First off, I just heard the seven-year old kids who live across the street rocking out at the top of their lungs to Ramstein’s Du Hast. Definitely in the running for my top highlight in San Pedro thus far.
Second, this past week I landed a volunteer opportunity. So I’ll be working for free again, which I swore I would never do. Dear god I hope this is better than interning on the Hill.
Today (Monday), I started working for FEDEPMA (Federación de los Pueblos Mayas), a local community development organization and collective of farmers and artisans. The coalition works in a wide variety of areas, including textiles, coffee, honey, fertilizer production, and carpentry by providing loans and technical assistance to its members; running an organic farm; processing raw agricultural goods and preparing them for sale and export; and managing several retail locations for its members products.
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| El horno. |
I’m working at the FEDEPMA center just a few hundred yards from our house, helping out the head empresaria, Loida Margarita, with roasting coffee. I’m pretty jazzed, despite my reluctance to write with exclamation points. Today we sorted roasted beans for resale: 1st grade whole bean, 1st grade ground, and second grade. Other days we’ll be roasting the beans and packaging product, and hopefully once the harvest comes in, processing the coffee cherries as well. It’s going to be an awesome learning experience, Loida is an incredibly nice and funny woman, and hopefully working in the coffee roasting plant also affords the opportunity to gain some insight into FEDEPMA’s other work, too. Because I love coffee, but while it’s been a while, when I was still in school I also used to geek out about microfinance and Latin American economic development. Nerd.
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| Sorting the beans. |
Now I just need to find something that pays…
Anyways, the main focus of this blog entry is supposed to be the food we’re eating here in Guatemala, which in two words, is great and cheap. And despite a tiny bit of momentary discomfort here and there, the food has yet to provide any days-on-end, life-altering, bowel-shattering experiences. Hooray, both for hyphens and a lack of dysentery.
A couple of conditions on the great and cheap. It’s great as long as you’re willing to try new things, and can deal with a random bit of gristle or bone every once in a while. You’re not getting all white meat. Deal with it. And it’s always pretty cheap, but in San Pedro it’s cheaper when you stay closer to the market and further from the touristy section near the docks. Still, there’s good stuff to be had in Gringolandia: two entrees and two great cocktails for about US $12 at Café la Puerta ain’t bad.
But eating in town is a totally different experience. When we get breakfast at the market, it’s typically a tostada or roll topped with guacamole, beans, hardboiled egg, and a variety of pickled vegetables and salsas; plus atól: a thick, warm, milk-based drink flavored with arroz con leche, arroz con chocolate, elote, or platano. Both for 4 Quetzales per person, roughly $0.50. Guatemala > the dollar menu (in terms of value, the opposite being true for price).
The snack staple so far has been chuchitos, basically slightly smaller and slightly more solid than a tamale. So a corn husk-wrapped ball of cooked cornmeal with a little piece of seasoned meat inside. See below, 1 Q, $0.12.
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| Chuchito, in various stages of unwrapping |
That being said, we try to eat most breakfasts and dinners at home, until today slightly hindered by a decidedly bush-league stove, and we pick up almost all the ingredients at either the market or one of the countless little bodegas that families run out of the front of their houses.
We’ve been eating a lot of pancakes, eggs, sautéed vegetables, rice, pasta, and fried plantains so far, with one failed attempt at beans under our belt. Buying raw meat in the market is a bit intimidating, particularly without a fridge to store it in, so we haven’t brought much home yet, but eventually…
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| The preparation station |
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| Typical meal of tortillas, huevos y platanos. |
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| I can´t eat fried rice without looking like a moron. |
Jesus- have I already been here a month? It’s hard for me to believe, given that I haven’t necessarily adapted into any kind of routine yet. Most days begin with sun and by about 2 or 3pm the clouds have rolled in bringing the rain and the already familiar damp chill. Thus, we have been starting our days muy temprano. The dishes from the night before usually have to be washed before breakfast (to stave off bugs or because we need them to eat the next meal). As I was writing this, our landlord, Shino, arrived with a new stove! We just installed it, and it’s beautiful. Now we have four functioning stove-top eyes, and hopefully will be able to actually simmer los frijoles negros when we’re ready for the second attempt. Pretty exciting.
I’m taking Spanish classes from a private instructor who has been teaching for about six years. He’s patient and inquisitive and corrects me when I’m wrong. He also likes discovering new words in English so we enjoy sharing silly expressions with each other. The class is three hours a day all week, and is a bargain for the service. Our neighbor is a yoga instructor in Gringolandia, and when I expressed an interest in coming to her class she told me they needed another teacher. I’m seriously considering this opportunity and hope that I can find the confidence and obtain the techniques to share with others what has been such a staple for my sanity for so many years. The pay of teaching at this studio is good, given that students show up. As this is the slower season, it’s almost impossible to predict that it would bring steady income, if at all.
I am so proud (and even a little jealous) of Kevin for getting to roast coffee at FEDEPMA. I think it will be a great experience, and it’s exactly the kind of homegrown organization that we dreamed of working with before we arrived. There are still other hypothetical opportunities for both of us that we have yet to address. All in good time, right? I like to think that timing is everything, but it’s meaning and restraints are so different in different cultures. Some people here are incredibly punctual, and but there are plenty of businesses that simply don’t have a set horario and seem to open or close whenever they feel like it.
Our cabin is beginning to feel more and more like home, and like Kevin said, our love for food hasn’t changed much J Although I do miss spinach, Honey Nut Cheerios + cold milk and basically anything else you could think of that needs to be refrigerated, the fruits and vegetables that grow abundantly here are beautiful and delicious.
This is güisquil. [insert photo] It’s incredibly cheap and there are a lot of varieties that grow around town. You boil it like a potato with the skin on, until it feels tender. After it is peeled and cut, you can eat it or season and sauté it. I have big plans for mashed güisquil someday soon. Stay tuned.
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| Güisquil...body part comparisons are natural. Also platanos, bananitos, and green oranges. |
I’ve also acquired a fairly unhealthy obsession with pan dulce, which is exactly what it sounds like: sweet bread. It’s super cheap (some panaderías and tiendas sell one bread roll for .50 centavos!) The breads here are freshest in the afternoon, because they bake them in the morning (late morning-not 3 or 4am like bakeries in the states). Most Guatemalan families buy a bag of ten pan dulces for breakfast the next morning because nothing pairs better with coffee. Yum! Sadly, I’m going to have to cut back this week. Kevin and I made a tentative budget last night, and I labeled pan dulce as a splurge so I don’t turn into a Pillsbury Dough Girl.
Apart from volunteering and classes, our other projects this week are food-related. My friend Ingrid has a liquadora (blender and food processor), and we have aspirations of making our own peanut butter and other tasty spreads. She was sick over the weekend so the production has been postponed, but rest assured that when it happens it will be well documented. Additionally, we are going to spend Saturday shopping, preparing and eating with a Guatemalan family to learn how they cook la comida típica. Not sure what’s on the menu yet, but it will be neat to see how food is cooked with a wood fire and such.
On an unrelated note, we finally got a mailing address to share with you folks. If anyone is interested in sending things, please use the following:
Jose Antonio _________
Kevin & Stacy
1a Calle 546
San Pedro La Laguna, Sololá
GUATEMALA
There’s really no telling how long mail will take to get here, so if you send something other than a letter, probably best that it’s not perishable (hmm… like Twizzlers, for example. I know first-hand that they are excellent travelers) We’d love to hear from you!
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