At the end of this day, I lay in bed and looked up at my fairy lights and thought: “yep.” This is how one day as a PCV unfolds (a Peace Corps Volunteer).

Join me?

I got out of bed early, 7:15, ready to brew my coffee and put on my costume which I reinforced the night before with packaging tape and staples.

I washed my sheet and blanket. It looked like sun.

First I eyeball an amount of powdered detergent and liquid fabric softener into a small bucket, pour water into it, open the spout to see if there is water and there is. (Water is available from 7am to 7pm but there are gaps during the day when I twist the spout and a puff of air comes out).  The basin in the pila begins to fill up. I will need this water to do the laundry. The pila is where all the washing happens: dishes and laundry. After I toss my soapy laundry from the detergent bucket into the pila, I wring out the detergent and pour clean water over the laundry, roll it back and forth over the cement ridges until the soap is gone. I carry my bedding up the cement steps, heave them over the thin rope to dry, and I walk down the stairs to my room. Wet laundry is heavy and now my clothes and feet are wet, too. Some volunteers pay their host families to wash their clothes, others take them to professional cleaners in nearby towns. I am too DIY and too cheap for either of those options. I wear the fact that I have never taken my laundry to the cleaners as a badge of honor.

For National Environmental Awareness Day, the middle schools of Santa Clara prepared an outdoor parade. Each middle school was in charge of dressing up as one element of the environment, but in only recyclable materials. For example, Paquip is a middle school where I work that was assigned “Forrest/Bosque.”I had a corn costume that I made last year and, like with every occasion in Santa Clara. I was told to be there at 8:00am, so 8:45am seemed about the time things would crank.

I walked up the street with my corn costume fully applied. The street attention began: Pazapik’ Awi! children and random neighbors called out. It’s rude not to respond, but sometimes I get tired because it’s like a broken record. Sometimes, if you can believe it, all I want to do is blend-in. But I am white. And I am wearing a corn costume made out of egg-cartons and construction paper walking down the street.

All the students were at a meeting point in their costumes and we stood around as we waited for someone to say the word. When the cars appeared with the speakers affixed to the sides, we began to walk the street. The school band from one of the middle schools was blasting the same song I hear them practicing from my room window. I walked part of the parade with one of my schools, Paquip, and the rest of the way with my other school Barrio San Antonio. Paquip students and teachers were completely covered in leaves, trees and flowers. I said to them “Pura Adal y Eva… (Adam and Eve)..” I couldn’t see one student at all from underneath her costume, I only knew she was a girl by her shoes and she was in primero from her height. I liked the Paquip costumes, they looked stunning in a very natural way, except for Profe Diego who made a poor excuse for an apple tree with cardboard and some red dollops of construction paper.

Barrio San Antonio dressed up in traje típico/traditional clothing of Santa Clara and carried props like huge leaves with natural elements written on them. Our traje típico of Santa Clara is very simple: dark blue with one thin pink stripe down the güipil (the blouse) and the corte (the long skirt). A faja, woven belt, holds the long skirt in place around the waist. I feel like Paquip put in a little more effort than this school, but I didn’t say a word. Corn isn’t here to judge.

Once we walked a complete roundabout of the town center, music from the band guiding our way as grandmas and children popped out of houses to watch, we walked it again and this time lined up in the plaza (thank God- no more walking). My ankle hurt. After 7 months after the sprain clearly it’s not going to heal beyond this point, which is disconcerting given the discomfort. I felt the sun beating down and tried to reason that Atlanta heat is so much worse, but I still felt so uncomfortable in my costume. As we found our spaces in the plaza, all 5 schools, I thought about going home and preparing for my meeting at 10am. Byron is supposed to be in the meeting but he is running sound, I noticed. When I reminded him yesterday about the meeting he didn’t say anything about not being free. But here we are.  I didn’t leave. Everyone was uncomfortable and I wasn’t covered head to toe in branches.

I sent a Whatsapp message to my other work partner, Irene, during the National Anthem. Forgive me, angels above, but the national anthem is, without exaggerating, an hour long. I saw the mayor look at me and considered that maybe I was being disrespectful. But I was wearing a corn costume, how high were his expectations? “Seño estamos todavía en la reunion. Le aviso cuando terminamos??” I sent in a message. We were supposed to meet at 10am. But I was in a corn costume.

As always, the program started with words of welcome, announcing and thanking each participant for being present, specifically the Muni (Town Hall) government seated in a straight line on the stage, all stoic. Saludo 1 means Hand on Heart and Saludo 2 means At Ease, come to find out. After the national anthem ended, Saludos 2, they said, and we released our hands to our sides.

