Staying with families

One of the relationship-building mission trip innovations we talked about in advance with folks in Izabal was while we were in El Estor having us stay with families, instead of in a local hotel, as we did in 2007. A couple of people in particular pushed for this. Partly because the Familia de Doe church was a little east of town, everyone - I think - went home to their host families' houses by car (mostly by cabs). The arrangements were somewhat different. Lucas and Benjamin stayed at the parsonage/manse at the fanciest church in town, Arca de Noe (Noah's Ark), which was the center of our activities in 2007. Although Benjamin and Lucas slept on the floor, they also had a real shower (with just cold water) and two real toilets. (I can't remember if they had their own room or rooms.) The two women stayed in the same rooms with big families who like most families (those of Pastor Jose Domingo and Pastor Raul and their families) all stayed in the same rooms. This arrangement gave them little privacy when changing clothes or considering washing. Raul also roughed it by staying with Pastor Pablo and his family out on the western edge of town, with little tree cover but a breathtaking view of the mountains surrounding El Estor and the Lago de Izabal lake - and in a house with no electricity. I stayed nearby with Pastor Benjamin whose family owned and operated a store - and a car! I take it this was a sign of some (relative) affluence. I've written before about how Benjamin was not only a pastor and a storekeeper but also a parent of six daughters and a (parafin) candle maker.

Thanks in part to the store, I had two conveniences. First, I worried that if I forgot to bring something for the stay or discovered I needed something, it would be difficult to go out and get in El Estor. But Pastor Benjamin's family had plenty of stuff in the store - including toilet paper, which I had belatedly bought, and a flashlight and batteries - critical to see what time it was on the watch Juanita lent me and to go out to the outhouse in the evening. Second, I slept in a little alcove off the store. It was next to the street, and so I heard a lot of street noise even late at night, but the family and I had a lot of privacy. In fact, while Juanita and Elena were sleeping in the same bedrooms (probably because the families were more comfortable having the women around their kids, Stephanie opined), I actually never saw the family bedroom in Pastor Benjamin’s family’s house. The house appeared to have three rooms (the dining room, where I ate alone with Pastor Benjamin and then afterwards his wife and daughters crowded in there), the bedroom (where I imagine they all slept), and the store, plus my little alcove. Outside there was a driveway where Pastor Benjamin parked the car, an area where the family burned wood for cooking, and a familiar (from the last trip) three-sink contraption behind a wall behind the carport . All of the families we stayed with - except during a couple of winter months - only got some water access during the nighttime. In Pastor Raul's family, women in the family got up at 3 a.m. to wash clothes by hand and then hang them up to dry. In Pastor Pablo's family, Pastor Pablo's wife got up at 4 a.m. to fire up the fire, and then slept for a while before starting to make tortillas (which all of these families served dozens and dozens of, piping hot) at 5 a.m. I never heard or saw any of this. But I believe members of Pastor Benjamin's family got up early to bathe, stockpile some water, and start making and cooking tortillas. This family was unusually not self-sufficient, in that they seemed to raid stuff from the store that they needed, and had no fruit trees in the yard and no small maize (corn) patch which they harvested, then took to the grindery nearby to have ground, and then made meal for tortillas with. Like the other families, however, Pastor Benjamin's family did have the outhouse in the back yard, which was not easy for us North Americans to deal with. (Two possible signs of the family's poor diet, hygiene, and water quality: at least two of the kids were sick while I was there (including the youngest: 1 1/2-year-old Narde Valesca, who cried a lot the first night) and both the bed and outhouse were a little too short for me (short stature being partly a result of poor nutrition). Most of us had some luck talking with the pastor and some of the kids we were staying with. Some of the kids and spouses were more shy. Carlota Tut, Pastor Benjamin's wife, talked with me some. Some others were more adventurous at helping the women out. In the house I stayed in, Carlotta and the older daughters did much work, while Benjamin and I talked or ate.

The farm animals around the yard, where cleaning up after them was not always easy (or attempted much at all), was a feature of almost all of the houses that we visited. Benjamin's family had no coches (pigs), but had platos (ducks) and pollos (chickens - including those that supplied the eggs I ate for breakfast Sunday and Monday mornings, with beans and hot homemade tortillas - Pastor Benjamin, who said his family ate meat once a week - said they bought the chicken for the fried chicken we ate for dinner Sunday). One other key sign of affluence: Benjamin's family had a dog. Most El Estor dogs are thin strays many of which ostensibly have rabies (and none seem spayed or neutered - given the number of stray dogs in general we see and the number we saw in 2007 having sex with each other). But this family had Blanca, a cute 10-year-old dog that also served as a kind of watch dog (barked at me when I went to the bathroom relatively late one night). The 13-year-old, Sara Elizabeth, whose father said was particularly intrigued by the United States, showed me little hot dog things that came from the store that they fed the dog. Many El Estor families could not afford to feed companion animal dogs. Below is one of Pastor Benjamin's family's chickens, eating the corn meal that not only forms tortillas but also helps feed the farm animals.

