Blog Entry – 22/3/09
Yesterday was my two-monthiversary in Guatemala. Perhaps it’s time for a bit of a review; be prepared for some self-indulgence later on. First though, this week, which has been a bit more interesting than last.
Firstly, no scorpions this week, though I did have to kill a cockroach on Saturday morning. This week has been mental, I’ve taught 30 hours of classes, which is a lot I can assure you. I’d be interested to know how many hours you guys teaching at home do, and if it’s as much as this, how you do it. I am exhausted. Still, I am looking forward to a pretty big paycheck at the end of this month.
Football this week was a little disappointing. We were only six out of seven again so a 6-3 defeat sounds like a respectable effort, but that hides the fact that the opposition never even got out of a jog. I think the big problem is lack of practice, but there’s not much opportunity. Guatemala doesn’t really do parks, they just build houses on them. There’s very little green space here, except in the middle of the main east to west highway. This is closed each Sunday for people to use as a park, which is nice but not really ideal. Apparently London is about 50% green space: in Guatemala the figure is more like 5%. Football-wise, I’m starting to favour the idea of joining a softball league instead. I was rounders captain in primary school, so I have experience.
On Friday evening our taxista, Freddi, invited housemate Andrea and I to his house and to watch a religious procession in El Pueblito (the little village), where he lives. I’ve talked before about how religious Guatemala is, but it’s worth mentioning again especially as we are in the run up to Semana Santa (Holy Week). Every bus you get on has numerous figures of Jesus and other religious minutiae, and most of the ‘camionetas’ are painted with “Jesus Es Mi Pastor” or suchlike. This obviously doesn’t help too much with keeping them safe though, as the number of bus-drivers murdered this year is already in double figures. Freddy, by comparison, is not so fanatical, keeping the iconography down to a small pendant of Christ on the cross hung from his rear-view mirror and ‘D-I-O-S’ written on the side of four pads of post-its on his dashboard.
Anyway, Freddi’s invitation poses a couple of problems. One, it threatens a whole evening of speaking Spanish, at which I am still less than proficient. Secondly, watching religious festivals make me feel rather awkward and slightly perverted: I’ve never quite seen why people who are wholly irreligious choose to get married in church. I can respect that people worship, but going to watch seems a little weird. I put these concerns to one side though, as this is something that few foreigners get to see in Guatemala -you can’t just wander into a village here, order a cream tea and potter about in the churchyard like you could in England. So, after work on Friday Freddy picks us up from our house and drives us up the hill south of the city to El Pueblito.
Freddi lives in a three storey house constructed of concrete blocks. It’s pretty austere but homely, and contains a nice stereo, big TV complete with Nintendo Wii for his nephew, Davide. He shares the house with his wife, three daughters, one of their husbands. He also has three cocker spaniels, who live perched precariously on the roof. His uncle lives next door, with several other relations. When we arrive, his family are engaged in building a shrine outside the house for the procession.
The procession takes the form of several of the women from the village carrying a statue of Jesus dragging the cross through the village. They are followed by a battered Nissan with a huge amplifier lashed to the top. From this emerges a stately march at deafening volume. Each house in the village has constructed a shrine outside, lit with candles or floodlights, and featuring variously pictures or statues of Jesus, melons, bits of tree and incense burners. The procession halts at each house, the music is turned off and the women say prayers through a microphone to the kneeling population. I stay back and observe while Andrea takes photos. I think about how privileged I am to be seeing this, and then about how many houses are in the village and how many stops the procession will make before it gets to Freddi’s house at the top of the hill. I reckon about 15 instances of listening to unintelligible prayers before I get some food. The children of the village prove to be more entertaining, they seem to be excused from the procession and amuse themselves playing football. Some of them speak a little English and shout “How are you?” They don’t really seem to understand when I answer them though. I try in Spanish instead with no more success. The only person who I seem to be able to communicate with is Davide, who is six. I think our Spanish is probably at about the same level, though that might be unfair on him.
Andrea meanwhile is proving a hit with the children. She is surrounded by them, showing them pictures on her digital camera and chattering away in Spanish. Andrea was definitely born to teach kids. I cower by Freddi’s side: “Muchos amigos,” he says pointing at Andrea. “Si,” I reply, then after a pause “Ella es muy beuno con los ninos”. I suspect that this is less than perfect Spanish, but I get my point across.
After about an hour of prayers and singing the procession winds its way to Freddi’s house. I stand next to him on a step. His daughters kneel in front of the shrine. Prayers are said and songs are sung, he looks at me and smiles. I can tell he’s proud. After one more halt, the procession makes its way back to the church. We follow it and bathe in the stares of the villagers who weren’t involved in the procession. Normally I feel fairly foreign just walking around the city, here I feel triply so. When we get to the church, the lady pastor gives a mercifully short speech and then thanks everyone for coming, including personally thanking “our visitors”, prompting everyone to turn around and applaud Andrea and I. I wonder if this is really deserved, all I’ve done is stand around and look out of place.
