Wow! I’ve got a lot to write about.
Things are going pretty well in Santa Maria, slow as usual, but there is nothing wrong with that! It’s learning to adjust to the pace of things that is really hard.
I am still working on designing an environmental education program for the schools, but the more I research the more I find out I have to do and the more complicated it gets. I am using a book that I found online and that was free to download by Judy Braus called Environmental Education in the Schools: Creating a Program That Works! It’s a book developed specifically for Peace Corps volunteers working with environmental education. It’s a very helpful starting point considering I’ve never taken any education classes and brought up some good points that I didn’t think about. For example, I should have done a more in depth study of the school system and schools here before I started. Next week though, I hope to start observing classes and interviewing teachers and students to find out more about the strengths and weaknesses of the school system here.
My site mate and I are planning on starting English classes next week as well since we have both been asked by various people to continue the English classes that were given by the previous volunteers. My fellow trainees are all going at different paces- some have to work on the weekends, have multiple counterparts, or came into a project already in place so they have a lot more work, and some are like me where we’re still trying to figure out where to start.
One of the biggest problems about development that I’ve learned about since I’ve been here is the attitude of dependence. This is not just a problem in Guatemala, but in countries all over the world. There are so many organizations, non-governmental and governmental, that just give the communities things like a landfill, or water filters and then they don’t train people on how to use them or care for them that people just become used to hand-outs. Behavior change is definitely one of the biggest obstacles I’ve come up against so far.
Other than learning more about environmental education, though, I’ve been going to several meetings this week. The one yesterday was in Sololá with all the Peace Corps in the department and it was an update from the Country Director and head of security about safety issues in Guatemala. Since rainy season has started (and oh yes, has it started) and we are in an area very prone to landslides, they warned us about any transportation issues we may have. The bad thing is that after Hurricane Agatha last year, they still haven’t repaired some of the roads or they did a sloppy job repairing them, and now rainy season has started so that makes them even more dangerous. But we do have an emergency action plan, so no worries! It is also election year, so they made us very aware of any violence that may occur (I am so glad Santa Maria is such a peaceful little place!). Today (Thursday) I went to a COMUDE meeting, or Consejo Municipal de Desarrollo, which is a meeting of all the leaders and representatives of the different communities of Santa Maria, members from the Muni, and members of the NGO’s that work in Santa Maria. It was really long but nice to learn about all the projects that are going on in Santa Maria, the state of the different communities (at least one community does not have running water), and the different organizations that are working here. There are various organizations here that work with nutrition and especially with little kids since Guatemala has such a high rate of malnutrition.
One thing that is crucial to doing any kind of project in Guatemala is developing confianza with your community. Confianza is basically a trusting relationship where people feel comfortable coming up to you and talking to you about the communities problems and are open to listening to your ideas. I’ve been debating back and forth about whether to take Kiche or Tz’utujil classes for a while now and a woman I met brought up a good point- some people in the community only speak Tz’utujil and it is harder to gain confianza with them when you only speak Spanish, or for many people Spanish is also their second language. So I think that is the deciding factor that made me want to take Tz’utujil, now the hard part is finding a teacher that meets Peace Corps requirements. The fact that I’m a foreigner already makes some people wary of me, so it would help if I at least knew some phrases in the official language of Santa Maria. I was walking with my host mom to Santa Clara and these little girls were staring at me and she jokingly said to them that I was going to steal them, which is a fear that many Guatemalans have- that foreigners have come to kidnap their children.
An attitude that many people have here, and that they preached in the church, is fatalism. Things happen because God wanted them to, and we are in these circumstances because it’s part of His plan and there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s hard for me to understand because it inhibits people from taking action, but I think it also helps people believing that things are going to be taken care of by God.
Anyways, Semana Santa! That was a fun week. Work was so slow, the office didn’t even open on Wednesday. We had vacation Thursday and Friday, and on Wednesday night two of my friends, Ben and Brandon, came to visit. On Thursday and Friday we went to the lake, but it started raining Thursday and Friday as well. We came back and went to Justo’s town, Santa Clara, where they have the famous toronjeada every year. Basically there’s two teams of guys, each with about 20 on each team, and the town provides each team with easily over 200 unripe oranges (so they are almost green). They get in the big town square and just throw oranges at each other for about an hour. It was so much fun! It rained the whole time, and Ben, Brandon, and Justo all participated in the battle. It’s pretty brutal cause oranges hurt! It was fun though because the whole community came out to watch, and I got soaked!
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