Cultural quirks

[Photos are of me giving a talk to the parents and working with a child in the classroom I support.)

Although I am clearly living in another culture, at least Antigua and San Pedro are so modern that the differences don't seem marked. But today I ran into something a little different.

There are many times when we go to a school to work that we learn we can't work that day because: it's a fiesta day for that community, the teachers have a training to go to, it was fiesta the night before and everyone's staying home that day, the children are excused for a(nother) special activity, etc. [It's no wonder that 60% of the children in 2nd -4th grade that we test are unable to read well enough to follow the instructions.]

But today we were given an unusual reason: we could not go to the school because 40 or so children in San Marcos had somehow come in contact with some old human bones and were bewitched. Many psychologists and so forth have been called in (for some reason I didn't hear that a shaman was called, though it seems more appropriate.) All agreed (so my informant said) that the children were "possessed." The bones wanted to be buried together not in jumbles, and the spirits of their human beings were possessing the children.

Although I am aware of hysterical reactions, especially of children and especially in groups (think of our Witch Hunts in the 1800s in the US, many of them sparked by "possessed" children), it seems to me perfectly possible that these children, individually and culturally, may be sensitive enough to receive the "vibrations," if you will, of these bones--whether we gringos are able to or not. They could easily be the bones of the "disappeared" during the "violencia" here, which would be crying for recognition and return.

[I have been reading a lot about this period of violence in Guate...currently "Violent Memories" by Judith Zur. So much to understand about Guate, and about human behavior.]

On another note, I have just returned from another happy and successful visit to my home town and find myself having a harder time adjusting than usual. More usual is to be there when I'm there; and here when I'm here. ..I'm more "in between," this time. On the shuttle-ride here, Guatemala looked more different from California to me than usual, too....scruffier and dirtier, though always more interesting. And it's suddenly the rainy season, here.

And on we go.