My Peace Corps Site is Not Mine

An interesting part of Peace Corps culture is that many volunteers refer to the sites where they live, and others’ sites, as though they belong to them – “my town” ;  “her village” ; “his city”. I remember reading a HuffPost editorial one night on my Tigo modem Internet that criticized volunteers for doing that, for pretending like we’re not sitting on the emergency ejection seat with parachute at the ready.

I was definitely one of those volunteers, and I remember thinking about it for approximately two seconds before dismissing it: “Okay. I get it. But I’m here. I know the people here. She doesn’t. I’m invested. She doesn’t get it.”

Leaving Guatemala nailed home one certain thing for me: the site where I lived was not my town.  I love that town. I poured two years of myself into the people I met there. But it’s not mine. On some level, I knew all this from the moment I moved there.  I was an outsider, and it took a while for people to get to know me. Walking on the streets, I could feel palpable discomfort from some people. I never did get to know everyone, and to some I was understandably representative of the systems that have oppressed many people in Guatemala.

Even so, if you had asked me at the time, I would have unhesitatingly called it my town. I experienced it daily in such a way. Getting smothered with love by my host siblings. Absorbing into the work flow of my host agency. My best friend, who I could count on any time of day for a laugh and a snack. The night my grandma passed away and two friends insisted I go out in the pouring rain so that they could buy me fried chicken. All of the people who showed so much kindness to me, who laughed with me, and who filled my life with meaning on a daily basis.

I'm not saying this is representative of all Peace Corps experiences; I speak for my experience alone. Yet I do think the Peace Corps culture of integration encourages people to consider their site to be a personal experience rather than a professional placement. The emotional isolation of the situation is another contributing factor. I had a strong instinct – perhaps better put as an emotional need – to identify with the people and places around me during the experience. It was part of my privilege as a wealthy US citizen to indulge that instinct despite significant racial and socioeconomic differences, to feel that in some way I belonged to the town.

So in that way I maintained cognitive dissonance about the privilege I had in the situation; foremost the ability to benefit from the experience of living there for two years, and then leave, on a plane, with a US passport, and not have to give a second thought to the people there and the structural challenges they face.  I tried to give more than I took, but in the so many intangible ways that the our actions ripple away, I'll never know whether I succeeded. I've always had the idea that I would find some way to stay involved with the town, especially with my closest friends if there is a way I can. There is nothing that forces me to do that, though.

And for the time being, I’m exercising that privilege. Somehow, despite the intensity of my feelings in the site where I lived, it was more than a year before I made a phone call back. My life is here, and though I’m constrained in certain ways, by family and economic opportunity, I mostly decide to be here.  I'm really looking forward to my first visit back this year, and I enjoy catching up with friends over Skype calls, instant messaging, the occasional phone call routed in Spanglish through my parent's house. Even so, it remains that I can choose when and how to bring my two years in Guatemala into my current life, if ever.  So no, my site is not mine, and never was.

Overcoming the Habit of Fear

The more I read on neuroplasticity, the more I realize that everything, anything can become habit.  Confession: fear has become a habit for me. And along with the fear habit comes another habit: the habit of "no",  "no, I don't think so" ... and "oh, I don't know"...   

How did this become a habit? I'm fundamentally a "yes" person, but living in Guatemala involved risks that were new to me. I took to managing those risks with great discipline, living under strictly self-imposed rules: never let your guard down. never walk alone at night or in remote places. limit travel. keep your money close. All good ideas...

The problem was that once that fear habit got going, the thin line between reasonable caution and pessimism blurred. And in a challenging environment, the fear habit nourished other types of fear: of rejection, of failure. All things equal, I began to take fewer chances in general. I became less assertive. I sought fewer novel experiences. I didn't ask for things as much when I felt people would say no.  I didn't speak up as much when it might offend people. Fear and pessimism were good. I obeyed them, and they protected me.

Life here is very different, in a small rural city that has only seen two murders in the past 120 years. Regardless, my fear habit has persisted.  That's not to say that "yes" hasn't been inside me all along: it's just that "No" now speaks in a much louder and more convincing voice. 

I've realized that rather than protecting me, "no" is now just limiting my possibilities. I'm tired of it. I want "yes" to speak up much more. I believe that anything can be habit-forming, including "yes", but it takes time. You have to listen for that negative voice, and the things we're most accustomed to are often most hidden from us. Sometimes it helps a lot to push yourself into new surroundings, even if briefly, where you have to be conscious of yourself.

Maybe that was why I went rock climbing last night, for the first time since college. It was "yes" that got me there, but don't get me wrong: "no" was there, too, gripping me to the wall. 

I wasn't even a fourth of the way up a route and I was struggling. A nice red hand-hold tempted me from three feet away. Fear assured me: you're going to fall. "No" said: Don't try. The dull, familiar weight of pessimism was infuriating, and something sparked. I pushed off and leaped for the hold.

I took a massive fall, but that's entirely besides the point. It was the first time in more than three years that I've screamed "YES", when "no" was pulsing throughout my being. 

I know now that I'll get back on that wall. If I learn to climb it, it will be in series of similar falls and spurts. And when I fall, it will be against the echoes of a resounding "yes!"

I think it's time to make it a habit.

The Incredible Lightness of Leaving

I finally bought my plane ticket home. I'll be home a few weeks earlier than I'd originally hoped, because I recently found out a close family member of mine is fighting cancer. That was another lesson from the universe, as if all this restructuring from Peace Corps security weren't enough stress: count your blessings. Always! As a kid, I really didn't always have to, but I've learned it in many ways here. This was just another reminder.

