Henry the cat

So there is a cat that hangs out in my backyard. His name is Henry. We had been getting along fine, as he respected some simple rules of cohabitation.

The first rule was he didn’t come in to my living space. And for this I didn’t poison him. It was a mutual agreement we had going. It worked out for both of us. A friend also pointed out that he would probably keep the mouse population under control. It seemed to make sense.

The second rule was he didn’t eat my food. Barring an isolated incident many months ago when he ravaged a loaf of bread in my kitchen, plastic wrapper and all, we had gotten along relatively well.

Until recently that is. I understand he is a street cat, and probably has to hunt his own food. Well this shouldn’t be a problem, as I know first hand there are quite a few mice/rats roaming around town. I have seen him hunting as far as the central park. However, he seemed to be incapable of hunting down the little mouse that was frequenting my bathroom for a few days. I considered this an affront to our mutual agreement. Ultimately though, this isn’t the greatest transgression. Inept hunting skills, I can deal with. Its unfortunate, but I haven’t really witnessed any mice for a number of months (knock on slightly rotted wood I hang my hammock from.)

However, when Henry began getting in to my food stores, my bread and butter (literally) I began to take issue with the feline fink. The volunteer I replaced had warned me to watch my food, because he sometimes helped himself to your foodstuffs. I had heard stories of a bold Henry making steaks on the grill disappear. I had not experienced such a contravention of our agreement so I thought I was safe. Until a few weeks ago when I was getting ready to cook up about a half pound of ground beef for some hamburgers. I left the meat unattended for a few moments, and when I returned it was gone, nowhere to be found. It took me a few minutes of searching to find some of the meat tucked away in a dark corner, half eaten.

I wasn’t going to risk cat cooties to salvage the rest of the meat, so I just let him eat the rest of it. Luckily for me, my mom had sent me a spam single package, an ingenious individualized serving of that delectable, fully cooked meat which only required heating to consume. I had already prepped the hamburger bun with ketchup and mustard, so I wasn’t going to waste that simply because Henry got greedy. It worked out in the end, the Spam turned out to be a formidable hamburger substitute.

TV Blues

My TV broke about a month ago. I haven't been able to replace it because the big box store I bought it at doesn't carry the same model anymore. This is what it looks like when I turn it on.

So I know the first thing you are gonna say, "What business does a Peace Corps volunteer have with a TV, in his house!?" Well damnit, it gets boring sometimes. And if nothing else, the TV let me watch countless hours of soccer, which was fantastic. I also knew all the gossip on Mexican soap opera stars. 

Since it broke, I have had alot of free time, and I started organizing my itunes library of 10,000+ songs. I have also been reading alot. And occasionaly, I even leave my house to walk around and enjoy this new thing we got called, "sunshine." It's pretty rad. 

A Chocolate Affair

Reports are coming from the department of Huehuetenango of an unfortunate event which took place this last week. Information is still a bit hazy, but here are the facts:

The victim was a 8 month old, dual core processor, 4GB RAM, 250 GB hard drive, 13.3¨gateway laptop. It´s model number is being withheld pending notification of next of kin. The culprit in this most regrettable of incidents is said to be a 150 gram bar of ¨Cote D´or - Noir de Noir¨ (roughly translates to: expensive as hell) Belgian Chocolate. For the protection of the rest of David´s electronics, the chocolate was preventively consumed in its entirety to avoid future mishaps. What follows is a cautionary tale of the dangers of chocolate to our modern way of life.



So the other day I was enjoying some of the afore mentioned fine Belgian Chocolates my mother sent me during lunch. I was also watching an episode of Band of Brothers, which I got in my last package from home. At some point, I became distracted and moved on to do something else in my house. I´m not exactly sure how it happened, but a piece of fine, expensive, delicious Belgian chocolate was left on my laptop, right by the mousepad.

