Ethnolinguistics in Guatemala

The waiting room in Comalapa

2009-02-06T11:53:00.001-06:00

These are from last year's trip.

the checky-inny table

flight plans

2009-02-06T11:41:00.002-06:00

I'm catching a plane this evening. The students and I will spend the night in the Chicago aiport tonight and meet up with the doctors. Then we'll all hop on a TACA flight in the wee small hours of the mornin', and arrive in Guatemala tomorrow.

I'm flying back to KC overnight Saturday the 14th, and I'll get here on Sunday.

Third Annual Big WK Trip

2009-02-06T11:04:00.004-06:00

It's in the 60s in KC today. A taste here of what I'll get there within the next 20 hours. I will try to blog about this event whenever I get a chance. If you'd like to make a comment to let me know you're reading along, it may inspire me to write even more.

Much of this year's trip to Guatemala will be similar to last year's, which you can read about in my previous entries and on the Wuqu' Kawoq blog. Dr. Mike Hill, the pediatrician, and Dr. Melinda Dabrowski, the gynecologist/obstetrician are both returning with us this year. I will be a primary Kaqchikel/English translator again for the doctors. (I was mostly paired with Melinda last year. This year I'll be with Mike.)

The locations are the same as last year too. We spend Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday working in Comalapa at the ACOTCHI clinic with the midwives. We do the same thing at Tecpan's midwife center on Thursday and Friday.

A few notable differences this year:

--We add Dr. Melvin to the team, also from Illinois, and his daughter.

--My friend Ana who lives in Lawrence, KS joins the team as a primary Kaqchikel/English translator. I first met her husband Pedro Mateo in the linguistics dept at KU. Ana is from Patzun. That's not far from Tecpan and Comalapa (the two main sites of our clinics), so she'll be able to go home at night and visit with her family and friends. It is common to find people in our circles who can do either Spanish/English or Kaqchikel/Spanish translating. It is extremely rare for us to find people to do Kaqchikel/English work. So we are so grateful that Ana is donating a week of her time and hard work this year to do that with Wuqu' Kawoq.

--Speaking of primary Kaqchikel/English translators, WK board member Robert Henderson will also be one. I'm so excited about this. Last year I was more or less on my own. This year I hope to learn a lot from Robert and Ana about better ways to express medical concepts. Prepare to have your brains picked every evening, you two.

--Because we have three translators for the doctors, A. we got to add another doctor to the team (Dr. Melvin), and B. Peter gets freed up to float between the exam rooms to give advice on available medicines, common local diseases, and to arrange followup care and further diagnostics. He was completely swamped last year, having to do everything I just mentioned plus straight-up translating for one doctor for 9 hours a day.

--This year I am taking two of my KU Kaqchikel students with me: Jenny and Miranda. Miranda is in my level 2 class, and Jenny is in level 3. Neither has been to Guatemala before; I'm excited for them to get to practice their Kaqchikel with lots of people who speak it natively. They'll be helping out greatly with some of the logistics flow of the clinic, along with triage duties (checking people in, weighing kids and mapping their growth charts, taking temps, running the pharmacy.)

--Lastly, Cat (photo-journalist) and Hannah Rohloff will not be returning this year. Hannah had open-heart surgery yesterday. It seems she is recovering well. We all look forward to the return of her stellar labwork and nightly pirate jokes in the 2010 trip.

Hannah working hard in the laboratory

2008-02-13T21:59:00.001-06:00

Working in the pharmacy

2008-02-13T21:48:00.000-06:00

Translating for Dr. Dabrowski, the gynecologist

2008-02-13T21:47:00.000-06:00

Organizing the clinic in Socorro

2008-02-13T21:46:00.001-06:00

Talking with a girl about anemia after Hannah checked her hemoglobin

2008-02-13T21:18:00.002-06:00

Brief Update

2008-01-08T19:26:00.000-06:00

Hi everybody,

I had hoped to have more internet access and time, but the days are packed from early in the morning til late at night. Sunday we did house calls all day in Santiago Sacatepequez. That wasn't nearly as challenging though as our major project for the week, which is the clinics.

Sunday night we grabbed a bite to eat at the Bagel Barn and hopped on the shuttle to Comalapa, a little over an hour away. That night Hannah and Peter and I got to stay with Magda (Ixkamey) and her family. It was wonderful to see her and her siblings, and her folks. You might remember all the stories of the time Peter and I lived there over a year ago. The girls were wearing the stocking hats I made them.

Yesterday and today I worked for about 18 hours total as a translator for the two doctors we brought to a clinic in Comalapa. The clinic is housed in the ACOTCHI building. (ACOTCHI is the midwife cooperative we work with.)

Tomorrow morning we'll get up at 6 and start in again. Then as soon as the clinic is finished we will get on a bus to Tecpan, where we will do a clinic at another ACOTCHI location Thursday and Friday.

The work is invigorating and exciting, and a bit of a mental marathon.

Peter works as the translator for the pediatrician, Mike.

I work as the translator for the OBGYN, Melinda.

They are both amazing doctors from Illinois. I am learning a ton about women's health issues.

Most of the patients over 30 or so years old do not know much of any Spanish, so it's necessary to conduct the entire consultation in Kaqchikel. (Some of the younger women are better at Spanish than Kaqchikel, so I do everything in Spanish for them.)

Melinda does not know any Spanish or Kaqchikel, just English. All the patient notes have to be written in Spanish (for subsequent doctors'use). This is why it's a mental marathon.

An example of a consultation is a 44yrold women coming in for her first prenatal visit of this pregnancy. I introduce myself in Kaqchikel as only the translator, not the doctor, and introduce Melinda. I ask her what the problem is. I listen to her talk quite a bit in Kaqchikel, write it down in Spanish, ask more questions in Kaqchikel, tell Melinda everything in English, ask more questions, etc. And my mind does a lot of swirling.

But mostly I have stayed on top of everything, and I can't understand how I'm saying all the things I'm saying. Things I did´n't know I knew how to say. I talk nearly constantly for hours. I am using more words in one day than I've used this whole past month. Maybe that's partly why I'm tired.

Got to go, but I'll try to update tomorrow. I got to work with Mike for a couple of hours today too and got to see a few children with scabies.

2008-01-05T17:51:00.000-06:00

Hannah and I stayed with Brian Longfellow and Sarah Castelletto last night in Chicago. Thanks guys for letting us crash at your place! We got up at 4, returned the rental car, and caught the plane to Guate. At the airport we met up with Cat, my friend who is studying photojournalism and will be documenting our trip, and Peter.

Then we grabbed a shuttle to Antigua, joined the group of folks who have all gathered at A Place to Stay hotel in the last 24 hours.

Russell Rohloff (Peter and Hannah's Dad. He will be supervising the Engineers without Borders group that is here to do the water project near Socorro.)
The Engineers without Borders group here from UIUC
Pat and Olga, representatives from The Rotary Club
Three doctors from Illinois, including an obstetrician and a pediatrician

We zipped over to the market before closing time and trapsed all over buying up medicinal plants for the week (rue, chamomile, eucalyptus, etc) and supplies for the Mayan blessing ceremony we're taking part in tonight.

In a minute we're collecting ourselves at some great eating establishment that serves avocadobased food items so we can have our planning meeting. Then it's off to Santiago Sacatepequez for the ceremony.

I will try to update here as often as possible this week.

Great News!

2007-12-09T14:16:00.001-06:00

Here's a recent message from Peter. You can stay up to date on all the Wuqu' Kawoq happenings by visiting our website. We frequently write new blog posts, like the following:

Wuqu' Kawoq has just received word that its grant application entitled Training of indigenous Kaqchikel-speaking midwives in Guatemala has just been funded at a level of nearly $10,000 by the Conservation, Food, and Health Foundation. This grant will provides support for our training programs in San Juan Comalapa and Tecpán working with the Associación de Comadronas Tradicionales de Chimaltenango. This training program is unique in two ways: First, all training is conducted in the native language, Kaqchikel, of the participants themselves. Second, an integrated and sophisticated data collection and evaluative component is built into the program. We thank the CFH foundation for its support, which will go a long way toward developing culturally appropriate, community-based health education efforts in the region.

Letter from Peter about the new website

2007-07-13T06:10:00.000-06:00

Dear friends,

As most of you know, I have been involved for some time in indigenous rights and medical aid work in the Kaqchikel-speaking regions of Guatemala.

I am just writing to let you know that our organization has a brand-new website which details much of the work we are doing. Much content still needs to be added, but you can still read about some of our projects, view photographs, download a brochure, and the like. Please take a moment to visit the website here:

www.wuqukawoq.org

We are a small organization, and we are always looking for help! Ways you can help:

(1) Click on this link once a day for several weeks, or post the link to your blog, facebook, or myspace page. This will help us to increase our Google visibility.

(2) Pass this link or other information along to friends and acquaintances.

(3) Invite us to come give a talk to a group you are involved with.

(4) Donate time or expertise. We have opportunities for physicians, midwives and medical students to provide medical care and midwife training classes. We also are in need of engineers to become involved in some of our water development projects. Linguists, activists, and persons with experience in publishing or fundraising are also needed.

(5) Donate money. There is a link on our website which has information about how to donate. You can make a general contribution, and there are also specific giving opportunities.

Specifically, we are soliciting for donations in the following areas: (1) funds to purchase training manuals for midwives and other indigenous providers; (2) funds to purchase basic medical equipment for an indigenous medical cooperative (for example, machines to check blood sugar and hemoglobin levels in pregnant women); (3) funds for publishing projects (we are publishing Kaqchikel- and Spanish-language medical self-help books); (4) and funds to purchase lands and water rights for community and water development projects.

Please contact me at rohloff@uiuc.edu or wuqu.kawoq@gmail.com for more information or to ask questions.

---------------------------------
Peter Rohloff, RN PhD
Executive Director, Wuqu' Kawoq S.A.
Fellow, Medical Scholars Program, UIUC
cel (Guatemala) 52435550/58291985
raxqij.blogspot.com
"strengthening Mayan language and medicine"

report from the benefit event

2007-06-26T23:28:00.000-06:00

On Sunday, June 17th, Vicki and I hosted a house concert in her home--our first of many fundraisers for the nonprofit organization I work with, Wuqu' Kawoq. We had advertised on KKFI, Kansas City's community radio station, and had passed out fliers all over the neighborhood and hung posters in Westport (posters like the rad one in the previous post.) About 40 people came. It was a magical evening.

I gathered together a band to open and close the night. It has become affectionately known as The Emily Tummons Peace Love and Harmony Band. We don't have any plans to perform outside of this summer house concert series. But who knows.

Brian Longfellow: guitar, harmonica, singing

Beth Tummons: ukulele, singing

Bobette Goetz: fiddle, singing

Nick Baker: percussion, singing

Michaela Meckel: banjo, fiddle

Emily Tummons: mandolin, singing

We played If I Needed You, I Told Them All About You, and Yellow Is the Color of My True Love's Hair to start the night off. Then we invited Desmond Poirier up. He is the lead singer of the Rivercity Revelators. It was a rare treat to get to hear him perform a handful of his songs acoustically. My favorite was Nothing's Ever Easy in Rhode Island.

We came to the halfway point of the evening, so I went up to talk about Wuqu' Kawoq. I pointed out the brochures we had printed up (which are AWESOME--thank you Anne, Rachel, and Peter), and directed people's attention to the donation station.

At that table were about 50 copies of a recording Nick Baker and I made especially for the event--the song, This Is My Maker's World. We had made it available for free to anyone who made a donation of any amount. Thanks to Mike and Jeremy for helping make the CD sleeves with the WK logo and info, and duplicating it.

I taught everyone how to say Thank You in Kaqchikel (matyox), and the sound of 40 people saying "matyox" enthusiastically back to me almost brought tears to my eyes. Then I talked for about 10 minutes about my experience in the highlands of Guatemala, how I met Peter and got to help out in the medical clinics he had started up. I explained why we started Wuqu' Kawoq (a little background on the awfulness of Guatemalan government health care and history of oppression of indigenous people) and described a few of the projects we are involved with.

Then I sang the song Angel Band with my sister Beth, and sang part of the song in Kaqchikel, so everyone could hear how the language sounded in music.

Then we invited Joel Kraft up to the front, our next local musician donating his time for the evening. He sang 4 or 5 songs, and I got to sing harmony with him.

Last on the bill was the ET PLH Band reprise. To close the night we sang Little Boxes, Puff the Magic Dragon, Day Is Done, and I'll Fly Away.

Thanks to everyone who helped make the night a success. We raised $104. I'm looking forward to the next one.

Wuqu' Kawoq Fundraiser Poster

2007-06-26T16:31:00.001-06:00

New Blog

2007-06-26T16:24:00.000-06:00

I want to devote this blog's content to my Guatemala/linguistics experiences. So I'm starting a new blog (under the same profile) where I can make posts about everything else.

