Updates and Happy New Year

For completeness, I just thought I'd note that I'm back in SB for the next couple of months, working with my committee on getting all my ducks in a line before doing the actual field work back in the Sierra del Lacandon. Here is a picture of me snuggling my well-fed nephew Tommy at my brother's house a few days after Christmas. This is the face of the next generation of Suters. Does that fluff on his head appear to have a reddish hue to you?

The Office

By special request, here are some pictures of the office I spend most days in at Defensores de la Naturalez, the NGO that co-administers the Sierra del Lacandon National Park. Plus a special bonus map of my commute from my home in San Miguel to the Defensores office in Santa Elena.


Okay, so here's the office...






I kid! That's el rancho, which is like the outdoor conference room/party gazebo on the office grounds. Here are more photos of the office and people that can be found there.

And here is a google map of the commute from my house to the office, done on foot, boat, and tuk-tuk.

False Alarm

Sorry to have panicked you, it turned out to be a false alarm about the tortilla prices going up. The story goes that that day the woman who sells tortillas door-to-door in Flores charged more than usual because she'd bought the dough pre-made instead of making it herself starting from corn kernels. The next day's prices were back to normal. But it highlights the fact that there is no place to buy freshly made tortillas in Flores. People have to go across the bridge to Santa Elena or buy from the one woman who goes door-to-door in Flores. There are no poor people in Flores, so no one to make tortillas. More on that at a later date.

Dontcha just hate it... ?

When you're abruptly woken up waaaay too early be a coconut falling off a tree and slamming to the ground just outside your bedroom window? And then with all the roosters crowing and pigs oinking, it can be tough to get back to sleep. Yeah...

Dun dun DUNNNNNNNN!!!

The price of tortillas went up today. Yesterday it was 5 tortillas for 1 Quetzal (about $0.13) and today it is 4 tortillas for the same price. Diversion of foodstocks for biofuel production? Couldn't tell you.

Uuuugh!

It took me a little while to figure out what I was seeing last night, but I witnessed a cockroach molting. At first I thought it was a very long white and brown bug, then I thought it was an albino cockroach and a normal cockroach humping (hey, if that's what you're into...), then as the fresh cockroach got a little distance from the shell of its former self, I finally figured it out. It's somewhat less inspiring than watching a butterfly emerge from its cocoon, as far as metaphors for transformation go. But the new fella sure looks fresh, doesn't he? I evicted him.

http://picasaweb.google.com/laurelsuter/2007_11_26BugEncounter

A Very Guate Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was coming up and everyone around Memo's household was looking kind of glum (apparently the tax-man stopped by) so I offered to make a Thanksgiving dinner for the family. They have been very generous with me, with free internet, food, and hugs so this was my chance to give something back. I figured since there were turkeys clucking around in many yards I could get us a real country turkey, so I arranged with a guard at the office to bring me one slaughtered and cleaned, though the cleaning was extra. I didn't want to add the additional challenge of de-feathering a bird (please refer to the Paulie Shore movie Son-in-Law). And this may sound cruel, but the other American at the office, José, knew I was making a Thanksgiving dinner since the whole turkey deal went down right in front of him, but I didn't invite him to join us. Based on a conversation I had with Zaira after his drunken tom-foolery, it appears he might have been the one Memo kicked out of their hostel a few months beforehand for bad behavior, and plus I'm just not that keen to spend time with him. The guard wasn't 100% sure he could get the bird, though, since people are already hoarding them in advance for Christmas, but another source told me I could get a frozen one at Maxi-Bodega, the new mega super store on the outskirts of town. So on Wednesday I went to the office not sure if there was a turkey awaiting me or not. I couldn't find the guard when I got there, so I looked in the fridge and didn't see it, but then the other guard told me that, sí, it was there. I'd known better than to expect a pumped-up turkey on steroids like what we have in the US, but I also hadn't expected what appeared to be a large chicken. I knew this wouldn't be enough, so I jumped in a tuk-tuk and we raced off to Maxi-Bodega. Turns out it's Wal-Mart owned. Hmm, I wonder if they're going to put a McDonald's out there too, I don't think there is one in all of Petén. I just asked Zaira if she's ever been to a McDonald's in her life and she says no. Well, I picked up a medium-sized frozen turkey, a Carolina original, and brought it back to Memo's place and he was like, "oh no, we need at least another bird, all of Angelica's relatives from the country-side are coming over for this," so I jumped into another tuk-tuk and raced off again to Maxi-Bodega. And thus began a long afternoon of fast-defrosting two turkeys and cleaning my new place. This morning I came over to their place at 7am and got to work, and without going into too much detail let's just say it's a lot of work to put together a whole Thankgiving oneself, though the kids Reyna and Wilso were invaluable assistants, chopping, peeling, and fetching for me, all very cheerfully and of their own free will. When it became apparent that not as many relatives could make it as had been thought, I took one of the Maxi-turkeys out to make more room in the oven. While I was cooking Memo and Angelica took the opportunity to satisfy their own curiosity and cruise on out to Maxi-Bodega. Loved it. It turns out that I undercooked the country-turkey, maybe because I thought it was so eensy-weensy I thought it'd cook really fast, so we ate pretty much all of one Maxi-turkey and returned the country turkey to the oven, followed but the other Maxi-turkey. So in the end we dined on a pretty typical pilgrim platter: turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, bread, but because of the oven bottleneck my roasted carrots weren't done in time. The only really Guatemalan substitution I had to make was I couldn't find celery for the stuffing so I put in huisquil instead. I'd never handled it before, and fortunately I discovered it needs to be soaked in water before I added it to the stuffing, to get rid of a stinging liquid it produces. Of course I discovered this when my hand became discolored and stinging, followed by a slow chemical peel on the palm. So that was that, every one was happy and it made the tax-man blues go away for at least a little while.

Please enjoy photos here.

This morning, however, the day after, I was a bit unwell and while my suspicions were on some tacos I ate the day before yesterday, I thought maybe I had food-poisoned everyone. But fortunately everyone else is fine and I can go back to hatin' on that taco stand. Never again!