Not suspecting there was a piece of cocoa deliciousness on my laptop, I closed the lid and went back to work, the whole seven steps away from the front door of my house. When I returned after work, I decided to go visit the local internet café in order to finish downloading a movie I got from Itunes.

You can imagine my surprise when I opened my relatively new, and very well preserved (until now at least) laptop to find a brown pool of muck all over the front. I honestly did not know what it was for the first few seconds. My first thought should have been ¨Oh crap, there goes my laptop, tool I use for my work daily, giver of entertainment in the form of dvd playage and music reproducing, link to the modern world!.¨But honestly, my first thought was ¨Damn, I didn´t eat that chocolate? How´d it get away?!?¨

I´d be lying to you if I said I didn´t consider eating the melted chocolate off my plastic protective sheet-covered laptop´s deck. But common sense and the horrified stares of the other patrons at the internet café stopped me from saving what I could of this sticky situation.

A confused face and a offer to pay her cold quetzal cash convinced a nearby food vendor to facilitiate some napkins, which only did a so-so job of slopping up the mess. Unfortunately, a very snazzy dress shirt I was wearing, as well as the handkerchief I was carrying at the time were victims of the cleanup. Doctor´s listed their conditions as stable, but still horribly stained with dark chocolate. Their outlooks for recovery look grim.

Luckily, the piece of quite expensive equipment has kept functioning until this moment (fingers crossed). It did get some chocolate mashed between the screen edge and the frame, which is a bit troubling, but like I said, so far so good. Also I´m pretty sure my media card reader is kaput as it´s pretty much jammed full of 56% cocoa beans from papau new guinea.

All in all a scary experience from which I have extrapolated the following moral. If you got the chocolate, don´t futz around and eat it all at once, or your pc may be the one to enjoy it for you.

Justice

7.52 am Saturday

I am awake. I have been awake for the last hour and a half. I have been awake for the last hour and a half because my neighbors (whom I share a very thin wall with) have been playing gospel music very, very loudly for the last hour and a half. I had no intention to be up this early.

My eyes itch from the sunlight coming in through the window above my door. I have managed to block most of it with a strategically placed towel. It isn’t a problem most mornings as I generally sleep through sunrise without a problem. However, when I’m awoken against my will around that time, I have a tough time falling asleep again. I bury my head between my lumpy pillows to no respite. I pray, no pun intended, for a break in the barrage in order to doze off comfortably into the nether world of sleep once again. But honestly who am I kidding. No such luck. My head hurts from a combination of lack of sleep, the bone rattling music coming through the door that separates our respective domiciles, and my brains vehement denial to process this “music.”

My door at 6.30am

When I say gospel music I don’t mean down home, dance-inducing, clap-along spirituals. No. This is a smorgasbord of ill-produced songs in every major style (rock, pop, cumbia, ranchera, salsa, regular guitar-y religious chant, etc). It seems like a sampler they give out at the temple or something. All of course include many passages such as “God is the Path,” “I found the light in the Lord,” and my personal favorite, “Entregate al Senor,” meaning roughly “Give yourself to the Lord.” There is one in particular that grind my gears. It reminds me of an “Old McDonald had a farm”-esque campy rhythm but with the aforementioned lyrics and sentiment. I wish I could go back to sleep.

And its not that I mind the music so much. I mean, music is great. However, variety is the spice of life. And these people play the same 10 songs over and over and painfully over again. My ears ache at the sound of the crescendo beginning of the first song on the album. I’m all for religious freedom, but not at 6.30am on a Saturday.

Oddly enough the last few tracks on the album are DJ Flex’s (The artist known as Nigga around the world, except in the US for obvious reasons) “Baby, Te Quiero.” This Panamanian reggae artist is quite popular here, but how he got his song (and various remixes even including an a capella version) on this particular album will forever elude me. He must have one hell of a marketing team. It’s hilarious to me that the strictly religious stuff is played when the father is home, but as soon as he leaves, its “Baby, Te Quiero!!!” blasting for hours on end. Same song. On repeat. I think my ears are going to start bleeding soon.