Some of the costumes were beyond impressive. I wondered how and why students are motivated to collect plastic bags and twist each one into an elaborate design for a costume, but I can’t get them to come to my youth groups or, well, pay attention during my sessions.

 

The school superintendent led us to take a moment of silence for those who died in the volcano the past Sunday, June 3 (70 deaths). It took a minute for restless jóvenes to stop gyrating and making noise, but I think we achieved 20 seconds of true, respectful silence. The moment was the most quiet I’ve ever heard the town center. To be honest, it was more than I was expecting because of the roosters, traveling salesmen repeating their jingles con recio, the roosters, pigs, random firecrackers (I swear it’s constant) the evangelical church (at whatever moment it wants to send up praises) and this culture’s love of sound. It was sobering, it made me sad. I thought of the victims. I wanted the silence to keep going. We continued with the activity.

An environmental talked about the need to care for the environment. The meeting about camp wasn’t going to happen this morning, was it? We were finally released to find shade and the presentations began. We didn’t have chairs so students retreated to curbs under shadow. The students presenting their dances were so formal, I made a note of the phrase: “que sea de su agrado” in my phone. I hope it will be to your pleasure. Have you ever heard a middle schooler in the States say that on a microphone? Or even out loud?

Each school had an artistic offering and it was obvious that some had only come up with their routine the day before (it’s usually the case). I stood patiently in the shadows, watching the songs but came out into the center to dance to “Deposito” (words changed from the song Despacito to talk about throwing away trash). Everyone laughs when I dance, which I have come to expect, but I never knew one person dancing off-script would be so delightfully intriguing to everyone. Or is it because I am white and I’m in a corn costume shaking my hips with a coffee traveler in one hand?

I’m so used to these same routines that I’m definitely tired of them. The Folkloric Dance to the marimba, the skimpily clad girls shaking their hips to reggaeton and The Mimes, always the Mimes.  I asked a cute teacher how old he was (the answer was 23- moving on), I sought out Seño Irene with whom I was supposed to meet in the muni. “Fíjese que,” said the corn “the meeting can’t happen until Byron is done.” I looked over at Byron during the ceremony, sitting behind the sound system on his phone. I bet you he COULD leave but he’s supposed to be running the event. So hmmm… meeting?

I hung out until I couldn’t hang anymore, around 10, and I went home and shucked the corn from my body. On the way back down to the muni, I bought bread from Doña Clara, breakfast at 11, and took my morning medicine. I found Irene and the new volunteer, Rafael, and we discussed the camp. Rafael is a Maternal & Child Health volunteer, I am Youth in Development. She seemed very on-board with every camp logistic except she kept stopping the meeting to field phone calls. Eventually we ironed everything out, made the edits to the agenda, discussed next steps, signed her book of ACTAS which proves that she did her job, took a photo as evidence (it’s a real thing that people do for work) and left for lunch. I had a productive morning in spite of still needing to meet with Byron… Oh, that work partner work relationship….

My phone rang at 11:57am and I remembered I told Doña Catarina I would come over for lunch. I met her at the pharmacy and we walked together to her house. She invited me to lunch a few weeks ago and then I left unexpectedly to the US. We rescheduled and rescheduled. I don’t know this woman, but she kept seeing me until she invited me to lunch. That’s usually how it goes. We walked up the hill, with her 10 year-old son next to us on a bike, and when we got to her house I was shocked. A gated, three-story home that looked like someone plopped out of a For Sale by Owner from the US. I was very confused about where I was.

In the courtyard, there was a birdcage attached to a wall with a cat sleeping on top of it and two birds inside. Keep your friends close and your enemies above  you, heh birds? And Catarina began to sing a song about Meesh (which is a colloquialism for Cat). I’d never heard the canto before. I want to ask her to sing it again so I can remember it always and sing it to my Meesh in Los Estados.

There was a beautiful garden leading up to the front door, a stunning courtyard. She pointed out some of her blooming flowers with pride. When the wooden door swung open, she introduced me to her third child, Cati, and continued into the living room with a TV so big I forgot TVs could be so big. She said: “Look I have a gringa baby” and pointed to a white baby doll on the navy blue furniture. I died laughing. I picked up the baby and brushed her plastic hair. Later I got a picture with the doll. We crossed the foyer and into the complete kitchen. A stainless steel sink with a spout that offered water all 24 hours (must be connected to a repository). I noticed two girls preparing the food. I was expecting a muchacha (a term I find uncomfortable but nevertheless refers to the housekeeper). But I wasn’t expecting two girls making tortillas and food.

