text:
tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49516141895174234482014-10-02T22:15:32.320-07:00Caitlin Doing the Peace CorpsCaitlin McKeehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-43473402799295371492009-11-05T07:50:00.000-08:002009-11-05T07:55:42.341-08:00TERMINATION REPORT SelectionsA selection of my final Peace Corps Termination Report...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Santa Cruz El Chol is a small town in the department of Baja Verapaz located 90 kilometers from the capital of Guatemala City. The town has a hot climate and is in a valley surrounded by mountains at about 1,000 meters above sea level. El Chol is mostly non-indigenous and Spanish speaking, with a population of almost 9,000 people in the municipality. The community is very welcoming and excited to share with Peace Corps volunteers and other outsiders. It is a very safe town with almost no violence or delinquency.

As a Municipal Development volunteer, my primary responsibilities were to improve the quality and efficiency of the services provided by the Municipal Planning Office (OMP) and to increase citizen participation in the needs assessment and development process of the communities the OMP serves. Working in the OMP I facilitated monthly inter-institutional meetings with governmental and nongovernmental organizations to coordinate activities, published a Municipal Newsletter to increase communication between citizens and their local government, and strengthened the Municipal Development Council (COMUDE). I also initiated the Municipal Women's and Youth Office (OMMJ) and assisted in the planning and execution of its activities. Key accomplishments in the OMMJ were the execution of gender-focused participatory community diagnostics, a series of Municipal Women Leaders Workshops, and trainings for rural women's groups on various topics including self-esteem, leadership, the importance of women in development, the Guatemalan system of Development Councils, small home income generation, and HIV/AIDS.

The municipal workers and community members enjoyed working with and learning from a Peace Corps volunteer. There are several key players in the community that are especially supportive and collaborative, that are essential to know as a volunteer.

In addition to my work in the municipality, I taught community English classes, taught a citizen participation course in the local high school, coordinated a World Map project, and coached an elementary school girls' soccer team. I acted as the Municipal Development Program representative on the Peace Corps Guatemala Gender and Development Committee. I was responsible for encouraging the inclusion of gender sensitivity in their projects and as Alta/Baja Verapaz Regional representative on the Peace Corps Guatemala HIV/AIDS Prevention and Education Committee.

The volunteer experience working in El Chol had many challenges due to the political situation in the Municipality, lack of resources, and the machismo present in the culture. However, it was a fulfilling experience both personally and professionally. I hope that the Municipal Women's and Youth Office that I started will continue to function well with the support of the next volunteer and contribute to the development of vulnerable populations for future generations.

A. Site Description:

 The town of Santa Cruz El Chol, Baja Verapaz is situated at 1008 meters above sea level about 90 kilometers northeast of Guatemala City in a small valley surrounded by mountains. The town is located about 2 1/2 hours down a dirt road coming from San Juan Sacatepéquez (the more traveled route) or 1 hour from Rabinal, Baja Verapaz. The town center is made up of about 5 intersecting cobblestone streets that are mildly busy with mostly motorcycle traffic. The climate is usually hot and dry with some humidity during the rainy season. During the rainy season it is hot and sunny during the day, but rains most afternoons. The town center has three main bridges, which pass over the two small rivers that run through town. There are some popular swimming holes that the townspeople swim in during the hotter months.

 El Chol has a population of 8,769 people, with over 2,000 people living in the town center. The majority of the population is ladino, making Spanish the prominent language spoken. The few indigenous communities that are native to the area speak A'chi and there are several representatives of other indigenous cultures that have relocated to El Chol, many of them during the 36 year armed conflict. Most speak Spanish fluently.

 There are 9 aldeas (villages with approximately 50-250 families) and 53 caseríos (settlements with 10-50 families) in the municipality of Santa Cruz El Chol. Most have access via dirt roads that are passable most of the year. A limited number have only foot paths or no access during the rainy season. El Chol is the municipal seat with several barrios (neighborhoods) including El Centro, El Calvario, Tamarindo, El Campamento.

 Santa Cruz El Chol is known for its production of corn, black beans, hibiscus flower, and other crops. Socially, it is an extremely tranquil town, with a municipal market and hotel, basic small convenience stores, a bank, a post office, a health center, a justice of the peace, many small elementary schools, several middle schools, two high schools, one university extension, two dirt soccer fields, a gym, and a few small cantinas.

 The municipality is located in the town center next to BanRural and across from the park (built about 4 years ago). The mayor, Aníbal Sarmiento Reyes is in his fourth term in office and currently represents the Union Nacional de Esperanza (UNE) Party. He is popular among many people in the surrounding villages and has loyal supporters in the town proper. He is very collaborative with projects and highly esteems Peace Corps volunteers. It is important to get to know the mayor and his wife, who is also a very successful and well-respected leader in the community.

 The community is fairly well developed in comparison to other small towns and has a good amount of commerce. The community is well organized and is committed to improving infrastructure. There are several projects that are underway or soon-to-be underway, including rebuilding the elementary schools in the Caserío Trapiche Viejo and in the urban center. The municipality finished improving the soccer field and has plans to build a stadium. The government is also involved in a 5-year project to pave the road from San Juan Sacatepéquez to Rabinal, Baja Verapaz.

 There are 28 registered COCODEs (Community Development Council) in Santa Cruz El Chol. Each aldea has a registered COCODE, the barrios of the town center and many caseríos or pairs of caseríos have a registered COCODE as well. There is a functioning COMUDE (Municipal Development Council) that meets the third Thursday of each month. The CODEDE (Departmental Development Council) of Baja Verapaz meets the first Monday of each month, rotating the meeting location among the eight municipalities of the Department.

D. Projects:

My two years working in the Municipality were very different. In my first year I worked only in the OMP and my activities focused on increasing office communication, coordination, planning, and transparency. Specifically, I:
• Facilitated monthly inter-institutional meetings with governmental and nongovernmental organizations to coordinate activities and share experiences of challenges in development work and look for solutions.
• Coordinated the publication of a bi-monthly (every two months) Municipal Newsletter to increase transparency and communication between the Municipal Government and local citizens.
• Assisted with socioeconomic data collection and organization and presentation with spatial analysis using ArcView GIS.
• Conducted SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the OMP and Annual Operating Plan for 2008.
• Assisted self-diagnostic of the Municipal Development Council (COMUDE) to assess strengths and weaknesses and find solutions to strengthen the Council.
• Accompanied the Municipal Women's and Youth Commission as part of the COMUDE to research and write a Public Policy for a long term Municipal Development Plan for Children and Youth.

My main project was to start and help run a Municipal Women's and Youth Office, which I focused on almost entirely my second year. I began writing the project profile as soon as I got to site in November, 2007. The Mayor and town council approved the project in May, 2008. In November, 2008 we received permission to start to hiring process. January 15th, 2009 was the new coordinator´s first day of work. In order to start the OMMJ, specifically, I:
• Researched socioeconomic data to assess the need for the office.
• Wrote Project Profile with justifications based on international agreements, Guatemalan national laws and Constitution, and municipal specific needs, regulations and development plans. I also included a chronology budget proposal, goals, objectives, and expected outcomes for the project.
• Presented the project to the Mayor and City Council to get political approval and permission execute the project.
• Was in charge of selection process for the Coordinator of the office. I advertised for the open position, accepted resumes and paperwork, selected viable candidates for interviews, conducted interviews, made final recommendation of selected candidate for Mayor's approval to hire.

To run the OMMJ, together with the coordinator I:
• Planned annual activities for the Office including month-by-month chronology.
• Wrote vision and mission statements.
• Solicited office equipment from governmental and nongovernmental institutions.
• Planned, coordinated, and executed gender-focused rural community diagnostics in order to assess and prioritize women's specific community needs.
• Planned, coordinated, and executed a series of Women's Leadership Workshops for women community leaders where I co-taught trainings on topics of self-esteem, leadership, the importance of women in development, and the Guatemalan system of Development Councils.
• Gave charlas ("chats") to rural women on various topics related to self-esteem, leadership, the importance of women in development, the Guatemalan system of Development Councils, and small home income generation.
• Gave workshops on HIV/AIDS to rural women´s groups.
• Developed promotional materials related to the office and our work.
• Coordinated governmental and nongovernmental organizations.
• Responded to the public daily.

There is still much that needs to be done to strengthen and continue the work of the OMMJ. There are no organized women´s groups in El Chol, which is one of the reasons why the work of OMMJ is so important. In order to gather women together for a meeting, we would inform the Community Mayor and the teachers of the local school to tell their students to tell their mothers. We were only able to complete the gender-focused rural community diagnostics in communities that were close enough to walk, since we have no other means of transportation. This diagnostic should be completed in the rest of the communities in order to have a complete picture of the situation that women live in and their needs. I would recommend continued visits and charlas to women's groups on topics of their interest that they suggest, in addition to more work in HIV/AIDS education. We started the series of Women's Leadership Workshops with the idea of electing a representative for women´s needs for the COMUDE, as allowed by the Development Councils Law. We felt that the women needed more preparation on the topic before having the election, so I would recommend continuing with the workshops and strengthening the organization and confidence of the women, and then proceeding with the election.

As secondary projects I:
• Taught basic and advanced English classes to two community groups.
• Taught a series of classes in the high school related to citizen participation.
• Coached and trained elementary school girls' soccer team and took them to Departmental and National Tournaments.
• Painted large world map on the basketball court of the local elementary school with my site mate. We solicited local donations for materials from local hardware stores, coordinated with high school students to execute the project, and trained teachers on activities to use with the map for educational purposes.
• Acted as Municipal Development Program representative on the Peace Corps Guatemala Gender and Development Committee. I was responsible for material and resource organization and distribution to fellow Municipal Development Volunteers and trained the participants to encourage the inclusion of gender sensitivity in their projects.
• Acted as Alta/Baja Verapaz Regional representative on the HIV/AIDS Prevention and Education Committee. I was responsible for production of HIV/AIDS educational materials and facilitated large (60-100 participants) regional and national "Training of Trainers" workshops. I taught participatory learning techniques and HIV/AIDS education and prevention to Guatemalan educators and professionals.

E. Women in Development and Community Development

The situation for the development of women in El Chol is not distinct from the rest of Guatemala. In El Chol, the Mayor is male with only one woman actively on the town council. There is some female participation in the COCODEs with 26% of members being women, but only 16% of the leadership positions (President, secretary, treasurer) are women. Women have historically had fewer opportunities for education and have higher illiteracy rates because with limited resources for education in a family, priority has often been given to sons while daughters were expected to help out around the house, care for younger siblings, and look for a husband to take care of her. This situation is improving with current generations, but much discrimination still exists. The machismo culture that places family/home responsibilities heavier on women, and having to ask permission from their husbands to leave the house makes citizen participation more challenging for women. Domestic violence is an acknowledged problem resulting in women having very low self esteem and fearful of speaking out or participating in public decision making processes.

Due to these conditions, the work of the OMMJ is very important. In order to address these challenges, more work needs to be done in with the following:
• Education on laws, rights, decentralization, COCODEs, COMUDE, via community trainings, newsletters, radio, etc.
• General support for women's groups
• Political and financial support for the OMMJ
• Literacy campaigns
• Involvement in community activities that support girls/women's development, such as sports teams or other social/cultural activities.
• Seek NGO support
• Family planning/reproduction health/HIV education

F. Personal Thoughts

In the technical work of the volunteer, there are common problems that I faced such as the lack of transportation to the communities, the lack of financial resources in the Municipality and in the communities, the political agenda that dictates municipal development, the difficulty of communication with women in rural communities, the lack of support from male community mayors for women's activities, and the limited coordination among various NGOs and the Municipality.

These problems will probably always exist in some form, so the volunteer must have much patience and understanding. In order to work around these challenges, a future volunteer might:
• Be creative with transportation out to the rural communities and solicit the use of the Municipal car when possible.
• Make sure that the OMMJ is included in the Municipal Budget with personnel and materials for activities.
• Continue to strongly solicit resources needed to run the OMMJ from the Municipality and other NGOs or governmental organizations with presence in the Municipality.
• Continue to improve communication between the Municipal Council and the municipal employees with meetings and reports.
• Send written invitations for meetings and workshops through community mayors, teachers, or other known persons.
• Sensitize men about the importance of participation of women in all levels of development and the system of development councils.
• Continue monthly inter-institutional meetings, letting participants know the date and time in advance and with reminders.

Since El Chol is a very small town, it is easy to get to know people and form solid friendships. People are eager to get to know you and eager to help you in any situation. However, male/female friendships are limited due to cultural norms. As a 25-year-old woman, it has been a little hard to make girl friends my age, since most are already married with kids and don't necessarily have the freedom to leave the house to go to the park or come over for dinner, etc. Thus, my friendships here are different than those I had in the US, but no less meaningful or rewarding.

It can be very frustrating working in the Municipality. Guatemalan politics both on the national and local levels are very complicated. Guatemala is not a meritocracy; jobs and benefits are usually given based on who you know and favors owed rather than merit. There is much turn over with municipal employees due to these conditions and also the fact that the pay is low and never on time. (Salaries should be paid monthly, but often 2-4 months pass without payment). It is difficult to create sustainable projects and sad to see lost human resources with such turn over. Politics dictate everything. Despite efforts for transparency and following the spirit or intention of the system of development councils, politics determine which communities are benefited for any project or program. It is important as a Peace Corps volunteer to seek means to increase transparency and more fair distribution of benefits, and when not possible, to distance oneself as much as possible from this drama.

Working directly with rural women has been the most challenging and rewarding aspect of my work as a volunteer. Due to the situation of the culture of machismo which brings discrimination and even abuse against women, Guatemalan females, especially in the rural areas, have limited opportunities and low self esteem. In certain situations, just asking a woman to say her name in public causes her to giggle, hide her face, become extremely embarrassed and incapable of responding. It is very rewarding to see women build confidence in themselves and be able to speak in public.

Religious beliefs, both Catholic and Evangelical, are very strong here and a fatalistic outlook on life on common. For example, when asking a group of women what they wanted their community to be like in ten years, one woman responded that only God knows if we will be alive in ten years so there is no point in bothering to think about it. But for every woman with her attitude, there is perhaps another optimistic woman working hard to bring up her family and her community from their current conditions, taking an active, rather than passive role in what happens in her life. It is important to encourage women and motivate them to see the positive side of life and their role in improving it. I also have learned so much from the women here and they are truly an inspiration for me.

In the end, the volunteer experience is truly rewarding. Oftentimes we may not even know that effect we have had on individuals' lives. It is important to keep positive and look for the small changes, and focus on relationships with people.

G. Views on Peace Corps' role

El Chol is surprisingly developed for such a small town that is so secluded from any big city. There is a lot of commerce and building going on, with many family members sending money home from the US. At times, the volunteer can feel like people here do not need as much help as in other places – that although they are still behind in many areas, there are other towns that could use a volunteer much more. However, even though El Chol is more developed than some other places, there are still many poor or disempowered families in town and in the aldeas, and all are in need.

It is important to keep in mind the history of paternalism with development work in Guatemala. In some cases people in the communities do not value knowledge-based development with adult education, but prefer infrastructure projects or programs that give material goods. The volunteer should maintain an awareness of this situation and not continue the paternalism that has been taking place in this country for decades. For this reason, I think that Peace Corps is one of the few organizations that genuinely gets development work right. While no organization is perfect, Peace Corps allows people the time and opportunity to really get to know a community and its people before attempting development projects with them, not for them. As volunteers we serve as a human resource rather than a checkbook, teaching, training, and sharing rather than giving, giving, giving. We have the tools and the support, and it is up to each one of us to do what we can to help the people of Guatemala to the best of our ability.

I believe the role of a Peace Corps volunteer exchange knowledge, experiences, and ideas, learning and teaching simultaneously. It is very difficult to teach people from a culture and community that you know nothing about so it is important to learn the customs, the language, the worldview, and the sensitivities of the people before you begin to teach. I also believe a volunteer should be open to trying new things, making new friendships and slow to judge. A volunteer goes through many different stages of emotion and it is often hard to adapt to a new culture, but it is important to remember that we are guests in this country, in each community, and in each home.

In terms of Peace Corps' mission, we are supposed to be bridging the gap between the two cultures while doing development work. I have found it very rewarding to tell people here was it is "really" like in the US, since most of their concept of it comes from the media. It has also been special sharing Guatemalan culture with friends and family through pictures, stories, a blog, and their visits there.

Lessons learned:
• It is important to maintain good communication with the Municipal Mayor and Municipal Council through written reports, formal meetings, and informal advisories.
• Annual, monthly, weekly, and daily planning is very important with coworkers.
• Take advantage of the knowledge, resources, advice, contacts, and community organization of the NGOs present.
• Talk a lot with everyone; make professional relationships and many friendships.
• Look for people who want to work with you such as teachers, youth, community leaders, neighbors, etc.
• Always be a good example of an independent professional woman without tolerance for machismo, abuse, discrimination, or disrespect.
• Have patience with everything, but keep fighting the good fight with perseverance and a positive and optimistic attitude!Caitlin McKeehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-31793268308142701682009-11-05T07:08:00.002-08:002009-11-05T07:50:08.414-08:00Good byes and the end.I went to the preschool and sixth grade graduation ceremony of the Trapiche Viejo school with one of my friends whose daughter was graduating from sixth grade and whose niece and nephew from preschool. She doesn´t have a camera, so really wanted me to take pictures of the event. Many kids don´t continue studying passed sixth grade (and some don´t even make it that far), so it´s a big deal. It was a really cute ceremony, except that the Mayor was the sponsor of the event and was supposed to give the welcome speech, so they waited two hours to start (one hour is normal waiting time here) and he never showed up. It was really cute watching each kids parents or family member pass to the front to congratulate their kid and take pictures with the teachers and the director. There was one father who went up alone and shook his kid's hand, (what parent shakes hands with their kid for their graduation?) then paused, then gave him a rough hug pulling the kid's head to his chest and went he went back to his seat, you could see the dad was crying and the kid was rubbing his eyes and shaking his head like he was crying too. I think the public witnesses the first hug that dad ever gave to his son.

At a woman´s solicitation, we went and did a charla ("chat") in the very far out aldea of Pacoc. It is technically part of El Chol, but it´s on the other side of the mountains closer to Rabinal and more culturally similar to there, so it is a very forgotten little settlement. A lady that lives there has been participating in our Municipal Womens Leaders conferences and she invited us out there since there´s not much support that goes there. Doña Mari is a super spunky lady that is chatty, smiley, and gets excited about everything while her neighbors that came that were the shyest group of women I have even met here who were too shy to even tell you their name. They also speak shaky Spanish since their mother tongue is A'chí. We had a great time though. Her house is in the middle of nowhere on a precipice, looking out on a gorgeous green valley with view almost all the way around. She has all kinds of plants growing and chicken, dogs, pigs, and little kids under foot. When we showed up, she gave us lemonade (never mind the source of the water) and homemade bread. We did an activity on self-esteem and women's rights that they accepted very well. By the end they were laughing and enjoying themselves and had gotten over their shyness, slightly. At the end of the activity, Doña Mari served us arroz con leche (rice with milk), a sweetened hot drink made with cinnamon. Her three daughters were adorable taking a hundred photos of me on their cell phone. She also sent us home with cooked guisquil, a green spiny squash. It was such a nice experience it made me wish that we had started going there early on.

We did our last HIV/AIDS workshop together from the Women's Office in El Amatillo. This is a mostly indigenous rural community with very shy women, mostly illiterate, who are not used to talking about such topics. We started off with about 25 women there, part way through it started to drizzle so a bunch of them left before they thought it might rain harder as the excuse, but really because they didn't really want to be there learning about HIV. There were about 8 that stayed through the whole thing, and most of them weren't really paying attention. So naturally I was pretty bummed about the whole thing. However, there were two women who were paying particularly close attention and asking questions. That's pretty much development work in a nutshell. It's slow, poco a poco, (little by little), and you have to be satisfied with small results like 2 out of 25 women really grasping an HIV workshop. You have to find the success in that those two people, even though only two, were two people who weren't informed before, but maybe are more empowered now. That about sums it up. Frustrating as hell, but worth it for the little successes.

I went and saw a fellow volunteer's project in Granados when she coordinated the construction of additional classrooms for the elementary school out of plastic bottles filled with trash. Really cool way to involve the community, reuse trash, and raise environmental awareness. It was an amazing project and I am so proud of her.

Leaving here is a BIG process of good bye activities with every sector. I had an awesome good bye excursion to a swimming pool in Granados with my little soccer girls and their families and my family that a few soccer moms helped me plan. We all piled into a big truck used for carrying construction supplies, standing up holding onto the iron bars and bouncing our way along the dirt road. I organized all the food, getting tortillas, meat to grill, refried beans, salad, and sodas for almost 50 people. I was greatly pleased when there was plenty of food and everyone said it was delicious. We were there all day long from 10 am til 4:30 there girls ridiculously happy playing in the water and the parents and families enjoying themselves too. It's not every day they go doing something fun and different like that. I printed out pictures from the Departmental Games tournament and gave each girl a copy. It was a great day and great memories.

