Guatemala Post 3 - The Weather

This you did not expect. The weather. It is such a prosaic topic in the rest of the world, unless some major disaster happens, like the Brisbane floods this year. Yet in a place like Guatemala, that sits in the path of hurricanes most of the time, the weather is very important.

At present, the rains have loosened bits of soil around the country and caused so many landslides that most of the country is cut off from itself, let alone neighbouring countries. I was meant to have left for Quetzaltenango, where I am based, a week ago. I am stuck in Guatemala City, trying to make the best of a crap situation.

Why is it crap you ask? Well... public transport here tends to be frequented by highwaymen. I am not kidding. Violent thugs climb onto public buses and demand at gunpoint to have everyone's wallet or mobile phone. How do normal people survive, you ask? They risk life and limb every day to go to work. And yes, the do get mugged.

So, because I'm about a foot taller than everyone and fairer skinned than most people on the buses, my cousins have convinced me to avoid public transport. I've taken it once or twice in a group of people, in fact, with the outfit I'm working with: Cultural Survival. I'm still hesitant to go by myself, but I'm going to have to do it.

Guatemala Post 2

Back on the interweb peeps. How's it been? Where did we leave off? Oh yeah. Returning to Guatemala after 24 years.

I stopped off in LA to see my cousin Christian before continuing onto the land of eternal spring. We had not seen each other in 9 years and Christian had been instrumental in helping me with grant applications in the States. He's been a pillar of strength and support in all this. It helps that he knows the industry. So I hung out with him and his family for a few days, preparing myself for the cultural shock that was to come - which I was forewarned about.

It's a funny thing, culture shock. You expect it to happen, but you never know what form it will take. I have been away from Central America a very, very long time. I had expected a few things to have changed since then. Some had. The physical landmarks I knew in Guatemala City were gone. What is now the Westin Camino Real was not there in Zone 10 last time I was here. The highway to El Salvador did not look the way it does now. It was a lot less built up. These were physical changes. It was the cultural changes I was hoping to see.

The weird things is, when you're a 17 year old girl coming from a very strict religious background Guatemalans seem so liberal. When you're a 41 year old woman who's been round the traps quite a few times, you realise that you've changed but they have not. In so many ways.

Women still ask their husband for permission to study, or to go on a social engagement, or to take part in a performance. Husbands still need their wives permission to go to a yoga class. I am not kidding. Women still have to fit a certain set of expectations about being a woman: angelic, sexy but still pure. I break that mold without even trying. There are also tactful, indirect ways of speaking, which I had forgotten. Formulas that you say as part of small talk and politeness, forgotten.

Wives still look after children and the home single-handedly while holding down a job. Their duty is to look after husband, children and any guest that crosses their threshold, even to their own detriment. This, too, I had forgotten.

Then there are the things I didn't know about Guatemalan culture. These could fill volumes and I'm discovering them as I go along.

So, do I have culture shock? Not shock really, surprise and wonderment. Sometimes I feel slightly inadequate to deal other times I feel 100% comfortable. And sometimes I forget how much just comes naturally that is apparent when someone who is not from here mentions it.

Guatemala Post 1

Hey there, it's been a while. I know. I was busy. You know how it is: packing house up, straightening out tax matters from 10 years ago, reactivating an insurance claim from 11 years ago, getting closure for broken relationships, packing bags, making a list, checking it twice, trying to get everything done and not really succeeding.

Woh. Woh. I hear you. Slow down. Yep. I hear you. Where am I going? What am I doing? Why am I chasing my tail faster and faster? Ok. I'll explain. In 2009 I applied for an artistic residency with a bunch called ArtCorps. They are a Non-Government Organisation that places artists with community organisations based in Central America. It took 6 months of a rigorous recruitment process which I thought didn't cover enough and asked all the wrong questions. But enough of that. I answered everything. I ticked all the boxes. I got the supporting letters. They liked. They really really really liked.

So they placed me with an environmental protection organisation working with the indigenous peoples of Guatemala in the Peten jungle, in 2010. Then the organisation got its funding pulled and my residency with them was axed. Yep. Another victim of the GFC. I shrugged, took in on the chin and went about my business.

Then, ArtCorps contacted me again to see if I was free to go to Guatemala in 2011. After protracted negotiations we agreed on a date for my arrival which just barely fit in one quarter of the year with another organisation called Cultural Survival. Better fit, stable funding. It was all good, except that my other half was not so sure about me going for a year, so we negotiated it to six months. Then as the time approached, he bailed for many reasons, one of them quite probably that he couldn't imagine living in Guatemala. I could.

After all, I had grown up next door. No big deal. So it was the second most dangerous country in the world after El Salvador. Whoop De Do. I was from El Salvador. As I said, no big deal. Once you know how to handle yourself in that environment, it all comes back pretty quick.

So here I was, embarking on a pilgrimage to a place that had mythical qualities in my imagination. Back in the annals of time, when I was just a wee girl of 17, I had been on a road trip through Guatemala with my classmates, where we saw Mayan ruins, jungle, rivers with crocs in them, and your run-of-the-mill guerrillas hijacking tourist buses on the way to Tikal, the largest Mayan city left in the world.

I had promised myself I would return to the land of eternal spring, as Guatemala is called. I had fallen head over heels in love with a country right next door to mine. I just never knew it would take 24 years before I saw it again.

