Guat's Up!

Guat’s Up friends and family!?

Our first month here has been eventful – election mayhem and peaceful protests bringing thousands of citizens from all socioeconomic and political classes together. It’s been amazing to witness all the momentum towards positive change.

We have also been able to travel to gorgeous spots. Here is MattKat at Lago de Atitlan this weekend. 

[ Hi! ]

                                                                   [ Magical ]

As Matt mentioned in his previous post, he has been slaving away at his job in the big city, while I have been taking Spanish classes and living in a home-stay in beautiful Antigua (except for last week when I traveled with Matt for his work trip and took classes at a school in Guate’s second city, Quetzaltenango, a town in the country’s Western Highlands).

My teacher in Antigua is Carmen, a wonderful woman who is incredibly funny, patient and kind (she and I are pictured slightly blurry below). I have a blast conversing with her for hours on end. Our talks range from the mundane - such as how to order food in a restaurant, to Guatemalan politics and gender inequality. She is 36 and studying to be a lawyer in Antigua but law school is time-intensive (5 years) and expensive.

                                                               [ Hola Carmen! ]

My homestay situation, although rewarding, has been less than comfortable. My Spanish is choppy and I feel like an idiot. I’m the outsider in the house who is incapable of complex sentence structure. Ugh. I want them to think of me as more than just a walking dollar sign, but they frequently ask me to borrow money and don’t seem particularly concerned with paying me back. The money is insignificant, but I’m hung up on the principle. It’s the same feeling when I buy food from the corner store and the owner charges me 3x what he charges a Guatemalteco. On the one hand, I realize that my dollar will go farther in the owner’s hands and he needs the money more than I do. On the other hand,  it’s hard to fight back against my natural instincts of not wanting to get ripped off just because I’m a gringa.  

                                                                  [  Antigua  ] 

I’ve also been looking for work in policy arenas where there is serious need– and there is a lot of need since Guatemala trails its Latin American counterparts in virtually every social and economic indicator – from maternal mortality to gender inequality, from poverty to childhood nutrition.  

We’ve been reading a lot about the battle over Planned Parenthood and the fate of healthcare options for low income women in the US, which has a lot of parallels for women here. 

In Guatemala, the average indigenous woman has an average of 4.5 children (vs. 3 for non-indigenous women) and half of all Guatemalan children are chronically malnourished to the point of physical stunting.

[ These photos are from a free dental clinic I volunteered at that was funded by contributions from the United States (George Mason University). Free clinics are the only healthcare option for most. ]

Abortion is illegal in Guatemalan but the use of contraceptive methods (including the opportunity to plan and space pregnancies) is perfectly legal and not used by the indigenous population because there is miscommunication and a lack of education. Health facilities are poorly stocked and there is a strong machista culture that doesn’t afford women much agency to make choices without their husbands.
  
It would cost Guatemala relatively little to educate their low-literacy indigenous populations living in remote areas. I think that creating and expanding programs that combat myths about birth control and stress the importance of planning pregnancies will help reduce poverty significantly.

Ok that’s enough serious talk for now. 


Next post from me will be about our new dog (we don't have him/her yet but she/he is coming!)

¡Bienvenid@s a GuatesHappening!

the "barrio" - zona 10, guatemala city

Guate’s happening, you ask? Well, Guate’s happening, obviously! Welcome to KatMatt’s blog, a fun fact-filled and (hopefully) regularly updated space in which we download our brains on all things Guate. Sometimes we’ll post serious wonky musings about poverty and development in Latin America. Other times we’ll post fun things about the places we travel and the food we eat. Sometimes we MIGHT EVEN POST BOTH AT THE SAME TIME.

Anyway, we’re here because I started a job with the Latin America Office of Catholic Relief Services, where I’ll be leading Monitoring & Evaluation efforts on many of the agency’s projects in the region – more on that later. Kat’s already deep into Spanish re-immersion, and for the next month is staying M-F with a host family down the road in Antigua, well beyond earshot of my toxic English. She’s also looking for work in the policy arena (e.g., asylum, immigration, rule of law, juvenile justice), so hit us up if you have any ideas and/or leads!

Speaking of Antigua, it’s quaint as hell, what with its cobblestone streets and charming colonial architecture, flanked by badass volcanoes on all sides. Some shots from this past weekend:

Obligatory calle de volcan shot

Niños riding the chicken bus

Fruits of the cocotero

From the coronas exhibit at hotel santo domingo

longing looks at earthlodge

But back in la ciudad, euphoria still runs high from the recent ouster of Guatemala’s ex-presidente, Otto Perez Molina, the result of his involvement (i.e., leadership) in a particularly egregious example of kleptocratic statecraft. Now known as La Linea, the deal consisted of government officials accepting bribes from Guatemalan companies in exchange for skipping out on payment of customs duties. In a country where the social safety net is full of holes already (think hospitals without syringes, villages without water, bankrupt social security), this is pretty high on the dictatorial d-bag scale. Following weeks of peaceful protest, Molina was swiftly stripped of his immunity by Guatemala’s congress on September 1 (the day we arrived), tendered his resignation the next evening, and went to jail the day after that. He’s still there, awaiting trial. Incredible and unprecedented, in this country and beyond. #CentralAmericanSpring?

prez palace from above - 100k protesters deep

In the meantime, general elections were held a week ago. No candidate won more than 50% of the popular vote, so there’ll be a runoff between the top two candidates on October 25. The choices aren’t great either – a comedian with no political experience, who has been called Guatemala’s Donald Trump, and a former First Lady (nicknamed “The Bulldozer”), who divorced her husband so she could get around a pesky law prohibiting family members of former heads of state from running for office.

GuateMALLa

While the protests and celebrations have been going on downtown, Kat and I have mostly been hanging out in Zone 10, a bougie enclave home to embassies, expats and wealthier Guatemalans (for safety reasons, CRS has a clearly defined "green zone" where its employees can live). Z10 also features several big fancy malls, including Oakland, which is a block away from our temporary housing. In some ways, this is a bit of a shock to the system. It’s surely a tad strange to come to the second-poorest country in the hemisphere (only Haiti is poorer, by most measures) only to find yourself in a mall with a Starbucks, an IMAX cinema (complete with buttkickahs) and authorized Apple dealer. But as it turns out, there is no shortage of millionaires in Guatemala City. The parking lot at the mall is full of Benzes, Beamers and Porches. Some mall-goers (especially the teenage children of the uber-elite and politicians) are apparently tailed by their plain clothes body guards. A friend told me last weekend that some rich dudes who don’t want to battle the city’s heinous traffic simply take their helicopters, whether it’s to the mall, office or the golf course. Indeed, Guate is also one the world’s 10 most unequal countries, which may explain the high levels of violence and other social woes.

But don’t worry about us (hi mom!) – almost all of the violent crime is restricted to areas of the city where gang activity is most prevalent, and along the Mexican border up north. Plus, we blend in real well - here’s Kat enjoying some fresh-squeezed OJ in a bag, as the Antigüeños do.

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