A new way to celebrate

September 15th is Guatemala's Independence Day. This year it happened to land on a Saturday, which conflicted with the majority of the church schedules in Salacuim. It also would be an incredible mistake to celebrate independence day and have parades and activities on a weekend. It's not a traditional Guatemalan event unless the kids get out of school for at least a week.

This year, Salacuim decided to do something different. They decided to have a fair. Most towns in Guatemala have their yearly fair dates set and it's a big deal. Salacuim has never been a fair town. We are the town that longs to have a fair, but have never been fortunate enough to have one. This year we were inundated with people from all around the region, just waiting to see what kind of activity we could put on.



Monday started out with a huge parade down the main street of Salacuim. The entire town came out to watch. All the schools participated and it actually turned into something much bigger than I expected. In the afternoon, there was a mass exodus to a nearby field where the first ever Salacuim rodeo was held. Everyone gathered around to see the best bull riders in the area take their turn. The energy in the town was amazing.



On Tuesday we celebrated our 3rd anniversary with a horse race in our front yard. The street that runs in front of our house was converted into a racing strip for horses. A rope was hung across the street between two poles. On the rope were little rings with ribbons. The object of the game was to run your horse full speed, as the rider tries to put a pencil through the ring. The event started to get a little unusual for us when they hung a live duck upside down by its feet and it soon became part of the competition. Corby did a nice job illustrating the event in his blog below.



As nightfall came, the park in front of our house was transformed into a midway. Complete with carnival games, a makeshift movie theater and dancing. That night, it was apparent to me that our little town is changing and will continue to evolve no matter how slowly the movement seems to be at times. Whether the changes are good or bad, I couldn't help but feel a sense of pride to live where we live over the last couple days and to be part of the events that brought the town together.

City Duck, Country Duck

Recently, the stories of two ducks with similar, gloomy fates have recently served to compare and contrast the differences between cultures.

This past weekend a domestic duck living in an ornamental pond in a high-society downtown St. Paul Minnesota hotel(our hometown before we came to Guatemala) was brutally attacked by a hotel guest that apparently ripped its head off in the hotel lobby informing the other guests that he was hungry. Farther to the south in rural Guatemala, we were witnesses this week to a "pato encebado" contest as part of a local celebration where a group of cowboys hung a living duck up by its legs and then shaved and greased its neck; all of this with the objective to take turns attempting to pull its head off with their hands during passes on their galloping horses.

The real lesson in all of this is found in the reactions of the society. In St Paul, the assailant is facing a felony with up to two years of jail time and a $5,000 fine while a high class hotel is considering some sort of increased security or fencing system to protect the rest of their ducks. In our town, the winner of the contest was awarded a prize of Q200 and much of the normally very reserved indigenous crowd really got their spirit up with shouts such as "¡arranquela hombre!"


City Duck


Country Duck

Read story of St. Paul Hotel Duck: http://www.startribune.com/462/story/1440073.html

The Stuff That Happens

Last night Kari and our site mate Nicole were the judges in a mini beauty pageant in Salacuim. The event was aimed at selecting the "Novia del Ganadero", or the "Cattleman's Girlfriend" who will be involved in the upcoming rodeo in late September. The biggest highlight/lowlight of the afternoon was a toss-up between when the stage collapsed breaking a kid's leg, and when one contestant lost control of her galloping horse and almost trampled the crowd. The lowlights aren't really a laughing matter, but you can't help but see a general trend and compare/contrast to the States.

With about 7 months left before our scheduled return to "normal life", I've been thinking a lot lately about how precious every day of our experience down here is. I can't say that I enjoy the typical daily chaos I've learned to put up with: a shrieky blown-out speaker system pounding 20 feet from my desk on all day on a day when I had planned to catch up with computer work, or upsetting Kari with my inability to track and kill the huge spider with the egg-sack that had just climbed into her clean clothes pile, or the megaphone charged vehicles that decide to park on our street and blare presidential ads at 7am, or the holes in the office roof that send us running to cover everything up if a storm passes. (these are all events from today, except the spider which was yesterday)

But at the end of the day sometimes you just have to soak it all up and appreciate the experience as a whole, think about what a challenge you've overcome to adapt, cherish the soul-filling energy that comes with overpowering the daily obstacles, and be thankful for the stories that come with it.

Here are some more pictures from last night's event...


