June 24

It’s about time I updated again!  Life in Santa Maria continues to be new and exciting.  The feria, or town fair, is next weekend so all the schools are preparing for the parade and the new central park is going to be opening that weekend as well.  My birthday was really nice- on Wednesday night, I shared tamales and chocolate with my host family and then on Thursday I was invited over to Israel’s house for tamales and chocolate.  I also made a banana-coconut bread concoction in my toaster oven that turned out really good!  They sang me happy birthday and other songs and it was a really nice meal.  It was wonderful not to have to eat alone on my birthday!  Tamales and chocolate is probably my favorite meal so far- the tamales are really good with a piece of meat and sauce inside.  They are usually eaten with fresh bread or crispy tortillas.  The chocolate is SOO good too- when I say chocolate, I mean the blocks that they melt in boiling water and drink.  It’s really rich and creamy if you add a bit of powdered milk- perfect for a cold rainy night.  That day as well I had a 4 hour meeting in the municipality so it was nice to relax for a bit after that.  I was starting to get really stressed out as well, with planning for classes and trying to do more than I have time for, so I had to cut down on my Tz’utujil classes.  It was hard because I know that my teacher really needs the money, but it wasn’t worth being so stressed out all the time.  Now I only have class 2 times a week.  There is a German volunteer in town who works in the preschool, so one day I went with her to work just to see what kind of stuff she does for a little while.  It was so cute!  The kids were absolutely adorable.  They ate breakfast there- beans and tortillas and everyone had beans all over their face.  We helped them brush their teeth afterward and played some games and then I had to leave.  My English classes are starting to get more technical so I have to look for fun ways to teach grammar.  I like our classes a lot though- we have about 4 students who always come to class and so we can joke around a lot and I can personalize the lessons a lot more.  I learn something new about teaching every day!  Sometimes it really stinks being a woman here because sometimes the guys don’t take you seriously.  I’ve been asked out several times by married men with children, and it just makes the work environment uncomfortable.  Fortunately, though, a strong “no” has deterred most of them for the time being.  Just part of being a single gringa in Guatemala!  My site mate Grace just certified three of her schools as “Healthy Schools” or “Escuelas Saludables”, so on Tuesday there was a big celebration for that.  It was so neat!  Each school did a presentation- two of the schools did traditional dances and one school sang 5 songs.  It was really sweet.  I took lots of pictures, so hopefully I will be able to post recent pictures this weekend.  I’m itching to buy a corte and guipil, but they are so expensive!  A little bit less than 1000 quetzales?  So I’m going to have to save for a while.  Other than that, I’ve been pretty busy planning for the taller for teachers that we will have.  Getting approval from the CTA, writing practice lesson plans, invitations, the agenda, lots of things to do!  There was also another clinic at the Puesto de Salud, except this time it was for diabetes.  I helped out there in the morning.  Diabetes is becoming a problem here so they want to be sure to catch any problems early on. 

Today was market day, so I got lots of fresh fruits and veggies!  It has to be my favorite day of the week.  I usually have smoothies on market days too because of all the fruit (watermelon smoothies are my favorite so far!) and now there are sweet potatoes, or camote, in the market so I’m excited about making some kind of bread with those.  I can’t make sweet potato muffins, but I’m going to try and see how it turns out if I just make it all in one pan.  I also got the Mennonite cookbook More with Less for my birthday from mom and dad (thanks so much!!) which is wonderful!  It has simple recipes with simple foods, most of which I can find in the market, so today I’m going to try out a broccoli stem/celery dish.  Most of the recipes don’t call for stuff that you can only find in the supermarket, which is great because it’s a big trip to the nearest one.  I don't know why I'm so obsessed with all the fresh food here, maybe because I survived on pickled okra, frozen veggies, eggs, and grilled cheese last fall in Georgia when I cooked for myself!