That's here: http://www.calamitybird.blogspot.com/

So I removed a bunch of superfluous posts, leaving just the ones regarding my Guatemalan cohorts.

Turn up the Volume

2007-03-27T09:39:00.001-06:00

A few more.

2007-03-26T18:22:00.000-06:00

Maelstrom and Me

2007-03-26T15:07:00.001-06:00

Birthday Blessings

2007-03-26T15:03:00.001-06:00

Saturday Hannah came from Illinois with her bellydancing buddy Amy. It was Hannah's birthday, and they wanted to go to a bunch of bellydancing workshops. I am so happy they came. I love spending time with Hannah. It was such a sweet wonderful thing that she spent her birthday in Kansas City with me.

When she got here, Amy started in on classes, and I dragged Hannah around to my various support groups. We went to ARTS Anonymous first, and Hannah liked it enough to say she's definitely coming back next time she's in KC on a Saturday. We meet in a little chapel inside Unity Temple on the Plaza. We all read aloud lots of affirmations before and after the sharing time. That felt really good. I'll have to do a post soon about ARTS Anonymous.

Then I was off to meet with my life coach, Cat. And when I introduced Cat and Hannah, Cat offered to do a birthday reading for Hannah. Yesss. I had been hoping she would offer something like that. So we went upstairs together, and Cat did a couple of spreads for Hannah. It was all very enlightening and interesting, especially when she did the numerology at the end.

Cat offers classes through conference calls, so that people all over the country can learn from her. Lindi and I are taking one for the next 5 Tuesdays (Living Intuitively--you get in touch with your angels, spirit guides, and animal totems). Cat's teaching one on Tarot next month, so maybe Hannah and I can do that one together.

I didn't know 'til Saturday that Hannah is a poet. She's probably written lots of poetry in the past, but the first one I've read is one that came to her after she had her reading with Cat. It is so cool. Maybe she'll let me post it here soon. In the slideshow there's a picture of her writing out a copy of it for me, so I could recite it in an upcoming open-mic poetry night. She also wrote it out in Tengwar (Elvish script).

A really neat thing that happened that day was Hannah and Amy were asked to perform that night in the big show. Their duo is called Maelstrom, and it kicks ass. I did Amy's makeup for it, and part of Hannah's. That night they lit us on fire. I don't have other performances of theirs to compare to, but the effect on the audience was electrifying. I'm so glad I got to see them live.

I'm uploading a slideshow right now, and also I took a little bit of video that I'll post here soon. This'll do for now . . .

The Musical Saw

2007-03-13T10:20:00.000-06:00

This post is in response to my new cyber-saw friend Jack's question.

About a year ago I saw a saw being played for the first time, at Mountain Music Shoppe. Jim Curley, the owner, earned a spot in the National Traditional Music Hall of Fame (in the Miscellaneous category) for paying the saw so swimmingly. That day a year ago he talked about going on tour in Europe, arriving at a German airport, having to explain to immigration officials the large saw he was carrying in his rifle case.

He played America the Beautiful for them, the way he did for us last April, and left us all speechless.

So in January, freshly back from Guatemala, I visited his shop and asked him to teach me. He said he can teach me everything I need to know in one 30-minute lesson, for $15. Awesome. I just needed an old large cello bow, and a 26" Stanley Handyman saw.

At Ace Hardware last week they only had the off-brands in 26", and only had smaller saws in Stanley. I'll hit another hardware store soon and I'm sure it won't be too hard to track one down.

I was eating dinner with John at Eden Alley (he also works at Eden Alley, which completely rocks.) I knew that he was a musician--I didn't know 'til our dinner that he also plays the saw. He said that it's easy to find a bow too. Just go to a music store and ask for a warped one. The more warped the better.

More Photos of Hannah and Her Cats

2007-03-13T01:02:00.000-06:00

More Photos from Jon's Pipe Shop

2007-03-13T00:11:00.000-06:00

Eden Alley Cafe

2007-03-12T14:29:00.001-06:00

I've been spending a lot of time at Eden Alley since I've been back from Guatemala. Here's a picture of me, my housemate Vicki, and Lindi. I'm holding a juice especially made for me by John. Beet juice, ginger, carrots, and cucumbers. Yum.

Click here and read about their delicious daily specials.

www.edenalley.com

Here are a few of the fine dishes I've enjoyed . . .

More pictures of Lindi . . .

Jon's Pipe Shop

2007-02-24T21:58:00.000-06:00

On Thursday, I left Kathy and Andrew's house (after watching the video Andrew took of himself painting a sculpture of found objects--it rocks) and got into Hannah and Sam's town a few hours before Hannah was going to be off work. That gave me time to stop by the pipe shop, which had been closed when I'd tried the week before.

I bought my first pipe here last October, on another Ohio/Illinois trip. It brought me great satisfaction in the months to follow, smoking it on roofs with Peter in Guatemala. But one night it fell down some concrete steps and broke in two.

I walked into the pipe shop Thursday and Michael recognized me as one of the myriads of females who buy pipes from him. I showed him the broken body of my companion, and he assurred me it would be simple to fix. He said the next day he'd go shopping for slow-set epoxy and aluminum tubing. Since the outside of my pipe is sandblasted, it won't be so obvious that it cracked once it's together again.

I was relieved. Then I had a lively time enjoying everyone's company, since I wasn't in a hurry to leave. The intoxicating smell of Garvey's Balkan tobacco is hard to leave.

When You Go Away

2007-02-24T10:26:00.000-06:00

When you go away the wind clicks around to the north
The painters work all day but at sundown the paint falls
Showing the black walls
The clock goes back to striking the same hour
That has no place in the years

And at night wrapped in the bed of ashes
In one breath I wake
It is the time when the beards of the dead get their growth
I remember that I am falling
That I am the reason
And that my words are the garment of what I shall never be
Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy

W. S. Merwin

Almost Home

2007-02-23T16:21:00.000-06:00

I left Hannah and Sam's house early this morning, and am stopping in Columbia, MO now to see my sister Suzie. I'll finally be home tonight after more than a week of unadulterated revelry. The picture is from Tuesday night--I got to tag along with Kathy (in Ohio) to play with the dozens of cats at the Humane Society, where she volunteers. This cat's name is Serenity and she was just the sweetest ever.

I enjoyed three days in Mount Vernon Ohio with Kathy and Andrew, including Ash Wednesday evening, when, after many glasses of burgundy and smokings, we all dipped our fingers in the ashes from our Honduras cigars and pipe bowls, and smudged each others' foreheads.

Speaking of cat photos, here's one from last night. Ri jeb'el Hannah, and her supremely affectionate Oliver . . .

Road Trip

2007-02-20T14:18:00.000-06:00

Last Thursday I drove to Hannah and Sam's house in Rantoul, Illinois. It was Oxlajuj K'at--Peter's Mayan birthday (February 15), so we had a special kotz'i'j for him out in the 17 inches of snow at 10pm. Hannah sacrificed her cookie sheets, on which we piled charcoal, candles, corn bread, flowers, and other loqolaj supplies and offerings.

Peter led the ceremony, doing all of the invokings, beseechings, thanksgivings, confessings, and day-counting in Kaqchikel. The temperature was way way below freezing, but the fire was warm, Raxq'ij's metaphors were inspired, and everybody seemed to have a happy time with it.

The next day, Peter and I drove a couple hours north to Chicago to catch a plane to Austin, where Robert (Lajuj Kej) and Laura live. We have been looking forward to visiting them for a long time.

Stay tuned for lots more pictures soon.

Harmonica Workshop

2007-02-06T12:35:00.000-06:00

Tonight Jenny, Bobette, Vicki, and I are going to Mountain Music Shoppe for a harmonica workshop, taught by Tulsa Reed himself. I already have a few real-life harmonicas, but in anticipation of this event I also bought the world's smallest Hohner. It's only got 4 holes, just an inch and a quarter long, but I can play Angels We Have Heard on High on it. Oh yes, I come from a very musical family. Here's my dad playing a Dasani.

True North

2007-02-06T12:02:00.000-06:00

I've been slaving away at True North, the snow removal company I do dispatching for every winter. I'm on call all the time, and during storms I do 12-18-hour shifts, with just a couple of hours of sleep in between. It's so worth it. Not only for the money but for all the perks. For breakfast somebody will scramble dozens of eggs or get bagels from Einstein Bros or Panera. For lunch we'll get carry-out from Jack's Stack or a fancy Mexican place. And for one supper at the last storm we spent hundreds of dollars on Lulu's, a Thai noodle place.

In between we get a wide array of snacks--Nutrigrain bars, chex mix, veggie trays, fruit, Naked juices, Captain Crunch, and of course unlimited coffee that you cannot see through. Unlike the Comalapa varieties.

They provide cots and showers and a fully stocked kitchen. I work so much that it isnot that inconvenient to only eat or drink when I'm at work. (I do shower at home sometimes.) I can put all that money I save on buying food toward a good cause. Like a plane ticket to Austin to see Lajuj Kej and Laura next weekend.

The best part about my job is that I get to use my Spanish all the time. I'm one of only two workers there (out of 40 or so) who speak it. And about half of our subcontractor plow drivers don't speak any English. So I help them fill out their W-9s, sell them salt and ice-melt, tell them which properties to treat next, ask them how they're feeling, and be their buddy.

Most of them are from Mexico, but I met a group from Guatemala last week. That warmed my heart. They're from Chiquimula, so they didn't know any Kaqchikel, just Chorti.

Hitting the Road in Pa K'in

2006-12-05T18:44:00.000-06:00

Here are a few more pictures from our afternoons of house calls.

Nebaj

2006-12-05T18:34:00.000-06:00

Traveling takes a lot out of me. We've been busy doing a lot of it the past week especially. Today has been a good day for recuperating: napping, starting my 18th crochet project, and organizing photos.

The plan is that tomorrow morning we'll leave for a mini-vacation, one last hurrah before I go home. I've never been to Nebaj, and it's supposed to be really pretty, with some desert-like scenery. It's 6 hours away, so we'll go tomorrow, do lots of hiking I hope, and come back Friday. I'm looking forward to hearing Ixil Maya spoken. I've never heard anything from that whole branch of the Mayan language family tree.

There's a lot more I want to blog about, maybe tomorrow morning, or if we can find an internet spot in Nebaj, so stay tuned . . .

Last Stop of the Day

2006-12-05T18:24:00.000-06:00

Yesterday afternoon, our last stop was the home of Cesar, the daykeeper, the place we held my birthday offering a couple of weeks ago. Cesar's wife has rhemetoid arthritis really bad. It started 3 years ago after the birth of her 7th kid. It's really bad. She already can't stretch her arm all the way out, her hands are inflamed and starting to curl, and she's in a lot of pain. She's the one in the middle.

Peter said if they don't do something she'll be crippled in just a few years. Medicine is forthcoming with Peter's three undergrad students, who will arrive December 17th. In the meantime, we gave her some eucalyptus and rue to soak in water and make an ointment for pain, some hibiscus (a diuretic) to help take away swelling, and some St. John's wort and chamomile to make a soothing sleep-helping spirit-lifting tea.

You'll remember the two girls sitting on our laps (Alicia and Anna) from the dancing video on Thanksgiving. I've gotten attached to them, especially Anna, and some of the hugs I got from her yesterday completely melted me. Cesar and his wife have the sweetest kids in the world.

Positionals Paper

2006-12-05T18:16:00.000-06:00

Lately lots of people have been emailing me asking how the turning in of my positionals paper went. I put the finishing touches on it last week and e-mailed it to my advisor on November 30, when I promised him I would give it to him. The whole week prior to that had been pretty intense. I spent lots of hours on my laptop (thanks again Janet--that's been a lifesaver) pulling my hair out over it.

But now it's finished. I still don't know why he wanted it. Maybe just to be able to see at a glance exactly how much I know about Kaqchikel positionals at this point in my research. I still have my thesis left to write in the coming months.

I hope to come back here for a week or two next semester, but we'll see how things go.

I'll be back in KC this Saturday afternoon. Then I think the first order of business is that Mike and Bobette and I are going to work up an arrangement of "Beautiful Star of Bethlehem" for the following Sunday Christmas program at church.

Medical Clinic in Pa K'in

2006-12-05T17:14:00.000-06:00

Yesterday morning (Monday) we did the same thing we did Sunday morning: wake up at 6, go to Cafe Condessa and split the usual: blackberry pancakes, eggs, potatoes, fruit, toast, unlimited coffee. Then we went to the market to buy more medicinal plants before catching the bus to Pa K'in (Santiago Sacatepequez) for the second day of seeing patients there.

Both of these clinics started off at the home of Cesar's friends, "the cofradia girls" as we refer to them. Patients came in all morning.

