Recent good times...

A lot of good stuff has been happening, so I figured I'd write a quick update. In rough chronological order:

Dentist appointment: After four appointments, three trips, and some 250Q in taxis into the capital, I have a permanent crown. It almost feels more comfortable than my own teeth. That dentist is an artist. Thanks, Uncle Sam, for the best root canal I will ever have in my entire life. (And let's hope, the last!)

Antigua: At this point the calories are all a blur, but I think we ate every type of dessert available in Antigua, probably twice. And the regular meals: Thai food, Tipico food, Antigua-gringo food, all so delicious. We also visited an old convent, Las Capuchinas. Really impressive.

Reconnect: It was good to see folks, and the highlight was probably a pizza lunch and Q/A with the Ambassador, who was really down-to-earth, but also well-composed and eloquently spoken. It was good to see him having three months of experience in-country. I liked him. And I hear he makes awesome brownies. Perhaps all US diplomats should be required to bake.

Feria: I got back from Antigua in time for the Feria in my town, and three days off from school/muni. I'm not sure our Feria really boasts anything all that special, but I will be pining away for churros for months ... And it was interesting to see the town full of vendors and cheap carnival games and rides. Pictures to come of the 30-some men dancing around in the church courtyard in skimpy Princess Xena costumes for the Baile of Disfraces. (Cross-dressing at Feria seems like a common-place occurence in Catholic Guatemala...)

Xela: On the weekend we went into Xela for awhile; I think I'm officially addicted to that Indian restaurant in town. Add it to the list of stuff gringos like.

Laguna Chkab'al: On Saturday we went with a friend who was visiting Xela up to Laguna Chicabal for the first time. I felt pretty out of shape but I remembered how much I love to get out hiking, and realized I need to figure out a way to get out more. Technically it is part of my work... But anyway, Chicabal is a pretty cool community tourism project, and for the moment it seems to be working well. A good example for us to think about following...

Panajachel: Now we're here on Lago Atitlan for five days of annual leave. I had expected Pana to be so touristy and expensive it would be a bummer, but after 5 days in Antigua it's actually not so bad. The lake is teeming with gringos, as promised, and locals following gringos around selling artesania, but the mellow atmosphere and beauty are pretty relaxing. And I've eaten more tofu in the past 36 hours than I did in the two weeks before I left for Guatemala. Interesting how tourism itself interacts with and influences local culture.

A tourism volunteer on vacation as a tourist... is that, like, meta-tourism?

Anyway, this break has been a good time to reflect on the past three and a half months, think about the perspectives and worries tying me down in site, and how I can readjust and refocus my approach for the next little stretch of work...

Y mañana, un descanso...

Have you ever sat waiting for a pot of water to boil while fire ants danced in your trousers?

That’s about how I feel right now!

Tomorrow I’m heading to the capital for a dentist appointment, and to reunite with a particular loved one, who is coming to visit for two weeks! (I’m a bit more excited about the visitor than the dentist, no offense to my dentist, of course.)

To top it off, today I had a good meeting with the consejo municipal – my first official meeting with them since the introductory one -, my cat is getting fatter every day, and I finished and printed out all of the materials I have to hand in at the Reconnect meeting this upcoming week – including a 6-month work plan, which my counterpart approved of, and which will take me up to Christmas (and probably for years beyond, to be realistic). So things feel wrapped up really well, for the moment; and when I get back from Reconnect and 5 days of vacation it’ll be back to the madness and figuring out what the heck’s going on, except this time in context of actual planned activities! Adelante, friends, adelante.

It sometimes seems like I couldn’t possible deserve such goodness out of life. But I’m thankful for it while it’s around.

Man of Faith, Man of Reason: Part 2

I realize I left the story hanging there with the pobre Mishi, so to cut to the chase: he’s recovered, as far as I can tell happy, and getting fatter by the day. And all the volunteers got their barbecue and potato salad at the 4th of July.

After posting my last blog I went home, and there was Mishi still: curled under a sheet on my bed, drooling, breathing heavily. My family, like the average family of my town, isn’t famously in love with stray animals (nor the hair they leave around - understandably, since they’re worried it’ll give the baby asthma; I’ve tried to tell my host sister that I grew up with my face practically rubbed in cat hair every day, and I turned out fine, but you just don’t want to mess with mama bear); so I was worried they might just kick him out on the street de una vez when I left the next morning for the capital.