Also, Wal-Mart is officially in Guatemla!  It has been here for a while now, under the name of Hiper Pais, but they officially changed the name to Wal-Mart recently.  It’s taking over the world!  They are the closest place I’ve found with peanut butter though, so they are good for that and spices/specialty foods that you can’t find anywhere else.  The Wal-Mart nearest me is in Quetzaltenango, though, so I only go there if I really, really, really, need peanut butter since it’s about 2 hours away!

First two weeks of June

Wednesday, June 1

Washing my socks by hand, I came to the conclusion that dryers do, in fact, eat socks.  I have been here for 5 months (I can’t believe it!) and just recently lost my first sock.  At home, whenever I do a load, I almost always end up with an uneven amount of socks!  It’s hard to manage washing clothes, work, fighting the mold, integrating into my community, exercising, and then having time to spend with my friends!  I’ve been very busy lately, with lots of different things!  I haven’t really been focusing on the environment lately, so I need to do that more, but I helped out at another gynecology clinic on Tuesday and today I taught 6 English classes in one of the schools and then gave a charla about recycling to the women’s group.  One of the ladies suggested that since they are learning to sew on machines, that I teach them how to make reusable bags that they can take to the market so they don’t have to use so many plastic bags.  So that’s my next project- hopefully I can collaborate with the sewing teacher so that they can learn that.  It’s amazing how far a simple greeting in Tz’utujil goes…it helps so much when getting to know people!  They either smile because I’m trying to speak Tz’utujil or they smile because of my pronunciation, and I’m fine with either kind of smile!  Today was really funny- during recess at the school, a youth group from Georgia came to work with the kids.  I had to make a phone call so I was going outside to call when all these gringos came walking up to school.  They stopped and greeted me in English and the first thing that I could think of to say because I was so surprised was “This is weird!”  And it was.  They came to play and read parts of the Bible to the kids and then they left just as quickly as they came. 

Thursday, June 2

One thing that is interesting here is that when you are sick, it’s always because of the cold.  It’s not because of bacteria or germs, but the cold.  For example, yesterday my throat was hurting and I was having trouble talking, and that afternoon I came home and washed some clothes.  My host mom told me I shouldn’t have done that because the cold water was making me sick.  Also she told me I shouldn’t shower while I’m sick because the water might be too cold and make me sicker.  Even though I’m sicker today, I feel a lot better than yesterday!  I was really stressed out yesterday.  And now that I can’t talk, today seems to be the day where everyone wants to come in and have a conversation.  But that’s okay with me…it’s nice when people pop in!  My Spanish has gotten a lot better since I’ve gotten here- I use pronouns a lot more now, and can even use past subjunctive without thinking about it sometimes!  Teaching English and learning Tz’utujil is also helping me with my Spanish because it’s kind of like learning Spanish backwards.

There have been so many times here where I wish I had my camera so bad!  Like today when I was walking to one of the schools, I saw the cutest pig tied to a fence!  It was all furry and cream colored with big brown spots.  Another time I wished I had my camera was when a pick up from the rural communities came by full of men in traje tipica- they were wearing the plaid skirt things with beautiful bright colored shirts and were all smiling so big!  One time it was really misty in the afternoon and you couldn’t really see anything except for sillouhettes of things and in front of me all I could see was the dark figure of a man riding a horse coming out of the mist.  It was so cool.  I felt like I was in a whole different time period! 

Sunday, June 12

So, a lot happened in the past week!  I wrote my first invitations in Spanish to a meeting, presented my ideas about an environmental education program to the three directors of “high school”, and met with my supervisor.  My visit with my supervisor went really well.  He gave me a lot of good ideas, and we met with the directors of secondaria, which is kind of a mix between high school and middle school, and are going to do several workshops with the teachers, beginning in July.  So right now I am working on designing the first workshop, writing formal invites to all the teachers, and getting the school superintendent’s approval. 

