Mom and Sister Amazon Prime. At first my host sister didn’t understand that what she was seeing was the internet. When the pages wouldn’t load, I had to change location for a stronger signal from next door, holding the computer in my hand and waving it like a crystal ball. Eventually we relocated upstairs where the signal (theoretically) is stronger. El motivo of this electronic field trip was to find out what kind of food strainers they wanted. I brought them a small tea strainer last Christmas and they liked the overlapping mesh and asked me to bring them more. After patiently waiting for each photo to load, going back and forth between different options and converting currencies: “How much is that one in quetzales?” “What about that one?” and myself pulling out a ruler to demonstrate the available sizes, they decided which ones they wanted.

How would you react if you’d never looked at a webpage in your whole life and your first exposure was Amazon Prime? And kitchen accessories at that. They were worried about how much packing space I would have and if I would have time to go shopping. I explained that I would have the items shipped to my house and then pack them in my bag, and that there was space. Their interaction with the computer and the pictures was so sweet. It’s not a moment I can really explain without sounding condescending, which I don’t want or mean, but I will always remember it and smile.

– – – – – – – – –

When dinner ended Abuelita kissed a tortilla. She said something in K’iche’. My Host Mom translated: “She kissed it because it is the last one and it’s all alone.” She kissed the tortilla so it wouldn’t be lonely.

And this morning my host aunt (visiting Abuelita) shared a cure for flea bites: lime.