The Judges




The contestants

Children of the week

In about 2 months, students will be finishing up the school year in Salacuim. We have one final group of kids to highlight before the year is over; our other junior high group. They all attend a fairly new and private school in Salacuim. The classes are small and there are 3 teachers that switch off teaching different subjects. It's a little more structured than the telesecundaria and this will be the first year that they will graduate a class from the school. There is a lot of talk lately as to weather or not the school will be around next year. It was started up by a local family of teachers as another alternative to learning in Salacuim, but they are renting a building which will not be available next year and looking at a lot of costs that are keeping them down.


name: Ofelia Xe age: 20 grade: 9th
favorite subject: spanish favorite sport: basketball
future goal: to be a teacher

Our town (or maybe Guatemala in general) has a reputation of making a lot of options for the same thing. Whether it's over 15 political parties on a ballot for president, 6 different churches of the same religion for our tiny town or 2 different junior highs, they like to divide rather than unite their efforts to make one outstanding system.


name: Leobardo Pop age: 15 grade: 8th
favorite subject: math favorite sport: soccer
future goal: to own a business

This group of kids has presented a special challenge to us. Only by chance, within this group we are dealing with our only single teen mother, who is struggling to balance school and taking care of her child. We also have one girl who has lost her mother and lacks a female influence in a machismo society. The challenges have surfaced in terms of not having a sufficient elementary education to understand complicated junior high topics and the results have been low grades. For some reason we have had to push this group to excel more than others. They have all risen to the occasion though and we are hoping that this year will end in success for them.


name: Narcy Ac age: 18 grade: 7th
favorite subject: q'eqchi' (mayan language)
favorite sport: soccer
future goal: to be a teacher


name: Ilce Choc age: 15 grade: 7th
favorite subject: q'eqchi' (mayan language)
favorite sport: basketball
future goal: to be a nurse

Regardless of all the obstacles, they are all getting a second chance to succeed this year. An opportunity that would not have been there without outside donor support.

Forsberg Family Vacation

Ruins of Quirigua

I grew up taking road trips across the country with my family. Every summer without fail we would load up the minivan and drive. Lately it's been more difficult to get everyone together and plan a big family trip. We all seem to be going in different directions, with different schedules. This year, the family came to us. For 10 days we experienced Guatemala and soaked up the culture and richness of the country together. For my parents, it was their first international trip and for Katie, who had already been here once and Mark, who had spent a month this summer studying in Honduras, it was still an adventure. We all saw things a little differently this time around. Even us, who have traveled this path many times over.


Laguna Lachuá National Park

It was invaluable to have everyone come to our site and see what we have done since we arrived. It is one thing to email our stories, but another thing to experience them with us. At times, the steps seem immeasurable to us, but to see how we have changed and grown through someone else's eyes is refreshing. It was great to have them meet our neighbors and the kids that we spend time with. The individual students that they are sponsoring through the scholarship program, were all able to spend time with them and see that there is a real person on the other end that cares about what they are doing. It was a powerful interaction for the kids and my family.


Meeting the scholarship kids they sponsor

Throughout the week and a half, we took in the sites of Antigua, Lake Atitlan, traveled to Salacuim and Laguna Lachuá, visited our host family in Santo Tomas, made the long drive up to Tikal National Park and spent a night in Rio Dulce. Every day was different and every day there was a new obstacle to overcome.
I really enjoyed watching the reactions to some of the things that we now consider fairly normal; a metal ladder leaning against an electrical line, a man climbing up the side of a bus to put something on top while it is moving down the highway, kids doing cartwheels at a stoplight for money and the lovely habit of throwing toilet paper in the wastebasket. It made me realize how much we have adapted in order not to notice these things and also how the readjustment back will be challenging.
This is a family trip that we will talk about forever. Whether it changed some viewpoints of those that came, or those that they met, it definitely impacted everyone in a different but important way.


Tikal National Park

Children of the week

This is one group of our junior high students that are benefiting from the scholarships this year. There are two options for junior high in Salacuim. One school is private and tends to be a little more expensive with a smaller student to teacher ratio. The other school, called a telesecundaria, is what these students are attending. In the telesecundaria, the idea is for the schools to use video tapes made by the government to teach the classes. It cuts back on the costs of teachers and also allows the government to regulate the curriculum to some degree. This is a system that is used frequently in the rural areas of Guatemala. In Salacuim however, the televisions have broken and they no longer use this method. They continue to call themselves a telesecundaria but instead they have one teacher for each grade.


name: Victor Ical age: 14 grade: 7th
favorite subject: math favorite sport: soccer
future goal: to be an accountant


name: Warner Quib age: 14 grade: 7th
favorite subject: math favorite sport: basketball
future goal: to be a college graduate

If the kids make it to the junior high school level in Salacuim, it is quite an achievement. They have beaten some of the odds and are that much closer to a high school education, which is almost unheard of in the rural areas. If you are living in Salacuim, your education ends at 9th grade. From there it is similar to deciding on what colleges to attend for kids in the states. For a 15 year old, it can be a difficult decision to decide to leave home and study or stay with their family and work. Many of these kids will soon be faced with this same question.


