And so this is Christmas

"Let's stop all the fight."

Well, this is Christmas in Xela. The winter nights are getting colder, but Xela is brightly decorated with red and green lights, a blow up snowman stands in the park, and creepy christmas tones play slowly inside the tiendas out of tune. Remember that John Lennon Christmas song? "War is over." Its true, the Guatemalan civil war has been over for 15 years, and yet Guatemala still holds several records in Central America for a slu of concerns like poverty and literacy rates. An article in the national newspaper yesterday interviewed Guatemalans who had been deported from the United States on Christmas day, many leaving their family and friends behind.

Yet, there's a sugar coated cheery spirit of Christmas here. Things look magical when you walk around the colonial center. Your heels click on the cobble stone streets, and you can stop in for a traditional hot chocolate at a comedor, or go to the market to buy different colored grass and supplies for your Nativity set.


"For rich and for poor ones."

Of course, there's another side to Guatemala that doesn't get to experience the joys of Christmas. Entre Mundos was invited by an organization called Gente Joven (young people), to distribute toys to disadvantaged youth. I was the only one who was able to go, and also the only foreigner who attended. We took a trip to three communities near Lake Atitlan, and to be fair, gave each little boy a toy truck, a ball for the big boys, and a doll for all the girls. Of course, we didn't take into account any children that might be questioning their gender, and thus their choice of toys, but still it was equal.

The kids lined up as patiently as they could to recieve their toy, and we stamped each one on the hand to keep track. Many of them tried to wash off the stamps, and sadly some of the mothers tried to trick us. All in all, the communities were very thankful, but we were a little upstaged when Santa Claus showed up with his sac (he was hired by the town), and threw candy into the crowd of screaming children. This was clearly not how you equally distribute. At 3 oclock, the 20 participants and I were starved, so we went to Panajachel by the lake, and I had a tasty lake fish prepared with a nice marinade and covered in lime and salsa.


"For black and for white."

Entre Mundos worked hard to finish the last anual report, and the latest issue of the magazine that will be distributed in January. You can view my article by clicking on the link below.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfr7nhkr_105rv6gmcd&hl=en

Next issue (March) will be focused on religion, and I´ll be writing a short one this time, about the contrast of Catholicism and Cosmovision Maya (the Mayan religions). Guatemala seems to be in a constant state of culture clash, and many Guatemalans themselves seem to be unaware of their identity. When I told my housemother that I had visited San Simon, and placed candles at the foot of the Mayan God, she jumped, ¨that stuff scares us,¨ but what is the significance of her traditional dress that she wears? Why is her God so much better.

A couple of weeks before Christmas on December 12th, the city paid homage to the Virgin of Guadalupe. Also called Our Lady of Guadalupe, and more celebrated in Mexico, it commemorates the account of her appearances to Saint Juan Diego on the hill of Tepeyac near Mexico City from 9 through 12 December 1531. People gathered in the park, after a host of face painting and marimba dances, and lined up with candles followed by about 10 others carrying what looked like a bed with an image of Guadalupe all the way to the end of town. She must have been really heavy, and it seemed like the women were doing most of the work. Children were also dressed in costumes, and its tradition to paint moustaches on little boys as if they were Spanish conquesters. Who are we really celebrating?

This adoration of a Catholic saint is also controversial, as many Aztecs had claimed that the Virgen revealed signs and symbols meant only for them, and that she wasn't a Catholic saint after all. More conflict. Playing in the park that night was Guatemala's traditional folk music, present before the Spaniards even came. Yet 40 percent of Guatemala are Christians, many of them whom I'm sure are evangelical, who don't normally spend their time adorning saints.


"And so happy Christmas."

I spent Christmas eve hiking Volcan Santa Maria, known as the second hardest climb around Xela, (12,000 ft.). Its eruption in 1902 was one of the three largest eruptions of the 20th century, followed by 20 years of dormancy, and in 1922 another erruption created an entirely new volcano, Santiagito, its extremely active little brother. A group of 10 of us climbed Santa Maria with a Non profit guiding group called Quetzaltrekkers. Their proceeds benefit different NGO's in the city, and all guides are volunteers. After the five hour climb to the top, which I did on no sleep by the way, the guides surprised us with a Christmas pinanta. Yes, it sounds strange, but all of us got a turn at 12,000 feet batting away at the paper mache santa. After killing Santa, the guides found that some of the treats were missing. Some other hungry guides in the Quetzaltrekker office had ruined Christmas, well only a little.

From the top of Santa Maria on a clear day, you can see Santiagito's vicious erruptions. On this particulary day, unfourtanately it was too cloudy to see Santiagito errupting, but I did however see the erruptions on my expedition up Volcan Tajamulco, the highest peak in Central America.


The climb down was worse than I thought. All I wanted to do was sleep, and was feeling a little nauseous from the constant switchbacks across the mountain. Little did I know, this would be a foreshadow of things to come. As we came upon the village at the bottom, some children asked me if I was tired. I guess I wasn't hiding it very well. I squeezed into the chicken bus next to an old man and a little girl, and told the girl to wake me up when we got to Xela, which was only about a 20 minute drive.


When we got back I slept for three hours, and then it was off to my homestay family's house for Christmas Eve dinner. The tradition here, and perhaps in other Latin American countries, is to celebrate at 12 midnight with a big feast of tamales (stuffed rice meal squares with chicken or pork and wrapped in a large green leaf to keep warm), with a hot fruit punch drink to stave off the cold. Now, not that Guatemala needs another reason to set off fireworks, but this is the one night where everyone in town sits outside to pay attention, as if they hadnt noticed all year that people are crazy about these things. Some of them were quite good, comprable to a small town July 4th show. It was a nice change from the usual annoying booms at 2 in the afternoon. At exactly 12 o'clock all the neighbors give each other a big hug, and say Feliz Navidad, and then proceed to drink a lot. My family of course went to bed, as did I, exhausted and still a little nauseous from the hike.

