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Published: January 16th 2009
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The flyer from Mundo Maya sounded confident and filled with opportunity for activities from regional cooking to canoeing round the lake. I signed up for a week's worth, 20 hours schooling and a week with a family in San Jose.
My new 'Mum' was Mirtala, she showed me around the family home. It consisted of two concrete and breeze block buildings. The first being the main home, had two 'bedrooms' soçectioned off by drapes. The main room had a table with a lacy cloth and six formal chairs, a short bench, a wardrobe, a table for kitchen utensils, a disconnected stove and a tall unit to house the TV, CD and DVD player. Everything was covered in lacey doilies and decorated with various knick-knacks made at school, received for mothers day or as congratulations for passing exams. Mirtala explained that the other room had been built as a kitchen but they had continued cooking outside over a wood fire. They did have a cooker but it was too expensive to run on bottled gas so they only used it in the cold months of January and February.
Bathroom and shower facilites were separate constructions of wood frames, with black
plastic walls and corrugated steel rooves. The sanitario itself was just a concrete throne into which one shits..without the ability to flush anything away. I must admit that it didn't smell until after I had used it several times.
The house was basic and despite having a mud floor, was kept clean and tidy. The worst bit though was I'd obviously displaced Mirtala and Elisio from their big bed, forcing Mum to share with the Maybelly, 11 and the baby and Dad to share a hammock in the other room with his 15 year old son Abner. All the meals were prepared with a lot of care and effort to be varied but the plates were oh so small! I felt like a greedy giant asking for seconds all the time and began to really love the heavy, filling dough of tortillas!
I guess they are typical of the way most Guatemalans live. Not much in the way of material possessions but with a lot of time spent together as a family unit. Mirtala, 34 proudly tells me that she will graduate from college as a nursery teacher in January, following in the footsteps of her nine brothers.
Eliseo works as a concierge in the local bank, less than 500 metres away. The kids are off school for the three month break between October and January. Unlike British kids they aren't sat indoors playing computer games or begging for days out. Instead they are cuddling their baby brother and helping Mum carry and fetch things around the house. I was only the fourth student they'd ever hosted, so it was natural for them to be a bit awkward around strangers and there were a lot of grins and nervous giggles. Incidentally the most confirdent of them all was Maybelly, the 11 year old girl. She was all too happy to help me with my homework; trying on my glasses and pretending to be teacher. She was also the best to guess what I was trying to say and wanted to learn about my camera and was fascinated with how my contact lenses worked. I never thought I'd say it, but hanging out with the kids was great fun and Maybelly was definitely my best friend for the week. I hope they remember to play 'eye spy' after I'm gone!
My 'maestra' Joanna was plump and cheery but
she had a bad habit of hacking up phlegm and spitting now and then! Despite having taught for seven years she hadn't really learnt how to adapt her lessons or learn any interesting teaching methods. There were no worksheets or textbooks, just writing down lists of verbs and my own examples, hence it became a bit tedious. However, I did learn a lot about her life and opinions on child care, alcoholism, families and the poor of Guatemala. Joanna has two kids and a kind, relaxed husband. Not like some men who drink too much, beat their wives, don't share their wages or force their wives into wearing modest clothes and no make-up. She despised this sort of man who made their wives into a baby machine and despite coming from a family of nine, had no intentions of having more than two.
I met Joanna's family at the fair in San Andres on Saturday night, it was very much a big playground for the kids, who were given free range to go mad and crawl in the dirt. Lots of trampolines, table football and shoot-em-up games with funny Barbie doll looki-likes of Enrique Iglesias and Shakira.
In
the afternoon's Emilio was the guide for the activities designed to practise my Spanish. Since I was the only student there I had an exlusive tour of the village, an informative trip to the medicinal garden, a mosquito plagued bike ride to Motul a local archeological site and a tour of Actun Can caves in Santa Elena. Emilio was very laid back and quietly got on with everything. The teachers nicknamed him 'Mexico' as he had a love for Mexican music, I nicknamed him Rambo after the outfit he wore to Motul. He also loved British rock music, especially the Stones and the Beatles and had even called his youngest Heather after Heather McCartney.
So, the Spanish...not a great deal better but a slight improvement on the past tense. Still, a fun week and an interesting insight into the lives of normal Guatemalan people.
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