Third Week in Site

This past week has been really fun!  I participated in a sewing workshop with some of the women in town, which was really fun.  We learned how to use sewing machines that work by using a pedal instead of electricity.  The first day was spent just learning how to use the pedal since all the machines were new and the pedals were really stiff.  It was really funny because all of us were huffing and puffing trying to get the machines going!  The muni bought about 10 machines for the women to use so that they may be able to earn some extra income or make clothes for their family.  We never actually sewed anything- just worked on making lines and curves and everything and then next month the trainer will come back for another week.  The trainer was really nice and interesting to talk to.  She’s with an organization that sends her out to give workshops about all kinds of stuff- sewing, crochet, knitting, baking, etc.  I made peanut butter cookies one day for snack for everyone and was asked to teach them how to bake, so hopefully that can be something I can do.  Also recycled art is really big here, so I might see if the women would be interested in learning how to make bracelets and purses out of chip bags and things like that to sell in the market.  The only downside is that there are no tourists here and I don’t think any locals would buy them so they would have to sell the goods in a more touristy town.   

Besides doing the sewing taller (workshop), I worked some more on my presentation and then on Friday went to Panajachel, which is a really touristy town on the lake, for an eco-festival put on by an NGO called Pura Vida.  They are the ones who invented the eco-ladrillo and bottle constructions and they work a lot with solid waste management around the lake.  At the festival they had all kinds of eco-friendly goods for sale and lots of info about composting and vermiculture.  I learned a lot more about worms so I think soon I may go visit a vermiculture specialist in Chimaltenango to see how he does it.  I went with Justo, who is another volunteer who lives in Santa Clara, the town right next to me.  It was really fun to get out of town and go see the Lake, which was beautiful even though there are so many hippies and tourists everywhere there!  It made me miss the beach a lot.   

I finally started cooking for myself, which is really nice.  Tonight I made dobladas, which are like empanadas, with fried plantains.  It was really yummy!!  Now I just have a lot of dishes to do.  I’m finding it’s really hard to find time to do everything I need to do!  Laundry takes at least two hours to do, and there’s lots of dust everywhere so I have to sweep a lot.  There are also tons of cobwebs in my house so tomorrow I’m going to try to do some spring cleaning and try to mold proof my casita before rainy season kicks in.  There’s already a little bit of mold creeping up some of the walls, so if anyone knows how to get rid of mold just let me know!  Peace Corps has made me so domestic!  I’ve been sewing and baking and washing clothes and cleaning a lot this past week.  And I’m working on turning a dress I found at a PACA into an apron.  I found a free podcast with snippets of Ricky Gervais’ comedy bits which are really funny, and I like listening to those at night when I’m cooking or having a coffee or something like that.  Even though I’m in Guatemala and the coffee here is SO good and is exported all over the world, I drink instant because the good stuff is too strong for me!  Lots of people in the campo, or rural areas, drink café con cereales, which is kind of like a really weak, watery coffee with barley and other grains in it.  I’m not a big fan.   

This week is the beginning of the Semana Santa, so the town is getting prepared for the celebration at the end of the week.  We have Thursday and Friday off, and on Friday in the town square the Catholic Church is building a couple platforms for the dramatization they are going to perform on Friday.  In Santa Clara, they do something called the toronjeada, which is where a bunch of people, some who are drunk, just throw oranges at each other.  That’s one of the major reasons why there has been a rise in the evangelical church here.  It’s about 50% evangelical and 50% Catholic.  A lot of people are evangelical because they think the Catholic Church is too loose with its rules- it allows people to drink, for example.  The Evangelical Church doesn’t, and so that’s why some people prefer that faith- it’s a lot stricter.  The family I live with is evangelical, and they are very, very religious.  They go to culto, or church service, every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday for at least two hours.  

 I apologize for all the grammar and spelling mistakes in my blogs, by the way.  It’s pretty much just a stream of words running from my brain to the page so that may be why I’m getting worse at spelling and grammar.   

Lately the shower has seemed colder than usual- I woke up on Saturday morning to take a shower, and it was so cold I could see my breath!  It definitely woke me up though and makes me take shorter showers.  Plus, when you get out, the air around you feels  a lot warmer than it did before you took a shower so that’s another plus. 

Sewing Class

I am also doing some sewing!  I started the sewing workshop on Monday and it was very funny.  The machines we're using are like electric ones except they are powered by a pedal instead of electricity.  It was really hard to get the machines going because they were new and the pedals were really stiff so we were all sweating and our legs got tired.  But it was fun! 

