Christmas at Home (and Now What?)

Hard to believe that it has been over two weeks since I got back from my Christmas vacation tothe US. And what a vacation it was. One thing Peace Corps has given me is the sense of how important it is to take breaks, to have a change of scenery, to say yes instead of no. Home was a much-needed jolt back to broader reality and my broader self.

It was a whirlwind two weeks, full of Christmas gatherings, seeing friends and family, drinking lots of tap water, and eating lots and lots of good food. We also had a few fun outings, to the local childrens’ play museum, an abridged winery tour, a pilgrimage to Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, and two nights at a bed and breakfast for New Years’. It was really fun. The US is really nice, in its own way.

An abridged list of mind-boggling and beautiful things I encountered:

1. Snow
2. My family
3. My brother
4. My boyfriend
5. Gringos everywhere, who don’t greet with ¨good morning¨
6. Speaking English to strangers in public
7. My family’s enormous cats (see picture at right. animals are genuinely ENORMOUS in Central New York)
8. Our Christmas tree
9. Wegmans!
10. The food! : Tofu, salads, take-out, brownies, pecan pie, pizza, lasagna, almond milk, five kinds of cereal mixed together, omelettes and homefries, Veggie dogs and burgers, Mom’s mac and cheese, Grandpa’s pancakes, Tex-Mex food, we could go on...
11. Toilet paper going down the toilet bowl
12. Trash management
13. Drinking water out of the faucet
14. Hot water out of the faucet
    
15. Christmas and its traditions!

Despite the comforts of home, coming back to Guatemala was not as tough as I had thought it might be. Being with family and being in a different culture are two very different things, but each has its own distinct challenges. On January 6 we completed a year in Guatemala, and I feel so accustomed to life here - tortillas and tamalitos, spinning through curves on the micro with reggaton blasting, the dusty countryside, Spanish, the burning sun and freezing nights, waiting, waiting, and waiting some more, my own cooking, the little oases I’ve found here. The maple syrup and nutritional yeast I brought back aren't going to hurt morale, either.

And, there is plenty of work to be done... HOW is just the question. The tough thing right now - I think typical for a volunteer at my stage of the game - is seeing how few concrete projects I have truly rolling in progress after these 9 months – including my Masters’ thesis – and wondering – how will this all work out? I have lots of ideas and smaller starts (as you might have gotten from my previous blog entry on work) but they seem to be constantly modulating based on the changes around me. I feel like I absorb my town's sense of inertia at times, too, which is tempting since waiting gives more time to assess, understand, before making any mistakes.

I've realized that assessing is good, but life is full of mistakes no matter how much thought you give things. And could trying to avoid them so adamantly not be its own mistake, too? This month the not-so-perfectionist side of me is being called to task for the next year, to make leaps and decide directions and make mistakes, to be more proactive here than I've been before. The results might be messy, but it’s really time to get down to work.

On the eve of vacation in the US

December 6 was the 11-month anniversary of our arrival here in Guate! Crazy. Here in site I've passed my first July 4th, my first birthday, my first Halloween, and my first Thanksgiving away from the US. I've also passed my first Semana Santa, my first Guatemalan summer, my first feria, my first Guatemalan Independence Day, and my first All Saints' Day - ever. (That's the beauty of Peace Corps - you get to celebrate twice the number of holidays!) I've painted gourds, adorned graves, made Thanksgiving dinner - with cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie! - kept a "countdown chain" like a 6-year-old, sung Advent carols over a candle wreath, baked Christmas sugar cookies. Sharing all of these little traditions - new or old - mine or others' - has been special for me, given me that sense of community and place which is so crucial.

The recent holidays have given me a lot of time to reflect on the purpose and evolution of tradition, both in my own life and for people generally. I live with an Adventist host family that doesn't celebrate traditional holidays, and while I respect them for their strong convictions, I realize that the holidays I celebrated as a kid will always be important to me. I went back and forth a little awhile about whether or not to go home, but ultimately I decided I would. I love my host family, and the commercialism at Christmas turns me off too, but the idea of missing Christmas at home was blatantly unappealing. I am really glad I made that choice.

