Day 122: Thanksgiving

“Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.”                                                           - Marcus Aurelius

As Thanksgiving Day drew closer over the past week, a palpable excitement seemed to hang over Peace Corps Guatemala. For many of my fellow volunteers, it was a nervous excitement, based both in severe homesickness and in eagerness for the giant Thanksgiving party being thrown by my training group. Several other volunteers were excited about the rapidly approaching arrivals of their families, who had chosen Thanksgiving as a good time to visit Guatemala.

My excitement was something else entirely. Don’t get me wrong; I’m still very homesick, and no doubt will be throughout the course of my service. But Thanksgiving has never been my favorite holiday (probably due to the fact that I strongly dislike almost all classic Thanksgiving foods), and therefore didn’t cause a spike in homesickness (Christmas will likely be another story). And I wasn’t actually planning to attend my training group’s Thanksgiving party. I love my fellow volunteers, and I love spending time with them, but I really prefer small group activities, sans vodka. Finally, my family did not come visit over Thanksgiving, because they don’t love me. I kid; my parents actually think I’m pretty cool, but I’m not allowed to have visitors yet. And given the fact that I will probably only get to see my parents a couple times during Peace Corps service, it makes sense to postpone family visits for a little while.

Anyway. I spent the past week in a state of extreme restlessness, which I think could most appropriately be called cabin fever. It turns out that living in a small town can be kind of limiting, and can really get in your head and MaKE yOu CrAZy. Well, stir crazy, at least. First of all, everyone in town knows you, and always wants to know how you’re doing. This is actually quite nice most of the time, but when you’re having a bad day, it sucks. I don’t want to lie to my local egg seller, but I also don’t want to tell him, “Well, I’m actually having a bad day, because I’m PMSing and right now everything about your culture seems backwards.” Probably not a great way to make friends. What’s more, any sort of excursion requires preplanning; you can’t just decide to go to the movies or out to eat. The closest cinema is an hour and a half away, and the restaurant in my town got very confused when I asked them for a vegetarian meal (they ended up serving me plain pasta with a teaspoon of tomato paste and three pieces of onion on top).

I was also feeling significantly frustrated with my daily work, or lack thereof. Everyone at my CAP is very nice, but they often spend entire afternoons napping or browsing Facebook. This makes collaboration difficult. When they do have work to do and I ask them how I can help, they usually say that I should “just be.” According to one of the Peace Corps trainers, this is likely due to the fact that I have a college degree (a rarity here), and am seen as being too fancy or important for basic CAP work. This makes me very sad, because I would really like to be helping! I do have some diagnostic work I can do for Peace Corps, but it feels very condescending to only work on figuring out what my fellow CAP workers are doing wrong.

So, in summary, by Thanksgiving Day, I was desperately excited to see my friend Hannah (a fellow volunteer who had come to stay), and to get out of town. We spent a glorious Thursday in Panajachel, hiking along the lakeside, sipping non-instant coffee, eating tempeh stir-fry (ACTUAL TEMPEH!), and getting massages from a darling Guatemalan lady. We also had an interesting grocery store run-in with a young Jehovah’s Witness missionary, who assured us that Peace Corps volunteers are “politically funded.” He was shocked to learn that there are “real expatriots” living in Pana. I don’t know how he missed the vast number of white people wandering around and running businesses, but whatever.

The day ended with a positively inspired pizza-from-scratch kitchen party, and a screening of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Weirdly, MFBGW, which I considered a masterpiece in junior high and now consider superbly cheesy, fit with Guatemalan life perfectly. Seriously, if you want to gain some perspective on gender roles and societal expectations in Guatemala, just listen to Toula Portokalos expound on the importance of marrying men of the same ethnic background, having babies of said ethnic background, and cooking for said babies of said ethnic background. I basically felt like I was watching a video of my current life (although John Corbett does not, to my knowledge, live in Guatemala).

On Friday, Hannah and I hiked to the local lookout over Lake Sololá (the same one introduced to me by my fellow CAP workers). While soaking up the sun and the view, we had a long, emotional, and ultimately helpful chat about integration difficulties.

The view en route to the lookout

The lake view from the lookout

Hannah and I then headed to another friend’s house, to begin cooking our real Thanksgiving dinner (pizza, while delicious, doesn’t really count as Thanksgiving food). Our exhaustive efforts over the next 24 hours produced a veritable feast: mashed potatoes, biscuits, cornbread stuffing, sweet-and-sour carrots, green bean casserole, spinach salad, apple pie, pumpkin pie, peach pie, and pumpkin rolls. This may sound like a pretty typical Thanksgiving lineup, albeit sans turkey, but it felt like a huge accomplishment, given the fact that all of the food was prepared using a portable stove and a toaster oven. Best of all, while eating, I got to catch up with six other volunteers. We talked about our successes in site, our frustrations, and what we are thankful for. It was a really nice, really homey Thanksgiving…despite being celebrated in a cement block in rural Guatemala.