Learning how to write for comedy at The Edge

For all those people who lamented the effect that the Brisbane floods had on The Edge, that groovy multimedia facility next to Queensland Sate Library, do not fret. The Edge is a resilient creature, that took shelter behind the skirts of that venerable QSL until its own facilities were restored to a more "livable" condition. Thanks to the persistence of The Edge Catalyst, their workshop series has not been cancelled.

Today, I attended the Stereotypical workshops, an exercise in teaching inexperienced writers how to write comedy scripts for stage and screen. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? The best part I thought, was that it is free. I was wrong, the best part is that they have someone teaching it with industry experience and who has a focus on writing with a focus on diversity: Candy Bowers. As a multicultural writer (what hogwash - that just means I'm not entirely white), I was intrigued by someone wanting to show that you can portray characters who are three dimensional, believable and from diverse backgrounds accurately.

She did. First lesson: connect with your own true self. Ask yourself what do you want right now. Ask yourself what you wanted at various stages in your life. Then ask yourself what you want in the future, on a long term basis. Don't forget you have to bust all these preconceptions people will have of you based on their own prejudices and the ideas they form when they first meet you. So take these preconceptions into account. Debunk them. Challenge them.

How, you wanna know? You'll have to wait for me to upload the recording of the class to soundcloud for the benefit of all writers.

Memories triggered by the Queensland Floods

It was all over the internet. All over the world news. All over the television. I'm sure you didn't miss it. Totally. The whole world knew 75% of Queensland was under water. Which is why I didn't post anything last week. I was offline. Seriously. Cut off from power and the internet. All I had was a mobile phone and a television to keep me updated. The telly wasn't even mine. It belonged to a good Samaritan called Megan. She, like many other unsung heroes in Queensland, took it upon herself to help those which she knew would be affected the oncoming floods. On Tuesday last week, she showed up on my doorstep and offered me help. In any shape or form that I needed it. This included somewhere to store anything I wanted to get out of the water's way, transporting it there and letting me crash at her place for as long as necessary. It was incredible.

Megan was not the only one offering out her help. My friend Candice rang out of the blue when she was evacuated from her work, asking if I needed help. I so did. I took her offer up and she packed all my clothes with me and took them to Megan's place. Then there were Tim and Susan, who were riding around West End looking for people to help. Same thing. They carried all my furniture and breakables and perishable furnishings up to my neighbour's flat out of harm's way. Then there was my neighbour, Marvin, offering refuge for anything people in the building wanted to secure. My mate Ljubo rang up just to ask if it was too late to help.

An army of volunteers from all over Brisbane descended on my street to help clean it up. I'm still in awe. And exhausted from hauling crap back and forth for a week. It made me realise how much crap I accummulate and how much I need to shed before I can get one bowl, one robe. It also restored my faith in humanity. A very special man, my partner Matt, couldn't get to my place in time and so he helped his neighbours. He shovelled mud and scrubbed walls in houses affected by the flood. His fourteen year old son was there beside him, helping his community get back on their feet.

It was incredible. The whole city rallied together and made an effort. Then we all went back to work, to keep the wheels of the economy turning. To keep the engine of this embattled stated turning.

I want to thank everyone who helped clean my street. I want to thank everyone of my friends who expressed concern and who gave a hand. My heart is full with your support and love.

Making a difference in developing countries

I hear a story that really moved me just before Christmas. One of the members of the Playback Theatre troupe in which I participate and with whom I've been training for over a year gave me an insight into the mindset of your average person. He is 40, has started his own business successfully and has an active social life. He believes in social justice but he is also a pragmatist, like most Australians. Donating to charities, other than ones where he could actually see a difference, did not convince him that he was effecting change.

He went on a holiday to India and while he was there he hired a motorised rickshaw to go sightseeing. He befriended the driver of the rickshaw and learnt a lot about this man's hopes and dreams. The driver hired his rickshaw from the rickshaw company and by the time he paid off his rental fee, petrol and taxes, had only the barest minimum to take home to his family. My friend asked him if he had any dreams or ambitions. The rickshaw driver said he dreamed of having his own rickshaw, so that he would only have the expense of petrol and maintenance and would therefore be able to keep the profits to feed his family.

My friend asked him how much money the rickshaw would cost and how much he needed to support his family. The driver said the rickshaw would cost 10,000 Rupees. It sounds like a lot but this is only $220 Australian dollars. Not a lot in the scheme of things, my friend thought. He said his rent cost 2000 Rupees, which used up all of the money left over after paying the rickshaw rental fee. He barely had enough money to feed his family.

This gave my friend food for thought. Here was a chance to make a difference in someone's life with an amount of money he could easily afford. So he took the risk. He withdrew $220 from his bank account and went to see the driver. He told the driver that he was giving him money to buy a rickshaw and that it could only be used for that. Setting aside the slightly dictatorial nature of the bequest, what really struck me was the motivation for the gift.

As my friend put it, he could quantify easily the difference it would make to this man's life if he he helped him in this way. He knew it would not only benefit the driver but his family as well. It would be an asset to passed onto a son later on and if the driver had any business acumen he would later be able to buy a second one. It fired his imagination. It gave him hope that his actions could make a difference.

Although I do not propose to go around giving money to people in need around the world and telling them how to spend it, I do agree that being able to see how your effort will have a measurable effect on someone else's life is very rewarding. See, I'm not kidding myself. Human beings, no matter how altruistic, are bound by their egos in many different ways. I like helping people. It gives me a kick to solve someone's problem. It makes me happy to make someone else happy. Which is why I'm fired up by social entrepeneurship and small independent not-for-profit organisations that give people the tools to create sustainable change for themselves in a culturally sensitive manner that addresses their needs and ability to choose.