Peter gave free medical consultations and then we gave them bundles of various plants we had bought at the market.

Then in the afternoons we walked over town, visiting people from their Catholic church who were sick.

We carried all the plants around with us in plastic bags: eucalyptus, St. John's wort, wormwood, rue, chamomile, spiderwort, myrtle, blessed thistle, hibiscus, and a few others.

Kaji' Tz'i'

2006-12-02T17:42:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow (Sunday) is Kaji' Tz'i', Four Dog. Every twenty days, when we have another Tz'i', I make sure to pray for every dog I see. The day Tz'i' is also associated with justice--appropriate to think of justice in regard to dogs, who are beaten and neglected here. I had a nice time with this one this morning. She was cleaner than most that I see, so I helped myself to a cuddle session.

Man taqumu' ta ri tz'umaj ri tzuntzun

2006-12-02T17:33:00.000-06:00

This morning while Peter was seeing patients in Ixkamey's courtyard, Ixkamey, Megan, and I took a walk to the only nearby aldea we hadn't yet walked to. All the corn and wildflowers are dying, because of the cold and the lack of rain. Isn't this little baby goat adorable?

Shining Star of the Fife and Drums Corps

2006-12-02T17:18:00.000-06:00

Warming up on "Wind Through the Barley."

Almost forgot how to end "Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms."

Trying out the Irish tunes on the how-to sheet.

Cracking himself up (and everybody else) during "Irish Washer Woman."

ManiMania

2006-12-01T17:35:00.000-06:00

Today is one of the market days in Comalapa, so we went to visit Cristy and Gladis' peanut stand. Business was slow due to the cold and wind, but Peter kept everyone entertained as always. (Speaking of Peter's entertaining abilities, stay tuned for photos of his impromptu penny whistle concert.)

Magnolias for Michelle

2006-12-01T17:33:00.000-06:00

These loop-de-loo tendrils are for you.

The Birth of a New NGO

2006-12-01T12:14:00.000-06:00

Peter is starting an NGO. We're in the process now of assembling the board and doing the paperwork. This morning we had a brainstorming session about a name. The working title of the organization is Wuq'u' Kawoq (Strengthening Mayan Language and Medicine). We picked Wuq'u' Kawoq because the day Kawoq is associated with medicine and advocacy for the oppressed, and the number wuq'u' (7) because it's associated with balance and harmony. Also, the Mayan calendar date Wuq'u' Kawoq happens to fall on January 1, 2007, which could be the official start date of this group. K'o chi niqatzu'.

This morning we shared the idea with Ixkamey in the kitchen after watching her weave for a while. Peter'll probably write more about that.

Here's Peter talking about how important it is that the indigenous people be the ones to decide which projects to do, and asking Ixkamey to think all of this over and respond to him with which matters she considers most pressing.

Here's Ixkamey listening intently. She loves this idea and is excited about the possibilities.

I am really excited about this too. If you're wondering what this new NGO is all about, here's a little blurb Peter wrote to email to potential board members. He's in the middle of writing the articles of incorporation and by-laws and what-nots, which are incredibly long. So I'll just post these few paragraphs for you:

Here in Guatemala we have been working with indigenous community leaders to develop models of health care that are holistic and attentive to all the features of excellence. We say ‘excellence’ because, although Guatemala is swamped with medical charities, churches, and NGO’s very little ever changes in terms of vital health care statistics. We are convinced that this is in part due to ignorance of or inattention to the linguistic and cultural barriers on the ground.

We say ‘excellence’ because there are no medical projects in Guatemala, national or international, that provide care or educational resources in the indigenous Mayan languages, this despite the fact that the majority of the population knows Spanish as a second language only or not at all. We believe that it is negligent and irresponsible for national medical professionals and also international aid workers to persist in their belief that knowledge of first languages is not required in order to provide excellent care.

During the last year, we have been doing just this, providing care and developing partnerships in Kaqchikel, one of the Mayan languages, and also integrating local ethnobotanical knowledge into our practice. The results of this simple intervention have been overwhelmingly positively received, and our work has been growing to such a degree that it is no longer sustainable without new sources of funding.To address this, we propose the formation of a new NGO in Guatemala, whose mission will be to cultivate partnerships and fund targeted sustainable projects at the intersection of indigenous language rights, literacy, and the provision of medical care.

Such projects might include: financial and logistical support for indigenous community ethnomedical cooperatives, such as lay midwife cooperatives, that provide care in indigenous languages; the development or translation and dissemination of written medical resources, such as dictionaries, midwife training manuals, ethnobotanical usage guides, in indigenous Mayan languages; literacy and continuing-education training for ethnomedical practioners; support for the development of indigenous-language allopathic services.

Weaving

2006-12-01T12:07:00.000-06:00

This morning, Peter and I sat in the kitchen and watched Ixkamey weave. She usually weaves out in the courtyard, where there's more light, but today the wind is fierce and cold. So we huddled around the fire.

I took a very short video. Click here to watch her fingers fly.

http://www.bigupload.com/d=EFE7BEAA

The Much-Anticipated "Next Post"

2006-11-28T12:58:00.000-06:00

This is the middle third of The Fourth Letter. It's primarily the last paragraph that I liked a lot. If I feel the need to procrastinate more on my positionals paper, I'll type in the first third, or the third third, both of which are great.

"To cope with sexuality is difficult. Yes, but everything assigned to us is a challenge; nearly everything that matters is a challenge, and everything matters. If you would only recognize that and come to the place where you would strive on your own to finally gain your very own relationship with sexuality, always keeping aware of your native bent and your personality, your own experience, your childhood, and your strengths, then you need no longer fear losing yourself and becoming unworthy of your sexuality, your most precious possession.

"Physical lust is a sensuous experience no different from innocently viewing something, or from the feeling of pure delight when a wonderful ripe fruit fills the tongue. It is a glorious infinite experience granted us, a gift of knowledge from the world, the fullness and radiance of all knowing. It is not bad that we welcome it. What is bad is that almost all misuse and waste it. They set it out as a lure in dreary places of their lives and use it as a distraction rather than as a focus on great heights.

"Man has also transformed eating into something else. Lack on the one hand and excess on the other have clouded the clarity of this basic need. Similarly cloudy have become all the deep and simple human needs in which life renews itself. But the individual can clarify them for himself and can live that clarity--as long as he is not too dependent on others, as long as he has a pact with aloneness.

"We can recall that all beauty in animals and plants is a silent and enduring form of love and longing. We can see the animal just as we perceive the plant, patiently and willingly uniting, multiplying, and growing, not from physical desire, not from physical grief, rather from adapting to what has to be. That existing order transcends desire and grief and is mightier than will and resistance. The earth is full of this secret down to her smallest things. Oh, that we would only receive this secret more humbly, bear it more earnestly, endure it, and feel how awesomely difficult it is, rather than to take it lightly.

"Oh, that we might hold in reverence our fertility, which is but one, even if it seems to be either spiritual or physical. They are of the same essence--only spiritual creativity is a gentler, more blissful, and more enduring repetition of physical desire and satisfaction. The desire to be a creator, to give birth, to guide the growth process is nothing without its constant materialization in the world, nothing without the thousandfold consent of things and animals. Its enjoyment is so indescribably beautiful and rich only because it is filled with inherited memories of millions of instances of procreation and births. In one thought of procreation a thousand forgotten nights of love are resurrected and that thought is fulfilled in grandeur and sublimity. They who meet in the night to be entwined and sway in passionate lust are performing a serious work. They are gathering ‘sweets’ and depth and power for the song of some future poet, who shall arise and speak of unspeakable bliss. They beg the future to wait to become the present, and they blindly embrace, believing their wish. Even so, they are mistaken. The future does come; a new human being arises, due to the law of nature. A strong resistant seed forces itself to the ovum that draws it willingly to itself.

"Do not allow yourself to be misled by the surfaces of things. In the great depths all becomes law. They who live this mystery badly and ineffectually (and there are many), lose it only for themselves. Even so, they pass it on like a sealed letter without knowing it. Do not be misled by the great number of names and the complexity of cases. Perhaps there is over all a great motherhood expressed as mutual longing.

"The beauty of a virgin, a being that, as you so aptly say, has not yet accomplished anything, is motherhood having a presentiment of itself, is in preparation, and has fears and longings. The beauty of the mother is that of a serving motherhood. And within the aged one there dwells an awesome memory.

"Within the man, motherhood exists also, it seems to me, both physical and spiritual. His part in procreation is also a type of giving birth, and giving birth it is when he draws strength from his innermost abundance.

"Perhaps the sexes are more closely related than one would think. Perhaps the great renewal of the world will consist of this, that man and woman, freed of all confused feelings and desires, shall no longer seek each other as opposites, but simply as members of a family and neighbors, and will unite as human beings, in order to simply, earnestly, patiently, and jointly bear the heavey responsibility of sexuality that has been entrusted to them."

The Creative and the Sexual

2006-11-28T08:50:00.000-06:00

Here's a discussion starter. I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be human vs. female or male. This is an excerpt from Letter #3 in Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet.

It's a warm-up for the next post. And thank you to everyone who has ever left or will ever leave a comment on my blog. Your commentationalism thrills me to my bones.

"My reaction to the books of Richard Dehmel--the same, by the way, as to the person, whom I do know slightly--is this: When I have found one of his well-written beautiful pages, I am then already afraid of the next ones, which destroy everything again and can turn that which is worthy of love into something unworthy. You have characterized him very well with the words, 'lustful in his life and writing.' Actually the creative experience lies so unbelievably close to the sexual, close to its pain and its pleasure, that both phenomena are only different forms of the same longing and bliss. If one could say 'sexuality' instead of 'lust'--sexuality in a large sense, in a wide pure sense, not one suspect by the church--then his art would be great and infinitely important. His poetic talent is great and as strong as the primeval urge; it has an impetuous rhythm that breaks forth out of him as water out of the rocks.

"But it seems that this power of his is not always entirely genuine and not without assuming a pose. (After all, this is indeed one of the most difficult tests for the true artist: he must always remain innocently unaware of his best virtues if he does not wish to rob them of their spontaneity and their unaffectedness.) And when Dehmel's creative power, rushing through his being, meets the sexual, then it finds the man not quite so pure as he needs to be. For him there exists no totally mature and pure world of sex, none that is simply human and not masculine only. For him there exist lust, intoxication, and restlessness, beleaguered with the old prejudices and pride, with which the male has disfigured and burdened love. He loves only as male, not simply as a human being. Consequently there is in his perception something confining, something spiteful, seemingly wild, something temporal, not eternal. There is something that detracts from his art, and makes it suggestive and questionable. His art is not without blemish; it has been imprinted with passion and transience. Little of it will continue and endure. (But this is true of most art.)

"In spite of that, one can appreciate and enjoy the part that is great. One must simply not be overwhelmed nor become a partisan to Dehmel's world, which is so infinitely fearful, full of adultery and confusion, far from the true destinies of man. They may on the one hand cause more real suffering than his fleeting gloom, but will also offer more opportunities for greatness and more courage for eternity . . ."

Ixkotz'i'j's Kotz'i'j

2006-11-26T13:00:00.000-06:00

For my birthday Thursday, we went to Pa K'in to do a small kotz'i'j (an offering/blessing ceremony) with Cesar the daykeeper and our friend Waqi' Aq'ab'al. We did this in Cesar's front yard--it was great to have his kids and wife closeby the whole time. This kotz'i'j was different from any of the others I've participated in. It felt familiar and intimate, very down-to-earth.

We wouldn't normally take pictures of a kotz'i'j, but Cesar thought it would be cool. So here are a few of the images Raxq'ij captured.

P.S. So my name Ixkotz'i'j doesn't just refer to flowers. It also refers to these offerings to God. Kotz'i'j is also the word for sacred candles, and placenta.

Rare Footage Now De-Rarified

2006-11-26T12:00:00.000-06:00

Ixkotz'i'j regrets to say that she is unable to keep up with the demands for e-mailed copies of her latest video, "The Rollicking Romp: A Birthday Night of Wild Unabashed Frolicking." She hopes that posting it here on her site will both appease her fans and also free her up to work more on her positionals paper, which is due this week.

http://www.bigupload.com/d=ACC10CBC

In a statement earlier this morning, she said: "The first 30 seconds or so are mainly of my butt, but it gets better, I promise." She added that her "birthday suit" in the video should be considered a "loud and proud shout-out" to the folk band Peter, Paul, and Mary. Lastly, Ixkotz'i'j wishes to thank all of the tots who participated in the making of the film: "Matyox chiwe, ri jeb'el wak'wala'. Majun b'ey xtinmestaj qanimaq'ij."

Happy Holidays

2006-11-23T11:05:00.000-06:00

As you know, today is a very special holiday. My birthday.

September 16, 1977 was Wuqu' Ajpu' according to the Mayan calendar. That day comes along once every 260 days, and today is one of those days. I've been looking forward to this day for months.

