I´ve been away

Team meetings, Livingston. lot´s of fun. 4 or 5 days
visiting students in their communities. Awesome and reewarding.6 days
traveling with Jenny. lots of fun. week, two weekends.

now I am finishing up, doing my final reports and enjoying as much as I can my last days at school, at home, and with Jenny before we go to seperate countries... again.

Jordan

Host Famly part. 3: Carmela

Carmela: Host mom, some 40 years old. A leader of the women at the church. As a mother she has to spend a lot of time in the oftentimes smoky kitchen, making tortillas over the wood fire (which she sometimes does to the beat of a song), but when you are in the kitchen with her, she is a fun person to talk with. She is not as much of a jokester as Matias, but she also laughs rather easily and is easier to have a sustained conversation with. I have had some very fun chats with her in the kitchen. Along with normal cooking duties, she also sometimes has to chop wood into smaller pieces sometimes too. She is very dedicated to the church, very confident in God and his work on earth, and she is an extremely good prayer. I have watched her launch brooms like spears at ducks and chickens in part of the never ending battle to keep them out of the kitchen.

Jordan

Memory and coming to terms with the end

I have always known that one year sounded short, even if at times it defiantly felt long. But about a month ago MCC sent us information on preparing to come home, two days ago I sat in one of my favorite places in Cobán, drinking a strong mixture of some of the best coffees in Alta Verapaz (famous for it´s coffee fincas) along with cake and surrounded by beautiful and rare orchids and wrote a list of things I should still try to do, personal and work related, and then sat down to writing what might serve as my toast to Elijah at his and Sina´s stateside wedding reception. Beginning to prepare for something outside of Guatemala is probably the most notable sign that soon I will leave.

I still have a month and a half, but the middle part of that month and a half will be taken up by travel with MCC, travel to visit some students, and then travel with Jenny. And the months have been passing by flying. May past by as fast as its´ frequent afternoon showers come and go. One losses himself in the overwhelming power of the rain and thunder, and in a few hours, its´ chaos seems like a strange dream.
Yesterday I went running along a little route along a river. The river is bigger and faster, and if possible, maybe even a little bit greener than the last time I ran along it. I ran past recently seeded corn fields, hills that have been replanted with trees, and a group of women or two doing their washing. There was a beautiful light sprinkle perfect for running, but I did not push myself but went slowly and enjoyed my solitude on the small path which sometimes is simply the path that a water line going to Carchá follows. I wondered what this place will look like in my memory. Memory lies, but I think in the case of a traveler, photography is the bigger culprit. I thought as I ran that it would be nice if I could have my camera along, but I am sure that I would take no picture that would be satisfactory. At the same time that I don´t trust my camera to capture what I see, I also know that I need to take some more pictures, and fast, of my host family and students at Bezaleel. It really is too bad that here people do not smile for pictures. Even the people who otherwise seem to not be able to stop smiling and laughing, will turn dead serious for a photo.

Thankfully, in my memory, they will be smiling. And in my memory, the river I run along side will still look like melted jade. And the water from the spring at the end of the run will be sweeter than I can describe. In my memory, my host mom will be looking down at me, while in my photo I´ll be head and shoulders above her.

Photos really are such liars.

Jordan

GIVE ME MY MONEY, HOLLISTER

I see all these Hollister “CALIFORNIA” shirts around here in Guatemala and I have to wonder where Hollister gets off selling me so shamelessly. Where did it find the audacity? I was born and raised in California. I am a living part of the legend that Hollister so shamelessly uses to sell it´s T-shirts. I have even visited other states, Europe, South America, and now Guatemala, in effect, spreading the coolness and popularity of California all around the world. When people ask me where I am from, I don´t say the United States, I say, California.

And now Hollister is taking the name California all around the world (right into the lonely Guatemala mountains), printing it on T-shirts and in the process turning what was once cool about California into factory produced lameness. Who gave Hollister the right to make the name California synonymous with preppy, act like I am too cool for school, pretend to be rebellious high schoolers with nothing better to do but shop in malls for shirts that are too tight. I feel like Snoop Dogg and every rap enthusiast in Los Angeles must have felt when the author of “Gin and Juice” went on to sell “Big Macs and Apple Pie” at that wonderful joint, McDonalds.

Betrayed. We can only hope that the people from Hollister are a bit more ashamed than Snoop Dogg was.

At least anybody who has to pay bills can understand Snoop Doggs selling out, but I don´t see a fat wad of money in MY pocket.

That´s right. Betrayed once again by shameless business practices. Hollister is stealing. Not only are they not giving me and my friends from California the money that we deserve, they are doing something far worse: They are stealing my identity. How am I supposed to continue saying that I am from California when hearing the name fires of the same synapses in peoples brains as those ugly little letters, “AF.”
Hollister is, metaphorically speaking, doing the same thing that Canadian gold companies are doing in Guatemala. That is ripping apart mountains, contaminating water, and paying small wages in exchange for gold being sold around the world. Myself and other Californians are the gold being sold around the world, and it is our souls that are being ripped apart.

