Well well well….. This has been one crazy week. I'll start with last Saturday, a week ago from today. I went to Coban and spent a bunch of time at Casa D'Acuna, my favorite restaurant and place to relax. I had some lunch and then headed to Queqchi class. We had class from 2-5pm, then I got ready to go to the election of La Rabin de Koban, the daughter of Coban which is just a pageant for indigenous girls that are a part of the municipality of Coban. I was invited by this guy that had come to my site several times talking with a girl a work with, Gloria, because she had a part in the ceremony this year. Well I soon found out that she was actually the runner-up last year. Anyway, I assumed this guy worked for the muni or something, but he ended up just being a random guy. Well so we headed over to the gymnasium for the election at 6:30pm. After arriving, I found out it didn't start until 8pm. Then he said he was going to wait outside because he was going to go in with a friend of his who had a press pass, but that I should save three more seats for him and his friends. So I go in, and decide if we are going to be there for hours, we're sitting on the front row. Gloria's family sat behind us so that was good. But soon I would find out that all the VIPs sit in the front rows and get all this preferential treatment and the whole time people kept giving us looks, obviously thinking, "who is this gringo and his friend". Also, the guy's friends never ended up showing up so we were the douches who saved empty seats on the front row for the whole ceremony….embarrassing.
So the ceremony was nice…LONG…..but nice. There are a ton of pictures in my picassa album. I was really bored so I decided to document the whole occasion. We didn't actually leave until about midnight. Ridiculous. Anyway, it was a nice experience and definitely the most cultural thing I've done since I've been in site. There aren't really many ceremonies or cultural events in my site and most people go to Coban for special religious or ceremonial events. I'm glad I experienced an indigenous pageant but will probably never make myself sit through another one again. If you did the math, I was there for about six hours….sitting in a plastic chair, breathing in incense, and didn't really have dinner before.
So Monday, I woke up early and headed to Coban to meet up with some Volunteers and one of their counterparts to go to another eco-tourism PCV, Jordan's, site. He is at Candelaria, which offers a tubing tour through caves. One of the volunteers in our area organized the day trip with her counterpart and we considered it kind of work because we were seeing one of the tourist sites that is part of our alliance here in the Verapaces, Viviente Verapaz. We had a good time, despite the river being low and having to walk through part of the river. However, I didn't feel well that whole day. I thought I had the symptoms of giardia, but soon would find out that it was a bacterial infection. Needless to say, Monday night was by far the worst experience of my service yet. Imagine having the worst stomach troubles 20 times and having to squat outside in the rain… So, Tuesday I called the PC nurses and headed to Coban to find out exactly what was wrong, which probably is going to sound gross to the normal person reading this blog, but is just part of the PC life. I had to go to a lab and give a "poop" sample, aka poop in a gerber baby food jar. By the afternoon, I had the results and started taking medicine. Being sick in the PC is probably the hardest part of the job. You feel so bad, you are lonely, and you have to do everything for yourself when you would just like to call someone else to get medicine or hop in a car to go to the doctor instead of organizing transportation to get to the town center. I am now feeling much better, but at the time, it was really really really rough.
Anyway, I wish I could move on to more happy news, but not quite yet. So Thursday afternoon, I decided I was feeling up to walking to work because my counterpart was gone to a meeting in the capital and I needed to check over our monthly plan she had typed up for us to present Friday in our monthly meeting. Well, apparently the monthly meeting was on the 6th and not the 7th, so the meeting was Thursday. I obviously missed half of it and she missed all of it. I could tell that when this other guy I work with, Mario, presented the plans, the board was not pleased with the presentation. I just thought it was his crappy presentation skills and inability to explain the answers to their questions and that my counterpart would straighten it out when she got back. I don't want to bore you with all the details but when my counterpart got back Friday, she told me they were all going to hand in their resignations. I literally "wigged-out". I could not believe this. I like working with Aura and Gloria so much, this just couldn't happen. So long story short, all day Friday, my first full day back to work, was spent talking to them about how they couldn't quit and that I would go with them to talk to the President and Vice-President and explain that they just CAN'T leave. So we did that, and I'm glad I voiced my opinion. They aren't going to leave…well, yet. I think it was good that everyone heard what I was thinking about how everything is going and will go in the future. I am just so so so glad they aren't leaving because they are great people to work with and I don't want to have to deal with a changeover of all the staff right now.
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