This morning I got up early, did a little podcast, and had coffee and a breakfast of refried beans, avocado, lime, and nacho chips. Then we went to market to buy the birthday flowers.

Can you think of a receptacle more well-suited for gerbera daisies than 3 empty Quetzalteca bottles?

Sewing

2006-11-23T09:30:00.000-06:00

Here are pictures of a few crochet projects from recent weeks. I've made lots of other things too: another hat, 3 scarves, 4 bags, and a potholder, but I just haven't thought to take pictures of them before the time to give them away. If I get photos of them in the near future, I'll post them.

A case for my recorder.

A little bag for Waqi' Aq'ab'al.

A hat for Megan (Ixkamey's daughter.)

A hat for Raxq'ij.

A hat for Ixkamey's brother.

Waking Up to Love

2006-11-23T08:50:00.000-06:00

I woke up at 6 this morning, went up on the roof, and read this to you. Enjoy the new podcast, in which I read some of Kim and Eckharts' words about love relationships. (Thanks Peter for bringing me coffee.)

http://www.bigupload.com/d=DE872154

"When you no longer perceive the world as hostile, there is no more fear, and when there is no more fear, you think, speak, and act differently. Love and compassion arise, and they affect the world."

Yay, We Finally Crested the Hill

2006-11-20T14:51:00.004-06:00

If you've been following my blog, you know that I've been dying to hike up to the tops of the hills surrounding Comalapa. My requests first resulted in being taken to the family cornfield to pick corn, which was joyous. Then it resulted in a nice walk to a nearby town, also joyous. But way more joyous was yesterday, when Ixkamey took Peter, Mildred, Megan, and me up to the top of the hill.

This is what I've been dying to do ever since my first visit here. Enjoy the slideshow . . .

A Wild Night in the Cornfields

2006-11-20T14:51:00.003-06:00

Friday night Ixkamey and I spent a few hours helping decorate and do other miscellaneous preparations for the all-day party the next day in honor of Mildred (who lives just down the path from Ixkamey). We picked calla lilies as big as our faces.

Ixkamey and I arranged the bouquets of hothouse flowers. I was shooting more for a kind of depth and spacing that my sister the FloristExtraordinaire taught me. But Ixkamey told me that the way they do it there is stack piles on a bench from tallest flower to shortest, then stick the clump in the vase. What you see below is an awkward mix of our styles.

I kept wanting to run out into the cornfields and pick wildflowers. So I did, and Mildred followed me. She had never picked wildflowers before. We had a magical, enchanting evening. We picked lots of other plants too, stalks of seeds, anything interesting to add to the bouquets. Then we brought all the vases back and placed them under an enormous poster of Jesus.

I made Mildred a purse in my spare time.

Take a look . . .

2006-11-20T14:51:00.002-06:00

I would like to take this moment to refer you to Peter’s (Raxq’ij’s) websites. Look especially at what he has to say about missionaries here and the charismatic movement on www.coprinus.blogspot.com. And then look at the same thing on www.raxqij.blogspot.com along with the layperson’s guide to what he is doing here with ethnomedicine. It is fascinating. And it'll give you a good idea of what I'm up to too.

Positionals with Pops

2006-11-20T14:51:00.001-06:00

Last night (Sunday) I did another elicitation session in my room with Ixkamey. She kept running off to the kitchen to ask her parents questions about derivations that she thought might have an older form, or words she hadn't heard but suspected her parents might've.

Eventually she walked back in with her dad in tow. We spent a delightful two hours going through my database of positionals. He has a completely different style from Ixkamey's of defining and describing words. I'll write more about that when I have time. We're scheduled to do it all again tonight. I'm so excited. This work is even more rollicking than it appears in the photos.

While Raxq'ij and Ixkamey were galavanting about the town doing medical consultations this morning, I spent a couple of hours working more on the writing of the actual paper. I have less than a week left now before I have to turn something in to my advisor. If you want to send some good thoughts or prayers my way, that would be wonderful.

My Weekly Bath

2006-11-20T14:51:00.000-06:00

We take baths every single week here in Comalapa. I took mine on Saturday, after not taking one since the Monday before, while we were still in Antigua.

It's a nifty system. The little sea-green bin holds industrial-strength dish/clothing soaps. The blue bucket is filled with cold water. The dark green bucket in the back is half-full of hot water. You stand/squat in the big white bucket, and use the little olive green container to scoop out mixtures of hot and cold water and dump it on your various body pieces.

I found this to be very relaxing. At the same time, keeping all the buckets straight and rationing my hot water well was a fun mental challenge.

***

On the theme of photos of the floor of our room, here's a picture of what happens when you leave the door open long enough for the chickens to march in and leave you a present.

When that happens, we just wait a half a day or so for it to dry before cleaning it up (and try to remember not to step on it with our bare feet.)

from The Fellowship of the Ring

2006-11-19T13:20:00.000-06:00

I sit beside the fire and think
Of all that I have seen,
Of meadow-flowers and butterflies
In summers that have been;
Of yellow leaves and gossamer
In autumns that there were,
With morning mist and silver sun
And wind upon my hair.
--J. R. R. Tolkien

Wildflower Walk

2006-11-19T12:15:00.000-06:00

Yesterday morning I got up at 6 to take a walk through the cornfields between Ixkamey's and 14-year-old Mildred's house, to pick more wildflowers for Mildred's all-day fiesta. This is the thing that I love doing in the States, taking long walks to gather wildflowers and interesting plants. It's so fun to be collecting entirely new species of flora and fauna.

Lots of people passed me on the path, fetching water, walking to their fields, going to school, whatever. So I got to speak a lot of Kaqchikel, especially with the men. Some men stopped and said to me in Spanish, So, you're gathering flowers to make a bouquet. And I said in Spanish, Yes, for Mildred's party. And pointed to her house. One man said under his breath to the other, in Kaqchikel, Ah, look, this girl really likes those flowers. And I responded in Kaqchikel, Oh Yes. I LOVE flowers. I love them so much that I gave myself the Mayan name Ixkotz'i'j. (which means Lady Flower)

Then there was much amazement and laughter. Moments like these happen all the time to Raxq'ij and me. People assume that we don't know any indigenous languages, so when we demonstrate that we do know what they're saying and we're happy to join the conversation, it's a bit of a shock.

More surprising than a Kaqchikel-speaking gringa seemed to be the fact that I was picking wildflowers. Some of them kept asking questions like, So she couldn't buy flowers? I don't understand, the family doesn't have enough money to buy real flowers for the fiesta?

And I'd explain that the family did buy lots of flowers for the party. And that this is just my little gift to her, that I love wild flowers a thousand times more than 'real' flowers.

So does Mildred, it turns out, which should count for something, since it the whole party was presumably for her. More on Mildred later . . .

Ri Chupuchïk Q’aq’

2006-11-17T14:17:00.000-06:00

This morning I got up at 7, a little later than usual. Cristina and Daisy are sleeping in Peter’s bed until he comes back on Saturday. My breakfast was k’ix soup (güisquil in Spanish--I don’t know what it is in English. It’s some kind of green spindly squashy vegetable), tortillas, and coffee.

That is exactly the meal that I had last night for supper too. Delicious.

Then I started working. I’ve been working for 4 hours on processing what I learned from Ixkamey last night, and reorganizing my positionals spreadsheets so that I can accommodate a new informant. This is a very peaceful place to work, in spite of the bawking chickens at the door and curious kids at the window. I get unlimited black coffee all day long. =)

Last night was the first night Ixkamey and I worked together on positionals. I was feeling exhausted because I’m battling mild turista again, and I had just gotten done walking all over town with her for hours. But she had energy to start working, so I agreed.

In my weariness, I tried to keep in mind some of the cardinal rules of fieldwork . . . if there’s ever any mistake it’s the fault of the linguist not the informant, no matter what happens the informant should always be made to feel that he or she is helping, above all smile liberally, etc.

It didn’t take long for the spark in her eyes to catch in mine. It was inspiring to watch her lift her face to heaven and ask herself “do I ever say that? have i ever heard anybody use that form? in what context?” and then confidently give me an answer: “Yes, I use that, but I use this other form more frequently.” or “No, I would never say that, and I’ve never heard anyone else in this town say it either.”

This has a radically different feel to it from what I experienced with Fili. Ixkamey brings a fiery enthusiasm to this work, and she’s got a natural curiosity about the details of her language that not every native speaker has. In other words, she’s a budding linguist.

You probably remember her from the stories that Raxq’ij recorded over the summer. We already knew from her storytelling abilities that she is amazingly creative with Kaqchikel. As of last night I’ve also discovered that she has a keen intuition about grammaticality. Vivid creativity and keen grammaticality aren’t always found within the same speaker.

With other informants, I might say “Can you say ___?” (And I mean, do people say this? is this used? does this form sound right to you?) And they might respond “Well . . . you could say that . . . I suppose . . . .”

I’ve had several experiences now where the informant lacks the confidence to say whether something sounds correct to him. (And there can be lots of reasons for this, one of which is probably me not getting across exactly what I want in a grammaticality judgment. I’ll try to write more about this later.)

But Ixkamey has a shortcut in her brain, like a wormhole, that gives her access to not only whether a form is good or not, but also why. She can talk about things that average speakers only grasp subconsciously, until a few linguistics classes start bringing deep pieces of the language structure to conscious light. As far as I know she hasn’t had any linguistic training, so I’m shaking my head at how good she is.

Christmas lights came up last night, which is part of what got me feeling happy again about Christmas. It came in the context of a discovery that I am excited to delve into this afternoon when we meet again.

For now I’ll skip the background information about positionals and their derivational patterns and give a couple of examples to illustrate a bit of this discovery.

I have believed for a long time that the positional adjective and the descriptive adjective have more or less the same meaning, and that they differ only in their syntactic function (which is why they take different suffixes on the surface level). For example, I have thought that setël and setesïk both mean “round,” and that chupül and chupuchïk both mean “turned off,” and that they just play different adjectival roles in the sentence.

(The former is sort of like English’s predicate adjective, and is used in nonverbal sentences. The latter is an adjective that directly modifies a noun.)

[Several Kaqchikel dictionaries and grammars support this erroneous semantic reduction. Even so, I will not be surprised when Lajuj Kej and Raxq'ij inform me that they already know all this, even though they are not the ones doing a thesis on positionals.]

But Ixkamey said that most of the time the descriptive adjective either means something slightly different from the positional one (as with the root chüp), or it indicates the meaning of the positional but in a stronger sense, an intensifier (as with the root sët). She gave me these examples:

chupül ri q’aq’ “The light is turned off”

ri chupuchïk q’aq’ “the blinking light” (this is when she noted that it would probably indicate the Christmas tree lights)

setël “round”

setesïk “very round”

About this one, she noted that it's similar to what occurs when you add the morpheme “-aläj” to an adjective. For example,

säq “white”

saqaläj “very white”

Here is what I want to know. What percentages of the descriptive adjectives (in relation to the positionals) mean:

1. the same thing
2. the same thing but intensified
3. something slightly different
4. something altogether different

I’m heading back now to work with Ixkamey on my new spreadsheets. I’ve decided to hone in on the adjectives, as far as what to turn in to my advisor in a week and a half. After that, with whatever time I have left, I’ll record all of her verbal derivations too.

That Christmas Bug

2006-11-17T14:11:00.000-06:00

I’ve got the Christmas bug. I’ve been talking to Mike over e-mail, and he’s agreed to be my caroling partner when I get back. Cooking up the arrangements is going to be great fun, and I’ve already started thinking through who should sing which harmony parts on which songs and when we should add in some dulcimer/banjo pizzazz. I’ll probably be home around the first or second week of December. That won’t give us a whole lot of time, but we shall carol our socks off until it’s time to leave town to be with family. I can smell the egg nog.

Additionally, I’ve also got a literal Christmas bug. The brilliant colors don't show up in the photo like I hoped they would, but this little bright red and green critter kept me company while I worked at the table all morning.

I like him more than the huge heavy spider that jumped from his ceiling ledge in the middle of the night and landed on my head. I hollered, swished it off my hair and onto the pillow, turned on the light, and gently guided it onto the floor. I am in a stage in my life where I don’t kill anything except mosquitoes. I hope this can produce karma enough to curb spiders’ interest in biting me. We’ll see.

And It Was All Yellow

2006-11-16T11:53:00.000-06:00

Here´s a woolyworm we saw on the bench outside our window yesterday afternoon. He is at least 3 inches long.

The next pictures are from a walk Raxq'ij and I took yesterday evening. We took the walk to marvel at how yellow the world looked (I didn't touch up the pictures). And we commented that if this had been the midwest, we'd be bracing ourselves in the eeriness for a fierce storm, maybe a tornado to boot. But it's Guatemala, so you get yellow skies sometimes for no reason, and for free.