I had a good bye lunch in La Ciénega where the ladies killed a chicken in my honor and made a delicious stew. I made them recipe books with a collection of all the recipes we had made together with photos of them and cute graphics of smiling carrots and what not. They were quite pleased. The trek out there was rather exciting since we ran into many cows which we were warned were quite ferocious. We ended up shooing them quite a long ways before we found an escape path to get around them. Since I´m not accustomed to herding cattle, I yelled at them what seemed natural in Spanish, which was "Échense chuchos!" which translates as "get out of here street dogs!" My compañeras just about peed their pants laughing at me yelling that.

There was a good bye/Halloween party with Peace Corps volunteers from the Verapaces region at the cabin in Tactic, the usual site of our regional gatherings. The theme was superheroes and people went all out. I wore a beautiful apron the indigenous women wear as a cape.

I did a ceremony of the giving of diplomas/good bye party for my English students, one for each class. I baked a congratulations cake and we celebrated in my house and they were all very appreciative of the classes and the gesture.
My closest muni girls, being the coordinators of the Womens Office and the Planning Office and the secretary all came over to my house for an intimate little good bye parties with just us. They brought the traditional Guatemalan snack food of sandwiches made with white bread, processed ham, ketchup, and mayo and orange soda to drink. It was quite precious.

The next day we did one with the whole muni in the afternoon after work on my last day. We ate hamburgers and drank hot chocolate and every single person that works in the muni gave words, meaning a little speech about me. And then of course I had to give words. It was a cute formal affair and made me feel all special and fuzzy inside. They gave me a lovely stuffed animal of a pink dog on a red velvet heart and a banner than they all signed.

My host family did a really sweet good bye dinner for me with the whole family. They made their specialty of "Pollo en Pepsi", chicken in Pepsi, as in the soda. The sauce is actually made with Pepsi soda. Dona Hilda gave a very tearful speech before the meal, telling me that I will always be part of the family, that they love me very much, and that the meal was very simple, but the least she could do. It made me cry too and I had to give a speech, of course, thanking them and giving my most heartfelt sentiments.

My old site mate came back and surprised me! I was so excited and had no idea she was coming, so we got to catch up and she helped me so much in every way in my moving out process.

My last day in El Chol was All Saints Day. I went to the cemetery and saw families there fixing up the graves of their loved ones, laying flowers, pine branches, candles, soda, oranges, and sharing a meal together. There was live marimba music and tons of kids flying kites in the soccer field. It was cool since there were lots of people there I could go around and say good byes, having the same conversation with each one. My last few days were kind of a constant flow of people stopping by my house with good words and gifts. It was very intense and very emotional, but what it needed to be. My feelings about leaving are so mixed up and complex; it's so complicated.

So now I have left El Chol, sad and happy, I am. Did all the Peace Corps paperwork, signatures, reports, and bureaucratic stuff. Sadly saying good bye to all my closest Peace Corps friends. Heading out on a bus to Honduras, traveling through Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, taking a sailboat to Colombia, and traveling through Ecuador and Peru. Flying back to the states from Lima in time for Christmas.
Thank you to everyone for all your support in this crazy adventure I've been on. Can't wait to see you all soon!!!Caitlin McKeehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-78737403013590688632009-10-09T13:09:00.000-07:002009-10-09T13:11:36.656-07:00Independence Day, COS, Dueñas feria, 25th birthday, library, bad bananas, home stretch…Independence day on September 15th was well celebrated. The thing is, as most celebrations in Guatemala, it´s not just the day, but the entire week leading up to it. So every afternoon for the preceding week there were school presentations of traditional dances, complete with the burning of the bull and devil where they set off firecrackers that are strapped to some one while they dance around. Pure craziness. Following the presentations is the sale of all the traditional foods from the region that each kid brings. But there isn´t that much quantity, so everyone pushes to get at the good food stands before everything runs out. I enjoyed delicious pinol, atol, ceviche, tostadas, torejas, manjar, etc.

To celebrate our completion of service, almost our entire group, or what´s left of us (we have lost five for various reasons along the way), went to the beach on the Pacific Coast at Monterrico where we have celebrated occasions in the past. It was a delightful time hanging out all together celebrating our service and discussing what comes next for us. The general drift is go back to the states, live with family, look for a job, and for some apply to grad school. It´s tough times for job hunting, despite this awesome experience we now all have. We all cooked meals together, splashed in the ocean, lounged in the pool, played beach volleyball, and danced into the night, soaking in our last time together as a group.

Our beach extravaganza was followed by our official Peace Corps Close of Service Conference. This three day conference in a nice colonial hotel in Antigua with delicious food was super helpful in terms of processing our service, preparing to leave, and looking at next steps. We covered all the PC paperwork and drama of closing bank accounts and getting flights, medical stuff, review of aspiration statements and letters to ourselves that we wrote before service, accomplishments during service, grad school options, job searches and interviews, evaluation of PC Guatemala and our respective programs. It was all rather emotional too with tears because the good byes started, we showed a slideshow of a selection of our photos with each other, and our muni program supervisor is retiring after 27 years working for Peace Corps and we are his final group. Our final night we got all dressed up fancy for dinner and did an activity where we guessed each others´ five year plans that we had each prepared anonymously.

The women´s soccer tournament continues with games every Sunday. Our team is doing well and it´s lots of fun. The only thing is it is ridiculously hot under the heat of the midday sun playing in the dusty dirt field. And we don´t have uniforms so the colors always get confusing. And everyone always arrives late and both teams start playing without full teams, and slowly the teams fill out. Every week. It´s kind of ridiculous, but really fun.

I had to go to the Peace Corps Office to give a training to the new trainees on Gender and Development as part of my committee work. It was good to spend some more time with the trainees who are going to replace us and the training went well. I stayed with a volunteer friend in San Miguel Dueñas, near Antigua, which was celebrating their town fair. That´s sure a town that knows how to celebrate! It was intense. There were firecrackers and bombs going off all night. There was awesome live music, rides, games, and tons of food. We hit up the taco and churro stands multiple times and rode the giant ferris wheel forever since they don´t let you get off until there are more people to get on. We probably spent over 30 minutes up on that rickety, rusty machine, but had a great view of the awesome fireworks shows. The bands played well past 6 am and in the morning there were drunks passed out all over the streets.

I celebrated my 25th birthday here is El Chol with lots of good celebrations. My third birthday in Guatemala! The week before I celebrated with some girlfriends during the feria in Dueñas and they made me a cake. I did a piñata party with my host family on Sunday Oct. 4th where Doña Hilda made chuchitos and I made a funfetti cake and the kids thoroughly enjoyed whacking at the piñata and getting at all the goodies. A couple of the sisters from the house gave me framed photos of their family that were really cute. Then on my birthday I received many hugs and good wishes and many "may that God bless you and that He give you many more years of life." After work my coworkers from the muni threw me a little party at one of their houses with a little duck/chicken piñata and food a cake and jacks tournament. After that I had my English students over and I baked a pizza, their favorite, and we drank micheladas. All in all, a great day well celebrated.

A little while ago we organized a library improvement committee here in El Chol since the library here, well, sucks. And we´ve been super lucky and got various institutions, both private and public to donate books. We´ve gotten donations of a few hundred books of various types, the most importante being some children´s books that were seriously lacking. Hopefully these efforts continue since we have visions of creating a children´s corner, story hour with activities, study groups for older kids, etc.

With all the problems with malnutrition and no rain and all that, there have been way more food donations and distribution from institutions and the government here. Of course that causes all sorts of problems of how to distribute the goods. Really, there is no good way to do it. They had each community mayor make a list of all the people in their communities, and then separated out all the corn, beans, oil, sugar, etc. that they are giving away into bags and had all the people come to town. But of course there are always problems with people who didn't make it onto the list, and communities that weren´t accounted for at all due to political reasons. Drama. Also, there was a huge donation of Chiquita bananas, which were intended for the schools. Well, they didn´t get distributed so when they started to rot, they started just giving them away to the municipal employees and people and the street and just whoever in general. The garbage cans in the muni were full of banana peels. Quite disheartening.

Well, I´m coming down the homestretch here! Less than one month to go being in the Peace Corps. I´m trying to get prepared for my departure since there is so much to do between preparing my replacement, organizing materials and documents, cleaning out my house and giving stuff away, getting Peace Corps paperwork in order, assembling thank you cards and parting gifts, and packing. It´s a very complex process on the one hand being so excited to come home and see everyone, and on the other it being so hard to say good bye to everyone here not knowing if/when I´ll see them again.Caitlin McKeehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-80137224567584970322009-09-11T15:25:00.000-07:002009-09-11T15:27:51.527-07:00Brother and Sister visit, muni work, God willing, Departmental Games, drought, new volunteers, Paris Hilton, Lake house, sad news, EsquipulasMy brother and sister came to visit! We spent Friday in Antigua checking out the market and the sites and visiting my host family in Alotenango. Then Saturday I took them on the long dusty chicken bus ride to El Chol. We spent all day Sunday at the soccer field where they got to see the finals of the soccer tournament that my girls´ team played in and also my women's team that I play with when we won first place. Monday they visited my work and participated in my English class where they ate pinol, the traditional tomato and corn based soup from this area and they showed pictures from home and talked about themselves when my students had the opportunity to ask them questions in English. We impromptively spent an entire afternoon at Norma's who is an incredibly nice woman with a very kind family and they fed us lunch and my brother enjoyed the homebrewed liquor she insisted we try. We took photos with their adorable family and they gave us souvenirs of typical shirts and a nice woven man-purse bag for my brother. During the time in El Chol we also spent time with my host family and enjoyed paches (potato tamales with pork and a spicy chili) and drank homemade coffee. We spent one more day shopping in Antigua and stayed our final night in a nice hotel in Guatemala City. My brother and I then traveled to Belize! It was absolutely stunningly beautiful, exactly as one sees a quintessential postcard of the Caribbean...white sand beaches, tropical fish, palm trees, locals on bicycles, etc. We spent a day out on a sail boat where we got a couple incredible snorkeling stops and swam with sharks, sting rays, and amazing fish among coral reefs. We visited Caye Caulker, another island, and had a yummy lunch there of stewed jerk chicken with rice and beans, and a lobster burrito. The food in general was incredibly delicious and we ate our fill of fresh seafood with shrimp, lobster, scallops, fish, etc. We spent the next day exploring Ambergris Caye, the island we stayed on, by bicycle and taking in the beaches, the shops, and the best ice cream I've ever had. It was super hot and humid but we had a fabulous time relaxing and taking it all in. It was so nice to have my brother and sister come to see me and so special the time that we spend together and that they now know El Chol and my people there.

My two years in the muni in El Chol have been vastly different. My first year I spent being the only woman in a male dominated office and this year I am a woman among women in the two offices that I work in. A nice little tradition that we have amongst ourselves is the 10:00 am coffee hour where we take a break to drink coffee and sometimes buy snacks like sweet bread or tamales or little sandwiches. It's a nice little moment in the day where we all sit and chat and sometimes buy a newspaper to peruse if the guy shows up to sell them. We were using Styrofoam cups that we would wash out everyday, but then the coordinator of the Planning Office bought us all cute mugs and then wrote all our names on them so we eat have our own mug to use that we store in the office. Very cute.

We've been plugging away at our community diagnostic with the Women's Office. In one of the communities we went to, one lady was upset and said that we were wasting her time with the workshop since we didn't have anything to give away that day (as most institutions do when the visit communities). We told her that the benefits to the community are not always immediate but that she was free to leave at any time. Well she stayed, but when I posed the question to the women of "what do you want your community to be like in 10 years?" she responded that "there is no point in thinking 10 years in the future since only God knows if we will be alive then." To which I replied, "yes, only God knows, but God willing we will be so let's think of the future." The same type of response follows in many communities to the question "what type of woman do you want to be in the future?" when they respond with "viejitas, si Dios nos presta la vida" (little old ladies, if God allows us life). For people that live their lives according to daily immediate needs with fatalistic beliefs, it's difficult to get across the concept of futuristic thinking long term planning.

Due to our participation in the National Games, my elementary school girls´ soccer team got invited to the Departmental (State) Games on August 27th. It was great for them to participate again in a big one day tournament against other girls from the area. We got the muni to donate transportation and all piled into the microbus one on top of the other all squished in nice and tight. They played two games and lost but they enjoyed themselves immensely. Besides the fact that there were more girls that wanted to go than space, it all turned out very well. They won a trophy for third place and decided to give it to me for all the support I've given them. (Plus this solved the problem that the municipal tournament that they played in and also won a trophy, that one girl took it even though the rest of the girls had voted to give it to me and girls and parents showed up to my house crying about the problem. The appearance of another trophy solved all this.)

With my counterparts we´ve been continuing to conduct HIV workshops in El Chol with largely illiterate women's groups. They have gone really well and I really enjoy this work. Presenting a topic such as HIV/AIDS to a group of women many of whom never went to school has its challenges. I have to look for alternative strategies to get the information across. Due to this experience as part of my work with the PC HIV Committee I volunteered to make a document about how to adapt the basic four hour participatory workshop into a two hour one for illiterate groups so that's been keeping me busy.

Our Peace Corps HIV Prevention and Education Committee continues our work to train volunteers, counterparts, and make available materials. We had another productive meeting with PC admin keep them in the loop of our activities and to do some long term strategy planning. We also had our Gender and Development Committee (GAD) meeting and got a lot accomplished. I have now found replacements for my position on both of these committees so now I have to organize all my binders of materials to be able to pass along all the info.

Peace Corps holds periodic Project Design Management (PDM) workshops for volunteer counterparts so I took my Women's Office Coordinator with me to the Peace Corps Office to participate in the training. It was fun to travel with her from El Chol and to take her and other counterparts around Antigua since they don't know it very well. She felt cool getting to go spend the night in Antigua and be in the Peace Corps Office and all that. The workshop was really valuable for her and she has already implemented some of the techniques that they learned there.

The new Peace Corps trainees came to visit El Chol! This is the new group of Municipal Development volunteers who will be replacing us. Crazy. It was really cool to meet them and to be able to show them my town and explain all about our work with my coworkers. I think they really enjoyed the visit since they told me so and told me I was a "superstar" volunteer which was really sweet. They seem like a great group and I'm excited to get to know who my replacement will be and get her on board with everything. It makes it real that I'm leaving knowing that the person that will continue in my place is already here. Crazy!

The rainy season this year is conspicuously lacking rain. Everyone is very worried about drought, crop loss, elevated food prices, and hunger. I remember last year it rained hard all the time, like every afternoon and this year it goes weeks at a time without raining during the rainy season. The corn crops that started out green ended up all brown with huge losses for subsistence farmers. The real big worry is that there will be massive water shortages during the dry summer months when the crisis will really hit. There have been various articles in the newspaper and on T.V. about the problem and the American ambassador went to the department of Jalapa to observe the situation where he met with some of my fellow volunteer friends who work there.

Big news…Paris Hilton came to Guatemala! She was actually in Antigua one weekend when I was there but I didn't see her and didn't find out til afterwards. Then she went to Lake Atitlan to see some project or something or other, but all the photos were in the newspaper, even though a lot of people here have no idea who she is.
I spent a few days in Antigua to do my Close Of Service (COS) medical appointments where Peace Corps pokes and prods you to make sure you are healthy finishing your service to go home. Thankfully everything turned out well and the biggest relief is that I don't have TB which some volunteers get (the inactive kind) and have to take medication for almost a year.

To celebrate our two year anniversary of being in country and a couple birthdays, our group rented out a beautiful house on Lake Atitlan for the weekend. It is owned by some former Peace Corps volunteers and they gave a great deal on such a fantastic home. I don't think I've ever been in a house with such a stunning view of a crystal lake surrounded by volcanoes from the toilet. We spent the weekend relaxing, swimming off the private dock, and visiting lake towns to do last chance souvenir shopping. We cooked big family style meals with spaghetti and meatballs made by the Italian in our group and chicken masala from the Indian in our group. It was my last chance at the lake and when the moment came to leave, hard to tear myself away from the clear water and volcano views.

Last week there was some sad news. A woman (my age) who had worked in the Women's Office in another municipality in our department and we had been to several trainings, workshops, and meetings with her, committed suicide. Apparently she got pregnant by a married man and he rejected her as did her family and so she drank agricultural pesticides and killed herself and her baby. This is incredibly sad and it is not altogether that uncommon. Societal pressures here on women are so strong and resources so few for women that find themselves in difficult situations with no one to turn to. In other sad news, the brother of one of my coworkers was killed in Guatemala City the same week. He was a just graduated policeman (21 years old) who was killed in a shootout with one of the gangs there. The violence in this country is shocking. There was an article in the paper awhile back about how Guatemala signed the Peace Accords to end their 36 year civil war in 1996, but more people die each year from violence than people that were killed in the massacres in the civil war and so Guatemala is living in a violent "Time of Peace" without peace. Government corruption, poverty, drug cartels, extortions, and gangs continue to feed the violence.

I had the privilege of going on a trip to Esquipulus with my family and about 60 people from El Chol. Esquipulas is the site of the most important Catholic shrine and largest pilgrimage in Central America, a town in the Eastern part of Guatemala in the department of Chiquimula that has a beautiful church that turns 250 years old this year. The motive for Catholics making a pilgrimage there is the famous crucifix of a carving of the Black Christ, The Lord of Esquipulas which is inside the church. So our town rented out one of the buses that goes to El Chol, a bright red and green old school bus from the states, and we made the seven hour road trip pilgrimage. It was the epitome of cultural experiences, to say the least.
We gathered at 3 am, the appointed leaving time, and finally pulled out of El Chol at 4am which for Guatemala is very on time. In the big bus it took 2 and a half hours to go 14 miles to get to Rabinal. The road up the mountain there is pretty bad right now. A few minutes of that time included a "bathroom stop" where the stopped and everyone piled off, peed on the side of the road wherever they found convenient. The kid in front of me got sick and was throwing up out the window and droplets of it flew back into the bus and landed of me. Gross. After much bouncing along the bad roads, hours of bouncy music, and a stop in El Rancho for a bit to eat breakfast food we had brought along, we made it to Esquipulas by 11 am. The last half hour of the journey everyone on the bus was chanting and singing hymns. We found a hotel amongst the plethora of cheap options there and got everyone settled in. The family had brought food with them to eat during the trip so we heated up tortillas and beans in the parking area of the hotel in a barrel cut in half long ways with firewood inside. For some reason it didn't matter that we brought meat, cheese, beans, etc. and didn't have a fridge and it was sweltering hot. And that was how we ate for two days.

First on the agenda was to stand in line to go see the dark wood carved statue of Christ. We were lucky and came on a rather slow day, but the next day we saw the line wind all the way around the park and people often wait several hours for their moment to see it. I watched the members of my family cry, pray, and kiss the glass when they saw it. Some people make their way on their knees and then everyone has to walk backwards out of the viewing area. Outside the blinding white church I watched people approach on their knees in sacrifice. Outside you are swarmed with souvenir and religious relic hawkers. For several blocks around the church are stalls with very aggressive vendors selling candles, framed images of Christ and the Virgin Mary, statues, clay incense burners, keychains, goofy hats, rosaries, typical sweets and candies, and everything else you can imagine. We spent a couple hours going around buying all kinds of the stuff. That evening we relaxed at the hotel and I played soccer, cards, and an improvised Catch Phrase in Spanish with the kids.
We went to mass twice the following day, once at 6 am, and then at 11 am after the rest of the hundreds of pilgrims from Baja Verapaz showed up and entered the church singing hymns. The church was packed with I couldn't even estimate how many thousands of people all packed in the center aisle and along the sides and sitting on the wooden part of the pews where you kneel. Despite the sweltering heat and pack of sweaty bodies, it was pretty powerful to listen to all those people chanting and singing together with the echo of the old church. All of the people from the eight municipalities of Baja Verapaz had on matching t-shirts (including me) with a giant image of Jesus on the front and on the back the words "Baja Verapaz" and "for me Christ is life." It was really cool to see such an array of Guatemalans from rich people from the Capital to the very, very poor. On colorful display were the traditional woven clothes from the indigenous people all over the country. Women used any kind of cloth to cover their heads including bandanas, handkerchiefs, and beach towels with any silly print on them like an American 100 dollar bill or an American flag. After the mass people lines up outside on painted lines to have the priests come by and sprinkle holy water on their heads and on all the souvenirs they bought to have it blessed. We also passed through the candle burning area where people go in and light candles of certain colors for certain prayers. I watched Dona Hilda pass the candle over various members of the family and herself while chanting before going in to light them.