I also helped out at another gynecology clinic here in Santa Maria- there are a lot of them right now because the students from the university who are doing their residencies here have to collect lots of data about the number of infections and things like that.  That was the last one though.  A group of pre-med students from the United States came to observe as well, and it was funny to hear them talk.  Most of them were sophomores in college and were talking about finding a husband in Guatemala and living in Guatemala City.  For lunch, I split lengua de vaca (cow tongue!) with Enma, one of the student doctors here.  It was really good actually- I liked it a lot!

English classes are going pretty well- we only have about 4 students, but those 4 students come to almost every class so it’s nice to have a steady attendance rate.  Last week I made cookies with Wendy, who is one of the doctors here.  We also had yucca, which was really yummy!  On Sunday I went over to Israel’s house to just talk to them and he told me a lot about the history of Santa Maria.    It’s really strange because here, in this one small area, they speak Tz’utujil, but we are surrounded by Quiche speaking communities.  Apparently Santa Maria was settled by people who came over from Santiago Atitlan, which is a Tz’utujil speaking town.  We had spaghetti with meat sauce for lunch, and I got to help grind the meat.  I’d never seen a meat grinding machine before but you just push the meat in one side, turn the crank, and it comes out ground the other side! 

This weekend I went to Panajachel for my first salsa dancing class!  I’m trying to take advantage of the fact that I’m in a Central American country and am going to try and learn salsa while I’m here.  It was really fun…I’m preparing for when I see Uncle Charlie the next time.  I also got to visit with almost everyone from our group, which was amazing!! We all went to dinner and it was so good to be all together and catch up on everything.  It was like a cheesy Olive Garden commercial where the family gets together over dinner, except there are no Olive Gardens here.

Friday, May 20

What started out as a terrible week ended up being a fantastic week!  I’ve been super busy, but that’s a good thing!  I bought a (really!) cheap guitar since I had some money left over from last month and this month, and Justo, my neighbor in Santa Clara, has started teaching me to play.  I also had enough money to pay June’s rent in advance, which was nice.  So guitar has been really fun (although my hands really hurt!) but it’s another goal to work towards and will help liven up the rainy days.  I also had my first classes of Tz’utujil, and can now greet people (Saqiri’ - Buenos dias, Xe’q’ij- Buenas tardes, and xokaq’aa- Buenas noches) as well as say how are you and my name is.  Afterwards my throat hurt though from making all the different sounds!  My teacher is really nice though and was really prepared- he teaches Tz’utujil regularly, so he’s got it down.  On Wednesday I helped out with another gynecology clinic and got to talk with the women more and got to know the doctors more.  The universities make their students do a residency in the puesto de saluds, or community health posts, in rural areas for 6 months so it was interesting to hear the doctors from Guatemala city talking about how different life was in rural areas.  We all got lunch from the local comedor, which is kind of like a cheap restaurant with only a few things on the menu, and it was sooooo good because it was the first real food I had eaten besides bread since I got sick the weekend before.  I was also invited to dinner this week by a guy I met in a tienda.  His wife prepared a nice meal and I met their two kids.  He teaches English and wanted to practice English, so he spoke English and I corrected him while I spoke Spanish and he corrected me.  He also said his wife wants a friend, so I am going over to their house again on Sunday to help her make lunch and then have our “club de conversacion”.   

Friday, May 27

Last Sunday I went over to Israel’s house, or the guy I met in the tienda.  I talked to his wife for a while she got the baby ready for the day and then helped Israel with his English while he helped me with my Tz’utujil.  I love the way people speak in this area because they use lots of different tones when they’re speaking, kind of like singing.  They talk slower than people from the city too, which helps me out.  For example when greeting people, instead of a short Buenos dias, it’s more of a long bueenoos dIIIas seño (seño is what young women/women teachers are called).  Israel is really proud of being Maya, and so he and his wife are also teaching me a lot about the Mayan culture here.  I can’t wait to wear traje tipica but I feel like I have to gain more confianza with the people before I do that!  This week I’ve been working on going to schools and getting to know more people.  Me and Grace, my site mate, teach English every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday (we only have 6 students so far, but it’s fun) and I have Tz’utujil classes Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, so I have been busy with all that as well!  On Thursday I went with Grace to one of the schools in the more rural communities, Chuipoj, to introduce myself and get to know the kids.  They are all so cute! Also, I greeted a woman in Tz’utujil this week and she understood me!  I didn’t understood what she said after “Xe’q’ij xten” but it was still exciting! 