You can share your traditions with people who are knowing them for the first time, or create a new tradition for the first time, but I think it's a whole other level to share those traditions with the people you've always shared them with. That's not to say new traditions can't be created with those you care about, but to the extent I can celebrate childhood traditions with the people who accompanied me in my childhood, the greater the abundance of joy in my life. To be in the same place, with the same decorations, the same food, the same people. Not to say that new traditions or people can't be included, but I realize that Christmas at home gives me a profound sense of belonging, a profound sense of security, a profound sense that the world has continuity. It's hard to describe.

This will be the longest vacation I've taken since starting Peace Corps, and my first visit to the US - so I expect it will be tough in some ways to come back. At the same time I feel I'm much more integrated with my community and my work at this point than I was before - and I think there will plenty of people and things that I miss about here when I'm home - tamalitos, my little host siblings, friends, etc. There is plenty for me here in Guatemala; you can just never tell how it's going to balance out in your heart, is the thing. I'll keep the blog updated on the subject!

Peace Corps Guatemala Packing List

It's that time again - just one month until another group of volunteers arrive here in Guate, the group that will arrive on my group's one-year anniversary in country! To mark the occasion, I'd thought I'd offer a few packing tips to those who might be reading.

First of all, you don't need to prepare to be out in the middle of nowhere for two years straight, nor buy a bunch of fancing camping gear and clothes. Guatemala is a very commercialized country, and most sites are comparatively not too rustic. Almost all volunteers have electricity and are within three hours of a supermarket/commercial center with products very much like those you'd buy in the US. Some are farther out, but still have more access to supermarkets and such than you would in, say, Mali.

Quality used clothing (paca) is cheap and abundant throughout Guatemala, and during training you have the chance to drop by the paca in Antigua's market. There's also a supermarket called Bodegonia for toiletries and such.

There is some stuff that is more expensive or non-existent here: electronics (computers, cameras), outdoor gear, some footwear, speciality toiletries. If needed, I'd stock up on that stuff before coming here.

My advice:

(1) Clothes: You may end up in a hot, temperate, or cold site, but in training days are warm and nights are cool or cold. Guatemalans dress up for business or family occasions, but for hanging out or going shopping or around town you can wear whatever (within reason). If you have doubts about a clothing item, leave it, cos if it turns out you do need it you can find an equivalent in the used clothing stores (paca). I'd bring:

• Two week supply of underwear
• 3-4 + outfits just to hang out or hike or mess around in - jeans, shorts, capris, t-shirts (long and short-sleeve), tank tops, casual skirts/dresses
• 2-3 business casual outfits to wear to the Peace Corps office (whether you'll need them in site depends)
• 1-2 going-out outfits if that's your thing (women get really dressed up here; men can get away with jeans and a collared shirt)
• bathing suit (hot springs, ocean, who knows?)
  
• comfortable pajamas
• 2-3 hoodies, fleeces, or sweaters; hat; gloves

You can always buy warmer or skimpier clothes depending on your site.

(2) Footwear: Strappy sandals, flats (closed or open-toe), or heels are standard for women in business and public generally. For work, I wear hiking sneakers or flats. For hanging out or around town, I wear hiking sneakers, Chacos or flip-flops. I usually tend to be a bit underdressed but it works. Men tend to wear dress shoes in business contexts. You can find some shoes in paca but it's hit or miss for sizes larger than womens' 8 or mens' 10.

(3) Raingear: I have a thick rainshell which is useful up here in the Highlands - it's freezing when it rains! - but not totally essential. In hotter parts of Guate, rainshells can be stifling hot. If you don't have a rainshell already, you can buy big umbrellas here which work fine anywhere except on the trail. If you anticipate doing a lot of hiking or fieldwork and don't have a functional rainshell, you will want to buy one.