On the way home, the same kid was throwing up in front of me, except this time onto the floor since someone told him to not throw up out the window, and instead into a bag. So I had to gingerly keep my flip flops in one place to avoid getting my bare feet in the vomit, even though the bottom of my flip flops got stuck in it. Despite all the physical discomforts and frustrations of the trip, it was amazing to see the customs and traditions in action. I know how important it is to them, especially to Dona Hilda who never leaves the house in El Chol and I could count the number of times she has ever left. She even brought her 89 year old mother who is now practically blind, deaf, in diapers, and can hardly walk. That's dedication. These are good memories to have with my family.Caitlin McKeehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-24766941031421595522009-07-24T15:56:00.000-07:002009-07-24T16:24:54.120-07:00Eight clowns and a gringa go to El CholAs they do from time to time, the communities in San Juan Sacatepéquez en route to El Chol were protesting, this time against a cement factory that one of the biggest companies in Guatemala wants to put in their town. The company says it will bring jobs, the community says it will only bring pollution. So they blocked the roads and protested several days in the town and in the capital. Consequently, there was no transportation to El Chol for several days. I was coming back from Antigua and was trying to figure out what I would do to get back. My site mate called me and informed me that a group of clowns were coming to El Chol to do an educational act about HIV/AIDS and since they didn't know how to get here, it worked out perfectly that I would show them the way and they would give me a ride. But as it goes, they left late and then there was a landslide on the route they were taking and they ended up super late so I was waiting in the town of San Lucas for six hours for these clowns. There is only so much coffee you can drink at one café and I think the security guards in the commercial center I was waiting at were a bit sketched out by me wandering around so much for so many hours. I guess it was worth it though since I got a ride and was well entertained the whole time. That is how the amusing thought occurred to me that I, the gringa, was in a van with eight clowns. They clowns were all university students and lots of fun. In El Chol they gave their presentation complete with one of the clowns in a giant condom suit and we played some great pickup basketball and soccer games in the park the two nights they were there.

As part of our work in the Women's Office we go out to the communities where we are invited to various types of workshops with them. We went to the community of San Francisco to do a self-esteem workshop with the women there. It was a small group but went really nicely. We all sat in a circle and did various types of activities to get conversation going about self-esteem. For example, having them write their name (or draw a picture) on a piece of paper and tear off pieces for situations that they share of things that have happened to them to hurt their self-esteem…then do the reverse and have them put the puzzle back together with examples of situations that have helped their self-esteem not only to increase awareness of the effects on their self worth, but also to recognize the effects of their own actions on the self esteem of others (like the huge problem of gossip in small communities). For these women, to some no one has even mentioned self-esteem to them before and with so many factors going against their feelings of self worth, including poverty and the machismo society they live in, it is an essential topic that forms the base of citizen participation and community development.

Recently I also conducted a training for a group of women in the Trapiche Viejo community on HIV/AIDS. It went really well, considering the challenge of adapting the activities to a group of mostly illiterate women. I used lots of props like to show the three methods of transmission, (blood, mother to baby, and sexual) I constantly referred to a syringe, a baby doll, and a pair of panties that I would hold up and wave around. This elicited lots of laughter, but I hope it was effective to get the ideas across. We also did skits of applicable situations to make the topic seems more real to them. This was actually the second time we had attempted to do the workshop (which had been asked for when we conducted our community diagnostic) but the first time it started raining so hard that you couldn't hear a word I was saying over the noise the raindrops made on the tin roof of the school. This time it didn't start raining til near the end, so I almost finished the workshop with them being able to hear me. I think that working with women's groups on this topic is almost the most challenging because in this society they are the ones with the least amount of control or perceived control over their lives, especially their sexuality. Sexual promiscuity among men is culturally accepted and even promoted, but a wife telling her husband to use a condom may cause many problems in the relationship where women have mentioned that their husbands become very suspicious. It is difficult to answer the questions that arise that have to do with these types of cultural barriers because so much of it has to do with much more basic issues of machismo, self-esteem, trust, and communication skills. It is good to start getting these topics out into the open, especially in the rural areas where women have never received any kind of orientation of any topic relating to sexuality or HIV/AIDS and as we also emphasis, values begin at home so it is up to them as mothers to educate their children on these topics.

The Women's Office hosted our Second Conference of Women Leaders on June 25th which was another big success. We covered the topic of community development and the System of Development Councils and an invited psychologist talked about women's rights, and a representative from the Ministry of the Economy gave a motivational presentation on recognizing themselves as businesswomen and promoting small income generation economic activities. The women got into groups and came up with ideas for simple businesses that don't exist here but could do well, such as a floral shop or a cake shop. The event was a big success and ended with a nice lunch provided by the muni.

In following with our goals of training women in various topics and promoting small income generation projects, we were planning a course to train a group on how to make cheese, given by the national vocational training academy (INTECAP). There are many families that have cows, and in the rainy season there is grass for them to eat, so they give milk, and various women know how to make one kind of fresh cheese. But they only know how to make one kind so the idea was to train women who didn't know how to make to learn, and for those that already know, to perfect their skills and learn how to make other varieties to sell here. We tried to tell everyone about it, both in the urban and rural areas and we posted signs and information everywhere. The Women's Office Coordinator and I both had high interest in learning as well, but unfortunately we didn't get enough people signed up to bring the instructor in from the capital.

We received the opportunity to participate in a project to build houses for single mothers at very low costs, essentially with all the materials provided and they would just have to pay for the labor. So we got 25 women listed as beneficiaries for the project and they had to jump through a bunch of hoops to get all the paperwork done and everything. It has been very difficult to coordinate since the project came from the Women's Commission from the Departmental Development Council which we as the Women's Office participate in, but there are many different government institutions involved and various other political players that have made executing the project a mess of politics and red tape.

We continue to work with the Municipal Council of Children and Adolescents (COMUNA), except now on our own without the help of the NGO that had been promoting the project. We got the group together and I helped plan the agenda, did some team building activities, and did a training on the System of Development Councils for the kids. We then created an action plan which they rehearsed, and then presented at the following COMUDE meeting.

In the Municipal Development Council (COMUDE) we reorganized the commissions for the second time with the hope of them sticking. The idea is that the City Council is organized into the same commissions so that each member is responsible for a certain one, and then leads the same one as part of the COMUDE where other NGOs and civil society participate. We did a training with one of the NGOs to orient everyone again on the work of the commissions and elaborate their yearly work plans (June isn't too late to start, right?)

Municipal newsletter was done for the first time done without me when I was away for Peace Corps activities. I was thrilled to come back and see it actually printed and photocopied and being distributed while I hadn't been there. It was nice because I have been very involved in the production of every issue since I got here so it's nice to see that the people I have helped train now do it themselves. There is some hope for sustainability in the muni!

The beginning of July started with the All Volunteer conference which is the only time all year when all Peace Corps Guatemala folks get together first for a professional development conference of networking with NGOs to work more effectively in our sites, and then focusing on life after PC with resume writing, grad school grants, etc. Kelly and I took advantage of the opportunity to pay our host families in Alotenango a visit. It had been awhile, but we were welcomed warmly with open arms as always and made me sad to think that I'll only have a few more opportunities to visit them before I go. Just great families.

 My best friend Jesse came to visit again!!! We had an awesome time hanging out and doing cool stuff. She was there for the annual Peace Corps 4th of July party complete with an American style BBQ and lots of American hip hop played, resulting in a great dance party as we all celebrated our American-ness. Go America.
 Then we made the trek out to El Chol again and she accompanied me to the CODEDE meeting, the Departmental Development Council meeting in which all the municipal mayors from the eight municipalities of the department of Baja Verapaz were present in El Chol hosting the event. In sum it was a long boring meeting, but important to be there as our housing project for single mothers was discussed and people put in their two cents about how it shouldn't be politicized and the governor responded how it wasn't being. Hmm. They also discussed all the projects that are being executed with funds approved by the Council and how all the 2008 projects are behind schedule and requested more time to finish them, and the 2009 projects haven't even been started yet. No surprises there. Anyway, it was a rather amusing meeting because there was a scheduled protest by all the people in El Chol with motorcycles who were upset about the new law requiring them to wear a helmet and vest with reflective symbols with the license plate registration. It is a law attempting to reduce the amount of crime that takes place with assaults from motorcycles (mainly in the capital), to allow the police to easily identify people, but many people are against it (especially in the rural areas). So they were expecting a big thing and brought the army in, I'm not exactly sure if it was for that purpose or to keep general calm since it was a meeting of lots of important people, but either way the soldiers were patrolling the perimeter and keeping a good eye on things. It was a generally jovial affair with music playing, tamales given out upon arriving for breakfast, chicken salad sandwiches for a snack time, and seafood stew complete with a whole crab for each person for lunch and beers for the men that wanted to partake. The municipal employees, who haven't been paid in four months, woefully ate their missing salaries.
 Our time in El Chol continued well, Jesse came with me to my English classes and my soccer practice. All the girls remembered her from the previous year and were excited to see her again. In general people (me included) thought that it was pretty cool that she liked El Chol so much that she wanted to come back. People are pretty proud of their town and like that foreigners like it. We participated in a reforestation project that my site mate had organized where students from various schools planted around 2000 trees on lands surrounding town. There is so much deforestation that happens here in consequence of firewood being the main source of cooking fuel, that projects like this are so needed. It was cute cause they did a march through the town before the planting with each kid holding their sapling tree so it was a powerful image with a couple thousand kids parading through the streets holding up banners and carrying the saplings. The day of environment continued with a cultural night in the market with the usual fanfare of loud music and the whole town coming out to see what the excitement was about. The kids did some really clever skits relating to the environment and there was a magician too from Guate who entertained to their delight.
 The next day we made the long journey to the town of Lanquin, Alta Verapaz where if you look at a map, it doesn't look like it´s that far from El Chol, but it took us almost 10 hours to get there from the time we left my house at 5:00 am, including time we stopped to get coffee in Salamá and eat in Cobán and such, but still, a long trip. We went to see the famous bat-filled Caves of Lanquin where the river is born inside the caves. It was a rather physically challenging excursion as we had to shimmy our way up and down through the caves and not fall on the slippery surfaces, including one move where we had to cross this cavern with a full body reach to the slippery rocks on the other side. The caves are used by the Keqchí people for ceremonies and such and there are altars with candles inside. Thankfully I felt my claustrophobia under control and Jesse kept her fear of heights at bay as well. The really cool part was that right at dusk, the millions and millions of bats make their exodus into the night to hunt for food so as we stood in the pitch darkness, there were all these bats flying all around us. Pretty crazy. The next we did the tour of Semuc Champey. We started the day by swinging off a high embankment into the river off a rope swing where we had to swim out quickly to avoid being carried off by the current. We then got inner tubes and went tubing down the river a ways. Then we went in some other caves where we had to wade through water up to our waists and swim in some parts holding candles for light. At some parts we had to climb rope ladders and pass under a waterfall that was there inside. Finally we spent the afternoon swimming and lounging in the teal blue series of pools that are Semuc Champey where a surging river splits and part goes underground, and the rest tranquilly passes over the series of clear pools perfect for wading and swimming. It is a stunning natural beauty. Dinner at the hostel was delicious with good chats with other travelers from all over the world.
 The next day we went back to Antigua and stayed at this awesome refuge in a little village above Antigua where our room was in a tree house. That´s right, the structure was built around the bed up in a tree. It was very rustic, but comfortable with the most stunning view of the villages surrounding Antigua in a green valley and the three volcanoes surrounding it all. At night there was a lightning storm between the volcanoes that lit up the sky. All in all it was a great trip with the BFF.

One of our friends, the woman that does the cleaning in the muni, invited my site mate and I over for dinner at her house as a goodbye for her. She is a woman that I admire very much. She is a single mom and works so hard to pay off her Habitat for Humanity house and bring up her three kids who are so well behaved, smart, fun, respectful, and insightful. I love going to her house cause we always have a good time and I love watching their family interactions. That night we played the card game Uno which got quite exciting.

This year I am so much more aware of the seasons and corresponding agricultural activities. The corn is getting tall, everything super green and pretty and looks all tropical-like because of the rains.Caitlin McKeehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-85587296918779392082009-06-23T08:35:00.000-07:002009-06-23T08:37:56.678-07:00Making chili in the campo, getting stuck in a barbed wire fence, medicinal plants, municipal soccer tournament, pork flu…Since in the Women's Office we don't really have our own funds to do projects, we try to get on board and complement the work that other institutions that do have funding are doing. (The muni just paid its employees their salaries only the month of March in the second half of June, still owes April, May, and June). SHARE is an NGO that just came to El Chol this year that is doing programs in the schools. Their first project was "scholarships" for every kid in the municipality in 4th, 5th, or 6th grade where they give them food staples to help the family out to encourage families in poverty to keep their kids in school rather than send them off to work. So every month every family with kids in those grades receives sacks of beans, rice, flour, oil, etc. This is an interesting method because the help is going to the families of every kid in those grades, whether they need it or not. In other municipalities there have been problems with people selling the product. Anyway, since they are receiving quite a bit, people get bored of eating the same thing over and over and the women don't know very many recipes to vary it up. The beans that they are being given are large red kidney beans, while people here are more accustomed to eating small black beans. I was over at the house of a friend drinking lemonade after a meeting in her community and she gave me some of the dried beans to try and I made Mom's famous chili with them, with corn and cinnamon and cloves, and it turned out yummy. I brought some for the friend and some for Irma to try, and they both loved it.
 So Irma and I are starting to do some food preparation/nutritional workshops to help people take advantage of the "scholarships". We went and made the chili from the SHARE beans and a soy meat substitute product called Protemás in La Ciénega. The women loved it! They were super excited to try something new, using all ingredients that they are familiar with and can get, and brought home lunch already made for their families.
 On our way walking there, on the path in front of a gate we had to go through, there was a whole family of cows with the complete with the mom, two calves, a bull, and the "uncle", a horse. We are both a little nervous around unknown animals, and didn't know what to do. We had to go through the gate, but all the animals were blocking it and every time we got closer, they all turned their heads to stare at us in a very threatening way. It was really rather silly, but the last thing we wanted was to get chased by an angry bull or an aggressive cow protecting her young. So we had to climb an embankment and go trudging through the thick underbrush. We came across a barbed wire fence which Irma squeezed through no problem. Irma is also not quite five feet tall and barely 100 pounds. So then she was like, "go on Katty, cross the fence." But for my size, that was a bit more challenging than it was for her. I got one leg through and was bent in half when my shirt got caught in the wire. So then Irma was telling me to duck more, which I couldn't. So then we both started laughing hysterically that I was stuck and then my pants got caught. I was hooked on the wire from above, hooked on the wire above and could not stop laughing and she couldn't do anything to help cause the wire couldn't be stretched any more. I finally wiggled my way out with only a small tear in my pants but with my stomach muscles hurting from laughing so hard. I made a jumped off a fairly steep part of the embankment to get back to the road, but Irma is so much smaller than me she was afraid to jump so had to keep trekking along to find a more sloping way down. She fell on her bum in the process which sent us into more peals of laughter. All to avoid some cows.

Sometimes we get lucky on the way back from a community and can hitch a ride in a pick up or a tuk tuk that is heading into town. One day we were bumping down the hillsides in the back of a truck with like 6 other women. One of them made a comment about my strange ear piercing and all the rest leaned over to ogle at it. Then an older woman clicked her tongue, shook her head, and announced "that's just not right…" It made me chuckle. What can you say to that?

The governmental institution for the Protection of Indigenous Women invited us as the Women's Office with several community leaders to participate in a health forum in Salama, the departmental capital. Even though El Chol is mainly mestizo, it's nice that the institution takes us into account for their activities. We went to the event and it was really interesting feeling out of place with everyone else in the indigenous clothing, speaking the indigenous language Achi. To commence the event, they did a traditional Mayan religious ceremony with candles, flowers arranged in the four cardinal points, and prayers. It's really interesting to see the blend of the traditional Mayan and the traditional Catholic practices because their religion is a definite hybrid. They cross themselves and say in the midst of the prayers in Achi, "the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit…" We were the only of only two group of non indigenous women there and afterwards the women from my town commented that they have lived all their lives in Guatemala and had never seen a Mayan ceremony like that. The majority of the workshop was in Achi, but they translated summaries into Spanish. The focus was on the practice of traditional healing use of medicinal plants and several mid-wives were invited to speak. They express themselves better in their mother tongue and the majority of the participants understood better in Achi. I was totally lost since I don't even know they names of all the local medicinal plants in Spanish, but it was a cool experience to observe anyway. One of the women from El Chol that went with us is a midwife as well and she loved all the information. Despite feeling a bit out of place, the women from El Chol liked the event and were busy scribbling down the information on the plants about which one makes women lactate after giving birth (to be mixed with chocolate and cinnamon and drank), and how to make a bath of avocado leaves to soak before giving birth to make to make the baby come out easier. The Ministry of Health representative was there too, and people took the opportunity to make public their complaints about discriminatory treatment in the public healthcare system that caused tears in various accounts of very inappropriate treatment. The institution provided a delicious lunch of a great piece of chicken in sautéed onion sauce (nice pieces of breast meat are rare here) which we had to take to go and eat on the fly to not miss our microbus back to El Chol.

The muni has reinitiated a soccer tournament for boys, girls, and women which is cool since the men's tournament is the biggest excitement that happens in town. Naturally my girls are playing, but they are divided into two teams since there's a bunch of them. I'm also playing on a women's team. So now my Sundays are spent all day at the soccer field helping out with the girls in the morning and playing myself in the afternoon. In the first game my team played in, I scored two goals to win the game 3-1, one on a free kick on the other I knocked in from a lovely arcing cross from my teammate.

Last weekend was the finals of the men's tournament and my site mate and her friend and our fellow volunteers from nearby came to watch the game, which the whole town comes out to see. They have to bring in professional referees from elsewhere so that they are unbiased and not too many fights break out. The police were there, more out of a lack of anything else to do than from any risk. But there were like 6 of them there with their giant guns, as is customary, watching over everything. We celebrated birthdays with a BBQ with carne asada and a Funfetti cake that I made for the occasion from the mix and frosting I scored in Antigua.

I continue my work with the HIV/AIDS prevention committee with Peace Corps and the other weekend we had a meeting in Antigua. It was refreshing to have a "gringo" meeting where everyone is there on time, a tight agenda is adhered to, topics are presented with discussion and resolution following, and in two hours sharp the meeting finishes up with lots accomplished and action points to follow. Imagine a Guatemalan meeting the polar opposite of that. As part of my work in the muni, my life here sometimes feels like a Guatemalan meeting. Some of my fellow volunteer friends were also in Antigua for various reason and we took advantage to celebrate some June birthdays with a night out splurged on Sushi dinner!

The infamous influenza A H1N1 has made its way to this tiny corner of the world. Everyone is talking about it and there's lots of "May God protect us…" There are also lots of puns and jokes made regarding the "pork flu" such as you know you have it when chicharrones (fried pork skins) come out when you sneeze. I think we are going to suspend some of our meetings with women in the communities for a bit til this dies down since the most recent one we went to, not a single woman showed up and we suspect it was because that was the day they announced there was a case in that very community. Lots of NGOs have cancelled activities that gather lots of people and the Ministry of Health has been putting up posters in lots of places with prevention and symptoms of the infection.Caitlin McKeehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-36363075168945440932009-06-01T11:23:00.000-07:002009-06-01T11:27:32.637-07:00Reaching "that" point, Todos Santos – Nebaj hike, Women's Office diagnostic, friends visitAt the beginning of May with a great group of volunteers we did one of the coolest hikes in the country from Todos Santos, Huehuetenango to Nebaj, Quiche. I don't know the correct distance, but I think we did in the vicinity of 15 miles the first day and 10 miles the second day up and across the high Cuchamatans mountain range. The adventures started at 4:00 am when I left my site and arrived at my friend's site in Todos Santos (the land of the red pants with the crazy horse race for All Saints Day) at 4:30 pm, picking up other friends along the way. We bought supplies and cooked a delicious dinner and headed out at 5:00 am in the dark and the cold the next morning. We took a bus to where we started hiking, with a quick stop along the way for a visit to some latrines with freezing cold cement seats and to buy hot tortillas with melted fresh cheese.
 We had a fabulous guide, a Swiss man who came to Guatemala with Doctors without Borders and married an indigenous woman and stayed in Todos Santos 15 years ago. We hiked from 6:30 am to 4:30 pm almost constantly through a few sparsely populated areas of all indigenous Mam' people that shyly peer out from their huts. It was lots of up and down, looking across a steep valley knowing that first you had to go down, and then all the way back up. We stopped for a respite at the bottom of the valley where a freezing pristine river ran through it and soaked our tired feet and watched two adolescent girls beating piles of clothes against rocks to get them clean. We breakfasted, lunched, and snacked on the food we had brought with us mostly consisting of tortillas, refried black beans out of a bag, hardboiled eggs, avocados, and mangos. The types of terrains we moved through were quite varied from the hot loose sandy inclines, cool pine forests, and the cold mountain ridge that had lots of rocks and very little vegetation and looked like some sort of disaster fallout (kind of reminded me of Mt. St. Helens).
 The rain held off all day long until about the last ten minutes when we could already see our shelter for the night and it started to pour down rain so hard that we got as soaked as if it had been steadily raining all day long. We stayed the night in a small cold village settlement on the ridge in a wood house structure that had beds and wools blankets that some NGO had set up to promote ecotourism in the area. Our guide asked around for a family that would give us dinner and hungry and cold as we were, speculating about what they would give us, looking forward to the usual Guatemalan dinner fare of eggs, beans, and tortillas. As this is area lives in extreme poverty, we were given cabbage in water, corn dough wrapped in leaves, and hot sugar water to drink. It was a very humbling experience sitting in the "kitchen" of the house, a dark room with a dirt floor with an open fire built in the middle on the ground and thick smoke filling the air. The girl who served us, maybe about 17 years old, couldn't speak a word of Spanish and only spoke Quiche and most likely had never been to a day of school in her life. We knew no more than two words in Quiche, matiox (thank you) and utz (good), which can barely get a smile but not much communication, so our group of eight just ate in silence as she reached her hand into the fire to pull out more corn dough wraps. That night we pushed the wood bed frames together and us five girls slept all scrunched together for warmth. Every single person had terrible gas and we all poisoned the air with our rank, all snuggled up together.
 The second day we arose and started hiking early, having gone to sleep exhausted around 7:30pm. We arrived at our destination of the aldea of Acul, Nebaj, Quiche where we had to jump a fence where I ripped beyond repair my favorite hiking pants that I had had since freshman year of high school (1999?) In Acul there is a cheese making hacienda that we lunched on hot tortillas with this artisan cheese and cantaloupe juice and bought whole wheels of cheese, as it is only sold by the wheel, to divide amongst us. We caught a microbus into the actual town of Nebaj, where we transferred buses to make our way to Cunen where the married couple in group lives and had graciously agreed to house and feed us for the night. We had to wait at the crossroads for a microbus into their town when a giant thunderstorm moved in but we finally made it to their house where they spoiled us with homemade Mexican style chicken enchiladas and cold showers since the electricity was out the whole time we were there. It was very merry and jovial all of glad to have survived and to be hanging out together. Very cool hike, all in all one of the coolest experiences I've had in Guatemala. After being here for so long, I thought I had seen pretty much everything, but this was definitely new and pretty mind blowing.