What to do? I called my mom in the US, and she suggested something altogether radical: talk to my host family about my fears. So I did, and sure, my host sister said. They’d check in on him now and again, although he’d get the boot if he made himself a nuisance. Feeling somewhat better I sat down at the table and accidentally invited myself – see upcoming post on sharing - to the birthday celebration of my host uncle.

That was when the magical thing happened. A bowl of toasted noodle and chicken caldo and some tamalitos later (I secretly pocketed the chicken to try to tempt Mishi into eating), I mentioned casually that the cat was sick and I was leaving the next day.

Sick? Inquired my host grandmother, who is a midwife (she definitely merits her own post, see upcoming).

Yeah, since three days ago, he has something on his paw, I said, trying to mask my excitement that someone might care about Mishi besides me.

I’ll take a look at him after the meal, then, she said.

Several jokes about pregnant male cats later, and to my amazement, the entire family was gathered in my room at the bedside of the hyperventilating Mishi, absolutely quiet. Even the little cousins, who physically lack the ability to stand still and most commonly could be found chasing Mishi around the yard screaming, were completely reverent.

After a brief check-up with each adult in the family assessing his paw and his other symptoms, my host grandmother summarized: Well, he ‘ll live. It’s because of the pain he’s acting so.

I don’t know what to do! I blurted out. I’m leaving tomorrow at 5 am and won’t be back until Monday. Can he stay in my room until I get back? I didn’t add, if he makes it.

He’s really bad, said my host grandfather.

Well, what are we going to do? asked my host grandmother. My heart jumped in my chest: we.

I suddenly felt surrounded by family, enveloped and nourished by the understanding that they saw and understood my love for this little pest, even if they themselves didn’t feel it; enveloped by the feeling that they would care for this cat for a little while, if only because they cared for me.

Leave me that little box. I’ll take him to the vet tomorrow, said my host grandfather. I didn’t know how to respond; this was beyond all expectations. So I only nodded and agreed to leave the box and money to cover expenses.

Later, after everyone had left, my host grandparents stayed around a little while chatting with me, perhaps sensing my loneliness. You all in your country have much care for animals, eh? commented my grandmother. Here, we don’t have much care for animals. But the Bible says that we should. That left me feeling like a real person, a person of reason and good, not just some foreigner who needed a place to stay. They stayed another few minutes chatting about life in the US, Bible stories, the time the family dog was on his death bed for four days and they wouldn't bother to take him to the vet, but he made it through anyway.

For me this was a powerful experience; I realized that so much of the hardship of the experience was feeling alone and separate. In that last week, amongst all the other cultural differences, I was struggling to not care for a cat in a culture in which stray animals have no importance, realizing I had to care and realizing the personal importance the unconditional acceptance of that cat had for me, feeling that no one would relate to my experience or perspective, and not wanting to burden or alienate others by sharing it.

Yet lesson learned: there can be so much happiness to be had in opening yourself up to others, in letting them hold you up for a little, even when you are unsure of their reactions. And even if you will someday become a story about the gringa who loved that little cat to such an inexplicable degree.

Man of Faith, Man of Reason

Mixi (mee-shee) Arturo Lopez, a gato callejero, came into my life one evening some three months ago, when I caught him eating an entire raw chicken the family had left on the kitchen table. I was a little freaked out by him at first. What kind of ferocious mini-cat-beast had I encountered, savaging the carcass of that poor departed bird?

I soon discovered that despite his rough exterior, he had a softer side, with urgent cries at my door whenever he wanted some lovin’. For the past three months I’ve been fighting the urge to do more than give him the occasional snuggle. It’s not sustainable, I thought. I’ll be gone in 21 months and he’ll be left here, accustomed to receiving food and moral support at my doorstep. It’d be ridiculous to bring him back to the US with so many homeless animals there.

And besides, I used to comfort myself, he’s totally callejero. He knows how to take care of himself and always has. It’s wrong of me to think of him as my pet.

Nevertheless, Mixi hits me deep down, on the level of a person in need of the feeling of regular love and affection. I realized the weakness of my moral boundaries on Sunday, when he hobbled into my room on three paws, the fourth obviously injured. Despite his troubles, all he wanted to do was hunker down in my lap and purr. I was immediately overwhelmed by the love I feel for him, this tiny ferocious creature who chooses to sit in my lap and snuggle under the covers up against me. And that love quickly turned to worry about what I could do to make him better, and whether it was enough.

After an examination that thoroughly aggravated him, I realized he has some sort of burn or growth on a rear paw which pains him a lot. This was concerning in itself, but yesterday and last night, he did nothing but sleep curled up in a ball on my bed; he wouldn’t purr, just let out the occasional guttural cry. This really worried me. He would never act like this normally.