(4) Toiletries: You can find more or less whatever mainstream stuff you'd find in a US pharmacy or supermarket, and Peace Corps gives floss, cheap sunscreen, etc. It's hard to find biodegradable or herbal soaps or toothpastes (e.g. Dr. Brunner's, Tom's) or good facial sunscreen. Pack a good supply of that stuff if you are picky. Otherwise bring just enough toiletries to get you through the first few weeks of training.

(5) Glasses vs. contacts: I gave up my contacts when I came here just because I didn't want the additional hassle or expense, but contact solution is not hard to find in larger cities.

(6) For women: Peace Corps provides plentiful Tampax tampons, and you can easily find pads in the corner stores. That said, trash management is non-existent here and I highly recommend the Diva Cup, supplemented with Glad Rags if you are worried about leakage or not into tampons. The money and trash you'll save really adds up. But give them a test run before leaving the US.

(8) Cell phone: [edit 12.12.2010] It turns out that Peace Corps cut a deal with Tigo and will be issuing contract cell phones to all volunteers starting later this month. Now we'll have free calls to other volunteers and PC staff, plus additional minutes nationally and internationally. Sounds like it should be a pretty sweet deal, but if you want to keep a second phone, tri-band phones from the US will work here. You just need to buy a Guatemalan SIM card (Tigo or Claro).

(9) Memory stick: A USB drive is useful for working/printing in Internet cafes or the Peace Corps office, especially during training. You can also easily find them for sale here if you have a need.

(10) Laptops: Most volunteers have computers. I went the first six months without, but then I got a used netbook sent from home and it's been great. (Computers and electronics generally are more expensive here than they are in the US, so take that into account.) Without it, getting work done was more difficult, I spent more money on Internet cafes and phone calls, and I was also a lot lonelier at night. Most volunteers have Tigo Internet reception in their sites, and I also got the Tigo cell phone modem to use Skype and check e-mail, which has worked out great for keeping in touch cheaply. Some volunteers love watching DVDs at night, so you might consider an external drive if you're one of those people and your laptop doesn't have one.

A note about electronics: Generally speaking, if you use your computer, I-pod, or camera all the time in the US, you will probably feel better having them in Guatemala, too. It can be a good challenge to go without, but keep in mind that the happier you are, the more professional and productive you will probably be. It's definitely a personal choice though. It's nice too to not have to worry about taking care of a bunch of stuff but a laptop is super-useful for work.

(11) Surge protector: This is a good idea if you have a computer, electricity is often unreliable and you don't want to fry your computer. They can be purchased here but are more expensive than in the US.

(12) Camera: I have a cheap digital camera I bought used in the states, other friends brought digital SLRs. I'm content to have a lower-end camera I can drag around everywhere and not worry about (after all, with digital these days, good photos are way more about composition than equipment!). Photos are popular with host families and digital developing is readily available here. A small card reader is useful if your laptop doesn't have one.

(13) I-pod: Some people swear by theirs for sanity.

(14) Headlamp: For black-outs, camping, hostels; essential if you do end up as one of the PCVs with limited electricity.

(15) Rechargable batteries: If you bring electronics that use disposable batteries, I'd recommend rechargable batteries and a charger. It's an investment but they'll save money over time and reduce trash. (No battery recycling here.)

(16) A gift for host families or kids: think of stuff you can't get here... a souvenir from your hometown, real maple syrup, etc. The kids will appreciate Hershey's chocolate but it'll taste the same whether you buy it at home or at the grocery in Antigua.

(17) Stuff to share with your host family -A pack of cards, a photo album of your family, house, and hometown - it's fun to share. You can easily find school supplies or stickers here which are also fun with kids.

