Day 236: Rollercoastering

“I wanted a perfect ending.  Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end.  Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.  Delicious ambiguity.”  - Gilda Radner

During my initial Peace Corps training, in August and September, I was repeatedly reminded that my entire Peace Corps experience would be studded with sharp emotional ups and downs.  I thought I understood what I was being told, given that, despite my desire to be in Guatemala, I was liable to break down crying at the slightest reminder of home.  But the past few weeks have shown me what emotional ups and downs really are.  Completely unremarkable events can push me over the edge, into anger or sadness or shock; at the same time, many of the things that would have shocked me in the United States barely register.

Some examples:

Barking dogs: Barking dogs are totally passé, both in the U.S. and here in Guatemala.  But my host family’s dog, which splits its time between the roof and the landing outside my door, yips with a vengeance, at all hours of the day and night.  I can no longer count on my hands the number of nights I have spent lying awake in bed, listening to Muñeca’s barking wars with the dogs next door.  As my friend Hannah put it, “If I could kill that dog with no one knowing it was me, I would do it.”  Ok, I probably wouldn’t kill Muñeca.  I think that would probably go against my whole personal-philosophy-of-pacifism thing.  But I wouldn’t be too upset if she got struck by lightning, or wandered off, or in some other way disappeared from my life.  In any case, the sound of dogs barking, which I hardly noticed before leaving the U.S., has now become a sort of psychological trigger, sending me into an immediate panic and/or rage.

Homicidal dogs: As you may have guessed from the fact that my host family keeps a creature as annoying as Muñeca, my host dad has a soft spot for dogs.  I honestly don’t understand why anyone in Guatemala keeps dogs as pets, because a) all the dogs are flea-ridden and quite likely to infest one’s house with the parasites, b) dogs therefore generally aren’t allowed to come inside, c) they bark constantly, and d) they cost money, and most of the Guatemalans I know spend a lot of time bemoaning their meager finances.  So it’s a bit of a mystery to me why my host dad keeps picking up new dogs.  Allow me to explain.  When I first came to Guatemala, there was only Muñeca.  But my host dad soon adopted “Bobby,” a giant black mutt he found in the road, nursing two broken legs (my host dad did not seek medical treatment for Bobby, but gave him some pills in the hope that they would “make him better”).  Shortly after Bobby arrived, my host dad bought my host brother a puppy.  This puppy, dubbed Osita or “little bear,” was positively crawling with fleas, and frequently bore signs of recent fighting—torn ears, bleeding paws, etc.  Then, a couple weeks ago, my host dad adopted another street dog, bringing our total tally to four.  After the adoption of this most recent “chucho” or street dog, Osita disappeared.  I finally asked my host dad what happened to her.  His response: “Se fue.”  “Se fue” literally translates as “she left,” but Guatemalans also use it to express that someone has died (this is very confusing).  I foolishly concluded that Osita had run away, until my host dad continued, “Yeah, that new street dog and Muñeca killed her.”  I fully recognize that this is absurd and terrifying, but I barely batted an eyelash, even when I found Osita’s severed paws hanging out on the kitchen windowsill a few days later.

Constant questions and stares: I totally understand that I’m an anomaly here.  I don’t look like the locals, I don’t dress like them, and I don’t act like them.  So it’s completely natural for Guatemalans to stare at me, or ask me questions about my behavior.  But, after so many months of constant curious attention, I hate it.  I’m sick of Guatemalans walking up to me in the park, introducing themselves, and enthusiastically shaking my hand while assuring me, “It’s such a pleasure.  An absolute pleasure.  Such a pleasure to know you.”  I’m tired of seven-year-old Guatemalan boys staring at me for five to ten minutes at a time on public transportation (smiles, winks, and waves have no effect on their deadpan expressions; it’s creepy).  And I’m over the constant stream of questions every day: How old are you?  How much do you weigh?  Why don’t you have a boyfriend?  Why don’t you wear skirts?  When are you going to have kids?  Your hair is dyed, right?  Are you walking (always asked while I am walking)?  You made it home (always asked when I walk in the door)?  What did you do to your eyelashes/are they real?  When I examine all these questions rationally, after the fact, I know that they should just make me chuckle, and appreciate Guatemalans’ curiosity.  But in the moment, the questioning frustrates me to no end.

The curious incident of the pregnant woman in the daytime: My fellow volunteer Paul, also known as Twinnesota, recently told me the following bizarre story: A woman in his town, who had planned a home birth, decided, in the middle of labor, that she would prefer to deliver at the health post.  She set off, alone and with a baby IN HER BIRTH CANAL.  She did not make it to the health post, but instead squatted in the town’s central park and proceeded with the whole giving birth thing.  The health post staff, on learning of the active labor on their town’s green, told Paul to try to get their single stretcher, which they keep in a locked room with no key.  The only way to open it is for a tall person to reach in, grope around for a tiny string tied to the lock, and pull on said string with all his or her might.  Paul, at over six feet, had found his true calling.  Sadly, by the time the stretcher was retrieved and brought to the park, it was no longer needed.  The woman and her (thankfully healthy) newborn were chilling on the grass.  Again, there’s a part of me that knows that everything about this story is crazy.  But there’s also a part that just feels, Eh.  Guatemala.

