I will cover August at once, simply because my studying for my distance course leaves me with less time to write and because the whole month has similar themes spanning it.
A lot of progress has occurred over the 2 weeks. While volunteers like, along with Freddy work half days, the team of construction workers work full days and a half day on Saturday. In this time they have dug the trenches and laid out several rows of cinder blocks. The volunteers have been helping more with all the auxiliary work, mostly involving the building of all the different beam cages that act as supports horizontally and vertically along the rows. Quite a lot of time has also been spent moving earth, either to make it more level or to flatten it out. This we did by foot, with massive circular pieces of wood and with a flattener, really just a cinder block with wodden handles nailed in. Friday the 16th, however I was helped in the preparation of our BBQ. Standing in front of the grill, being able to smell the meat cooking was driving me into a frenzy. Eating the meat proved tricky as I had no knife to use, making a bit of mess of myself, eand earning the laughter of all the Guatemalan workers.
By now the flow of volunteers is more rapid, most volunteers now stay for a week or two. The most recent batch's Spanish ability is quite low, with Fredy and Lorenzo, the boss of the group of professional builders, using me to translate instructions at times to other volunteers. A step up of sorts. This continued throughhout August as we continued to build ever higher walls. By the end the height was such that scaffolding was constructed to be able to continue laying more levels of the wall. It must be noted that working on the scaffolding is not quite safe; there are no barriers to prevent a fall, health and safety being a somewhat unknown concept in Guatemala. However seeing Lorenzo and Fredy fearlessly disregard this drove us to disregard this as well. Taking some basic precautions and always being aware of what you're doing makes all the difference in such a situation.
The first week of August also saw the arrival of a group of Spanish volunteers. They were all greeted with a general school assembly, speeches, music and dancing. Even though I felt slightly jealous of their pompous welcome, I later found that certain members of the Spanish group had been coming to this particular school over consecutive years. They also worked full days, teaching the children Spanish, playing with them during break times, organizing various events for them and helping with painting and some of the construction work after our half day.
meanwhile my level of Spanish has developed to a sufficient level to enable me to attend various cultural events at the Cooperacion Espanola, an organisation funded by Spain to foster culture in Antigua, it is housed in a gorgeous, spacious and red building just in front of a collapsed church, dating back from the 17th century. This included watching anIiranian movie with Spanish subtitles, about a kid, hired to carry a child without the use of his feet but with a rich family, to school everyday. The smaller kid begins to abuse his servant more and more and to hide the fact his servant is actually a human with feelings, converts him more and more into a horse: adding a saddle, horse shoes, making him live in the stables, feeding him hay and top it all off fits him with a horse head. The servant boy living in squalor succumbs to all the abuse but eventually quits or so the movie led me to believe. this only results in another boy being hired as a 'horse' starting the cycle all over again.
I also attended a couple of book presentations, hoping to snag some books for free. I want to keep practising my Spanish after my return to Canada through the use of Spanish literature amongst other ways, but the cost of books in Guatemala is generally exorbitant, requiring me to come up with other ideas to get my hands on some. The first, although it proceeded without the actual book being discussed, leading the organisers to admit feeling embarassment was highly interesting. The author spoke about his creation, a book analysing some of the key actors and reasons for Guatemala's 36 year internal war. The second although yielded me with a skinny novel in Spanish but I understood quite a bit less, since poetry was discuessed. I suppose something as abstract as poetry is still slightly beyond my ability and interest. It was nice to see a father-daughter partnership in the presentation.
I also watched a play in Spanish. I did not anticipate that it would be of the 'absurd' genre. There were only 2 actors who also happened to be assassins with guns. the play started and continued with one of the characters engrossed in his paper, at times bursting out in laughter at some unfortunate accident or murder. The other character, evidently bored, kept bugging his companion with random questions just to amuse himself. At the same time they would receive orders from a cafe above adding to the confusion. Although I could understand much of what was being said in individual scenes, overall it made no sense neither to me or to the rest of the public just as intended.
The final event I attended was a storytelling session. A professional storyteller telling stories of contemporary life, some of them fantastical, the others based on biographical elements. This was accompanied by varying the tone, pitch and volume of his voice, long pauses, active physical gesticulations. He also actively involved the audience showing them how to impersonate certain characters with the correct mannersisms. To top it off, at the beginning of stories he would also ask the audience questions. I was sitting at the front, making it easy to select me by pointing at me. In one case he asked the audience what they wanted to be when they grew up. I howver only heard him ask me what I wanted. I answered "An island!". The storyteller paused, smirked and said, ok an island to the awkward laughter of some of the people at the back. Needless to say I felt quite embarassed for the rest of the night.