(18) Ear-plugs!: Guatemala is a noisy country. Depends on your tolerance, but I personally am not into hearing church sermons at 4:30 am on Saturday morning.

(19) Nalgene or Kleen Kanteen bottles (or Camelbak if you think you'll do a lot of hiking) - gotta have a place to put that agua pura!

(20) Camping gear: If you really love camping, you could think about bringing your own gear with you in case you'd rather not go out with tour operators. Camping off the beaten track is not generally considered a safe activity in Guatemala, but there are definitely plenty of parks where it is safe. A sleeping bag can be useful for regular travel, too.

(21) Medium-sized daypack: What is really useful for me and many volunteers is a large school backpack or medium-sized daypack (around 3000-3500 cc) for shorter trips, vacations, and day hikes. It fits in the overhead rack on the camioneta rather than needing to be thrown on top of the bus, which is less hassle in the rush and bustle to get on and off the camioneta, and also safer for your stuff.

And what to pack it all in:

A big backpackers' pack is convenient for carrying a lot of weight at one time, but if you don't already have one and don't plan on doing backpacking trips, it's not an essential. It can be convenient to have a big backpack and one other bag (rolling or duffle) but a regular rolling luggage and a duffle bag works fine. In most cases you'll never walk very far with all of your luggage combined, the bus ayudantes are super-helpful, and at most you'll brave the buses with all your stuff two times - probably less if your in-site counterpart picks you up with a car at the end of training. So don't feel pressured to buy an expensive backpackers' bag just for that.

So that's what I've got. Any comments or questions, feel free to get in touch with me!

A day as a Guatemalan tourist

Since I'm on a roll with blog posts, I thought I'd roll out one I wrote almost a month ago, about the October 20th holiday, and never got around to posting, about a trip to Champerico with my fellow muni employees.

I sometimes feel as though I am genuinely living in an episode of The Office, if The Office were filmed in Guatemala, in a Maya-Mam town, and followed the activities of the municipalidad (the local town hall). The show would be titled "Ja te' ko'wb'il", which to someone from my town means "La municipalidad." Literally it means something like, "house of power," but it's about as close to "The Office" as we're going to get in the Mam dialect of my town.

No more is the sense of being present on some strange comedy show emphasized for me than when the muni employees are gathered collectively, as in the time the head of the office of municipal planning invited us all to his one-year-old daughter's birthday lunch, or when we gather to eat paches (hopefully potato paches) and celebrate's someone's leaving or coming or to plan the important work of stringing up 10 balloons for some crucially important event.

For the moment you will need to take my word that the variety of personalities and their interactions is amusing, to say the least. This hit home for me again on Wednesday, with my first experience as a Guatemalan tourist. Every year the muni gives its employees a free outing, and Wednesday was a holiday to celebrate the overthrow of Dictator Jorge Ubico in 1944. The muni employees decided to take advantage of the holiday to ask for an outing to beach at Champerico. (The original choice was Panajachel, but the men revolted and insisted on Champerico, for reasons that later became evident.)

The morning started out bright and early (in the dark) at 5:30 am. The rented camioneta (old school bus) was "leaving" at 5 am, which everyone knew meant 6 am (optimistically); but the most eager folks weren't for anything going to miss a free ride to the beach nor free breakfast and lunch at the beach, so they showed up at 5:30. My officemate was one of the eager beavers - she even had what I am pretty sure was strep throat and preferred to go to the beach over the doctor - so at 5:20 am I was dragging myself away from my kitten and a warm bed.

Around 6:15 we were making the calls to Persons X, Y, and Z, whom Person Q and Person T knew were coming but still had not made an appearance. At 6:30 Person Z clambered on board without the slightest hint of shame, and off we chugged to pick up two people in an aldea of my town. It also came out that there were people waiting for us down in the nearest big city, but we were going another route and someone made the executive decision to leave them behind. As far as I know, they are probably still waiting for us to pick them up. By 7 we were burning down the highway toward the beach.