So take him to the vet an hour away, easy, right? Before he seemed seriously ill, I was questioning whether going to a vet with a street cat made sense in this cultural context, with plenty of people without basic health care... but now that moral qualms have slid away into worry, I'm not even sure I have a way to physically take him.

Today I tried to take him in the morning, but without a carrier to restrain him, he wouldn’t even tolerate the walk to the bus stop. After five minutes he jumped out of the towel-lined cardboard box he'd settled into and sprinted away. I was relieved when we met back up at home and he let me pick him up. I felt bad for having taxed his energy, but also relieved he still had it. Yet I felt so strained by the moment's demands: what to do for him? In a split decision, I had the overwhelming sense he was telling me enough was enough; so I put him down in the covered woodpile, relatively safe from today’s harsh winds and rain, and he snuggled up there. I checked two hours later and he was gone or hidden. I still don’t know where he is.

That’s (as on LOST) where our reason and faith enter, the struggle I’ve been fighting since Sunday. Should I have gotten him to the vet earlier, and at whatever cost? Should I find him and tape him in a box, trap him in a pillowcase, screaming and miserable, and pay a private taxi or beg my host father; if that is the only way to maximize his chances of surviving healthfully? Or is it better to leave him in peace, believe in his own ability to heal, let him to his own instincts to curl up and hide in a good place?

I’m so worried about him. What if last night and this morning’s behavior is a sign of a bad infection or illness in the paw, and he’ll really die without a vet? What if he suffers a lot, alone? Tomorrow I leave at 5 am for the capital, a mandatory dental appointment, and three days of 4th of July celebrations. So that more or less decides it; for now I will have to be a woman of faith. If I’m not, there’s nothing left for me.

Worries aside, I do hope everyone at home has a happy 4th. We'll certainly be celebrating here. Although I'll miss Gramom's potato salad, rumor has it they'll be all manner of United Statesian fare at the party...

Three Months of… Trash!

Yesterday marks the three-month anniversary of my arrival here in site as a Peace Corps Volunteer! Three months living with my host family, getting to feel like home here, and starting to get a clue about my work... and also three months of making trash. Trash management is a big issue in my community, as for many in Guatemala – with rampant consumerism, poorly organized public education, and ineffective municipal management, many rivers and roadsides overfill with trash.

As an Environment volunteer I’ve already done my fair share of preaching to local school kids about the issue, but as the saying goes… preaching doesn’t do much without the practice behind it. Thus it occurred to me to save my trash in these first months and make myself publicly accountable to how well I’m actually doing with the 4 R’s I talk so much about.

Data

ORGANICS!
Much to my initial excitement three months ago, my host family habitually separates their organic and inorganic trash for animal fodder, so a picture of my organic trash right now would look a lot like the family cow! We don't compost paper, so I'll put that under the false heading of ¨Inorganics¨ for now.

Drum roll please... INORGANICS!

The True Trash
This is stuff - in the black bag in the upper left hand corner and a dirty cake box - that I just didn’t want to deal with or is highly tainted with organics: It may not be honest, but I plan to take this stuff and drop it off in a public trash can in the nearest big city with a sanitary landfill the next time I’m there. I’ll report back how this goes. The dirty paper I'll give to my host family to burn in their wood stove, if they want it.

The Cheating Factor
I also need to fess up to having added my own toilet paper – some seven rolls in these three months – to the family and office bathroom wastebins. It just wasn’t something I wanted to deal with. We can assume that’s all going to a nearby barranco. I also have used plenty of styrofoam when someone offered me a snack - you just can't refuse generosity here! - and thrown it in the bin when taking it home would make people think I was an alien.

Reusable
I plan to stuff the soda bottles with the clean plastic packaging I've hoarded these three months (in the two large black bags above) and contribute this to my office’s upcoming ecoladrillo (¨eco-brick¨) drive. Cans make great pencil holders; and clean peanut butter jars for food storage. Possibilities with trash are endless.

Recyclable
Cans, plastic, and paper are recycled in the region. The town’s can-buying man passes in pick-up every Wednesday announcing his presence with much ceremony with his megaphone (yocomprolatashierrolamina...), and I plan to take advantage. My current obstacle with recycling plastic and paper is that cans are about 10x as valuable, so one person uses nowhere near enough paper nor plastic to sell it to anyone. We’re talking about possibly starting a recycling center here in town to sell to buyers in the city, but until then I’ll just be holding onto the stuff.

