things you realize when you are away

today, as i was sitting in the pharmacy, helping dole out prescriptions to guatemalan after guatemalan, my mouth started to water. an inexplicable urge to eat a turkey sandwich had overwhelmed me, and currently, it is still haunting my every thought. dont get me wrong, i love avocado. i love salsa. i love tortillas. i love black beans. but i also love eating those things once a week, or once a month. instead, i eat them 3 times a day. i love drinking water and not being terrified. i miss those things from home. i miss berries. apparently eating berries here is one of the number 1 ways to get all sorts of crazy shit - and if any of you may know, i. love. berries. strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, cranberries, the unidentifiable berry you get in a muffin at your local gas station. i miss them.

i want eegees.

luckily, i have a main squeeze who is planning my return by bringing me the aforementioned eegees to the airport, and i must remind him immediately that berries must be in the fridge and the candy drawer must be stocked. i am impatiently waiting to walk off the plane, into my mans arms - but almost more importantly, into a brown paper bag filled with a fresh turkey sandwich, frenchfries, and a teagee.

some things

1) abortion in guatemala is illegal, and punishable by death.

2) guatemalans love pancakes.

3) pap smears take only 2 minutes to complete in guatemala.

4) every single hot sauce made here is better than the next.

5) when a mother dies in the hospital in guatemala, the grief and suffering of the family is unmistakable, but the guard in the waiting room kicks them out of the hospital, for creating a scene.

roasting marshmallows in lava.

on tuesday we hiked a volcano. it is called pacaya. at the top of pacaya, after 2 hours of straight up hiking, you break through the thick layer of clouds and you see a sight that could only be described as the most breathtaking vista on earth. j.r.tolkein...eat your heart out. so, when you get to the base of the volcano (as high as you can go without your shoes melting) you start to hike out in the black battle field of hardened magma, watching your step and looking forward towards the feral dogs that walk with you in hopes of getting food (how they do it, why they do it, left me astounded). at one point, if you stop to take a breath, a few things happen. one thing is that you look straight, and you see 3 more volcanoes reaching high above the clouds, one right after another, and the vibrant green vegitation that contrasts with the black as night rock you stand on. the other thing that happens is that your shoes start to melt. after you walk for a little while, your feet always moving, you reach a point where you can look through cracks in the rock, and see bright red streams flowing through them, about 2 or 3 feet below. that is lava, there. a group of german tourists, who had brought jet-puff marshmallows, decided that their kids had enough sugar (much to the shagrin of the 13 year old son, who gave me the evilist eye ever when i thanked him) and gave us their half finished bag. our tour guide had brought a stick, and we threw some of the jumbo mallows on it. then, we spent the next few minutes, always quick stepping some our shoes didnt become tar, roasting marshmallows in the ambient heat of the lava. true, i love roasted marshmallows over a campfire. true, i love looking out over an unknown terrain and thinking, wow, this is incredible. but the unbelievable combination of my sticky hands covered with roasted marshmallows that were roasted by lava, looking out over the sunset across jet black craggy rocks to the lush green and volcanos in the distance, was something i will never recreate. and thats the way i like it.

dressing burn victims

on monday we worked in the actual clinic, having had our share of injecting needles into children. on first arrival, we were trained to take heights and weights of the incoming patients. but then, they decided that that wasnt really that important, so we were moved into the one-stop-shop nursing room to take care of all things quick and medical. included in these tasks were taking out sutures of women who had c sections, more vaccinations but this time for people of all ages (did you know that the birth control shot is the number 1 preferred family planning method here?) and, of course, quick fixes for burn victims. an elderly man, who works as a cement mixer down by the city dump, had an accident with the mixture, and suffered severe chemical burns on both of his calves. in strong tradition of my mother, the only thing that really grosses me out in terms of ailments of the human body is a gnary, puss filled, infected, skin hanging off, basal cell layer exposed body part, with exposed nerve endings creating exruciating pain for whomever. so, of course, thats what i got to see at 8 in the morning. pancakes be damned! so, i took a deep breath, put on gloves (incredible!) and went to work with a wooden stick and some antibiotic cream. i struck up a conversation with the burned man, but he couldnt quite talk through the pain. i wasnt nervous, its not hard to swab cream on a leg, but it was an experience - no pain medication, no gauze to cover the wound, just an old man's burned leg, and me sweating and feeling amazed that i was doing it without barfing.

things that made the weekend great.