It was a long ride through some beautiful country. When we actually reached the coastal plain I was struck by how similar it felt to rural New York in summer. Many times in my life I've looked over flat, rolling agricultural plains, humid, hot air bellowing in from open windows. But maybe I'm just a little homesick.

We arrived at the beachfront in Champerico and all 33 of us piled into an open-air restaurant for a late breakfast of eggs, refried beans, tortillas, queso fresco, fried plantains, and soft drinks. Then an agricultural volunteer from another foreign organization pulled out an almost-full bottle of rum, which was my first sense of where the day was heading.

From that point onward we separated into three groups: the drinking men, the women and abstaining men, and one family (a secretary, her husband who didn't give her permission to go on her own, and her young son). I didn't mind this arrangement, especially because the two guys who hung out with us all day are really good guys and it was fun to have a mixed-gender group. You generally don't hang out with people of the opposite sex in my town unless you're family, work colleagues, or dating, so it was nice to have some of the "hanging out" I was used to in the US.

We spent a little time on the beach, but the sun was sweltering hot - it felt like you could burn in just a second. Like a true gringa tourist I was prepared with sunscreen, a sun hat, a light long-sleeved shirt, and an umbrella. I gave my officemates a good laugh with all this ceremony, but they wore awesome huge-brimmed hats with their traje, too. Mom would have been proud.

Anyway, after a quick dip in the ocean the consensus was to head to a pool; so we hopped on a bicycle rickshaw and off we went, hearing rumors that there was a good spot a long ways out of town. The driver charged us less than $2 to carry three of us more than a mile in the sweltering heat; it was amazing. I think the bicycle rickshaws were a highlight of the day. It was definitely a relaxing way to travel. That type of technology makes a lot of sense for a flat tourist town without cobbled streets; I'm glad they haven't caught the tuk-tuk plague yet. It was also the first time I had ever received an advertising flyer while on a moving bicycle, from someone else on a moving bicycle. I love bikes.

I don't think I had seen a pool in more than nine months, and it was great. This was a real pool (admission $1.25) which had clean-ish showers, changing rooms, and indications of being chlorinated. After an elaborate sunscreen re-application process it was into the water. We took turns diving for a coin and did some laps. Everyone in the group happens to be really friendly and it was fun to feel really part of a group if only for a few hours.

Champerico is an interesting place. It's definitely a tourist town, but decidedly geared to national tourists. The beach is covered in trash; the bungalows are run down; there are desperate-seeming people walking around all over selling cheap shell jewelry, shaved ice cones of questionable origin, and coconuts, ready to be cut open and given a straw. Horses run up and down the beach, mostly carrying a the few foreign tourists around, and for a buck you can get your picture taken with a plastic inflatable shark. And the bike rickshaws. I liked it. It had character.

After the pool it was off to meet up with the big group for a late lunch, which reminded me that I definitely am not a seafood fan. Being vegetarian (or, here in Guatemala, "vegetarian"), this is always theoretically true, but in practice, different types of meat definitely evoke different physical reactions from me, generally in accordance with my exposure to them as a child. Most precisely I'm not a fan of seafood since it often requires bodily dismembering every last thing on the plate and in the bowl. (My parents can attest to that one in base of the famous lobster incident on Cape Cod as a kid, which was a precursory warning to my imminent vegetarianism). Perhaps the fact that the crab looks ready to crawl out of the bowl and off the plate makes it more delicious to some people.

After lunch the men scrambled to get a few last beers in for the bus ride home, and given a lack of fixed leadership - it was more like leadership by druken male consensus - we rolled out of town about an hour after schedule, which meant we were going to get home well after dark. These few hours of excitement harkened back to the days of the "drunk bus" in college; the highlights including general, mind-numbing racket; the head of police threateningly propositioning my officemate who was sitting next to me, before a municipal plumber who I think is an absolute dreamboat stepped in to tell him to buzz off; several passionate conversations between men in Mam that sounded a lot like "hey, I love you man." "Naww, I love YOU man. You're the best." "Nawwww, YOU'RE the best."; and at least two men openly bawling their eyes out on the shoulder of the guy next to them. It wasn't pretty. This has given me some whole new theories about emotional repression.