It’s not only my emotions that are rollercoastering these days; it’s also my projects at work.  I’m really happy to say I have a lot going on these days (finally), but I must admit my success with said goings-on really varies.

To elaborate, over the past two weeks I have started four big new work activities:

1. An Espacio Amigable, or “Safe Space,” for local youth.  The gender-segregated Espacio Amigable meets every other week in the municipal library, and is intended as a place/time for high school kids to learn about sexual and reproductive health, seek advice from trusted adults (read: me), and get help on homework.  By the way, I’m joking about that whole me-as-the-trusted-adult thing.  While I am active in the Espacio Amigable, and definitely consider myself a resource for the young men and women attending, the meetings are held as a joint effort by the health educators, my site mate Laura, and me.

At our very first meeting, I was shocked and incredibly pleased to find several teenage girls waiting outside the locked library, eager for the session to start.  They loved the video we showed them about the importance of self esteem, and we were even able to facilitate a little bit of discussion with the notoriously shy ladyfolk.

Our second meeting, for the chicos, was less successful.  Maybe they had a harder time relating to the video, given that the main character is a girl and machismo is not portrayed in a positive light.  Maybe they were afraid of coming off as overly sensitive in front of their peers.  Or maybe they’re just not that interested in the Espacio Amigable.  Whatever the cause, getting them to participate in a discussion after the video was worse than pulling teeth.  I tried to start them off with easy questions, and to address specific boys to get them to talk.  Their response was to stare at me in silence for minutes at a time.  So, not the most comfortable or productive meeting.  I’m hoping that as they get more comfortable with each other, and with the weird gringas in their midst, they’ll open up.

Desperately trying to get local high school boys to speak

2. A Club de Embarazadas, or pregnancy club, for—you guessed it—local pregnant women.  The idea here is a sort of support group that meets once a month at the CAP to share advice, learn about health during and after pregnancy, and eat healthy snacks.  This initiative takes a bit more planning than the Espacio Amigable, because the health center staff and I have to look for outside funding.  In addition to the healthy snacks, we want to provide each woman with a small gift basket when she gives birth—nothing fancy, just some diapers and a toy and an outfit, or some such.  The health post can’t afford these things (given that we can’t even afford thread for sutures), and we can’t ask the municipal government, because they already cover a lot of our needs (i.e. gas for the ambulance, medications for patients who cannot pay, etc.).  We therefore wrote a letter to a separate governmental organization, located in Sololá and dedicated to nutrition, soliciting financial aid.  I went to deliver the letter in person and plead our case (twice), but was told the organization has absolutely no money.  We’re now working on similar solicitations to the local bank, the grocery story (run by Walmart), and the Sololá governor.  I thought about applying for a special type of Peace Corps grant allowing Americans (largely friends and family) to donate to the cause, but I really want this club to be entirely sustainable within Guatemala.

The point of this long-winded financial rambling is to relate that, by the time our first meeting rolled around, we still had no money.  The educators and I agreed to foot the bill for the first healthy snack (a giant fruit salad), and to explain to the pregnant women that we are doing all we can to find funding for the gift baskets.  The day before the meeting, I learned that the educators had forgotten to spread the news of the club on their house visits to pregnant women, meaning that none of the pregnant women in our community knew about the club.  The educators frantically went door-to-door that day, and I rested easy.

The morning of our first meeting, I learned that there was educator confusion about who would be running the club with me, and that three of the four educators in charge of the club did not know they were involved.  This made me feel very stupid indeed.  But, we worked through the morning to orient ourselves and to prepare lesson materials, and by the afternoon I was again feeling hopeful.

My hope quickly died when only one pregnant woman showed up (she got a very large serving of fruit salad).  We decided to continue with the lesson plan, but that too ran amok: the attendee was Kaqchikel Mayan, and spoke only baseline Spanish.  One of the educators stepped in to translate, which would have been great except for the fact that she got quite overenthusiastic with her teaching.  I would say one sentence, like, “One warning sign during pregnancy is vaginal bleeding,” and this educator would expound upon the point for 3-5 minutes.  I know this doesn’t sound like a problem; it sounds like she’s just being super educational.  But due to childhood malnutrition, the vast majority of Guatemalans don’t process information like you or I do.  They learn best in small doses, and basically can’t handle too much information at one time.  So, as the lesson went on, this poor pregnant woman just got more and more confused.

When my lesson had finally ended (the ten-minute plan extending into a 30-minute execution), a visiting lecturer on nutrition stepped up and told me she would now be giving her own lesson to this single pregnant woman (who had already told us she was in a hurry to leave).  I was kind of mortified, but also felt completely powerless to stop the visitor from giving her lecture.