I had the realization the other day that I am now doing what I had imagined I would be doing in the Peace Corps after coming out of training. As I have said several times, there is a really good reason that Peace Corps is for two years. I've hit "that" point…where Spanish comes without thinking and often easier than English; where I feel genuine community acceptance; I feel needed and valued at work, People seek me out for various types of consultations; I crave tamales, beans and tortillas; a 12 hour chicken bus ride or a giant cockroach in my bed doesn't even faze me; I'm doing what I'd envisioned doing; and I'm starting to panic about leaving.

My relationship with my counterpart, Irma, the Women's Office coordinator, is what I feel like the counterpart/volunteer relationship strives to be. We balance each other's strengths and weaknesses very well and have both a professional and friendly relationship. She is great with the women out in the rural communities and runs all the activities that I helped her plan. I help her a lot with planning, organization, motivation, institutional strengthening and computer skills and I follow her examples of culturally appropriate ways to do all our work.

The work we are doing together is now fitting into that image that I had coming out from training. I had imagined trekking through picturesque countryside stepping over pigs and chickens to get to women's groups to do lots of participatory activities. It's pretty much coming true. As part of our annual operating plan Irma and I are walking an hour each way up and down the mountains surrounding El Chol to complete a community diagnostic in each of the 28 communities that have community development councils (COCODEs) organized. We always meet in the afternoon in the community school. We set the meeting for 2:00 pm, as the women might have a moment of free time in the packed days of domestic responsibilities, but as the concept of time is loose here, we don't start til well after 3:00 sometimes. We always start by introducing ourselves and explaining the existence of the women's office. We ask them to go around and say their names, which are pulled out of them after much giggling, feet shuffling, hand wringing, and face hiding.
 The diagnostic activity consists of the women completing an individual questionnaire that we read out loud to them as a group with questions both factual and opinionated related to demography, economic activities, health, education, domestic violence, and migration. We will be using the information from the diagnostic to have a better idea of the situation that women are living in the rural areas to assess their needs and then to prioritize the communities and projects we will work with. For example, if lots of women have an interest in learning about reproductive health issues, we can plan an informative discussion about the topic or coordinate with the health center in town to do an activity. The sheet that they have to fill out just has the question number and the letter options that they can choose, so they only need to be able to distinguish their letters a – e. But since most of the women can't read and write, or can do so at such a basic level, it is a very trying task. When you had the women the sheet of paper they panic and tell you they can't read and write, even if they can a little bit. I tell them not to worry, that we will help them or to sit next to someone who knows. They are even so afraid to hold a pen or pencil, since they have done it so few times in their lives or feels like they aren't capable of managing the foreign object. The first few questions always take forever as you explain the concept of drawing a circle around a letter to make a selection. With some women the problem is they don't understand the concept, others can't see the letters well, some weren't listening to the options mentioned, others can't hold a pen properly, others are too timid to make the bold move of marking a piece of paper. After the first few questions, things start to go smoother as they get the hang of it and start smiling, confidently encircling letters, and responding with their opinions in regard to the questions. Sometimes they just wrinkle their noses at a question, and it generates good discussion. Such as when we ask what topics in health they would like to learn about and HIV/AIDS is one of the options and they say to you, "whatever that is…" and then we mention that there are several confirmed cases of this fatal yet preventative disease and then they perk up and listen. Or a question about participation when we ask them what prevents women from participating in community activities or meetings and one of the answer options is that their husbands don't give them permission to participate and they all nod their heads vigorously in agreement and chime in with their anecdotes from the experiences in their lives to corroborate the evidence that it is hard to get their husbands to let them leave the house, especially when there are always a bunch of kids to take care of and housework that needs to get done. A woman in her early 20's who is not married yet because her boyfriend went to the states (and even though he now has a new Honduran girlfriend there) she is waiting for him to get back, was telling me how she is super active in all kinds of groups, involved heavily in her church, is a community health promoter, and always attends any workshop or community meeting…but once her boyfriend supposedly comes back to marry her she will have to stop being involved in all these activities because he will tell her she needs to be in the house. It's sad because she's obviously a smart girl, had the luck of finished 9th grade, has lots of potential to be a great community leader and help her small community develop, but once she gets married it's like that's just it.
 After the questionnaire activity we do a community mapping exercise where we give the women the chance to draw on big paper their community. In color blue the things that are already present and services that they have, and in color red the way they want to see their community and themselves within ten years. After a few giggles about how they will all be "viejitas" (little old ladies) in ten years they get into the activity. It's cool cause they have so few opportunities to get out of their usual routine of doing work in the house and relax for a bit, see their neighbors, and do something novel like drawing. At first it seems weird to them to be talking about so far in the future, since they live subsistence day-to-day lives. But as I try to explain to them, drawing what they want doesn't mean that we have a magic wand to make it so, but that we have to be futuristic thinking if we ever want to develop and improve the quality of our lives. If we only think of today, today, and maybe tomorrow, then things will always stay the same. It sounds cheesy, but you have to dream it first to make it reality, so we try to get them to think in that mode.
 Visiting all the communities in the municipality has been really interesting because they vary a lot from each other. Some are highly indigenously, some are more timid than others, some propose things, others take it all in silently and hardly participate. It's given me a good chance to really get to know all the rural roads and pathways since the muni doesn't have any money right now to give us transportation, and even if they did it is extremely difficult and complicated to make that happen; so we walk. We sweat. A lot. But it also gives you a new appreciation for your surroundings noticing with greater detail this year's corn sprouts which are just coming up, the gecko scurrying across your path, and the pungent smell of fermenting mangos which have fallen from the huge mango trees which shade the road at some parts. It gives you the opportunity to properly greet people that you pass with the appropriate literal "Good afternoon. May that you go well." It gives Irma and I lots of time to discuss what went well in the meeting, what we could change, life, and the differences and similarities in the realities in our lives.

Rainy season is back in full force. It started early this year and it's looking like it will be a rough one. Walking back from the rural communities in the afternoons, we get soaked and muddy. But it's still suffocating hot and muggy at mid-day when we have to walk up the mountains to get there, and then it pours in the afternoons as we slide our way down on the slippery "roads".

At my urging from awhile back to some of the NGO's, there has been organized a coordination among the women's offices in the department of Baja Verapaz. We've had a couple opportunities to all get together and have a sharing of experiences, since most of the offices are quite new. Irma and I were invited to give the feature presentation at one of these workshops, where we focused on writing of a vision and mission statement, creating an annual operating plan, and shared our experience of organizing the Municipal Forum of Women Leaders. It went really well and felt good to be an example to the other offices in the department because we all face many of the same challenges in the work that we do. We had gotten a ride from the mayor that morning and our activity finished at 1:00 and we called him to which he said he would be ready to go at 2:00. He came and picked us up, and then we waited in the car and in the street for the next six hours for him to finish a meeting with one of the departmental representatives to Congress. Got home late, really annoying, but totally normal for here. This is why I now have more patience than I know what to do with.

There are continuing perpetual financial problems in the muni, employees haven't been paid in three months, still no money to buy us a computer or to give us reliable transportation to meetings, workshops, and community activities. On a positive note, Guatemala passed a national law guaranteeing access to public information that requires any institution receiving public funds to make public all their documents and records by means of an information office, and gives jail time and stiff financial penalties for noncompliance. They are working hard to increase transparency and reduce corruption in this country. They have a long way to go still.

I have lots of coworkers in the muni and no one really tells other people when it's their birthday, til it comes up later since they don't really make a very big deal of birthdays for adults here. Since Irma's birthday passed and she didn't tell me til a month later and she is the person that I spend the most hours of my day with, I decided to make a nice cake for her and all my other coworkers and celebrate everyone all at once. (Plus it's expensive to be baking a cake for someone every couple weeks). So I make a yummy chocolate cake out of a box with rich chocolate butter cream frosting from scratch to celebrate. My mom had sent me some seasonal cake decorating supplies so I put those to good use and make it really pretty. I brought it to the muni and surprised everyone and made them all sing to each other. It was a festive occasion and we took pictures to remember it by.

Working in a country with such ties to the US through all the immigration that takes place adds a strange facet to the Peace Corps experience. I get constant inquiries from people if I can help them get a visa or people asking me I know so-and-so who lives in New Jersey. I hear lots of stories about the dangerous crossing from people who have come back. I feel sick to my stomach when I hear of people that I know getting ready to the attempt. This week a woman I am close with from a very poor family from one of the rural communities informed me that her son who just turned 19 is leaving in a few days. As is customary for people who don't have the money to pay the huge coyote fees, the family had to turn over the titles to their land and house as a guarantee that the debt gets paid back. But who knows if he will actually make it? If he makes it, it will be a huge help to the family to help his siblings go to school and to pay for other important things. And if not, that leaves his parents and all his little brothers and sisters homeless without land to even plant the corn that sustains them. It's a big gamble. I imagine this kid, who speaks not a word of English and has lived a very limited experience thus far in his life consisting of working the little patch of land that his family has, first making the dangerous desert crossing lasting days without food, water, or sleep, being beat up by the gangs that control the territory, and then walking the wide paved streets with traffic lights in the States. And the anxiety of his mother going weeks without hearing word from him. There's really nothing you can even say to her other than "May that he go well with God."

Another visit with good friends from college! We had a fabulous time hanging out, catching up, and getting to show off this beautiful country that I have the opportunity to live in. Seeing their reactions to everything makes me realize how accustomed to things I have become and how it all seems so normal to me now. They kept saying to me, "Caitlin, you've been here too long. You've got your Guatemala goggles on." We went to Antigua first and explored around churches and ruins and walked up to the hill with a giant cross that overlooks the whole town with a direct view of Volcan de Agua (Water Volcano). We climbed the Pacaya Volcano (for my third time) but every time it's different and this might have been the best lava flows I had seen. We went out dancing and I felt like a "real person" as we say in the Peace Corps when we do things that are familiar from home. Then we made the crazy trek up to El Chol and I think they barely made it on the long, hot, bumpy bus ride and they asked me "How do you live like this?" I guess you just get used to it. The time in my site was super fun and relaxed. They came with me to my English classes and my soccer practice and loved the group of little girls that I have. We went to the river in a tuk tuk (motorized three wheeled rickshaw) but evidently we were a lot of weight for the smaller motor and I had to get out on the inclines otherwise it wouldn't make it up the hills. We got the priest in town to take us into the underpart of the church where bats live and supposedly people were buried before El Chol had a cemetery. My friends were super helpful in my office too because they helped me set up the Excel spreadsheet and formulas to tabulate the results from the Community Diagnostic for the Women's Office. Since they got here right at the start of rainy season, supposedly the chequenes (big flying edible ants) were supposed to come out. My coworker called me at 4:00 am to go out and hunt for them, so we all got up and waited patiently in the soccer field for awhile, but alas, sadly they never showed up so they never got to try them fried up with lime and salt. I don't know if they actually would have tried them though, since the whole time they freaked out about my bug-infested house, which really isn't that bad, it's just that when you live in the countryside in an unsealed house, you are a part of the living environment and living things get in. Either way, there was lots of concern over spiders which I guess I've just learned to live with. After my site we took another chicken bus adventure to Lake Atitlan and stayed at the beautiful Casa del Mundo hotel that is built into the hillside and it feels like you're floating over the volcano surrounded lake. Cool. We relaxed in the hotel and they got all their souvenir shopping done in Panajachel. Since my friends knew I had been to the lake a bunch of time, they told me to pick something for us to do that I had never done. So, we went and did these awesome zip lines in the lake town of Santa Clara which were sweet! There were two actually, the first one was short and you held on to a pulley as you swept across the lush green valley. Then you walk up for a bit and then do a longer one when we got strapped on from our backs so you soar like an eagle across the valley. On that we were up higher and the clouds had rolled in so we flew through a cloud without being able to see the other side which was disorienting and exhilarating. One of the coolest things ever. I want to go back and do it again on a clear day since supposedly there are great views of the lake as you soar across, but I kind of liked the cloud effect. I have been missing my friends from home the whole time I've been here, but seeing them again made me really realize how much I missed them and it got me getting excited to come home.Caitlin McKeehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-12245406305351252802009-04-20T11:48:00.000-07:002009-04-20T11:50:58.246-07:00El Mirador trip for Semana SantaSemana Santa, Holy Week before Easter, is a big deal in Guatemala. Bigger than Christmas I would say. Most of the week is given as vacation and everyone takes advantage to visit family and go to the lakes, rivers, oceans, and water parks since it is also the hottest time of year being right before the rainy season starts. The public buses are crazy-crowded and thefts increase dramatically. So this year a group of us Peace Corps volunteers decided to go do a five day hike in the jungle to Mayan ruins of El Mirador in the northernmost part of Guatemala in the department of Petén. Getting up to Flores from El Chol presented some challenges as it's about a 12 hour trip on five buses from El Chol to Rabinal, to Salamá, to El Rancho (essentially a filthy truck stop where we waited for over an hour for a bus in blazing mid-day heat eating ripe mangos and inhaling only pure black exhaust from all the traffic and observing the prostitutes coming out of the bars as full buses passed and wouldn't let us on), to Rio Hondo, where we scored seats on a bus coming from El Salvador up to Flores. We stayed at a cute Hostel and left early the next morning for our jungle trek.

So we got a local guide from the community of Carmelita which is an aldea of the municipality of San Andrés, Petén to take us on the hike. We hiked two days in to the ruins, spent a day checking them out, and hiked two days out. We had mules with us that carried our food, water, packs, and supplies. The walk itself was tough but manageable since it is almost entirely flat and shaded most of the way. We walked between 5 and 7 hours a day at a good pace for a total of an estimated 70 miles or 110 km over the five days. (No one was really sure of the mileage, the guide didn't really know, and the guys we ran into with GPS only took start and end points rather than the path taken).

We slept in tents on the ground with a sheet as bedding and our arms as pillows. We ate a lot of white bread and canned tuna en route but at camp ate lots of eggs and beans and other delicious camping foods such as spaghetti and vegetable stew. Breakfast was a delicious one cup meal of instant coffee, sugar, powdered milk, Nesquick, and cornflakes all mixed together. Snacks were all the fresh fruits in season such as mangos, watermelon, cantaloupe, and pineapple. Fortunately we avoided the scorpions, pumas, and the deadly poisonous snakes whose bites have no cure. The ticks were another story and I picked off a total of six from my body that were in the process of burrowing in – supposedly there is no Lyme disease here though. We saw lots of monkeys (and heard more of the howler monkeys), cool spiders, geckos, and birds like toucans.

The ruins themselves were cool, but after having been to Tikal which is highly excavated, El Mirador was perhaps cooler in concept than in actual viewing. El Mirador is a whole ancient Mayan city from around the time of Christ which consists of a bunch of "complexes" and different temples and towers but are barely excavated and mostly look like piles of rocks still covered with vegetation. The cool part is that they were "discovered" less than 30 years ago and it is a hotbed of archeological excavation and research. It's cool to think that you are climbing all over ancient uncovered temples. There were places where we got the guards to lift tarps to uncover newly found original wall carvings. There is scaffolding on various structures and all the stuff of the archeologists. It's special that we got to go because we imagine that within a couple decades there will be significant excavation and the site will be accessible by vehicle and commercialized like Tikal.

Of the four nights we were out there, I was on top of a tower of a ruin for every single sunset (and one sunrise). It is quite breathtaking sitting atop an ancient temple above the canopy of the jungle taking in the views of the intense greenery and seeing other ruins poking out of the trees in the distance and on the horizon as the light changes and the sun plays with the clouds. You can see all the way to Tikal and other structures scattered about the region. We were there at the ruins on the exact night of the full moon so that was quite impressive so see as well. There was also a buzz about it being a very special night in the Mayan calendar when some stars aligned with the temples like every 12 years or something but never quite got the full story on that, but we were all waiting for something crazy to happen as we watched the moon rise and fill the sky.

So obviously backpacking there is nowhere to bathe yourself, but at the spots where we camped there was a swamp where you can get a bucket of brown water to make an attempt at it. After a long day walking in the jungle heat, I felt it quite necessary to make that attempt to at least remove a a layer of the dirt and salt that had built up on my skin. So I went with a friend and he kept watch in the other direction on the path while I stripped down and was there buck naked in the clearing in the forest splashing water on myself. All of a sudden a single file line of like seven Guatemalan guys appeared from the opposite direction of the forest from a path we hadn't noticed. It was an awkward moment as I quickly grabbed my towel and stood there with it around me while they passed. Amazingly they said nothing and didn't bother me in the least bit. We had a good laugh about it.
We talked with our guide and the assistant about the effect of this ecotourism project on their community. They have been receiving trainings from the government about how to interact with tourists, first aid, etc. to improve the project. There is controversy as to whether the park and protected area will stay in the hands of the government, or if it will be privatized. Would the protection of the forest be better and more efficiently enforced with a private entity? Would it take the jobs of the local guides away? The community is also divided between those that work a logging/rubber extraction/tourism cooperative and those that independently have organized themselves into groups that work together to guide the treks. It is interesting that since the ruins are a two day walk from the nearest community, the majority of the people that live there have never been to see the ruins. Driving to get to the community you pass vast deforested areas logged for the timber industry and burned expanses making room for agriculture. Effects on global warming, anyone?

There were 11 of us Peace Corps volunteers in our group along with a couple upper class kids from the capital, a guy from the Basque Country in Spain, and a Canadian guy. It was cool having the time to talk to everyone as I learned all about the autonomy and independence movement in the Basque Country, what it's like to have body guards and live the rich life in Guatemala. It was also nice to have the chance to talk to fellow volunteers in depth about grad school, research interests, international development critiques, and future career and job possibilities since we are all leaving this year and starting to think about next steps.

Upon getting back to Flores from the trip we bought 50 giant ripe yummy mangos for 45 Quetzales (around 5 bucks) among the 15 of us to celebrate getting back. Eating whole mangos in a bus is a tricky business. You have to take of the peel with your teeth, eat the flesh while juice runs down your chin and arms and then suck the rest of the stringy fruit off the pit which then leaves your front teeth with mangos strings attractively hanging out and requiring flossing. It's messy but oh-so-worth it. Flores is actually an island town in the middle of a lake, so when we got into town we all jumped into the lake for the most refreshing dip I've had in my whole life, since that swamp water rinse didn't really do the trick.