Meanwhile the women sat there ignoring it, tolerating it silently. But nevertheless, it was a memorable day, and a worthwhile day of cultural reflection, to say the least. I was exhausted and part of me would have loved to have slept in, caught up on work, and Google-chatted with my boyfriend all day. But in the end I wouldn't have remembered such a day at all, and this one I definitely will.

Working Hard, or Hardly Working?

It's been awhile since my last post: four solid weeks of thinking, hanging out with folks, teaching English, snuggling Oliver, and funnest of all, pimping the deformed love-child of my and my counterpart's ideas of community tourism.

I realize that in my quest to keep my posts mostly interesting, I've barely talked about work. In my first five months here work was very slow, but these past three months have been genuinely busy, and time has been going a lot more quickly. At times I regret all those "wasted" days - especially now having days in which I could use 72 hours instead of 24 - but when I really look back on it, there was not too much else I could have done. The slowness of work was in many ways directly related to the culture here and the amount of trust people had in me, which simply took time to build. Now I do more or less have that trust, which feels great, but it hardly seems professional to take so long before getting down to doing anything. Other factors intervened also - the weather, a disorganized counterpart, scattered community investment in my project.

At any rate, at a friend's request, I thought I'd finally get down to describing my work and projects here.

My general project is community tourism, perhaps one of the most flexible and funnest Peace Corps projects (especially if you are working at a site which actually has tourism!) We can work on everything from good business practices to hospitality to signs to guide trainings to trash management to womens' artesania to marketing and publicity to English classes to environmental education to trailwork and infrastructure to environmental interpretation... yada yada. We work with community associations, municipalities, schools, and whoever else we can.

One of the myriad ways for the frustration to come in is when you're at a site with questionable tourism potential. I am the first tourism volunteer in my site, where there is currently no tourism. It can be rather discouraging, since maybe one-third of PCV tourism sites "make it big" or have some financial success and in the others 1-3 volunteers invest two years of their lives each for a project that goes nowhere. I'm sure good things will come of my time here, but it may have nothing to do with actual tourism.

That said, there certainly is potential here. My site is near a major city as well as another major regional tourist attraction, and we have some gorgeous forests full of Mayan altars and views of volcanoes, completely undeveloped hot springs (although with very difficult access), and other gems most local people probably don't want outsiders knowing about. They have already began constructing a recreation center in the woods with a small building for events, playground, sports field, etc (directed toward regional or national tourists- Guatemalans like to have a playground and sports field in their woods!) The spot is far enough away, though, that attracting outside tourists, even nationals, is going to require some real work. It seems possible to attract a regional market, which is fine because there is a large one nearby, but that is not what my counterpart and the mayor are hoping for the park. They are imagining gringos crawling all over, and that I am the one to bring those people (with a zip-line, says my counterpart!). I doubt foreign tourists are ever going to financially sustain the operation, and I see part of my job as helping direct the muni toward a more accessible and profitable market.

Getting things going has been tough. Money's run out for the recreation center. The average townsperson doesn't really get the idea of tourism and feels ambivalent about devoting any time or energy to the idea. My counterpart, head of the municipal environmental office, is quite enthusiastic about tourism but completely scattered and in charge of about a hundred other things. (Managing six park guards and two office employees, representing our muni to GOs and NGOs, influencing municipal environmental regulations, trash management, reforestation, control of natural resources in the protected areas.)

My goals for my time here are to leave behind:

1. a strategic tourism plan and business plan for the muni and recreation center (and people who understand it);

2. a tourist-ready recreation center, well-managed and regulated, with signs and a completed environmental interpretation trail;

3. a group of people who can do environmental interpretation for groups that visit

4. solid promotion of the recreation center with local and regional schools and churches.

