The DJ for the local radio station asked the Peace Corps volunteers in the surrounding villages to put together some health education activities for an annual event in his village. The village, an hour and a half away from my own (and home to our training q’eqchi teacher!) hosts Maya Day in conjunction with the high school/education center there, Tumulk’in.
Of course, as Peace Corps Volunteers, there is nothing we are better suited for than entertaining large numbers of people with poorly drawn pictures of respiratory tract infections, so we said yes!
Rachel and I were able to hitch a ride with her entire village, who had been invited to the event to perform a sacred, traditional dance; the “deer dance.” Performing the deer dance is an honor, and requires special practice and rites, as well as a period of fasting and abstinence from the marriage bed. By the time the deer dance day comes around, let’s just say that men are ready for a good time. I was roundly welcomed onto the bus, and Rachel and I were treated to a pretty excessive cheer that became rather less sober as the day wore on.
We arrived at the fair grounds around 9am and were shown to our booth—a thatch cubby that we outfitted with a long bench and 30 or so posters that featured information about everything from hand washing to weaning practices. It’s important to cover your bases. We also had 4 games for participants; a healthy eating game to identify different food groups, a physical activity game, a question and answer game about healthy habits, and my pet project, “the brain game.”
The brain game required participants to listen to me talk about healthy brain habits, (omega-3s!) and then match the part of the brain with the function it accomplished. The only problem was that I lost my own answer key, and as such, was probably a less than reliable educator.
Whoops.
We took turns walking around the fair grounds. The day featured not only the deer dance, but also several contests. Three of our primary school girls competed in a corn husking and shelling contest, there was a “best dressed,” award, and several men, late in the drinking day, competed to bake tortillas. The students from the high school wore stilts and beautiful costumes, and danced around the main stage.
There was also the most wonderful selection of food options. We had popcorn for breakfast, corn on the cob, and a cold chocolate drink made from straight sugar and cocoa. It went down exceptionally well and then we all felt rather nauseated. There was fresh honey, tamales, seaweed juice, coconut water from coconuts, many different animals in stewed variety, oranges, watermelon, and pineapple. The Wheat Bread Man from town was even there!
The Wheat Bread Man is one of my favorite humans; his baked good craftsmanship, entrepreneurship, and sense of self are quite inspiring. This gentleman has earned a reputation with some notoriety for his habit of boarding village buses with a bucket of bread and a large poster board with key nutritional highlights taken from Leviticus. The poster is divided into two sections—“Thou Shall Not Eat,” and “Thou Shall Eat.”
Wheat bread is on the latter side.
Everyone gives him a terrible time when he comes on the buses to do some pretty intense preaching, but that bread…that bread is the best.
And you know, it’s made without lard, because animals with hooves are unclean.
Leviticus 11:7. Check it.
The only wrinkle in the day may have been our return home. The bus scheduled to drive Rachel’s village and their guest white people home, didn’t return at the end of the day. The chief organizer, along with most of the village, was engaged in serious negotiation with another bus driver when Rachel and I showed up at the parking lot.
The bus driver, who had never been as far south as our villages, was not easily persuaded.
“It’s only 45 minutes!” The entire village was telling him, “Please take us home!”
It was not 45 minutes to Rachel’s village. It was probably about 2 ½ hours out, and 2 ½ back in. And given that, once persuaded, he drove his bus down the rather treacherously potholed road with the care of a new father bringing home his newborn from the hospital, it took us 4 to reach.
It was, as bus rides go, one of the best. We ate more, listened to a bizarre country playlist, (impressing everyone with our keen knowledge of Shania Twain lyrics) and periodically reassured the bus driver that we were “almost there.” We didn’t suggest that if he traveled at a speed greater than 25 miles per hour, he would arrive home a bit sooner.
The happily drunk village men cheered me off the bus around 7pm.
Good day all around.
Volunteer Jess playing with kids
We were warm…
High school students performing on stilts.
Our First Year Out 