My conversation with my fellow volunteers made me realize that, even though I’m frustrated with small town life and my lack of progress in my CAP, I have a TON to be thankful for. I’m thankful for all the opportunities I’ve had in my life, many of which were afforded to me because I was born in a country like the United States, and not in Guatemala. Seriously, how amazing is it that I got to go to college, study abroad, work as a medical scribe in an ER, and join the Peace Corps? Those things are unheard of here!

I’m also thankful for my health—another anomaly here. The vast majority of Guatemalans are malnourished, and many Guatemalan women my age (23) already have three or four children. The results of such early and frequent childbirths can be devastating—Hannah just met a 17-year-old mother, whose recent bungled Cesarean section left her paralyzed from the waist down.

I’m thankful I’ve been placed in a town I like, with a generous and caring host family. And I’m thankful for my friends and family back home. I’ve always been thankful for the people I love, but since coming here I’ve realized more than ever just how much I love all of you.

Today, a few days after Thanksgiving, I have a new something to be thankful for. I’m talking, of course, about Cyber Monday. Just kidding! I’m actually talking about a promising work opportunity in my health district. However, given the length of this blog post, and as part of a sneaky plan to leave you hanging so that you read my subsequent blog posts, I’ll tell you about it next time!

See those little radio towers?  That's my town!

Day 103: Frustrations

"I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved."                                                             - Søren Kierkegaard

After a quiet Monday at the CAP, I packed my bags for an overnight youth camp on sexuality. The camp, which was held at a beautiful local nature reserve, was planned entirely by Laura, my site mate, and she had invited me to come along, both to help with lesson plans and to learn about how such camps are run, what local high-schoolers are like, etc. The overall experience was, in a word, jarring. I was disappointed and even a little bit frightened by the gender dynamics among the students, the students’ lack of knowledge regarding sexuality (both before and after the camp), and the lack of order among the students. Allow me to explain each issue a little more clearly:

Gender Dynamics: The boys were loud, raucous, and frequently disrespectful to the teachers. They laughed uproariously with every mention of body parts or bodily functions, and ridiculed their fellows who dared to answer teachers’ prompts. The girls, on the other hand, were quiet and withdrawn. During one of opening icebreaker activities, in which a ball was thrown around a circle to prompt introductions, about 90% of the girls refused to even try to catch the ball. If it was tossed their way, they would sidestep it and then meekly watch it roll away. I’m not sure why they didn’t want to talk in front of their classmates, but the scene made me feel profoundly sad.

Lack of Knowledge: I was pretty shocked that the 14- through 17-year-olds attending the camp didn’t know how menstruation works (I was less shocked that they didn’t know what homosexual means, given Guatemala’s conservative and religious atmosphere). I mean, I think it’s safe to assume that most of the young women at the camp had experienced menarche/been visited by Aunt Flo/“become women,” and yet only a handful of them could explain WHY they hemorrhaged from their vaginas every month. As a woman, allow me to tell you that getting your period is scary enough even without the added difficulty of not knowing why it’s happening.

The lack of knowledge was further demonstrated in the pre- and post-tests given to the students at the start and end of the camp, respectively. Despite the fact that the tests were identical, and the two-day camp was spent spoonfeeding the answers to the students, most of the participants scraped only a 4/10 or a 5/10 on the final exam. What’s more, a lot of them blatantly cheated during the exam, copying answers word-for-word (if you’re going to cheat, at least get a little creative!). But we’ll come back to that in a minute. For now, allow me to share some of my favorite answers with you; they’re quite comical, really, but also insanely frustrating:

Question: What are the signs of an abusive or dangerous relationship?
Answer 1: When a woman is pregnant and the man beats her and she has an abortion.
Answer 2: Having sexual relations

Question: What are three possible consequences of an unplanned adolescent pregnancy?
Answer 1: Friendship, love, caring
Answer 2: Birth, natural birth, Cesarean section
Answer 3: Having sex, don’t inject yourself, stop injecting yourself

Question: What are three ways of preventing pregnancy?
Answer 1: Abortion, spontaneous abortion, unwanted pregnancy
Answer 2: A woman can prevent pregnancy if she gets an injection for strength.

Question: What are three ways of preventing HIV transmission?
Answer 1: Sexuality, cough, cold
Answer 2: Blood, sex
Answer 3: Calendar, cough, sexuality

Question: What is a resource that you can access to receive help regarding your sexual and reproductive health?
Answer 1: When a man loves a woman, he has to ask her father and mother so that she stays healthy.
Answer 2: Don’t eat a lot of fats. You have to eat vegetables and fruits so you don’t get sick.

And the best response of all:

Question: What is sexual responsibility?
Answer: Reproduction, pleasure, snack.

