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.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Estrellas de Hoy Stars of Today
One benefit of hand-washing clothing is that it certainly gives you time to think. Your hands are busy, rhythmically repeating the same motions in the cool water, but your head is clear to roam.
One Sunday in August, I was washing and began to think of my idea for a girl’s group. Since training, I had become obsessed with the idea of starting a girls’ group. I knew that besides the church youth groups, the young people in my community had no social out-of-school time, especially the women. When they weren’t in class, they were working hard in the house. I also noticed that the women in class were often significantly more reserved and timid than the boys. They dreaded having to say anything in class or share their ideas.
As I was washing, the ideas that I had been harboring for months seemed to crystallize. During training, I had heard some other volunteers talking about girls groups they had worked with in the States that involved sports and art to encourage the girls’ expression and confidence, an idea that stuck with me. And of course my own experience lies with leading young people in community service, having spent two years in Boston as an AmeriCorps volunteer. I believe community service is the best way to teach leadership, civic engagement and critical thinking, but it is not a common concept here in Guatemala. I decided I wanted to put on a camp that incorporated all of these things: sports, art, and community service.
Of course, this wouldn’t be possible without funding, especially for art supplies and a service project. This gave me a slight hang-up. I could try to seek it within the community, but I thought my chances of getting it, being so new in town, would be slim to none, and that people may not see the value of the camp (and instead just a frivolous waste of non-working time). But there was also a big population of people in the US that were very enthusiastic and supportive of my service in the Peace Corps, and I knew they would be excited to help me out. It wouldn’t be sustainable, and it wouldn’t be from my own community, which are pitfalls the Peace Corps warned us about time and again. But, I decided then, I could sit around and fret about sustainability and do nothing, or I could ask for support from home and do something new and positive for the young women in town. In that moment I made my decision. I had been tossing around the idea for a girls’ group for months, and if I really wanted this, it was time to start.
I got to work writing up my ideas, schedules and plans for activities. I made a flier to help get the word out at home and coordinating the fundraising from my parent (I asked for a modest amount from a limited number of donors). I tried speaking to some of the other local teachers and women around my age who might be interested in helping out.
In the last couple weeks of school I made presentations in all the classes in the Institute about the camp. I invited the girls to come to an information meeting if they were interested. For the first information meeting, only about 5 girls showed up, and I began to get worried (my goal was 20 participants with 4 team leaders). Once school ended, I would have no good way of contacting the potential participants. I scheduled another meeting and went back to the institute the day before to let the girls know. This time I had almost a full classroom of girls. I presented my idea once more and passed out a sign-up sheet to get their names and phone numbers. And I breathed a huge sigh of relief.
With my parents help, the funding was easily secured because their coworkers and family friends were very supportive, as well as many of my friends that I e-mailed. Although a few women in town had expressed interested in helping me, only one actually followed through by helping me plan a menu for snacks. I spent some of the funding and a good amount of time calling all the girls on my sign-up sheet to tell them about our first day and encourage them to come. I spent Thanksgiving weekend frantically shopping for materials and snack ingredients. I became very nervous, especially when I heard from other volunteers who had very disappointing turn-outs for their camps because of the harvest time. I decided privately that I would be happy if 5 girls showed up, and I would give those 5 girls a great camp.
On the first day, to my immense relief and joy, about 15 girls showed up, including the 4 girls I had selected to be my co-leaders.
I quickly found out that activities I planned took much longer than expected, especially the art because the girls were so meticulous, and every time we played sports, we had so much fun that we didn’t want to stop. In the first week, we only did about half the activities I had previously planned. The girls’ attendance also varied and was never as high as the first day. There was a “core” group of about 7 that came almost every day, but many girls could come only about every other day because they were needed to help at home with the harvest.
I also quickly realized that I had taken on a tremendous amount of work in trying to run a two week sports-art-community service camp on my own. The camp began at 10 every morning and run until 5, with a two hour break for lunch. Despite all the preparations I thought I had done, I was up late each night preparing the activities and supplies and writing up the guides for the team leaders. In the mornings and during the lunch breaks, I was frantically preparing the snacks (which were much more involved than the original snacks I had planned). I ran between the Institute and my house (thankfully only 5 minutes away), carting supplies, about 10 times a day. It was extremely exhausting.