The pregnant woman finally left (read: fled), and the visiting lecturer sat down with my educators and I to talk.  She asked me if I often gave lessons to locals or to the educators, and I explained to her that my project was really just starting to take off, today being the first meeting of the Club de Embarazadas.  I’m also starting to plan lessons for my educators, at the request of my boss at the CAP, but haven’t given any lectures to them yet.  This visitor then turned to my educators and said, “Well, if you ever want me to come and give you lessons, since Ann can’t, let me know.”  What?!  The educators then rubbed salt in the wound by telling her how great that would be.  I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach.  I literally ask the health post staff every day what I can do to help them, and they always tell me, “Nothing,” or, “Just be.”  I was embarrassed that this visiting nutrition expert thought that I was so useless, and ashamed that I hadn’t done more at the CAP to make myself useful.

In summary, the first Pregnancy Club really sucked.

3. A year-long “diplomado,” or workshop, dedicated to training health educators on better education methods (I mentioned this in my Christmas post, I believe).  Two other volunteers and I have spent the past month preparing lessons on teamwork and respect in the workplace, printing and organizing follow-along worksheets and homework, and generally slaving over logistics (lists of attendees, venue preparation, lunch arrangements, etc.).  I’m happy to say that the result was…pretty good.  There were a few snags in the day-long presentation (the Guatemalan in charge of the entire project had invited a guest speaker without telling us), but overall things went well.  We made it through all the necessary talking points in the time allotted, and in a fun/interactive way.  All the food was delivered on time.  The Guatemalans scored, on average, 22% higher on the post-test than on the pre-test.  I felt proud of what we had accomplished, and am looking forward to next month’s session.

A quick aside: the one thing the Guatemalans really didn’t like about the training event was the food (I think it’s a good sign that the food was the worst part, don’t you?  It’s probably the easiest thing to fix).  We had ordered them a pizza party lunch, thinking that this would be great fun for all involved.  But we had made a great cultural misstep.  In Guatemala, pizza is a snack food, not a meal.  The comment cards the Guatemalans turned in at the end of the day featured such suggestions as, “No pizza.  Only tortillas,” and, “Next time we would appreciate an actual lunch.”  (Just FYI, Guatemalans insist on eating pizza with ketchup, mayonnaise, and spicy green sauce.  Must make all food as unhealthy as possible.)

4. Assisting the social worker at the Sololá Hospital.  The head of the diplomado committee (see #3 above) is married to the social worker at the Sololá Hospital, and my boss at Peace Corps suggested I take advantage of my proximity to Sololá and try working with her.  I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be doing with her (she mentioned doing education on exclusive breastfeeding), but on my first day she threw me into social work headfirst.  She showed me to the neonatal care ward, where tiny stick-figure babies breathed tiny ragged breaths in tiny beeping incubators.  This was another moment when I felt like I had been punched; I was overwhelmed by the sadness and desperation of the scene, and by the fact that there were no nurses around.  Shouldn’t these babies, most of which seemed to be barely clinging to life, be receiving round-the-clock attention?

The social worker led me to one baby in particular, which happened to be from San José Chacayá.  She had been born extremely premature two months previously, and her parents had basically abandoned her immediately postpartum.  She now needed to undergo cardiac testing in Guatemala City, an ambulance journey that required the presence of at least one parent.  Despite multiple calls and even appointments set up by the social worker, the parents had failed to return to the hospital.  The social worker wanted me to seek out the parents back in my community and find out what exactly they were playing at.

So, the next day, back in San José Chacayá, I corralled a few educators to accompany me, and trekked the two and a half miles to this woman’s house.  It turned out that the educators were a necessity, because the woman spoke Kaqchikel.  We spent about an hour at her house, explaining the situation/scolding her/pleading with her to go care for her baby.  She finally agreed to go to the hospital that afternoon.  I followed up with the social worker a few days later, and I’m happy to say that both parents went to the hospital to accompany the baby to Guatemala City.

I know that getting a single pair of parents to reclaim their abandoned baby isn’t the sustainable or widespread work that Peace Corps is looking for, but I can’t help feeling like it’s the most important thing I’ve done so far in country.  It makes me feel like even with my failed Pregnancy Club attempt, I’m doing good here.  With all these rollercoastering emotions and day-to-day activities, it’s things like this that keep me sane.

Day 199: It's A Girl!

“Birth is not only about making babies.  Birth is about making mothers—strong, competent, capable mothers who trust themselves and know their inner strength.”                                                                                                – Barbara Katz Rothman

First things first: no, I didn’t have a baby; my host mom did!  The baby doesn’t have a name yet, so throughout this post I’ll be referring to her as the Guatemalans do: la nena.  “Nena,” as far as I can tell, is basically a cutesy word for baby girl (the male version is nene).