Lack of order: I’ve already mentioned the blatant cheating. What I didn’t mention is that when teachers at the camp told the students to knock it off, the students either ignored them, or mocked them to their faces. It seemed like disciplinary action is just not something these kids are familiar with, and I didn’t feel like I was in an appropriate position to introduce them to it. The students also flaunted authority by showing up thirty minutes late to lessons, sneaking off into the woods at night to make out, and holding an all-night music party in the boys’ dormitory. None of those things are distinctly Guatemalan, of course; I’m sure you would find them at American youth camps too. But that doesn’t make them any less annoying.

So there you have them: my frustrations with the camp. Of course, it wasn’t all bad. There were thrills, like piling into box trucks for transport to camp…

…beautiful views…

…and the following moments of genuine joy:

Laura maneuvers a girl, pretending to be an ovum, through an imaginary fallopian tube

My new biffles, fellow PCV Sam and fellow CAP worker Luisa

Did I mention there was a zipline?

Yeah, a zipline.  Just look at that awesome midair chicken dance.

Anyway, after an exhausting two days of youth camp, it was time to head back to San José Chacayá. Although the other gringas and I got seats in the cabs of pickup trucks, most of the camp attendees were not so lucky:

Thursday morning found me at an ebola training, and on Friday my coworkers decided to re-strike. This is logical, given the fact that they still haven’t been paid, but it’s hard to take. In the first place, I’m sad that my friends are being mistreated. I still struggle to imagine how it would feel to go 6-7 months without pay. Second, I’m upset that no one in my community has access to easy healthcare right now. Third, I’m frustrated that my days will once again be spent sitting around the CAP doing absolutely nothing. And fourth, I keep thinking about that annoying-to-the-point-of-hilarity SNL sketch starring Jimmy Fallon and Ben Affleck as warring DJs, screaming, “AND WE’RE BACK!” I now have “AND WE’RE BACK (on strike)!” playing on repeat in my head.  Since I can't access the Youtube video from a non-U.S. IP address, I can't embed the SNL video, but you can check it out here: https://screen.yahoo.com/z105-morning-madhouse-000000804.html.

As an attempt at optimism/hope/positivity, I’m choosing to end this post with a list of some of the really great things Guatemalans do—more specifically, things that Guatemalans unquestionably do better than Americans. It can be difficult for me to remember that I have just as much to learn from Guatemalans as they do from me, and I hope that ruminating on and sharing this list will help keep me sane and balanced. So, without further ado:

1. Retention of artisanal crafts: Whereas most U.S. tourist shops are filled with hokey T-shirts, cheap plastic doo-dads, and novelty shot glasses, Guatemalan tourist destinations are overflowing with woven textiles, jade intricacies, and beautiful wool blankets. Yeah, there are some cheap T-shirts here too, but just imagine if the U.S. offered a similar number of Native American handicrafts. Don’t you think we’d all know a lot more about our country and its people’s history?

2. Breastfeeding: I rarely pass a day in Guatemala without seeing a woman breastfeeding her infant in public, something that is unfortunately a rarity in the United States. It’s true that Guatemalans in general are far more conservative in dress and mannerisms than Americans, but they don’t seem to have the same shame that American women have about baring their breasts to feed their babies, which is great. Sadly, the male equivalent seems to be public urination, but let’s not go there.

3. Bus painting: Why would you decorate a bus like this:

http://www.minnpost.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/article_detail/images/articles/metrotransitbus_main.jpg

when you could be decorating it like this:

http://www.unitedplanet.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/3232516247_253d21129f.jpg

4. Family: One of the most common questions I get here is how I could bear to leave my family for two years—not how I could leave my home, or my friends, or a stable income. I don’t even really get asked why I decided to come to Guatemala. All the questions are about family: how could I leave them, how much do I miss them, when will I see them again, and why don't Americans care about their families? Of course, I think most Americans do care about their families, quite a lot, but we don’t maintain the physical familial closeness practiced in Guatemala. Here, most men live with their parents throughout their lives (women move in with their husband’s families when they get married). Sometimes they share homes; more often they live in family compounds, little haphazard gatherings of houses grouped around a common courtyard. All the children are intimately acquainted with their grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc., and most families exchange lots of favors over the course of each year. It’s a pretty beautiful communal way of life.

5. Local produce: Sure, it may be food considered too poor in quality to export to the United States, but it’s fresh, healthy, local, and way cheaper than what I can buy at the local (Walmart-owned) grocery store. This past Sunday, I bought a pound of beans, a pound of strawberries, 12 passionfruit, 15 jocotes (a chalky, tangy Guatemalan fruit), two onions, a bunch of cilantro, a half pound of carrots, a pound of peas, two limes, and an orange, for a grand total of…$5.00.

6. Dog vaccinations: ARE FREE! I recognize that this might contribute to the dog overpopulation problem, but I still think it’s great that local health centers offer regular free dog vaccination days. No dog deserves the pain and suffering of a preventable disease.

