Importance of Culture

“In Guatemala, we have customs and they are very important. We do things a certain way.”

Those wise words were spoken by my host mom the other night when I offered to help clean up the mess from our full family operation of making paper balloons with pictures of the kids from the preschool (which is a whole other story of deilghtfulness…). It was 9:30pm, the bedtime of most Guatemalans, and there was paper ALL OVER the floor of the kitchen. Not to mention the glue all over the table serving of evidence of my over-exuberant use of the glue stick. I offered to help clean up – it seemed like the sensible thing to do and my bedtime just has not managed to adjust to the Guatemalan time zone (aka 10 or 11…) so I had time. Rosa responded, “you don’t clean at night – night is for rest, not work”. When I looked confused, Rosa said her wise words about customs. And, since that conversation, I have spent a lot of time observing and contemplating customs.

There is the custom of rain. When it’s “demasiado lluvia” or “hace frio” (too much rain or too cold), the world pretty much stops. It’s been a pretty wet week this week and consequently, the preschool has had only 14 out of the 24 kids appear at the door in the morning. It is widely believed that if you get wet, you’ll get sick, and in a land without health insurance or disposable incomes, being sick is not a good thing.

There’s also the custom of fiestas and “dia de…”. You may recall the blog about Dia De Indepencia. Well, today was another dia… “Dia de los Niños”. It is a day that is devoted to celebrating kids and allowing them to celebrate. The preschool went to Pollo Compero in Antigua because it is the closest playground and they played and had lunch. They returned for piñatas at house and cake and toys. We also had a fiesta at our language school and I learned some customs and rules about piñatas as we destroyed the bee.

Rule 1: There are 2-3 lines required. The long one on top is best when it can be slippery so the piñata can easily slide across. All my ideas for lines this morning were not good enough because a) they were not safe or b) they provided too much friction. The result was a spool of electrical wire.

Rule 2: When there are no kids involved, everyone, without any limitations of age or ability, is fair game for being chanted into smashing the piñata

 

Rule 3: All people smashing the piñata will inevitably look silly so you may as well embrace it.

 Rule 4: When there are no kids involved, the adults who grew up grabbing candy are really good at getting it. I think us students collectively got as much candy as any given professor.
Rule 5: When the piñata won’t break, smash it without a blindfold. When that doesn’t work, just tear it up with your hands.

Another custom I love is the importance of family. There is little to no concept of postal mail and very little internet access. The Antigua post office only has 400ish mailboxes. Totally crazy! (This custom may mean that few people receive Christmas presents on time this year…) Most people seem extremely content with their family and live very close by. I live with a 15yo girl and 11yo boy and tonight we played Uno for 3 hours with random dance parties interspersed in the game. They seemed totally happy and content with family night… it was pretty cool.

Finally, there are a ton of indigenous customs that we had the opportunity to observe Thursday. We went to San (insert a saint’s name that I just forgot here) Aguas Calientes for a presentation of customs by some delightful women. They showed us how people made backpacks, baby carriers, basket holders for your head, and many other things out of a blanket. They even let us try!

 Then, they told us about the customs of the blankets – if you have a striped/plainish blanket (I think I’m using the blanket word very loosely… it’s much fancier) and it’s taken from you, that guy will be your husband. For the wedding, it is necessary to make a blanket for the future mother-in-law. These blankets are gorgeous and take 6+ months to make or 6000Q to buy (that’s a lot). If mama don’t like it, the wedding’s off.

We got to see them grind coffee…

Make cool things out of reeds (that’s my new goal for the year…)…

Weave…

And then there was a mock wedding where Tina got to marry a European guy.

Finally, we made tortillas, had some soup and some coffee, and perused their work.

After seeing all the work these women/the indigenous people/this culture originally puts into daily tasks, I understand why it’s necessary to keep nights sacred and away from work. Maybe that’s not a bad idea for us either…