1) a zoo in a rainforest. around the town of flores and santa elena, there are several sights to see. one of those is a zoo which you have to take a boat to get to. once in the zoo, you will find all the animals of the rainforest. and dont worry, there are no fences to hold the animals in. also, there are waterslides from the canopy to the lake in the zoo.
2) spelunking. after the zoo, our group decided to check out this cave we had sort of heard of a little bit. when we arrived at the cave, we were lucky enough to be shuttled into the entrance along with a group of 45 teenage guatemalan boys on a school field trip. after a slight descent on a lighted pathway, we saw the usual cave fare - stalagtite/mites, bats chirping in the distance, the possibility of a cavein (pun obviously intended). then, what do you know, the tour guide points to what looks incredibly like a rabbit hole, and says in spanish, ladies first, and dont worry, this is only one of the smallest holes we will climb through today. then, for the next 2 hours, we were either on our hands and knees crawling through bat shit, sliding on our stomachs through bat shit to get through the tight parts, or being in total darkness save for a few flashlights with bats flying around our heads, confused and sweating and scared and laughing and swearing and trying to photodocument the experience.
3) mayan ruins with a tourguide that can answer any question on earth. tikal, one of the great pyramid complexes in the new world, was our main stop on saturday. when you walk through a place like that, you sense the magnatism, the weight, the collective memory of an entire civilization. not many words can describe how incredible it was. our tour guide, rolando, made it exponentially better by knowing how to do monkey calls, how to coerce rainforest tarantulas to come out of their underground lairs, and by having a 1 hour discussion with me about 2012, metaphysics, synchronism, and the 5th world.
4) canopy tours. what everyone does in the rainforest. all the obvious joys, including several large insects among the highest highs of the trees.
5) a bar called AAdictos? that happened.

it was one of those weekends that enlightened, tested your physical and spiritual limits, reinvigorated your sense of wonder, made you so tired you dont remember falling asleep, and made you feel completely immersed in the moment.

when buses break down in guatemala.

i needed to save a few hundred dollars, and so did a few other people. so, instead of taking the 45 minute flight to tikal, we decided to take a bus. it was a charter bus after all, and i figured that charter buses are sort of universal...what with the fabric cup holders, the guy behind you that makes you anxious to recline your seat, and the overwhelming knowledge that yes, at one point, you will have to use the unairconditioned lavatory. much to my surprise, then, when after 10 minutes of driving, the piloto, or driver, got out to smoke a cigar. i didnt misspell that word. then, about an hour after that, the bus lurched to a stop, and my friends and i looked at eachother with a mixture of confusion, and amusement. yes, we were bad ass for taking the 8 hours bus ride. no, we didnt know that the driver had an overactive bladder and an unusual hankering for cigars. so, after about 30 minutes of sitting on an emergency pull out on a country highway (see the blog post a few days ago to remind yourself what that is) 3 hours outside of the city, in the middle of burgeoning rainforest, we realize the transmission is shot. to ease my mind, i went for a quick walk into the underbrush, until i ran into (literally) a cow who mooed at me in the most vitriolic way i had ever heard. then, we played some frisbee, being careful not to throw it into the busy highway. after about 2 hours, a new bus came. sure, this one didnt have airconditioning (again...rainforest), but only a short 12 hours later, at 12 47 in the morning the next day, we arrived at the tikal bus stop, feeling achy, tired, and still, bad ass.

me, vaccinating, and where i do it.

doing laundry here is both awesome and weird

you know those days when you have to do laundry and you really dont want to? at those moments, if god descended down from the heavens and asked you in his thunderous voice, "may i, god, wash, dry, and fold your clothes for you, while you stop over at the internet cafe and drink a latte?" you would literally bow down and submit to his glory. but have you ever really thought about someone else doing your laundry? i always thought it would be bad ass, until today. see, i had to get my laundromat on, and thinking it was going to be a self wash kind of situation, i didnt bother rinsing off my pants that i wore to work today, on which feces was caked on the cuffs from walking in the shantytowns. then, i showed up at the laundromat, and someone just outstreched their hands and took my shit. literally, and figuratively. i of course started backtracking, explaining that well ok, see, its gross but its ok because its where i work and that shirt is black and new so please dont wash it with that one and can this be dried and i think i need this for tomorrow. trust me, spanish as a second language works well until there is shit on your pants.
but, lets face it. in 10 minutes i will show up, and the clothes will be folded. and dried, at least pretty much. then i will pack my bag and head to tikal to see the mayan ruins tomorrow, and be pretty thankful ive got clean pajamas.