And this has been happening for the last 7 days in a row. They also turn the music on at night, but that doesn’t bother me so much. It’s just a horrible way to be awoken, that’s all. So I resolve to fight back. During the week I don’t mind so much, because I can forget about setting my alarm clock and don’t have to worry, because sure as the sun will rise, the music is on at the crack of dawn. I don’t know what time the sun comes up around here, I have made a concerted effort to not know. But it must be pretty damn close to 6.30am judging by the weak sun rays filtering into my room when I am awoken by the music.

I fire up the old laptop, and turn on the awesome Logitech speakers I found on amazon.com for 25 bucks, even though they retailed at Best Buy for 100 clams. I try to select from my 45 gigabyte library of tunes what I judge as the furthest cry apart from what they are listening to. I settle on a French duo called Justice (I know, I know, with a name like that it is a godsend.) Even better the tracks I play are off of their latest album, Cross, whose album art is a gigantic yellow catholic cross on a black blackground (pictured below.) It’s perfect. I feel justified to play their songs, righteous you might even say. The names are even right for the situation, with names such as Genesis (which was featured on a Cadillac commercial recently), Let there be light, Waters of Nazareth, Stress (what I’m feeling right now) and last but certainly not least, DVNO (which is sounded out phonetically in spanish sounds like “Divine.”

Justice´s album cover for Cross

I turn the music up, but just enough to drown out the noise from next door. Even though my european electronic music is pretty loud, it’s just nice to have something streaming in my ears that I chose, something I know and appreciate. I start to drift into a highly relaxed state of near unconsciousness. I can’t turn off their music, but I can damn sure drown it out.

And then my house flooded... Twice.

So wednesday was a big day. I got a visit from my project specialist, kind of like my supervisor at peace corps. All the comedors in my town were closed, so we drove into Huehue. The first eatery on the road is none other than the golden arches, ambassadors to the world. You got it, McDonald´s which had opened up recently near my town. She said she had craving for it and who was I to intervene. It was her treat. Awesome. Over my quarter pounder with cheese we talked about what I had been up to the first month and a half in site, and all the projects I would like to see undertaken with the coming year.

It was a good visit and I got my vacation plans all squared away with the boss. She came to talk to my counterpart, who gave me rave reviews. My mayor also had good things to say about my work so far so that was good too. Now, this visit ended around 4.30pm. It looked like it might rain, so I grabbed my rain jacket, just in case. Everyone in town swore up and down that it NEVER rained here after November. Boy, were they wrong.

It started raining as we say in panama, ¨un palo de agua.¨(read: alot) So now I was stuck in my office, which is really just two doors down from my house, but for solidarities sake, I stayed with everyone else who was stuck and had a long commute home. One guy had to ride his bike 2 km, through now muddy uphill roads. I did not envy him. So around 5.45pm when I had finally had enough, I waltzed home to find my house flooded.

On the ground was about an inch of water, product of a drain clogged with leaves. Luckily my room had been spared, with the my computer and tv connections on the floor. Also spared, the carpet I had inherited from the past volunteer. My kitchen, bathroom and backyard were not so lucky. They was a mix of dirt, leaves and rain water sloshing about my house. Most comical of all were my shower sandals floating through my kitchen. The culprit in this unfortunate debacle? Leaves that were not picked up by me in the backyard because everyone had sworn up and down ¨it never rains here during december!¨ I had to go out in the rain and constantly keep clearing the drain. My shower drain had also mysteriously clogged so i had to take turns between clearing the other and sloshing my way into the backyard to clear the other.

Fortunately I had invested in a pair of waterproof hiking boots before I joined the Peace Corps, and boy did they deliver on this occasion. My new rain jacket I received in my christmas box from my mom also worked to specifications.

