Peace Corps Hustlin'

On the run

I think I might be suffering from shell-shock. Last year, I used to make appointments to do my laundry just so I could have something to write down in my planner. This year, I’ve already filled up all of March and half of April.

The speed with which the time passed in 2008 seemed to have more to do with feeling like it was slipping away than with the fact that I had too much to do. Now I find myself wishing for an extra day in the week so that I can get everything done.

The last month has been absolutely crazy. Following six consecutive weeks in site, I found myself traveling every weekend for four weeks straight.

A group of us headed out to the beach on Valentine’s Day weekend for a little “relax,” as they say here in Guatemala. I ended up doing four days of traveling round trip for what was about a day and a half at the beach, but it was a good time and definitely worth it.

The next weekend, I did a one-day turnaround to Huehue to welcome in the “new volunteers.” They actually got started in November, but with the holidays we hadn’t had a chance to give them a proper Bienvenido.

I was back in the Huehue-area again five days later for a belated celebration of Katie’s birthday, and came back to Jacal that Sunday to help out with the March group of Habitat for Humanity/medical volunteers. As always, it was a great experience and I’m starting to feel a lot more comfortable with my medical translating skills. I spent two days working in the clinics and on Wednesday helped out the team that is coordinating the installation of a Living Waters water purification system in two schools in a nearby village.

Pura Vida

At 2 o’clock that Thursday morning I left Jacal again, this time with the six teachers from my small school and the mason who will be working on our kitchen project. After a month of delays, we were finally heading out to San Marcos, La Laguna on Lake Atitlán to receive training from Pura Vida on how to do the bottle constructions. We arrived in San Marcos at about 9:30 a.m. and got right to work helping out on the construction of a house that was underway. We learned how to stack the bottles, ensuring that they stay in place and how to make the cement mixture.

Profe Juan

Seño Sandra

Our awesome mason Secundino putting on the first layer of cement

A finished Pura Vida wall

Celebrating a job well begun

Suzanna, Pura Vida’s one-woman show, is a German ex-patriot who has lived in Guatemala for nearly 20 years. Working without an office, personal computer, a cell phone or any kind of compensation, she is tirelessly trying to promote environmentally-friendly practices in Guatemala and especially in the towns around Atitlán, one of the world’s great natural treasures. She gave us a tour of her town of San Marcos, including a recycling center that she helped get up and running and a hotel that now employs the bottle method for any new construction and has figured out a way to recycle virtually every piece of garbage it creates.

Recycled glass artistic table top at the hotel

Little by little, she is changing the mentality of an entire town, and maybe even a region by maximizing the small amount of funds she sporadically receives from international aid organizations. I included a link to the Pura Vida web site in my last post, but here it is again: http://www.puravidaatitlan.org/. If you’re interested in helping them out, send them an email (Suzanna and Lenny, Pura Vida's other promoter, both speak English) or let me know.


In Taj Buxup, we’re moving along, having collected about 1,000 of the 2,500 bottles we’ll need to complete the project. We recently found out that Banrural (a Guatemalan bank) closed the grant fund that had been created specifically for schools participating in the Peace Corps Healthy Schools program. But because ours is a bottle construction, the cost will be significantly lower than normal and I don’t think we should have a problem finding the funds with other local organizations (Ojalá).

Still on the run
On Friday, I got on a bus at 5:30 a.m. in order to make my 9:30 medical check-up appointment at the Peace Corps offices. After a day of oh-so-fun medical and dental exams, I got back on a bus for the hour-trip to my friend Dana’s house in Tecpán. All I really wanted to do was crash and go to bed. But when I got there I found there was a bit of a gathering underway and I somehow managed to stay awake (mostly) until everyone left around 10 or 11 (I was pretty delirious at that point).

On Saturday, Dana and I headed up to Xela to catch a performance of the Vagina Monologues … in Spanish. It was truly incredible to see all these Guatemalan women (including an indigenous woman and several women I would say ranged in age from 50 to 70 years old) putting on a performance dedicated to the empowerment of women. We all know the kind of controversy these monologues have stirred up in the states. Just imagine how brave these women have to be to do something like that in a country like Guatemala, which is so saturated with the Machista culture. It definitely rates as one of my most amazing experiences here.

No rest for the weary
I returned home Sunday evening and headed down to Buxup on Monday to give a talk to the parents (actually only one dad showed up, the rest were moms) at my big school. My goal this year is to get the parents educated on the Healthy Schools program so they can reinforce in the home everything we’re doing with the kids at school.