Obama, your governmental regulations on business practices are not nearly tough enough. I want money for property damage. Essentially Hollister is lowering the value of all California property. I want money for the time I spend with a shrink trying to find a new identity for myself that isn´t bottled up and plastered onto high school boys chests. I want Holister charged for identity theft, and I want them to pay. I want a shirt that says, I am California, and I hate Hollister.

Jordan

Ps. I used to have no answer to fellow students in Kansas when they would ask me why I decided to move (in a baffled tone of voice). Now I do… and it is written on thousands of 20 dollar shirts.

Host Fam part 2: Matias

Matias: host dad, 40 some years old. Works hard everyday either with his construction job or on a house which the family is building for one of their children. Matias loves to joke around and is also very energetic. Every other Sunday he leads a sort of pre-service Sunday school. Often times he comes home from work and we shake hands while we talk about our day and how we are. I have gotten way better at shaking hands since I have been here in Guatemala (one usually shakes everybody´s hand in a room when he walks in, and handshakes can last a long time. He has a slight. Once I turned around in the bath house to see him in the chicken pen holding one limp rooster and using it to attack another rooster, I watched for about five minutes and I think it was as much for the fun of it as to make the one that was getting beaten to stop attacking the one that my host father was using to beat it up. He eats his food fast and then drinks his glass of tea in about five seconds flat, leans back and lets out a long “wwwoooooww” wipes his mouth and moves onto the next activity. He is always concerned for my well being. Sometimes he will grab his nephews, and hold them very clothes, cheek to cheek, for fairly long periods of time.

Jordan

ps. and I also had a very fun trip following Dave Janzen around the mountains surrounding Nebaj. Rachel and friends were also along for the fun.

The Political Crisis in Guatemala:

The normal: Impunity, crime, corruption. The judicial system desperately needs to be fixed. On the one hand, way more police are needed, but on the other hand, law enforcement itself is quite corrupt. While in Mexico big name drug traffickers are lined up in front of huge arsenals of weapons after they are caught, in Guatemala you read about arms being stolen from the police. The absolute lack of police enforcement in some rural areas has brought the return of community justice (beatings, burnings, etc). The congress cannot pass a desperately needed fiscal reform bill.

The new: Recently a Harvard and Cambridge educated lawyer filmed a video message three days in anticipation of his assassination blaming his future assassination on high ranking bank officials in cahoots with drug traffickers and the president and the presidents wife himself. His client and client´s daughter were earlier assassinated. The lawyers claim is that Banrural, the biggest bank in Guatemala, takes money from drug traffickers and cleans it… the banks´ other biggest client, the government, stands idly by. Documents have been produced showing apparent anxiety by the Presidents personal secretary about the lawyers client. The president claims that this is the latest act of a long campaign by drug traffickers and others unsympathetic with the leftist government to destabilize his government. When I first got here the president was just finding out that he was being spied on. Now some hopefully impartial organizations such as an organization set up by the UN will be investigating the claims made by the deceased lawyer.

Anyways thousands have taken to streets to protest and call for the resignation of the president. Today the government organized a protest in support, but the paper here ran an article saying that the participation in this march wouldn´t be quite as voluntary as the other. On the other hand, the paper is a city paper, and I hear that the president did better in rural areas, and the support for the counter rally apparently came from people outside of the city.

Colom is moderately liberal and those of us here working on social justice have had hope that he could make changes that would force the government to serve those that it has never served: the huge rural population of Guatemala that constitutes the “other Guatemala.” But what good is a golden head on a broken body? What could Colom do anyway if the legislative and judicial bodies are so screwed up?

This is why education is so important. Good education not only creates a more adept workforce but creates a more self-conscious public that has the skills and the confidence to demand, no require, better governance. Schools like Bezaleel can and are creating competent individuals who dream of a better Guatemala, and who simply through their quality of character will make a more just Guatemala.

On a lighter note a few weeks ago the paper ran an article on a town that said it was being terrorized by the spirit of a dead person some kids and unwittingly dug up. The author also noted that members of the reporting team also experienced some kind of supernatural event.

Jordan

ps. speaking of education, I hear that CA is going to have to make cuts on education. That seems dumb...

My host family part 1

Selbil: Little brother of 17 years. Energetic and chistoso, he smiles and laughs rather easily. He is in an accounting program in Cobán, where he attends everyday wearing the obligatory nice pants, nice shoes, button up tucked in shirt, hair about as long as it is allowed. He calls me “cushO” (I am spelling it how it sounds) and sometimes attacks my shoulders like Rusty Moyer when he is giving someone a “massage.” He is a good soccer player. Besides playing soccer he likes to attack our little cousin, the lovable “pescadito” (little fish). Unlike many young people, Selbil does not dream of leaving for the states, but realizes that there are possibilities here in Guatemala and that his friends and the people of his community are truly important for him. He goes to church every Saturday and Sunday, prays before meals, and wonders aloud about theological problems such as homosexuality. Selbil is very easy to get along with and I am thankful for how he reached out to me from the very beginning.