So I'm getting the cat's "visas" in order, scrambling toward the finish line on the ecological trail, making final to-do lists, putting together a list of potential follow-up things my replacement can work on.

I didn't do everything I committed to do before leaving - largely because of the transition in municipal government - but I desperately want to at least acknowledge it, to leave feeling I dotted the i's and crossed the t's and that it will be tougher for folks to say: "Oh that volunteer? She didn't do anything!"

Having the ticket is nice, because it's forcing me to accept that what I've done, I've done, and what I won't do, I won't do. And it's helping me to picture that plane ride home with some excitement: that first bite of pizza at our local pizzeria, the first hug with my grandma, the fragrant fresh smell of western NY in the spring time and wearing a tank-top and flip-flops!

At COS conference in February, our programming officer led us through a visualization of going home. It made me cry, which I tried to hide through squeezed eyes. I just wasn't there yet, miles from it. I felt horrible about the idea of leaving. Without proper goodbyes, without closing out projects, without even having passed anything over to my replacement. (Actually, then, I didn't even know for sure if I would be replaced, because the mayor's council was dragging their feet).

Now I'm ready to think about it, yet as I begin to attack my leaving to-do list, I'm still fighting my own resistance to leaving. I think about it for a minute: oh, I should... (fill in the blank) : sort my recycling, clean up that pile of dirt I've left in that corner all year, back-up my Master's data, wash the clothes I'm giving away...

Then it occurs to me that I'm leaving and as soon as I do anything on that list, I will be one step closer to leaving, just a tiny bit lighter. I don't want to be lighter. As tough as it's been, I've anchored myself here over the past two years. I wanted to stay anchored. I don't want to float away after so much time invested in the community.

What would I do with a completely clean house, packed bags, and nothing to do on my to-do list? Just being is terrifying.

Last night, on the whim of an invitation, I sat eating dinner with one of my best friends and her mom, campesino cheese with boiled salt potatoes and tamalitos. It was delicious for some reason, maybe because I didn't need to cook it. We chatted and talked about the town's history and development and what makes it special, a common topic in her house. Afterward she walked me home and we watched the Friday lenten procession: women in teams carrying floats with statues of the Virgin Mary and Jesus decked out in resplendent velvet robes, flanked by plastic flowers, illuminated by high-power CFC lightbulbs installed in the corner of each float, little kids trailing behind the floats pushing gas generators on wheels.

I thought about the creativity and unique spirit of the people in my site, and how I wished I could share it with everyone back home so that they would understand that the town is in no significant way "third world" to the US. And I thought about how I would miss it all, even the potatoes and tamalitos.

My sense of wonder is mourning: how did I became so comfortable here? Why were the confidence and efficacy I have now so elusive to me in my first year? Why do I have to leave now, and what have I even really done here?

There will be time to ponder these issues, and I intend to take advantage of my time at home this next month to write about a lot of these things.

In the meanwhile, two weeks is a short amount of time, but I'm determined to try to be here in every moment I can. Getting lighter and lighter.

What I'll Miss About Guatemala

I've had this post in my head for a long time now. Since my departure from Guatemala is now imminent (t-minus 1 month!), I'd better start wrapping myself around the fact that I'm leaving.

I'm feeling pretty mixed up about it. I know I'll be back to Guatemala in the future, but things will never be quite the same for me in my community as they are now. I long ago got over the phase of desperately wanting the experience to be over and now feel this wonderful but tenuous belonging. I don't want to give that up, but I also realize that it's time given my personal circumstances.

I spend a lot of time now thinking about what a great place I'm in now to do all the work I wanted to do a year ago, and fantasizing about coming back and living here and doing what I really want, outside of the constraints of my Peace Corps counterpart agency.

And maybe because my main project still isn't finished, I am currently exerting way less mental energy than I expected in celebrating that I will soon be back with the loved ones I've missed so much, having left behind the stress of the last two years. I'm in a weird place in between counting down the days and wishing each day would just slow down a bit.

In that spirit, I've been thinking about all the things I need to enjoy now, and to keep the balance, the things that I have to look forward to...

Things I'll Miss...

(1) Tortillas, beans, rice, and eggs with chopped onion/tomato at Dona Mary's diner. Seriously the best plate ever!

(2) The people. I think this is true wherever you go, but my better friendships and even casual acquaintanceships here were so hard-won that it's hard to think about letting them fade out. It's a little bit beyond describing.

(3) Living on $250/month with a practically unlimited supply of fresh vegetables, house to myself, the occasional meal out, and the ability to take great vacations for little. And being able to buy almost everything I need from a small seller in the market or a mom-and-pop shop!

(4) Being admired by kids and having automatic celebrity. Kids are awesome.

(5) Long-term structure... because even when Peace Corps was tough, I always knew where I would be and what I would be doing until March 2012. Now I'm going back to the States with a Masters' degree to finish, but after that life is a big "?"!

(6) Having a job working with protected areas and environmental ed. As tough as it was sometimes to work within a different culture, I loved my job and the freedom to imagine different projects to address varying needs.

(7) Guatemalan street snacks, and the accompanying immunity I've built up.

(8) The connection people here have to the land and the lack of consumeristic culture. A silly example: Like most people in my town, I didn't have a refrigerator while I was here, and I realized I won't even ever need one, at least not of the typical size we have in the US. In a different environment I doubt I would have ever realized that.

(9) The fairly temperate climate, year-round. (Makes wardrobe easy.)

(10) The slower pace of life and less demanding expectations. (Not in the sense of expectations for me, but it's just nice to be around people who are not sweating the small stuff too much.)