I woke up the next day to find my floor caked in dirt with leaves scattered about. It was going to be a bear to clean and I had just run out of cleaning fluid to mop. I decided to shower, and go to the store to get some cleaning supplies for the project at hand. As I turned the shower on, only a hiss of air came out. Great, no water today. So I took a bucket bath, and went into town. I came back around noon. As I entered my house, I heard the sound of running water. Of course now there´s water! But at least this meant I could flush my toilet without prejudice. So I walked into my kitchen to find once again, a good deal of water on the floor. I turned to the bathroom, where I had left the shower on, product of forgetting to turn the knob to the closed position. Verdamnt. I had to wait for the mess to drain again, and then set about cleaning it all up.

Hey, at least I got McDonald´s out of the whole deal.

Now that I´m settled...

I didn´t really post up anything while I was in training because time kind of flew by. I can see now that once at my site, the pace of life is alot more shall we say, ¨relaxed.¨ Since arriving at my town near Huehuetenango, I have been able to visit about 8 communities of the 17 that surround us. I consider this a success. Getting out there has been an ordeal at times, but the Muni has made arrangements since we are not allowed to use motorcycles. A few of the projects we have been working on are organizing our COMUDE, which is like a super community group, gathering info for a new census the central government asked us to do, and getting internet for the office. It´s slow going on all three, but progress is being made. A few interesting things that have happened lately:

1.I have a cat named Henry which is in my backyard regardless of whether I want it there or not. He ate a can of tuna I left out. It wouldn´t be so bad, but tuna is about 2 dollars a can here.

2. I went to Lake Atitlan for thanksgiving with a bunch of other volunteers, which was awesome. It was relaxing, the food was good, albeit expensive, and it was just nice to not have pressure to be ¨on¨ all the time.

3. I don´t think I am going to be able to get rid of all the spiders in my house, I guess I am just going to have to get comfortable having them around. One upside, they keep the fly population down.

4. I finally figured out how to make rice well given the altitude, turns out I have to use a lot more water than I regularly would.

5. We will be receiving ArcView GIS training soon, which I´m looking forward to very much.

6. Being able to talk on Tigo after 9pm and being charged only the first five minutes goes a long ways towards staying in touch with everybody.

So that´s about it for now. Hopefully my office will get internet soon and I´ll be able to update this guy more often.

A Month In

So I have been in Guatemala for a month now. It feels like its been years. My town feels pretty safe, and I feel like I can travel without problems. I have taken a few field trips to visit other volunteers and haven't run into any problems. My housing situation is great, I have a really nice house with my own bedroom with a door and its own bathroom, which is alot more than I can say for some of the other volunteers. The walk uphill sucks to go into town, or to catch the bus, but its getting better.

My host mom's dog doesn't bite me much anymore, but now has turned on her, which is kind of funny. It was also her birthday (host mom, not the dog) last week, and she totally did not mention anything at all about it. I found out about 6pm because her daughter came in with a birthday cake. I was on my way out, so I wasn't even there to sing happy birthday. She did however get a washing machine, which is awesome because now when she washes clothes, it dries alot quicker.

I did my first charla, or talk, to a group yesterday. I talked to about 15 high schoolers about citizen participation. It was awesome. When I asked why it is important to be a part of your community, they answered almost exactly what I had in mind to tell them. Also, they really got into the activities, and participated alot. If anything, I didn't give them enough chances to speak their minds. I also talked a little about the importance of going to college.

I am going to another town tomorrow to see some ruins, and its supposedly really impressive. I am really excited to just travel around, since during training we are so limited in our freedom. That has probably been the toughest part of this whole thing so far, not being able to move about freely, stay anywhere overnight, go too far. But I guess that this trip I am taking this week will ease that concern a bit. We are going out west for a weeklong training session. We are going to give a presentation to a community group about leadership. We are also staying at a luxurious hotel where we will be paying about 4 dollars a night for, so I am super curious to see what that will be all about. I am all packed already (no se rian mom and vali) and just not looking forward to the long ride in the bus. It sure beats getting on a camioneta with our luggage though.