7. Tamales: Maybe it’s cheating to say that Guatemalans make better Latin food than Americans do, seeing as Guatemala is a Latin American country, but if you tasted a tamal de elote (a sweet corn tamale), you would forgive me. Each tamale, served piping hot off the grill, is slightly crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside. The color and flavor is similar to cornbread, except for the unexpected burst of cardamom you get in each bite.

8. Bilinguality: In a similar vein with artisanal crafts, Guatemala manages to maintain 21 different indigenous tongues. Most of the people in my town, including children, are bilingual, and can switch between Spanish and Kaqchikel seemingly without thought. Most U.S. children, on the other hand, at least in WASPy white Minnesota, don’t start their forays into non-English until high school, at which point they struggle to learn even the most rudimentary Spanish. Yeah, Guatemalans have a leg up in that over half the population here is indigenous. But it’s still pretty neat to think how much their language does to preserve both Mayan tongues and local culture. It’s especially cool when you consider how difficult it can be to speak Mayan dialects, which sometimes don't even sound human to me (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3t0sJ-SJ6g).

9. Hospitality: Guatemalans regularly welcome me into their homes with proclamations that I should consider it my home, offers of delicious homemade food, and pleas for me to let them know what they can do to make me happier. They often greet me on the street with hugs and kisses. And when I thanked my host dad for driving my friend and me to Walmart, a 7-hour-trip, so that she could buy a futon, he told me, “Ana, as long as there is breath in my body and blood in my veins, I’m happy to help you in any way I can.” Whoa.

10. Menswear: All the native clothing here, known as “traje,” is pretty cool (just Google “Guatemalan traje” for some dizzying pictures), but I’m especially taken with the menswear. It usually takes the form of a festively colored, striped and embroidered shirt; similarly colored and striped pants; and a thick wool wrap, worn around the waist in a kilt-ish fashion. WAY cooler than a business suit.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBII9FI_kwDnzwXECg5PJKNC4FpPD1zBO9VJ8yGT1eV8O0i2o1p7cJzCPYEvniooCdH47Z3OG5JncHVZXXNJu5jQ9PPZOnL7dRkAy0xOJaozdacT5K18LLOzDD7liLw08IYpkYCB5U1iI/s1600/guate+man+clothing+on+mountain.jpg

I desperately want to invest in pairs and pairs of said stripey pants, but I think a gringa in men’s clothing might be frowned upon. Ah well. Until next time!

Laura teaching camp-goers about menstruation

Day 97: Holidays

"From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity."

                                                                                                              - Edvard Munch

Brace yourself: this post is going to be a long one (in other words, Ann got a little overeager with her camera over the past week, and can’t resist showing the results).

With the end of the strike at my health center came a difficult realization: they don’t have very much for me to do.  I’m excited to propose some projects of my own (i.e. forming a support/information club for local pregnant women, improving computer literacy among health center personnel, etc.), but I’m also nervous to immediately propose these ideas without fully understanding how the health center works.  For this reason, I’ve spent the past two weeks mostly as an observer.  I’ve accompanied educators on house visits to weigh and measure babies, attended staff trainings, and done some data entry on malnutrition and dietary supplementation.

I’m also spending time getting to know the local community, aided by my delightful host family and my equally delightful site mate, Laura.  My host family is only too happy to include me in their daily activities, whether that’s Mass at one of the two local churches or a visit to my host mother’s indigenous family (even though her grandmother only speaks the Mayan dialect K’iche, she knew enough Spanish to ask me if I was married.  I am learning that for lots of Guatemalans, this is the most important information about me.  They always seem disappointed to learn that I am unmarried and unattached at 23—basically a spinster).

Laura, always generous with her time and knowledge, is doing a great job both showing me around the area and introducing me to her Guatemalan friends.  We spent a memorable Sunday afternoon climbing a steep hill (I would even go so far as to call it a mountain, but maybe that’s the altitude talking) to the radio towers overlooking San José Chacayá.  We were rewarded with a beautiful view of Lake Atitlán,

our first site mate photo,

and a hair-raising but invigorating climb up one of the radio towers.

The outing made me genuinely happy, both because it was fun to talk with Laura and her friend Oscar, aka Coca (don’t get me started on the weird nicknames here), and because it reminded me of how much staggering beauty there is all around me.  I don’t think any location will ever replace northern Minnesota in my heart, but gazing at the Guatemalan countryside, with all its tangled greenery, precipitous cliffs, and myriad waterfalls, makes me feel more at home here.

Laura then suggested that we organize a pumpkin-carving activity with my coworkers and some of her students (she works in the Peace Corps’s Youth in Development project, in the local high school).  Halloween really isn’t a thing here, and neither are pumpkins, but we decided we could improvise with some enormous local squash, dull kitchen knives, and horrifically scented tea lights found at Walmart.  The results were surprisingly pleasing:

  

After our costume-less (and, more devastatingly, candy-less) Halloween celebrations, I got to experience Guatemala’s own death-themed holiday: Día de Todos los Santos (All Saints’ Day).  As you may have guessed from the name, it’s a religious holiday, dedicated to honoring both the saints and departed loved ones.  And although Guatemalans spend much of November 1 and 2 in their graveyards, the holiday seemed to me to be about anything but mourning.  No doubt this perception is partly to do with the bright colors of Guatemalan cemeteries, which seem to banish melancholy.

