7/10 -- Jocotenango Daily Life

Today is what OAT calls 'A day in the life', in which we get an closer view of what it is like to live in the culture we are visiting. Each version of a day in the life is slightly different, but always eye-opening. We started out by walking to the area where 'chicken' buses leave for various points in Guatemala. You really need to know your local geography, because often only the start and end points are listed on the bus. We were saved the hassle of determining what bus to take and how much it cost because Luis handled it and we hopped on the bus that pulled up. Many are decorated with fancy chrome and paint jobs.

Our goal was a local suburb of Antigua called Jocotenango. Luis explained that there was always more room on the bus. If a seat could hold two people, surely it could hold 3 or 4. While we traveled, we saw a man with a big backpack get on and push over two already in the seat to make room for himself. Fortunately for them, he only rode a couple stops.

Row of buses

Loading onto the bus

Our destination

Our first stop was a school that is being supported in part by the Grand Circle Foundation, like Safe Passages, which we had visited earlier. This school has a lot smaller budget and costs a quarter as much to support a student although it also helps 600 students a year. A big difference is that this school has a less complete program, even though there are many similarities. The facility we visited housed classes from kindergarten to middle school. High school and college students were supported with scholarships and social services to help them succeed. We learned about the auxiliary programs they provide like health, nutrition, and clean water, and then had the opportunity to participate in a classroom activity for about 30 minutes. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to photograph the students. Jim and I were assigned to a 3rd grade class that was doing a small group activity where they matched the English words for over 20 animals with their picture and also had to find and circle the animal names in a jumbled grid of letters. The kids did pretty well and it was a lot of fun for us.

Luis walking across a central classroom courtyard used for
recess and gym classes.

The hill above the school where  many students live. Although
the views are nice, the  location is inconvenient to reach and
subject to landslides and earthquakes, so it is quite a poor area.

The school kitchen. The big pot on the left has enough soup for
250 servings.

After the 2-hour school visit, we stopped in a market and divided into teams of 3. Luis gave each team the name of something to buy and 10-15Q to spend. For me the challenge was that the item name was not written down and my translate app didn't have the Guatemalan version of the word, so it was a guessing game. We did manage to come up with the proper ingredient (sesame seeds), and the rest of the teams did well too. Then we headed off to join a local family to provide them with our ingredients for the meal they were  making.

The dish they provided is very slow cooking, so they had actually started it much earlier and apparently used our purchases to replenish their supplies. They did make a snack while we watched: they roasted pepita seeds (they also called them pumpkin seeds, but they were rounded and green, not flat and cream), then added salt and a lot of lime juice -- totally yummy. The main course was a thick vegetable broth to which you could add a variety of other ingredients: cooked veggies like green beans and potatoes, cooked chicken pieces, rice, etc. I am not a big soup fan, but it was really tasty.

The tables set up for us. This is probably a
middle class family, but they have metal roofs.

The mom fixing pepitas. Note that she doesn't use any tools.

After lunch we went back to the hotel for a quick break before taking a short tour of a jade merchant who showed us some of the traditional uses of  jade. There are 2 types of jade:  jadeite, found here and prized for its black and purple hues and its hardness, and nephrite, found in China and prized for its translucency, but not quite as  hard. Which is better appears to depend on  your  point of view. Looking at the store, Jim found a lovely piece of purple/white jade with touches of green and pink, and of course I did not resist.

Afterwords we did a bit of hand laundry and rested up for dinner.