My host mom has been visibly pregnant my entire time in site.  She’s actually been a little too visibly pregnant; both her family and the local doctors grew concerned about her insanely large belly, leading her to get an ultrasound at a nearby hospital.  It might come as a shock to you, as it did to me, that ultrasounds during pregnancy are not the norm here.  Most women pass through their five-ish pregnancies without once seeking medical imaging.  Only if a woman develops one of the six pregnancy “warning signs”* does she usually seek medical advice, and even then there’s no guarantee that she’ll get an ultrasound.  This is partly due to lack of ultrasound machines and health staff training (there is a $60,000 ultrasound machine in the next town over, gifted to the health center by the Japanese aid organization JICA; the machine sits unused, because no one in the health center, including the doctor, knows how to operate it).  But the lack of ultrasounds is also a matter of tradition: women aren’t used to getting ultrasounds, and health centers aren’t used to promoting them.  Pregnancies simply aren’t as carefully monitored here as they are in the U.S.  Oh, and each ultrasound costs about $25, which is a big chunk of Guatemalan change.

In any case, in November, my host mom went to Sololá, a fifteen-minute car ride away, to get an ultrasound.  The imaging unfortunately revealed that the fetus was breached, which in turn meant that my host mom would probably require a Cesarean section.  In the U.S., Cesareans have become fairly passé: no one really wants one, but if it’s necessary, it’s no big deal.  Here, it’s a big deal.  The procedure is dangerous, and the recovery period is really dangerous, mainly due to lack of personal hygiene.  I recently met a 19-year-old with an infected Cesarean wound (she had been cleaning it once daily with hand soap, and didn’t seem to know how to apply clean dressing).  My fellow volunteer Hannah had an even more dramatic encounter, with a 17-year-old permanently paralyzed from the waist down following a botched Cesarean (I know I’ve mentioned this story before, but I still feel horrified every time I think of it).

So my host mom came home from her ultrasound, understandably upset about the idea of a Cesarean.  In an attempt to cheer her up, I asked her if she had learned the sex of the baby.  With a smile, she said no, that the ultrasound technician had told her husband, but that her husband had forbidden the tech from telling her.  He wanted to be the only one to know.  This was another shock for me.  In what kind of world can a man prevent his wife’s doctor from telling her the sex of the baby?  It just goes to show, to me at least, how deep the machismo runs here.

The plan after the ultrasound was follow-up: Maria, my host mom, would return to the hospital in one month for a second ultrasound, to see if the fetus had flipped.  But she never went in for the follow-up.  When I asked her about it, she said, “I don’t really need to know.  Better to keep it a surprise.”  In other words, better to see what happens when I give birth.  Her blasé attitude toward her health (and the health of her fetus) was alarming, and pretty much the norm here.  I was comforted by the fact that she at least planned to give birth in the hospital (not the norm here).  If anything went wrong, she would be in a place with somewhat adequate staff, equipment, and capabilities.

Yesterday morning, at about 2:00, I was woken by the sound of movement in my house: my host dad practically yelling in his loud voice, my host mom responding in hushed murmurs, and, inexplicably, someone taking a shower.  This isn’t the first time my host family has woken me up at strange hours with their strange goings-on (a couple weeks ago, my host dad got up at three in the morning to drive to Mexico in search of a pick-up truck), so I didn’t think much of it.  I rolled over groggily, pressed my head harder into the pillow to muffle the sound, and went back to sleep.

At around 7:30, as I walked out of the house to go to work, I ran into my host dad—disheveled, bleary-eyed, and clutching a roll of toilet paper.  We exchanged our usual morning pleasantries, and then he said, “Oh, by the way, Maria is in the hospital giving birth right now.”  SAY WHAT?!  He told me that she had woken at 1:00 am with contractions, and that they had driven to the hospital at about 3:00 am, when her labor pains were coming five minutes apart.  She had showered before leaving, because “the hospital is such a dirty place.”  The nurses in the hospital, finding her to be about 5 cm dilated, predicted that she would give birth at about 7:30 or 8:00—in other words, at exactly the time Juan and I were talking.

And here we come to another shocking fact about Guatemala: in public hospitals, family members are not permitted to be present during births.  Pregnant women are attended by doctors and nurses, and no one else.  None of the Guatemalans I’ve talked to have been able to explain this rule, and none of them seem to like it.  And I have to agree: wouldn’t it be better to allow mothers, sisters, husbands into the room, to hold hands, verbally encourage, and just generally provide support?

Not only was my host dad barred from attending his daughter’s birth; he couldn’t even visit until the afternoon.  The hospital allows visitations only between 2:00 and 3:00 pm.  At all other times, the hospital entrances are guarded by men with guns, and anyone trying to gain entrance is questioned.  This is silly for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that emergency patients have to waste time explaining to hospital guards why they’re seeking medical care.

This weird (read: stupid) visitation policy explained why my host dad was working a half day in San José Chacayá, and why when he came home for lunch he ate at a leisurely pace.  I had scarfed down my meal, raring to go to the hospital, but he knew there was no sense in leaving early.  We would just be turned away at the hospital gate.

Before going to the hospital, we had to stop at the grocery store for supplies.  See, another crazy thing about the maternity wards in Guatemala is that they don’t provide diapers or clothing for the babies, or any personal hygiene items for the mothers.  My host dad had packed clothes and towels from home, but he needed to buy soap, toothpaste, diapers, etc.  He also bought bananas for my host mom, a detail that will become relevant in several paragraphs.