children are people too

around lake atitlan are several mayan villages. each has a different name and a different significance to the natives peoples. they all have different catholic churches and traditional festivals. they all have a different patron saint with names including many letter like x. the one thing they do have in common is the fact that tourists come through to puruse the merchandise, and pay the local people the equivalent of 13 cents to have their picture photographed (in these mayan villages, their dress is traditional). with tourists comes essential revenue, sure. but also, it brings out the most brutal desperation of an otherwise proud and vibrant culture i have ever layed witness to. we stepped off the boat at every stop (save the 2nd stop, which was a part of the lake that was naturally heated by lava flowing underneath, creating hotsprings within the cold body of water) to the barrage of children, i mean, CHILDREN, assualting our guilty sides with handmade gifts. trinkets, really. in our group of 15 there was the entire spectrum, those who simply ignored them, those who said no, no gracias, no los quiero, or those who just handed over 1 quetzal, otra vez y otra vez, until they couldnt rummage for any more change. this was all fine, i was somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. i just kept pointing at other groups and saying, maybe you could ask them.
until dinner, i didnt really think of these little humans as children. our group of friends tossed around ideas of whether their parents taught them things to say (eg - please buy this so i can buy pencils for school) or if any of it was true. i sort of put them and their souls on the backburner and thought, well, theyre just trying to make a living. just while discussing this over sugarcane cocacola and the first pizza of the trip, a little boy approached our table holding a plastic bucket with homemade keychains. they were cute, but our whole table had already bought some from another little boy who sat in the rain and stared at us while we waited for the rest of our group on the boat earlier that day. at this particular dinner table, all of us said the same thing to him, no, no gracias, no los quiero. and then something happened that changed my life. he put his small black haired head on the table and started to weep. the weeping didnt sound like it was coming from a 6 year old, but from someone who had seen too much. took on too much. one of our group, the fluent spanish speaker, was able to understand what he was saying through heaves of his small chest. he just wanted a slice of pizza, he said. he didnt want anyone to buy his things. he just wanted pizza. after a few minutes of all of us, eyes filled with tears, looking at eachother in astonishment and confusion and horror and guilt, a little girl, perhaps 1 or 2 years the boys senior, approached the table and put her chin on his shoulder. she whispered something. his eyes were red but he stopped crying. they turned and walked away.

things you see when driving

you see things when driving on a country backroad in guatemala that you dont see on interstate 10. you see a lot of graffiti, for example. but it isnt just regular graffiti, its the size of the side of a mountain. you also see people riding bikes. but they arent cyclists, they are women carrying 50 pound sacks of carrots or corn up a 18% incline when the idea of a bike lane required a 10 minute explanation to the driver of the van from me. other things you may see are 25 people in a pickup truck going 60 miles an hour. you might also see fruits, called things like melecoton, wikowei, and durosas. every once in a while, you see about 10 dogs in a pack, more wild than tame, all the females pregnant or nursing. you might think to yourself when you see that if thats what dogs are supposed to be like. something else you might see when looking out the window on your drive to chichicastenango are the volcanic mountains, with half the hillside covered with corn and coffee plants. you might see a patch of sun breaking through the rainforest clouds, illuminating a slope of crops and dense vegetation, creating the most luminous green you have ever seen.

i have a secret, and, coffee

1) im wearing a scarf made by a mayan woman.
2) "i have a secret," a little girl whispered (in spanish) to me as her brother was getting a vaccine, "im not getting a shot today....but i LOVE shots." "i have a secret too," i whispered, getting close enough to her to make the rooster pecking between us ruffle its feathers, "i love them too. that means we are brave." this was at a tortilla factory/house in which we, keep in mind in 1 location, vaccinated 17 children. 17.
3) we went to a coffee plantation yesterday. there was a history of coffee in guatemala. quick fact - guatemala is the 5th largest producer of coffee, but 3rd in quality. ta da.
4) we are going to lake aticlan tomorrow. google it.

pedestrians do not have the right of way.