Below is Carlota and Narde Valesca.

Below is 13-year-old Sara Elisabeth.

Below - I believe - is 11-year-old Elda Mariscela. All of the daughters (who are old enough) apparently go to school. I believe that Elda Mariscela and 6-year-old Judith Estere went off in their school uniforms (which of course cost money) to go to the elementary school across the street Monday morning. Sara Elisabeth and 16-year-old Irma Yolanda were to head for secondary school later in the day (most of these pictures - including the one below - were taken on Sunday - which of course was not a school day - but note that Elda Mariscela does not have traditional Q'eqchi' dress on).

Here's Blanca (in front of the car in the driveway, standing near the sink apparatus). Blanca of course means white in Spanish (or Castellano, as the Q'eqchi' sometimes call it), and so the dog's name in Q'eqchi' was ... (white). The rope around the dog's body served as a kind of collar.

Below is one of the ducks in the area between the car and the little wall that separated the "car port" from the sink area.

Below is another prize possession of the family: the car, a 1989 4-door which like our old Ford Taurus had one back door that didn't work (in fact - as with ours - on the driver's side). From this vantage point, at the back of the carport is a kind of gate, which the family locked, I believe. When Pastor Benjamin - who seemed like a rather gentle man - instead of opening the gate himself, honked his horn, and one of his daughters came running to open the gate. That's Narde Valesca in front of the cars. Of course, she was not one of the daugthters who opened the gate. I can't remember if she always had those diapers on.

This is the bed, with a kind of mosquito net over it that worked pretty good, which I slept in. Most of us slept under mosquito nets, and some members of our host families did also. Only two of us (Juanita and I) took Chloroquine, an antimalaria medication, and I believe I only sprayed my stuff with permetrine and used some DEET-based insect repellant while in El Estor (which like Rio Dulce is in the malaria risk zone). None of us recall mosquitoes biting us. I do remember ants at the hotel in Rio Dulce. Of course, I was terrified about contracting scabies - tiny microscopic insects - which I'd gotten before - indirectly - from sheets in a cheap hotel in Guatemala - and I can't be sure yet whether or not I did (contract scabies).

Pictured below is part of the tienda (store) in Pastor Benjamin's house. Although some customers entered here, the outside wall between the store and what passes for the family's front yard and the street, included a little window and shutters. Many customers simply stopped by the window - as if they were stopping at an ice cream stand - and asked for what they wanted from Irma Yolanda, Sara Elisabeth, or Elsa Mariscela.



Below is a picture of the car and the table that Benjamin and I sat around late Sunday trading information about Q'eqchi', Spanish, and English words (and even Chinese characters!). Behind the table is the little area where the family burns wood to cook on. (I introduced myself to the various churches as someone who is an ancieno (elder) of Crescent Hill church and someone who works for the national church (I was not able to explain very effectively in Spanish what it is I do for the national church (research).) I might also mention that my esposa (spouse) Estefani (Stephanie) and my hijo (son) Vincente were there in El Estor two years ago and that Estefani was at the workshop on partnershp at the camp on Lago de Amatitlan this past November.



Sunday morning when we got up (usually around 5:30 a.m. for me - with the sun coming up early because of no daylight savings time and the street noises and roosters crowing when it was still pitch black) - despite having stayed up until 9:30 or 10:00 talking - Pastor Benjamin and I got up early enough for him to drive me all the way across town back to his church (where we had had dinner and worshiped the night before). In the church bathroom (in a kind of outhouse - like a portable toilet) was an OK toilet (no toilet seat, of course) and a shower, which I used just to wash partially. Except for this time, almost every other time Pastor Benjamin and I drove to or from the house we drove maybe 3/4 of a mile away - on a maze of extremely bumpy, pot-holed streets - to the house of Pastor Pablo, Benjamin's father and other family members. There we picked up Raul, Pablo, and others. Mainly because the trees had all been chopped down in this areas, the vistas from around Pablo's house were incredible, as you could see easily up the mountains surrounding the town's area. On Sunday morning, Raul got up in the dark very early in the morning and briefly got lost walking around the area.

-- Perry