Thanksgiving with Native Americans

390 years ago, a group of Pilgrims had a celebration with some of their new Native American friends.  The same thing happened today.

We had gotten the advice long before we moved to Guatemala to make sure we took the time to "do familiar things" and "make things feel like home", and holidays are a really good excuse to do familiar things in familiar ways.  The typical Thanksgiving at the Colvett household includes throwing frozen hot dogs at passing cars, but since we don't have a freezer, hot dogs, or passing cars, we had to make other plans.  A couple of weeks ago, we decided that we were going to have a true Thanksgiving feast, complete with turkey and stuffing and stuffing turkeys like me.  So, with a little forethought, we had some friends bring some food from the US as part of a visiting team last week and we did a little out-of-the-ordinary shopping ourselves.  We also invited several people here who we are close to and had a great day.

The turkey, which is for some reason the centerpiece of the Holiday, was a special challenge.  We don't have an oven here in which to cook one and we didn't want to use a turkey fryer because we figured that setting fire to the Ulpan Valley would be frowned upon by the 7,500 people here, although it would teach the principle of "stuff and burn" to people who are more accustomed to "slash and burn".  So after doing some intense research (i.e. Googling for a few minutes), we determined that we could cook a turkey underground (like what might have actually been done in 1621).  So, yesterday we spent about 4 hours using machetes to chop down and chop up firewood.  We had some help from our Mayan friends here, and their wood was cut fairly cleanly but the ones we cut were basically turned into mulch.  The next step was to dig a hole:

The hole needed to be about 3' by 3' by 3', so this took some time.  Notice how nice and bright the sunshine is.  That lasted for about 45 more seconds.  Getting a fire going in a hole isn't as easy as it might sound, but it is as smoky as it might sound.  However, we borrowed a trick from the original Pilgrims and started soaking our firewood in kerosene.  I assume their 50-year old kerosene heaters they borrowed from other missionaries didn't work either, so what else did they need kerosene for than to create an explosive pit of jet fuel?  Speaking of which, let me just say "Poof! No eyebrows!" and leave it at that.  Here's proof of pre-poof:

You can see our good friend Roberto Caal in the background cutting up wood.  We'd given up long before this.  Next was the most sacred of all Thanksgiving traditions: the burying of the turkey where you usually park the Mazda pickup.  Of all the things to baste a turkey with, soil is pretty low on the list, so we once again followed the path of our ancestors and wrapped the turkey in aluminum foil, then in banana leaves (those grow on Cape Cod, right???) and then a screen mesh we typically use to screen outlets to spring boxes and then secured it all with rebar tie wire:

It was pouring down rain at this point, and well after dark, but to protect our fire we had constructed a plastic tarp over it, firmly secured with scrap lumber, broken fence posts, and I think a small turtle.  We were, however, quite confident that we could keep the turkey moist, since there was a nice mix of water and kerosene in its soon-to-be-occupied grave.  So about 10:00 last night, we buried the turkey and nervously awaited its exhumation this morning.  It did stop raining during the night, and most of the family stopped throwing up as well.  Here's Kris opening the poultry-geist this morning:

Put simply, it was the best turkey I'd ever had.  Really, I was chicken at first, maybe a little sheepish, and almost had a cow when I tried it because the concept still seemed fishy to me, but I really pigged out.  Our company was even better.  It brought to mind times growing up when Billy Ray Warren would write on a chalkboard all the things people said they were thankful for, or when Steve and Debbie Gampp in Boulder would invite a strange new couple from Alabama to their house to share the holiday.  It brought to mind the fact that my mother was with my aunt today and Ginger's sister was with her parents today.  We were right there with them all.  That's the great thing about holidays and being a part of God's family.  In this picture you see a bunch of lost Pilgrims and people like Manuel and Roberto and Julio and their wives and their kids and right there with them are people they've never met.  But they're all at the same table, and there's plenty of room and plenty of food.

We capped the evening off with a viewing of The Polar Express.  Movies have become a real favorite of people here, and it makes us feel like home.  Afterward, right at sunset, we said our goodbyes and said "hasta manana" to our friends, or in some cases "wulak chik alooy", which means "see you soon, friend".  And as we said goodbye, a huge rainbow spread across the east end of the valley, and this sight was on the west end:

Happy Thanksgiving.

