Mixed Moss

Some further notes on Guatemala:

This trip has been wonderful. It has been educational. It has been HARD. I have so much to say that I have no words for it. A rare occassion: Melissa is speechless. Chalk this one up in the record books.

Further notes on Guatemala: I think that my allergies are worse than they have been since I worked at the golf course. The air quality here is lousy. First of all, it’s thin. And then to make matters worse, the car emissions are off the chart. I’m sure they have some emission standards, because they are into eco-tourism, which means they get mass people from the UK and the rest of Western Europe, and from what I understand the EU won’t have much to do with you if you don’t take care of the environment to some extent. But they certainly aren’t enfrocing any of them. The predominant smell in Antigua is car emissions. Which, I suppose, is better than the predominant smell in Santa Maria de Jesus: a combination of wood smoke, hot dirty people, hot dirty street dogs, horse manure, and chicken manure, and very strong soap.

Today I saw somebody in the village lead his mule into his house.

Yesterday we attended Wednesday night youth group up in SMdJ and sang “Shout to the Lord” in Spanish.

We went to visit Lake Atitlan over the week-end (supposedly the most beautiful lake in the world). It reminded me of scotland, with the clouds and mist and mountains– only in Scotland the mountains aren’t active volcanoes. John Wentz got an awsome picture of me that I will send to the relatives.

There is a woman at the Comidor (feeding center) where I have been working all week named Ramona. She is the same height as my Aunt Ramona. She is the nicest woman– very hospitable, tries hard to make sure we have everything we need, so that we can be a success at what we are trying to do here. She taught me to make tortillas– very hard to do!

Life in Guatemala is a strange dichotemy. In some ways the people in SMdJ live a very simple life. But in other ways, life is so much more complicated. For example: you want to substitute apple sauce for vegetable oil in a recipe to make it healthier. Well, apple sauce isn’t availble here. So you have to go down to the market, argue over the price of manzanas (apples) in half-Spanish, half-Kaqchikell, take the apples back and slice and boil and mash them before you can even start baking the pasteles (cakes). Cooking here is like cooking on the set of Christy. Flies you simply can’t get rid of, and no running water– water flows through the pipes only once a week, so families have to collect as much as they can in barrels or cisterns or whatever they have and store it and be very careful to conserve it, because it has to last all week. The same at the Comidor; can you imagine keeping enough dishes clean to run a cooking school and a feeding center, with no running water? It’s an all-day chore. And there are chickens in the back yard. And families cook over wood fires (thankfully at the Comidor there’s an old gas stove).

God bless 4-H. I have spent much of my time here adapting Betty Crocker recipes for cakes and cookies to make them healthier (omit salt, halve the oil and add apple sauce, etc. and all those other 4-H Nutrition project tricks), translating the new recipes into Spanish (!), and then teaching the cooking class to make them. They then take them into town and sell them to the small tiendas, thus making extra income for their families.

I have discovered a new fruit here. I’ve never heard of it or seen it in the States. It lookslike an avocado but is brown on the outside and bright orange on the inside. It tastes like squash but with the brown sugar already added- ultra sweet. I found a recipe for pumpkin bars and adapted it for use with Zapote– I was able to take out half of the refined sugar in the recipe. Good times.

I am getting back to Cincy tonight. I am both sad and relieved to leave at the same time. I have learned to maintain hope in the most overwhelming of circumstances. It is a lesson I will probably continue to learn over and over again my entire life. God is God of Guatemala and Cincinnati.

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