The Sololá cemetery

But it’s more than that.  The weekend of Día de Todos los Santos seemed to positively ooze happiness, from the festive grave-decorating activities, in which Guatemalans bedeck their family member’s tombstones with pine needles, flowers, and food…

Flower vendors outside the cemetery

…to the graveside cookouts and serenades…

A graveside band

…to the kite-flying competitions held across the country.

My host brother, Jon Isaias, and his kite

Interestingly, perhaps the only sour note in the entire weekend took place at San José Chacayá’s kite-flying spectacle.  I noticed right away that all the children were flying red-and-white kites, which were being handed out by my host dad’s sister.  I assumed that red and white were just the colors she’d had on hand.  But after about an hour of watching the soaring kites, an orange-and-blue-bedecked pickup drove by, jeering at the children.  This pickup was full of orange-and-blue kites, and was labeled, “Partido Patriota.”  The “Patriotic Party” is one of the two main political parties in my town; the other is Lider (whose colors, wouldn’t you know, are red and white).  I quickly realized that the children’s kite-flying activity was color-coded according to their parents’ political allegiances.  Then, when I asked my host dad’s sister if the Patriotic Party children would be joining us, I learned that they had their own kite-flying event, and would not be mingling with us.  This left me feeling somewhat dumbfounded.  I know that the local political parties are at loggerheads, due largely to their fierce competition for voter support, but I never imagined they would segregate such a happy children’s activity.  By the way, this is probably a good moment to mention my woefully incomplete blog page documenting the different Guatemalan political parties, which you can conveniently access from the main menu.  End advertisement.

Laura and I spent the second day of Todos Santos celebrations on a grand journey to Sololá and Panajachel, a nearby tourist hotspot with breathtaking lake views, excellent restaurants, and two (two!) stores peddling American wares, including olive oil and Parmesan cheese.  We started our adventure in the Sololá cemetery,

A distant view of said cemetery

which afforded us some lovely sights of the local celebrations and the lake scenery.

Lake Atitlán, as seen from the Sololá cemetery

Even though there are frequent (and cheap) buses from Sololá to Panajachel, we decided to continue on foot, as it was a sunny but cool day and we both relished the thought of stretching our legs.  This turned out to be a great decision, because the road to Pana is dotted with scenic overlooks.  A few of my favorite shots from the day:

One of the volcanoes overlooking Lake Atitlán

Panajachel

A waterfall along the road

We then spent the afternoon enjoying all that culinary Pana had to offer: fresh strawberries, Thai food, and real coffee (despite Guatemala’s status as one of the world’s coffee capitals, the coffee actually served here is pretty, pretty bad.  This is because they export all of their quality product (or sell it at outrageous markups in tourist destinations), and serve all the leftovers to the locals.  It’s a crying shame, especially when you consider the mere cents Guatemalan coffee farmers receive for every dollar of their coffee sold abroad).

And on that happy, caffeinated note, I bid you good night!

Day 81: No Es Posible

“We’ve been robbed long enough.  It’s time to strike.”                                                                                                                                  - Minnesota Iron Range miners, 1916

I spent my first day in site unpacking and getting to know Sololá, the nearest city and also the nearest market.  My host mom took me to explore the rows of potatoes, beans, onions, corn, and bananas, sprinkled with local delicacies like jocotes and pigs’ feet and sweet corn tamales.  The whole place gave off that verdant aroma particular to farmers’ markets, and I can tell I’m going to enjoy spending time there.  The only downside is that, as a gringa, I’m almost always asked to pay double or triple the regular prices.  This means that I’m now experiencing a fierce mental war between my Minnesota Nice training and the necessity of improving my haggling skills.

My first day at work was spent in shy introductions to the seemingly enormous CAP staff (all of whom, in Guatemalan fashion, have a first name, middle name, and two last names), dull research into the organizational structure of the CAP, and brief forays into town to meet Important People (i.e. the local justice of the peace) and see the sights.  These forays were necessarily brief, because the town is basically one city block.  This block contains the CAP, a Catholic church, and several stores, and is surrounded by the primary school, the high school, the municipal headquarters, the currently-under-construction future CAP, another church, and more shops.  Outside of the one-block radius lies a mixture of houses, terraced farmland, and Evangelical churches.  It’s all very beautiful, but quite a bit smaller than I’m used to.

 

The view of San José Chacayá from a nearby hill

When I showed up at work on my third day in site, I found the CAP entrance closed, bearing a homemade sign reading, “NO ES POSIBLE CONTINUAR TRABAJANDO SIN PAGAMIENTO.  ESTAMOS ATENDIENDO SÓLO LAS EMERGENCIAS.”  Translation: "It is not possible to continue working without payment.  We are only attending emergencies."

