Josie Tribute

Anyone else missing her? Probably the only ones that can say no to that are my parents. Cherish her!

Cribs

It was a snap to find a place to stay. I looked for signs, asked for leads, and in the end chose a simple room in a 4 room "hotel". Gladys and her husband live below, then they have 4 rooms above and since I am going to be here a long while they arranged it to my liking. 1000Q/month, or $132. It is near the family I hang with, and it is pretty sweet. Just a simple room and a private bathroom, with the "widow maker" type of shower head.




Views from balcony















Pretty much every time I leave either the sheets
are changed or the trash is taken out, but rarely both.











Special guest

Bienvenida?

When I first got to Flores and was reunited with the family I stayed with last time, Memo (a gringo who's been living here for 4 years), his Guatemalan wife Angelica, her kids Reyna (10) and Wilso (8), their kid Paralee (1.5), and Angelica's sister Zaira (freshly 18), I was a little disappointed. I'd stayed here for 3 weeks 6 months ago, but the kids didn't really seem to remember me. Even Zaira, who I thought I'd had plenty of girl-time with, was like, "where are you from?" I guess it was partly because in the 6 months I was away they'd turned their place into a hostel, and so a parade of gringas has come through here. But everyone warmed up again pretty quickly and it is comfortable again. I've arranged to eat many of my meals with them when I'm in town, and I've hunkered down in their internet cafe with my own laptop. And last night I felt things really turned a corner with the little kids, when they remembered completely on the own that I had taught them the robot dance last time I was here.

Anyway, this is a nice arrangement because I can cook occasional things in their kitchen and I don't have to sit alone in a restaurant whenever I want a real meal, which gets old fast. I just have to be on guard against tickle attacks, but if I get my back into a corner I can usually hold the two of them off pretty well.

It's becoming routine

I actually shocked myself in the shower again last night, though this time it was not so much of a surprise, I knew I was running a risk. I was trying to adjust something on the shower head, when I felt the tingle. The part I was touching appeared all plastic, though, so I am not sure what parts are safely touchable and which are not. Perhaps I need a more advanced tutorial.

And it has been pointed out to me by Stacy that I mis-wrote the code for dialing out of the US when I posted my phone number. My number here is 011-502-5185-5624, not 001-etc. as I had originally posted.

Anyway, last Friday I went into the big bad city and had some meetings with folks involved in the park management. All turned out well, I kind of just crashed their gap analysis workshop, talked to the folks I needed to talk to, then skedaddled. On the way back to Antigua, the very full bus I was on suddenly and completely conked out. I've never witnessed a faster death of an automobile. It was like we coasted to a stop and then all the electricity failed. Maybe it's the new electro-magnetism I am carrying around with me since my shower incident. Batteries fail, hard drives erase... it's a mess. Anyway, it was dark, and they tried to clutch-start the bus by letting it roll backwards downhill. I put my head down on my arms, braced in crash position, but fortunately that did not happen, but nor did the engine start. In the end, all the passengers got off and we got into whichever buses stopped for us, little by little. A long trip!

Yesterday, Sunday, I left Antigua and came to Flores, the biggish urban area closest to where I am going to be doing my research. I'm starting out with the family that I stayed with last time, though since then they have converted the huge room I had all to myself into a dormitory style hostel. So I need to find something new, with more more privacy and room to spread out. I also want it to have cable TV. Let me know if you hear of anything.

It finally happened

It was just a matter of time, amazing that I escaped it those 3 months when I was here before, but today I finally did what I knew would happen one day. I electrocuted myself in the shower. It wasn't extremely painful, it was a really strange feeling. It was like I'd stubbed my finger really hard and then waves were radiating through my arm. This photo is of a pretty typical shower head here in Guatemala, though not the actual one with which I had my encounter. It's an electric water heater and most visitors who come here need a tutorial on how to use them. A high water flow means the water will be too cool, but with a low flow the electric heater is sufficient for heating it up and you have a nice shower. Kat and Jude taught me that when I came the first time last December, as well as warning me not to touch it. Mid-shower I was stretching my back, arms above my head, when zzzztttt!!! I don't even know which part I touched, but it got me good. I don't recommend it, but if you're interested to experiment with electrocution I guess this is the way to do it. Fortunately they do 110 volts here, but anyway. Yow.