Things I'm Looking Forward to...!

(1) The ridiculous variety of foods, flavors, and cuisines we have daily access to in the US! Whole grains!

(2) Being with family and friends at home.

(3) Summer = farmer's markets? Let's hope.

(4) Not being constantly asked to teach English, share information about where I'm from or what I'm doing, tell people about life in the United States, etc. No longer being blatantly stared out whenever I leave my house.

(5) Being able to control more of the structure of my daily life, and also feeling less pressure to cram my entire day full of activities, social time, or work. As PCVs we're encouraged to be "on" 24-7 ... there's always something to do, even if it's just brushing up on language ... that pressure gets tiring. And I can't honestly say I learned to balance my relaxing and work time, unfortunately.

(6) Applying what I've learned here to environmental ed in the US. So many valuable lessons... And being able to hike and backpack freely again without fear of being ambushed off the beaten bath.

(7) Cleanliness: drinking water out of the tap!! ... a washing machine!!! ... hot running water! People here value cleanliness a lot, but the place is really dusty, and there's very little automation or hot water. So, keeping stuff clean here as most housewives do implies being way less lazy than I am. I'm excited to be in a place where staying clean is easier.

(8) Living in an apartment with windows and natural light! I've had enough of this cement-block cave ;-)

(9) SNOW and SEASONS aside from : rain / no rain.

(10) Meetings starting more or less at a given hour, with the people in attendance who claimed they'd attend. People who say out loud in words what they really think rather than in a complex mixture of body language and telepathy.

The Tragedy of the Pumpkin Pie

(SimplyRecipes.com)

There’s this amazing bakery run by Mennonites* in the closest major city to me. Throughout the year they offer a dizzying array of donuts, breads, cookies, dairy products, condiments, and other assorted baked sweets. And they sell honey in empty, repurposed Jack Daniels and rum bottles. How could one not be all for it? (Yes, I’m talking to you, A!)

Every Thanksgiving they take pre-orders for pumpkin pie. I, being a good US citizen, did my part by pre-ordering three pies. I was thinking to present two for snack at a meeting we were to have on Wednesday before I left for Thanksgiving break… and leaving the other for… general household consumption. There’s just something about being able to have a little taste and sight and smell of home, even if you're far from family.

And I was missing an important meeting on Friday because of Thanksgiving vacation, so in my head the pie was a way to make up for lost points with my colleagues. Oh the accolades and acceptance that pie would bring on the wave of each delighted bite…

The only problem was that they open solely on Tuesday and Friday, from 9 am – 6 pm, which is always a bit shy of fitting into my work schedule, unless I happen to be going into the city for the weekend. And while I tried to beg and plead, I had to get the pies on their timetable.

I had already pumped up this pie to my colleagues who would be at the Wednesday meeting, and I’m a bit of an anguished people pleaser sometimes. I had to deliver. I just had to.

(As with any time of unusual stress, you occasionally fixate on weird and insignificant things during Peace Corps- this was certainly one of my better moments.)

The situation was: meeting on Wednesday morning; pie pick-up on Tuesday or Friday. It had to be Tuesday.

Only problem, I was already double-booked on Tuesday. I had a workshop all morning and a meeting all afternoon. Maybe I could slip away at lunch. Or, worst case, head out a little early and bust down to the city before 6.

As to be expected, everything on Tuesday ran a good hour and a half behind schedule. By the time I got away from my afternoon meeting it was questionable whether I could make it or not. I wanted those pies, though, so I crossed my hopeful fingers and hopped on a bus.

The bus driver I chose must have been ahead of schedule or taking sedatives, because he moseyed down the highway at a cozy 30 miles an hour for six miles, slowing down and personally inviting every single pedestrian on the side of the road to board.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a Guatemalan mini-bus, but their drivers are generally not renowned for their moderate pace or adherence to traffic laws. I took this as a sign that the universe perhaps did not want me to have those pies. Or wanted me to get a lesson in patience. Patience was not really what I felt, though, as we crawled down the highway at two-thirds the normal mini-bus speed.

When we finally got into the city, a quick glance at my watch revealed that there was still a good chance that I might get the pies. Hopeful, I sprinted off the bus seven blocks from the bakery, and ran.

Yes, ran, full-out sprint, down the city blocks, spreading confused looks in my wake. In Guatemala the pace is not really conducive to rushing for much of anything, except perhaps a good seat on the mini-bus. And in that case, rushing has more to do with butt size and elbow sharpness than anything else. Despite a fair-sized and growing group of Guatemalan athletes who embrace the sport, running farther than half a block outside of a soccer field is generally something one does to escape personal danger.

I hadn’t run that hard in months, and I liked it. I had been forced to tolerate the mini-bus, and now I was in control: queen of my own pace, captain of my own team, destiny itself. Every stride was pounding out my frustrations at the day, the relaxed bus driver, those pies that might not wait for me.

I breezed past traffic lights, shopping malls and early-evening shoppers, commuters on foot and in their cars, high school couples hidden away in poorly lit corners, almost certain of my victory now.

6:03 pm.

That was when I arrived to find the store closed. Lights off, everything quiet as a mouse. At first I couldn’t believe I had gotten there on time. Or, what should have been on time. It seems unfair that in a country with such a relaxed culture of time, something as informal as picking up a pie should be regulated to the minute. How punctual they were in closing!