We finally made it to the hospital, and started pushing our way through the crowded waiting room.  There was no one to greet us, ask us who we were, direct us to the correct ward, or anything like that.  Instead, there was a single woman charged with corralling children.  The hospital has a rule that no one under 12 can visit any patients, presumably for hygienic reasons.  As my host brother is only seven, he was quickly picked out as underage and targeted.  The hospital worker swooped down on us, and basically detained my host brother in the waiting room.

We continued down a long hallway, searching for the maternity ward.  But, before we found it, my host dad spotted a woman and her clearly-less-than-12-year-old son walking the hallway, most likely visiting an ailing relative.  My host dad insisted on storming back to the waiting room, grabbing my host brother, and basically dragging him through the halls to the maternity ward.  This did not sit well with the hospital authorities.  We were soon surrounded by a group of security guards with large guns (I wish I was talking about biceps here, but I’m talking rifles).

Jon Isaias, my host brother, was soon returned to the waiting room, and my host dad, host grandmother, and I walked on to the ward.  Each “room” (really more a cavernous space with an opening to the hallway in place of a door) held six to eight new mothers, each lying on a twin bed, and about three bedside tables.  I guess only the lucky patients got a place to store their things, besides the floor.  We had no idea which room my host mom was in, so we had to look in each room, scan the tired faces, and move on.  We finally found her tucked snugly against a wall, cradling a nondescript, and allegedly sleeping, baby bundle.

Here we come to some comforting good news: the delivery went very well.  The nena had spontaneously flipped to the correct position, and Maria didn’t require a Cesarean section.  Both mother and baby were healthy and happy.

Apologies for the poor image quality; I didn't feel like I should use my flash around all the tired new moms!

My host dad quickly picked up la nena, and I eagerly began my duties as family photographer.  But, within about twenty seconds, my host dad had turned to me and asked if I wanted to hold the baby.  I was shocked—if I had just had a baby, I think I would want to hold it forever.  He had held her for twenty seconds, and was now offering her up to this weird gringa who happens to live in his house!  I was so blown away that I almost said no.  But I took the baby and nuzzled her fuzzy little head for a few seconds, before my host dad took her back.  He redeposited her at Maria’s breast, then LEFT to go continue waging his war with the security department.  Seriously.  He went to go fight with the men with guns.

His mother stayed, and promptly busied herself pouring out sugary flour atole for Maria (atole is the hot beverage of choice here, and comes in many different varieties: plantain atole, chocolate atole, rice atole, corn atole, you get the idea.  It’s almost always loaded with sugar).  As Maria sipped away, her mother-in-law started sorting out all the stuff we had brought her.  When she got to the bananas, she and Maria turned to me: Would it be safe for Maria to eat some bananas?  Are they healthy enough to eat after giving birth?

Something you have to understand about Guatemala is that university degrees are very rare here.  Anyone who has a university degree is regarded with the same respect afforded to a PhD in the United States.  Seriously, most Guatemalans think I’m basically a doctor.  The whole respect thing is nice, but I’m often asked questions that I’m not really qualified to answer.  For instance, earlier in her pregnancy, my host mom had asked me if I could tell her how to flip her breached baby.  Now, I was being asked for dietary advice.  Back in the United States, while working as a medical scribe, I would never have considered it safe or okay to tell any patient what he or she could or could not eat.  But here, after glancing at the hot sugar water my host mother was happily sipping, I felt quite comfortable telling her that yes, bananas are okay.  I did make her promise not to give any to the baby, though.  After all, one of my primary Peace Corps jobs is to promote exclusive breastfeeding.

All too soon, visiting hour was at an end.  We had to leave the maternity ward, but we hung around outside the hospital for another half hour, because my host dad wasn’t finished hashing it out with the guards.  I get where my host dad was coming from—it’s ridiculous that a healthy seven-year-old can’t meet his healthy new baby sister.  It’s even more ridiculous that the hospital has no limit on the number of visitors.  Two beds over from my host mom, one new mother had about twenty friends and family members clustered around her bed.  I’m pretty sure those twenty people were carrying more germs than my single host brother.  But, I didn’t understand why my host dad was making such a big deal out of this silly hospital rule, when he only had an hour to visit his new daughter.

The germ-ridden (presumably) crowd

I’ve thought a lot about whether his behavior has anything to do with the fact that la nena is a daughter, and not a son.  The sad truth in this country is that men are literally valued much more than women.  I say literally because midwives actually charge more to deliver a male baby than a female one.  With a male baby comes the promise of an educated child, an asset to the labor force, and income to support the parents in their old age.  With a female baby comes early marriage and housework.  Slightly less appealing.

The new nena also has the disadvantage of being Guatemalan, whereas my host brother is an American citizen (he was born in the United States while his parents were living there illegally).  My host dad even brought this up while fighting with the security guards.  He told them that his son was an American, cleaner than Guatemalan children and with more right to visit the hospital.

So, all of that, combined with the ruthless machismo of Guatemala, has me a little worried for la nena’s future.  But for now, she’s at home, safe and healthy.  And for now, that’s all I can ask for.