Its been hard to get a lot of work done lately since the schools have been on strike since the beginning of last week and all the teachers are in Guatemala city.

(from an email sent by Rosemary...) 

Second Week at Site

My mind is always thinking about trash now since that’s my main job, trash management education.  Being somewhere that doesn’t have a management system in place makes you really really think about how much trash you produce and how bad it exactly is for our environment.  It makes you think more about packaging, plastic bags, and everything.  I am trying to get a hold of some red wrigglers so I can try vermiculture in my casita and have a little compost and with the stuff I can’t compost make eco-bricks.  They are a really cool way to use trash in a good way and not burn it or throw it in the campo.  Basically you take a plastic soda bottle that still has a lid, and stuff it with trash like chip bags, plastics, and other inorganic trash so that it is really solid.  You can end up fitting a lot of stuff in one soda bottle!  Then once you have enough, you can use them to build different structures like schools, latrines, and recycling centers.  Several other Peace Corps volunteers have done projects like this and it has turned out really successful!  I know it may sound kind of crazy, but it’s a way to manage trash when there are no landfills or a trash pickup service. 

On Wednesday I went for a hike with several of the guys I work with to the site where the landfill and recycling center is going to be.  It is so beautiful out in the rural area!  There are HUGE avocado trees that grow in the wild and look like they would be great climbing trees.  It was fun going with those guys because they are all really funny- David and Hugo, who work in the Planning office, both were wearing dress pants and nice shoes, and then Elmer and Don Bernabe always dress like vaqueros, or cowboys, with HUGE belt buckles and really pointy boots.  Don Bernabe even had on his sombrero.  Bernabe is really religious and asked me how to say a lot of things in English while Elmer filled me in on where the best places to buy good quality boots are. 

I also made oatmeal-chocolate cookies in my toaster oven for my host-brother’s birthday on Thursday!  It was so nice to have my room smell like cookies and be all warm and toasty.  Even though I didn’t have all the ingredients, and I used fake M&Ms instead of regular chocolate chips and put in honey instead of brown sugar, they still turned out pretty tasty!  I’m looking forward to making another batch this weekend for my co-workers with the leftover ingredients.  The nice thing about here is that you can buy eggs one by one, so you don’t have to buy a whole dozen at once.  You can do the same with sticks of margarine, pounds of flour, even cinnamon!  On Thursday I gave my first charla here to 16 year olds at La Salle, a private school run by brothers.  Apparently there are schools like La Salle all over the world, even in the United States.  They were founded by a rich French guy or something like that.  I will look it up first before I try to explain it more.  Anyways, my charla was over organic compost, and their assignment is to make little composts in 3 liter bottles that they find.  Hopefully it works!  It was really fun and the kids paid attention most of the time.

I have slowly but surely tried to wean myself off of pan dulce and am now down to 1 a day.  I’ve started eating mangos a lot though- you can buy bags of mango slices in the street for 1 quetzal and so that’s usually my before lunch snack.  Hopefully I will get a cutting board and knife this weekend so I can just start buying mangos and make my own mango slices so I don’t use as many bags.  But it’s really refreshing!  And sometimes there are these weird spices on them- like a mixture of salt and something called pepita and it tastes really good.  My stomach has been hurting lately from eating too many beans and tortillas.  I think they’re both kind of hard to digest in large quantities, and my host mom doesn’t put garlic or anything in the beans to make them smoother, so I’m excited to start cooking for myself next week!  Since it is mango season, mango chicken is first on my list to make.  I ate my first pollocriollo yesterday.  This is what I understood: Pollocriollo is basically chicken you raise yourself at home.  It’s fed corn, tortillas, and other kitchen scraps while the chicken she usually buys is fed something like a Purina mix for chickens.  We had a rooster for a while and then my host mom killed it for her son’s birthday and made a stew with it.  It was really good but I’ll be honest- couldn’t really tell a huge difference between pollocriollo and the pollo that she usually buys from the meat lady. Some people here though only eat pollocriollo and it’s something that people eat on holidays or celebration days.

Earlier on this week I met with the CTA, who is kind of like the school superintendent for Santa Maria, and talked to him about going to the schools and doing educational programs for them.  He said that was a good idea and that I should come up with a plan and a curriculum to present to the principals at their next meeting in May.  I’m really excited to come up with a curriculum about waste management but it’s a daunting task at the same time!  I really want whatever I do to be sustainable, so I would love to leave behind a curriculum the teachers could continue teaching.  So that’s what I’m working on now as well as trying to get together English classes again.  The volunteer before me taught English and I’ve had a lot of people come up to me and ask me to start the classes again because everyone wants to go to the States.  I probably won’t start them until after Semana Santa, which is the week before Easter.  Next week I’m going to attend a sewing workshop with the women’s group here to get to know the women better.  The only problem is, they usually all speak Tz’utujil.  I went to their meeting on Monday, and it was all in Tz’utujil.  Very confusing. 