As I perused the sign, one of my coworkers opened the gate to let me in.  My boss then explained to me that the majority of the CAP workers had not received their salaries since March, and that the other health workers throughout the department (the Guatemalan version of a state) were in the same predicament.  The majority of the departmental health workers had met in Sololá (the very day that I was there picking up vegetables in ignorant bliss), and had decided to go on strike.

Although this news was shocking to me, it’s apparently not uncommon in Guatemala.  A lot of governmental workers regularly go weeks or months without pay, forcing them to use their life savings for day-to-day expenses.  And when they go on strike, which is a similarly common occurrence, they might be paid in a matter of days, or in a matter of months.  It’s all very up-in-the-air, and pretty mind-blowing.  I mean, can you imagine the uproar if the U.S. government suddenly and without explanation stopped all medical funding in, say, Pennsylvania?  There would be immediate rage, and picket-lines, and demands for explanation.  But here, in Guatemala, there’s a sort of resigned-ness to the situation.  The health workers, after protesting in Sololá for one day, settled themselves in to wait; there was one brief newspaper article about the strike, and that was it.

So, my coworkers spend every day sitting around the CAP doing nothing.  The idea is that they are here in case of medical emergencies, but will not be doing any other work.  It’s a noble sentiment, although I’m not sure there’s much point in the educators (whose job it is to give educational talks to community members, weigh babies, etc.) or the secretaries coming in to work every day.

I was able to spend the first few days of the strike entering health data from the municipality into my computer, as part of the diagnostic I have to do for the Peace Corps.  Once I ran out of work to do there, I alternated between reading, journaling, and trying to spend time with the health workers.  The days dragged by, without any news as to when the workers might be paid.  And even though I’m pretty bored at work (it kind of sucks to start a new job at the same time as a strike), I know that my frustrations are nothing compared to what my companions must be experiencing.

Today, everything changed.  First of all, when I got to work, I learned that the majority of my coworkers would be taking me for a walk, to a lookout point near town.  En route, they bought me water and junk food from a local roadside shop, and joked with me about my complete inability to speak Kaqchikel.  Once we were at the lookout (which was incredibly beautiful), they all wanted to take pictures with me.  They then gathered me a huge bouquet of exotic flowers, saying, “flowers for a flower.”  And on our way back to the CAP, they stopped at a pear tree, and paid the tree’s owner for the privilege to basically strip it of all ripe fruit.  It was a really lovely excursion, and the generosity of my comrades made me feel much more at home in San José Chacayá.

After lunch, news came from Sololá that three of the big players in the health department had been detained, and another had fled to Guatemala City to escape punishment.  It turns out that all the money for all the health worker salaries in Sololá had been given to these four individuals, and instead of distributing it to the health workers, they had just pocketed it.  I don’t really understand how they thought they would get away with this genius plan, but there you have it.  The San José Chacayá CAP personnel, although sad that their friends in the health department betrayed them like that, have agreed to resume working on Monday, and I’m excited to see what sort of work we’ll actually be doing.

The view from my backyard.  #poshcorps

Of course, not all my time in my site is spent at work, thank goodness.  I’m also spending a good deal of time cooking (lentils, how I have missed you!), getting to know my delightful site mate (another Peace Corps Volunteer who lives in the same town), chatting with my host family (my host dad’s stories about being illegally immigrating to and being deported from the U.S. are especially fascinating), and binge-watching Masters of Sex (yes, binge-watching transcends all national boundaries).  Here are some of the things I’ve learned:

1. Masters of Sex is really good.
2. Guatemalans love to add the diminutive suffix “-ito” or “-ita” to seemingly everything, even if it doesn’t really make sense.  For instance, the word “ahora,” which means “now,” is usually said as “ahorita,” as in, “Let’s go to the shop right little now.”  Also, my name appears to have become Anita.
3. It is entirely normal for Guatemalans to answer their phones during business meetings, without leaving the room or asking their callers to call back later.
4. If your washing machine isn’t hooked up to a water supply, you can fill it with the garden hose.
5. Catholic church services here are just as serious as Evangelical ones.  At the end of my first service in town, everyone knelt down to say the rosary.  I only lasted 45-ish minutes, then sat down with my knees burning with pain and my stomach burning with good old Catholic guilt.  It was pretty embarrassing, given the fact that both my 5-months-pregnant host mother and numerous Guatemalan grandmothers were still going strong.  Also, my site mate has informed me that at Christmastime, it is not abnormal for Catholics to hold two-hour-long services, kneeling the whole time.
6. Speaking of pregnancies, Guatemalan women generally don’t get ultrasounds.  Unless they are hemorrhaging or experiencing severe abdominal pain or have some other warning sign, they pass their entire pregnancies without medical imaging.  This means they don’t generally know the sex of their baby, or whether they are carrying twins.
7. It is not uncommon to see drunks pass out in the street.  Literally pass out, as in, stumbling around one second and unconscious on the ground the next.
8. Guatemalans love scented toilet paper.  At least, the toilet paper section of the grocery store has led me to believe this must be true.
9. If you ask your host dad to give you and your friend a ride to Walmart so that she can buy a futon, he will graciously agree, and then arrange for you to use the municipality’s enormous box truck to transport said futon.
10. Last, and most importantly, the sound of three little pigs snorting and oinking themselves to sleep is quite soothing at night.