Let’s Run Through the Green Hills

2006-11-15T14:00:00.000-06:00

It took me nearly an hour to get through snapping all those green beans. Then I went back in the room to do some writing until they were ready to go pa juyu’. Very shortly they were. And I discovered that “let’s go pa juyu’” means quite a lot of different things. It doesn’t just mean what I meant to express yesterday (which was meant to evoke images of meandering through the hills SoundofMusic-style . . . and if horses should appear that we ride bareback through the fragrant meadows where, on a clear day, we can see forevermore, then so be it.)

It can also mean “let’s go to the country,” or as was the case this morning, “let’s go to our cornfield and pick corn.”

So Gladis, Cristina, and I went to the cornfields, about a 15-minute walk from the house. We passed fields of all kinds of flowers and vegetables, including cabbage.

We ducked into a cornfield with stalks two stories high and stopped under an avocado tree.

They showed me how to bend down the stalk and tell when an ear of corn is ready to be picked.

We picked and picked until we had a bag full. Then we started home.

We passed some cows on the path.

I pointed to the hills again and reiterated how much I would love to go pa-juyu’ing. I asked if there was a road going up to the top of the hills. Their eyes got big. They said yes, there’s a road, and boy are you ever going to get really tired. But they’re going to show me sometime this week where to go.

When we got back home, we shucked the corn, pulled off all the ruwi’ äj (the corn’s hair) and began the slow hard process of picking off each kernel.

It was so fun to get to know Cristina better. I hadn’t spent any time with her the last time I was here. She knows how to play the marimba, and she said she would love to learn to play the recorder. (I brought that with me and played it for them the last time I was here.) I told her that when I come back here in a week or two I’ll bring it with me and teach her.

Gladis and the gang roasted corn and made stew for lunch. Now Peter and I are going to hunt for an internet place. If we can find one with fast enough speed to be able to upload things, then I’ll post this. If not, it’ll post later this week.

Cold Morning in Comalapa

2006-11-15T13:49:00.000-06:00

This morning I got up at 6am to help with the family chores for the first time. I went to the pila first to talk to Ixkamey. The coldest places in Comalapa in the morning are the pilas. Those are large sink-like constructions in the center of the courtyard. They’re divided in three sections. The middle part is a big basin of water. The two sides are shallower, with drains. Those are where you wash dishes, wash your hair, wash your clothes.

As I’m writing this, Daisy and Megan are sitting on the edge of my bed, staring at me. Before that they did their daily routine of running past my open door, giggling, peeking in, occasionally mustering the courage to tiptoe in and give me a small offering (this morning a handful of corn-and-jalapeno-flavored Tortrix chips), and eventually settling in as close as they can to me. They don’t seem be paying any attention at all to Raxq’ij, sitting just a few feet from me on the other bed.

I had a couple of layers of clothing on and I was shivering. But I wasn’t half as cold as they were--Cristina was starting to wash dishes in the right section. Ixkamey was leaning over the left section, dumping bowls of ice cold water to get the shampoo out of her hair. She was dressed for the cold, but the sleeves of her sweater were getting drenched. I started freezing just watching them.

Ixkamey looked up at me through her hair and explained that she had to go spend the day in Antigua, but that she’d be back tonight. She said some of her family might take me pa juyu’ (up into the hills.)

I’m really excited about that. I talked to them about it yesterday afternoon, asking if there is a road through the beautiful hills because I want to spend several hours hiking there. This is what I’ve wanted to do since the first day I visited. I’ll try to take some pictures of the hills today so you can see what I’m talking about.

They said yesterday that there are roads and I’ll get to walk on them at some point this week. (Later on I found out they meant something different.)

So I talked with Ixkamey a bit more, and then went into the kitchen to talk to Ixkamey’s mom. I felt myself inching closer and closer to the fire in the middle, where she was heating coffee and a pot of hot water. In Kaqchikel, terms for parts of the house are vividly descriptive. For example, windows are ruwäch jay, or “the eyes of the house,” and the door is ruchi’ jay, or “the mouth of the house.”

My favorite of all is the kitchen: rute’ q’aq’, or “the mother of fire.”

I asked her which chore she’d like me to help with. She smiled and said, “You can help Cristina with the dishes.”

In Kaqchikel the word for “dish” is läk, and the word for “to buy” is löq’. All the lax vowels (the ones with umlauts over the tops of them) tend to assimilate into one neutral mid-central vowel, which means that läk and löq’ sound a löt alïke.

I thought she said to me, “You can help Cristina buy . . .”

And then she paused. I chimed in, “OK, sure!” and stood there waiting for her to finish her sentence . . . to say what things we needed to buy, or where we would buy them.

She smiled at me, pointed to Cristina out in the courtyard, and repeated herself, “So, if you want to, you can help Cristina buy . . .”

I stood there, smiling, like a goon.

She generously broke it down for me. “Cristina. Dishes. She washes. You wash too. Dishes.”

Finally I got it. “Oh—dishes! Yes. I’ll go do dishes. With Cristina.” We chuckled.

I hadn’t been helping Cristina at the pila for long before Ixkamey's mom called me back in to do my favorite kitchen job. Snapping green beans. I love that sound. I sat as close as I could to the fire, gathered a couple of baskets around me and snapped the ends off of too many green beans to count. Enough to feed a family of 6 plus two guests.

She got out the metate, rinsed it off, and plopped on top of it the tomatoes she had just boiled. Steam poured off the cold stone. While I snapped green beans, she did the grinding of the tomatoes, and we both chatted with Gladis, who was frying eggs. The rasping of the grinding stone, the sizzling of the eggs, and the popping of the beans blended beautifully with the voiceless velar and alveo-dental fricatives, bilabial implosives, and glottalized ejectives.

Morning Reflection

2006-11-14T08:50:00.000-06:00

http://www.bigupload.com/d=A7ED60CB

The Courtyard Clinic

2006-11-13T18:14:00.000-06:00

Caskets and Consultations

2006-11-13T17:23:00.000-06:00

I have always said that one advantage to practicing medicine in a coffin factory is that caskets are on hand should you practice poorly.

Today was my second time going with Peter to Irena's house (where her family makes coffins) in San Antonio Aguas Calientes. I'll only comment on one observation, in the interest of time. What follows is what you hear when you are among the handful of women and men waiting to see Peter.

We sit in lawn chairs just a few feet from his medicine table. Not only do they hang on every word he says, they react dramatically to it all, gasping, clutching the heart, etc. (Sometimes the women finish Peter's sentences before he does. And he's got a decently rapid pace.) Here is one example of what I'm talking about, and this one's mild. Only arthritis. These conversations for the most part stay just barely out of earshot of the doctor and patient. I loosely translated the Kaqchikel and Spanish:

Man complains of not walking well.

Oh, he has not walked well in years, poor thing. Just look at those legs of his! Everyone knows that man does NOT walk well. Ay, that's tough.

Man and Peter talk about history of pains and symptoms. Peter says it's rheumatoid arthritis.

Oh dear God. Did you hear that? Rheumatoid arthritis! Ay, that's tough. We should have known it would be that! Poor thing.

Peter says the condition is due to his age.

Age! His age! Of course. So many years. Oh he has got to be SOOO old, just look at him, the poor little man. How old do you think he is? Oh my God, he looks so old!

Peter asks him how old he is. Man says 81.

(Gasps galore.) 81! Did you hear that? He said he's 81. Very, very old! Oh, so old. Ay, that's tough. I knew he was old, I mean look at him, but 81? That's really old! It's no wonder at all that you can't walk when you're that old. No wonder at all. The poor man!

Peter mentions camphor as a treatment option for pain.

What did he say? Camphor! Aha! That's it! Of course! for the pain. Oh that doctor knows his plants. Camphor for the pain. And he speaks Kaqchikel! Oh, so much pain. Ay, that's tough. Poor, poor little arthritic man.

Santa Clara Ruins

2006-11-12T17:21:00.001-06:00

Here is a slideshow from the ruins at a convent we visited recently. Since I had the camera, there was no one at all to take any pictures of me. (Jo'ok nuwach.) So I took muchas fotos of myself. But I've decided to spare you all--I left those out of the final slideshow cut.

We've been enjoying a few days of mostly relaxing. Friday night we went to a showing of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. In a couple hours we're going to the sequel.

(Mom, I hope you like the pictures. I know how you like your museums. Jaherm, thanks for reminding me to take the camera.)

Running in Circles

2006-11-11T09:22:00.000-06:00

This blog entry is dedicated to three of my linguistics friends: Lajuj Kej, Laura, and Michelle.

I’m typing in a page from the field methods textbook I’ve quoted from in earlier blogs. This chapter was written by Larry M. Hyman. He included the following letter, which Jan Voorhoeve wrote to a member of Hyman’s research team who was struggling in Cameroon. This resonated with me--my informant Filiberto and I are struggling with grammaticality judgments these days. Ill write more about that soon . . .

“Last remark. You started tonal analysis, and you hint at a personal instability. Be sure to meet the biggest crisis of your career if you are not prepared to fail constantly in the tonal analysis. I regard myself as a stable person and the tonal analysis still pushes me to the fringes of self-control. It is clear agony. All of the old feelings of inferiority will heap up in you. You will think that any other linguist would have solved the problems, but you are unable to do so. You will go in circles, coming back to refuted hypotheses, refuting them once more, and so on . . .

“I cannot understand how Larry manages to keep happy without really knowing the system. Larry is way off the truth in the verbal system, he knows it, and he is still happy. I am not. I am suffering. I have worked with a good informant for the last 8 months and it has not been solved . . . [but] . . . Please let it not ruin your pleasure in Linguistics.”

A little gift from me

2006-11-08T09:37:00.000-06:00

to everybody looking for the glory of God.

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

Day of Rest

2006-11-07T18:46:00.000-06:00

(Chirij SUNDAY, 11/5)

The missionaries, Hillary, Peter, and I took a private shuttle to Antigua Sunday morning. They came here for a vacation day and would return that night for a few more days of clinic work in Suchi. (I wanted to stay and do more positionals work the next few days.)

Peter graciously volunteered to be their tour guide. I didn’t accompany them all around the town, to the old churches and other historical markers. But I did catch some of Peter in action on the way to Antigua. He seemed to know everything about all the flora, fauna, crops, everything growing, the historical patterns of land appropriations, numerous geological facts, and then took us to the old church in Ciudad Vieja, the oldest church in Guatemala.

He mentioned that the church was built in 1521. Somebody went up to the face of the church, found the inscription block, and asked why it said it was built in 1530something. Peter replied that the block is misleading—it was dedicated in 1530something but definitely built in 1521.

Later, after the tour, just before they were going to head back to Suchi, I talked to Peter about how the hell does he know so much about this. He said, “Yeah, isn’t it funny when you suddenly realize you know an enormous amount about something, and you have no idea how you do? Somebody asks you, ‘How the hell do you know so much about ____’ and you think hard but can’t remember ever acquiring all that knowledge.”

I thought about it. I said, “Um, no. Things like that happen to you. Not me.”

I happily took Sunday off from doing any work. I finished making a hat on my loom, and started reading Interior Castle by St. Teresa of Avila. Because of the turning from 13 Ajpu’ to 1 Imox, I did some regressive and progressive reflecting about my life. I was so tuckered out from three days of clinic work and not much sleep that I crashed at 6:45pm and slept hard ‘til 7:15am the next morning.

“Seek him who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into the morning, and darkens the day into night; who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out upon the surface of the earth.” (Amos 5:8)

The Missionaries in Suchi

2006-11-07T18:36:00.000-06:00

(Chirij SATURDAY, 11/4, Day 3 of the Clinic)

I couldn’t help but feel weird every night when I would have to overhear the pastor leading the team in “Bible study” and prayer. His lesson the first night (about the train of God’s robe filling the temple with glory) was vacuous and dangerously dumb. He was that loud caricature of evangelical pretentiousness that we’re all familiar with, the one with the bloated head.

His prayers beseeched God to allow the native Mayans to see His glory in the missionaries, “that they would see our good works, and glorify you.” He also made juvenile comments about the Spanish and Mayan languages and the cycle of poverty, and he was constantly bemoaning his hardships (having to take cold showers, having to get dirty digging the well, etc.) The thing that offended me most, though, was this idea that God was not already among these “natives,” and that it was up to the tall white people to transport God in.

Besides the fact that this level of ignorance should be bothersome, I think it was particularly jolting for me because I haven’t had a pastor like that in years. Mindy and Josh, the co-pastors at my Kansas City church (and our previous pastor, Brian) have characteristics like these: humility; ability to do intelligent exegesis; open-mindedness in all the right respects; simplicity of lifestyle; commitment to works of peace and social justice; and lots of other traits you wouldn’t expect to find in a mainstream Christian leader.