Analysis and Implications for Future Work
I am pretty satisfied with my trash production, at least with the small amount of stuff I plan to throw away. I seem room for improvement, though; volume-wise my three biggest sources of trash are toilet paper, canned beans, and plastic packaging.

For plastic, my goal for the next months is to try to buy more grains and bread from bulk using re-usable plastic bags; for cans, I'm going to try to make more beans from dried bulk, especially on the wood stove if I can. Really I’d need an environmental engineer to do the analysis for me and tell me whether buying canned beans, making them from dried on the gas stove, or making them on the wood stove is less environmentally costly, but nmot having access to this at the moment, I’m going to guess the more local the better.

I’m not sure I’m ready to tackle the toilet paper issue, but I’ll think about it. At least I’ll be getting some GladRags from the US next month, which in concert with the fabulous DivaCup will eliminate my waste from sanitary pads!

Thanks folks. Keep an eye out for another trash update in another three months! (Yay, something to look forward to...)

Things I Do That Make Me Strange

One thing I have realized wholehearted while living in Guatemala is that behind the many differences in behavior and attitudes in the 6.8 billion or so of our species on the planet, there exists very legitimate logic, at least to someone; that logic simply may not be clear when you're in the majority looking at the small minority. It took being in the miniscule minority for me to take a look around and realize this simple reality, and, what's more, that not everything I do may be immediately logical to those around me. In my defense, I present the following:

Things I Do That Make Me Strange**:

**I should note that strange is not necessarily perceived as all good or all bad to the folks around me. Just different, is the definite thing.

Exist with light hair, light skin, light eyes, and at least six inches of height over the average person. I try to slouch as much as I can, but generally there isn't much to do about this one.

Live in Guatemala as a single, childless, family-less, 24-year-old woman. I think Peace Corps might have been suspicious if I showed up to staging with a baby swaddled on my back. Although I would have gotten points for effort at pre-country integration.

Wear pants, although not stylish ones, and sneakers, not stylish ones, all the time. I am thinking physical and mental comfort, here; although traje and fancy-sandals are the typical for women here... we'll see - maybe for special occasions?

Wear a sombrero whenever there is a lot of sun out. In the local culture only men wear a wide-brimmed hat. Younger women sometimes wear baseball hats, but the coverage just doesn’t do it for me. Skin cancer! Please! You do see the occasional dame with an umbrella, but I feel even more out of place. I already wear pants. Might as well go full-dude.

Re-use my plastic bags and refuse plastic bags religiously in stores and markets and in the plaza. I also get weird looks for this in upstate New York, though.

Hoard my trash for recycling. What, do you want me to throw it in the river like everybody else?

Express my opinion outright, thus inciting several hours of conversation from those around me beating around the bush until I give them the secret cue that I actually meant what I said. This is one of the finer points of US and Guatemalan cultural differences: direct vs. indirect communication. More related to this one:

Make random comments about things that amuse me, and generally prattle on more than the average person.

Unintentionally state the obvious, despite it being slightly controversial or uncomfortable.

Ask an incredible number of clarifying (or perhaps what seem like prying) questions, due to the massive sense of confusion when a conversation is left completely unfinished. In the beginning I thought everyone else psychically knew what was going on, but I now realize that it’s mostly that don’t let the state of confusion or uncertainty bother them. The bottom line is: Whatever. We'll figure it out when we need to figure it out.

Eat food in front of people without offering them any/skip meals and snack all day. I am actually finding this more and more inexcusable myself. See upcoming post about sharing! It’s one of my favorite things here.

Not have the 3,000-some bus routes of Guatemala automatically memorized. I think the government downloads this info into every Guatemalan’s brain at birth.

And, obviously, I only speak Spanish.

Yet if they only knew all the stuff I keep hidden about myself! And I’m sure, if I only knew all the stuff they think is strange about me, but that they politely hide!

So needless to say, it’s been interesting trying to adapt to life here; starting out conservatively to be safe, adapting as I could, opening up as I got a better sense of which differences could be deal-breakers and which ones just make me a charming weirdo foreigner. After three months here I've adapted successfully in about 1,000 different little ways; but I've also realized that there are about 500,000 other ways that I'll never be able to. But I embrace the best case scenario; cheers to being the "weird" but friendly foreigner.

Letter to a Peace Corps Nominee

This is an excerpt from a letter I sent to a friend, who got her Peace Corps nomination a month ago!