*The pregnancy warning signs, as my health center teaches them, are: fever, headache, shortness of breath, epigastric abdominal pain, vaginal bleeding, and swollen feet.

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.

Day 160: New Beginnings

“Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road, healthy, free, the world before me.”                                                                                                                             - Walt Whitman

I’m not sure whether or not my last post communicated just how difficult Christmas in Guatemala was for me. I was trying to stay positive, but the fact is…Christmas was really hard. December 25 is kind of my favorite thing in the world. I look forward all year to slogging through slushy parking lots with my arms full of presents, bounding through fresh snowdrifts with my little brother dachshund, and waking up on Christmas Day to my dad’s steaming poppyseed rolls and my mom’s warm cuddles.  So Christmas in Guatemala was a struggle, both because I was away from my family, and because I was away from our traditions.  Guatemala has been starting to feel more like home, but on Christmas it felt more alien than ever.

I had decided at the end of training that I would spend Christmas in site, but that I would spend New Year’s on vacation.  Christmas would be a big integrational push for me, and New Year’s would be a mental break.  And by December 26, I was ready for a mental break in a major way.  I was homesick, I was reeling about the health situation in my CAP (as revealed by my diagnostic work, and detailed a little further on in this post), and I wanted to speak English again.  So, on December 31, together with some of my favorite fellow volunteers, I bought a bottle of wine and hopped on a chartered Eurovan to Monterrico, Guatemala’s famous black-sand beach.

First things first: Monterrico is beautiful.  The miles-long beach is lined with palm trees, funkily-painted hostels, and oceanside bars.  Within hours of arrival, we got to enjoy this glorious sunset over the Pacific:

One of these things is paler than the others...

The rest of the trip was just as fun, and often just as picturesque.  I spent the days running on the beach, sunbathing on the beach, swimming in the peaceful surf past the dangerous riptide, exploring different beachfront restaurants, and eating lots of ice cream (one of the local chains has a new “dark chocolate” flavor, which is basically equivalent to regular American chocolate ice cream…in other words, it is luxurious).  It was one of those vacations where you never really take off your bathing suit; you just wear it into whatever shop or restaurant you may need to enter.

Aside from all the ice cream and beach time (and cinnamon-spiced piña coladas), there were two undeniable highlights.  The first was a morning expedition into the local mangrove lagoons.  We set our alarms for 5:30 am, bundled into a narrow flat-bottomed boat paddled around by a local gondolier, and got to watch the sun rise over the volcanic landscape.

Once there was a little more light among the mangroves, we were able to enjoy a healthy dose of local wildlife: majestic wading birds, fluttering sparrows, cackling monkeys, and tangled water weeds, to name a few.  My favorite animal sighting was this strange little fish that skimmed across the top of the water just like a skipped rock.  Interestingly, the ecosystem of the lagoon changes every half year, thanks to the ocean tides—it’s a freshwater habitat for half the year, and saltwater for the other half.

The second highlight of the Monterrico trip was buying, and releasing, a baby sea turtle.  For a measly Q10 ($1.50-ish), I got to acquaint myself with Tyrion Turtle (we had just been discussing Game of Thrones), and set him free to seek his fortune in the swirling ocean currents.  It was a bittersweet goodbye, but I feel sure his life won’t be rough as his namesake’s.

All too soon, it was time to head back to site, where I had a couple days to finish up my diagnostic work before heading to Early In-Service Training (EIST).  EIST, held at Peace Corps Headquarters, is a time for volunteers to share what they’ve observed so far in their communities (the diagnostic), learn project-specific strategies for improving community conditions (i.e. how to teach classes about birth control, how to collaborate with midwives, etc.), and formulate future project plans.  Best of all, it’s an opportunity to reunite with all the volunteers from my training group.  I can’t wait.

But, back to the diagnostic: As you would expect, the Maternal and Child Health diagnostic is an assessment of current community health practices.  I’ve spent the past three months working on it, and I’ve made some interesting/surprising/disheartening discoveries:

• 70% of the population in San José Chacayá lives off less than Q1500 per month ($200).  This actually puts us above the average departmental poverty rate (77%).
• 14.8% of local women use birth control, with monthly injections and exclusive breastfeeding accounting for about 75% of their birth control use (exclusive breastfeeding is a hugely popular method of birth control here, though all but unheard-of in the United States.  Basically, after giving birth, a woman can prevent the return of menstruation, and fertility, by breastfeeding any time her child is hungry—about 12 times a day.  As you might suspect, this is not the most effective birth control method).
• 7.8% of local men use birth control, all in the form of condoms.
• The average woman in San José Chacayá will give birth to five children in her lifetime.  No wonder the locals look at me like I’m crazy when I say I only have one sibling.
• Only 31.94% of local births take place at institutions run by the Ministry of Health (i.e. hospitals, the CAP).  This preference for home births was further illustrated in my interviews with local pregnant women, when I asked, “What will you do when you go into labor?”  About 40% of the women answered that they would tell their husband or their mother that they were about to have a baby, and stay home.
• My CAP does not educate young women (or men) on birth control until after their first pregnancy, their reasoning being that women only need to know about birth control in order to safely space out their pregnancies.  I think the lack of education also has something to do with the strong religious fervor here, and the extreme hesitance to discuss female bodily functions.
• The municipal government used to provide free Pap smears to all women of reproductive age in San José Chacayá.  Since the funding ran out two years ago, Pap coverage has dropped to less than 1%.