"For weak and for strong."

I woke up the next morning with a Christmas surprise, jolting stomach pains and a bad case of diarrhea. I spent the day in bed, and the night with delirious dreams, trying to replace the fluid lost each time I went to the bathroom with a cup of water. I watched WallE in Spanish on my housemates laptop, such a great movie, wish it wasn't such bad pirated quality.

The next day I was feeling stronger, and decided to walk the three blocks to the pharmacy for some anti biotics. Now, if anyone has ever travelled outside of the United States they know the satisfying, convenient, and slightly rebellious feeling of being able to get just about anything you need at the pharmacy wihout waiting for a doctors prescription. I told the pharmacist my symptoms, and immediately she asked me, "Donde come Usted?" (Where do you eat?) "Sometimes in the street, but not recently," I said shamefully. She told me I needed to take suero, and I didnt understand the word. At this point, I was feeling dizzy so I took a seat, and she pulled out the suero, a huge bottle of orange liquid that looked like cough medicine. I later discovered that suero is something like pedia lite to rehydrate your body.

I was disgusted at the looks of the bottle. What was she trying to give me? I just wanted some juice, but couldnt find the strength to ask her. I got dizzier and dizzier, and in fact, I dont think I had ever felt that sick in my life. I saw some people coming in, so I decided to put my head in my lap to take a short nap while they were being attended to. The last thing I remember saying was "Necesito auyda, necesito auyda, I need help." I opened my eyes to seeing four pairs of shoes, and the women were lifting me up, rubbing my back, and frantically calling out the numbers 126, which must have been the ambulance. I had fainted. "What happened to me?" I asked. "Usted tiene un gran infeccion!" Just then two little men came from the volunteer fire department and asked me if I would rather go to a public hospital or private clinic. I said I wasnt sure, so they brought me to the public hospital. (I would later discover this was a good option). I was feeling 100% better after the fainting episode, but it had occured to me that I was extremely dehydrated.

We entered the woman's ward, and they put me on a cot in a small lowly lit room with four other ladies. On my right was an older indigenous woman with a red puffy eye, getting pricks in her finger for diabetes checks, and on my left a woman hooked up to IVs. "Im all wet" she said in a raspy voice, and looked at me in pain. I wasn't sure if she had wet herself, or if her IV bag was leaking. Either way, I didnt know how to help her. I began to realize that these people were very poor, and much sicker than I. A doctor entered not much older than 23, checked my heart beat, and pushed on my stomach to see if I felt any pain. He noticed my tongue was white, and said I was deyhdrated.

I layed down and began to cry, maybe because I had survived the trauma, or maybe at the sight of what was around me. Another young doctor entered and asked me why I was crying. "I dont know," I said, "because of your boyfriend?" he asked. I didnt respond, not a funny joke. He gave me two sample cups, and when I came back from the bathroom the woman with the puffy eye had left, and a much older woman had replaced her, and her grandaughter was translating for the doctors from Quiche to Spanish. The old woman layed down on the bed sideways, her legs curled up and crossed under her colorful skirt, and she held her little shoes in one hand, dangling off the bed. I wondered why she did that. She blinked at me through her wrinkled skin as if she felt no pain at all. The doctors discovered a huge mass of skin on her stomach. The grandaughter explained she had had that for 25 years, but it was recently giving her pain.

Another young doctor, barely 20, came in with a nurse, who still wore the old fashioned blue nurse ribbon in her hair. She came equiped with alchohol, a long tube, and needle. "I dont want an IV," I told him. The doctor paused, and laughed..."Well, why? You need it." I convinced them that I would drink water, and the suero (the saline solution to rehydrate me) until my tongue was a better color. They agreed, and I remained there with my styrofoam cup and pitcher of suero.

The daughter of the woman hooked up to the IVs finally came. She was 20 and her mother was 40. They spoke in Quiche together. The daughter turned around to me, "Que le paso?" (What happened to you?) We exchanged war stories. Her mother's was much worse. She had been beat up by her other daughter, and had a "pained heart," so she hadnt eaten in three days. Every once in a while we heard screaming from another room in the hospital. I asked the girl how much she thought my visit would cost. "This hospital is free, she laughed. I had all three of my children here, starting when I was 13. My mother had her first at 13 too. They wont give you food though, unless you spend the night." She then proceeded to list the diverse cuisine offered at the public hospital, as if they had been the best meals of her life.

I sighed in relief. They weren't real doctors, still in med school really, but they were nice, and I was attended to quickly. Every once in a while a group of the young students came in with a supervisor while they all took notes and looked at me like a specimen. One young doctor was sucking on a lollypop. "We've had a lot of foriegners lately," she told me.

The doctor came back with my lab results. I had an intenstinal infection, not a parasite. He patted me on the back, "rehydrate yourself." My housemates came later with some money and snacks. "I wont be needing the money," I told them. I waved goodbye to the young doctors, and we left in a microbus. At the entrance to the hospital sat about thirty people, probably not from the city, waiting presumably for the visitors hours. The hospital faded in the distance, and in my delighful release, I realized I had forgotten to say goodbye to the mother and daughter.

"Lets hope its a good one, without any fear."

To view my pics
http://picasaweb.google.com/laurenb1981/SantaMariaAlmolongaXelaToysForTots#