My host family doesn’t have living room furniture at all, no sofa, coffee table, armchair or pillows. My host sister lays on her bed and my host mom sits on a small wooden chair facing the TV while Abuelita sleeps behind them. To see a sofa in Santa Clara is weird. When I noted the appliances in the kitchen, I felt overwhelmed by how one pueblo can have such poverty and such privilege all within blocks of the town center.

I raved and raved about how beautiful the house was, not sure what else to say except: “Woooooow” and a more honest reaction could not have been summoned. The home was Guatemala chic. Still with all of the features you expect in a Guatemalan home, endless tile, wardrobes instead of closets and no A/C, for example, but with mahogany wood finishes around the windows and stand-up showers in bathrooms and separate bedrooms for the son from the two daughters. These things are all unusual, I’ve never seen them in a Guatemalan home.

I tried not to wonder where this money came from, I tried not to want to move in and worship the microwave. The pila was still there, of course there is always a pila, but it was the bourgeousist pila I’d ever seen so I took a picture. On the tour I kept posing on all of their furniture and Catarina kept taking pictures of me on it. I wasn’t sure what else to do. I felt like I was on every showcase in The Price is Right.

When I sat down at the wooden round table for lunch, they put a plate in front of me (before anyone else, even the husband) and a piece of cooked fish stared up at me. He looked just as concerned as I did, this fish. I didn’t ask his gender so I can’t be sure it was a he. The bigger task at hand was the ‘tap’ in K’iche’, cangrejo, crab, with eyes bulging out and floating around in the broth, the caldo de marisco. 10 year-old Emerson imitated the crabs as they die in the pot. He stood in the living room and flailed his arms around wildly. The hot water makes them swim around quickly until they stop moving, he says. Dead. He flopped on the couch, limp. It felt oddly tragic, how cavalier he was about boiling crabs to death. I felt like a murderer. I’m not a vegetarian but I’ve never eaten a crab with the eyes bulging out of it’s head.

But I told her I ate everything except for pork (these days) the pig squeals of trauma and death that I hear on a daily basis have made me forlorn at the thought of bacon. So I thanked them immensely for the food and I took a deep breath and started in.

The two muchachas sat with us, one was 12 years-old and the other was 20. In my training host family the ‘muchacha’ ate in the kitchen, alone, while we ate at the dining table, so I was relieved to see there was no difference. Her parents died, Doña Catarina had told me about the 12 year-old. “She lives here” as she indicated a bedroom during my grand tour. I noticed a large suitcase above the wardrobe. How long has that suitcase been unpacked? How do people find hired help in this country? And she is 12, that’s definitely against child labor laws which are difficult to enforce here. Not only was I supporting boiling helpless crabs to death, I was supporting that the 12 year-old cook for me as I sat at this giant table.

Her husband kept saying: “Eat Natalie, Eat.” It’s a custom here. It’s something you respond to with “Thank you.” They’re not rushing you, or mandating, they are telling you to enjoy your food and to take as much as you want. I told everyone around the table: “‘Twooooooq” which is “eat” in K’iche.’ It’s technically Chat woq’ but if you are really down with K’iche’ you just say ’twoq. I’d never been around whiney children like their youngest daughter who kept complaining about not wanting to eat. She said she didn’t eat tortillas. I wondered how she had survived in this country so far.

The evangelical music was in full swing coming through the giant speakers in the living room. “That’s my sister singing” Doña Catarina said.

A round table meant everyone could watch me eat. The technique with the fish is to pull it apart and suck the meat off of the spine. I’d never really looked at a true fish skeleton except on cartoons but now I was cleaning one myself. I knew that eating the head was going to be the not-so-grand finale but whatever I didn’t eat, they would notice. I made progress on the fish so I began on the crab. He wasn’t a big crab, maybe 3 inches wide, so it wasn’t easy to find what I was supposed to eat from what I wasn’t. His eyes bugged out of his head like they were trying to flea from his body. I looked at him and thought: “Sorry little guy.” The shrimp was the only easy part, of which there were three.