This bothered me a great deal. I asked Peter that night why it couldn’t at least be reciprocal, why couldn’t they balance that request (that Mayans see God’s glory in the mission team) with the reverse: that God’s glory could also be revealed to them, through the Mayan people.

He told me that Gayle (the director of PID) laughs at this as well, and she notes that many of the Mayans here in Suchi are already devout Christians, and the ones that aren’t are probably still far holier than any mission trip member that visits. Gayle is a Christian too, but she doesn’t allow people to evangelize while they’re working at her clinic. Her motto: “Work with your hands, and keep your mouth shut.”

I have a lot of thinking to do about this. Here’s a starter: Maybe the most important thing I can do with my life is give it to poor people. But I don’t see myself as better than them in any way. I want them to get something out of my work, because I see devoting my life to the poor as simply my responsibility as a lucky American.

But so far, I am getting much more out of this than they are. Maybe that will change someday, and I’ll sense that what I’m doing is making a big difference. Until then, I’ll just keep on being around and working with people who are suffering. I know I’m much more likely to encounter Jesus in these environments than I would be around people who are rich, comfortable, and powerful.

Tales from the Exam Room

2006-11-07T18:24:00.000-06:00

(Chirij FRIDAY, 11/3, Day 2 of the Clinic)

Friday and Saturday I was a translator and aide for our nurse practitioner Amy, doing prenatal pelvic exams. You can read a lot about this in an earlier blog. Here are some additional thoughts in the form of anecdotes. I changed the names.

Isabela
Isabela is in her 30s; she’s had 13 children and now her 14th child is due in December. Of the 13 previous, 5 were still alive, and 8 were born normal but died inexplicably one or two days after delivery.

I found out later that this has to do with something called rh-negative. Or, I don’t remember exactly. It is so treatable that it hardly ever causes infant deaths in the States, which is why I had never heard of it (also because I know next to nothing about women’s reproductive health). Anyway this rh thing probably caused the death of 8 of Isabela’s kids.

Isabela was just as afraid of the exam as every other woman we saw was. But she was more animatedly talkative than most. At the end we handed off the tissue sample to Peter, and told her she could get dressed.

There was desperation in her voice as she started talking about how much she has suffered. She said, “I have suffered so much. I have had way too many pregnancies. I don’t want to have any more. Please help me not to. Over and over, I suffer, I suffer, I suffer. I have suffered so much. You have got to help me stop having babies.”

I looked at Amy, translated everything, and asked her what we can do.

About this time, Peter called the nurse out, after having looked at the sample under the microscope. I heard them in the hall. He told Amy the results, and then added that Isabela had “tested positive” for sperm. Amy came back in and said, “No wonder she’s so worried about getting pregnant again. She had sex right before she came here. She doesn’t have a chance in December without some help.”

She told me what to tell Isabela. I explained to her in Spanish that the first step will be an injection in her arm immediately after her baby is born. This will provide birth control for the first 3 months while she is recovering from delivery. After three months we will arrange for her to have a tubal ligation operation. And as always, everything will be free. Relief washed over her face, and she expressed lavish appreciation and gratitude.

Birth control is a tricky thing here. Not just because many of the people are Catholic. Also, it’s common for men to forbid their wives to have operations to prevent future pregnancies. Gayle, the director of the clinic, said some women have told her that their husbands’ reasonings are that if they get operations then they will be able to cheat on them freely and the husbands will never know. I probably don’t have to mention that there are not many pillars of fidelity among the men here.

Ana
Ana was one of the only women to come for a pelvic exam who wasn’t pregnant. We checked her for vaginal infections and any abnormalities. She had a lot of pain during the exam, and toward the end, she confided to us that every time she has sex with her husband “le duele mucho,” it hurts a lot. The nurse practitioner gave me an assortment of questions to ask her in Spanish. Like “Has it always hurt when you’ve had sex, even before you had your first child?” (Yes.) and “Does it hurt in every sexual position, or just certain ones?” (All the time, every time.)

This consultation disturbed me. Not so much because she has pain during intercourse—that’s not really rare. But while Ana was getting dressed, I asked the nurse, in English, “What are the chances we could encourage her to take a break from having sex if it hurts, until we figure out what the reason is and can deal with it.” She smiled a helpless smile. As I suspected, no chance. There is no chance that the husband will stop making her have sex, painful or not.

“It’s a cultural thing,” she said.

It’s true--if you’re a Mayan wife, you are likely to be beaten, and it’s more likely than not that your husband comes home drunk at night and forces you to have sex. I sighed. And wished for the clinic to get a good social worker for Christmas. We patted Ana on the back, gave her an appointment card for next month, and sent her back home to her husband.

Rachel
This reminded me of the only time I got to help Peter with a pelvic exam, at the clinic in October. Rachel was 14 years old, and she had just had her first baby the month before. She had a huge laceration from delivery that was only just beginning to heal. The wound was painful, and it dawned on me that probably this little 14-year-old girl was still having to have sex with her husband, even though her gash was still raw and had a long way to go to heal.

I’d like to know the frequency of this in developing countries like Guatemala compared to the frequency in a place like America. (“This” being wives having sex with their husbands when they very much do not want to.) It's probably more common here in Guatemala, but I don't know.

One thing we don’t talk about in conservative Christian circles is how common it is between married people for the husband to coerce his wife to have sex with him. And she doesn’t feel that she has a choice for a myriad of reasons. Somehow we get away with calling all sex outside of marriage wicked and all sex inside of marriage sanctified. Oh the tales these pelvic exams could tell of how decidedly unholy married sex can be.

Cowboy Coffee at the Clinic

2006-11-07T18:20:00.000-06:00

(Chirij THURSDAY, 11/2, Day 1 of the Clinic)

The three of us got up at 5:00 the next morning in Antigua and took the three-hour bus ride to Suchi for a longer clinic than normal. This is my 5th or 6th time doing a clinic in Suchi. The mornings on this trip were a thousand times better than in previous months because Raxq’ij got up early to make cowboy coffee.

Usually we’re stuck with instant coffee, the worst possible brand of instant.

How he describes it: with decent instant brands at least you can add more grounds when it’s weak and make it strong (even it it’s still not good), but with this brand, you add more grounds and it “just goes from weak to ass.”

So before we left Antigua we invested in a bag of real live coffee and a couple of strainers. Matyöx chawe Raxq’ij—wakamin ronojel qanimaq’a yalan ütz.

That first day I primarily did administrative/clerical/flow work. We had a new mission trip group with us and none of them spoke any Spanish. (Although they are all well-meaning and work very hard, not knowing any local language seriously handicaps one’s ability to contribute something valuable to the clinic.)

I especially enjoyed meeting Lisa and Maureen, the two missionaries whose task it was to reorganize all the 400 or so patient files and check people in. They are naturals at administrative duties. We are lucky that they did a number this week on our paper organizational system.

Day of the Dead

2006-11-07T18:11:00.000-06:00

(Chirij WEDNESDAY, 11/1)

Peter, Hillary and I spent all day last Wednesday in Santiago Sacatepequez, celebrating Dia de los Muertos with Aq’ab’al in the cemetery. None of us had ever seen anything like it. Take a look at the slide show if you get a chance, although photos don’t really do it justice. The skeleton of the kite, made of large sugar cane poles, was so heavy it took several people to lift it. I still don’t understand how they got those things up in the air.

Most of the graves were bedecked to the hilt with parutz’ (marigolds) and every other kind of flower, including daisies, roses, poinsettias, and fragrant pine needles. We all found obliging graves to sit on and watch the spectacular kites despegar. The boys started at one end of the cemetery for the take-off, ran all the way to the other end, jumping over the hurdles of crosses and fresh piles of dirt. When they got to the bluff at the end, the kite would fall, and whichever family it landed on would do their best to catch it gently. (Hands would sometimes go right through the tissue paper.) Then the boys would carry the kites back to the front end and wait for the next gust of wind.

We bought lots of pizza at the exit of the cemetery, and had to pick out large chunks of bologna. Then we joined the crushing jam of people going back down the hill to the town. At first this was a novelty. We marveled at how long the traffic jam stretched before us, and how impossible it was to move the crowd, no matter how firmly anyone pushed. Nobody around us was upset, we were all laughing.

But it stopped being funny after I saw the first little girl get squished. It got dangerous for everybody, especially kids. Vendors were roasting corn and poning tortillas on open fires all along the sides of the jam. So if you wanted a brief reprieve from hazards inside the suffocating throng (hazards that included being jabbed by spokes and whatnots from bikes) and you could negotiate your way to the edges, you still had to contend with rickety pots of boiling water and hot, makeshift stovetops.

So Peter and I took turns swooping up kids and carrying them. This worked great because we were significantly taller than everyone else. The kids didn’t know quite what to think of us, but the moms loved it.

On our way to meet Aq’ab’al, Peter warned Hillary and me, Don’t eat anything else because Aq’ab’al’s family is probably going to feed us.

I didn’t listen--all I could think about was finding a strawberry cheesecake ice cream cone from a local Sarita. I was so single-minded that they had trouble keeping up with me. I found one, savored every bite, and then when we wound up at Aq’ab’al’s house, out came the courses of the banquet feast. My stomach started to churn—piles of rice, cucumber, tomato, tortillas, and heaping mounds of what looked like a peas/mayonnaise mixture.

Long after Hillary and Peter had stopped eating, it still looked like hadn’t eaten a bite and I could not get even one more crumb down. We were alone, so Peter had the brilliant idea to flush it all down the toilet. This worked great! Thanks Peter.

Lunch with Fili and Paty

2006-11-07T17:57:00.000-06:00

(Chirij TUESDAY, 10/31)

My friend Rainbow had given me Filiberto Patal’s e-mail address a couple of weeks before. (He's the main writer for OKMA's new Kaqchikel dictionary.) We had a great first communication back and forth, and then after several failed attempts to arrange a meeting through phone and e-mail, I finally went to PLFM last Tuesday, found his wife Paty, introduced myself, and asked if we could all get together. Over lunch that day she took me in a tuk-tuk to their house in an aldea of Antigua. Fili was there watching their two boys. He and I enjoyed 3 hours of talking about all the ins and outs of positionals.

One of his suggestions was for me to talk with Nikte’ Sis Iboy, the director of OKMA. I thought this was a terrific idea because I knew of her from her 2004 paper about K’iche’ positionals. K’iche’ and Kaqchikel are in the same language family branch and share many linguistic similarities. She also speaks Kaqchikel.

I’m not sure how much technical stuff to post here. I’ll think about it and maybe post it all in lump someday this week, after a few more meetings with Fili. ‘Til then, I’ll share one really neat non-technical thing that happened that day over lunch with Fili and Paty:

They are quiet people. I thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with them during the first part of the visit, before we got going on positionals. Although smiles were exchanged frequently and liberally, not many words were.

That’s my kind of lunch. But I’ve been wrestling with this for some time, my tendency to be quiet in social situations where I don’t know people well. Even in English there’s usually a good-sized delay between when I think of something I can say and when I have figured out how to say it. But especially when I’m not fluent in the language, it’s tough. I don’t think this is bad as far as personality traits go. But this not speaking is not helping me speak the language better, which is a major goal of mine.

I didn’t do too badly over the summer. It was easier to talk lots and not be afraid of messing up then, because that’s the whole point of the language course. That’s the reason I was there. The role I played over the summer was of a language student. Now my role isn’t so well defined. My teachers are also becoming actual friends.

Raxq’ij is always getting on my case about this (in a kind way). In most encounters we have with new people, he probably feels like he has to do the talking for two people. (Although the cause-effect relationship is hard to figure. Sometimes he talks more because I’m not talking. Sometimes I don’t talk because he is talking.)

Anyway, this weakness has been a thorn in my side. One of my rationales for staying quiet (and I have many) has been that if I talk more, I will be saying things I don’t care about it, piling up random observations like “she’s sitting on the floor.” And doing that does not help me with an equally important goal—building authentic solid relationships with the people here.

So as I was enjoying the quiet sharing of lunch with Fili and Paty, I suddenly felt safe to confess all of this. I told them, in Kaqchikel, that it is very challenging for me to get in all the speaking practice I need in Kaqchikel (or Spanish for that matter) because of my personality. I said that I am always afraid of talking too much, of alienating people, of accidentally dominating them by being too loud (thank you Elizabeth Elliot, for feeding this paranoia) or generally just keeping other people from talking (especially native Kaqchikel speakers, who I very much want to hear from.)

Also, I explained to Fili and Paty that pockets of silence within conversation are really precious to me. So much bonding and communication for me can best happen with smiles and body language, and in quietness.

There was something liberating about saying all of this to people who gave me all the space and time I needed to think about what I was saying. They understood completely, agreed that they value the same sort of communication patterns, and totally accepted this about me. With lots of smiling.

