Thanksgiving in Guatemala: Catching Fire

This is the second Thanksgiving I’ve spent in Guatemala, the first was a day after I, and everyone else in my training group, (otherwise known as the ‘amazing’ Bak’tun 6 per María Cristina one of our Peace Corps supervisors), was sworn into service about a year ago. Back in 2015, we were living in handful of “training sites” near Peace Corps headquarters, and a bonafide Thanksgiving meal was provided for us in the form of a roast turkey and stuffing, and volunteers cooked the sides with ingredients provided free of charge. This week, the current training group, Bak’tun 8, made-up of Healthy Schools and Youth In Development Volunteers celebrated their Thanksgiving at Peace Corps headquarters, incidentally they also received their site assignments (i.e. where they’ll be living for the next two years) on Thanksgiving Day.

After our first two months in site, during which Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) in Guatemala basically spend our time 24/7 getting to know our communities and integrating into them, we are free unfasten our site integration safety belts and move around the country. I had vague plans of perhaps traveling to Antigua for an all-you-can Thanksgiving buffet at the ‘Mono Loco’, or Crazy Monkey, frequented by ex-pats, perhaps meeting up with some fellow PCVs. Other smaller groups of volunteers here met up in a number of towns in the region of the country where they serve.

Last week I got invited to go to a special meeting of health commissions in the regional capital of Momostenango, which I gladly accepted as I and the nurses at one of our health posts are working on establishing, and expanding the work, of a community health commission. Peace Corps gave us Thanksgiving and the following Friday off, and I could have spent it in a relatively fancy American-style restaurant somewhere in one of the more touristy parts of Guatemala, but how many chances will I get to go to a meeting of health commissions in Guatemala? After an hour and a half in a pick-up riding over mountainous, and somewhat bumpy, dirt roads above bucolic valleys we finally arrived in ‘Momo’!

I was impressed by the size and beauty of Momo’s central park, and the jelly filled donut I bought before the meeting started! I’m not personally a big fan of these sugary bad boys but I haven’t had one for over a year. I also got a bag of popcorn, called “Poporopos” in Spanish, for just 1 Quetzal, which is a pretty good deal.

There must have been community health commissions from at least eight different communities, and we started the event with a ‘dinamica’, in which the people organizing the event (local Guatemalans working for the NGO (non-governmental organization) PIES de Occidente), passed around a match and we had to see how far we could pass it before it burned out.

After much laughter, possibly some burnt finger tips and hand-cupping the tiny flame to deflect the chance gust of air, the PIES de Occidente worker explained that the flame represents the life of a young child or pregnant woman and our shepherding the flame represents the work of health commissions to protect these lives. (Yes, suddenly this ‘game’ became somewhat emotional). Interestingly, PIES de Occidente, which does a fantastic job running women’s groups, focuses on child and maternal health using similar strategies as the Peace Corps. After this ice-breaking dinamica, each health commission group made two posters, one explaining what we accomplished this past year, and what we had planned for the next year.

Food was provided, and since I am a part of my community’s health commission, I got a snack, or “refa” which was a tamale and white bread. I gave the bread rolls to somebody else, as this snack was a little too high on the carbs for me, (I shouldn’t have eaten that donut before the meeting!), though the tamale was quite excellent and had the consistency of Italian polenta, though its flavor would put most polentas to shame.

Later, we had the lunch, or almuerzo, which was two modest pieces of a flank-steak, a chorizo sausage, rice, refried beans and corn tortillas. Also a bit high in carbs, but I ate it all and it really made my Thanksgiving!

It was great sharing this meal with people from the health commission, and though I wasn’t expecting a belt-loosening lunch, by chance that is exactly what happened!

People in Guatemala don’t, for obvious reasons, celebrate Thanksgiving, though many have an awareness of the holiday. Some folks in my town wondered if I was going back to the states for this holiday, and one person asked me if this was the week in the U.S. when we “kill all the turkeys.”

I think it was good that I attended this event as I have more activities I want to work on with my local health commission, and it would have been awkward to inform my work partners here that I would be going-off to celebrate an American holiday. Also, it was interesting hearing what other health commissions are doing, and I think the event motivated us to do even more.

I was also interviewed by a local television station in Momo that was interested in what I was doing at the meeting and if I thought that the people in the community enjoyed going to health commission meetings. I kept my answers short, as Peace Corps instructs us to do when giving interviews with the media, and gave a modified version of my “elevator speech” or the short speech we practice during Pre-Service Training (PST) before we head to our towns in order to answer the inevitable flood of questions from host country nationals, (Guatemalans), about our work here. In English my elevator speech would be:

Me: Hello, my name is Mateo, I am from Arizona which is located in the southern part of the United States. I am a volunteer with Peace Corps and my project focuses on supporting the improvement of maternal and child health here.

Host Country National: What sort of work do you do?

Me: I work with health care personnel here, in the health center and health posts, giving health talks and getting to know the people in the community by doing house visits, as well as working on projects that improve maternal and child health. I really enjoy doing house visits, it is a great way to get to know the people, and I’m learning Spanish and K’iche’.

I’ve noticed that people in my community respond very positively when I tell them that part of my job as a Peace Corps volunteer is to get to know the people here, and how I enjoy doing house visits, and also that I am trying to learn K’iche’, the Mayan dialect frequently used in my town.

On Friday, I had plans to do a mini-training for my health center on the benefits of Peace Corps’ approach to adult education using the ERCA model (see other blog posts I’ve done specifically about ERCA if you want to learn more!) I used some photos and video I shot of an education session for a pregnant women’s group that we did using the ERCA methodology, as well as some Peace Corps provided video to illustrate the concept and the director of the health center said that she felt that this sort of approach to giving health talks could be beneficial. Also this week, workers installed LED office-style lighting to the health center, which before was completely unlit in the waiting room. After I finished-up with the talk on ERCA, the mayor, or alcalde, walked through the health center to inspect the new lighting system.