Day 71: A New Career In A New Town

“Well, I’m off to St. Mary’s . . . to deliver a baby . . . because that’s what I do.”
                                                                                                 - Dr. Pomatter, Waitress

After three miserable weeks of bloglessness (miserable due to my lack of updates, not due to my experiences in Guatemala), I’m back.  For all of you still reading, thanks for your patience and continued interest in my adventures.

Today is the start of a new era in my Peace Corps journey, marked by two exciting/terrifying events: swearing in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV, if you want to sound cool and informed), and moving to my assigned site, where I will be living for the next two years.

The newly sworn in Peace Corps Volunteers

Swearing In (capitalized to convey the full Importance, Formality, and Life-Changingness of the event) was, in fact, somewhat anticlimactic.  After dressing ourselves in varying levels of formalwear and arranging ourselves in not-quite-alphabetical-order, my fellow trainees and I listened to a host of speeches, pledged our commitment to the Peace Corps cause, and received our diplomas (I think this is probably not the correct term to use here, but I don’t know what else to call them).  Most of the ceremony passed by in a blur.  In fact, one of my most distinct memories of the ceremony is contemplating my Nalgene and wondering, “Have I had enough water to drink today?”  Fortunately, that’s not the only tidbit I’ve retained—I keep daydreaming over the words of one fellow trainee-turned-volunteer, whose speech moved me deeply:

“My personal belief is that we are charged with caring for the world around us—the natural world, as well as the built world, and all its people—in the present and with an eye towards the next seven generations.  We’ll do this in our work alongside our host country partners, in nurturing the health and wellness of mothers and their children, and by empowering youth to be leaders and stewards of their communities.  As for service learning amidst an array of challenges, we’ll do so from an angle of empathy, with open hearts and minds, and a willingness to say yes, to commit ourselves every day to service.  We may not change the whole world, but perhaps a small corner of it . . . . For me, this is a good place to start.”

I don’t imagine that I can successfully convey, through the imperfect medium of bloggery, the meaning that these words have for me, but I’ll try.  I’ve learned over the past ten weeks that serving in the Peace Corps is really a daily commitment.  It’s one thing to pack your bags and move to a foreign country, with the intent of staying for two years.  It’s another thing entirely to wake up every morning in that foreign country, thinking, “Can I really handle any more Spanish today?  Any more tortillas?  Any more stares at the white girl in the street?”  Yes, my days here have known some truly wonderful experiences.  But I also have to take the time and energy every day to remind myself why I’m here, to motivate myself, and that can be exhausting.  The willingness to keep saying yes, as mentioned in the speech above, is in itself a learning process.

The cutest of swear-in photos

After the swearing-in ceremony, I felt strangely empty and a little bit lost.  I think this is partly because my hands had just been doused in scalding coffee by an overeager volunteer; and partly because I was scared senseless about moving away from my training family and starting my “real work;” and partly because I didn’t feel like a real volunteer.  It’s kind of like when you turn 13, and are surprised to discover that being a teenager doesn’t actually feel any different from being 12—at least not right away.  Swearing in, similarly, does not impart any instantaneous special knowledge or skills.  I can’t say that I expected it to (I’m not a complete maroon, after all), but I still felt strangely at a loss to think that I was suddenly a PCV, with all these new responsibilities and tasks, and without any real clue of how I would carry them out.

Luckily, the Peace Corps doesn’t give you much time to dwell on your potential shortcomings as a PCV: four days after Swear In, I shipped out.  I spent the night before the move saying my goodbyes around the community of Santo Tomás.  This amounted to lots of house visits, lots of “remembrance” gifts (including a big bag full of delicious passionfruit), and lots of pictures with unsmiling Guatemalans (I’m not sure why smiling for photos isn’t a thing here, but it makes me look like a grinning baboon in comparison).

"Cousin" Brandon, a grinning baboon, and "Uncle" Enrique

I’ll definitely miss Claudia,

Claudia and me (I'm on the left)

and her niece Esmeralda (my partner in jigsaw puzzles),

Esmeralda and me

and the cozy house we’ve all shared.