I briefly contemplated throwing myself to the ground and screaming in the style of Marlon Brando, A Street-Car Named Desire, but there wasn’t any audience, and it was getting late, and there wasn’t much to do about it. I jogged back to my bus stop, and made it back to site in record time, with a bus driver who was not put off by such minor details as the highway being full of non-moving cars in rush-hour gridlock. He'd just make his own right hand lane – weaving in and out of dirt parking lots and over minor ditches - when he felt traffic was too congested. The drivers are always most insane when you’re not in a rush.

In the end, of course, it wasn't such a tragedy.

My colleagues hardly noticed the snack change. (I might still be a few points short for missing the meeting, though.)

The pies were bought by others, or maybe fed to hungry suntanned Mennonite children.

I saved a few Q. and a few calories. And on Thanksgiving day, I had a delicious slice of apple pie (my total favorite) at dinner.

Truth be told I never have even liked pumpkin pie.

The Guatemalan Feria

What happens when Guatemalans get together to celebrate their patron saints? Fireworks lit off within 10 meters of their 450-year-old church, that's what happens. (As an aside, when the first shell went off, I nearly hit the ground, certain that some sort of gang warfare had just broken out. The man next to me commented, "Don't worry! It's just fireworks." I might have pointed out that in New York, we rarely light fireworks 30 feet away from a crowd of 400 people. But no need to get into all the complexities of cultural differences in risk perception, or we'll be here all night.)

My reaction to feria last year might be chalked up to cultural differences. The whole thing struck me as crowded, uninteresting, and mildly grungy. The streets were filled with rigged carnival games, marimba bands, "costume dances" where grown men gyrate their hips for hours on end while dressed as Xena Princess Warrior, ladies selling peanuts and bland biscuits in ring shapes. Impromptu cantinas covered in Gallo beer advertisements, food stands selling lots of exotic stuff that scream trouble for the digestive tract, strange drunk men, carnival rides ready to break apart in mid-air and throw their riders to certain death. In case you don't get the idea, space is rented to the vendors in units of 1 square meter. A Guatemalan feria is a US county fair or street festival on steroids.

Now that I've come to know the feria, I could talk about it from the perspective of the town and its significance in local culture, for better or for worse. I could talk about the human need for community and collective ritual and holidays centered around those things. I could... But instead, feria comes to mind this year more from own perspective. This year I realized my need for community; my need for collective ritual; my need for a holiday I could participate in. This year the feria struck me differently.

It might be that this was my first feria living in the center of town, away from my Evangelical host family, my first feria free to experience the Catholic culture here. My first feria since I've made good friends here. My first feria where there were people I was excited to run into on the street and pass time with. My first feria where I had someone to drink a beer with, watch fireworks with, eat cheese-filled tortillas with.

It might be that this was my first feria where rather than being surrounded by strangers, rather than feeling isolated by fright or indignation or indifference, rather than being the unwanted foreigner, I was finally invited to participate among friends.

It might be that this was my first feria where it felt like my town, and not just someplace I was living.

It might be that I was finally home.

Gender and identity in highlands Guatemala

One of the gals?

One of the guys?

I sometimes forget that I am a light-skinned, grotesquely tall alien. Then someone takes my picture in a group with local people and I’m reminded why small children usually either react to me with fascination or abject fright.

Yet beyond that, I put up these two pictures to illustrate an issue of identity that has been central to my experience here – gender.

I grew up in a small town in upstate New York wanting to think that my gender didn’t matter, that being female didn’t make me significantly different from any of my male peers. I distinctly remember the first week of third grade, when my teacher asked for some strong boys to help her hand out the math textbooks. The comment struck a strong chord – placed by whom and when, who knows – but I put my hand up and volunteered; and later that year I went on to beat all but two of the boys in my class in arm wrestling. I still remember so clearly those early affirmations that gender in itself is not a limitation.

So I guess it was odd for me to experience, coming here, that local attitudes surrounding my gender really did limit me, much more so than in the US. Having always wanted to be “gender-blind”, I didn’t really perceive it a lot at first. Yet over time I became more aware of the general inflexibility of gender roles - and accompanying attitudes. I also became more aware of my place as a pant-wearing female, smack dab in the middle of the two gender worlds, seemingly receiving the worst of both of them, especially as a foreigner to boot.

In a place where identity is assessed principally on two axes (first, foreigner or local; and later, female or male), I felt especially out of place, since locals – once having identified me as a foreigner - could not confidently place me on the female/male axis. I felt unwanted in either camp: uninvited to go work in the woods, even when I asked; uncomfortable walking alone at night; heckled by drunks in certain neighborhoods; plagued by the sense that my counterpart was frequently ignoring my comments and proposals; questioned by everyone whether I was afraid to live on my own. Yet neither was I invited to chit-chat with my female counterparts, or asked to help them at events, and am still met with skepticism that I can do my own cooking and cleaning.

It seems like I ought to offer some sort of breakthrough, a turning point to all of this; but there hasn’t been one, really. I’ve simply gone about figuring my identity here by getting to know more and more people, trying to prove that there are things I am capable of even if I can't fold 100 tamalitos in an hour or plant an acre of potatoes by hand in half a day. Overall, my experience hasn't been tough as some have it out in the really remote villages, and being female has given me a distinct advantage with the wonderful women's groups here.

And I've had the numerous little rebellions: taking joy in carrying heavy things in front of and with my counterpart and the park guards, wielding a machete, hiking fast with open enjoyment; fixing technology; wearing corte when it's appropriate; and always requesting in a quiet but firm way the respect I feel I deserve - not as a foreigner or a woman, but as a person.