Can't believe it's already May 17th!

People showed up to my english class today!!!!  That was really, really good since I've been having kind of a rough time lately.  I was sick to my stomach for the first time since I've been here, which was HORRIBLE.  Hopefully I'm getting better though, although I haven't tried eating anything besides bread and bananas yet.  I also had a bad day at work on Monday which just kind of pushed me over the edge, but now I'm doing much better!  That day motivated me to take more action and more initiative.  So today I worked really hard to finish researching about environmental education programs and have decided instead of waiting for the director's meeting, which I don't know when it is, I'm just going to go to different schools and present my ideas and introduce myself and research the school system.  Today I also made up questions to ask each school to get a feel for how the schools work.  Hopefully I'll get to go out on Friday because tomorrow and Thursday I am helping out at the gynecology clinic again.  But first, Mother's Day.

So, El Dia de Las Madres was on Tuesday, the 10th.  I woke up at 4 a.m. on Tuesday to what I thought was a gunshot.  Now I don't want to scare anyone, because I don't think it happens in my town, but lynching still exists in Guatemala.  Sometimes in the pueblos there are no police or people don't trust the police so they take justice into their own hands and form mobs and terrible things are done.  So I thought that was what was going on, except the mob had guns.  But then I started noticing music in the street and there were firecrackers, so my panic settled down and I was just confused after that.  It turned out to be a bunch of kids in the street celebrating mother's day by waking everyone up and playing music.  After that hullaballoo, there were luncheons at schools and celebrations at schools for mother's day.  That night I went with students from the school I've taught at, La Salle, to serenade mom's around the town.  The music students led the whole school in a song on the doorsteps of different mothers.  It was really sweet!  They sang this song: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpEmdThN0Mg).  On Thursday the municipality held an event for all the mom's in town.  Many women came, over 200, lots of them bringing their children with them.  It was a nice ceremony with speeches in Tz'utujil and Spanish by the mayor, the head of the oficina de la mujer, and a woman from and NGO that works with empowerment.  I had to go around and pin a note on each of their shirts, which was kind of awkward, but it helped me get to know a lot more women.  The note was from the municipality thanking the mom's for all their support and helping to develop the town and everything they do for their families.  Then afterwards, we served cake and coffee to all of them, which was chaos.  I was at the cake table, helping put the cake on plates, but then some women got out of their seats cause they needed to go home and they started crowding the table.  Icing was everywhere and afterwards the gym was a mess!  But it was really fun to see the women get recognized for all the things they do because they work so hard!

Then I got sick on Friday and now I am way behind on cleaning my house, laundry, knitting, and all my other projects!  I did get to wash my underwear today finally though (thank goodness!).  Today I also met a guy in a tienda who speaks really good English and wants to practice so we are going to do a language exchange, I hope.  His wife invited me over for dinner on Thursday, so yay for making friends!  Poco a poco (little by little) is my motto for my Peace Corps service so far.  Also one quote that I have on my wall from the book The Tao of Pooh is "A thousand mile journey starts with one step" which pretty sums up the attitude I have needed to take so far.

First Week of May

I have hot water now!  Which is really, really nice.  Now I am not as smelly anymore!  