With no one to interrupt me, and the feeling of a happy, secure environment, I actually talked quite a bit. And after we talked about this topic, I talked about quite a few other topics. I think a switch flipped in my head that day, because I’ve felt better about it ever since. And I’ve talked a lot more. About 30 minutes ago, Aq’ab’al popped his head into the Bagel Barn, where I’m typing this. When he left, I thought back on all the things we had talked about, how fluidly my sentences had flowed out, and how natural it felt to talk a lot to him. I’m glad to be getting over this.

The following element has also helped me reconcile all of this: the people I’m building relationships with care very much about my language acquisition. My progress in learning their language speaks volumes to them about how much I care about them as persons. I’m not saying it’s the only litmus test for my commitment level, but it is without question the biggest one.

So it turns out these people don’t mind at all if I say lots of things that are not objectively meaningful blocks in the building of genuine friendship (like “oh look at the spotted cat--he’s jumping off the table” if I want to practice saying the word spotted.) As a part of the whole, they do mean something. They mean that I care about the people, because I’m practicing constantly, every chance I get, at improving my language abilities.

At least that’s where I am right now. I’m releasing myself to let lots of words spill out, even if it’s messy or silly. This won’t get in the way of true connection. Ultimately it will be (along with the smiles) what connects us.

Yarn Day

2006-11-07T17:54:00.000-06:00

(Chirij MONDAY, 10/30)

Yarn is really cheap here, less than 50 cents per skein. It’s poor quality and almost offensively neon (Martha Stewart would never use a potholder fashioned from yarn with pigments like these). All the more alluring, then, the challenge to create something beautiful out of them. In Comalapa the week before, I had used up most of the 20 or so nice skeins I’d brought with me making hats and scarves for Ixkamey’s family members and teaching them all how to crochet.

I needed more yarn, but I don’t like long walks through the labyrinth of the market. The market is right next to our hostel. A convenient location but I rarely ever go there, except for very quick daily produce trips, when Raxq’ij and I pick up xkoya’, oj, wäy, tzetz, and limonix for supper. It’s an assault on my senses if I spend much longer than that there. Loud noises, the smell of rotting fish and cow tongue, puberty-full boys who cop lots of feels.

Anyway, I figured out the ticket to me enjoying the market: Go really early, when only 1/15 of the market stalls have opened. Whatever it is you need (a new trash bin, more salt, flip-flops, or yarn) you can usually count on 15 vendors selling that thing. But you only need one vendor. So I went early Monday morning, found the lone earlybird yarn vendor, and bought 37 skeins from her. Yaaaayyyy.

The Week in Review

2006-11-07T17:52:00.000-06:00

Today I spent a good amount of time blogging about this past week. What follows will be a separate post for every day, starting with a week ago yesterday, leading up to the present. (Please contain your excitement.)

Let's Go Fly a Kite

2006-11-06T17:41:00.000-06:00

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

Dia de los Muertos

2006-11-05T13:06:00.000-06:00

Here is the first of many more pictures to come, from the kite festival in the graveyard in Santiago Sacatepequez.

More from the medical clinic

2006-11-04T18:47:00.000-06:00

I figured that once you've given birth 13 or 14 times, you'd lose your modesty about your reproductive organs. That's not the case here in San Antonio Suchitipequez. For the past couple of days I have been Amy's translator (a nurse practitioner) while she's been giving pelvic exams at the medical clinic.

This has been a really humbling experience. The only history I have with pelvic exams are with my own. Even with all my american education about what to expect, I would never describe these as a walk in the park. In a developing country, things are even harder. We have very primitive equipment, and Amy does not speak Spanish or any Mayan language.

I remember the first day I visited this clinic, in late June, I hoped I would never have to translate for the doctors--I felt completely incompentent about having to intercede for women in vulnerable states like these, and there was no way I felt confident enough in my language abilities. I was happy doing miscellaneous tasks, in-take, sorting vitamins, talking in Kaqchikel with the women waiting outside the building, waiting their turn.

But here I am, there's no one else to do this translation work this week. I'm finding that I like it, even though it is tough as all get out.

During one of the listenings to a baby's heartbeat today, Amy let me feel the baby kick. I let out a squeal of delight--I had never felt anything like that before. It was one of the happier moments for all the people in the exam room.

In the past two days I've done the translating for more than a dozen women's prenatal visits. This was the first exam each woman had ever had, regardless of her age or number of pregnancies.

Most procedures went more or less like this:

--I get the woman's reproductive and menstrual history.
--She's had several kids and she always looks older than she is. A few of her babies have died.
--I tell her that first she needs to take off her skirt and underwear and put this vinyly cloth over herself in place of it.
--She only takes off her skirt, very very carefully, with the cloth over it all, nerviously eyeing the curtain that occasionally kids sweep to the side. She can't fathom that I am serious in saying she must remove her underwear. When I repeat this, she giggles, then this changes to a concerned look and she asks if she really really has to.
--I ask if she's receiving medical care from Centro de Salud or if she's ever had a pelvic exam
--No and no.
--Then I explain a bit more about why the exam is important, to check if she's got any vaginal infections, to examine the uterus and make sure everything is ok with the baby, etc. And that the doctor needs her to completely undress in order to do a proper examination. She reluctantly obliges.
--While she's mounting the table (that is way too high for Mayans) and lying down, I explain that in the first part of the exam the doctor will listen to her heart and lungs, and the baby's heart (which ends up being difficult with only a stethoscope, especially if it's early in the pregnancy) and then measure the abdomen to chart how well the baby is growing.
--She likes this part well enough. Although this involves child control from up high--she's usually brought in with her a few kids to keep track of during the exam. Keeping them out of the trash cans is a constant bother.

--Now comes the time when I ask her to scoot toward the end of the table, for the internal part of the exam. I try my best to stay one step ahead of Amy and tell the woman blow-by-blow what she will feel, what Amy is doing.
--This is challenging because Amy works quickly, and doesn't monitor the facial expressions or cries of the woman.
--First I say that Amy will "introducir" the apparatus into the vagina. That it will be a little uncomfortable at first, but that it is over quickly.
--She looks terrified.
--I am at her side, Amy is completely out of sight at the end of the table. The woman has no way to tell, during the whole exam, whether Amy has leaned back to gather other things out of the cabinets, or whether she's poised with the lubricant and will any second insert the next thing into her.
--I feel nervous that Amy is never telling me anything to tell the woman, so I try to always try to guess what she will do next and what the timing will be, and try not let it show that I'm a little uneasy with the pace of the practitioner. Amy begins pushing the woman's legs open before I can ask her first politely to please separate her knees.
--The woman doesn't take well to her legs being spread out for her, looks terrified again, and squeezes her legs together. I step in to negotiate. Eventually the knees are far enough apart for Amy to do what she needs to do. But barely.
--I try to smile the whole time and exude peacefulness, trying not to give any more fear or nervousness to the woman than what she already feels. I hold her shoulder with one hand and lightly hold a knee with the other.
--Occasionally she reaches up to hold my hand.
--I mention something about having had an exam myself.
--She is shocked that I've had one. "You mean I'm not the only person who has to have this?"
--I explain that every pregnant woman in the clinic has this exact exam at least once during each pregnancy. And that I've never been pregnant but I still have to get one every single year, just like every other woman.
--This seems to reassure her.
--About this time Amy is ready to introducir los dedos, so I explain that part of the exam.

--Then I share with the woman that my first exam was very scary.
-- This is the turning point in the exam. The woman looks relieved. One woman (when I told her that I remembered my first exam like it was yesterday and that it was really tough to get through, uncomfortable, and frightening, even though I knew it was important for my health), suddenly reached up and held my face and said, "Oh thank God. You were scared? I am so, so scared right now."
--I keep holding hands, looking sympathetic, saying things like, "yes, I know it's tough. It'll be over soon. Amy's a very good doctor," etc.
--As soon as it's over I tell the woman she can get dressed, help her climb down from the table and recover her clothing and kids. I tell her Amy will run the sample to the lab, and in the meantime we'll get vitamins for her and her children. Then I tell her that when she comes back next month we won't have to do that second half of the exam, just the listening to heartbeats and measuring.

***

I spent some time talking to Peter about this tonight at Comedor Marylin. We talked about the details of the exam, and he explained a lot to me about how to do it well, and how to do it poorly. There's so much--in the terminology, in the methodology. The irony of all of this is that Peter gave the prenatal appointments to Amy because Amy is a woman, and it's a safe bet that these women would prefer to have the exam done by a woman rather than a man. But if they went to Peter instead they would almost surely have a far better experience in every way. If they got over the initial embarrassment of being examined by a man, every other step of the exam would go more smoothly and feel more safe to the women than it has with Amy.

Before the next time I translate for pelvic exams or aid in any way, I am going to do a lot of research.

Up on the Roof

2006-11-02T18:31:00.000-06:00

I know it seems improbable that a sunrise/sunset could surpass the magnificence of the one in that Uma Thurman commercial about the cologne Miracle. But nearly every evening that we yojjote' to the roof of the hostel in Antigua, the Mayan sky manages to accomplish this. Behold the vistas that typically backdrop the smoking of the pipas de paz, the declaiming of poetry, and the sipping of the Quetzalteca.

Kite Festival

2006-11-01T20:15:00.000-06:00

Tonight we returned from Santiago Sacatepequez, where they had a huge kite-flying festival at the graveyards to celebrate Dia de los Muertos. I took more than a hundred pictures. We are getting up at 5:30 tomorrow morning to head to the medical clinic in Suchi for a few days. While I'm there I will post photos from the kite festival. The kites were unbelievably enormous and intricate.

Also, I had a meeting with Fili Patal (writer of the new OKMA Kaqchikel dictionary), on Tuesday, 3 hours of talking about lots of ins and outs of positionals. It went so well. We'll meet again early next week. I'll write some about that too.

Wishing you all a happy healthy Kab'lajuj Kawoq tomorrow,
Ixkotz'i'j

Birdcast

2006-10-30T13:57:00.000-06:00

This is my first podcast, using a highly low-quality digital voice recorder. I decided to make the first one bite-sized. It was tough, whittling down all my selections to only 10 minutes--I promise to make the next one longer.

http://www.bigupload.com/d=3A0FABC2

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Emily Dickinson
"A Sparrow Took a Slice of Twig"
Robert Frost
"The Oven Bird"
William Butler Yeats
"The Wild Swans at Coole"
Marie Luise Kaschnitz
"Birds"
"At Times"
W. S. Merwin
"Early One Summer"
"How We Are Spared"
"Migration"
"The Wren"
"The Unknown Bird"
e e cummings
"sweet spring is your time"
"you shall above all things be glad and young"
"may my heart always be open to little"
Wendell Berry
"The Peace of Wild Things"

Positionals Reading List

2006-10-29T17:04:00.000-06:00

As you know, 1/2 of the reason I'm here for two months is to work on my thesis topic--Kaqchikel positionals. I am busy reading the materials I brought with me, as well as making contacts here to talk with people and view resources that are impossible to access in the States.

Here are a few selections from my reading list, most of which I've already waded through . . .
* Knowles, Susan M. "Chontal Mayan Positionals," Journal of Mayan Linguistics
* Rankin, Robert L. "The History and Development of Siouan Positionals with Special Attention to Polygrammaticalization in Dhegiha," Spractypologie und Universalienforschung
* Brown, Penelope. "'He Descended Legs-Upwards': Position and Motion in Tzeltal Frog Stories," The Proceedings of the 13th Annual Child Language Research Forum
* Martin, Laura. "Positional Roots in Kanjobal"
* Kaufman, Terrence. "Some Structural Characteristics of the Mayan Languages with Special Reference to Quiche"
* Telma Kaan y Nikte' Sis Iboy. "Contextualizando posicionales: K'ichee'-Achi" OKMA
* Dryer, Matthew S. "Are Grammatical Relations Universal?" Essays on Language Function and Language Type

About a week ago, my advisor emailed me and told me to put together a paper on positionals within the next month. This is separate from my thesis, which I plan to have done (and defended) by the spring. I thought about freaking out over the email, but Raxq'ij quickly went to work and after about 10 minutes I was convinced that this is a good thing.

I emailed Rainbow, a girl I met over the summer who was here in Guate for a few years doing a PhD in linguistics at Berkley. She wrote back right away and put me in touch with Filiberto Patal (who just finished writing the new OKMA Kaqchikel dictionary); Tomas Chacach, the main writer of a new monolingual Kaqchikel dictionary at Kaqchikel Cholchi' (the Kaqchikel branch of the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala); and Marcos, the director of English classes at Kaqchikel Molaj (sponsored through PLFM.)

This was immensely encouraging, and now I'm in the process of arranging meetings.

Calmalapa

2006-10-28T16:19:00.000-06:00

Ixkamey is one of the teachers of the Kaqchikel course I took the last two summers. Here she is with her daughter Megan, 2 years old.