Traveling back home on Saturday before Easter was a bit tricky since everyone is on vacation, including many bus drivers. We left Flores super early and were trying to get back to El Chol that same day, but it turned out to be impossible and so had to stay a night in Antigua. I was super frustrated, but it actually turned out to be really cool since Antigua is the most famous place in Central America for Semana Santa because of the elaborate processions including thousands of people that take place with impressive "carpets" made on the streets with colored sand, sawdust, and pine branches. Even though we had to pay quadruple to stay at the hostel we always stay at, we were super lucky to find a place to sleep. We got to see a night procession pass through the central park in front of the cathedral that was all lit up. Every person in the massive crowd was holding a candle and the air was thick and hazy with all the incense that was being burned. We watched the statues of Mary and Jesus pass by on giant wooden platforms that sway side to side being carried by gloved people wearing identical hooded purple robes. It is a very impressive display of religious devotion. At the hostel we enjoyed hot showers, ordering Domino's pizza and applying exfoliating face masks. I spent Easter Sunday en route back to El Chol. The bus driver that I had called to ensure that he was working, evidently changed his mind and didn't leave so we were facing the prospect of waiting in San Juan for five hours hoping that another bus would leave in the afternoon when luck struck us and a guy that my friend knows from her site drove by and gave us a ride back the 2 ½ hours to my site. Back to work on Monday with tons of stuff to do in the Women's Office…Caitlin McKeehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-40782357252969470842009-04-20T11:41:00.000-07:002009-04-20T11:47:50.353-07:00Soccer trip and other adventuresGoing back a bit, I took 15 girls aged 8 to 12 to the National Games in Soccer for Elementary schools in Chimaltenango, about 5 hours from El Chol. The trip was a huge success! I had two official adult chaperones go with me and a few other parents go as well. It was a wonderful opportunity for the girls since the Ministry of Education paid for the trip and covered transportation, lodging, and food. We slept on the floor of a school there and ate all our meals cafeteria style with the hundreds of kids who were participating. It was actually the first time in all my time in this country that I have seen any food service worker use gloves. It was a trying since most of the time there was no water…so the toilets couldn't flush and there was no where to wash your hands. There were pilas, but the girls washed their hair there and then the water got nasty. I didn't bathe myself for the four days of the trip.
 Like I said, it was trying. I was responsible for coordinating all the logistics with the driver of the bus, all the paperwork, getting meal tickets, figuring out where we needed to be and when, and everything else. Also for keeping track of the girls, making sure everyone had drinking water, that they brushed their teeth, that they ate (and didn´t eat too many sweets), that they had all the pieces of their uniform, taking them to the bathroom in the middle of the night (and listening to one poor little girl's bowels explode). This trip was the first time that some of the girls had left the town. We left on a Saturday and along the way we stopped at the Dispensa, which is a chain of low cost grocery stores. They never have the opportunity to go to a grocery store and were all wide-eyed and eager to purchase candies and snacks. On Sunday morning there was a parade in which all the participants put on matching t-shirts and walked through the city and traffic was stopped on the Inter-American highway so that all the kids could cross. The parade started in the central park and ended in the Municipal Stadium where the event was inaugurated with the speeches and the National Anthem.
 The girls played three games in total: the first against Sololá which we lost 1-5, the next day against Jutiapa (the national champions from the previous year) which we lost 0-11, and the third and most exciting against Chiquimula which we tied 1-1 and then won in penalty kicks. The moment that they won the last game, all the moms were crying and the girls were jumping up and down and screaming in excitement. I imagine they will almost remember that. I think they forgot that they had lost the other games and felt like they were the national champions. When we got back to El Chol, there were firecrackers set off and juices and cookies given by the mayor.
 All in all the event was a great chance for the girls to see other parts of their country and meet other kids from all over, to play and feel special and important. I'd say it was part of my primary project by boosting girls´ self esteem to be confident women citizens and participate in their local government, eh? We still practice one afternoon a week and they keep asking me when we are going to take another trip.
 13 of the 15 girls were from El Chol and the other two were from nearby Rabinal. Although Rabinal is only 24 km down the road, it is seen as being totally separate "on the other side of the mountains". It is very different, ethnically (mostly indigenous), culturally (most women wear "corte" the traditional skirts), and linguistically (many people speak the Mayan language Achi). The people from El Chol often do not speak well of the people from Rabinal and there is much prejudice and discrimination. So when the girls from El Chol found out that two girls from Rabinal were going to play with them, oh how they complained and said they didn´t want to play with them and even worse if they wore corte (which it turned out they did). At first they didn´t mingle at all and the girls from Rabinal were very shy and didn´t talk much but by the end of the trip, they were talking and laughing and at least some of the barriers had been broken down, aided by the fact that they played soccer very well and one of them scored the goal in the first game. Guatemala is a complex country and I had never witnesses such overt racism as I have observed here because in the States it is politically incorrect and covert.

I continue to work with the Peace Corps committee on HIV/AIDS education and prevention. At the beginning of March we had our second National HIV/AIDS prevention workshop with the volunteers and their counterparts in which around 75 people participated in the two-day workshop. We gave them training on participatory education, community penetration such as analyzing attitudes, knowledge, and practices of the community related to the subject, the full four hour HIV/AIDS prevention workshop, and action plans of how to implement the training. According to their evaluations, it was another big success.

I keep in touch with my host family from Alotenango and paid them a visit in March and met the new trainee that they have living with them right now. They are such a wonderful family and wonderful friends of mine and it's nice to always feel so welcome in their home. I gave them the business card of the restaurant where their nephew is working in Bellevue, WA that he gave me when I was home for Christmas. I also gave them a historical book of Alontenango with an old-time photo of a man and a women who died years ago that they had known that I salvaged from the garbage when we were cleaning out the office space for the Women´s Office in El Chol.

This year we saw many changes in the personnel of the Planning Office. We have a new coordinator, who is a woman (my age) who is finishing up her university studies in civil engineering. It is a positive influence on the office, but has been a bit challenging to get the rest of the guys in the office on board. We have a female secretary now too as the guy who was the secretary is now in a different department. We're bringing the female power to the muni!

Although the main focus of my work this year has been with the Women´s Office, I continue to do projects with and support the Municipal Planning Office. In February we did a self-diagnostic of the COMUDE, the Municipal Development Council, which in its ideal state would be the space for discussion and solution of municipal topics and problems. We split all the participants from the various communities and institutions into focus groups in which they brainstormed and responded to questions and analyzed the functioning of the Council. Afterwards we put all the responses and suggestions into a document and presented the results. Right now we are awaiting a meeting with the city council to address the needs. One of the most pressing issues is that the COMUDE should be divided into work commissions such as health, education, environment, etc. but as of right now they only exist on paper and there is no actual functioning. We hope to improve this problem this year.

It is delightful, delicious mango season! The last time I went to the community La Ciénega to bake bread we made mango bread. The women were thrilled! You make it exactly like banana bread, except instead of mashed ripe bananas, you use a pulp of ripe mangos. It is absolutely delicious! I decided to do this type of bread with them because in that community there are tons of mango trees and they can´t ever eat all the mangos that they give and many fall to the ground and rot, so better to be taking advantage of local resources and putting them into bread.

In March I had to delight of friends from the States coming to visit, my dear dear friend Allie and her boyfriend Matt. We had a lovely time. I picked them up from the airport and we got directly on a chicken bus and headed to El Chol where we spent a few days. They came with me to my English class and also to my soccer practice where they dove right in and played with the girls. They came with me to the feria in the aldea Los Amates where we watched the coronation of the queen of the feria and went to the community dance afterwards where we all danced exuberantly. We then went to Lake Atitlán and stayed in a beautiful hotel overlooking the lake with gorgeous views. It was super fun to have them visit and like always, such a joy for me to show off El Chol and play tour guide in this beautiful country.

The weather has been super hot in El Chol and so we take advantage on the weekends to go play at the river either with my site mate when we BBQ´d hamburgers or with my family that I live with.

Doña Hilda is so sweet and always giving me food. They other day she gave me a dish of cooked beets and some piece of suspicious meat sticking out with a thick tendon attached. When I thanked her for the food, she asked me if I had enjoyed the pig´s foot and I sheepishly told her that I had not. Then the other day I stuck my head in the kitchen to say "good afternoon" and she waved at me with a pair of bloody pig´s feet and motioned to another pair on the table. Shudders went through me and she laughed.Caitlin McKeehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-76125057580018918252009-03-30T15:36:00.000-07:002009-03-30T15:37:53.657-07:00Women's Office up and running!SO! We have the Municipal Women's and Youth Office!!! As of January 15th, 2009 we started the office, known as the OMMJ for Oficina Municipal de la Mujer y la Juventud. In May of 2008 the project was approved by the city council, in November 2008 we got permission to conduct the interview process (the only formal transparent interview process based on merit that has taken place in this municipality), and in January we hired our coordinator. She is an awesome woman, a Home Economics teacher, very smart, very petite, very punctual. At the same time a recent high school grad (one of my former students from last year) was hired as the Youth and Children's technician.

We started out with the three of us crowded in the Planning Office, a small space which already had five people working in it with five chairs. Supposedly the Civil Registry was supposed to leave with the new privatized national registry, but that hasn't happened yet so we were without an office space. After exploring about around the muni, we requested permission to clean out a storage area/garbage pile that was off of the library. This work took us a few days getting dirty removing all the trash that had been there for decades. Water gets in during the rainy season so everything was moist. There were tools, pipes, furniture, papers, a sack of moldy bean seeds, an old scale for weighing crops, rakes to prevent the spread of forest fires, old typewriters and computer equipment, and several unidentifiable objects. There were boxes of old books dating back to the 1930´s piled high that disintegrated when you pulled them down. All the books were wet and moldy and the boxes fell apart. There were registries from the treasury office with payments of 38 cents from the 1950´s. I'm sure historians would have cringed to see all the history being thrown away, but they were really unusable. There were cockroaches, spiders, evidence of rats, and a fossil of a toad that had met an unfortunate fate. Rumor has it that before being a storage/garbage room that is was the municipal jail when there was no presence of the national police force. Finally we got everything cleaned out, got the order for some of the muchachos that work for the muni to paint the space. We had to wait a few more days to get the wiring fixed so we could turn on the light. We salvaged a few rickety chairs from the trash to paint and they looked as good as new (as long as you sit carefully on them). We worked that way for a few weeks and then finally the municipal secretary gave us an old desk from who knows where so we finally had a place to write at least. We put the name of our office and mounted it on construction paper to tape to the door. Each little step we got more and more excited about the space. Even though it has no windows, there are doors on either side so at least there is air that gets in, once the smell of bleach and gasoline cleared out.

Our first task was to get the word out that we existed, to the communities and to the institutions working in the municipality. This included lots of meetings and explaining. In my time here I've accumulated a ton of materials about the laws, rights, citizen participation, etc. and since the two employees had lots to learn, they spent quite a bit of time familiarizing themselves with all that. The coordinator had never used a computer before, so training her on that has also been a big task. She knew how to type on a typewriter, but I've been training her on Windows, Word, and Excel and we've set her up with an email account to put her in direct contact with the institutions.

After working since January, in mid-March we finally got her contract finalized after many circles round and round the muni and then at the end of March she got her first pay check! I was so excited that day I was jumping up and down since the municipal employees only get paid once every few months, I had been holding my breath ever since she started working there, afraid somehow that she would never get paid. But she did! Success!

March 26th we had our first big event put on by our office…El Primer Encuentro Municipal de Lideresas (First Municipal Gathering of Women Leaders). We invited all the women who are part of the COCODES (Community Development Councils), as least written down as being part of them on paper at least, to an event in the town. We did workshops on self-esteem, the importance of women in development, and community organization. We facilitated the event and the workshops as the Women's Office with the help of the Municipal Planning Office and invited facilitators from various NGO's to participate. The goal of the invent was to promote boost women's confidence in their participation in the Development Council and empower then to take part in decision making processes, such as prioritizing projects in their communities. The women were so excited to have been invited and that we were taking them into account, since there is so much machismo in this country that women are constantly being overlooked and not invited to things. In fact, we became aware that some of the male community leaders that we had sent the written invitations to didn't distribute them, and lied to us and told them that they had. There are just so many barriers to including women in these processes it is very frustrating. These are the very women who are supposedly elected by their communities to represent them, and they tell us that they are constantly being excluded from the meeting of the very group that they are a part of. Anyway, so that's why it was so cool that we did this. It was a great opportunity to debut the Women's Office and get a start on organizing women's groups in the rural communities. It was also just so nice for the women to be able to leave their houses for a time and play and laugh and learn and share with other women since they are just stuck in their houses all day long with household chores and taking care of their kids, there are so few opportunities for them to get out and have the spaces to enjoy and learn like that. We decorated the space with balloons and posters of inspirational messages and played lots of games and had all kinds of participatory activities. The municipality covered the costs of providing snacks and lunch for the women (and the inevitable children that are stuck to them). It was a big success and we are already planning the next event. I was so proud of my coordinator for putting so much work and planning into everything and she felt so good for the accomplishment.

So that's how we've started out…little by little. I feel so proud to have accomplished starting this office, since it was one of my major goals in the Peace Corps. There is a good reason why Peace Corps is for two years. It really is in the second year when everything magically comes together and stuff gets done. I have tons of work now and am feeling very fulfilled in what I'm doing in the role of training the coordinator and the technician, guiding the planning process and long term goals, and helping execute special events and trainings. Woo hoo!Caitlin McKeehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-393189278379534932009-02-18T10:02:00.000-08:002009-02-18T10:11:25.429-08:00Soccer trip, electricity inauguration, economy, Valentines Day...etc.As the new year started, I continued to have soccer practice with my group of elementary school girls. One day I received a call from the Departmental coordinator of Physical Education inviting our group to represent the department of Baja Verapaz in the National Physical Education Games in Chimaltenango at the end of February. I guess he was talking one day in the departmental capital to one of the city councilmen and that's how he found out about my group and got my number. Anyway, it's a big honor and a really cool opportunity for the girls to go play with kids from all over the country and leave this town, some of them for the first time. The Ministry will be covering the costs of transportation, food, and organizing lodging in a school there, so it makes the trip possible for kids that wouldn't be able to pay. So in the meantime I've been doing all the logistical organizing to make this trip possible. It hasn't been easy. Of course the girls were all for it, it's a matter of convincing the parents to let them go. Getting permission here is tricky, whether it's a child from a parent or a wife from her husband. So I made official notes with the information and an invitation to a parents meeting and delivered them door to door to twenty houses of girls who had come out to practice with the help of one of the girls in my house. Only about seven parents showed up (I needed 15 girls) so that wasn't quite enough. I was about to scrap the idea right there and think that I was crazy for even trying, but one of the moms said that she would go around with me and muster up more interest. So I made more house calls another day with her and little by little we got more parents on board. After the fourth meeting and several more house calls to confirm with parents who didn't come to the meeting, but whose daughters said they got permission. During these meetings we picked the other two responsible adults who will be going with us as chaperones. Then came all paperwork, nagging the girls and their parents to give me copies of their birth certificates, going to their school on several occasions to get a letting from the director for permission and proving that they attended that school, figuring out uniforms, taking their pictures and getting them printed for their ID cards. It was REALLY annoying and I had to keep repeating the mantra in my head of how great of an opportunity this is going to be for them. I was having several conversations a week with the coordinator who had invited us about the logistics and requirement. Well the week that I was going to turn the paperwork, he called for a list of the names and birthdates and informed me that the girls who were born in 1996 couldn't go because they would turn 13 this year, even though during the event they would be 12 during the event. This was a very important detail that he had failed to mention to me earlier, so I had to have a sad conversation with two of the girls telling them that they couldn't go anymore. Then I had parents upset with me because their daughters were upset. Then a girl who was cousins with one of them then told me that her mom wouldn't let her go if her cousin wasn't going, so I had to make another house call and go in and drink coffee and eat stale bread while I explained the situation. So anyway, the trip is for this weekend....wish us luck!!!

So the other weekend I had the privilege of attending a ceremony to inaugurate the project of introducing electricity in the community where I bake bread. The project was one of the projects done with financing from the System of Development Councils approved at the departmental level. When I first came to El Chol, I had met the super smart female community mayor and she told me that "ya mero" (very soon) they would have the project finished. Well, 14 months later it happened. I had intended to walk there (about an hour) but got lucky and caught a ride in the back of the mayor's pickup as he was heading out of town and made our way to the rural village and on the bumpy dirt road barely hanging on around the curves. We got there and there was the usual loud music blasting from big speakers from the sound system that had been brought by the local disco company which runs all the events in town. Good thing they finally had electricity to hook them up with. Kids were selling bags of peanuts and acidic unripe mango slice with lime and salt. In the school they did a ceremony where the municipal mayor and community mayor gave words and they did various competitions and games with prizes. The event culminated in a lunch that they gave everyone in attendance, which was quite the crowd with everyone from the 18 family community plus the invited people from town. A common pork dish in orange sauce with rice that had been bubbling all morning in huge caldrons over open fires in the patio of the school was served with tortillas. (I thought about making a joke about where were the electric stoves? But then thought that might not be very appropriate). It was a cool event to participate in because it was a huge deal for this community to have executed the project and ever cooler that it was done by a female leader. There are few opportunities for the people of rural communities to get together and celebrate so it was a unique opportunity for them to get dressed up, leave their houses, and share a meal with each other and people from town and have the honorable presence of the municipal mayor too. They were very proud of themselves and it was a merry event and having electricity will obviously make a huge change in the community.

I am continuing with my English class from last year, now my "intermediate" group and I've started with another beginning group with about 15 students all between the ages of 18-25. They are a great group and several of them have either been in the states or have studied English before and know a fair bit. This continues to be an activity that I thoroughly enjoy and look forward to. For Valentine's Day I did an activity with candy hearts from the States where each student drew a few and had to write love letters in English using the inspiration from the candy heart messages. It was pretty cute and there was lots of giggling.

In January my site mate and I finished our world map project and finally painted the names of all the countries in Spanish, touched up a few areas, and added the acknowledgements. We did a teacher training before the kids started classes and gave the teacher a packet of information with explanations of some of the games that you can play with the map and then we played some of the games with them. For example, we did one where you play music and dance over the map and when the music stops, you have to freeze on the country that you are on and then read the name of the country and state the continent that it's on. Some of these teachers had a hard time naming the continent they were on, which reinforced for us the importance of this project in the familiarization of geography, not only for the kids.

At the beginning of February my family here in El Chol observed the one year anniversary of the death of the señora's dad. There were several evenings of prayer sessions followed by the compulsory coffee and tamales and lots of family members and community member in attendance. I continue to be impressioned by the rituals surrounding death here.

Ripples of the bad state of the economy are being felt in rural Guatemala and it is the hot topic of conversation. Lots of people from here who had gone there illegally to work and making their way back since they can't find work. Most of them were working in construction, and since there isn't a lot of new house building going on right now, they're coming back. And those that are staying aren't able to send back remittances as they used to. This situation has significantly affected the household incomes here that were highly dependent upon that cash flow. Money is tight everywhere, for everyone. People talk about how they have high hopes in Obama to improve the situation since there is a lot of blaming the United States for financial problems here.

There were a few weeks where it actually got pretty cold here at night and the early mornings, even though the days were warm and sunny. The thermometer on my alarm clock registered as low as 57 degrees in my house at night. It was strange to be wearing a fleece and socks to sleep in and still be cold and to wear sleeves to work in the morning. It seems that cold snap has passed and is now more like 70 at night and 85 in the day. Things are dry and dusty since the rains won't come again til May. Keeping the house clean and dust free is an impossible task and traveling out of town covers you in a thick layer and the joke made every time is how everyone arrives "canche" (light-haired).

Valentine's Day is hugely celebrated in Guatemala…not just boyfriend/girlfriends, but in any social situation. Families and church groups go the river and have picnics, every level of school does a gift exchange event, text messages and emails are sent to everyone in your address book, offices have celebrations. In the muni we did a gift exchange by drawing names of the person you had to get a gift for and sharing a snack Monday afternoon. It was cute since there are few opportunities when all the employees that work in the muni get together, about 15 of us. We all gathered in one of the offices and each person had the opportunity to give words about what Valentine's Day ("Día de Cariño" or "Day of Caring") means to them. This is all taken with utmost seriousness and is not considered cheesy or appropriate for giggles, as I was inclined to stifle. There were lots of hugs and everyone applauded and gave whoops of surprise as one by one we gave our gifts for the intended person. We then drank cantaloupe juice and ate guacamole on large tortilla chip rounds. It was special to be a part of.

To celebrate Valentine's Day on the actual day, I gathered with some of my Peace Corps girlfriends at the Lake at one of their houses. It was a much needed respite and chance to catch up with the girls. We were hanging out at the dock and met the Guatemalan volunteer firefighters that work in that town who were receiving a training from some firefighters, coincidentally from Lynnwood, WA. While they were learning how to do water rescues, we went for a swim and ended up being practiced on as their "victims" by getting us up onto a board and pulling us into the boat. It was pretty hilarious with the Guatemalan firefighter about half my size who himself couldn't swim without the bulky lifejacket, hefting two of us onto the board as the American firefighters called out instructions in broken Spanish. But he had a smile ear to ear after completing his feat. There was applause from the boat and from the dock and the rest of my friends where keeled over in laughter. It was a great day and worth the total of 16 hours of chicken bus travel time for 12 hours of waking time during the visit.Caitlin McKeehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-39073120069909770562009-01-09T15:04:00.000-08:002009-01-09T15:15:10.848-08:00Happy New Year!The 2008 El Chol feria was a huge success. This is the event that the entire town looks forward to the whole year. The extended week long celebration was intense, super fun, and tired me out. The feria basically exists of various elements: the religious aspect of which is the reason for celebrating which consists of processions with the Virgin Mary, vigils in the church, people hosting "Ave Marias" at their houses, and the arrival of traveling pilgrims; the commercial aspect of people coming from all over the region to sell their wares; the competitive aspect with many opportunities for participation in athletic competitions; the entertainment aspect with the election of the queen, a rodeo, motocross, and cock fighting; and the community aspect of it all getting people out of their houses and into the streets for shopping, the parade, the four nights of community dances. I participated in many of the competitions that took place such as:

Campeonato de futbol feminino. Women's soccer tournament. Our El Chol selection made up of mostly middle school and high school girls won first place of the invited teams from Rabinal and Granados! Big trophy.

Triatlon. Triathlon. For my second year participating in this event, I came in second place again of a total of three participants, being the only woman. The guy who won was the same guy who beat me last year. But this year the prizes were better and I won 500 quetzales, the equivalent of my rent for a month or just over 60 bucks. In the days before the race everyone kept asking me if I was ready to compete. Just as last year, the race consisted of a 100 meter swim in the river in waist deep cold water coming off the mountain, a 3 km bike ride all uphill on a dusty dirt road, and a 2 km run on that road arriving into town. I was ahead during the whole bike part and the little van with the loudspeakers was giving the play by play announcing that Katty McKee was leading the race. We were accompanied by plenty of motorcycles and friends cheering us on. In addition to the cash, I won a glass trophy with the emblem of the national beer.

