Other Sites

In Training, it didn’t take me long to realize how a volunteer’s site determines their service. We had the opportunity to visit a few volunteers during training, and I remember clearly how seeing the towns that they worked in and the houses they lived in left a deep impression on all of us, as we were each privately trying to imagine the perfect site for us. At one point, two other trainees and I went to visit a volunteer in her site in Alta Verapaz, near Cobán, for a few days. Alta Verapaz is a district in central Guatemala with thick, jungle-like forests and a hot humid climate. This volunteer had had to change sites almost mid-way through her service due to security concerns, and previously she had lived in the mountainous, cold, pine-studded Western Highlands (where I live now). But perhaps the even more dramatic a change was the difference between being in a 100% Indigenous site to moving to a mixed Ladino and Indigenous site. In Indigenous sites, the people tend to be more reserved and traditional and follow old customs, as well as speak an Indigenous language. In Ladino sites, the people tend to be more openly friendly and inviting, and more liberal in their dress. This volunteer was doing very well and loved her new site, but the stark change was almost as dramatic as doing two Peace Corps services.

After being settled in my site for a while, and adjusting to my reality here and how my service is defined by where I live, it can sometimes be easy to forget how dramatically different the experiences of some of my fellow volunteers must be, based on the differences of their sites. This past month for the first time I’ve had the opportunity to visit some of the other volunteers from my training group in their sites and see their different realities.

One girl moved from a very rural Indigenous aldea (village) to the Cabecera, the departmental capital, which is predominately Ladino, in order to be able to access all of the aldeas in which she works more easily. She mourns the loss of the Indigenous culture (she was a big fan), but is also enjoying some perks being in a bigger city. She says she knows quite a few people around town already, and I’m sure many recognize here, but visiting her, I was struck by the relative anonymity that she has. I cannot leave my front door without several children calling out my first name, without wishing every person I see a good morning or afternoon, without being stopped by several people for a chat. I can’t imagine being able to walk around without getting any kind of big reaction or exchanging words with anyone.

Another friend lives in a very small aldea that is almost a suburb of her Cabecera. Her town is literally one road, shooting out from the Cabecera, with a spread-out sprinkling of shops and houses. Her house, though technically near the center of town, has a very remote feeling, being surrounded mostly by farm lands and in a valley ringed with mountains (which, I’ll admit, made me a bit jealous). She is close to a family that lives near-by and of course knows the store owners and such. But walking out of her house, her town seemed empty. There was barely anyone outside of the house, and it was very quiet. I live near the center of an actually very large aldea that takes over a whole corner of the valley, with 32 parajes (neighborhoods). I am surrounded by houses and shops on all sides (with intermittent corn fields, of course), and from my room I can hear people chatting, kids playing basketball, pigs oinking, car doors slamming, children shouting, buses passing (honking noisily), dogs fighting… until about 10 at night or later. In my town there is always a bustling of activity, although things get a little sleepier around noon and on Sundays. It is large, but very isolated from other towns, up against its own mountain ridge. It is very much its own town, and I wonder at the difference of living in a sleepy little suburb.

But the friend whose site made the biggest impression lives in a town that is a municipality (meaning that it has its own government representation and funding, rather than an aldea, which receives its funding and government services from the closest municipality, as in my case). Although her town has an Indigenous past, and some women still wear a somewhat subtle traje, the language has long been lost, and the mixed Ladino population gives the town a much more Ladino feel. The town is perched high on a mountain, but it had such a more urban feel than my town. The streets are all paved with cement bricks, and the buildings were continuous, which is to say not interspersed with open plots and corn fields, as in my case. It also didn’t seem as though people kept their farm animals tucked within their family complexes, also in my case, so I didn’t see chickens roaming the streets or women dragging reluctant pigs on a rope through the center of town (though this surely occurred on the outskirts of her town).

Beside the physical differences, there was a remarkable difference in the people. We took a walk in the evening after arriving, and everyone stopped us to chat for a prolonged period of time and several people invited us in. We were invited into the house of a middle aged couple, and as soon as we sat down the women brought out a bottle of wine and poured us all a little. I was a little shocked, as in my town the only people that drink at all are the town drunks, and when they drink it is to get completely wasted. The women and more respectable men definitely do not drink, and there is certainly a shroud of shame hanging around the act of drinking. By contrast, in my friend’s town, there were several people out “merrymaking”, women and men, and there it’s a normal and accepted pastime. In the couple’s house, we also got to talking about tortillas, and I was telling my friend how you can make tortillas by just buying corn flour and mixing it with water (rather than the long soaking-and-grinding process that most women in my town do). The woman then proceeded to get out her corn floor and make us some tortillas on the spot, to eat with a bit of cheese. It was a long time before we were able to make polite excuses and get away. We stopped to visit the family that are her closest friends, and the young woman kept telling me how nice and pretty I was. In my own town, I have never once received a direct compliment, nor have I heard anyone else receive one. It’s just not part of the culture. On our way back to her house, a complete stranger invited us to her house for food (we were able to politely decline). By the time we got back to my friend’s house, it was 9 p.m. and we had yet to eat dinner.

In my town, people do not generally invite other people into their houses unless they are visiting family members or unless there is an important celebration going on (such as a wedding or graduation or something). For me, it is a very rare occasion to be invited to someone’s house (definitely not something that would happen multiple times in a day). The dress was different, especially for the women. Some of them wore heavy vivid makeup and more fitted clothing, and some ladies had short hair. All of these things would be unthinkable in my town, where almost no one wears makeup, almost everyone is in traje, and virtually all of the women have hair that trails to their waist or lower (although usually it’s twisted up). Also, the kind of casual teasing that I saw the people engaging with my friend was very different from the more refrained joking and conversation that goes on in my town. And I don’t have “friends” in my town the way I have American friends, people who I can visit in their house and chat about my day, as my friend has in her town. In my town, people spend time almost exclusively with their family and extended families (with the exception of kids still in school, that still have more prominent friendships), though people may be friendly at work or at the market or at church. But I can never see myself hanging out, chatting in someone’s bedroom, or anything like that. I don’t think it really happens here.

At the end of the day, after all the visits, I wouldn’t switch my site for any other. I like that I have my privacy and escape in the evenings… I can almost always count on being alone, which as someone who appreciates alone time, is actually refreshing at the end of my days of chatting with everyone and teaching huge amounts of students. I like living with a family, which gives me my place in society and people I can visit with whenever I like (because they treat me like a family member). I like also that when I leave the house, little kids are excited to see me and several people chat with me. I like my town’s personality, its mix of urban and rural, its distinct Indigenous culture, its isolation, its proximity to Xela and my volunteer friends, and its setting against a beautiful pine mountain ridge.

In training, they told us over and over that everyone ends up loving their site and thinking it’s the best. We didn’t believe them at the time, and our nerves were raw with worry about the sites we’d get dealt, but now I see that it’s true. And my site is, of course, the best.