Comalapa is 2 or 3 hours away from Antigua. My only other visit to this town was toward the end of this last summer. Raxq'ij and I went there to spend a day with Ixkamey. She walked us through the market and all around the town. The best part was hiking up a high hill and sitting up there for a very long time staring at the lush green hills encircling the town. Everything about the town is tranquil. The sky is quiet. Even the bustly market, the tuk-tuk horns, and the blasting stereos all seem to have their volume knobs turned down, and they blend together in a lullaby.

After that day I thought a town had never calmed me so, and I couldn't wait to come back and stay for a long time.

I was looking forward to this return visit for other reasons too. Like another gringo I know, I'm partial to the Comalapa dialect. Also there would be chances to do elicitations, record more of Ixkamey's stories (she's a fantastic storyteller), and live in the home of a Kaqchikel family. But mostly I was anticipating the tranquility.

So it's funny that we arrived there just at the time when Ixkamey's brother found work building large outdoor-music-festival speaker boxes. He tested them all day every day with techno/hiphop songs at extraordinarily high volumes. The same songs over and over. The bass line of The Rhythm of the Night shook my bed and clobbered my ear drums for long, long hours while I writhed with fever and nausea.

And I was still so happy to be there. No amount of racket can touch the underlying peacefulness of the place.

The sounds at night are the best. The cornfields are just feet away from the beds, and the leaves and ears are constantly tickling one another in the wind. I am constantly mistaking that gentle patter for rain. That sound is a 24-hour pacifier.

Crochetathon

2006-10-28T15:47:00.000-06:00

When the ejective aspects of my sickness waned, I was still left with nausea that prevented me from doing much of anything except sitting. One by one all of Ixkamey's sisters peeked in to greet the new gringa. So I enthusiastically persuaded them to let me teach them to crochet.

I happened to have brought with me a couple of hat looms, 10 or 11 crochet hooks, and dozens of colors of yarn. We worked happily for hours and hours.

To Alba, Ixkamey's cousin (10 years old) and Daisy, Ixkamey's sister (9 years old) I taught the chain stitch, slip stitch, and the single. They made long long chains and then some hats for their dolls.

Gladis (23 years old) learned the the first two stitches and the half-double, double, and 3-double-in-the-same-stitch, and treble. She also learned how to work the hat loom.

Mery (15 years old) deftly learned all the aforementioned stitches with lightning speed, plus a funky stitch I can't remember the name of. She had a natural knack, the likes of which I have never seen before in all my churchy crochet circles. She blew my mind. Mery and Gladis finished making purses with drawstrings by the end of the day.

Panorama of the Family Restroom

2006-10-28T15:07:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, Friday, we arrived back in Antigua after three days of hard work in tranquil San Juan Comalapa. Raxq'ij's work was house calls with Ixkamey for several hours every day, going door to door all over town giving free medical consultations. My work was stumbling from my bed across the courtyard to the bathroom to have neverending egressive experiences.

The layout of Ixkamey's family's house is like most Guatemalan homes: a large square courtyard in the middle (where chickens and bunnies are kept and clothes and dishes are washed in the pila) and enclosed rooms built all around the square (kitchen, bedrooms). Typically the bathroom might be a part of the enclosed structure. But here it's part of the great outdoors.

There are only a couple of walls near the toilet. When I'm standing, I can see an enormous cornfield over the top of one of the walls, and the other wall is chicken wire (on the other side of which are smelly noisy chickens.) If you are going to keep chickens in the bathroom, it is good then that the bathroom is out in the open, where you won't have to worry with competing odor collisions. But it doesn't provide much privacy for people who are under the weather. Speaking of under the weather, yes, you get rained on too.

Anyway, this chicken coup is what average people probably stare at while they are in the throes of tourista.

The next picture shows the vista if tourista inspires you project your eliminative efforts upward as well as downward (which it did me, many many times).

But I was so happy to be in Comalapa, that I made the best of it. Not being average, I stared up at the stars most of the time, which were illimitable. Here's that view (but during the day).

The sky is so black there at night and the stars are so luminous that the number of shooting stars I saw almost made it worth being ill. Almost.

Calendar

2006-10-22T17:58:00.000-06:00

Last week we had a day or so to recover from the clinic in Suchi, and then it was off to Santiago Sacatepequez. Early Friday morning we hiked up the hill for a little less than an hour to Manzanilla and met with a delightful Kaqchikel midwife who kept wrinkling her nose adorably when she laughed. And she laughed a lot. That afternoon we met woman who works with local health programs in Santiago. You can read about both of these interviews on Raxq'ij's blog.

Waqi' Aq'ab'al went accompanied us on both visits. That night we had a short chat with a few women cleaning mountains of vegetables near a cofradia, and after that invited Cesar, a Mayan daykeeper, to Aq'ab'al's house for a mini welcome-back-to-Guatemala party for me.

We got back to Antigua on Saturday and have been doing a lot of flashcards and language study. I've also been keeping busy reading all these copies of journal articles I brought with me about positionals (my thesis topic).

Tomorrow morning we're off to San Antonio Aguas Calientes to meet with more midwives. Tuesday through Thursday we'll spend with Ixkamey in Comalapa. Then some major festivities begin this next weekend . . . on Friday there's a big kotz'i'j for Maximon in Santa Catarina (Polopo?), home of one of our teachers, Tojil. I'm buying new traje for that--with a super flowy uq' (probably from Cob'an or Xela) for spinning. Then Peter goes to Suchi for a day to meet with Gail, then the tail end of October and the first day of November will be spent in Santiago with Aq'ab'al and Cesar, celebrating Dia de los Muertos, with myriads of kites and the whole bit.

Then November 2 through the 7th or 9th will be a big big clinic in Suchi.

I would be posting more pictures right now, but at the last clinic Raxq'ij's camera died. We'll get another one soon.

Qualities of a Linguistic Fieldworker

2006-10-21T11:48:00.000-06:00

from Larry M. Hyman, "Fieldwork is a state of mind":

Exploring the theory-driven vs. the languages-driven models of research . . . "A true fieldworker is a languages-driven person who may devote his or her activities to any number of goals: linguistic theory, description of languages, comparison of languages, reconstruction of languages, development of language materials for the community, etc."

Relating to linguistic theory . . . "'If these data do not obviously bear on some aspect of theory, why are they interesting?' I don't think that this state of mind is compatible with that of a fieldworker."

"The love of discovery, of going out into the unknown in search of uniqueness, whether documenting rare speech sounds or the unique details of out-of-focus marking in Aghun, language particulars usually excite fieldworkers, who take visible 'pride' in their language(s). Much of tghe rhetoric of generative grammar has been to reduce surface differences to underlying sameness, hence, in principle, denying privileged status to any individual language. The fieldworker, on the other hand, establishes a special relationship with his or her language (and its speakers,) which, in its extreme manifestation, can be translated as 'the world turns around my language.' In some cases, field linguists might in fact be on location primarily because of their attraction to this or that language, country, or geographical area. Here we have a subjectivity that draws the scholar to think of his language(s) as special."

One last photo from Suchi

2006-10-19T18:09:00.000-06:00

Me + some patients, Aq'ab'al + some kids

2006-10-19T18:06:00.000-06:00

Raxq'ij examining fecal samples for worm eggs

2006-10-19T17:56:00.000-06:00

Mothers and Childs

2006-10-19T17:45:00.000-06:00

The Butterfly Effect

2006-10-19T17:12:00.000-06:00

During the better part of a typical clinic day, I focus completely on doing my primary job--speaking in Kaqchikel with everyone, about everything (along with doing whatever miscellaneous tasks Raxq'ij needs). But sometimes a butterfly lands on you, and, well, you have to do something about it.

The Start of the Day in Suchi

2006-10-19T16:53:00.000-06:00

Here's our social worker Aida, greeting the women and children at the beginning of the day. Most patients arrive long before we do in the mornings and end up waiting for at least 4 or 5 hours with their kids, sometimes in the pouring rain.

Integrating into the language community

2006-10-19T11:48:00.000-06:00

I've been reading a lot the past month or so about holistic approaches to documenting languages. One of my goals is to learn the language. I'm not here just to do research for a thesis, write it, and leave. I will be a student of the Mayan people for a long time, primarily of their language. I'm here this fall to do everything I can to learn Kaqchikel, and to build relationships with people in the Mayan community, looking to them to help shape what my role will be in the pan-Mayan revitalization movement.

Here are a few paragraphs from Larry M. Hyman's essay "Fieldwork is a state of mind" in the book Linguistics Fieldwork.

"Indigenous people are not library books. They do not exist merely to be consulted for data and then placed back on the shelf while the researchers return to their careers. When one makes a decision to do fieldwork, it is imperative that one also recognize that this decision entails a responsibility to aid the community in which the research is being conducted. And aid implies relationship--one cannot provide meaningful, community-internal help (in non-emergency cases) without being to some degree integrated into the community. Such integration is not easy. It requires the building of bonds of trust, respect, and friendship . . .

By learning the language, the linguist places himself in a subordinate role within the community. Instead of being the 'teacher,' the linguist enters as a student. This demonstrates respect for the speakers of the language under study and can establish a non-threatening, minimally disruptive social role for the linguist. More directly, this strategy benefits the research . . .

In my experience the point they most want to see and most easily recognize is progress in language learning . . . This reinforces the claim that monolingual work requires an ambitious level of commitment."

A poem by Hafiz

2006-10-19T11:46:00.000-06:00

The Same Suntan

Burn
Every address for
God.

Any
Beloved
Who has just one color of hair,
One gender, one race,

The same suntan all the time,
One rule book,

Trust me when I say,

That man is not even
Half a god

And will only
Cause you

Grief.

A poem by Louis McKee

2006-10-19T10:14:00.000-06:00

I ran across this poem on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac website and translated it into Kaqchikel for your reading pleasure.

Jun B'ey Chïk
Pa wach'ik', yitzolin
akuchi ojer, ojer kan xib'e pa ri itzel b'ey
Y yisipax jun b'ey chïk
(roma k'o chi yicha' ri ütz b'ey)
yib'e qa pa ri nab'ey b'ey.
Ja', chuqa' taq yiwär
wetaman chi xaxe k'o jun b'ey wichin--
y yalan jeb'ël ri b'ey.
Akuchi man jeb'ël ta, ke ri,
xtik'oje' ütz taq xtintz'et rija'
jun b'ey chïk.

Second Chance
In my dream I return
to the place I went
wrong, and given this
chance to change
things, I go on
down the way I went
before. Even in sleep
I know there is only one go--
and it went well
the first time. Where
it didn't--well, it will
be good to see her again.

The Clinic in Suchi

2006-10-17T10:21:00.000-06:00

Raxq'ij and I are in San Antonio Suchitepequez working at the medical clinic. When he returned from Illinois Sunday afternoon, we met up with Waqi' Aq'ab'al and took the buses to Suchi that evening. Internet services are sketchy here, so I'll write more about these days when we get back to Antigua Wednesday afternoon.

The clinic is running so much more smoothly than it was on my first visit here in June. There's a new building, and Raxq'ij has put into place several new systems of organization and flow. There's an exciting momentum here. We have two microscopes, and last night our whole team got to look at worm eggs in poop samples.

I took dozens of pictures yesterday. We'll post some of them this week. I got to talk to lots of women in Kaqchikel again, and Aq'ab'al was especially engaging and always had a gaggle of kids around him. We are doing what we can to support Kaqchikel as the default language in this clinic, as part of an overall investigation that has to do with endangered-language revitalization and reversing language shift in domains where indiginous language use is fading. More on this later.

Yesterday was primarily for patients who had appointments, and Raxq'ij saw maybe 35 women and kids. Today we will have lots and lots more people. We're here at an internet place for just a few minutes because he is submitting some abstracts for the Global Health Conference next May.

As always, visit Raxq'ij's page for more:
www.raxqij.blogspot.com

2006-10-14T18:55:00.000-06:00

Ixnal (native Kaqchikel instructor and bi-lingual educator), me, and Wo'o' Kamey (Marc) in our summer class, telling children's stories to each other in Kaqchikel.

2006-10-14T18:33:00.000-06:00

Ixq'anil (Judith Maxwell), the director of the Oxlajuj Aj Kaqchikel Maya intensive immersion course that I took the last two summers.

2006-10-14T18:30:00.000-06:00

Lajuj Kej (Robert, a linguistics student in Austin) and me in Santa Catarina traje.

2006-10-14T17:15:00.000-06:00

I landed in Iximulew a few hours ago. I'm working on putting together a slideshow or two for you of some of my Guatemalan photos. Stay tuned. I might post a few single ones to tie you over. Raxq'ij returns tomorrow from the States, and we're headed to the medical clinic in Suchi shortly thereafter.