Thoughts and a little history

I have decided that I will start or end posts with a quote or poem, it might be relevant, or maybe just something I heard and really liked.

“You will never be completely at home again, because part of your hear will always be elsewhere, this is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.” 

Living In Guatemala

I am not entirely sure the moment I stopped living in Guatemala and started just living; living without clarification of a place, because the place stopped becoming anything out of the ordinary and simply became the everyday life. I like it. I like that after almost a year I am accustomed to things here. I have started to do the weird Guatemalan hand flick. I have stopped really missing showers, and given in to the saunas. I also crave Guatemalan food now. The other day I was in Antigua and all I wanted were some frijoles and fried plantains, which is insane. I hated frijoles before coming here, and I had never tried a plantain in my life. Now they are so common place that I only notice them in their absence.

There are a ton of people going home to visit the states in the upcoming weeks and months. I am a little happy to not be among them. The idea of the immensity of the US, the fast paced life, people not greeting every single person you encounter on the street, it abruptly all seems so foreign, and in truth, a little intimidating. But seriously, walking down the street here you at the very least greet everyone, and it’s commonplace to stop and chat a bit, generally in the middle of the road. I am not certain the appeal of the middle of the road, but it seems a communal greeting spot.

The last few weeks I have been out of site so much, between training, med visits, all the random PC upkeep, it became very overwhelming and on the shuttle back I mentioned not being able to wait to go home. The response was about the states and when I was going to go visit. I just assumed this was friendly conversation until I realized that the person I was talking to thought that when I said “home” I meant the states. It did not occur to me that this would have been a communication error, but it made sense. However, what I meant was to come back to my goofy host siblings, my crazy Pond, and maybe most importantly my bed with my 15 million super comfy pillows. I like these people and these things, this life that I have started to build, though a temporary one has become the familiar and comfortable. At the end of the day, no matter how much my host family can drive me up a wall with incessant questions, window taps, door knocks, calling ten thousand times until I answer, etc. etc.  My happiness is inextricably linked with their presence, their adorable giggles, their billions of questions, and that they call me amiga, hermana, y,  meimbro de le familia. For that I am truly blessed and thankful to be a part of this beautiful experience.

Over the weekend I was invited to an amazing theater presentation. I was truly unaware that these things existed, but decided to give it a go. Going into the building I realized I had no idea what the show was about, or if I would understand, sometimes if people talk too fast I still get tripped up a bit.

As the show started two girls appeared, one in traje tipico, the other in clothes typically worn by Ladinos.* Based off of where I live I knew this to be a somewhat strange relationship as there tends to be a fair bit of animosity and discrimination between these two groups. The ladinos generally claiming to be higher brow than their indigenous brethren. The indigenous people that I have spoken to seem to be far less concerned with the Ladino people. My host mom and I have spoken at great lengths about this, with her answer always being “people are just people, we are all the same.” Such a beautiful idealist, that one. I am not entirely sure her train of thought coincides with most though. I have heard several indigenous people call ladinos thieves for stealing land etc. A few days after watching the show I was able to watch a history presentation on Guatemala from the 1400s-1980. It was SOOOO interesting, I really miss learning about the history of things like this. But possibly what I found to be most interesting was that the government is who created the divide between indigenous people and everyone else. And that was the divide indigenous and everyone else, then it was later divided into indigenous, those with Spanish blood, and then ladinos. This in itself is not terribly interesting but the fact that ladinos, the dominant group, or who is not seen as such (due to affluence, education etc) was defined not by what they are, but rather what they are not. This is amazing because in GS 101 we learn that minority groups are often times not scene as complete individuals having their own identities separate from those of the majority, but rather always seen through the lens of “not” not white, not straight, not able bodied. However in this case a characteristic of a minority group, one of the biggest defining features, or ways of defining has been imposed on a group that somehow occupies a minority and majority sphere. Wow.  Culture is amazing, social classes, race, ethnicity, ugh, everything that makes up a society, is so incredibly mind blowing.

I also learned that the Spaniards brought the caste system with them to Guatemala when they first began to conquer (slaughter) them. Random facts <3

  

*A little background, there are four group of people in Guatemala, indigenous, garifunos, ladinos, y xinca. Indigenous women are generally easily identifiable based off of what they are wearing. Many women still wear traje tipico. There will be a post dedicated to this later. The main point is that the clothing is a big identifier and there are often times repercussions for this.