what decade am i in?

A word here about lynchings:

Vigilante justice is the most common and to be truthful, probably the most effective, form of castigating criminals in Guatemala.  Especially in very rural areas like mine, where there is not a police station for miles around, when someone steals, kills, rapes, extorts, kidnaps, cheats, etc, the community gets together and takes matters into their own hands.  I have heard that there are a variety of Mayan punishments that get employed, like forcing the criminal to walk through town several times carrying large stones, but the only form I have ever heard of or seen in my area is a good old-fashioned lynching.  

Yes, lynching.  That's right, we're in 2009, here, folks.  

The affair generally begins with the alleged criminal being seized from their home in the middle of the day.  From there they are beaten, often with whips or rubber hoses.  Then gasoline is poured on the offender and he is burned alive.  

The most recent case of this happened in my little corner of the Land of the Eternal Spring about a month ago.  Two young men were extorting a family for money in another town.  When the police got wise, there was a shoot-out on main street, in which one innocent bystander died.  The two men from my pueblo escaped unharmed and fled to a community in my town.  Later that day, they met an untimely end at the hands of justice-seeking community leaders.  

The general consensus of the people in my health center was a shrug followed by, "Pobrecitos, but they should have known better."  As recently as last week, several men from within the health center were threatened by community leaders.  As a result, they had to leave town.  

Now, before you go dismissing an entire people as barbarians, I should remind you that lynching is not all that distant from many of our own communities.  And unlike in many of the race and sexual orientation hate crimes in our nation's past, I would say that in most cases here in Guatemala, the criminals seem to be guilty the majority of the time.  

Furthermore, lynchings here are rarely hate crimes.  They are a form of seeking justice in a society where the murder conviction rate is in the single digits, and where security is everyone's top concern.  Who can say that if a family member was brutally murdered, raped or even simply had all their possessions stolen from them, they would not be tempted to take matters into their own hands if the offender walked free?  Of course, that begs the question of whether the vigilantes are really seeking justice or only vengeance, but that is another matter.

Many have speculated that after a thirty-year civil war, preceded by centuries of bloody clashes with the Spanish, what you have is a society that reaches for a gun to deal with its problems before all else.  But with a corrupt government and a broken judicial system, who could blame them?  

Better governance and less poverty are the only solutions to this problem.  

smells like volunteer spirit

I have never in my life gone so long without bathing.

Tomorrow it will be over a week with little more than a sponge bath every few days to attend to my personal hygiene.

I'd like to describe my bathing situation. For the past four months, to wash myself I have had to wake up extra early, heat up water on the stove, and then carry it into an outdoor shower stall. There one uses a small bowl to throw water over oneself, a little at a time. Lather, rinse, repeat. It's not the most comfortable way to bathe and I don't really think it's as effective as a shower, but it more or less gets the job done.

Bathing this way takes a lot of energy and motivation. Sometimes it's hard to summon the drive to heat up the water, haul it where you need to go, and be constantly dousing yourself instead of letting manmade technology do the work.

But never has it taken more energy than the past week. You see, I recently purchased a gas stove for my new residence. One has to buy the stovetop and the propane tank separately and then attach them with a hose.

When I finally got all the needed parts, I realized that the salespeople had forgotten to include burners for the gas stove. This meant yet another trip to the "state capital." While there, I bought vegetables and spaghetti in anticipation of a working stove an access to cooking.

When I got home, I realized that I couldn't connect the gas tank to the stove. The valve on the hose wouldn't fit. This means no spaghetti, no stir-fry and worst of all, another day of no hot water to bathe in. It also means that it is impossible to boil water (which is necessary before drinking anything that comes out of the tap).

Which brings me to why I have finally opened that bottle of wine I was saving for an especially hard day.

Today I sat through a lunch where I didn't understand a word that was said, was the butt of many jokes re: my marrying any of the other men at the lunch, and choked down a soda (I hate carbonated drinks).

My neighbor forced me to ask for leftovers, even though nobody else at the party did.

And I smell like a person who hasn't showered in a week.

Readers, raise your glasses with me in a toast to Guatemala--may she live in peace, justice and prosperity forever.