The meeting was scheduled to start at 2 and the first mom didn’t show ‘til 2:30. We didn’t really get underway until after 3 and I actually had a couple moms arrive as I was closing up the school at 4:30. That’s Guatemalan time for you. But other than the tardiness, the parents in Buxup seem to be on board with the plan.

I gave the same talk at my small school in Taj Buxup on Thursday, and while the parents there don’t seem quite as enthusiastic, at least they were a littler timelier. Most people had shown up by 2:45.

Tuesday I gave a teamwork-focused training to my teachers in Buxup, who are still having major difficulties working effectively together. My limits are definitely being tested at this school and I’m not sure we made any real progress, but I’ll just have to keep chipping away as long as I can.

An opportunity missed
The best part of the day was during the break while we were all sitting around eating and chatting. The talk turned to “kids these days” and how they listen to devil music and have poor attitudes and no good role models to imitate. This led one of my teachers (whom I had considered to be fairly progressive for someone who grew up in a rural Guatemalan village) to comment at length on how he didn’t think women should wear pants, because pants were made for men. And women wearing pants only puts ideas into a man’s head, and he doesn’t know why women don’t stick to skirts and dresses because they’re so much more lady-like (I’ll let you figure out the logic there, ‘cause I’m still lost).

He made this little speech to a group which included me and three other female teachers who were all wearing jeans, but we weren’t supposed to take offense, he said. It took all of my strength to bite my tongue and not get into it with this guy, although I’m pretty sure he could tell that I didn’t agree. I just swept it under the rug as yet another cultural difference for which I’d have to dig down and find some tolerance.

But the more I think about it, I wish I had said something. The more I think about it, it doesn’t really have anything to do with cultural differences. The more I think about it, it’s about ignorance and a lack of education, and I think I may have missed an opportunity to be an example of a strong woman who stands up for herself and isn’t defined by what she wears, but by how she acts and what she accomplishes. Not that I should have jumped down his throat, but I could have voiced my opinion instead of letting his stand unchallenged. Although, as steamed as I was at the time, maybe it’s best I didn’t say anything because it may not have been very constructive.

Soluciones Comunitarias
Last Friday I went with Doña Manuela to do publicity for Soluciones Comunitarias in the village of Peb’il Pam. Manuela is the hardest worker of the Soluciones Comunitarias group, but her selling partner, Doña Candelaria, has been laid up the last couple months recovering from an appendectomy, so I’ve been accompanying Manuela twice a month on her selling campaigns. She made a killing on her two campaigns in February, and we’re hoping for some decent returns on Sunday in Peb’il Pam.

I wanna be a ‘ballah, shot-callah!
Don’t laugh. It seems I’ve been recruited as the assistant coach for the girls basketball team in Taj Buxup. This happened after I reluctantly agreed to “referee” (basically just make possession calls and blow the whistle for the most blatant double dribbles and personal fouls) their game on Wednesday. We’ve definitely got our work cut out for us. They got pummeled by a team on which half of the girls played barefoot.

The head coach, Seño Antonia

So far, I’ve only helped out at one practice and the girls are already annoyed with me for making them run and do drills instead of letting them scamper around the court playing something that loosely resembles a basketball game. It’s all very “Coach Carter.”

Jou speak-a dee Engleesh?
So I’ve been resisting requests/demands/pleas to give English classes for almost a year now, and I’ve finally given in. I don’t necessarily think it’s the most sustainable work I can do here, but it’s what my teachers are asking for and part of being a Peace Corps volunteer is responding to the wants of the community, so we’re going to give it a try. I’m teaching one class for my teachers who live in the villages and one for those who live here in Jacal.

Nearly 15 teachers told me they wanted to be in the class. Only four showed up for class in the village, and four here in Jacal. Not the most encouraging start. We’ll see how it goes.

I’m sure I’m leaving plenty out, but those are the major updates. I’m looking forward to being home for the next few weeks, as I have nothing planned that should take me away. I’m hoping to make more progress on the kitchen project and get back down to the nitty-gritty in the schools, though I’m sure there’ll be distraction upon distraction as the sports season gets underway.

As always, best wishes to everyone back home. Even as I start feeling more and more at home here in Jacal, I’ve been missing you all as much as ever. Your support means everything and keeps me going on those tough days when nothing seems to be going the way it should. And you’re the first ones I think of on those days I feel like maybe I am making a small difference, because I know none of it would be possible if you weren’t behind me.

Peace out,
Kristina