The Site Visit

A picture I found of my village.

So this week I saw the village where I´ll be spending the next two years of my life, for the first time.

On Tuesday, we had our counterpart day, where I met the director of one of the schools where I´ll be working and the superintendant of the elementary schools that will be managing me. It was an exhausting day of workshops and discussions where Peace Corps did its best to explain my role as a volunteer and the program and set us up for success. Mid-morning the next day, I left, with my counterparts and the two other girls going to Toto, to make the journey out to my site.

It wasn´t as long as expected, only 4 hours by pullman (the nicer style of bus, similar to a Greyhound)-- up into the mountains of the Western Highlands-- to arrive at Cuatro Caminos, a transportation hub of the main highways that take you all 4 directions in Guatemala. From there, it was only about a 20 minute ride by camioneta into my town. After a few miles, we left the Inter-American highway that runs all the way to Alaska, and turned onto a very bumpy dirt road that wound its way into the little valley where my village is nestled, up against a mountain ridge.

The town is surrounded by corn fields and farm lands. Plots of corn are scattered throughout the town center and the hills are smattered with the little houses of the farmers. The surrounding hills and mountains are blanketed with pine trees, a testament to the colder climate and higher altitude (no palm trees here!). It was a pretty town, secluded but very accesible (by Guatemalan standards), small but with sufficient resources to be comfortable (internet, many tiendas, even a small library). There are buses that run directly from my town to the city of Xela, a lively and developed city, which is central to where most of the volunteers in my group will be working. Yet, I am the first and only volunteer in my town. It will be "my town", and I'm excited to be their first exposure to the Peace Corps. Yet I will be able to escape easily when I need a break. It's truly ideal.

The director of the institute had already set up a living situation for me with one of the teachers and his family in a house right next to the town center. The teacher and his brothers had have worked in the States, and the difference in this house from the one I live in now was drastic. They were two 2-story houses alongside each other, connected to each other and to two stores (a hardware store and a traje fabric store). One of the houses is mostly vacant because the brother is currently working in the States, and in this house I will be living. My bedroom is upstairs. It has a queen size comfortable bed and a bay window surrounded by exposed brick. (Peace Corps or Posh Corps?) I will also have my own rooftop where I can look down on the whole surrounding town. There is a common living space and private bathroom on the same floor as the bedroom, but they´re currently being used for processing maiz to make the tamalitos they eat with every meal. The living room was filled with bundles of corn to be husked and the bathtub was full of corn stalks-- so for now I have to make the long journey down my stairs and up the family´s stairs to the bathroom. But rather than bucket baths in the temescal, I´ll have a hot shower (which felt amazing after 2 months without). This family clearly enjoys a different living standard than the one I live with now.

Still there are similarities. There are around 9 people living there-- the teacher and his pregnant wife and their daughter, his sister-in-law and her 2 year old daughter and infant baby, the mother, the father, and a couple people I have yet to identify. The women all wear traje very similar to the other family, and rather than tortillas they serve tamalitos (ground up maize molded into hot patties) with every meal (a nice change). They still do all the washing in the pila and most cooking with firewood, though their kitchen is much nicer with tile-lined walls and a brick chimey rather than rickety wooden walls and no chimney in the other and they even have a refrigerator.

I know I would have been fine with simpler conditions, as I have been fine for the past two months. But I will enjoy the higher comfort level, and especially the additional privacy. I will have a lot of space to myself and separation. I´ll be preparing my own breakfast and lunch, but I´ll take dinner with the family. I´m looking forward to having more control over my life.

Besides getting to know the family, my director took me around the first day meeting everyone and their brother-- the mayors, the health officials, the directors and teachers of all the schools, store owners, committee members, you name it. The next day I left my town and went to San Francisco, the larger town of which mine is an aldea, and met all the officials there, including the Catholic priest. I also visited the three other communities and the three other institutes where I´ll be working and met many of the students. One of the schools even hosted a surprise assembly, and I had to give an impromptu speech in front of all the students an teachers I hadn´t met yet.

By the end of the third day, my head felt stuffed to the brim with jumbled up puzzle pieces of Spanish words of thanks and welcome and introductions. The last night, I spent a lonely 4th of July in a rather run-down hotel room in San Fran, but I appreciated the quiet. The visit was definitely exhausting, but overall I am pleased. For the first time, it really hit me that I am going to be on my own, without other volunteers, without PC staff hovering over me, without Americans. This is real. I´m a little scared, but ready.