most of you either live in new york city or have been in new york city. and almost all of you have heard me say, as i walk across the street in any place, "no, its cool, pedestrians have the right of way, im not going to get hit by a car." now, imagine a very busy intersection in new york city. then multiply the number of motorcycles and bicylces by 10, divide the number of pedestrians by half, add some a subtropical rainstorm, and multiply that all by many cars having bad brake systems. oh, and then add in a sprinkle of cultural difference. then, think about every intersection being like this. the light turns green, which is tricky to begin with because there is only 1 light per intersection, so going 3 out of the 4 ways hinders your ability to judge whether to go or not, and everyone does 2 things: honks, and goes. no. matter. what. oh oh oh and to that last equation above, add in several piles of stray dog feces that you have to avoid while crossing. so youre walking across the intersection, neigh, RUNNING FOR YOUR LIFE across the intersection, jumping over dog shit and hitting the cars on their hoods to make them stop about a centimeter before you die, looking 4 ways at once and wondering if going to the ice cream shop really was necessary in the first place. and thats what walking in guatemala city is like. cheers.

vaccines for the poor

today was the first day of my internship. apparently, guatemala is starting a new national campaign to vaccinate both women and children. women in particular need tetanus shots, because most births are done in the home, with no proper sanitation. children still need polio vaccines here, as well as the usual MMR and whatnot. so, i, and two other interns, embarked on a journey into zone 3 of guatemala city to vaccinate the masses. and yes, i donned a needle and the rudimentary training of watching the nurse do it twice, and started shooting up 1 year olds and pregnant women with small amounts of live virus. by the way - im great at vaccinating. the most interesting thing i noticed where how brave the wee children are. no crying, just big brown eyes looking right at the injection site (upper arm) and then up at you, most likely thinking...what the hell is this gringa doing? but anyway. zone 3 is near the town garbage dump. actually, not near it, on it. there were various houses that were no longer houses, but piles of rubble due to the various mudslides. apparently, the nurses told me, as she pointed to a pile of rubble - there were 3 people, a woman and 2 children, dead and rotting in that particular pile of debri. they just didnt have the space between the houses to get them out, and now that they had been there so long..."por los parajos." (for the birds). yep. these shanty towns were beyond description and rather horrific at first, but after the inital stench and the hidden gawking, you tend to just hear the common sounds of any city, children playing, pots slamming, the occasional gun shot. it started to rain, and it was coming down hard, and a woman opened her door as we walked by and invited us in. she, a mother of 4, let us sit on her only piece of furniture other than the sole bed, and let us wait until the rain stopped. so, kindness supercedes all, yes? i guess we all knew this, but to see it in this extreme condition...makes you that much more amazed.

oh, and we are going to a coffee plantation wednesday. get excited.
oh, and the avocados here are like someone slicing off a buttery piece of heaven.
oh, and write comments to let me know you are out there.

mission trips, and the palm of the lion

hello one and all.

i am writing this, sitting in the bottom half of a bunk bed. i am tired, and i am about to eat pankcakes. guatemalan pancakes. which are, probably, just like american ones. they are making us a big meal before orientation begins this morning, and hell, im ready to eat. 

yesterday was long, and somewhat surreal (duh). on the plane there (from houston to guate) about 90 percent of the plane were people on trips with their churches. after the prerequisite 'so when did you find jesus' questions bestowed unto me, i ended up just wanting to point to my nose and be like, yo, i killed your main man. but instead i smiled politely and then talked trash about them with the flight attendant (she said, at one point, "i know im going to hell, but thats none of your business"). 

the plants here are grandiose, at least. each of them are bigger then the next. it is, after all, a rainforest, but i still wasnt quite ready to see such much GREEN, man. don luis, the guard/jardinero (gardener) gave me a quick tour of the place where im staying, and told me what plants were which. all were beautiful, and then i looked up and saw this plant unlike anything i had seen before. it was green, but had black claws, almost. it reached down from the top of the building and extended out above my head, big green leafy paws of plant covering my head. it began to rain, i guess indicative of what ill be experiencing the next 27 days. but this plant covered my head from the rain. i asked don luis the name of the plant. he said in spanish "it called the palm of the lion - because of the claws, see, but also, because of the protection it gives."

away i go?

test. test. 1.2.3.
countdown - 2 days.
test. test. 3.2.1.
2.1.
1.
go.