Last week me and my site mate Grace tried to start English classes but no one showed up, so we will have to try again and publicize more or something.  I taught twice last week, and both days went really well.  One day we talked about the water cycle and did some water activities and then the other day we talked about recycling, if they would recycle if there was a program here in Santa Maria, and then made bracelets out of newspaper.  I also tried to explain packaging and how that is a big part of waste and how they can reduce their waste by making an effort to buy things with less packaging, but I don’t think that idea really caught on.  Maybe it’s because they don’t buy the food for their families or because there aren’t that many options where they can choose to buy something or not based on its packaging.  I like the kids a lot- it’s about 14 kids who are ages 13-16 and are just a lot of fun to work with.  I still have so much to learn about teaching and am basically just going by trial and error right now, but I am slowly starting to figure out what works.  One of the hardest things to figure out how to do is how to teach with limited resources.  I’ve been buying paper and stuff for my classes so far, but I know I can’t do that all the time and I can’t ask the students to buy school materials because I don’t know what their financial situation is at home.  They all speak Kiche too, so sometimes they speak in Kiche to each other, which makes me want to learn Kiche just so I know what they’re saying.

I went out to eat on Saturday night with some other volunteers and had lo mein with beef in it, which was soooooo good!  I hadn’t had Asian food in a while.  I am having a problem fruit flies right now because my fruits and veggies are just in hanging baskets right now and attracting lots of flies, but this week I am going to give in and get a refrigerator so I can save food for longer and don’t have to worry about it going bad.  I made pupusas this weekend successfully, which is really exciting for me!  I’ve tried making them before but have ended up with masa, or dough, everywhere in the kitchen trying to flatten them with my hands.  So I got a tortilla press, which is just two pieces of metal that you press down to flatten the dough instead of patting it in between your hands and shaping it, which I have tried many times to do but have failed miserably.

I thought I might just try to explain a typical scene you might see in Santa Maria; I have grown accustomed to it but when I talk to other people they are really interested in it.  In the streets, you might see a pick up go by full of people in the bed of the truck, going to one of the other communities near by.  You could see an older man in the picop wearing traje tipico, which for men in Santa Maria is a bright woven shirt, usually orange (or sometimes pink), with a brown flannel looking blanket tied around his waist  like a skirt that goes down to about the knees.  As you get out into the more rural areas, you could see horses or cows grazing on the side of the road while their owners are out doing something in the campo.  People use the horses to carry huge loads of lena [firewood] back into town and I feel so bad for them sometimes because they always look so tired!  You might pass a woman and her children, collecting lena to carry back on their backs.  It amazes me how much firewood these women and children can carry.  It’s not uncommon to see women in traje carrying their babies on their backs too, or even seeing the younger kids carrying the baby on their back while the mom is busy or has another kid on her back.  Not many people are in the street, but the people you do see will always greet you with “Buenos dias” or “adios” and you should greet them as well, or else you might be seen as the angry gringa. The occasional chucho  with one eye will be curled up on the corner and women walk by carrying tubs on their head with laundry in it, stuff from the market, or who knows what else.  They can even have conversations with each other while balancing these huge tubs on their head.  In the afternoon, you’ll see kids walking home from school.  If it’s market day, the plaza in front of the muni will be full of people selling fruits, veggies, laundry detergent, sugar, fish, chicken, eggs, and other random things like pots and CDs.

It’s been hot during the day lately and sunny, so people are usually talking about the abnormal weather, how it needs to rain because they just planted this year’s corn, or their kids.

Friday, April 29

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!

Email from Rosemary

Hey mom and dad!...

Over the weekend I went to visit my other host family, which went really well, and then on Monday it was a holiday here (World Work Day or something) and so I just cleaned my house, studied Spanish, and finished reading Help [The Help?], which another volunteer lent me.  It was so good!  

Today was an eye opening day.  I went with my counterpart and volunteers from another organization to do a survey in the poorest communities of Santa Maria about their attitudes towards the forest. It was crazy to hear how much these families lived on per month- one family of five lived on less than $118 per month.  None of them made more then they spent either, so most of the families were in debt. One of the woman interviewed is really active in the womans group here so we decided to work on a project  to help out.  She said the main problems with receiving outside help is that people just come and train them and dont give them any help to get started or train them in things that arent useful or they just give them gifts without training.  

Love,
Rosemary