I would often arrive at camp tired and frazzled, but after being around the girls just a little while, my mood would begin to shift. They never failed to energize me, and each day I was with them, I loved what I was doing. I quickly developed a relaxed and joking relationship with them, and I was impressed by the leadership that many of the girls already showed. When we played sports we had the most fun, especially when I taught them dogeball and kickball, and they tried to improve my pitiful soccer skills.
We also did more serious activities, such as community mapping and analyzing community service projects that other young women had accomplished in other communities in the world. The last day of our first week, it was time to create our own idea. I lead them in a brainstorm of what they liked and what they felt was lacking in their community. I gave them a list of 50 ideas for potential service projects and asked them to come up with some ideas in groups. Each group chose the same one: a community garden.
I probed them for why a garden was important to them. They told me that it would make their community more beautiful, give the people a sense of pride, and maybe encourage people to care for the community better and stop throwing trash on the ground. I made them choose some back-up ideas, but I could see they were very excited about the idea of a garden.
I had planned on having a week break in between week 1 and week 2, but the girls wanted to start fundraising for the garden right away. Our first idea was to hang up their art work in the community salon and invite people that were at the market to pay a small amount to come in and see their art and get a free coffee and sell snacks. We painstakingly decorated the salon and lit candles, but sadly only a few people entered the gallery, including the mayors who were trying to be nice. It was a little disheartening to see how few people were interested in helping out the girls. But all of the girls had come with snacks they had prepared at home, and we were able to sell some of the food and earn money that way.
In week 3, the girls dedicated themselves to making a life-like model of the garden, in addition to our regular sports and art activities. I had only intended this activity to be a drawing that would take one morning, but it involved into a week-long project. They carefully cut out little flowers and fences and paths from construction paper and made trees out of real tree branches and a lawn out of pine needles. The result was quite beautiful and impressive. On our last day, we decided to form a club to continue with the garden project. We elected our club leadership and made plans to meet twice a month.
Our club has been slow getting started, now that school has started and most of the girls are back to studying and a lot busier. I also have had less time to dedicate to them with all the teaching I am doing, and finding days to meet has been difficult. But we have made plans to visit some greenhouses in Xela, and they seem excited by the prospect of picking out the trees and plants that they like. I think we will get back into the momentum again. But I do miss the time when I had whole days to spend with them, laughing and joking and teasing and playing, and sometimes having more serious discussions. It was the first time I really felt like I was contributing something to my community, that there was a group of people that really cared about my presence here, and despite all the work, it was the happiest I have been here.
One Sunday in August, I was washing and began to think of my idea for a girl’s group. Since training, I had become obsessed with the idea of starting a girls’ group. I knew that besides the church youth groups, the young people in my community had no social out-of-school time, especially the women. When they weren’t in class, they were working hard in the house. I also noticed that the women in class were often significantly more reserved and timid than the boys. They dreaded having to say anything in class or share their ideas.
As I was washing, the ideas that I had been harboring for months seemed to crystallize. During training, I had heard some other volunteers talking about girls groups they had worked with in the States that involved sports and art to encourage the girls’ expression and confidence, an idea that stuck with me. And of course my own experience lies with leading young people in community service, having spent two years in Boston as an AmeriCorps volunteer. I believe community service is the best way to teach leadership, civic engagement and critical thinking, but it is not a common concept here in Guatemala. I decided I wanted to put on a camp that incorporated all of these things: sports, art, and community service.
Of course, this wouldn’t be possible without funding, especially for art supplies and a service project. This gave me a slight hang-up. I could try to seek it within the community, but I thought my chances of getting it, being so new in town, would be slim to none, and that people may not see the value of the camp (and instead just a frivolous waste of non-working time). But there was also a big population of people in the US that were very enthusiastic and supportive of my service in the Peace Corps, and I knew they would be excited to help me out. It wouldn’t be sustainable, and it wouldn’t be from my own community, which are pitfalls the Peace Corps warned us about time and again. But, I decided then, I could sit around and fret about sustainability and do nothing, or I could ask for support from home and do something new and positive for the young women in town. In that moment I made my decision. I had been tossing around the idea for a girls’ group for months, and if I really wanted this, it was time to start.
I got to work writing up my ideas, schedules and plans for activities. I made a flier to help get the word out at home and coordinating the fundraising from my parent (I asked for a modest amount from a limited number of donors). I tried speaking to some of the other local teachers and women around my age who might be interested in helping out.