So the good news is there’s lots of room for improvement, in my eyes at least.  The hard part will be motivating Guatemalans to change, and making improvements in a culturally sensitive way.  As much as I’d like to, I can’t just charge into the local school and start handing out condoms.

I thought my diagnostic would be the last roadblock before EIST, but I was wrong.  The night before I was due to leave, my host dad came home with bad news: his brother-in-law, who owned and ran the shop next to our house, was dead.  My immediate reaction was shock.  I had seen Byron less than 48 hours ago, when he helped me pick out the ripest banana in his stock (this was our daily custom).  He was probably in his late thirties or early forties, and appeared to be in the peak of health.  I soon found out that he had long been suffering from some mysterious chronic disease, took a turn for the worse, and died en route to the hospital.

Guatemalans move quickly when faced with death, and Byron’s wake was already taking place next door, less than 24 hours after his death.  My host family and I went to pay our respects at about 10:30 pm, just after his body arrived from the hospital.  My shock had, by this point, turned to sadness, largely due to the thought of Byron’s two young and now fatherless daughters.  At the wake, my sadness was pervaded with horror, as each of Byron’s family members wept over his casket.  I felt like I was watching something far too personal, like I had no place observing this family’s raw sorrow.  And it wasn’t like I was just an out-of-place gringa among close family members—I was one of about 200 villagers crammed into the makeshift chapel, all of us mutely looking on at one of the darkest moments in this family’s life.

The worst moment of all was when the time came to “dar palabras.”  The direct translation of dar palabras is “to give words,” but dar-ing palabras is more than that: Guatemalans love to offer up praises, reminiscences, advice, and good will at all social occasions.  At the wake, Byron’s closest friends and family members took the stage to memorialize him, all the while crying, screaming, and gasping for breath.  One of his friends nearly fainted with emotion, and had to be carried into the house.  Byron’s sobbing teenage daughter begged everyone in the audience to love their parents while they still can.  That was where I lost it, and just started crying.  You see, being in the Peace Corps is an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experience, but it suddenly struck me as a rather selfish venture.  I’ve left behind all the people I love to have this incredible adventure by myself.  What if one of my parents gets sick?  What if someone back home needs me?

By the time we returned home around midnight, I had calmed considerably (although I did emotionally wolf down an entire pack of cheap chocolates before going to bed).  Byron’s death left me once again reflecting on how lucky I am.  I don’t mean to get overly preachy in all my posts, but, seriously, I have it really good.  I have a loving, supportive, and healthy family; I have an excellent education; I have my own health; I have amazing friends; I have the ability to serve in the Peace Corps without worrying about how my family will support themselves in my absence.  I’m really in the lap of luxury, even in my little cement-and-metal hamlet in the Guatemalan highlands.

Now, it’s off to EIST!  I’ll end this post with a shout-out to my dad: I saw your little milk truck’s cousin getting ferried around the Monterrico lagoon, and missed you more than ever.

Day 150: Christmas

"'One can never have enough socks,' said Dumbledore. 'Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn't get a single pair.'"                          - J. K. Rowling

Signs that it’s Christmas in Guatemala:

1. The assembly of a giant musical Christmas tree in Sololá, complete with the famous Gallo beer logo atop the star.

2. The overnight appearance of a metal frame tree in your town center.  The frame is soon filled with individual fir tree clippings, which are then spray-painted teal and draped with red and gold ribbons.  I think it may have been easier to just use a full tree, but Guatever.

3. An inexplicably threatening poster of the town mayor hung at the base of the town tree.  I think he’s wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, but he may be threatening broken kneecaps; it’s not entirely clear.

4. A second threatening photo of the mayor, this time with his full posse in tow.

5. A proliferation of those horrible singing Christmas lights that play tinny renditions of 2-3 Christmas classics on repeat.  Seriously, they even have these bedecking the Virgin Mary statue in church, and keep them playing through Mass.

6. The arrival in site of a new group of volunteers.  It’s great to see some friendly, albeit unfamiliar, gringo faces for the holidays, and to accompany them on a tour of the lake, reveling in the Guatemalan landscape and scoping out local real estate.

7. An abundance of fluffy white snow.  Oh, wait, actually, it’s 70 degrees here.

8. Posadas.  Meant as a reenactment of all the inn rejections Mary and Joseph experienced, posadas are nightly neighborhood gatherings at different houses.  A band plays, everyone kneels and prays for about two hours, and snacks are served.  It’s quite a to-do.  For the posada at my house, my host dad hung the garage with curtains, painted a desert landscape on the back wall, and erected a huge tree and dwarf-size nativity scene.  I took the afternoon off work to help my host family prepare, and, along with four other women, spent three hours chopping fruit to feed the coming guests.  Said guests filled the garage and the driveway, overflowing into the street.

