As I mentioned, the day before this whole thing with Galindo I was set to write a big update on events here. I might as well lighten the mood and change the subject. In the last post I mentioned we would soon be going back south for some follow up at our training center. Life definitely got crazy before we left.

Two days before we were to leave, the town was celebrating the end of another school year. It’s a big deal here. You get a graduation for every grade, but the sixth grade students get the biggest part of the day dedicated to them as they’re the oldest grade in the school here in Temux.  We’d been hearing about this day for quite a while because people are always excited to tell us there’s going to be marimba and dancing in town, which made up the grand-finale to the school year. These events were all taking place on a Tuesday, the day of our weekly charla here, so we moved it to Wednesday so no one had to miss anything. We spent the morning in town working with the 120 midwives in the area for their once a month meeting that lasts about 4 hours. We returned home to eat pretty worn out, and not all that excited to go down to the school to dance in a circle for hours on end, so we put off it for a while, until we felt bad for staying away. You should know, often times living here is just a sequence of random surprise events. We were glad once we got there that we hadn’t gone any earlier. : P : )

We got to the school where the playground was full of screaming children, and the comunal salon was packed with people listening to speeches by the teachers. We stood about visiting with kids until the school director came out and asked us to take a seat inside. He walked us into the salon and sat us on the stage in front of everyone. Apparently he’d decided we should help hand out diploma’s this year. Who knows when he made this decision? It was a bit awkward as we had no prior notice, so looked like we do every day, which is to say we were wearing jeans, hiking boots and thermal shirts. Everyone else was wearing their best clothing if not brand-new clothing, hair freshly washed, the smell of ivory soap on every child scrubbed red as they walked up to get their diploma. We presented diplomas to the equivalent of the kindergarden kids which was pretty cute. I just kept thinking, “Really? They couldn’t have given us like a days?” We would have at least had the chance to look a little better. I don’t think it mattered to them in the end. They seem to take the gringos as they’ve got them without really putting expectations on us, which is nice I guess. When we finished the kindergarden graduation the director informed us of a two hour long break before we all reconvened for the graduation dinner in honor of the sixth graders, graduation immediately following, then the dancing.

In the meantime they set off fireworks and officially opened up the schools new computer center( the source of much stress for Fletch-o, but we went to be supportive) and ended up doing demonstrations of different programs. I opened up Paint, and started doing drawings of Temux, and someone would tell me it needed an apple tree, a sheep, a chicken, a turkey, a house, a person, and I would draw whatever they said. Pretty entertaining. The computers are really nice.

Then we went to the dinner and were served first as guests of honor. Luckily a representative who we’d met as a fellow judge in the Independence Day beauty contest, had come from town to help pass out diplomas. He’s a really nice guy, who translated for us throughout the evening. He said the problem with being served first as the guest of honor is that you’re assured a cold plate since generally people wait to eat until everyone has been served. Ha, and so it was.

The graduation itself was very elaborately planned amongst the teachers in regards to the processions in and out and the sending off of all the graduates. The problem is that they never explained anything until two seconds before it was supposed to happen, and they wanted me to go first! Haha, I looked like a fool, doing things slightly off all night. Fletch had the benefit of going third almost always, lucky him. 🙂 But again, no one seemed to mind terribly, as long as I played along.

The last thing we did after giving a million hugs to parents and graduates was to start the dance by doing the The dance of the pañuelo or handkerchief, where people dance around in a circle with a handkerchief placing it on the next people to dance around the circle until everyone has gone and the last woman takes it and drops it on the marimba to stop their playing so the dance ends. I was told about this just seconds before the dance started and informed that I would be the one to end the first dance. Guatemalans everywhere seem to get a kick out of seeing the gringos dance, to the point that whenever we feel like people are egging us on to do something just so they can laugh about it we look at each other and say in English, “Dance, gringo! Dance!” It happens all the time. So Fletch decided we would be extra entertaining, and dance to the marimba part way around the circle before breaking into a round of swing dancing, before cutting back to the marimba and dropping the hankerchief on the instruments to stop the music. The crowd went wild, I kid you not. There was all sorts of whistles and shouting and vigorous clapping and hysterical laughter. You gotta keep the people happy.

We danced a few rounds of marimba, and no one would dance as long as we stayed on the floor. In fact, everyone told us they DON’T dance. It was nearly midnight at this point, way passed our bedtimes, so we decided we’d go home since nothing was happening. This is what cracks me up, because no one will join in, but the moment we decide to leave people will ask all surprised, “What? You’re going home so soon?” as though we’re leaving in the middle of all the action. We were actually dead tired though, had had a very long day, and another ahead of us on Wednesday. We had the forethought to cancel the community charla until we got back from our trip, and we had no idea how great an idea that was until Wednesday rolled around.

Turns out after we left everyone else danced for hours, including all those who claimed not to dance at all. And nearly all the men in town drank themselves silly, so that the next day they were still dumbfoundingly drunk and stumbling around. We went running in the late afternoon and passed a man completely splayed out on the side of the road. It seemed a strange way for fathers to celebrate their little kids’ graduations, but that’s how it went. Since we had no charla I shut myself up in the house for most of the day in order to avoid the bolos and got ready to leave for our ten day trip the next morning. At that point, I was feeling ready to leave.

Also on the educational front: In the last few hours before leaving down (between 6:30 and 8 am) on Thursday the girls we are trying to help get scholarships came over to get in the last of their information to me. Guatemala is not a plan ahead kind of place, so they showed up at the very last minute. We wrapped up the applications and sent them in, so we’ll know in a few weeks if they got them or not. Keep your fingers crossed.