The Girl Who Cried 'Dog'

[Warning this post is graphic, so if you don't like talk of death, blood, etc... just skip it entirely]

I know I haven't written in a long, long time and I apologize. I had a cute and spunky update post written up a while back and I was going to publish it whenever I had access to an internet connection, but other things came up a few days ago.

So since the last time I blogged, I was gifted a puppy (named Canela: Cinnamon) from the same family who gave me my kitty, Frijolita. She was friendly, lovable and got along with my cat so well that she believed herself to be one! She snuck some cat food, played with the cat toys, and eventually began to climb roofs.

Her roof prowling became so out of control that one day I heard her barking so far away that I went up on my roof and found her about 5 or 6 houses away lounging on a neighbor's lamina roof. That's when I decided to tie her up.

Since my house is a pretty decent size, I tied her with a leash/laundry rope combo from one of the iron poles sticking out of my roof (which Guatemalan home owners keep exposed in order to expand their house after a few years) so as to give her enough room to run around my whole house and maybe jump around one or two houses directly around me.

This plan worked for a couple of days... she would roam around, still wrestle with my cat and managed to make it into her faux dog bed that I had made when she first arrived.

Then Tuesday Arrived. I came home to an unusually quiet house and thought my dog had escaped and wandered off to another roof. Instead, I saw my dog's rope strewn past the stairs leading to my roof and the dog toys across the floor. I mentally compartmentalized it and headed toward my bedroom.

The nook between my stairs and my bedroom is where I found her in a way that only brought back visuals from hundreds of horror movies I had seen in the past. I really don't want to scar others but I can guarantee that you will only be able to imagine a quarter of what I saw when I discovered my puppy. She was lifeless and she was bloody.

Now, she was just a memory of what Canela used to be. I screamed a silent scream that soon broke loose  into a sound that still haunts me along with that scene.

I left the house immediately in a fit of hysterics. I began calling everyone I knew in town and no one was in town or picking up their phones. All I wanted was for someone to release my dog from its current position (that still haunted me as I hyperventilated around town) and to help me remove her from my house since I would be unable to do both.

Soon I was wandering aimlessly, crying my eyes until Abra called me to tell me that I might get some help from the Centro de Salud. It turns out, all they were interested in was mocking the fact that I was crying about a chucho (street dog). I tried to explain why I couldn't just grab a trash bag and take him to the barranco (trash cliff), but they just rolled their eyes and kept passing me around every office in the center so that everyone could enjoy my suffering. After I passed by the last office, the gentleman behind the desk brushed me off by saying that the Municipal Building might have an idea of what to do with a dead chucho.

I ran to the Municipal Building, pausing occasionally to burst into tears and finally managed to compose myself by the time I reached the front office. Once again, I explained my story between heavy breathing and just had all the older men laughing while the secretaries were yelling around the office, "Can anyone help this Gringa, her chucho died."

It wasn't until I was loosing it in the office that one woman in the office took pity on me and accompanied me out into town to find some help. Eventually, about thirty minutes or so of asking random guys to help, we managed to find the people who clean the city. With some promise of money, the head cleaner agreed to help. This turned out to be a huge mistake.

The older gentleman who was now following me back home began cracking jokes about dead chuchos, kept asking if the 'mutt was warm blooded or long gone', and then kept saying what a long walk this was going to be with a dead dog strapped to his back. And all I wanted him to do was shut up and perform the task at hand.

We got to my place and things became exponentially worse. My dog was still there where I had found it and the older man stood in front of my dog and sighed. "Wow what a big dog, I don't know if 10 Quetzales will cover this. And I don't know if I want this thing on my back." I began to cry, in my living room, as I offered him a higher price, gave him a costal (huge, woven bag) and some scissors to let go of my dog. And the horrific jokes kept coming along with a few actions (including calling me outside to watch and consult) that made cringe while being two rooms away and yelling 'Stop it'.

After the job was done and my dog was in the costal outside my house, the older man once again mentioned how heavy this was going to be when he had to 'dump the mutt on the trash cliff' and how the money was not worth it. Being desperate and still unable to form a proper sentence, I pulled out my wallet and slammed every Quetzal I had in my wallet into his hands as I called for a tuk-tuk (mini taxi). Then I saw him throw what used to be my dog, pretty forcefully, into the tuk-tuk and drive off. That was the last image of my dog... being treated like any other street dog and being driven off by a greedy, tactless dickhead.

Unable to go back into my house, I continued to cry around the corner, on the floor. Teenagers passed by laughing and pointing while men paused to enjoy the show. I was a miserable wreck.

Sure, the shock of finding my dog in such a way was painful and still haunts me (during the day and night), but what was worse was the way I was treated in a place I took comfort in. Professionals thought my problems were trivial, laughing as I was writhing in pain. Jokes were made and people ignored me.

I understand people in Guatemala don't really have pets and constantly kick/beat/run-over animals for fun, but what about the human aspect of this dilemma? I am a person. I was going to dozens of people across town and all they would do is laugh me off at best. I had nowhere to go when my house was still a real-life haunted house and I can't understand why.
How could the human connection be so lost?