Between bones they asked me about the USA. Everyone likes to paint a picture of the USA with a single stroke: “Luxurious, Opportunity, English” and it’s hard to explain why there is much more to it than that, because they have a fixed but limited idea in their minds. However, the Don of the household studied medicine in the US for several years, somewhere in the Northeast. He told me that is where he learned about punctuality and frankness. When you say 9am, you mean 8:55am, and when you say No you mean No. I miss the straightforwardness of that… some days. They commented on my K’iche’ interspersed in my Spanish. They said I speak more than their children. I hear that a lot. The Mayan languages are being lost with each generation.

I noticed that the girls who work in the house got less food than the rest of us. I noticed that Doña Catarina kept scolding Luvia, the 12-year old. I noticed my inclination to put all of my attention on the two helper girls because I felt sorry for them. I noticed how uncomfortable it made me, because we don’t have ‘muchachas’ like this in my culture. Yes we have housecleaners, sometimes home assistants, but we don’t have children cooking and cleaning and one who stays the night. It was too much like Orphan Annie except her Ms. Hannigan was also her Daddy Warbucks and there was no where else to go.

We still have class differences in the US, but they usually don’t share the same roof.

This may be too much information, but I watched something inside of the crab explode on Luvia’s tongue, I think it may have been bile or urine. And I died a little inside. I powered through. I kept reaching for a tortilla or sipped the broth when I needed a break.I kept saying “Qué rico, qué rico” because that’s what I learned in the USA. You tell the hosts how delicious the food is. But I think I was trying to disguise my struggle. At the end of lunch, the two kids fought over the cable that plugs in the TV. The TV was Super Bowl Sunday sized. The parents explained: we remove the cable so they can’t watch without our permission. I agree with this choice.

Then the little girl, Cati, begged her mom for ice cream until her mom scooped some out into a mug. We don’t have a fridge, so we don’t have ice cream available unless we go buy some in the street.

I left lunch, thanking them profusely, and I walked 3 minutes to the swinging lamina door of mine. I grabbed my computer and walked down to Los Olivos, my favorite restaurant in site which most importantly, had internet.

On the way down the street a toyota rolled up to me with “TAXI” on top. He asked me: “Where are you from?” “Atlanta” I said perfunctorily. I was walking down a hill and measuring my steps because it was steep. After a few questions, the guy offered to give me a ride. I said: “No thanks, the restaurant is 20 feet from me..” And he goaded “C’monnnnn. I want to give you a ride, why don’t you want a ride?” “No thanks” I responded and he continued more or less until I was at the restaurant, driving off. I felt creeped out for 10 seconds, but I felt bothered for longer. I rarely get harassed in site, but the infrequency doesn’t lessen the annoyance or frustration when it does happen. How often do male volunteers get harassed like that in this country?

I ordered my typical meal, Desayuno Típico, and stayed the afternoon working. I didn’t have any lessons planned for Paquip and I wasn’t even sure if there was class because they had the Medio-ambiente event in the morning. I let youtube play in the background while I worked on writing: I wanted to finish the post about my parents visit so I can get on to more pending posts. It’s harder to write this year because I don’t feel like a spectator, I feel I am a part of this community.

I paid Q25 for my meal, stopped for Q1 of beans from the comedor in the square, and I greeted Abuelita as I walked in the door to her laughter. I began to prep the usual ingredients, putting the simple, wooden cutting board on the kitchen table, washing the tall red bell pepper with soap and beginning to slice the onion. Clara, my host sister, walked in the door from the living room. “Yo tengo una mala noticia…” she said like she had dropped her ice cream cone on the ground. But she never says that, so I hoped for the best but braced myself for something terrible. It was just four days before that my host family was crying about the violence they saw on the news from the volcano. What had happened now?

Her cousin and our next door neighbor, who was pregnant, had her baby. He was not healthy, the doctors said he wasn’t going to survive. In that moment I was washed to my childhood in a hospital in Tampa on January 17, 1994. My mom gave birth to a little baby boy. He was unhealthy, issues with his heart and therefore everything else. He was not going to survive.

Clara said that the baby was connected “por la luz” (to the power) and that after 72 hours, they would take him off of the machine. The news settled quietly and quickly in the kitchen. Abuelita is hard of hearing so she did not know still, but my host mom and I were learning at the same exact moment. There weren’t words.  Except to ask about logistics: “Where is she now? Is it a boy or a girl? Does the baby have a name?”

I asked my host mom if there was a photo of the baby. She said that she saw one earlier that day, that she would bring it to me later. She was still making tortillas and Clara joined in to finish. Doing a diurnal, perfunctory task but in the wake of very unusual circumstances.