We retire to Freddi’s house for tacos and sweetbreads, both of which are delicious. I spend the rest of the evening murdering the Spanish language in an attempt to communicate, and confessing that yes, the English do drink a lot (well, we do). Then we go back home through the ravine, which Freddi tells us isn’t that dangerous after all, and is absolutely amazing. I set my alarm for 6:30am (on a Saturday!) and go to bed.
Saturday night is birthday night, no less than three people associated with the school had birthdays around last weekend, so on Saturday night we went out for some drinks and a bit of dancing in Cuatro Grados Norte, a small, slightly bohemian area which is springing up in Zona 4. It’s definitely the best part of the city I’ve been to. The bars are cool, the crowds are good and you can row about drink prices in pigeon Spanish. We go to a bar where we are the only white people, and show the locals how you should definitely not go about dancing.
Since I started writing this a while ago more stuff has happened. Yesterday we all got sent home early as Guatemala City was ‘kicking off’ a bit. The gangsters here murdered 8 bus drivers for not paying their extortion monies, and also two Koreans for no good reason at all. Then the bus drivers blocked the roads, the army came out and martial law was looking like it might get declared. In the end I don’t think that it did. It made little difference to me anyway, I went home, went for a run, ate some soup and watched ‘The Last Castle’ with Robert Redford. It’s a hard job living here, but someone has to do it.
So how is it going? Well, actually really good. The teaching’s going well, though in terms of grammar it’s a very steep learning curve especially as I prefer to teach higher levels, and the people at the school are great. They kind of have to be though, as it’s not the easiest place to meet people here. There’s little nightlife and what there is is eye-wateringly expensive for poorly paid English teachers. The house is also fine, I’m enjoying things being a bit more simple, though the electricity cutting out halfway through your shower is never a good thing. I’m not that sunburnt, though not at all tanned either. I’ll end with two wishes:
1) The school recruits a teacher who’s halfway decent at football, but not so good as to upstage me.
2) Someone brings me a computer, or points one out that I can afford here.
Thanks for reading all this. I’m also attaching some parade photos, courtesy of Andrea.
AG
Yesterday was my two-monthiversary in Guatemala. Perhaps it’s time for a bit of a review; be prepared for some self-indulgence later on. First though, this week, which has been a bit more interesting than last.
Firstly, no scorpions this week, though I did have to kill a cockroach on Saturday morning. This week has been mental, I’ve taught 30 hours of classes, which is a lot I can assure you. I’d be interested to know how many hours you guys teaching at home do, and if it’s as much as this, how you do it. I am exhausted. Still, I am looking forward to a pretty big paycheck at the end of this month.
Football this week was a little disappointing. We were only six out of seven again so a 6-3 defeat sounds like a respectable effort, but that hides the fact that the opposition never even got out of a jog. I think the big problem is lack of practice, but there’s not much opportunity. Guatemala doesn’t really do parks, they just build houses on them. There’s very little green space here, except in the middle of the main east to west highway. This is closed each Sunday for people to use as a park, which is nice but not really ideal. Apparently London is about 50% green space: in Guatemala the figure is more like 5%. Football-wise, I’m starting to favour the idea of joining a softball league instead. I was rounders captain in primary school, so I have experience.
On Friday evening our taxista, Freddi, invited housemate Andrea and I to his house and to watch a religious procession in El Pueblito (the little village), where he lives. I’ve talked before about how religious Guatemala is, but it’s worth mentioning again especially as we are in the run up to Semana Santa (Holy Week). Every bus you get on has numerous figures of Jesus and other religious minutiae, and most of the ‘camionetas’ are painted with “Jesus Es Mi Pastor” or suchlike. This obviously doesn’t help too much with keeping them safe though, as the number of bus-drivers murdered this year is already in double figures. Freddy, by comparison, is not so fanatical, keeping the iconography down to a small pendant of Christ on the cross hung from his rear-view mirror and ‘D-I-O-S’ written on the side of four pads of post-its on his dashboard.
Anyway, Freddi’s invitation poses a couple of problems. One, it threatens a whole evening of speaking Spanish, at which I am still less than proficient. Secondly, watching religious festivals make me feel rather awkward and slightly perverted: I’ve never quite seen why people who are wholly irreligious choose to get married in church. I can respect that people worship, but going to watch seems a little weird. I put these concerns to one side though, as this is something that few foreigners get to see in Guatemala -you can’t just wander into a village here, order a cream tea and potter about in the churchyard like you could in England. So, after work on Friday Freddy picks us up from our house and drives us up the hill south of the city to El Pueblito.