First week at site

This week has been very busy but very interesting!  I’m getting to know my community little by little, which helps a lot.  On Monday, I helped paint some trash barrels to put in the schools and got to know my counterpart a little better.  It’s very difficult because we have to remember that our views are seen as the views of the Peace Corps as well, and so when people ask us difficult questions we should defer them.  For example, my counterpart was asking me what I thought of Barack Obama, immigration in the United States, and drugs.  It was very hard not to state my opinions, but I got to know Elmer more and he’s a pretty funny guy.  He’s never at the office, which is sometimes hard, but at the same time makes it easy for me to make my own schedule.  There’s another guy who works in the same office, Santiago, with CONAP.  He’s only here on Mondays and Fridays to deal with land issues and then the rest of the week he walks the forests, looking for people who are illegally taking plants and animals.  The law here is for every tree you cut down, you have to plant 10 more.  It’s a good law, but hard to enforce!  Santiago is awesome- he seems like a pretty tough guy on the outside, but on the inside he’s a funny marimba loving family guy.   

On Tuesday, I went with Grace, another volunteer in my site who’s working with health in the schools, to some schools in the more rural areas of Santa Maria.  We had to go in picop, or pick up, and ride in the back holding on for dear life.  I thought chicken buses were crazy, but that was before I rode in a pickup!  The roads are in terrible condition too- I definitely won’t be going on those roads during rainy season.  We went out to a Kiche only speaking community and went to the school there where she did an activity with the kids in Spanish and the teachers translated that to Kiche for the kids.  It was a fun morning and then we went to the market in Santa Clara, our sister town, where the market is bustling on Tuesdays and Saturdays.  I’m starting to slowly gather stuff for my house and hopefully this weekend I’ll get a toaster oven.   

That afternoon I went to a meeting with my counterpart (for three hours!) and got a better idea of what the muni is trying to do in terms of the environment.  They are currently building a landfill and recycling collection center so that they can start doing a trash pickup and have placed bins in the schools to separate trash into inorganic and organic.  I volunteered myself for something at the health post here just to get to know the community without actually knowing what I was volunteering for.  I was surprised to find out it was a gynecology clinic where they were giving PAP smears!  It turned out to be really fun though.  I worked with Santiago all day there, taking down the names and information of the women who did the exam and Santiago translated from Kiche to Spanish for me.  It was a challenge writing down all the names of the indigenous women!  For example, some last names I had to spell were Tox, Itaix, Tzaj, Chavajay, etc.  And I’m pretty sure I even spelled those wrong, but what made it even harder was that some of the women didn’t know how to write so they couldn’t tell me if I was spelling it right or not.  Santiago helped a lot though, and I got to know the nurses and some ladies from the Women’s Office in the muni.   

Today (Friday), I want to talk to my counterpart.  I will have to get him to give me a copy of his schedule so I know when he is going to be in the office and when he isn’t.  From what I have gathered so far, most of the time it will be me taking the initiative to introduce myself to the schools and other people I will be working with and developing my own projects, and then running it by Elmer to make sure I have his support. 

Things with my host family are a little awkward - the mom sells Avon products, and so she wants me to buy some of her things.  Who knew that Avon now sells kitchenware and sheets!  The excuse that I don’t have a lot of money doesn’t work because to her, I have a lot and I am looking to buy things like pots and silverware.  I just can’t afford Avon brand pots!  So that’s been kind of difficult, but other than that things have been fine.  I talked to the other volunteer who lived there about it and she said that that’s just how the situation is, that instead of integrating into the family like I did in Ciudad Vieja, here it is more of a renter-landlord relationship.  I came back and the grandmother is raising turkeys now to sell and there’s a cute kitten who always tries to get in my house.  My addiction to pan dulce is now very serious.  One day I didn’t have it and I was craving some sweet bread so bad!  I have had to limit myself to two a day.  I am still eating with the family, but that has turned into them serving me in the living room and then they stay in the kitchen.  I think after this month I will start cooking for myself so I can try to have a more balanced diet, or at least just eat more dairy because now that’s pretty non-existent in my diet.  I’ve been getting used to powder milk though because I can’t drink the raw milk that people sell.