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Living in San Mateo Ixtatán |
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What to expect when you come to San Mateo IxtatánSan Mateo Ixtatán is a municipality in the department of Huehuetenango. It is situated at 2,540m above sea level and has a population of 23,000 people. It has a weekly market on Thursday and Sunday. The annual festival is during the third week of September. The residents of San Mateo speak Chuj as a first language and Spanish as a second. There is a special type of bath that is common in this area that also takes the name Chuj. These are like fabulous, fabulous wood-fired steam rooms. HousingThe Foundation is located in the lower half of the house of Don Mateo’s family. The living space is attached to the public Internet café. There are 4 bedrooms, one guestroom, kitchen and bathroom in the Foundation. These bedrooms are for long-term teachers. Occasionally, there will be a short-term volunteer occupying the guest room. Also, there is a school computer maintenance/storage room in the Foundation. If you receive a monthly stipend of about $300 for volunteering, you will be expected to pay rent. Rent at the Foundation is Q400 a month. Please pay Maria Bautista and she will give you a receipt. Teachers are responsible for their cooking, cleaning and not blaring music at night. Generally, everyone here goes to bed early and wakes up early. Guest Housing: Let us know a couple of days in advance when you plan to arrive if you are/were a Foundation volunteer. We will direct you to the Foundation if room is available or direct you to the nearest SMI hotel. The teachers may have guests over if room is available. FoodWhat is there? Seasonal fruits, rice, pasta, sweet bread, chicken, beef, potatoes, tomatoes, lemons, onions, carrots, and hot dogs, greens, squash, beans, eggs, lots and lots of corn tortillas and the essential condiment Picamás (hot sauce). All staple items for a complete diet are available in San Mateo, but if you have certain dietary needs or preferences you will need to bring specialty items with you or purchase them in a larger city. If you are lactose intolerant, this may be just the place for you, as there is a scarcity of all dairy products. Most produce can be purchased twice a week at the Thursday and Sunday morning market. Other dry goods can be purchased all week at a variety of local stores. We drink filtered or boiled water at the Foundation and clean our fruits and vegetables in a solution of colloidal silver. The tap water is not safe to drink. Please boil water at altitudes above 2,000m for only 5 minutes! If you under 2,000m, boil your water for only 1 minute! What to bring to San Mateo? Although other parts of Guatemala may have these things, San Mateo does not have the following: peanut butter, wine, liquors, cheese, liquid milk, powdered sugar, chocolate, any kind of tea, raisins, honey, vinegar, baking soda, yeast, Italian, Cajun or Indian spices. For cleaning produce and to use for other miscellaneous remedies, please bring a supply of colloidal silver to share with the house. You can purchase this at health food stores in the US. It is NOT readily available in Guatemala. What are the kitchen rules? The volunteers/teachers will share a kitchen including a refrigerator, gas stove top and gas oven in the Foundation. Any food you find in the foundation is purchased by the teachers. We take turns buying food and try to share the cost. We also take turns cooking dinner for each other. A refill of the tank costs around Q125, and lasts 3-4 weeks. Also, the hot water is heated by a large separate 60 lb. gas tank outside. A total refill is Q500, and it lasts about 2-3 months depending on how much hot water you use. Refills can be done at the Nuevo Mateano Tienda. What if you are a guest in our kitchen? Feel free to cook, set the table and do dishes. Please be aware that in the morning the teachers are not on a leisurely schedule. They are eating breakfast, making final class preparations and trying to be on time and should be given priority over the kitchen during this time. Also, no one minds if you grab a tomato or banana from the communal veggie bowl to go with your meal. Please refill the bowl or ask how to contribute to the grocery “kitty”. However, some foods in the kitchen are impossible to get in SMI. They are often prized tidbits that everyone uses sparingly to make it last. Rule of thumb: if you don’t know you can replace it easily in SMI, ask before you use it, or don’t. If you stay longer than a couple of days, you will need to contribute to the cost of cooking gas. How are the restaurants? Well, there are currently two restaurants in SMI, Chaz Chaz and Restaurant California. Chaz Chaz is perhaps the nicest and most expensive restaurant here, but it is hard to spend over $5 (Q35) per person here. They do not serve alcohol, but they have cake and nice fruit shakes. Restaurant California’s niche is hot chocolate and beer along with cheap food. A typical meal runs $2-3 (Q15-20). A typical meal has beef, chicken or eggs with sides of beans, pasta, and salad. Of course, tortillas come with every meal. There are also about 5-6 comedors. The difference between a comedor and a restaurant is that comedors usually serve one thing plus tortillas. These meals are usually a meat and vegetable stew called caldo or eggs and beans. They run about $1.50-2 (Q10-15). ClothingWhat is the weather like? San Mateo Ixtatán can be warm during the day and chilly at night. The temperature ranges from 60-80F (15-25C) during the day to as low as 40-45F (4-7C) at night. It is a little cooler here up in the mountains than in the rest of the country. Also, it is rainy season the second half of the year, which means that it rains in the late evening and at night on a regular basis. An umbrella and raincoat will be well used. What is usually worn around town? You will notice that the majority of women here wear hüipiles (embroidered blouses), button down sweaters, cortes (long woven skirts) and scarves around their heads. The majority of men wear jeans, cowboy boots, cowboy or baseball hats and black leather jackets. Traditionally, the men wear Kapixay (thickly woven sheep’s wool top) when it is cold. What clothes should I bring? As San Mateo Ixtatán is located high in the mountains, please bring clothes for