Freddi lives in a three storey house constructed of concrete blocks. It’s pretty austere but homely, and contains a nice stereo, big TV complete with Nintendo Wii for his nephew, Davide. He shares the house with his wife, three daughters, one of their husbands. He also has three cocker spaniels, who live perched precariously on the roof. His uncle lives next door, with several other relations. When we arrive, his family are engaged in building a shrine outside the house for the procession.
The procession takes the form of several of the women from the village carrying a statue of Jesus dragging the cross through the village. They are followed by a battered Nissan with a huge amplifier lashed to the top. From this emerges a stately march at deafening volume. Each house in the village has constructed a shrine outside, lit with candles or floodlights, and featuring variously pictures or statues of Jesus, melons, bits of tree and incense burners. The procession halts at each house, the music is turned off and the women say prayers through a microphone to the kneeling population. I stay back and observe while Andrea takes photos. I think about how privileged I am to be seeing this, and then about how many houses are in the village and how many stops the procession will make before it gets to Freddi’s house at the top of the hill. I reckon about 15 instances of listening to unintelligible prayers before I get some food. The children of the village prove to be more entertaining, they seem to be excused from the procession and amuse themselves playing football. Some of them speak a little English and shout “How are you?” They don’t really seem to understand when I answer them though. I try in Spanish instead with no more success. The only person who I seem to be able to communicate with is Davide, who is six. I think our Spanish is probably at about the same level, though that might be unfair on him.
Andrea meanwhile is proving a hit with the children. She is surrounded by them, showing them pictures on her digital camera and chattering away in Spanish. Andrea was definitely born to teach kids. I cower by Freddi’s side: “Muchos amigos,” he says pointing at Andrea. “Si,” I reply, then after a pause “Ella es muy beuno con los ninos”. I suspect that this is less than perfect Spanish, but I get my point across.
After about an hour of prayers and singing the procession winds its way to Freddi’s house. I stand next to him on a step. His daughters kneel in front of the shrine. Prayers are said and songs are sung, he looks at me and smiles. I can tell he’s proud. After one more halt, the procession makes its way back to the church. We follow it and bathe in the stares of the villagers who weren’t involved in the procession. Normally I feel fairly foreign just walking around the city, here I feel triply so. When we get to the church, the lady pastor gives a mercifully short speech and then thanks everyone for coming, including personally thanking “our visitors”, prompting everyone to turn around and applaud Andrea and I. I wonder if this is really deserved, all I’ve done is stand around and look out of place.
We retire to Freddi’s house for tacos and sweetbreads, both of which are delicious. I spend the rest of the evening murdering the Spanish language in an attempt to communicate, and confessing that yes, the English do drink a lot (well, we do). Then we go back home through the ravine, which Freddi tells us isn’t that dangerous after all, and is absolutely amazing. I set my alarm for 6:30am (on a Saturday!) and go to bed.
Saturday night is birthday night, no less than three people associated with the school had birthdays around last weekend, so on Saturday night we went out for some drinks and a bit of dancing in Cuatro Grados Norte, a small, slightly bohemian area which is springing up in Zona 4. It’s definitely the best part of the city I’ve been to. The bars are cool, the crowds are good and you can row about drink prices in pigeon Spanish. We go to a bar where we are the only white people, and show the locals how you should definitely not go about dancing.
Since I started writing this a while ago more stuff has happened. Yesterday we all got sent home early as Guatemala City was ‘kicking off’ a bit. The gangsters here murdered 8 bus drivers for not paying their extortion monies, and also two Koreans for no good reason at all. Then the bus drivers blocked the roads, the army came out and martial law was looking like it might get declared. In the end I don’t think that it did. It made little difference to me anyway, I went home, went for a run, ate some soup and watched ‘The Last Castle’ with Robert Redford. It’s a hard job living here, but someone has to do it.
So how is it going? Well, actually really good. The teaching’s going well, though in terms of grammar it’s a very steep learning curve especially as I prefer to teach higher levels, and the people at the school are great. They kind of have to be though, as it’s not the easiest place to meet people here. There’s little nightlife and what there is is eye-wateringly expensive for poorly paid English teachers. The house is also fine, I’m enjoying things being a bit more simple, though the electricity cutting out halfway through your shower is never a good thing. I’m not that sunburnt, though not at all tanned either. I’ll end with two wishes:
1) The school recruits a teacher who’s halfway decent at football, but not so good as to upstage me.
2) Someone brings me a computer, or points one out that I can afford here.
Thanks for reading all this. I’m also attaching some parade photos, courtesy of Andrea.
AG