I don't have much hope for getting tourism going outside of the recreation center in the next 15 months, but I'd like to leave the idea with the muni that there are other touristic spots in town; the rec center is far far far and really not any more interesting than other spots in the municipio, or simply the municipio's culture itself. But, there aren't too many people in town who care at all about developing tourism, and my counterpart, the most vocal proponent, really only cares about "eco-tourism" in the forests. I also hope to unite the womens' artesania groups here a little more - that could go somewhere even if tourism doesn't, especially with the recent opening of the Municipal Womens' Office.

It would also be nice to accomplish some stuff with trash management; this year we will be doing an eco-ladrillo campaign with schools (which we could use for building at the recreation center!). I also hope to do a program with high schools to clean up the main rivers in town, and motivate the muni to fix the mess that is the municipal trash dump - perhaps via pressure from a community trash management committee. Plus my Masters' thesis on the water springs, which I've had the thought could be the kick-off of a community water monitoring program (similar to how the community plants trees every year.) OK so I'm dreaming big here, but you've gotta shoot for the moon sometimes even if you're just going to end up flat on your butt in the dirt.

I also have a total dream of putting together a video with oral histories from older people, about their lives and their perspectives on the environment, to use with high school students whose respect for traditional ways are ever waning. I think there would be lots of support for this idea from the Elders' Council, Cultural House, schools... And I would love doing it. I can just anticipate a lot of "creative differences" coming up though, so I would have to ask myself if it was really for local folks, or more for me.

At the moment these goals seem somewhat reasonable but we will have to see. I am about a third through my Peace Corps service and will have to ramp up my productivity rate considerably to get all that done! But the reach has got to exceed the grasp, or you might not even grasp all what you can - is my theory.

Right now without funding to finish the recreation center, stuff has been going slowly. I've been finishing a market survey with local folks about the recreation center (we did 200 surveys and it's now just the analysis), and I've also been doing a summer course in English for teachers (with about 25-30 participants), and meeting with womens' artesania groups to get to know their abilities and guage interest for an English-tourism hospitality class.

As a tiny side project I am trying to help the women improve their products and find small markets; they want to get rich but I'm learning breaking into the foreign artesania market is really tough. Other projects could be much more profitable... Just because gringos have money doesn't mean there's a portable gold mine hidden down our pants that we're ready to turn over. In fact, quite the opposite when the middle-man is getting a 4-5x mark-up. (There's a reason we have money!) But I want to help them realize that, if nothing else. And at best maybe a woman's cooperative or artesanal market could take off here in the future.

This month we'll also go out to the springs to get an idea what the monitoring program will entail. I also am currently in charge of training our new environmental educator by this next school year and writing our office's environmental education and tourism plans for 2011 with her.

So. Life is a little all over the place. But it's definitely not boring. And I go home for Christmas one month from today exactly! So excited!

Peace Corps Pet #2: Oliver!

After a request from a dear penpal, I'm working on post on about my project work, goals, and reflections. I realize I write very little about work - these first six months have been way more about adapting and integrating and just living - but I think six months in is a good time to write such a post - it's just going to take a little thinking and pruning before I release it off onto the web.

In the meanwhile I realized I haven't mentioned much about a major life change, my new kitten, Oliver! My whole host family knows I like cats, and that I'd been feeling down about Mishi since he took off. One day about three weeks ago my 5-year-old twin host cousins came back from their grandma's house, knocked on my window, and announced that they had a "regalo" for me.

Typically this would be a total trick and they would just want an excuse to be let into my room in order to run around screaming and wreaking general chaos, so I ignored them. Yet after a little while my older host sister, too, knocked on the door, and so I answered. And there he was in a little box: a tiny kitten of maybe 8 weeks of age. Originally I wasn't going to get another pet if Mishi didn't come back; but with a motherless kitten on my hands, I was feeling kind of flexible.