both warm sunshine and an occasional heavy rain! Bring at least two sweaters, light, long sleeve shirts, longer skirts, pants/jeans and a light jacket. Layering is essential! If you get cold easily you may want to bring long underwear or thermal shirts. People generally cover up here, so you will not see people wearing shorts or tank tops. Also, cheap jewelry is very popular here. We will show you how to dress in corte and hüipil when you get here as it will be part of the school uniform. At least two pairs of shoes: Tennis shoes, jelly shoes, if you like to wear heels, go with a thicker heel. Perhaps a flat sandal and flat closed-toed shoe would be good. If you wear larger than an 8, you may have trouble finding shoes in San Mateo. You'll have to go to a bigger city like Huehuetenango or Xela. Is there laundry? All clothing is hand washed and line dried. There are neither washing machines nor dryers. It is possible to send your clothing out to be hand washed, usually at a cost of 1Q per item. Toiletries/MedicineWhat do I bring? Most general toiletries are available in stores. The following are not available in San Mateo: sunscreen, multivitamins, nail polish remover, tampons, panty liners, condoms, aloe vera, tea tree oil, lavender oil, Q-tips, curling irons, hair conditioner, etc. Umm, digestion? You may want to bring a personal supply of ciproflaxin and anti-diarrhea medicine for digestive issues. In case of severe diarrhea, recommended foods to settle your stomach are: bananas, toast, rice, and yogurt, which are all available in San Mateo. Flax seed and ginger are also good for digestion. Do I need to have medical insurance? Maybe. For traveling overseas, most health plans do not provide coverage and the ones that do often require you to pay for services upfront and reimburse you only after you return home and filed the necessary paperwork with your insurance company. As a safety net, you may want to buy travel medical insurance. If you would like additional medical insurance, look into the following: MEDEX Assistance: (410) 453-6300; www.medexassist.com Travel Assistance International: (800) 821-2828; www.travelassistance.com Is there a hospital in San Mateo Ixtatán? No. There are two clinics. One is run by the city and one by the Catholic Church. They are usually open weekdays until 4:30pm. In this area, there is one/two doctors for every 30,000 people. You are able to get medicine at the clinics usually for free. Otherwise, you can buy medicine at the pharmacies. Most pharmacies are open every day during the day. MoneyBefore entering Guatemala, please consider changing some money to quetzales (Q) in the airport. Otherwise, change money in the Guate airport or at a bank before you get here. Make sure that you get some smaller bills, like 5Q, 10Q or 20Q. You can also change money in Huehuetenango. There is one bank, BANRURAL, in San Mateo. It is still not possible to change money here and there is no ATM. The closest ATM is in Barillas an hour and a half away or Soloma (2 hours). You can open a savings or checking account here. You may also cash your local paycheck here without an account. It is open Monday through Friday and Saturday mornings. Transportation What is the bus schedule in San Mateo? There is a bus that goes to south to Huehuetenango and east to Barillas around every hour from 11:30pm to 3pm. There is a bus that goes west to Nentón every day around 11am. Other options for getting around SMI include walking, taking the Tuk Tuk taxi and/or micro. Is it possible to rent a microbus for my group? We can hire microbuses from San Mateo and it costs around Q2000 for the trip, so it's only worth while if there is a group who can share the price. Communication in SMIHow is the snail mail? In general, the Guatemalan postal system is not reliable. It could take anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months to get mail, including from the United States. There is one post office here and the mailman seems to know where everyone lives without much of an address. The snail mail address of the Foundation is: Your Name
Will I need a cell phone? Maybe. Cell phones are quite cheap. If you are planning to stay for a while and plan to use the phone, you should consider buying a cheap prepaid phone. You can certainly buy one here in San Mateo Ixtatán and add credit to your phone with telephone cards. There are three major mobile phone companies to choose from: Tigo, Claro and Movistar. You can buy telephone credit at most stores here in SMI. Also, be sure to look for monthly offers for free double or triple credit. The Foundation phones use Claro credit if you need to recharge them. Tigo seems to get the best signal. Is there Internet? Yes. Internet is available to the public at the Foundation. Currently, we are the only Internet provider in town. Wireless service is available throughout the Foundation. There are four computers available for public use. The hours are: 8am-12pm and 1:30pm-5:00pm Monday through Saturdays. It is also open Sunday afternoons. The price is 6Q an hour. Yinhatil Nab’en teachers and students may use it for free on weekdays. The service is also connected to the Yinhatil Nab’en main office and the Asociación INHAT office. How much can be downloaded? Currently, there is a limit of 375MB of downloading per day per group (not per computer). If the limit is exceeded, the following day will be ridiculously slow. Please be conscience of this as the school, the association and the foundation are considered one group to the internet provider. Are there any bookstores? There are no bookstores and there is no newspaper. There are a lot of books in English to be read at the Foundation. We have no TV or radio in the Foundation. Learn some ChujChuj is a language belonging to Q'anjobalan-Chujean family of Mayan languages spoken by around 40,000 people in Guatemala and 10,000 in Mexico. You may realize when you are here that many people are not speaking Spanish. They are speaking Chuj. The Foundation Office is across from the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala-Comunidad Lingüística Chuj (A.L.M.G.). The Academia is usually open Monday through Fridays and offers Basic Chuj Language Classes in the afternoons. You can also go there to learn your personal Mayan symbols, learn about the Mayan calendar, traditions, etc. The phone number is 7739-1837. |