Tortear, Maiz, Hitler and Clinton

When I first met Dona Eulalia, she told me she thought my name (Caitlin) sounded just like, "the name of that really horrible German man…Hitler!" Now she will occasionally call me "Clinton", which is an improvement from "Hitler." The kids have practiced my name ad naseum and quite pleased with themselves, will ride around on their bikes in circles chanting, Cait-lin, Cait-lin. 

We have not had any births this week, but have been making quite a few prenatal visits. The rest of January and all of February will be very busy, lots of babies being born! My spanish is improving, but I continue to say "camiseta"= t-shirt, instead of camioneta=chicken bus, and Pene=penis, instead of Pena=sadness, which is embarrassing.

These are photos of the preparing and making of tortillas, which is one of the more time consuming things that needs to be done, and it is also one of the most important. It even has it's own verb! I am still no good at forming the tortillas, so the inferior looking ones cooking on the comal are my creations. Dona Eulalia makes perfect circular ones, that are always the same size.

The dried corn is cooked in water with lime (derived from limestone) until the corn is soft, this is called Nixtamal. When the Spanish conquistadors brought corn back to Spain and Africa they didn't prepare it with lime, an alkali, without which the niacin in corn is not absorbed by the body. Soon the people relying on the corn were sick with Pellagra a vitamin deficiency disease. So, clearly the nixtamlization of the corn is extremely important, and is something that all native people who rely on corn as a staple food, have been doing for thousands of years.

Once the nixtamal is cooked, it is ready to grind. Everyone in the pueblo pays a quetzal to use the communal grinder, which is the source of a very loud repetitive machine gun noise throughout most of the day. Once ground, you have Masa, the tortilla dough.

Life in Guatemala is sustained by tortillas. The people, the dogs, cats and pigs all require them. For thousands of years Maize (corn) has held huge spiritual and cultural importance to the Mayan people and it is believed that man himself was made from Maize. So it isn't just food.

When we visit friends and family of Eulalia she beams and tells them that "(Clinton) eats everything, and she loves tortillas!" This pleases her and whomever she is telling immensely. Which reminds me of this quote from I, Rigoberto Menchu, "We only trust people who eat what we eat…" I think there is some truth in this.