Personal/cultural musings

April 15: I start a full work-week (I’m limiting it to four days) next week, with both the Brain Gym teachers in the small pueblo schools, and seeing some women in their homes with a social worker and held in the kids group for Familias de Esperanza. Frankly, I’ve been enjoying my time off to go out of the country, to Chico the last week in March, for Semana Santa in Antigua and the week my sister was here - just going from this to that………..but volunteering is what I came down here for and I know I’ll get caught up in that again, too.

I still don’t feel centered here, but can’t imagine anyplace else that is more right – not Chico, not Livingston, though I hope to go there again in November, and still fantasize at times about living with more music and dance….and pigs in the street. I think about San Juan on Lago Atitlan….which would keep me in touch with the Brain Gym project, be the same climate (though I’d like it a little warmer,) and be a little quieter and more tranquil – possibly even more “in the country.” And last nite by chance I met a woman from Spain who is volunteering in Xela, and very much wants me to come up to see the children in the orphanage there which she works for…..but reading in the guidebook, the altitude could touch into my fear of heights, and it is COLDER than Antigua, not warmer.
So nothing’s quite right. But I’m still putting one foot in front of another, feeling my way along.
Actually what I enjoy most is sitting at my computer, writing on one or another project I’ve become involved with….looking out at the banana trees and bouganvilla in my yard here in Santa Ana.
And of course when the people next door suddenly start playing some good CDs really loud (usually there is no sound from there – it seems to be a small convention center) and the plaza is full of fathers and kids playing papi futbol……and I’m going out to dinner with some folks from the project………it all seems pretty good.

Cultural/Personal
As I’m walking home from the bus at lunch time – the side street from Calle Hermano Pedro to my house is a little more deserted than it usually is at 8 or 5 – two Guatemalan men are coming down the street in my direction.
“Hello,” the man closest calls out, in stilted English. “How are you?” “I’m just fine,” I say, with an off-hand smile, but he sticks his hand out to shake mine. I take his hand, but notice that his eyes and his friend’s look a little drunk, at this hour. “You can give me money for lunch?” He asks. I often hand out quetzals but not to drunk-looking men. “No,” I say, “No hoy.” (Not today.) And pass on.
In retrospect I realized that in my intention to be friendly and respectful to all passersby, no matter their outward appearance, I could have been in trouble in this instance, with no one else on the street. When I gave him my hand he could easily have pulled me to him, at least robbing me.
I am careful not to carry much money, and when I have a little more than usual with me, for some purpose, to put it in my pants pocket or an inner pocket of my bag. But I think on an empty street like that I need to steer clear of getting so close to strange men.
Later in the day, I hear that the body of a 30-year-old man was recently found a block from that spot. I will be a little more cautious.

If I want to involve myself more in the culture here, I am going to have to change some life-long habits. I have already shifted one: my tendency is to get right to whatever subject I have when talking with another person. I was already cautioned about that when meeting with some Native Americans in California; first they want to get to know who you are before you start discussing business.
Here, the cultural tendency is to say, “Hello, How are you? I am fine, thank you, and you?” before even the briefest phone conversation. I am learning this. At least it is not the more elaborate greeting that I understand exists in Afghanistan (and all Muslim countries?) where you enquire after the person’s family back to the 10th generation, the health of their households, etc.
Secondly, everyone here kisses on one or both cheeks even on first meeting. In California, I often hug people I’m very fond of, touch them on the hand or arm, and so forth, but not in a routine way on meeting and departing, as they do here. And not when I first meet someone.
Oddly enough, now that I’ve gotten used to it, Guatemalans in the psicologia department at the project, are NOT greeting me like that, and I miss it. And of course I decide to change that immediately, and with my salsa teacher, too, by initiating it.
Another custom, which I ran into with my mother-in-law in East Oakland, was to feed everyone who comes into your home. Maybe this is just a poor, rather than Guatemalan, custom. Well I don’t do this except if someone has come from a long way and is staying awhile.
More habits to change. More reference to the Alchemical idea of working on oneself in anything you do, and I guess, anywhere you go.