Tiro con honda. Slingshot contest. It was the first time in my life shooting a slingshot. Out of my ten chances, I didn't hit a single bottle.

Motos empujadas. Pushed motorcycles. A challenging event where in pairs you have to push a motorcycle (turned off) around the perimeter of the soccer field. I did this with my site mate and we thought we would dominate the event, but came in last of the three women's teams. The winners felt bad and gave us their medals donated by the national beer brand.

Other exciting events that I witnessed included gatos asustados, scaredy cats, where people bring their cats and tie a string around its neck with a metal ring which is attached to a string between two poles. They then set off firecrackers and watch the cats go running, and the first to arrive at the other side wins. Cruel. The cock fighting was also rather disturbing but fascinating to see. It was the first time in my life to see such an event and I didn't stay very long. The razor blades that they attached to their talons slicing into the other bird and the owners giving the avian equivalent of CPR was just a bit disturbing for me. Jaripeo, the rodeo, was pretty awesome. One crazy thing they did to entertain the crowd during the breaks was the "The most applauded table" where they offered free beers to the first four volunteers who came forward. The contest was to see who could finish the beer first, without getting up from their seat at the table that was set up in the middle. They then released the biggest, meanest bull into the pen and it went trampling over the four guys in the middle. Being stupid and drunk, they didn't even move and all got trampled. Luckily we didn't see anyone die or and serious visible wounds, but those scenarios were in high probability. Imagine the lawsuits in the States.

The community dances were incredibly fun and for two of the nights they brought in live Ranchera bands which were pretty good and made for a good atmosphere. In all it was a very enjoyable feria, but sad to think it was my last one here. It's funny cause the first year in your site, every event and activity is new and exciting and then the second year it's hard thinking that it will be your last time doing or celebrating each thing.

Right after the feria I went home to the states, which was glorious. Despite the unusual snow storm (record since 1955!) I thoroughly enjoyed my time at home with family and friends. I was reminded of all the things that I missed and had grown accustomed to doing without and it made it even more difficult to say goodbye and think of another year away.

It was nice to come back to friends and "family" and in Guatemala. I spent new years at the beach on the Pacific coast in Monterrico. It was nice catching up with Peace Corps friends, making new friends, and transitioning back into Guatemalan life.

Coming back to El Chol was very nice. I was greeted with a swarm of kids from the family as soon as I stepped off the bus and it was good to have that "coming home" feeling on both ends of my journey. The señora had a tamale ready for me which she had saved, knowing the strangeness that we don't eat tamales for Christmas in the U.S. and wanting to make sure I had mine. I relished distributing gifts and trinkets to everyone from the states and they were quite thrilled with what I had brought them. Everyone I saw on the street was glad to see me and asked where I had been since they had noticed that I hadn't been around.

We're getting back into the swing of things at work. My counterpart, the coordinator of the Municipal Planning Office is no longer working here so we are awaiting the appointment of the new coordinator. While I was gone a técnico for children and youth was hired who will be working with us in the almost formed Municipal Women and Youth Office. (He was actually one of my students last year when I was giving citizen participation workshops in the high school). We started the year off well doing a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis of our office that I think was good and honest and then moving on to an annual operating plan for 2009. It was a good way to start things off and I hope that we will stick to what we say we will do. 10 months to go…Caitlin McKeehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-64192580114815348902008-12-01T13:25:00.000-08:002008-12-01T13:28:00.252-08:00AIDS, mid-service, legalizing groups, world map, English clausura, Thanksgiving, feria…I´M COMING HOME SOON!!!In mid-November our Peace Corps HIV/AIDS committee put on a National HIV/AIDS workshop where various volunteers and their counterparts participated from all over the county in a two-day workshop at the Peace Corps office. The event was a huge success. The idea is to train counterparts not only in up-to-date and accurate information on the subject, but to give them lots of tools and participatory activities that they can use in their communities to replicate the knowledge. I was in a group of rural health workers, so their knowledge was pretty good and we were able to focus on strategies of how to implement the activities in their communities. Since they were from all over, it was a good opportunity for them to discuss their common challenges and share stories as well. Some pretty horrifying things like how in one community there is a microbus full of adolescent boys that leaves every Friday evening for a city where in a certain establishment you can show your student ID and get a discount on the prostitutes that frequent there. There is a long way to go here in HIV/AIDS education. There are lots of cultural barriers that present themselves the complicate the challenge, such as many parents who don't want any sort of sexual education in the schools and teachers can lose their jobs and be run out of town for touching on these subjects. Or for example as one neighbor put it to me in El Chol, it is the responsibility of the government to make public the list of names of HIV positive people so that everyone else can avoid them and live in peace. As I said, there´s a long way to go. Our committee had a really good productive meeting with the Peace Corps Guatemala Country Director to discuss a future vision for HIV/AIDS work here.

Right after the AIDS workshop my group had our mid-service conference to mark the one year of being in our sites. It was a very productive full day with lots of reflection on the work of the past year and making plans and sharing resources for the upcoming year, which generally seems to be the most productive time in your service. We also had our mid-service medical and dental check-ups which I was relieved to find out that I'm good and healthy and that a sugary diet didn't leave me with any cavities, and I've somehow managed to avoid or fight off all the bacteria, fungi, parasites, and bugs that one might encounter here.

The other week I had a super busy workweek, definitely the busiest I've had my whole time here. We did the interviews for the Women's Office coordinator, which I conducted and led with the presence of the two city council members. I was super pleased with two of the women that we interviewed and would be very pleased to have the honor of working with them next year. The only problem now is that I want to have a written contract before the call is made to offer them a job. Work is hard to come by here; there aren't an abundance of job opportunities. But my coworkers in the muni haven't been paid in four months and I don't want to offer someone a salary that is not going to appear. So we are still in negotiations. We also had a meeting with the women's commission to make advances in the Política Pública that we are creating. And also for our monthly interinstitutional meeting I invited some community leaders to do an analysis of the COMUDE, but there was a bunch of activities happening that day and the mayor was there, with a meeting planned for the same time, so we were having our meeting, when like 15 people showed up in the middle and sort of joined in and there was lots of confusion and then we all crammed into the mayor's office to meet with him and it was all very stressful and confusing. And I didn't get the opportunity to hammer out the details of the coordinator of the women's office, so I have to wait til the next time the City Council meets, which who knows when that will be since we are now in Feria time.

My counterpart called me the other day to tell me that there was a group of women in one of the communities that wanted to organize themselves into a committee and asked me if I would go. So that Sunday afternoon I met up with the woman who had called the meeting and we walk up (and up and up) to the community, which is only accessible on foot. There were about 18 women who showed up, plus all the babies and children in tow. They wanted to legalize a group because only legalized groups can receive projects or benefits. It is a very formal process here in Guatemala to organize and legalize a group…you have to a have a meeting where the representatives are elected, you have to HAND WRITE an official version of the acta (the meeting minutes), in an official book of actas, which everyone has to sign (or put their thumbprint for those who can't write their name). The official book of actas has to be authorized by the mayor and the municipal secretary, and then the group has to apply to receive an official stamp they have to put on all their documents to make them official. It's a very exact process. So we went through a voting process, which was difficult because no one wanted to take on an official position and many of them didn't know how to read and write. Finally we finished the voting process and the COCODE president wrote the acta for us, which took a full hour in which everyone had to linger around for so they could sign their names (or thumbprint) after it had been read. A very interesting experience. So then a few days later the women went to the muni to get their book of actas authorized, at which point it came to attention that the women elected as treasurer couldn't read or write, which is kind of important for that position, so they couldn't get authorized yet, and will have to have another meeting to put someone in her place that can read and write.

We are almost finished with our world map project. All the countries and oceans have been painted, now we just need to write the country names and thankyous to the contributors. Having never done a project like this before, we had absolutely no idea how much paint we would need. The hardware stores in town donated everything that we asked for, but we didn't ask for enough. So we went back and asked for more and were donated a little bit more, but ended up having to front a bunch of the money. The teachers contributed a bit too, but it was still more than we were expecting. It was totally worth it though cause it turned out so cool! Next year when classes start again we are planning on going and teaching some of the games you can play with it. It's also nice to have done one thing here where you can physically see the results, which is admittedly very satisfying.

I finished up my English class for the year and gave a final test on which everyone did well. We had a clausura (closing ceremony) at my house since they like to do ceremonies for everything. We ate pizza which was for sale for the feria and I baked a cake with homemade chocolate frosting. As is custom, I gave a speech, thanking everyone for their participation and encouraging them to keep studying. As is custom, I gave them each a diploma certifying their participation. They are very into the diplomas here; when you go to apply for a job you have to include with your CV photocopies of all the diplomas you have received for participation in any classes, courses, or trainings and these count significantly towards consideration for hire. I myself have already acquired a neat little stack of them for random one-day trainings and such. As is custom, each person gave some words of thanks to me and to God. It was actually all quite touching and made me feel really good for having taken the time and effort to do the class all year. Being a small group of nine who completed the course, we all got really close. I hope that everyone continues to study next year with me.

Everyone here knows that in the US we celebrate Thanksgiving or "Día de Acción de Gracias" ("Day of Action of Thanks") and it is interesting to explain the history of the tradition and the irony of it. I made sure to tell the family that I live with that on this day when we pause to give thanks for what we have in our lives, that I include them in my thoughts of thanks. Despite being away from home and missing my family, Thanksgiving Day here was exquisite. We gathered together about 20 of us volunteers and slaughtered a turkey. We really killed a real turkey. One volunteer had purchased it three weeks before Thanksgiving and had been taking care of it. We improvised how to kill it, pluck it, clean it remove all the entrails, and cook it. We had to tie its feet together, pin the wings back, and tie a piece of string around its neck to stretch it out to make sure the machete hit the right spot to cut off the head. The volunteer who bought it was attached, but was also the one to make the fateful hack with the machete to cut off its head. We all screamed at the moment since it was flopping around everywhere and blood was squirting out. Everyone was yelling "Grab it! Grab its legs!" There was quite a bloodstain on the green grass. The headless flapping of the wings eventually ceased, the bleeding from the neck slowed to an occasional drip, and the legs were hacked off with a few more machete swings. We dunked it in a pot of boiling water to open the pores to remove the feathers easier, as we have all witnessed done with chickens in this country. My site mate did most of the organ removal; she was literally up to her elbow in turkey butt. The whole event was all very dramatic and a bit emotionally draining. We all had studied biology/anatomy in high school or college and had a slight idea of what we were doing and some people group had done it the year before and had a bit of experience. We basted it with a delicious basil rub, cooked it to a safe 180 degrees. It turned out delicious and no one got sick! The rest of the food was amazing too. Everyone brought their family´s favorite recipe and went shopping for specialty items in the capital. Someone's family mailed down a bunch of goods from the States to make the event just like home, including canned cranberry sauce, Stovetop, and Hershey's chocolates. The boxed wine was not lacking and before eating, we all went around the table and said what we were thankful for, including the two Guatemalans who were present with us. It was a special and memorable Thanksgiving.

It's feria time! In Santa Cruz El Chol, the titular town fair is in honor of the Most Holy Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception from December 1st – 9th. During this time the town completely changes and becomes busting with commercialism, loud music everywhere and firecrackers going off whenever. The days packed full of competitions, soccer tournaments, and cultural events. The streets become blocked off and impassable with so many tents put up selling food and goods. The central park is filled with two Ferris wheels, games, and foosball tables. It's the time to take advantage to buy new clothes, kitchen utensils, toys, pirated CDs and DVDs, household items, furniture, and knick-knacks. The festivities are kicked off with the election of the queen of the feria, essentially a full on beauty pagent. It is a big formal event where they build a stage in the market and the entire town comes out to watch. It started at 8 pm, and finished at 3:30 am. Seriously. Each of the candidates has her "fantasy outfit" consisting of some sort of glittery bra and mini skirt and large head piece made with cardboard and feathers, then there is the evening gown, a group dance, and a speech. The group dance has very sexually suggestive choreography and the coverage of the skin is minimal. There is lots of whistling and cat calling from the men drooling from the upper levels of the market. It is a very merry event, and no one seems to have any problem with the social messages that are being conveyed. The following day was the inagural parade in which the members of my office were put in charge of decorating one of the pickups that carried the pageant contestants (a carroza). We started working on it several days before with a western theme, complete with a giant horseshoe made out of PVC pipe and wire, paper cactus, and fake bales of hay made out of all those boxes from the care packages you've been sending me being put to good use. So after a late night watching the election I got up at the crack of dawn to help my compañeros finish the carroza. The parade was high class with participation of school bands, dances, acrobatics, horses, morocycles and of course the carrozas. The feria was inaugurated in the blazing sun at mid-day with speeches and lots of course firecrackers. For the dances that take place, it is customary to wear new clothes, so I shopped around and found a new top to debut.

So excited to come home! It's so soon! Can't wait to see everyone!!!!Caitlin McKeehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-50023821654532931482008-11-12T08:32:00.000-08:002008-11-12T08:38:23.353-08:00Dia de los Santos, elections, kickboxingSo for All Saints Day, we went to go visit one of my good friends in the town of Todos Santos Cuchumatans in the department of Huehuetenango. It is a very indigenous town in the Western Highlands unique in the fact that everyone that lives there still wears the traditional form of dress, including the men and youth. As a result of the 30 year bloody civil war, lots of people, especially men stopped wearing their traditional clothing. But in Todos Santos it is so cool to see everyone still wearing it. The men wear bright red striped pants and everyone where these small hats with a blue and red band. It's like the whole town is in uniform. It's fascinating to see how the youth adapt their clothes by wearing the pants super baggy, ripping the shirts, attaching patches, or wearing Metallica shirts with it. They speak the indigenous language Mam, although most people speak at least a little Spanish it is difficult to communicate. It is SUPER cold there too. It's clear in the morning and then around noon the clouds roll in and it's super foggy. Since there is no indoor heating of anything here, you see your breath all day long. You layer many sweaters, and they're not enough and the water is so cold to wash your hands it burns. November 1st is their feria so there are lots of people that go there for their famous horse riding event, which consists of a bunch of very intoxicated men riding back and forth on the dirt road that goes out of town on a stretch about 200 meters. All day long. Not racing. No winner. Just riding. Every so often one of the guys falls off and there is a big "oohhh" from the crowd. This year the first woman ever participated in the event. She was also intoxicated. The whole event was so interesting. I felt like I was in a whole different country…it's a different world out there on that side of Guatemala. It was quite the trek to get out there from my site and many uncomfortable hours of chicken bus riding. On the way back, some guy was throwing up on the micro. The driver got really mad and stopped and kicked him out, but demanded that he clean it up first. We were in the in middle of nowhere, so the guy went off into the bushes on the mountainside and collected some yellow wildflowers, which he then used to clean up his own vomit. Priceless.

The elections here were big news! For the days leading up to it, people would greet me with, "who's gonna win?" and the days following with jubilant comments about how they were pleased with the results. It makes you realize that these elections were not just for our country, but the whole world was really hanging on them. I went to a prayer session the day after for the birthday of one of the señora´s sons who is in the States, and the woman leading it gave a long prayer for Obama that God give me wisdom, courage, and strength so that he would lead our country and the rest of the world in an honorable way. It's funny to step out of context and think that in some small rural town in Guatemala there are elderly women praying for our soon-to-be president.

My site mate and I are deeply involved with our World Map project now. We are painting a map of the world the size of the entire basketball court in the elementary school in the town. So far we have measured everything out, painted the background all white, and draw the grid lines from which will guide how we draw it all in. We got a bunch of the students from the high school to help us and it looks like its going to turn out really cool!

After meeting with the mayor and a couple members of the City Council again, we finally have begun the process of contracting the coordinator of the new Municipal Women's and Youth Office to start working in the beginning of January! Yay! A year in waiting and it looks like it's going to happen! So in order to announce the position, we hand wrote in permanent marker a bunch of posters to put up around town, in the fashion that any important information is disseminated in El Chol. I've have lots of women come up to ask me about the job, even one woman came and tracked me down at my house at night while I was washing dishes in my pajamas to ask me about it. Next week we'll sit down and review the applications and call people in for interviews. I hope this all comes together.

Since the women in my family all have high blood pressure and cholesterol, they are trying to get into working out. So the other day I brought down one of my exercise DVDs that I figured out is dubbed in Spanish and we did a kickboxing workout. It was hilarious! Of course all the kids joined in too. Everyone is extremely uncoordinated but had a great time anyway bopping around and kicking and punching the air at will. Oh I wish I had a video of them to show…Caitlin McKeehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-3852152710445199622008-10-17T09:29:00.000-07:002008-10-17T09:33:30.834-07:00Gifting, gordita, prayer sessions, frustrations of workThe nature of gifting things in Guatemala is very interesting. People here are very generous, even if they don't have much themselves. There is a strong custom of gifting things and inviting people to eat, meaning that you will pay for them. I'm getting used to this system, but there are subtleties that take a little while to catch onto since they are different from how we do it in the states. Generally, if someone is wearing something pretty, like a pair of earrings for example, saying that you think it is very pretty is kind of like asking for them to give it to you. In Spanish it is better to say that "those earrings look nice on you" because saying "I like your earrings; they are pretty" means that you want them to give them to you. I learned this awhile back when a girl who is part of the family came to visit and I told her that her earrings were pretty, as is a common compliment that we give in the US. She promptly gave me a pair of identical one of a different color that she had bought, even though I protested she insisted. I get a lot of people commenting on the silver rings that I wear, telling me how pretty they are and asking me to gift one to them, so which I have to refuse because…they are my rings. Another example of generosity, if we're working in the office, and someone leaves to go buy something at the store, they will generally get something for everyone without asking, just to be nice, even if it's just a lollypop. We often take turns going to buy chocolate covered frozen bananas. If you're eating something in front of someone else, you always offer them some, and they will always accept, even if they don't really want it, just to be nice; whereas in the US, we would probably decline just to be nice, even if we wanted some. This is uncomfortable sometimes, especially when it's a kid offering you some sort of sticky candy that has half melted in his dirty hand. One time I was waiting for the bus in San Juan with a woman from town who I kind of knew, and she went to buy some roasted corn on the cob that was for sale on the street, and asked me if I wanted some, so I accepted and knew that it would be impolite to offer to pay for it. Oftentimes random fruits and vegetables are gifted to me, like when one lady stopped by my office the other day to give me a pound of green beans, or when my soccer girls give me handfuls of jocote fruits or a giant lime the size of a giant orange. Whenever the women that I live with make something like corn bread or tamales, them always save me one. I've adapted to this too and since I bake frequently in my house, I always make sure to make enough to give some to the family. It's a nice thing.

Along with the having to accept food that is offered to you and food being such a part of social customs, comes the gaining of weight with the cuisine here being carbo-heavy and relying heavily on pig lard, vegetable oil, and salt. It's not necessarily seen as bad to be overweight here, and definitely not rude to comment about it. Even though I consider myself to be a normal height and weight in the states and maintain an active lifestyle here, I'm much bigger and taller than most people here, including lots of men. But coming from US culture, it still stings when people comment about my size. Last week when two of my coworkers made comments about how Katy was getting "gordita," - little fatty - (which is not an insult and is often used as a term of endearment), I had to hold myself back from getting really annoyed at them. When the truck that I was riding on one day slid off the side of the road and we had to get towed out, they were calling for the heaviest people of the group to stand on the back bumper to give it weight to give the tire traction. And of course they called the gringa to go stand on it. These instances grate on me and take a lot of internal rationalizing to not let them bother you.

I went to another prayer session recently at the house of some of my friends for the one year anniversary of when their younger sister who had special needs passed away. I rather enjoy going to these events, since they are an opportunity to see lots of people from the community and share in a common purpose and share food together. They are not somber, formal events, but rather relaxed informal gatherings. Everyone is happy to see everyone and despite the reason for the gathering, everyone is in good spirits. People come late and leave early, and younger kids dart around playing between the adults seated on chairs and benches. People bring flowers (usually plastic ones) that are placed on an altar with candles, incense and a picture of the deceased person and sit together for about an hour while some women leads the praying/chanting/singing of which they are all familiar. Afterwards there is always some sort of snack and hot beverage, this particular evening there was chicken salad on tostadas and on rolls with hot chocolate made with cinnamon. It is common for people to take the snacks with them wrapped up to go to eat the next day or give to a family member at home. These events exist usually for birthdays, deaths, anniversaries of deaths. A nice Guatemalan custom.

There is a government institution in Guatemala in charge of upholding human rights. They have been active in El Chol organizing youth groups and promoting that youth know about their rights. So they organized a Fair for the Recognition of Youth Rights here in which they asked the participation of various institutions. So I was in charge of organizing the stand for the municipality on the subject of citizen participation, which is one of the main focuses of my project. I designed the content and the interns in my office helped me to make some posters and some games for the kids to play. On the day there were group of 15 kids that came in six rotations so I gave them a short presentation on participation and the System of Development Councils, then they played some interactive games to which we gave them candy for finishing the puzzles.

