Day 178: In-Service Training

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”                                                                                                                           - T.H. White, The Once and Future King

I am now home from Early In-Service Training, the 10-day, project-specific course for all the volunteers in my training group. The training was held at Headquarters, which meant that for 10 days I was once again living with Claudia, my first host mom. Even though I knew from experience that Claudia is a great host mom, I was taken aback by how good it was to see her again. Eating dinner with her and her niece, washing my underwear in her pila, curling up in the thick wool blankets she put on my bed—it all felt like a sort of homecoming, which, when you think about it, is kind of weird, right? I only lived with her for two months, in comparison to the three months I’ve now spent in site. And yet, her home and lifestyle felt infinitely less strange to me than San José Chacayá. Maybe it’s because she lives in more of an urban town, or because she’s more educated than the vast majority of Chacayá inhabitants, or because we have a special lady bond. I don’t know. In any case, we spent long hours chatting about my life in site, my joys and frustrations with Guatemala, and, of course, Esmeralda.

Esmeralda is Claudia’s niece.  She’s one of fiercest Guatemalan girls I’ve met, self-possessed and outgoing and funny.  Whereas most young Guatemalan girls travel in quiet packs through the streets, keeping their heads down and giggling when addressed, Esmeralda roams solo.  She bargains for used toys at the market; she plays soccer; she once left a church service to go buy chips and soda pop, before coming back and chowing down in the pew.  She’s basically the coolest Guatemalan kid I’ve met.

But, as cool as Esmeralda is, she’s an unwitting example of just how poor the Guatemalan education system is.  At seven years of age, she’s just learning how to read.  She’s also learning a Mayan language, but neither she nor Claudia knows which one it is (at least Claudia knows what grade Esmeralda is in, which is more than I can say for some Guatemalan parents).  And then there’s this conversation I had with Esmeralda during EIST, which frankly made me wonder what they teach her in math class:

Esmeralda: How old are you turning this year?

Ann: 24.

Esmeralda: So, right now…you’re…25.

Ann: What?  No!  I’m 23!

Esmeralda: Oh.  Ok.  Good.  But then, when you have your birthday, how long until you actually turn 24?  Two days, or two weeks?

Ann: What?

Esmeralda: After your birthday, do you turn 24 in two days or in two weeks?

Ann: What?  I’m sorry; I don’t understand.

Esmeralda: So imagine today is your birthday.  Do you turn 24 in two days or two weeks?

Ann: I turn 24 on my birthday.  I don’t understand.

Esmeralda: Well, you called me after my birthday to wish me a happy birthday.  It must be because I didn’t turn seven until after my birthday.

Ann: Oh, that’s because I had the wrong date!  I called on the day I thought was your birthday!

Esmeralda: Oh.  Ok.  So when you turn 24, you’ll turn 25 in two days or two weeks?

Ann: …After I turn 24, I have to wait a year till I turn 25.  So I still have two years to go before 25.

Esmeralda: YOU’RE GOING TO BE 25 YEARS OLD IN TWO YEARS?

Ann: Yup.

Esmeralda: IN TWO YEARS.  YOU’RE GOING TO BE 25 IN TWO YEARS.  YOU’RE SO OLD.

Ann: I’m going to go do dishes now.

So that was weird, and fairly uncomfortable.  But it was also profoundly sad, really, because it made me think about what the future has in store for Esmeralda.  In all likelihood, Esmeralda, this spunky fearless girl, and thousands more girls like her throughout Guatemala, will end up finishing high school with a shoddy education, marrying young, having a few kids, and maybe working part-time at their family stores.  And they’re the lucky ones.  More rural girls, like those living in San José Chacayá, will probably drop out of school, get pregnant as teenagers, and spend the rest of their working lives caring for all their subsequent babies, while their husbands toil in the onion fields.  It’s a pretty dark future.

The good news is that maybe it’s a future I can improve.  The whole purpose of EIST is to provide volunteers with tools they can use to effect positive change in their communities.  And believe me, my community needs change.  So I spent the long days at the Peace Corps Office immersing myself in talks on positive masculinity, HIV/AIDS, how to work with pregnant women, and how to train health workers.  Some of the sessions were moving and useful, like our group discussion of how to deal with machismo in site.  Other sessions served as brutal reminders of how difficult it is to work in the Guatemalan culture.  For instance, the session led by Guatemalan comadronas (midwives, basically) focused almost entirely on the importance of dream interpretation.  Dreams are really important in comadrona culture, it seems, but I couldn’t help but wonder how this information would prove useful, at all, in my work in Chacayá.  Then I felt culturally insensitive, and tried to refocus on the comadronas’ message, only to find myself getting frustrated with them all over again.

The highlight of EIST was undoubtedly a two-day retreat, held at a completely kooky hotel in the department of Chimaltenango.  The various hotel cabins were surrounded by herb gardens, rusty swingsets, giant wooden giraffes with hand- and foot-holds for climbing, brightly painted bicycle parts, and little bridges over dry streambeds.  There was also a chapel, an exercise facility with walls made of plastic bottles, and a weird zoo-like area containing deer, dogs, and sheep.  I spent most of my free time wandering the grounds and soaking it all in.

I didn’t have unlimited free time, though, because of course the retreat had a purpose: discussing the role of gender in Guatemala, both in our personal lives and in our work.  I think most of you know that gender is one of my favorite subjects, so I was pretty much in ecstasy throughout the training.  Best of all, the Peace Corps Guatemala Gender Equality Committee, which led the retreat, was looking for two new members.  I applied, and I got a spot!  I have high hopes that a position on the committee will provide more opportunities for me to make lasting changes here.  I can help train other volunteers on gender equality, so that they can pass that knowledge on in their sites; I can help plan educational activities with locals (the committee is currently producing a Spanish and Mayan-language version of the Vagina Monologues); and I can work in monitoring and evaluation to assess what Peace Corps Guatemala is doing well in terms of gender, and what it can do to improve.  I’m pretty pumped.

In closing, I must apologize for the lack of photographic illustration in this blog post; I basically forgot that my camera existed during IST.  However, I do have one picture to share with you, albeit for very prideful and selfish reasons.  I spent a lot of IST doodling, because that kind of mindless activity helps me focus during lectures and group discussions.  I didn’t expect the doodle to turn into anything, but it grew into a pretty neat little art project, and I’m proud of it.  So, even if I my coworkers in San José Chacayá continue to prove difficult to work with, at least my time in Guatemala will have produced this drawing.  It’s the little things.