It Takes More Than One Wing To Fly Straight

Over the past few months we have met hundreds of people here in the Ulpan Valley.  Not surprisingly, the ones we have gotten to know the best generally fall into two groups:

1. People who live near us, and
2. People we work with frequently

And a few people fall into both categories.  This post is about three of them - Juan, Ignacio, and Arturo, and how similar they are to people and groups we know in the United States.

To describe anyone in just a few sentences is doing them (as well as the describer) a disservice because you wind up stereotyping or gossiping or overgeneralizing.  But over the past few weeks, as I have gotten to know these men and worked alongside them, I have become fascinated with their different talents and different approaches to life.  It makes we wonder if the lasting effect of our time here will be mixing people together who ordinarily wouldn't be interacting very much.

Juan is very motivated and seizes opportunities to make things better for him and his family.  In fact, he sold us the land the Project Ulpan facilities are located on so that he could benefit from a long-term relationship.  When the initial water system was constructed in Benitzul, he made sure that the line ran to his house and there was a good supply there, and when opportunities to serve on things like solar panel committees, water committees, etc., present themselves, you can rest assured that he or his wife will be a part of that.  He is respected in the community, but not completely well-liked because of his assertiveness.  It's almost an elbow-you-outta-my-way sort of assertiveness, but this community would be less than it is without him in it. 

Ignacio, on the other hand, is very quiet and meek - so much so that it's often difficult to even hear him speak.  I think that he is like the majority of the people here in that way.  He works and never complains, but works at a slower pace than others, and they notice that.  A couple of weeks ago, he came to visit and you could tell that he was very timid about what was on his mind.  He was asking if we could help him with a water situation near his house and it took him close to a half hour of "I hate to bother you" to get to that point.  Incidentally, the water situation he wanted help with was a location in a cave where many people crawl down 100 feet of mud to get water (including an 80-year old woman - everyday).  A few weeks ago, a rock fell and killed a woman doing her laundry.  The end result of this is that we will be installing a solar powered pump here and actually using it to augment the water system, including the portion near Juan's house.  I hope to post pictures of an 80-year old woman getting water at her house for the first time ever in the next few weeks.  Ignacio has helped us with some other situations here and is a true friend, but if everyone were like him in the Valley, I fear not much would ever get done, even though it would be a very peaceful place.

Arturo is one of the few people in the Valley who everyone refers to as "Don", which in a very Godfather sort of way is a term of respect.  Even other communities know and respect him.  I do too.  He is illiterate and barely speaks Spanish, but he is the local resource from everything ranging from horticulture to knot-tying to construction.  If there is something that needs to be done in the community, he will be the first one there and the last one to leave.  He shares his food and his very limited goods with, as best I can tell, everyone.  He serves on virtually every committee in the community, but it comes across more as "service" than "what do I have to gain by doing this?"

At this point in the post, it is tempting to create some analogy like: God doesn't want us to be like Ignacio because he wants us to tend the field and improve things, but he doesn't want us to use our success for our own benefit like Juan - he wants us to share and be like Arturo.  Some or all of that may be true, but maybe the lesson here isn't necessarily that Person A needs to be more like Person B, or that Person C is better than A and B because he is a blend of their gifts.  Maybe the lesson is that Person A needs to be put in situations where they can learn from Person B, or Person B needs to be put in situations where his talents complement those of Person C.  I think we get too hung up on trying to change people into something they aren't, or trying to change ourselves into something we are not.  Instead, we could simply just accept that God put different people here for different reasons, and the end result can be beautiful.  It can also be chaos.



All this to say - from 1000 miles away the whole "Occupy" thing seems strangely reminiscent of what we are trying to end here - where people mistakenly believe that they don't need other people, regardless of what "percent" you find yourself.  After watching an infant be buried yesterday and two others in small communities die in the past week, I feel like inviting a team of Wall Street bankers and occupy-ers to come to the Ulpan Valley for a week and pour some concrete and fit some waterlines together and work with men like Ignacio, Juan and Arturo.  In each their own way, I think the three of them would be able to teach such a team quite a bit.

Here is Ignacio showing me the cave that will be a new water source for the west end of Benitzul and the east end of Esquipulas.  We're 100 feet below the walking path here, and the next rock that falls here I want to hit a concrete box with a pump inside and not a human being.

