A view of Xela over one of the most common security systems: shards of broken glass on top of your walls.
As mentioned before in some detail, gastrointestinal illness is one of the greatest perils (aside from wild dogs) in Guatemala. Dave and I have been doing our best to cultivate these endangered microbes in our intestines, and very soon we will be announcing the winners and honorable mentions for our Great Gastrointestinal Competition (aka Shit Contest). It's quite a close race right now, and the decision will be a hard one. But further upstream of the gastrointestinal tract, there is another perilously dangerous host of microbes; ones which neither Dave nor I will try to be saving. They live in your mouth and (get ready for a highly technical description): eat sugar and shit cavities.
The amount of sugar that is consumed here is incredible. Pretty much every type of food has sugar added, and then the omnipresent snacks are omni-sugared as well. Emily, one of the previous interns, left AIDG and returned home to find that she had developed 8 cavities. Kat, Kyle's girlfriend, returned home temporarily to find out that she has 12 cavities. I've decided that common sense is going to have to prevail in this country and I'm going to have to start brushing my teeth more than the recommended once every 6 months. Wait... was that for dentist visits? In any case, my dental hygiene is going to improve, so you'll all benefit if you ever stand closer than 4 feet from me.
This week there have been nation-wide protests over instituting a national ID card. I was unable to travel outside of Xela to a community needing urgent repairs to their microhydro generator until Tuesday, when rumour had it the road that I needed wasn't being blocked, presumeably because the protesters had slept in. Natalia, one of the girls at Xelateco (one of AIDG's incubated businesses in Xela), who lives near Cantel (on the other side of the road block) couldn't come to work earlier this week because she was threatened to be burnt alive if she crossed the road block. She's now living at her friend's house in Xela and can't return home for fear of being caught crossing the line. In general no one is too concerned here otherwise, although Natalia may move into the intern house temporarily, which will be good for our Spanish, and good for her physics and math courses she's taking; I've already been tutoring her a bit, which is tough in Spanish.
Another perhaps less worrisome trend (haha) is the robbery and assault problem here. I think I may have mentioned that a few of our colleagues were robbed. Usually a small group of thugs come up to the target or targets and tell them to give up all their valuables. They are usually armed with knives or tools, although guns are more common on highways and roads. One group that robbed Natalie and Josue was armed with large screwdrivers. Natalie was assaulted twice and Josue was robbed another couple of times. Once he was robbed of a candy bar (all he had) on his way to our house. I was standing a stone's throw away taking pictures of clouds when he urgently told me to get in the house before they stole my camera. El Jefe (the boss) was robbed in his car once at gunpoint and they took his laptops and other valuables. Natalia, from Xelateco, was robbed outside of Domino's Pizza a couple blocks away at 8am before work one day. Candido, one of the stocky guys at Xelateco was robbed on Monday night at 7pm right outside Xelateco (which incidentally is right beside the AIDG office) and relieved of 850Q (a lot of money for a Guatemalan). It was a pretty good language lesson in curse words when Candido explained what happened. I guess it's only a matter of time before Dave or I get robbed. Apparently when we rode our bikes to the lake last weekend we unwittingly rode through a particularly dangerous road, known to the locals to have gangs of ladrones (theives) armed with AK-47's. Ignorance may be bliss, but we won't be returning to that road any time soon.
Finally more of an irritation to some than a veritable danger, are those pesky chinches (bed bugs). All of our roommates and most of our guests have picked up bedbugs at some point or another, while Dave and I have remained incredulously immune. Based on empirical evidence, we believe that the bugs prefer women to men, and everyone else in the world to Canadians. So being Canadian boys provides us with a particularly useful immunity. Katie is especially annoyed at the moment, being the only girl in the house right now, she's basically like a black hole for the resident bed bug population.
I think Dave has a few words to say about my workbench... but from me, that's all for now.
Dan.
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