Working in Guatemala is frustrating. Working in the muni is frustrating. Here's a little anecdote that captures pretty well the types of frustrations that are faced here. Days and days can go by without anything really to do. Then all of a sudden, a bunch of things all happen at once. One particular Thursday there were four work-related activities going on that I wanted to participate in. One, the monthly COMUDE meeting which I have never missed one and I don't like to since you hear about everything that is going on. Two, a training on the GIS ArcView program. Three, one of the city councilwoman and I received an invitation to go to the capital for a two day convention on a Thursday of representatives of the Commission 9 (Family, Women, and Youth) part of the COMUDE, given by one of the NGOs active in El Chol. We were planning on going, but then two days beforehand, on Tuesday, three women representatives from the Presidential Secretary of the Woman (like the National Women's Office) stopped by my office to tell us about an assembly they were hosting for the same day the other meeting was for in Salamá, the departmental capital of Baja Verapaz (activity number four). This meeting was supposed to be a gathering of ten women leaders from each of the eight municipalities in the department of Baja Verapaz to create a network of female leaders and elect representatives to the CODEDE, the Departmental Development Council. Baja Verapaz has a female governor (politically appointed position, but still cool), and she was gonna be there with representatives from different sectors that support women's issues. So in talking to the city councilwoman, we decided that it would be more beneficial to go to that meeting, considering these contacts would be good for the women's office that we are supposedly opening in January of next year. Of course the invitation was dated for ten days earlier and they weren't able to get them to us til two days before the event, expecting us to get the notes to the ten female community leaders to the different rural communities in next day. It seemed like such a great opportunity that we made the effort. They had left five of the notes with me, and five of them with another community leader to distribute. So I had to coordinate with her but she is very busy and hard to track down and doesn't really answer the phone. So I found her late Tuesday afternoon and we made the plans to go, put together the list of participants and she said she would arrange the microbus to take our group. It's a delicate line that you have to tread on since all of these things are very political and personal, in terms of whom to invite, who get along with or doesn't get along with whom, and all that nit-picky stuff that I know exists all the world over, but I feel is especially heightened here. Right afterwards I made the appropriate phone calls and house calls to invite the women. One I couldn't get the phone number for so had to track down the microbus that was going out to that community and give the note to a random neighbor for her to pass on. On Wednesday I called the community leader to try to confirm the microbus, and she didn't pick up the phone all day. I was calling and calling and she didn't answer. Meanwhile the participants are calling me to confirm that they are coming, so I tell them to be there at 6:00 in the morning on Thursday to leave to be there by 8:30 when the meeting started. I don't get a hold of her until 7:00 Wednesday night when she finally answered my site mate's phone call and told her that she wasn't able to go and that the bus wasn't working. Well then I freaked out not knowing what to do, with all these women planning on making the effort to come down from their communities to attend this event. So I called the public microbus driver so see if by any chance he could take us and wait for us, but since the roads are so bad right now because of the rain, mud, and landslides, he told be he wouldn't be leaving until 7:30, which would mean we wouldn't get to Salamá til 10:00, late. And that to come back, the bus would be leaving at noon, which wouldn't give us hardly any time at the meeting. So that option was out. I then called the coordinator of the women's office in Granados, because I knew they were going and had a microbus and would be passing through El Chol. But she told me they only had room for two people and would be passing through at 5:00 am. There were no other options and I had no choice but to call them all and tell them that we wouldn't be able to go. I was able to get a hold of everyone, except that COCODE president from the community that I go bake bread in. That community doesn't have electricity, so the charge on her phone had run out. I was calling her all evening, sent a text message and everything but she didn't get them. I was worried because she is an awesome woman who is super sharp, intelligent, and participatory and I knew that even though it rained all night, that she would still come. I barely slept all night worrying about this and I sent my alarm for 4:30 Thursday morning to try to call her again as she would be leaving her house, but still her phone was dead. So at 6:00 I rolled out of bed and went down to meet her in front of the muni. There she was, waiting there all by herself, dressed in her nicest homemade pink blouse and skirt set, and a thin sweater, soaked from the rain and sweat from the walk into town. I apologized profusely explaining the circumstances to which she was completely understanding. No matter how many times she told me not to worry about it, I just felt so bad, knowing that she had to ask permission from her husband to leave, spent all day the day before grinding extra corn for her absence, getting up before dawn, and walking for an hour in the darkness down the slippery muddy path from her house into town in the rain all alone. So we went to the market and I bought her breakfast of pinol and atol and she charged her phone in the muni before walking back home. I went home to shower and get ready and bought some lollypops for her to take back with her to give to her three year old daughter named Katy also. As far as the other activities were concerned, it turned out that the COMUDE meeting was canceled because the mayor called it off last minute, I couldn't go to the ArcView training since they were gonna go on a motorcycle (which we aren't allowed to ride anymore) but then they ended up not even going anyway because the roads are so bad, and it was too late to travel to the capital for the other convention. So there were four events planned for that Thursday that I wanted to go to, and it resulted that I ended up that none of them turned out and I spent a long boring day at the office frustrated, sad, and disappointed, playing some Spider Solitaire and listening to it pour down rain outside. Ugh. The whole day I was in a funk…questioning if I can really do much of anything here.Caitlin McKeehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-56237328629364541852008-10-03T14:11:00.000-07:002008-10-03T14:12:16.390-07:00The rainy season continues...world map...oatmeal scones...We gave another AIDS workshop in the department of Sololá. It went really well. It's interesting to see how different communities react to the topic. For example, this was an indigenous site where some people speak Kachikel, so when we did the activity "Lenguaje de la Calle" (street language) people used some words in Kachikel. We stayed at a volunteer's house and I got to meet some volunteers that I didn't know. It's always fun to share experiences and common frustrations and hear about the situations in people's various sites. I continue to be impressed by the fascinating people that join the Peace Corps and what they have done in their lives. That weekend there was a group in Panajachel celebrating various occasions, (including my birthday). We went out dancing that night and I think I burned a million calories, but replaced a few with some late night street tacos on the way back to the hostel.

The trip back to my site was long and rainy. The clouds cling to the peaks of the surrounding green hills and settle in the low valleys. Along the sides of the highway run rivers of mud that look like chocolate milk and cut away at the road. The roads are in really bad shape now and covered with giant potholes from all the water running under them. The sights on the side of the road have become commonplace and I don't much notice them as anything notable anymore…kids carrying loads of firewood bigger than they are, women carrying water on their head from who knows what source, guys carrying 100 pound sacks of corn on their backs with a strap around their forehead, old men sitting on cinderblocks chatting with bottles of illegally manufactured potent liquor, boys playing soccer on the road with goals marked by tree branches, and little girls in brightly colored woven skirts with big brown eyes and dirty faces peering out from tin shacks.

When we were only five km from El Chol, the micro I was on turned to the side of the road to avoid a passing car, and got stuck in the mud on the side of the cliff. I was the only one who yelped, so then everyone laughed at me. So all the passengers had to pile out, careful to not slip in the mud on the steep slope into the rickety barbed wire fence. Then we had to wait in the darkness in the rain for a pickup truck to come from town to pull us out and it made it a nine-hour trip home from the lake. I'm ready for rainy season to end – ready for my clothes to dry, ready for the mold to disappear from my walls, ready for my roof not to leak, ready for the water from my faucet not to be brown.

My site mate and I are starting a project to paint a world map on the basketball court of the elementary school in town. Geography is not a strong point here, it's not like there are maps and globes in the classrooms, so we think it will be a good way for kids to see the countries of the world and orient themselves within it. And having it on the basketball court you can play those games where you call out a country and everyone has to race to that country, like we always played with the states back in elementary school. It should be fun. We have a template in squares, so you just measure the lines on the court and paint accordingly to the squares. We're gonna have to get all the kids together to clean the area first and try to pick off the stuck-on gum and get them to participate in the painting as well.

The latest baking adventure in La Ciénega was oatmeal scones, which turned out superbly. The way that the clay oven works is that you put a bunch of firewood in there, let it burn down to coals, and then push them out. The only problem was that since it is the rainy season and has been raining a ton recently, all the firewood was wet, so it took a long time. Then to make the second batch, we had to burn a second pile of firewood and wait for that to become coals to bake the rest. In all we baked 110 scones. I brought the photos that my dad had printed out of the lunch we had when they were visiting and gave them the pictures that they were in. They were thrilled since they have very few family photos. I also showed them the pictures of my family when they went to Lake Quinalt and a bunch of new photos of my niece, which they loved and asked for me to give them some again.

We continue with our monthly inter-institutional meetings to coordinate with the NGOs that work in El Chol. There was little presence at the August meeting, so we came to the conclusion that the development professionals needed to be reminded of the meeting with a text message a couple days before. So I did that for the September meeting and there was more presence, but still not everyone. This is very frustrating. We have also started taking notes at the meetings to keep track of what we talk about and document our agreements and obligations. It was my turn to write the last meeting notes and it's funny, that to create a five page single-spaced document in Spanish doesn't even faze me. I still have my counterpart review it before I send it out, but my Spanish is definitely gotten a lot better. I have to say, becoming fluent in Spanish is one of my proudest life accomplishments. So I sent it to all the email addresses that everyone had given me, and about half bounced back. When I asked at the meeting if the rest had received the document, not one had checked their email to open it. Not one! Text messages are definitely to mode of communication here, email is not. And now the signal at the good internet café in town is down "til November" to remodel, whatever that means and the other internet place in town takes about 30 minutes just to open your hotmail account.Caitlin McKeehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-18081831861169261262008-09-22T11:18:00.000-07:002008-09-22T11:25:46.681-07:00COMUNA, work, Independence Day!So one of the NGOs that's active in El Chol has started a project to form a Municipal Council of Youth (Consejo Municipl de la Niñez y la Adolescencia or COMUNA). The idea is to teach kids about citizen participation and civic responsibility by having them go through an election process of electing a Municipal Council made up of kids that mirrors the process that adults take part in. The kids made three political parties with candidates for Mayor and Government Plans and then they have to register to vote, have an election day, and then the elected council will participate in the adult-run COMUDE and make proposals to the City Council. As one of the goals of my project of Municipal Development is increasing citizen participation, I've been getting involved with this process. It's a huge logistical undertaking for the NGO to coordinate 18 schools that are participating, all the teachers, and over 600 kids. They have brought them all together for general assemblies, in which transportation, snacks, and lunches have to be provided. I facilitated one groups of kids when they were creating their Government Plan to run on. We looked at each of the sectors of health, education, environment, recreation, etc. and discussed the problems and realistic solutions in these areas. This whole project is awesome in theory, but in practice it has been rather difficult as it presents a logistical and organizational challenges. Last Sunday all the kids and teachers got together for a forum to present their Government Plans and respond to questions and next week the voting will take place. After the committee is elected, hopefully the kids will participate in the COMUDE meetings and that their opinions will be taken seriously.

So back in February we created nine committees as part of the COMUDE, which are technically required by law and correspond to the committees that the City Council has. However, none of them really function, or rather, we have a list of names on paper that pertain to each committee, but they never meet and never do anything. Well, I'm part of the committee for the Family, Women, and Children (Comisión IX) and we've been getting support from an NGO to create a polÌtica p·blica…kind of like a document of needs and short and long-term goals in the sector of youth. We have monthly meetings where we learn about the legal basis that protects kids and promotes their rights, we broke up into sub-committees to do research on various sectors relating to health, education, recreation, etc. with youth, and hopefully soon we will be using this needs assessment to decide on priorities, wrap it up in a pretty little package of a document, and then get the prioritized projects into the budget, and hopefully coordinate with the kids who are elected to the COMUNA so that they have their say and we come with double force to the City Council. We'll see…

In July we printed our fourth Municipal Newsletter and in September we printed our fifth. They have been going really well and gotten very positive responses. I created an anonymous questionnaire to get some feedback on them, and handed it out during the COMUDE meeting when we distributed the newsletters. Everybody wrote good things and gave me some suggestions for future topics. Recent topics that I have written about include: Get to know the Municipal Code, What are Municipal Incomes, the Formation of the COMUNA, and the printing of the costs for every project executed by the muni in 2008.

At the end of August my good friend Juan Pablo, the civil engineering intern from the University of San Carlos in Guate in our office who was doing his internship here for six months, finished his time here with us. With took the afternoon off and had a nice traditional going away party for him with chicharrones (fried pig skins complete with bristly hairs on some pieces), tortillas, guacamole, salt, rum and cokes, and durenguense music. He will be missed. But we got another civil engineering intern from the USAC, this time a girl! So I'm not the only girl in the office anymore, which is a relief. She's a lot of fun and buena onda so it's been a nice change.
A while ago I was taking a shower in a hotel at Lake Atitlan. I was enjoying the experience as the water was incredibly hot and the bathroom was getting very filled with steam. Then I realized that the steam smelled funny and that I could no longer see through it, as which point it occurred to me that it was smoke, not steam. Well I was all soapy at this point and figured I¥d just try to rinse off real quick, but then all of a sudden flames started shooting out of the calentador, the water-heating device connected directly on top of the spout. I immediately turned off the water and started screaming and ran out of the bathroom all soapy in my tiny travel towel to which my friends found hilarious. Only in Guatemala would a shower actually catch on fire.

The other weekend I rode my bike ride to Granados, the next town over about 10 km away down the mountainous dirt road to visit another volunteer who lives there. We had a nice time catching up and sharing the joys and many frustrations of this strange life we live here and chatting about grad schools, careers, and what might come next. We made two boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese that she had gotten from the states and ate them both. Delicious. The next day I left to ride back to El Chol and about half way back the sky opened up and I got caught in the heaviest rain that I've seen since I've been here. I arrived home soaking wet like I'd just gotten out of the shower, except covered with mud too and my family got quite the kick out of it. They just think I'm crazy for the things I do sometimes….as it would never occur to them to ride a bike to Granados, especially if it were raining.

Yesterday I went on a walk with my site mate up the mountain here in El Chol. It had been stormy all day, but wasn´t at the moment. As we were walking back down, a bolt of lightning struck right in front of us! I seriously saw it hit the ground right in front of us. We both screamed and grabbed hands and hurried home. It freaked me out so much. I´ve never been afraid of being struck by lightning, but now that I almost died, I am.

So…INDEPENDENCE DAY! in Guatemala was September 15th, celebrating their liberation from Spain in 1821. It was quite the festivity, as most celebrations in Guatemala generally are. They don¥t just celebrate the actual day, but for days leading up to the lead as well. Different communities have different traditions, but in El Chol there were a series of Civic Moments in which the pre-school, primary school, middle school, high school, and teachers put on performances of traditional dances with traditional costumes in the park and then sold all different kinds of typical foods. Each group had their own day on the days leading up to the 15th. These performances were complete with the burning of devil, being someone dressed up in red with a mask with fireworks strapped to them that shot off in all directions. The food for sale was delicious with dobladas (corn dough stuffed, folded, and fried), chuchitos (corn dough cooked in corn husks), tamales (corn dough cooked in a big green leaf with tomato sauce and a piece of pork), bushboles (corn dough cooked in greens), chepes (corn dough with whole black beans), elotes (corn on the cob), atol (hot sweet beverages, sometimes made out of corn), tostados (toppings on a large round tortilla chip), panza (cow stomach), torejas (sweet bread cooked in eggs and honey), ejotes (green beans), pinol (tortilla soup-esque), frutas en conserva (preserved fruits in syrup), caldo de gallina (chicken soup).

In addition to the civic moments, there is the tradition of the schools going on field trips to run and bring the Torch of Peace, kind of like the bringing of the Olympic Torch. It's a cool tradition because the kids get to travel around their country and for many kids, it's the only opportunity they have to experience different places outside their community or department. For example, the middle school kids went to Livingston, the GarÌfuna community on the Caribbean coast and one of the elementary schools went to the Biotopo Quetzal a rainforest nature preserve. I had the honor of going on two trips: one with an elementary school to a water park and another with the high school to Panajachel.

I went on one with the elementary school Trapiche Viejo where the mayors wife is the director of the school so she went and the mayor went, in addition to some of the teachers that I know. We met at 2:00 am to get all the kids on the two full school buses that went in addition to a microbus with the rest of us to go to the awesome water park of Xocomil (Sho-co-mill) in the Pacific coastal department of Retalhuleu (Rey-tal-lu-lay-oo). We got there at 10:30 am and played all day on the water slides and wave pool. This place was seriously better than Wild Waves at home. The kids loved every minute of it, even though most of them were too scared to go on the water slides, it was so much fun to enjoy myself in the water (this is the Peace Corps?) and to watch the kids having such a good time. The park being a tourist attraction, there were people from all over Guatemala there and the unwanted attention from guys and adolescent boys for being foreigners walking around in bikinis was a real annoyance. That night we stayed in a dormitory in a multi-sport complex that felt a bit like a homeless shelter with a long room filled with blue metal bunk beds, gross mattresses, dirty bathrooms with no toilet seats (typical because evidently there is a shortage of toilet seats in Guatemala), and tons of women and children laying out towels and sheets to sleep on in the stuffy heat. But it was all part of the experience and we made the best of it. Fell asleep absolutely exhausted at 9:00 pm to get up again at 4:00 am to go to see the ocean. Went to Puerto de Champerico by 6:30 am when it was already super hot. Got coffee and breakfast (eggs and beans, what else?) at a beach hut restaurant in the sand and lazed in a hammock while the kids played in the super dangerous ocean waves. Only one kid had to be rescued from the undertow by some surfer dudes. I was surprised to see how they did no head counts, never set meeting times or places, but somehow everything worked out. They started running with the torch from there, and a number of kids and teachers ran a few kilometers in the mid-day sweltering heat, carrying the Guatemalan flag and sign from their school and blowing whistles the whole time. Everywhere there are walking vendors selling flags of all sizes and these plastic whistles to make sure that every kids in Guatemala is capable making the most noise possible. Now that is patriotism. They got back on the buses, which are also decked out with Flags, and we made our way back to El Chol. We started running again in Granados at about 10:00 at night and both my site mate and I were given the opportunity to carry the torch for a bit. It¥s a funny site with a mob of kids running with matching t-shirts, headbands, all kinds of Guatemala adornments all blowing whistles like crazy and the buses following behind with horns blaring the whole way and crowds cheering everyone on. The kids take turns running and carrying the torch like a relay. We showed up in El Chol with motorcycle and tuk tuk escorts around 11:30 that night to a welcoming crowd and tons of firecrackers and more blaring horns (this is a loud country). We ended at the school where they had speeches, sang the national anthem (I think officially the longest in the world), gave everyone snacks, and then had a marimba dance. I went home to prepare for the next field trip, went to bed around 1:45 am, slept about 45 minutes, and got up to leave for the next trip.

With the high school kids we met at 3:00 am to all leave on one school bus to go to Panajachel on Lake Atitl·n. Even though it was super early in the morning, all of them were so excited to be going they had lots of energy. There was loud pumping music and giddy screaming the whole way, although in my state of exhaustion I slept through most of it. We arrived at the lake later that morning and Hannah and I had a serious need for good coffee, so we went to our favorite cafÈ owned by our South African and New York couple friends. In the mean time, the group left on a ferry to go visit the traditional town of Santiago across the lake, so we had to find a lancha to get us over there to meet back up with them. That evening the kids wanted to go out on the town to go dancing, so we went out and played a semi-chaperone role, even though some of the students are our age. We had a lot of fun dancing with our students and seeing them enjoying themselves outside of small El Chol. The next day (the 14th) we took off around noon and made our way down the inter-American highway towards El Chol. The whole way were other school groups carrying the torch so traffic was completely snarled and every vehicle had Guatemalan flags plastered all over it and it. The kids were actually running on the highway with trucks passing them and everything. Everyone was madly honking in both encouragement and frustration, not a day to be traveling for any reason other than to be carrying a torch. It was the craziest in Chimaltenango, a major town on the highway that you have to pass through no matter where you are going. There were tons of crowds lining the highway and we were crawling along at the pace of the runners. As is the tradition, everyone throws water at the runners and at the buses, we're talking bags of waters, buckets, and hoses. It was chaos with the mucic, the whistles, the screaming, and the water coming from every person in every direction. The doors and the windows of the bus were open, so we weren't spared the soaking. The ayudante of the bus kept filling up a bucket and chucking it around inside the bus so everything was soaked, including all of our backpacks. The kids inside the bus were also spraying Coca Cola and orange soda to top it off. Nuts. It was literally like we'd been swimming with our clothes and our shoes on. We made it to San Juan Sacatequez around 5:00 from where they started running. It took seven hours to run the 47 kilometers (28 miles) back to El Chol, going super slow and freezing cold from being wet so long. It was a strange mix of horrible suffering from being tired, wet, cold, bored, and going deaf but also just sheer amazement of the kids energy, patriotism, and excitement and just how cool it was to be witnessing such a unique cultural experience. There were kids running the whole way with the torch. I took my turn and ran for a good 5 km. It was a cool experience running with that energy down the dirt mountain road in pitch darkness with only the light of the moon. Every so often you'd get surprise water thrown at you from the darkness by someone on a hill above or a house behind the trees. As we got closer to El Chol, there were people from there waiting on motorcycles to accompany us back and when we finally arrived in town after midnight, all of us running at the end, the whole town was there to greet us with cheering and more firecrackers. There was a stage set up in the central park and again, speeches (the mentioned the participation of the Peace Corps volunteers) and hoopla. The torch was presented to the mayor and there was a live band, tamales for the whole town, and several drunks stumbling about. People stayed and carried on til 3:00 am, which I could hear all of it from my house nearby.