This was sunrise out our front door a few days ago.  Not really pertinent to this post, but I just kinda thought it was pretty.

GIVE THEM THE OPPORTUNITY TO SAY "NO"

A few years ago at my former job, when I was dealing with a particularly "interesting" client on a particularly thorny issue, I asked a mentor named Garland Rose what I should do to potentially resolve the issue.  What I needed to do was to ask them to do something that I figured they probably wouldn't do, so I was struggling with why I needed to ask them in the first place (by the way, I'm not purposefully being ambiguous here - I really don't remember all the specifics of the situation).  Garland's advice was simple: "You need to give them the opportunity to say No", and it was good advice.  The end result of that was that they did indeed say "no" and that was pretty much that, but the advice has stuck with me:  even if you expect someone to say "no", you at least need to give them that opportunity.  There is probably some spiritual application to this regarding prayer and petition and our ongoing conversation with God, but this post is about a meeting I had last night with the Benitzul Ulpan Water Committee.

Backing up a little, about two and a half years ago, the first project of any sort ever done as part of Project Ulpan was a water system for the village of Benitzul.  It was primarily a construction effort at the time, but as relationships grew and we learned more about the communities here, we grew with them.  And as one might guess, any water system - in Nashville or in Benitzul - is only as good as the people taking care of it.  A real problem in the developing world is that many well-intentioned people give money for a project - like a new well or a new school or a new hospital, but there is no follow-up for the training and the maintenance and eventual "ownership" of the project by the community.  It's a difficult line to walk between helping and enabling and I'm not sure there's a clear litmus test for when you're doing either.  But, at some point, the goal is to make the project sustainable and self-reliant, and last night was a big step in that direction.

Without boring anyone with the details (probably too late for that), the community approached us with a request to extend their water system a little farther to make it more accessible for a dozen or so more families.  Because of the generosity of www.thelivingwaterproject.us and several individuals, we have more than ample money to accomplish this extension.  But, we felt that this would be a good time to walk with the community through the process of collecting money from the "customers" and saving that money so they can pay a portion of the cost.  The portion we proposed to them was approximately 10%, which interestingly is analagous to the "match" portion many water systems in Tennessee must pay when applying for state or federal assistance for water projects (whether there is ample follow-up or training for those projects is a different set of opinions for a different time).  I really had no idea how this concept would be received, but I felt it was important to "give them the opportunity to say no".

It turned out that their reaction was one of thanks and of excitement and of total agreement.  I was really proud of how the Water Committee felt an eagerness to make an investment their system and in their community.  They said they would have their share of the money in the next couple of weeks.  I think this is a great precedent and a great sign that we are helping teach them how to develop their community.  It's easy to forget that most of us work in "community development" - that most of what we do (engineering, teaching, doctoring, preaching, making, selling, cleaning, etc.) is for other people and for the "good" of the community.  It's also easy to forget that everything we've accomplished thus far in the "developed" world has been the direct result of someone giving someone else the opportunity to say "no", because every now and then the answer is "yes", and that's when things move in the right direction.

A Stormy Night

     The following is Sam's account of our stormy night:

One night there was a huge storm. It involved a loud noise on the tin roof, a small landslide on the side of the house, and some working in the morning. That night was strange and scary. Lots of people were up for the most of it. Here is what happened.
       The most annoying part of the night was that the rain on the  tin roof sounded like you were in a movie theater with the volume all the way up, and glass was shattering constantly.  My friend Zane and I were asleep for most of it.  We were only awake for the loud part of it though.  From what I hear it went on for hours, and hours.  The front porch was wet all over, and it was covered all the way by tin too.
      Another strange thing that happened during the storm was that there was a small landslide right on the side of our house. All of the sudden we heard a thud.  I opened my eyes and I saw water seeping through the walls. The others went around the side of the house and they said, " Yep it's a landslide."  As it happened a thin tree trunk fence had fallen down with a lot of mud and hit the side of the house.
     The next week  involved cleaning the little bit of landslide up from the house. We also had to dig up mud from a drain.After that we cleaned up the utensils that we used. And then we took the mud in the wheelbarrow down to the road and dumped it out.
      All in all we were okay, but tired.And I still can't believe I slept through most of it!