The cozy house (yes, that is a full line of ropa interior, washed lovingly by yours truly)

As for the move itself, it’s been a bit stressful.  The other ex-trainees and I, in addition to the 100 lbs of luggage we brought into Guatemala, have to deal with the books, binders, art supplies, medical kits, bulky mosquito nets, etc. etc. etc. gifted to us by the Peace Corps.  And although the Peace Corps vans can drive volunteers part of the way to their new sites, we all had to figure out our own transport for the final legs of our journeys.  I was fully prepared to cram my stuff into a taxi trunk or haul it onto a bus, but this turned out to be unnecessary.  My new town, in anticipation of my arrival, had sent their only working ambulance to Peace Corps Headquarters, to ferry me to site in Cleopatra/Nicki Minaj/full diva style (I seriously hope there were no medical emergencies that day).

And now, the grand reveal of my site, for which I am sure you have been waiting with bated breath: I now live in San José Chacayá, Sololá (check out my new address under the Contact Tab!).  SJC is a small community of 4,851 people (about 650-ish of whom actually live in town), located 2200 meters above sea level and less than three miles from the stunningly beautiful Lake Atitlán.  I knew, as the ambulance crested the final hills leading into town, that I was arriving in a pretty spectacular place:

A view en route to site

A second view en route

San José Chacayá is 95% indigenous, but luckily most people speak Spanish (I am, however, about to start lessons in Kakchikel, the local Mayan language that may break my psyche/vocal cords).  I’m living with a small family, comprised of a mother and father (Maria and Juan), their 7-year-old son (Jon Isaias), their dog (Muñeca), and three pigs; and I will soon start work at the local health post, the Centro de Atención Permanente (or CAP).  I’m excited to know both the family and the community better.

Good night!

An erupting volcano, seen from the hostel the other PCVs and I shared after swearing in

Day 52: Independence

“Yes, my consuming desire is to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regulars—to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording . . . . Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night . . . ” - Sylvia Plath

I think almost anyone who has trained as a Peace Corps Volunteer could tell you that training, while fun, is exhausting. One of the reasons for said exhaustion is the utter lack of independence: your days are planned out seemingly to the last minute, you can’t leave your host house after dark (aka after 6:30 pm), and you have to ask your training manager for permission to leave your host town. Don’t get me wrong; these are good policies for the safety and security of trainees. But as a 23-year-old woman used to the freedom of a car, late night dates with friends, and whatnot, it can be hard to swallow.

The promise of increased independence was one of the main reasons I was looking forward to FBT, or Field-Based Training.  In FBT, all the trainees are sent to towns around Guatemala where current volunteers live.  We basically shadow the volunteers for a few days, observing their work and their lives.

I was sent with one other beloved trainee to the town of San Cristobal in the department of Totonicapán.  En route, I was immediately impressed by the geographic diversity and beauty of Guatemala.  We had traveled a little previously, but getting out of the most highly populated areas was new.  Once we made it to site, I was impressed both by the hospitality of our host volunteer (she greeted us with kiwis, wine, Milano cookies, cheddar cheese, and a giant, beautifully quilted bed) and by the relevance/usefulness of her work.  We spent one day attending a large “training of trainers” (basically a teach-in for Guatemalan health care professionals, educating them on better methods of disseminating knowledge for the good of their communities).  We also spent time working with a local group of women to create a safe space for young teenagers to talk about problems at home, sex education, etc.

I really felt that both of these projects were making a difference in the lives of Guatemalans, and that if I could work on even one similar thing during my service, it would be two years well spent.  Yes, I know the Peace Corps does good work (it would have been kind of silly to join if I didn’t believe that), but it was so refreshing to finally see that.  It’s all too easy to lose sight of the real goals and impact of service during the grueling hours of training.

Of course, FBT wasn’t all work.  We passed memorable hours exploring the surrounding communities…

Cross-stitching guipiles, the blouses that local women wear (this project will likely take all of my two years to finish!)…

And making pizza, from scratch, with some neighboring Mormon missionaries.  I have no pictures of this interesting experience, but I hope you will enjoy this artistic mural shot in lieu of photographic evidence of our cooking skills:

All in all, I returned to Peace Corps Headquarters feeling refreshed, optimistic, and excited.  We made it home just in time to celebrate Guatemalan Independence Day, also known as Quince (the nation declared independence from the Spanish empire on September 15, 1821).  Even though it was a rainy day, my host mom and I got to enjoy a charmingly strange, and inexplicably long, parade (over two hours, for a small aldea!).  Why do I say the parade was strange?  It’s a bit of a toss-up between the sexual dances performed by young girls (in a culture where married couples often don’t dance in public, for fear of appearing shameless)…

The awesome costumes…

The visibly downcast male cheerleaders…

And the McDonald’s contingent:

But Independence Day isn’t just celebrated with a parade.  In my town, it also featured frequent ear-splitting bombas, dance and music competitions, and antorchas (a country-wide tradition, in which children take to the streets running, carrying huge flaming torches.  I’m not sure why this is such a popular activity, because each year tens of children allegedly vanish without a trace).  In an already photography-heavy post, I leave you with several more pictures of the Quince celebrations:

The pig roast

The greased-pig catch (not the same pig)

The greased-pole climb (definitely the same grease)