[Note: 4/22/2013: As I remained longer in my community, I realized that like in many cultures, age was another important aspect of identity and social hierarchy. Being male would not have automatically brought me respect.  I still think that being a foreigner, first, and of ambiguous-but-female gender was more principal to the way I was perceived than age.]

Balance

Mom and Dad’s visit went off pretty much without a hitch. I’ve been back to work for about two weeks now, and I’ll be excited to put up a guest post from them soon!

In the meanwhile, I’ve been reflecting a lot about balance. Over the past year, I’ve often felt like I was ricocheting from one thing to the next – work to dinner to binging on the Internet to sleep to work to the bare necessary housework to lunch to the bare necessary social interaction to work to dinner, and so on and so forth. It’s so easy to become addicted to repetitive, meaningless thought and action – and so hard to break those patterns.

Unlike my first six months in Guatemala, having a laptop has made me feel like I have to be “on” 100% of the time. The only problem is that’s just not realistic in terms of mental energy.

So getting home, numbly standing around for 5 minutes thinking "What am I doing?", putting on the computer and vegging out on blogs and Facebook until my boyfriend comes on Skype, feeling guilty about it, and falling asleep the minute we hung up, has become the norm.

Last week, I finally struck more balance than I’ve experienced in at least a year of living here. Part of it was surely Mom and Dad’s visit - almost 10 days of hot showers, clean hotel rooms, parental coddling, being the boss of your own schedule, and no cooking, cleaning, or work, will leave a psyche somewhat rejuvenated. Their trip was something I had been planning for awhile and I was also just psyched that it all turned out so well.

Immediately following that I had a crazy week with a day of food poisoning, a handicrafts workshop, a meeting of the local economic development commission, finishing our SPA proposal for the sign project, and two walks up to the park in two days (about 13 miles and 3000 ft gained and lost - great exercise!)

After the second walk, I’m not sure what it was, but some small voice in my head told me to turn off the nagger inside me and focus on doing something cool, new, break out of the pattern, tackle some of the things on my to-do list that I always brush aside.

So the next day I bought, chopped, and over the next three days subsequently ate a full head of turnip leaves, something I’ve been meaning to do forever. I stayed away from the office (Trap of Distraction and Death to Productivity) for two afternoons and thought about my Masters’ project, something which has been needing attention.

I started adding other little tasks to the day – deleting a few emails every day to break up the big task of cleaning my Gmail box – setting a bedtime regardless of the boyfriend – giving myself 5 minutes for Facebook and my favorite blogs, no more - doing whatever dishes are in the sink nightly, just to have it off my mind.

I'm realizing that changing habits for the better is all about breaking big jobs down into smaller jobs, and then making these smaller jobs daily habits. Chab'aku, poco a poco, little by little, as they say here. The sense of accomplishment becomes this self-reinforcing thing: cool, we've got that one thing pretty under control, now let's take on that other little thing in the back burner.

Rather than being overwhelmed, you begin to strike a balance between wanting to control everything and wanting to control nothing.

Show me your mental map; Techniques for navigating a new cultural landscape

One of the most valuable benefits of Peace Corps service, I think, is an extended-length, purely experiential lesson on culture. So what is culture? I read a few things for a graduate sociology class once about culture, but in the past year I’ve had the chance to live it and reflect on it quite a bit. Ultimately I think the metaphor of culture as a shared “mental map" – which I first came across in Earl Babbie’s work, I think – is particularly helpful.

So culture: comprises the shared features of individuals´ mental maps that indicate, like those of any map, both the nature of reality and how to navigate that reality.

To borrow the idea from Babbie and sociology and develop it a little further from my own perspective: From birth we develop a mental map which is somewhat congruent with that of others around us, most heavily influenced by family, friends, teachers, and other influential persons. Every person has one of these maps, and each map bares differing similarity to others´ maps. Our map may be close that of our parents´ or totally different, but we will usually share quite a bit in common. And the thing that helps bridge differences in our native state, city or town, especially our native households, is that we know the landscape intimately. That helps us to converse about a common feature even when we have differing representations on the map. We come to know the subtle range of differences in the representations of these features, and form a catalogue of these representations that we can refer to.

As a PCV not only are you are surrounded by people with a very different mental map than the one you hold onto, you are in an unfamiliar landscape, as well. You don't even know what variation is out there or what features are necessarily important. You’re frantically trying to sketch out new features based on what you hear and observe of others. But rather than the 18-21 years you had to form and test the mental map that you carried with you when entering the adult world of the US, you have about six months to make some sort of usuable map of your new landscape, and learn how to orient your own pre-existing mental map with the local map – whenever and however it is necessary.

Sounds tough, and it is. But, it’s do-able. It’s also indispensible to surviving and working in the local culture.

One easy example is cold beverages. My mental map tells me that cold foods may not always do good things to my stomach. I know that Guatemalans´ mental maps usually tell them that it is a bad idea to drink cold things when you have a sore throat. If I feel skeptical that it´s a good idea to take a cold drink I´m offered, I say I´ve got a sore throat. Works like a charm. I don´t have to drink it, and no one is offended that I won´t take what they´ve offered.

To be fair this is kind of a lame trick; I am not getting people to understand my mental map – just manipulating theirs to make it coincide with my own. But what's easier? Tell someone I've got a cold, or give a three-hour lecture on hygiene and microbe pathology? While these tricks are useful, genuine intercultural exchange takes a lot more work.