9. All the tamales!  All the ponche!  These two Guatemalan delicacies comprise literally all the Christmas cuisine here—everyone serves them, and no one serves anything else.  The tamales consist of corn meal filled with peppers, raisins, and unidentifiable meat (possibly beef?), all stuffed in banana leaves and boiled until cooked through.  Ponche is a Guatemalan twist on fruit punch: a pell-mell mixture of any and all available tropical fruits (papaya, pineapple, plantains, coconut, etc.) dumped into a veritable cauldron of water and boiled until syrupy.  I foolishly thought this was a healthy Guatemalan treat, until I saw my host mom dump four pounds of sugar into her ponche pot.  I wish I was exaggerating.

10. Too.  Many.  Firecrackers.  “Bombas” are a popular Guatemalan entertainment year-round, but the locals really scale up their efforts for the yuletide.  It’s practically impossible to walk down the street without experiencing an auditory assault.  The grand finale comes on Christmas Eve night: everyone waits up till midnight with their families, then sets off hundreds of Quetzales’ worth of firecrackers.

And so, at 12:30 Christmas morning, I found myself in my host family’s driveway, clutching a mug of ponche and shivering against the night breeze.  I watched in horror as my host dad instructed Isaias to aim his firework gun directly for the power lines hanging about six feet above his head, while my host mom pelted the two of them with lit bombas (the whole fireworks safety thing hasn’t really caught on in Guatemala.  It’s quite common to see people missing eyes or ears or cheeks or fingers, and it’s a safe bet that said body parts were lost to incendiary devices).  Luckily, my host family and I escaped unscathed.

Forty-five minutes earlier, I had timidly presented my host family with their Christmas gifts:

• A can of American chili for my host dad (he is obsessed with American chili, and once told me this story of how he made chili without a stove, by wrapping beans and meat in a plastic sheet and hanging the assembly in his hot shower for three hours.  He swears it was delicious)
• Fancypants American body butter for my host mom to rub on her burgeoning stomach (I am actually concerned she is going to explode, a la John Hurt in Alien)
• Dodgy bootleg DVDs for my host brother, including Monsters University and the Muppet Movie (it’s a little weird to gift such obviously black market material to a seven-year-old, but bootleg DVDs are the only available DVDs here, and I figured he could benefit from a little Tina Fey in his life) 

My host family hadn’t gotten me anything, but I consoled myself with the beautiful purse gifted me by my CAP family, and with the recent Christmas care package lovingly shipped from Minnesota.  Say what you will; good tampons and New Yorkers make a positively heartwarming Christmas gift.

After the gift-giving hugging time, the heartstopping fireworks celebration, and some weepy prayers in the garage (Guatemalans are big on crying while praying, and I was feeling pretty homesick), my host family and I headed next door (my host aunt’s house) for tamales and ponche.  I ate my way around the mystery meat in my tamale, and, to the delight of my hostess, drank a full two mugs of steaming ponche.  The Guatemalans, in a truly welcoming fashion, wanted to hear all about Minnesota.  I was happy to oblige, although blabbing about snow and Christmas in the U.S. didn’t really help the whole homesickness thing.

We all crawled into bed around 3:00, then got up at 6:30 to go to Christmas Mass.  Seeing how the churches here are overflowing every Sunday, I fully expected the Christmas service to be mobbed.  But there was hardly anyone there!  My host parents explained that most people are just too tired from tamale-making and firecracker-exploding to venture out on Christmas morning.  So, instead of a hymn-heavy, candle-filled Christmas Mass like the ones I used to attend in grade school, I was treated to an intimate acoustic show, with the priest strumming Silent Night and Feliz Navidad on his guitar.  I quite liked it.

The post-firecracker lethargy didn’t end with Mass; it apparently lasts all Christmas Day.  I spent the day wandering my town, chatting on the phone with other Peace Corps Volunteers, and jaunting to Sololá to find a pineapple (I had a craving, ok?).  I hardly saw anyone, and returned home to a quiet dinner of Velveeta mac ‘n’ cheese (a great splurge), half a pineapple, and peanut butter M&Ms—in other words, my own little Guatemalan feast.

Now, before ending this post, I have to tell you about my Christmas present from Guatemala, as promised.  Around Thanksgiving, I was contacted by the Coordinator for the Sololá Área de Salud (the Health District, essentially).  He wants me, along with two other nearby Peace Corps Volunteers, to plan and lead a year-long training for the district’s health educators.  We’ll be teaching them about how adults learn, how to use the experiential learning cycle to plan lessons, and how to make do with available resources to give interactive and useful lessons.  Right now, community health lessons are usually given by reading off a sheet of paper, so there’s a lot of room for improvement.  I’m pretty excited, mostly because I think the training could make a big difference, but also just because it’s something to do!  I’ll keep you posted.

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas, whether you have snow or not.  I leave you with this photo of a fairly adorable puppy, found by another volunteer and transported by yours truly to its new home (with a friend’s host family).