At any rate, Oliver has been great. After an initial night of crying and hiding he's gotten used to the environment and seems content with eating, sleeping, digging in his improvised litter box, and tearing around the room chasing everything from my toilet paper roll to the cat toys my parents sent. And he's so tiny, my room is plenty big for the moment, which is great. (My little host brother calls him "Botz Mishi" which means "Small Mishi" in Mam... too cute.) I am hoping we will be together for the rest of my 18 months here, but at the same time just really enjoying the time we have here together now.











As for Mishi, I still think of him, but his fate is definitively out of my hands unless he comes back. And I feel okay about that, since I think that as a time-hardened callejero he had earned the right to come and go as he wanted.

Hmm... I am definitely headed for total cat lady status, aren't I, though? I'm pretty sure I've already secured my status with my host family in future volunteer stories as "the one who loved cats."

The Joys of Market Day

Something that I love about Guatemala is the extent to which people are still engrained with the land. I see this every day, but it's on market days that the prevalence of the local economy really shows; in one tiny space you can get an amazing variety of goods: vegetables, fruits, meats, eggs, fresh cheese, dried staples, spices, artisan wares, street foods, and other goods, the majority cultivated, crafted, or raised within the same department or municipality, or at least within Guatemala. And generally speaking, the people work incredibly hard to make the land as productive as it is.

I was reflecting, walking home from the plaza today (eating a pineapple pastry which cost me about $0.40 cents), that taking for granted a twice-weekly year-round market, teeming with fresh cheap produce, is something I am going to miss a lot when I go back to New York and Michigan. I am going to miss being in a place where it is the norm to shop at an open-air market instead of an air-conditioned store where the average product inside has traveled more than 300 miles to get to its destination. There is just something about a market that makes me feel inherently more alive and engaged in the process of feeding myself.

It's not just the market, either. You can't go on a walk in our forest without someone plucking a bunch of hierba to boil up, or leaves to use in cooking, or some plant for medicine or to jazz up their food. My host mom was once talking about how she didn't know what to make for dinner, and my 8-year-old host cousin overheard. “I'll go get some hierba (greens) on the mountain,” he said. And he did. Just like that. Most people here know where food comes from, and from a young age, too.

Today my host mom invited me to have lunch with the family because they were going to slaughter a chicken. (They know how we "vegetarians" love meat!) My host sister and I ended up depluming and butchering up the poor lady while my four-year-old host brother looked on nonchalantly. After lunch I sat in a circle with the women, them chatting in Mam, me straining to catch words I knew, as we scraped corn off the husk by hand to make sweet corn tamales for dinner. As we worked my host grandfather and little host sister brought us fresh cobs from the field; it struck me how remarkable it is that these are all still totally normal, everyday tasks here for an average middle-class family in my town.

You find plenty of signs of the disconnected-from-everything global consumer economy here too, though. In any Guatemalan market or plaza you can find an amazing array of cheap throw-away goods from China. Out of habit, most people get everything in a brand new plastic bag. People are just as likely to buy a pill as use a natural remedy. Seeing all of this, I wonder sometimes if it is inevitable with greater people having greater economic security that fast convenience will over-take traditional ways of doing things - leaving the slower methods for special occasions, holidays, and stories for grandkids.

Based on my experience so far, I would argue it's a natural human instinct to seek greater convenience to the extent it's within our economic means, and you can't judge people for it; we all look for ways to make life easier, which is a fundamental driver of cultural evolution. Yet at the same time, personal taste, familiarity, and culture pride have a lot to do with it, too. Based on what I know of my town's cultural tenacity, I'm inclined to say that even if everyone in my town became rich, I wouldn't expect them to abolish the market and throw up a Wal-Mart the next day or anything. But I suppose we will have to see!