That's fantastic you got your nomination - congratulations and thanks for getting in touch. I think the best thing I did before joining Peace Corps was to talk to as many different volunteers and read as much about other experiences as I could, so keep it up. You should check out peacecorpsjournal.com, it is a great way to get a sense for PC life. You can also read at peacecorpswiki.org, there's lots of info over there, especially on which programs leave when and such.

My perspective, for what it's worth: I have been in my site for almost three months, and Guate for six months with training. I am enjoying Guate a lot, but make no mistake, it has been a difficult experience for as an PCV, and not necessarily in the way you'd expect. Work here has been very slow, and people weren't even really sure what they expected of me. It was hard just to figure out what was going on the first month or two, and I was doing nothing other than showing up in the office each day and trying to get direction from someone; people also constantly spoke and still speak the local language in front of me, so that was isolating – although it is an amazing opportunity to learn a third language, for which I've been grateful.

Slowly I've been making friends, figuring what projects to start pursuing, and learning the local language, so that's been great. I live with a host family in a nice house, with electricity, indoor toilet, gas stove, etc. They're great, they have a 3-year old and for me that's been really fun (and tiring- kids here are pretty interested in what's going on all the time!) Everyone makes a big deal about the physical challenges of Peace Corps, but for many volunteers here there are fewer physical challenges; more it's the social and emotional challenges. I think this took me by surprise because I had envisioned in my head a remote site that was more physically challenging. I kind of wanted that, too, to prove I was tough. Overcoming emotional challenges doesn’t get as many badass points, right?

That said, the odds were against me to have a really rustic site. Most volunteers here have electricity, local access to a variety of foods, running water, an indoor toilet, and maybe even a refridgerator and hot shower. Most host families probably have at least one TV (mine has two, and a semi-functional computer). For security reasons every volunteer has a cell phone - there is good coverage in all but the most remote areas - and many volunteers can get cheap wireless internet through a national cellular-phone company.

The biggest thing is, try to be aware of your expectations, and know that you can't be prepared. You have to just roll with the punches. For example, you may be living in a big or medium town with a huge trash management problem instead of a small, tight-knit community in a remote location. Placements really run the gamut. Communicating with local people may be a lot more difficult than you thought; people may be skeptical of why you're there or just disinterested. You may have to deal with the legacy of other Peace Corps Volunteers who were either really great or deal with repairing the damage of ones who were not well-received. Your counterpart may ignore you and have no idea what you should be doing. At the same time, you can't just jump into your own projects or work without getting to know people, or else the majority of them won't work at all, or at least won't last. So you may sit around your first six months in site without feeling like you're doing anything aside from saying hi to people. It's hard to recognize it, but this isn't a waste of time. Even though you may not feel very productive, your biggest job as a PCV is to make friends, get to know the community, and get to feeling comfortable and happy in site. Without that, project success is less likely and certainly less sustainable.

To get through Peace Corps, you have to be able to go with the flow with what happens, both in what PC tells you and in what happens in your community - things will happen all the time without people telling you, or people will be late, or won't come at all to things you help organize - it's just the cultural style is less organized than in the US. At any meeting you’ll have the folks who are on time, and those who show up an hour after it’s supposed to start. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just different – for example, people are generally quicker to forgive tardiness and disorder, as well, so I tend to feel less pressured and judged when organizing public gatherings or charlas. Generally speaking, pueblo life here is much more relaxed than my former life in the US, and I like that aspect of things.

You have to learn to enjoy and appreciate the experience for what it is, living in the moments, the simple meals you cook, the people you meet, the conversations with host family, the challenges you overcome, the stomach flus you beat, the ridiculous situations and cultural experiences you just can't believe; you have to live in these things rather than the idea of ¨doing something¨ or ¨helping¨ in your community, because doing that is a slow and sometimes futile process. It is certainly possible to do great things, but you're much more likely to only significantly touch just a few lives, so it's best to try to be ok with that now. Expectations are what undo most volunteers who end up quitting.

That said, Peace Corps is an incredibly rich life experience, and apart from the lows, it has fabulous highs, too. What an amazing privelege and chance to live in another culture - all expenses paid, with fabulous health care - to learn another language (or two!), to learn how ´development´ really does and doesn't work ... It's a great opportunity, even if you will work hard socially and emotionally - and against the occasional stomach virus or parasite, too! - to earn the satisfaction of it.

OK! Really excited for you!! If you have any other questions about Guate or PC generally or medical clearance or whatever, please don't hesitate to let me know.