What I am finding as a PCV is that depending on the person, getting people to really understand my mental map -- and understanding theirs -- takes a lot of time, patience, and conversation. Even then there are people – for example, rural male farmers or very old people - with whom I feel I can never really communicate a significant part of my mental map, or understand a significant part of theirs. (That is, the unique part other than what almost all humans have in common, by virtue of certain biological and physiological realities.) Rather, if I want to communicate with them, I have to adapt my mental map to theirs as much as possible. Yet this is challenging, since we’re talking about something that is largely inaccessible to me due to social and linguistic barriers - the mind of a rural farmer or an elder.

So the natural solution around this is that I gravitate to work most with people whose mental maps are most compatible with mine: young people, school teachers, and young to middle-aged women, that is to say, people with malleable mental maps or whose experience and perspective more closely matches my own. No matter how similar the perspective, you are usually wisest off in trying to guide people to understand, or at least follow, your own mental map using their own. The more similar the two maps are, the easier it is for us to actually communicate our maps to each other. (And the more able and willing the other person is to share their map so that I can understand it, incidentally.)

But no matter how effectively you can bend, mimic, adapt, guide, even with good friends in my town I’m usually left feeling that there will always be significant portions of our mental maps that will be mutually unvisited and misunderstood. And, it’s always treacherously easy to get stuck in the woods, trying to figure out what to make of our conflicting map information, and with no compass to mediate our surroundings. In which case, a shrug, a smile, and a change of conversation do wonders.

Note: In response to a commenter; it's not that I want to spread my mental map - and it is of course crucial to absorb and understand others' maps - but the point of my post is that effectively communicating the discordant features on my map, while often very difficult, is sometimes necessary both to achieve common goals and to form genuine relationships. Thanks for that, though - this hits on a crucial point in "development" work generally- the dangerous waters of "they should think like I think!"

Moving into my own place!

It’s been awhile since I’ve last blogged – not for lack of ideas, so much as lack of time. And a lack of attention span, too. Living in semi-urban Guatemala is like keeping both the TV and stereo going full blast. I think it wears out the mind. Or at least, the mind formed from a young age in a small town in the US where the loudest thing around is the occasional dog barking, ambulance siren, or ice cream truck. But at least in the midst of the insanity, some ideas for projects are coming together.

More on that later, but the big news - related to wearing out and lack of time - I have finally moved out of my host family’s house! I lived with them for almost an entire year. The move wasn’t inspired by any particularly acute stimulus, rather a slow build-up of thoughts and wonderings along the theme of: “Hmm, wouldn’t it be nice to…” I find it tough to explain it to local people when they ask me why I left, because I really love the family, and there wasn’t one particular reason.

There were a few obvious drawbacks to being with them: lack of control over the general cleanliness of my environment, lack of space and organization, feeling like I was constantly on stage - all of which were definitely draining me mentally. I never felt like I really had space to think. I also was looking forward to the March-June fly and low-water season with less than excitement, and by default had to leave Oliver to wander freely all day, which led to a couple close calls with street dogs.

Moving out has helped a lot. The neighbors all respect my privacy, I have soo much organizing space it’s glorious, and I have a 50 gallon water tank all to myself. Plus there aren’t any flies in this part of town yet. Oliver is pretty content; he can go up on the porch whenever he wants and I don’t have to worry about him fighting with street dogs. I’ll get to see my host family a few hours every week, which was about equivalent to the amount of really quality time I was spending with them before anyway. (I feel like my relationships with them reached the comfort zone plateau awhile ago - that is to say, our relationships have developed most of their potential, and putting a lot more time into it doesn't really make that much difference.) Plus the family next door is plenty noisy so I don’t feel really lonely. And as an added bonus the Catholic church is a lot less noisy than the neighborhood Evangelical church where I used to live.

The current drawbacks? I don’t get to come home to a hug from my little host brother nor greetings from the fan club, although I’m amassing a new one here; It’s freezing in the house since no one uses the woodstove; incidentally this house has few windows, and I love natural light; there’s no tamales or leftovers; I don’t have access to even a square foot of land; and I have lots more responsibility: I have to buy and cook everything I need; I’m going to have to figure out what to do with my used toilet paper and Oliver’s litter; I have to cart my food scraps over to a neighbor’s; no more washing machine; I have millions of little house maintenance things! The toilet is already seriously backing up which I am taking as an unfortunate sign. And I do live alone, which is a little less secure than I was with the host family, although I live in a busy neighborhood.

That said, I feel like this was a really positive change. Most people will ask me something like: Aren’t you afraid of being on your own? With the obvious undercurrent of: Does this mean you want to entertain unsavory men-folk? Drink alcohol? Do who knows what else? More than being in danger, a woman without chaperone is a very dangerous thing here. I get the idea that society needs to keep behavior in check by directly enforcing collective norms and such. It can’t necessarily trust its members to police themselves through indirect pressure. Yet I don’t think I’ll be up to anything too scandalous- maybe drinking a glass of wine while listening to bluegrass and organizing my kitchen cabinets ;-) I’m pretty sure the neighbors will get over it.

Confessions as we near the one-year mark

I’m coming close to approaching one year as a PCV. For me, this brings some highly mixed feelings. On the one hand, I’ve made it nearly a year – and there comes with that a strong feeling that the worst is over and the best is yet to come. There also comes with that a visceral comfort in my routine and surroundings. On the other hand, it brings a lot of self-doubts. I’ve been here a year, with what to show for it? Mostly relationships, a semi-successful English class for teachers, a completed tourism diagnostic, and lots of ideas about what could be done this year and in the future. But those hardly seem like professional results.