Sexual Repression & An Overly Stimulated Population

Do you know what happens to people when they are told sex is wrong/sinful/only to happen when married while being simultaneously stimulated by provocative imagery at every turn? 
Tension.

Churches, camioneta preachers, (some) host families and even the newspapers go on and on about the 'sinful' nature of sexual freedom--even going as far as mentioning some levels of hell that would make Dante cringe.

But looking past the proselytizing, you see the harsh reaction to such a conservative society. Every day, one can pass an energy drink poster featuring half naked women which jokes about the need for stamina during a threesome, television commercials zooming in on women's breasts/crotches/butts while discussing something as mundane as insurance, and even a section in the local daily newspaper which is blatantly emulating Playboy's Playmate spread.

This harsh crash between the national moral compass and sexual stimuli can be the only thing to explain the constant slut-shaming (Definition: Also known as slut-bashing/victim-blaming, is the idea of shaming and/or attacking a woman or a girl for being sexual, having one or more sexual partners, acknowledging sexual feeling and/or acting on sexual feelings) in newspapers and the communities themselves, the harsh piropos (loosely translated as a flirtatious remarks) and large number of sexual assaults/crimes against women every year.

There has to be a correlation there.

And I'm sure that it doesn't help that the machista culture panders towards the male gaze while still severely shaming women into the 'virginity or eternal singledom' paradigm.

Who knows if things will ever change for the better in Guatemala, but this girl is sick of being harassed for wearing a skirt, a white shirt, or even donning makeup. So enough, men of Guatemala, I'm done being this pretty thing you can objectify. Next time you say something that can be clearly defined as harassment, there'll be a stiff finger in your face and harsh words in perfect spanish.

Independence, Anniversaries and An Intact Ear Drum

Happy Fourth of July

AND

Happy Anniversary to The Parentals

Seeing as I'm still slightly deaf (since the 'quick fix' would be drilling a hole through my ear drum and you better bet I rejected that idea), I decided to partake in just a small portion of the Peace Corps Fourth of July festivities.

Below are a few photos of the actual Fourth of July Party that took place this week which had at least a couple hundred volunteers in attendance.

And to all my sistren and brethren back in the States, hope you had some great times.

Enjoy.

Viral Videos Make Me Feel Better: July

These are just some of the finds that brightened up my day:

1. BP related video: They're burning sea turtles alive with their clean up efforts, they deserve to be scrutinized via comedy.



2. For some odd reason this reminds me of my family. Mostly because, we totally had a swagger van when my sister and I were growing up:



3. Football lovers singing a 90's one hit wonder, please:



4. If you knew me before Peace Corps, you knew how obsessed I was with 'The Battery's Down' (the web series)... well they made a spoof of Lady Gaga's 'Alejandro' and I'm in love. Especially since I hated the fact that the real video was all knock offs of good things: Ace of Base (I know, questionable) and Madonna.


5. And finally... Bill Murray + Poetry = great stuff:

Peer Pressure, An Overdue Thank You & Moving Woes

 Let me begin by saying that for the most part (and for most things) I have patience and restraint. Just sayin'.

About a week ago, I received a gargantuan package from home... and here is a photo to show the scale (box v. kitten). [Please ignore the censor bars I have added to avoid virtual/actual stalking.]

This box had been alluded to in many phone calls with the fam, but I had no idea that this care package was about the size of that meteor/meteorite (which is it again?) in 'Armageddon'. I mean, I even felt the need to hire a crafty team of astronauts who also slightly resembled the film's cast (you know, like a chapin Ben Affleck doppleganger would be doing the unpacking in a not-so-bulky astronaut suit). Guatemalan Ben Affleck or no Guatemalan Ben Affleck though, this box was going to be opened up!

My first attempt occurred the night that I received the 'Box 'o Awesomeness' as I like to refer to it. How far did I get? Well, only the first layer, which included a handful of spices and clothing in smaller sizes--which is a great thing since all my pants started to look like MC Hammer's circa 1990, Can't Touch This. But seeing as my three months in my current host family's house was almost up, I managed to hold off on looking deeper and unpacking all the goodies.

Days passed and friends began to comment on the fact that they would have ripped the box to shreds trying to discover everything inside. And day after day, the box stood there, in the middle of my room, begging me to open it up.

Ah, I can't, I would think to myself. There are only a few more days left here and everything will just get dirty and disorganized since I have no furniture and therefore, nowhere to put everything. So again, I let the now taunting Box O' Awesomeness in the middle of my room.

Then, today arrived. After weeks of trying to see houses and being stopped by multiple factors (my host family telling everyone that I'm rich and can afford 1000Q rent out of spite [remember, I just mentioned I own no furniture... and this includes an actual bed], the torrential rain, busy home owners), I have not been able to actually see possible places to move and the end of the month is coming up. So with my moving woes, I finally opened up the box hoping that it would cheer me up. AND YOU BET YOUR A** IT DID.

Gummy Bears, Spices, Clothing, Cleaning Supplies, Makeup, Books, Gum, Organic Soap, Shoes, Lotion and so much more came flying out of that box. It all almost made me forget the fact that I am half deaf and that I have had so much bad luck with host families!!

So here is to you family:
A BIG A$$ THANK YOU.
Love you guys and miss you... 
and sorry I just used a$$
... twice.
<3