name: Yadira Sagui age: 18 grade: 7th
favorite subject: math favorite sport: soccer
future goal: to be a college graduate


name: Zunilda Chen age: 15 grade: 8th
favorite subject: math favorite sport: soccer & basketball
future goal: to be a college graduate


name: Julio Paau age: 15 grade: 9th
favorite subject: math favorite sport: soccer & basketball
future goal: to be an engineer

The work load is much more demanding at this level of schooling. The students are taking 10 different classes and also have a mandatory typing class that they must attend 20 hours a month outside of school. At this age they are also responsible for doing many of the adult duties in their family as well. For the boys, this would generally involve field work. The girls mostly work in the home cooking and cleaning. Aside from the demands being higher, the costs also double from the costs of elementary school. For many families it is not financially possible to think about junior high. Luckily all of these kids are benefiting from your support this year.

Salvador

One of the amazing things about being a Peace Corps Volunteer is being able to see the world. Not just where you serve, but all around you. We had a great trip to El Salvador last week. Beautiful beaches, friendly people and American dollars. It felt like home.



beauty



tranquility



solitude

Dream of a Community Library

The community of Santa Lucia Lachuá is a 30 min trip from Salacuim and is home to an incredibly motivated and organized group of leaders as well as a robust school system that includes a teachers school (magisterio). We have enjoyed working with the community and are supporting and encouraging their request to host a Peace Corps volunteer after we leave the region in April of 2008.

In February the community submitted a proposal for a community library project to the "Peace Corps Partnership Program", where the Peace Corps in Washington publishes and advertises community projects to corporate sponsors and regular givers. The idea is that the givers enter a "partnership" with the community and receive communication directly from the people that benefit from the gift throughout the project. Unfortunately, the project has not received funding as quickly as we would have hoped. The project needs to receive funding within 2-3 months or they won't be able to complete the construction before we leave in April 2008.

Below is a link to a detailed project profile in PDF as well as a link to the project profile website (where donations can be made).

If anyone out there knows of potential donors (businesses, corporations, etc.) or any other creative funding ideas, please contact us!

Proposal for the Community Library (1.25 MB)
Peace Corps Website Promoting the Project



Youth group during planning meeting


Judging an environmental art competition in Santa Lucia Lachuá


Joint Youth Group / COCODE meeting in Santa Lucia Lachuá

Child of the week

name: Ingrid Caal
age: 9
grade: 1st
favorite subject: spanish
favorite sport: soccer
future goal: to be a teacher

Sometimes is is hard to see the direct academic impact that our scholarship program has on the kids. We know that all the children in our program could not have studied this year without outside help. We can see that they are in school and now part of something academic, but are they succeeding and thriving? The school system in Salacuim is a long ways from being known as the best of the best, but you work with what you have.


first ever school supplies

Ingrid has been one of the rare transformations to watch academically. At 9 years old, she was given the chance to go to school for the first time in her life. Being from one of the poorer families, she had never been able to attend the last three years that she was eligible. In the last 5 months, we have seen her go from only being able to draw pictures to express herself to writing words and sentences. She is now able to read and write at a basic level. A level which is well beyond what her mother is at. To me, that is progress. To see huge steps like this being taken in a short amount of time is the definition of why we are doing this program. Ingrid gives us some hope that we are doing the right thing and making a positive contribution to the way people think about education here.

In Salacuim and perhaps rural Guatemala in general, girls quickly become labeled as future mothers and wives that will take care of the home and have no need to be educated. We hope to break some of this cycle by starting young and giving the girls a chance to explore and succeed before they are consumed by years of tradition. Ingrid is now setting the example for her two younger sisters and living the dream of her mother to be an educated adult.


ingrid, mom and sisters

Top 10

There are many mornings when I wake up and wonder what it is I am doing and accomplishing here. While there are frustrations, there are also things that I cannot imagine living without that I have discovered during our time in Salacuim. Each day makes me appreciate the little things.
A common first reaction when visiting a third world country or a very poor area tends to be focused on the surface ugliness. Whether it be the extreme poverty, trash everywhere or lack of hygiene practices. It takes a long time to see beyond what we are trained to see as beautiful. I think I have reached the point where I can look beyond the surface and see what lies beneath. An enormous amount of potential and one amazingly BEAUTIFUL place.

my top 10 of Salacuim ...



the faces, laguna lachuá national park, time together, at your door service, chixoy river,
jungle shower, the ride, fresh pineapple, main street, hammocks