I just feel skeptical that I will guide our office to accomplish much more in this year - in terms of the overall "plan" - than I did in the past year. I know that it's been really important to wait things out and build confidence with people, but what if I still haven't done enough to lay groundwork for this next year? What could I have accomplished this year - or still accomplish - with a more-thought-out plan, greater persistence, more contact with the community, less fear of offending people, less fear of walking alone, less of a religious insistence on sitting back and observing? What could I have accomplished if my head and heart hadn't been floating detached from me for the first months here, living from phone call to phone call and e-mail to e-mail with my significant other?

It becomes difficult to sort out where the external challenges begin and I end. Was it I who was detached or did my surroundings work to detach me? Or both? The real gist turns in my mind: what could have been done differently in this past year, whether by me or someone more capable?

But the reality neither is nor was that simple. I am not and was not separate from the challenges I’ve faced. They are part of me and I am part of them; I have to face up to that. The past always seems less messy looking back than the present feels… and I think a large part of this experience is accepting that lesson. But I would really like to strive for greater clarity in what I’m doing in the present, while accepting my internal and external limitations.

A Tale of Two Communities

This weekend I went to visit a friend from my training town to see her site and help her give an environmental education workshop to the teachers of her community. Of all the 16 (?) of us from our training group, Tara's and my communities are physically closest as the crow flies – about 20 km - despite this, to get between the two the standard method is a 100-or-so km, 3-hour tour in bus or pick-up on established roads. If you were accustomed to the terrain, you could probably get between the two in a half day's walk. In terms of characteristics, however, the communities could practically be on different sides of the country.

One of the beautiful views out into the sub-tropical jungle!

My indigenous agrarian community of several thousand is somewhat dry and temperate trending to cold; Tara's ladino agrarian community of a few hundred people is quite humid and temperate trending to hot. Tara's got jungle, tropical diseases, and tarantulas; we've got temperate deciduous and coniferous forest, and I think I once saw a spider that was about the size of a nickel. Her closest market is about an hour away, there is only one bus a day out of town and one back in; in comparison, within my town I can get almost everything I reasonably need, and I can hop a micro every 30 or so minutes, to arrive in under an hour at the nearest big city where I can find some store carrying almost whatever I could want. In a quick daytrip – fairly standard for many volunteers in my region - I can even choose to shop at Hiper-Paiz - the local Wal-Mart branch - or any number of other chain stores in the local mall. (Not that I have the urge much.)

The teachers hard at work listening. Note the hammock (!)

This is all just to say that Guatemala is a country of unbelievable diversity, which makes the Peace Corps experience quite diverse as well. For me, this weekend was an interesting time to be thrust in a completely different environment, resulting in some hard personal reflection in a short amount of time. I had a great time: we drank the cooperative's delicious coffee (and I never enjoy drinking coffee!), feasted on the food Tara valiantly trekked home from town, watched her community win in the local soccer finals, hashed and re-hashed our experiences and reflections, and took in the humid air (which reminded me of summer at home in New York), expansive views of jungle and plantation, and peaceful sense of isolation. I also hung out in a hammock reading while the afternoon rains pounded down, which has made me realize I would like a hammock. Oh yeah, and we worked a little bit, too!

Something I am beginning to come to terms with is my initial disappointment to be assigned to a larger town, with few physical challenges, close to a large city. Through my visit to Tara's site I had time to process and to put to words the idea that it is in a small isolated community that I feel most energized, where I naturally recharge myself, where I feel I can work most effectively. Tara on the other hand really craves the city life sometimes. So I think we came to the conclusion that sometimes by nature people can work best, especially under stress, in one particular environment over another, and perhaps Peace Corps ought to assess this a little more rigorously.

While I see room for improvement in the assignment process, especially as a professional development organization, at the end of the day, you sometimes just have to just live it to know how it will be and how you will react. Perhaps this is the prime lesson Peace Corps can offer us as a personal growth experience, of taking what we have in every moment for what it is and not wishing it were something else. Just easier said than done. Which is why, I suppose, you just gotta do it.

Thanks to Tara for a great weekend!

Life on the rollercoaster

What to report of late? It's interesting, but in these past two weeks since my vacation I am really getting back into the “life here is so worthwhile” and I dare say, on occasion, “I love it here!” frame of mind, which is great. It is so interesting to note my own mood swings and the “rollercoaster” of emotion as my good friend from my training town commented on her blog. It is fascinating to me how we humans are able to adapt ourselves to different situations, and the processes we go through during that adaptation - how different my feelings can be from week to week and day to day.

Things are looking up primarily for the fact that the new environmental educator has started in my office, and coincidentally a whole pile of potential work and collaborations have started showing up. My counterpart also recently suggested monthly planning meetings - which I have mentioned a few times and have been fantasizing about for months - and I am really psyched. In this month's planning meeting we already planned October's planning meeting. I am sure it will actually happen, too, +/-7 days from its scheduled date. Amazing! My philosophy in these past nearly six months has been that for sustainability's sake there is only so much you can exert yourself if local counterparts don't take initiative. So when they do, it is a real eureka moment! It just requires a lot of patience... perhaps 24 months of patience...

In the months before summer vacation sets in we're primarily doing a survey on local opinions about tourism, as well as some activities with local schools and young people, including promoting the park and recreation center as a good location for the sixth-graders' farewell party. I feel good about this work. It's important in my view to make the community aspect of “community tourism” actually happen, and not leave it as a half-baked idea. (Of which there are unfortunately many in my municipality and in my office, specifically.) We also are starting a project with local Mayan priests to name and “label” the 20-something altars in the protected areas of the muni with wood signs, assuming the priests give it the OK. I am thinking this collaboration could lead to some cool projects later on, too. Not to mention everything else we'd like to do in November and December...