In the last couple weeks of school I made presentations in all the classes in the Institute about the camp. I invited the girls to come to an information meeting if they were interested. For the first information meeting, only about 5 girls showed up, and I began to get worried (my goal was 20 participants with 4 team leaders). Once school ended, I would have no good way of contacting the potential participants. I scheduled another meeting and went back to the institute the day before to let the girls know. This time I had almost a full classroom of girls. I presented my idea once more and passed out a sign-up sheet to get their names and phone numbers. And I breathed a huge sigh of relief.
With my parents help, the funding was easily secured because their coworkers and family friends were very supportive, as well as many of my friends that I e-mailed. Although a few women in town had expressed interested in helping me, only one actually followed through by helping me plan a menu for snacks. I spent some of the funding and a good amount of time calling all the girls on my sign-up sheet to tell them about our first day and encourage them to come. I spent Thanksgiving weekend frantically shopping for materials and snack ingredients. I became very nervous, especially when I heard from other volunteers who had very disappointing turn-outs for their camps because of the harvest time. I decided privately that I would be happy if 5 girls showed up, and I would give those 5 girls a great camp.
On the first day, to my immense relief and joy, about 15 girls showed up, including the 4 girls I had selected to be my co-leaders.
I quickly found out that activities I planned took much longer than expected, especially the art because the girls were so meticulous, and every time we played sports, we had so much fun that we didn’t want to stop. In the first week, we only did about half the activities I had previously planned. The girls’ attendance also varied and was never as high as the first day. There was a “core” group of about 7 that came almost every day, but many girls could come only about every other day because they were needed to help at home with the harvest.
I also quickly realized that I had taken on a tremendous amount of work in trying to run a two week sports-art-community service camp on my own. The camp began at 10 every morning and run until 5, with a two hour break for lunch. Despite all the preparations I thought I had done, I was up late each night preparing the activities and supplies and writing up the guides for the team leaders. In the mornings and during the lunch breaks, I was frantically preparing the snacks (which were much more involved than the original snacks I had planned). I ran between the Institute and my house (thankfully only 5 minutes away), carting supplies, about 10 times a day. It was extremely exhausting.
I would often arrive at camp tired and frazzled, but after being around the girls just a little while, my mood would begin to shift. They never failed to energize me, and each day I was with them, I loved what I was doing. I quickly developed a relaxed and joking relationship with them, and I was impressed by the leadership that many of the girls already showed. When we played sports we had the most fun, especially when I taught them dogeball and kickball, and they tried to improve my pitiful soccer skills.
We also did more serious activities, such as community mapping and analyzing community service projects that other young women had accomplished in other communities in the world. The last day of our first week, it was time to create our own idea. I lead them in a brainstorm of what they liked and what they felt was lacking in their community. I gave them a list of 50 ideas for potential service projects and asked them to come up with some ideas in groups. Each group chose the same one: a community garden.
I probed them for why a garden was important to them. They told me that it would make their community more beautiful, give the people a sense of pride, and maybe encourage people to care for the community better and stop throwing trash on the ground. I made them choose some back-up ideas, but I could see they were very excited about the idea of a garden.
I had planned on having a week break in between week 1 and week 2, but the girls wanted to start fundraising for the garden right away. Our first idea was to hang up their art work in the community salon and invite people that were at the market to pay a small amount to come in and see their art and get a free coffee and sell snacks. We painstakingly decorated the salon and lit candles, but sadly only a few people entered the gallery, including the mayors who were trying to be nice. It was a little disheartening to see how few people were interested in helping out the girls. But all of the girls had come with snacks they had prepared at home, and we were able to sell some of the food and earn money that way.
In week 3, the girls dedicated themselves to making a life-like model of the garden, in addition to our regular sports and art activities. I had only intended this activity to be a drawing that would take one morning, but it involved into a week-long project. They carefully cut out little flowers and fences and paths from construction paper and made trees out of real tree branches and a lawn out of pine needles. The result was quite beautiful and impressive. On our last day, we decided to form a club to continue with the garden project. We elected our club leadership and made plans to meet twice a month.
Our club has been slow getting started, now that school has started and most of the girls are back to studying and a lot busier. I also have had less time to dedicate to them with all the teaching I am doing, and finding days to meet has been difficult. But we have made plans to visit some greenhouses in Xela, and they seem excited by the prospect of picking out the trees and plants that they like. I think we will get back into the momentum again. But I do miss the time when I had whole days to spend with them, laughing and joking and teasing and playing, and sometimes having more serious discussions. It was the first time I really felt like I was contributing something to my community, that there was a group of people that really cared about my presence here, and despite all the work, it was the happiest I have been here.
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