I said the audience was heavenly, but the traveling was hell

I’m Thankful For… (A Haiku)
Friends and Family,
Baseball, Music, Traveling,
Luck and Fate, and Jokes.

So, the past couple weeks have been filled with lots and lots of traveling, and very little sleep. Lots of death-trap roads (and holding of breath while tumbling down hills on them in a shaky little bus), lots of 4 am wake ups and cold showers outdoors. Lots of roommates and lotsss of cold and rain. But only in the best way.

We started off our travels by taking one of our women’s groups to Cobán to meet with some women’s groups there that have done some really cool projects. We stayed at the women’s co-op in a couple ranch houses with leaky roofs and bunk beds. It was a pretty rustic couple of days, and it literally POURED the entire time we were there, but Cobán is absolutely beautiful and the women were really into seeing the projects. Even though I have never been so soaking wet in my entire life (this coming from a Seattle girl who’s spent most of her summers camping in the PNW), it was awesome to see the women get really excited when they saw that it actually was possible to put together a project that would benefit them.

We then did the six hour trip home, dropped off group #1, and left with group #2 for Uspantán. This group was the women’s commission of the Muni, so they’re a bit more urban and, for the most part, educated. We visited the Women’s Office in Uspantán and learned about their commissions and associations. The trip there was about eight hours, but the road was terrible and the women were so freaked out that the refused to go home the same way, and instead we took the long way home, which took almost 12 hours. It’s such a great depiction of the Guatemalan culture, because I cannot imagine any American seeing the sense in adding four hours to a trip just because a few miles of road are less than pleasant. I certainly couldn’t, but the gringa doesn’t get much say in those things, so the long way we went.

We dropped the ladies off at home and left the next day with Group #3 to the capital for Día de La No Violencia Contra Las Mujeres, which also happened to be Thanksgiving. I find this completely appropriate because living in Guatemala and working with women’s groups has definitely made me thankful for growing up in the States where violence against women is not acceptable or allowed. There is certainly an attitude here that these issues should not be talked about, and that “it’s just part of the culture”. We got into Guate on Wednesday night for a vigil held for all of the women in Guatemala (more than 5,800 in the past ten years) who have been killed. The next morning was a march for the big day, in which all of the women’s organizations in Guatemala participated.

The women we brought with us are from a very small, poor aldea and almost none of them can read or write. Also, not one of them owns a sweater. Not only that, when CODEFEM gave them each a sweater for the chilly capital, my counterpart and I had to teach them how to zip them up.

Straight from there I hopped a bus to Matequescuintla, Jalapa to meet up with the other volunteers in the Oriente for Thanksgiving. Most of them are from my training group, and it was nice to spend the holiday with familiar faces and catch up a bit. We had dinner at one of the volunteer’s houses, and then her host dad drove us all down to the lodge down the street where we had a campfire and somehow crammed all 14 of us into one cabin. The next day, some of us decided to stay another night and we spent the day zip-lining on the lodge property and exploring the nearby town of Colis for lunch.

Now, finally home, I am just relaxing a resting up, as we are taking our third group on their interchange trip next weekend. It’s so strange to think I have been in site for a month already- and that pretty soon it will be December- and Christmas!