My host mom began to reason as to why this tragedy occurred: she seemed angry, wondering if the baby was unhealthy because the mom, my host cousin, was stressed during her pregnancy. I explained that, sadly, my own parents had lost a baby boy after three days of age. I told my host mom that, from my understanding, there is no connection with my host cousin’s emotions and the baby’s health. It would be natural to want to blame someone or something, but there is no one to blame. Sometimes cells do strange things and humans don’t survive.

I felt a frustrating arrogance to correct my host mom. I studied teratogens in college, there were 36 at the time, any possible birth defect that can happen to an embryo/fetus. I know about the trisomies, 13, 21… But I know my host mom has her own sense of reliable intuition though we have had different life paths.

I’ve learned about the culture of Guatemala that there is a certain respect and fear for the power of emotions. If you get too sad, they believe you can die. And I think my host mom attributed the power of her niece’s emotions to the sickness of this baby. But I know my host cousin and her situation: my host mom isn’t referring to stress like domestic violence or drug abuse, she is talking about financial stress. And I don’t think that that life’s normal stressors can cause a baby’s heart to develop abnormally, because people have healthy babies under all matter of stressful circumstances. But at the end of the day, who am I to say? Maybe my host mom is right.

We sat. We talked over all of our questions and doubts and how concerned we were for the parents. We finished our food. I felt full from dinner, but not relaxed like I normally do after a long day. I felt the heaviness of the news, the sickness of a little person I had never met, the pending loss of an anticipated life. I decided not to mention, but I did think to myself: “this is precisely why I don’t want to have my own babies. I don’t want to create a little creature that suffers and dies. I don’t want to lose an infant…” Maybe fear is my gut reaction, like my host mom’s anger.

After I thanked my family for dinner “Muchas Gracias” to their “Buen Provecho,” I washed my dishes somberly and slowly climbed the cement steps to my room.

When I came back down to the kitchen to say goodnight, they were both sitting in the same spot: my host mom and host sister. They had been talking, reasoning, wondering, sad. My host mom brought me a cell phone in her hand that I didn’t recognize. She held the phone with care, passing it to me. There was a freeze frame on the screen of a little baby in the ICU. I pressed play and watched his little body inhale and exhale with a mask covering his face. He looked so big from the angle of the camera even though he was brand new. These moments of breathing were precious and I am glad they were documented. I was so happy to see this little life and also terribly sad. I wonder how the person felt who was taking the video, my other host cousin: pride, happiness, sadness, distress, anger, numbness.

I called my real mom who still happened to be awake. I told her the situation, laying under my mosquito net with my fairy lights turned on. My eyes darted from fairly light to fairly light, looking up at the different constellations over my bed. I asked my mom if it was true, if they would have been able to save the baby had he been born in the US like my host sister postulated. She told me that normally the baby would go immediately into heart surgery. That was the answer I hoped and didn’t hope for: that there is a medical solution but that it isn’t available here. I thought about lunch with the fish and crab, when the Doctor and Don of the house who thought of the US as the land of promise, progress and access to resources. In this case, he is more right than I thought. It doesn’t mean the baby would survive if it went into emergency surgery, but it means there would be a chance for survival somewhere.

At 8:45pm, Doña Catarina called me: “I just wanted to make sure the fish didn’t make you sick!” I didn’t recognize the number, even though I had her number saved in my phone. This happens all the time. People don’t have enough credit on their phones so they borrow someone else’s. I told her thank you for calling and that I was totally fine. That’s never happened to me before.

This day started in a corn costume, continued with crab and fishtails and ended in tragic news.

It’s not every day in Peace Corps that takes crescendoes and crashes. Some days are mind-numbingly, bean and tortilla, slow and school-dazedly predictable, and some days I am called in to the principal’s office for teaching sexual health charlas that are too explicit, that in my opinion, are completely natural and necessary. I can’t call if it will rain or shine all day long, kick up the realities of loss from your own life and trigger unhappy memories. And that is life everywhere, isn’t it? But the vicissitudes of this pueblo life can suffer more peaks and valleys than I bargained for. And for me, this is a season. For Santa Clara, this is life.

A completely normal abnormal day.

*Full disclosure, I can’t remember if we got the news about the baby’s health on Wednesday or Thursday. Which, if we did get the news on Thursday, it was the day after the parade, the lunch and the taxi. But I think it was the same day.

Santiago Ixmatá passed away on Friday night. His family buried him on Saturday. Maybe Santiago and my little brother Paul have become acquainted. Que descanse en paz, little man. May you rest in peace. I will share additional details about the funeral in another post.