Since I got here a few days ago, I've kind of just been waiting around for a meeting I'm supposed to have in Guatemala City before I make the 8 hour bus ride up north. I decided to hunker down in Antigua while I'm waiting since here, in comparison to Guatemala City, the ratio of cheap to safe for accommodations is more even. At first I had pretty sharp nostalgia for when I was here with my parents (see photo, taken last February), but that has subsided somewhat. I hadn't been talking to too many people since I got here, so in the interest of working the kinks out of my spanish conversation and also just to talk to someone I had a 4 hour lesson at one of the language schools here. We just gabbed the whole time, it was exactly as I'd hoped. At any rate, I am filling my time with my regular work and little incidentals, like I had to get a new chip for my cell phone. And thus my phone number is now 5185-5624 (add 011 and 502 to the front of that if you're calling from the US).

Tomorrow, exciting meetings in the city!

Who wants to be a millionaire... of amoebas?

I finally set foot in the place I'm going to do my research, the Sierra del Lacandon National Park (SLNP), which is co-administered by an NGO, Defensores de la Naturaleza (FDN), and the federal agency for protected areas (CONAP) . Yesterday I went there with two fellows from FDN, a community outreach technician named Carlos and the driver named Rigoberto. The first community we visited, Manantialito, does not have a road connecting it so Carlos and I hiked an hour to reach it. En route, I was questioning Carlos about the kind of crops they grow, which is mainly corn, with some squash and beans as well. This is the golden three of agricultural production for nutrition and soil conservation, so I was asking if with this diet there was much mal-nutrition and Carlos said of course there is because the people in the village are millionaires... of amoebas. One of the goals is to get this place at least a minimum health post to treat these chronic parasite problems. Carlos went to the community that day for a meeting to discuss replacing the school teacher who took off mid-Februrary without warning. The community was like, 'when are we going to get a new school teacher?' and Carlos was like, 'well, you need to form a committee to organize to find one, with a president and a treasurer and a secretary and some additional members and then open a bank account and then submit an application...' and they were like, "when are we going to get our frickin' school teacher?!?!' And at a point in the meeting I got to take the floor and tell them what I was hoping to do, with their permission. Some of them remembered with my advisor David had been there in 1998-1999, so that was fun. We then visited 3 other communites, all with road access, though sometimes extremely rough, and all more developed than the first community. No meetings held in those other towns, but I introduced myself to some of the "mayors" in the towns, or failing that, their brother. This Saturday or so I'll probably go on a multi-day trip to this community with in the park but closer to the upper border with Mexico. You can refer to this map!

http://www.nature.org/aboutus/travel/ecotourism/travel/art996.html





School house in Manantialito, post-meeting.





Crazy cucharacha







Carlos on the trail from Manantialito

Final dentally themed entry

I'm now in Flores, Peten, the capital city of the northernmost 'wild-west' (but north) department of Guatemala. I happened upon a family here composed of an American man named Memo, originally from a Texas oil family but who came here to stay 3 years ago, by way of dot-coming in California, and his wife, Angelica, from the nearby town of San Benito. She has two kids from her previous marriage, Wilson (7) and Reina (10), and they have a daughter together, Paralee (11 months). They have a big place with lots of space, and Memo offered me a place to stay for free, and it's pretty sweet, t.v. and internet, if you can believe it. Such luxury is usually only to be had in zona 9 of GC.




Wilson and his friend Julian, who are twins with their missing front teeth.




Before I'd moved in, Memo loaned me a little bag so I wouldn't have to take my whole back-pack on our functional ATM search, nor carry my nude bank card in my hand since I lacked pockets. Later on back at my hotel I discovered I'd accidentally kept his bag, and also that he had failed to clean out the old dental bridge that he'd left in one of the pockets. I returned the whole thing to him today, and suggested that he'd probably want to get those teeth under his pillow asap for the tooth fairy.

As an aside, several family members are eating this kind of sweet potato that helps with de-worming. Memo just takes a veterinarian prescribed remedy every 6 months, but Angelica has to do a more mild treatment since she's still breast-feeding.