So at this point we have a ton of work to do and it constantly feels like herding cats. Or at times, juggling them. Efficiency is a whole other concept here and keeping track of all the loose ends requires a lot of organization and patience. I am kind of hoping I don't adapt too much – could make reverse-adaptation to the US work-world a real shock!

A recent downturn of events is that Mishi has gone on the lamb, presumably in hunt of a nice sexy lady friend, or several nice sexy lady friends. He took off three days ago, disappointingly the day before I got a package of toys and catnip for him from my parents. (Heaven help my future children from the spoiling they are going to get!) The package is a whole other cultural commentary for another day...

The downturn is mostly because he had been acting out-of-character and aggressive lately, and gave me a good bite or two in the last two weeks. Per standard protocol I had been keeping an eye on him since the last bite to be sure the aggression was behavioral and not medical (rabies, for instance) – but since he took off, you can't say for sure. So, rabies prophylaxis it is; I get the final shot on Monday. I really doubt he had rabies, but nevertheless, the idea scares the hell out of me, so I called in. The Peace Corps Medical Officer was really understanding on the phone, although clearly not too excited I'd adopted a quasi-feral street cat. Fair enough.

But you had to know him. What a great cat. I hope he comes home.

Yardwork

I bring up yard work not because we have a yard here; in fact I can’t remember the last time I saw an actual grass lawn in front of a house. I bring this up because lately I’ve been contemplating life in context of the often-used but especially applicable saying whenever expectations and human beings mix: the grass is always greener on the other side. To put on my symbolism hat, I went through a mood for a few days after my vacation finished where I just felt miserably fixated on how brown and depressing and sparse my lawn is in comparison to the one I‘d been hanging out on for the past two weeks. I even began to think about my friend’s lawns and how much greener they were, too. Positive thinking can take you so far (Repeat after me: “Man, I really like brown grass!”) but at some point emotional honesty has to come in to play. Sometimes the grass does look greener over there. It really does.

It occurred to me to just sell the house, pack it in, and go pitch a tent on the green grass. I didn’t fixate on this particular option, finding it extreme and knowing that I’d probably get used to brown grass again, anyway. But I thought about it. And I was still miserable.

Then it occurred to me: if I figure out why the grass is so freaking sickly, maybe I can make it greener, rather than just lamenting its sorry state.

I think the reasons I came up with are not that unusual to the typical Peace Corps experience:

I feel lonely.
I feel stagnant, as though I am stuck in the same ineffective routine.
I feel my contribution here is not that significant to anyone.

So then I went about starting some yard work, a little watering here, a little flower-planting there, a little landscaping there… that is to say, it occurred to me to reach out to the people around me to try to make stronger social connections and get new, fun, small routines going, as the larger-picture work is going to take a lot longer and require a lot of patience.

(1) I reached out to a JICA volunteer in my site and went to a Japanese cultural fair in a nearby town - we've always been kind of too busy to get together, but it turns out she is extremely nice - and we‘re talking about hanging out every other weekend or so with the newly arrived JICA volunteer.
(2) Instead of just sitting in the office all day Monday, I checked out a cultural tourism fair organized by a fellow community tourism PCV
(3) I started making lunch every Thursday with the volunteer at a clinic in town, who lives in a nearby city
(4) I called the newly-arrived PCV in a nearby town, who it turns out is super-psyched to be friends and wants to go hiking sometime soon!
(5) I dropped in to chat with all the store-keepers in town I haven’t seen in awhile; my goal is to meet more of them and have a more regular presence in parts of town I don't always go to
(6) I had a sleepover and made some delicious food with the two friends from my training group I had never visited in site
(7) I arranged to teach English for Segundo basico students every Monday with a teacher in a nearby aldea… I’m excited to make it fun and incorporate a mix of Youth Development and Environmental Ed topics.
(8) I bought a fun card game for the kids in my host family, which I have now had to play every night for two hours, but hey, I asked for it
(9) I’ve started thinking about how to make my menu a little bit more exciting and interesting … and some cool foods I could perhaps share with my host family. It’s apple season so I am thinking apple sauce and apple pie!
(10) I gave in and am now regularly providing el gatito with a can of cat food per day. It’s sometimes more than I spend on food for myself, but that regular companionship is so worth it.
(11) I’m contemplating a serious attack on the Mam language. Despite finding lessons with my teacher really boring, she’s a good friend so I think I'll stick with her and have to take my own initiative to make it exciting to learn.
(12) I met some folks from MAGA who work in our muni and are also on the Comision de Fomento Economico y Medio Ambiente. They are really excited about collaborating on projects that really interest me: family gardens, lombricompost. In the later collaboration especially I perhaps see hope for the future of trash management here. This is a huge feeling.

And there are lots of other small things outside the routine that I am contemplating doing to “free my mind” so-to-speak.

It’s not too out of the routine but I also have gone to help with reforestation with kids twice during the past two weeks. I always come back so content from the time with the kids, the teachers, and in the woods. This makes me realize I really need to take the initiative to get out to the schools and start working with them more, now that I have a solid base of confianza in the office and have some clue what the deal is.

I still feel kind of lousy on occasion, but I think the positive thing is that I’ve turned the switch on my brain to start looking for and seeking smaller pleasures out of this experience, as well as being aware of barriers I’m putting up for myself.

So Project: Lawn Improvement is underway. I will let you know how it proceeds. Based on the pilot experience this week, I am hopeful for positive results. We’re not putting in the koi pond and rhododendron bushes yet… but, at least with these small steps I am feeling more energized, and capable of making this experience more what I want it to be.