Fun with hair

 Veronica and I have been having fun dying our hair!  So far Michael has declined to join us.

Trusses

We put together the first house truss to check it out!  There will be 8 trusses in all, each in three parts.  The weight of one truss is about 400 lbs., which is very heavy to lift without a crane, so we designed the two halves and the bottom chord to be lifted up on the house separately and then welded together up there.

Manuel is balancing the two top halves,
which are just resting on the bottom
chord for this trial run.

Sebastián and Michael are checking
some measurements.

Now, 7 more to go!

Vaccinated!

Both of us, Michael and Heather, have now gotten our second vaccine dose against Covid-19.  For us, this was a very happy day!  (Note: the dates are in the Spanish order of day/month/year.)

News of the pandemic in Guatemala is very sad.  The country is having its worst surge yet, and it is really a national tragedy.  One of our friends here just told us that he talked to a worker in the town's cemetery who said they are burying 5-6 people a day instead of the usual 1-2, and that is not the only cemetery in this municipality.  We also just read a post written by another missionary about a hospital in his city that is swamped with Covid cases and 48% of the patients they admit are dying.  There could easily be 1000+ people dying a day in Guatemala from Covid, and that's in a country with only 18 million people.  We are praying for the end of this pandemic!

Traffic lights

Our little town of Chichicastenango now has three traffic lights!  Here are photos of two of them which we drive past on our way to the grocery store, along with some various scenes along the way.

This is the line outside of the bank,
in which Michael often has to wait.

Surprising methods

We have two boys working on construction, Sebastián and Manuel, brothers ages 18 and 20.  They are hard workers, although inexperienced.  They are quick to offer assistance, and there are a variety of maintenance tasks they help us with as well.  However, we are often surprised by their different way of doing things, which we usually categorize as bad ideas.  

For example, we needed to get rid of some old rotting boards that had been stored for a while.  We assumed we could donate them to a neighbor who could burn them in their cooking fire, because the firewood supply is getting scarcer here.  But we heard a fire crackling and looked out to see an old wheelbarrow base on our driveway with the boards merrily burning inside!  This was a bad idea because we now have a burned patch of paving bricks, but we laughed and admitted to each other that they surprised us again!  And by the way, we did put a stop to the burning and gave the rest of the wood to our neighbor who seemed very glad for the donation.

Events during pandemic

Monday morning we were awakened at 6:00 a.m. by blaring Guatemalan marimba music, which sounded like it was coming from next door.  The music continued for 20 hours until 2:15 a.m., only interspersed with brief respites of someone talking into a microphone, which we couldn't quite understand.  The bass was so loud it vibrated our house and fence all day, even rattling the mirror and circuit-breaker panel door in the kitchen! 

There are only three types of music blared loudly here in Chichicastenango: current contemporary worship music played by evangelical Christian churches, old-fashioned chorus style music with a K'iche' twist played by evangelical Christian churches, and marimba music and latin-beat music played by traditional Mayan religious groups.  This particular music was the latter style, very lively and high-speed, making for an exhausting day!

Heather and Veronica already had plans to go to a park that afternoon, and this is what they saw in the road, a couple of houses down from us.  There were a few hundred people crowded together with hardly any masks.  We are concerned for the lack of caution in the middle of a pandemic which is hitting Guatemala pretty hard right now.

The big black rectangle in center-left
is a stack of 20 speakers.
No wonder it was so loud!

The men lined up are wearing the
fabric headdress of the traditional
Mayan religion.  We weren't sure what
this particular event was celebrating.

Heather and Veronica enjoy going to
hang out at a small local park
where hardly anyone goes.  We
don't leave the house much these
days due to the pandemic, so it is
nice to get out.

Roof work

This week we replaced four sections of our roof which had been damaged by hail and had been leaking during the recent heavy rains.  Now hopefully we can put away the buckets which have been sitting in our living room for a while!

Floor and plumbing

We put in the plumbing and started pouring the concrete floor of our house.

We are pouring the floor room by room because we have to mix the concrete in a small mixer, so it takes a while.  Each section will be pond-cured for a week to increase strength.

Sports court

This week we saw a new sign down the street from our house announcing the opening of a new sports court.  Michael walked down the short side dirt street to take a photo.  We are always glad to see people taking initiative here!

Church blessing

A few weeks ago we received an announcement under our gate inviting us to a "church blessing event" for a church in our community that had bought new land and was moving.  The flyer and envelope were announcing the celebration service and asking for donations.  

The previous church building was made of steel roofing sheets nailed to wooden posts.  It was near our house on borrowed land, but they recently took it down and we weren't sure what happened to it.  A couple of weeks ago we found it being built next to the community soccer field!

Police records

As part of the yearly renewal process for our residency here in Guatemala, we went to the police station in a neighboring town to request documents showing our police record.  Fortunately, our records correctly showed that we are not guilty of any crimes!  Heather and Veronica waited in the car for Michael, who went to request the documents, and this was the view.  The police station is the nondescript gray building in the center of the photo.

Traffic jam

A couple of weeks ago we went shopping in town as usual, but the traffic was very congested.  In fact, on the way home, it took us 40 minutes just to get out of town, instead of the usual 5 minutes.  The main problem with traffic jams here are the old U.S. school buses and large 18-wheelers trying to navigate the narrow roads in town with 6-point turns at some corners.  This happens because the main highway that runs north-south through Chichicastenango goes through the narrow grid of streets that were created before cars existed here.

We later found out that the "traffic police," were absent because the town mayor called them off the job to help him with some other business.  Three of these officers direct traffic in the three main intersections in town rather than traffic lights.  We heard that there was a lot of frustration with the mayor over this issue!  And we found out how important those three traffic workers are!

House foundation

The boys poured the first section of our house foundation this week.  They did a great job digging and setting posts, then pouring the bottom concrete base.  Now they have five more sections to go, and then they have some foundation blocks to lay and columns to pour.