The next day was Independence Day, the parade of all the schools started at 9:00 am with each group of kids in uniforms or costumes, some behind pickups with large speakers blaring music, others in school bands complete with drums and chimes. After the parade, my coworkers and I handed out 400 copies of the latest municipal newsletter to everyone in the park. After that, we handed out snacks of cookies and juice to the hundreds of kids who had participated in the parade, as it was mid-day and super hot by that point. In the afternoon there was a soccer tournament for men, and one game for women in which I played and we won 3-0 and I scored a goal!

Overall the Independence Day events were lots of fun. It's so interesting to see how other countries express their pride and patriotism. Kind of like everything in Guatemala, it was long and drawn out, but super interesting and made me feel good to be able to be a part of it all with the community.Caitlin McKeehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-8459978121195529522008-09-16T14:50:00.000-07:002008-09-16T15:23:33.490-07:00ONE YEAR IN GUATEMALA!!!So yes, at the end of August I completed one year in this beautiful country. For a multitude of reasons that day was a bad day full of frustration and disappointment, but besides that day everything has been going very well. I still am very happy with my decision to be here and have never taken a serious thought to wanting to come home early. I feel very comfortable and integrated into the community, I've gotten into a routine at work, and enjoy myself with a variety of other activities. I don't feel like I'm changing the world or making any major institutional changes in the municipality, but there are little things that I have done that I think have helped in their own little way and relationships that I have built with people that I think speak the most.

To celebrate our one year anniversary, my training group all got together at Fuente Georginas, a natural hot springs outside the city of Xela in the western highlands. It was great to see everyone and catch up and spend some time together. The hot springs were awesome…the perfect temperature for the chilly weather at that altitude. It was sprinkling down rain so it made a cool atmosphere with the steam rising out of the pool made with natural rocks, surrounded by lush green forests. We stayed overnight there in cabins complete with the necessary fireplaces, so after it closed to the public in the evening, we had the place to ourselves. We all brought food to BBQ and grilled veggies and sausages and had quite the feast. The whole experience was enchanting!

It's been awhile since I've had an update, I apologize, but it's a good thing that I've been busy. Here's a hodgepodge of what's been going on in the past couple months…

El Chol was the host of a gathering of preschool teachers in the department of Baja Verapaz. They all got together for workshops and curriculum work and of course, an election of the queen of the events. There was a big community gathering in the market to watch the festivities. They put together a big stage with a giant strawberry as a backdrop and cartoon character hanging down. There was lots of pomp and circumstance with the bringing in of the flag, singing of the national anthem, various speakers giving the welcome, etc. There was a candidate from each of the eight municipalities in Baja Verapaz who paraded themselves about in "fantasy outfits". There was also a dance done by some of the preschool kids dressed up in traditional garb with these wooden masks that are used for the ceremonial dances. The highlight of the evening was the "burning of the devil" where someone dressed up as the devil dances about with firecrackers strapped to his back shooting off in all directions into the crowd. That's another one of those things that's really cool, but would never be allowed in the states. Imagine all the fire codes broken and lawsuits waiting to happen. That's why I love Guatemala.

The other day I was invited to a friend of mine's birthday party. As is common here, it was a sort of prayer session, but this was special since there was an invited group that played live marimba music and put on a religious service. It was quite the interesting experience…I sat there in a chair outside for three hours before I had to excuse myself and go home. It was a Catholic service, but seemed Evangelical as there was lots of singing with hands raised in the air, crying about Jesus, and people being cured right there on the spot. Seriously, three hours sitting there feeling out of place, under a tent while it was pouring down rain…I didn't even stay long enough for coffee and tamales. It's always nice to be invited to things but sometimes it turns out not quite as expected.

The other day for my English class I brought the movie Juno to watch with them, as an exercise in listening comprehension, of course. I brought bags of popcorn, someone brought soda, and we had a merry time. They thought it was cool that I had the "original" DVD since here originals are almost unheard of since there is such a strong pirating industry. Some of the pirated versions are straight copies of the originals and they are actually pretty good, while other are literally filmed in the movie theaters and are off centered and have babies crying and heads walking across the screen.

In the month of August I had the wonderful visit of Jesse and Nate! We had such a good time it was awesome to show them around this lovely country and share my life here with them. I picked them up at the airport and we spent a few days in Antigua where we climbed the Pacaya Volcano (the one I climbed during training where you can walk out on the lava fields and roast marshmallows), visited a coffee farm and museum, went and saw the Mayan/Catholic saint of Maximon where the bus ride there was so crowded we were literally hanging out of the bus door, enjoyed various typical Guatemalan cuisine, went out dancing, and shopped around in the market. Then we traveled out to my site, enjoying all the forms of transportation that Guatemala has to offer. In El Chol they visited my office, we took a tuk tuk (three wheeled mototaxi) ride to bask at the river, watched the plucking of a turkey and two chickens that were living at my houses (thank goodness I don't have to wake up to turkey squabbles anymore), watched Jesse suffer as she received chicken heads in TWO meals in one day, went to the school in Los Jobos where the women I live with work and read them some stories and played soccer with them at recess, attended a prayer session at my house for the senor's birthday, Jesse attended soccer practice with me, they came to my English class with me, watched a community event of traditional dances in the elementary school, and made lunch of peanut sauce stir-fry at my house with coworkers. Then we traveled to Panajachel on Lake Atitilan and went to an awesome cross dressing party at a hostel. On the way back Jesse had her passport stolen on the bus out of her purse, so then we spent our last day at the American Embassy in Guatemala City getting it replaced. That was a strange experience to be at the embassy with all the Guatemalans lined up there trying to gets visas to go to the US and all the American couples getting passports for the Guatemalan children they were adopting. It gave me a funny feeling. But overall the trip was incredible! It was so much fun to get to hang out with them and share everything with them!

I've been getting involved with HIV/AIDS education projects. Peace Corps received a grant from USAID to conduct a series of education workshops for teachers so that they can be trained to give it to their students, as HIV/AIDS education is now mandatory in the schools by law, but not very often enforced. I've given a few of these workshops now at other volunteers' sites. The biggest one was in Pachalum, Quiche where almost 120 teachers and youth participated in the event. They are four hour long workshops that are full of participatory and interactive activities complete with a condom practice with plantains. Each community and each group is different, but overall the participants have been very receptive. They ask good questions that sometimes make me chuckle to myself such as when an older woman asked what the purpose of flavored condoms was. Recently I co-taught a workshop with my site mate in the high school in El Chol that went very well. We asked the doctor from the Health Center in town to speak during the workshop, which turned out interestingly. He basically started reinforcing all bad gender stereotypes by essentially celebrating and joking with the guys about how promiscuous they are. When he left this led to a productive conversation about gender roles and stereotypes. The high school kids are a really good and a wonderful group to work with.

I've continued going into the high school to give workshops on citizen participation. Most recently we did the cycle of a project and how to do a community diagnostic and project prioritization. I had them break into groups according to the diagnostic we did for El Chol and the projects they prioritized to write a project profile for the hypothetical projects. Hopefully we will have them replicate the process out in the communities.

Now that we've been here for one year, the new group of Municipal Development volunteers has arrived. It's strange that my group now finds itself in the role of the experienced ones who help out with training. The group came to visit me in my site two weeks after arriving in country to get an orientation of the work and life of a volunteer. They had the opportunity to see my office and meet my mayor, counterpart, and coworkers. I shared with them about my work and they visited my house and I showed them some pictures of my experiences here.

I am the new Municipal Development program representative for the Peace Corps Gender and Development Committee. So I helped give a workshop with the trainees at the Peace Corps training center on gender awareness and how it fits into our project. It went well and started lots of good conversations, such as when we did the activity where we brainstorm "As a man/woman in Guatemala/US I can/cannot do…." Machismo and conservative gender roles present such a huge barrier in the work that we do in our communities, it is essentially to be aware and well versed in these issues, as well as prepared with strategies to confront these challenges.

Okay, that's all for now even though there's a lot more to update on. Stay posted for the telling of the experience of Independence Day!Caitlin McKeehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-48634586819938287272008-07-30T09:37:00.000-07:002008-07-30T09:38:26.212-07:00Chequenes, Soccer, chicken anatomy, Chiquimula, Los Jobos FeriaI forgot to write about something crazy: Chequenes. Towards the beginning of the rainy season at the beginning of June, there is this phenomenon that these flying bugs, kind of like large juicy ants with wings, fall from the sky in the wee morning hours. There is all kinds of excitement because people collect them and cook 'em up and eat 'em. So back in the beginning of June, I got a phone call from one of my co-workers around 4:45 in the morning. I grumpily answered thinking he was just messing with me or something, and he told me to come down to the soccer field quickly where the chequenes were falling. Really not wanting to get out of bed, but figuring this may be a once in a lifetime opportunity, I made my way down there. There were various people out in the streets positioned under the streetlights for when the bugs fell they put them in plastic sacks. I met up with my coworkers and helped with the collection. They swirl around the street lights in swarms, and then one by one they just sort of fall and land on the ground where you can pick them up by their wings. We collected enough to fill about one third of a grocery sack (that's a lot). We got a lady who works at the muni to prepare them for us, removing the wings and legs, cleaning them, and the toasting them with lime and salt. Then we got a bunch of tortillas to pile them onto and snacked on them right there in the office (this was when my cousin was visiting and she got in on it too). They actually taste pretty good once you get over the idea of what you are eating. They have a soft crunch and full salty flavor. I wouldn't want to eat a ton of them, but the experience was intriguing.

So out of the blue all of a sudden there was an organized women's soccer tournament in El Chol. There are four teams: two from the middle school, one from the high school, and one of teachers. I asked permission to play with the teachers and last Saturday I played with them for the first time. We won our game 1-0 against one of the middle school teams, and I made the winning goal! It's not the highest level of competition I've ever played with, but we have a good time and it's so nice to be playing full field real soccer games where I feel like I fit in. There were lots of people there cheering us on, and cheering me on specifically telling me to score (I was playing right forward the first half, and center forward the second half when I scored). It was cool to see the little girls that I coach there watching the game and getting into it.

It's cute…the girls at my house ask me everyday if we're going to have practice that day (we practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays). I think that half the girls show up with at least one article of pink clothing. It takes a ton of energy for me to run these practices. There are like 30 girls now and I have to yell loudly to get their attention on the field. Twice now during our practices, a bull has run onto the field, sending all the girls screaming and running. Two men quickly appear, one on a motorcycle and one on foot with a lasso to try to get control of it. Only in Guatemala…that was something I never had to deal with in when I was coaching with Skyhawks. There is such a huge difference between the boys and the girls…when I watch the boys their age play, I am blown away by how good they are and what a good touch on the ball they have. With the girls right now I'm working on not having them stop the ball with their hands. Obviously there has been a huge difference in the ways the boys and girls are brought up and encouraged.

The summer of visitors continues. Two friends from the states that are volunteering in El Salvador came to El Chol to visit me for a weekend. We had a good time hanging out and catching up. The señora brought us tamales, as she does often, for us to eat. We went on some walks around town, they came to my soccer game, and we ate churrascos (tasty grilled meat) from a cart on the street run by a kind older gentleman.

At work the other day we had a great walk down memory lane together watching YouTube videos of cartoons from the 1980´s that we shared in common in our childhood like Transformers, Captain Planet, and Power Rangers. I love it when you find the little things in common.

So the other day I came home for lunch and the señora at the house was standing at the pila cleaning chicken parts. She often is dealing with chickens, casually carrying them around by the neck, about to be killed or recently killed, like it ain't no thang. I greeted her and asked her with curiosity about what she was working on. She then proceeded to give me a fascinating lesson on the anatomy of a chicken. Back in high school biology we had dissected cats and the organs of other various animals so I had sort of seen this stuff before, but never so casually. She instructed me on the liver, the kidneys, the heart, the lungs, among other parts. She showed me fully formed egg that hadn't been laid yet and put it aside to eat. I don't know why, but it seemed weird to me to eat an egg that hadn't been laid yet and she joked that it was as fresh as they come, which I suppose is true. There was the canal where the eggs pass down with 6! yolks increasing in size from one about the size of a marble to the fully formed egg. It's crazy to see how they are formed and to look at such an everyday common object in a different way. The stomach was also really cool, she rinsed out everything that had been inside, full grains of corn and a bunch of pebbles. She scraped the toughness well with a knife, which made a loud rasping sound and told me how they were going to eat it. I guess my fascination with the whole process shows that I didn't grow up on a farm.

I'm happy with the progress of my English class. Right now I have 12 students which is perfect cause you can still do group activities, but I can give them much more individualized attention. Their pronunciation is getting a lot better and their vocabularies have improved quite a bit. We're almost half way through the materials that I have.

The other weekend a few of us went to visit a fellow volunteer working out in the eastern part of the country in the department of Chiquimula. It's a bit of a different world out there. The buses first of all are actually really nice with comfy seats, TVs, and air conditioning! The craziest thing was that the ayudante came around to collect trash, which is rather revolutionary since most people just throw their trash out the window without a second thought. In general the people out east are much less conservative and everyone speaks with rather vulgar words. There are hardly any indigenous people and cowboy boots are common. And it's really hot. We had a fun time all hanging out together on my friend's patio all day long doing nothing but eating yummy Indian food that she cooked for us, chatting, and reading People and Newsweek magazines. At night we piled into a pickup and went to some hot springs with some of her friends from town (it's too hot to go during the day). On the way back home on the usual rickety Chol bus, there was a lady who had a basket full of baby chickens that was covered with a cloth. As we were going along, one of the chicks somehow fell out of the basket and hit a little kid on the head, which I found quite hilarious. I also had the bad luck of sitting in the one seat where the window wouldn't go up while it was pouring down rain. The water came in in droves and got me quite soaked.

It was the feria in one of the rural communities of El Chol, in the aldea Los Jobos. That is the community where the three teachers that I live with teach in, so there were quite involved with the planning of the event. All week long there were activities such as the crowning of the queen of the feria, soccer games, cattle sales, rifle competitions, etc. On Saturday I went with my site mate for the dance where they brought in a live band. We caught a ride in a pickup truck after waiting forever. The road going the 12 km out there is terrible and there were like 20 of us all crammed in standing up in the back of this truck trying to hold on as we bumped along the horribly potholed dirt road under the starry night sky. The truck kept losing power on the uphills with so much weight in it and everyone would have to get out and walk up the inclines. We made it out there in time to grab some food, walk around and soak in the atmosphere. The dance was lots of fun and typical of community dances here. All the mothers attend with their little kids to keep an eye on their adolescent daughters. So it's super hot and suffocatingly stuffy, and all the moms and sitting in chairs along the sides. There's always way more guys than girls and the majority of them are drunk. It makes for quite the interesting ambiance. You wait for a guy to ask you to dance (not that you have to wait long with the favorable ratios), so we danced with a few people that we knew. But we didn't want to keep telling no to the random drunks, so my site mate and I ended up just dancing together the two of us like we would in the states, but is really weird here. So we usually get started at a lot just for looking different, but dancing together drew way more attention. It was rather amusing.

So my training group has been in country almost a year now and just recently we had our first person go home. He´s a good friend of mine and was just done being here and ready to go back and start grad school. I made a quick trip to get together in Antigua with a group of us to say goodbye. Our training group is really close, so it's hard and sad to see somebody go home. We're gonna miss you big guy.

The soccer tournament is going well and really fun, even though we lost our second game 0-1. Everyone kept cheering and asking where my goal was…sadly I couldn't please them. We played against the high school team and they scored in the last minute.

Last Sunday was 14th David's birthday, one of the kids related to the family. We had a little party compete with tamales, coffee, and cake. I got him a pirated DVD Ironman, which he was quite happy about.

Mmm…the other day was a typical good day…a beautiful bike ride in the morning sunshine, a tranquil day at work, soccer practice with the girls in the afternoon, chatting and joking with the family when I got home, and a nice quiet evening alone at home making a pineapple curry stir fry with fresh local veggies, baking an apple pie, and drinking warm milk as I finished the second season of Scrubs on DVD. I went to bed quite satisfied and so happy to be where I am.Caitlin McKeehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-65504750574806292512008-07-11T10:10:00.000-07:002008-07-11T10:14:42.141-07:00Parents visit and Fourth of JulyIn the last weeks of June I had the grand honor of hosting my parents in Guatemala. I had a great time showing them my life and my work here, and also getting to see some other parts of Guatemala. After meeting them at the airport, we spent a couple days in Antigua soaking in the colonial atmosphere and easing them into Guatemala. We checked out the ruins, churches, and fabulous restaurants. I hired a guy from my town (the señora at my houses brother-in-law) to pick us up in Antigua and take us to my town. En route we stopped for lunch at Pollo Campero, the Guatemalan fried chicken chain that's gone international. It's an institution and sooo Guatemalan. It´s a popular spot for families to go for a treat and oftentimes if people have the money they will bring it back to their families in the rural areas after traveling through a large town. Even though there are a few franchises in the US, they say that it doesn't taste as good cause there are nutrition standards so they can't use as much grease. Thus, they also say that flights from Guatemala to the US always smell like fried chicken because everyone brings it to their relatives.

The time in my site with them was wonderful…they got to meet my friends, family, and coworkers, soak in the atmosphere of El Chol, and get a taste of the life I'm living. We all stayed in my cozy little house, them taking my bed and me on the couch. They came to my office bringing smoked salmon and Beecher´s Flagship cheese to share with my coworkers. The cheese was a big hit and I almost cried with happiness upon tasting the lusciousness again. It was cool cause my inquisitive Dad had a long conversation with my counterpart, who speaks pretty good English (I didn't realize how good), asking him all about the work at the muni in regards to water systems, generation of electricity, and all kinds of other questions. The highlight of the time at my site was a lunch that my parents gave to 60 people from town including muni employees, my English students, women and children from La Ciénega (who had to walk three hours there and back), and members of the family that I live with. The mayor's wife owns a comedor and hosts lots of lunches and various events so we had it there. It was so neat to see everybody come together and meet my parents. Lots of people dressed up for the event and the kids that came down from the rural community that I usually see barefoot and dirty were all fixed up with gelled hair and decent clothes and shoes. Various people brought gifts for my parents, such as typical handbags with El Chol stitched onto them and a pink knitted shirt for my mom that took the woman months to make. Lots of people wanted to take pictures with them too, which was slightly odd, but cool. We spent an entire evening chatting with the family that I live with after giving the kids coloring books and crayons, which they were fascinated with, and the women little footie socks that I wear that they had always said that they wanted. My mom's Spanish did quite well, but it was still stressful having to do lots of translating. All in all though, it was just so cool to see my two worlds come together and for people to meet my family and for them to see my life here.

After my site we went to Panajachel on Lake Atitlan and stayed in an awesome colonial hotel. The lake is gorgeous – surrounded by three volcanoes and traditional indigenous towns. It was nice to relax and take in the natural beauty.

Next it was off to Tikal, the largest site of Mayan ruins up in the northern jungle region of Petén. We stayed a night inside the park, sleeping under mosquito nets and listening to the sounds of the jungle outside our cabin, including howler monkeys and countless species of birds. We got up while it was still dark to take the "sunrise tour" to the ruins. Trekking through the jungle heat and humidity in the wee morning hours, we climbed Temple IV, the highest one, to watch the sunrise and the series of ruins appear above the trees slowly through the mist. Impressive. Then we spent the next few hours being guided through the various ruins of temples and pyramids and hearing about the history and the myths. That afternoon we headed to Flores, a very small island town in the middle of a lake, despite being the departmental seat. You could walk the perimeter of the tranquil town in about 30 minutes, but the setting was quite lovely. We spent our last night in Guatemala City and they flew out early in the morning. All in all we had a wonderful time, despite the slight stresses on me of organizing everything and translating, it was well worth it for the memorable experience.

I then went to Antigua for the Peace Corps All Volunteer Conference, the one time the whole year when all 170ish volunteers in Guatemala get together. It was awesome to touch base with all my friends and to meet lots of other volunteers. We had some great speakers give information and opinions on topics such as Municipal Empowerment and Immigration. The next day we had a fabulous Fourth of July party in San Lucas put on by our Volunteer Advocacy Council. There was an American style BBQ complete with American flag toothpicks, a volunteer talent show, a singing of the national anthem, soccer and Frisbee, plenty of American music, and a dance party. There were no fireworks, but we tracked down some sparklers and had a patriotic moment in Antigua. It was a great way to spend the Fourth of July if you have to be out of the country, but for the first time I realized how much I really miss the USA the country, not just the people and places in it.

On the way back to my site, I was on a microbus on the dirt road heading to my town, when the camioneta (big school bus) from my town decided to broadside us on purpose. The two vehicles stopped and the drivers yelled at each other for awhile about not respecting the schedule of when each one left. The driver of the big bus was mad at the driver of the little bus for leaving at the same time and supposedly stealing his passengers and subsequently the money they would have paid him. (Which the driver of the little bus had no control over, since he was just doing what his boss ordered him to do). The driver of the big bus got back in, pulled it in front of our microbus, and then proceeded to back up into us on purpose and smash the front of our bus and then speed away. There was a fair bit of damage to the microbus, everyone was rather shaken up, and the driver of our bus was pissed. He called his boss and the police met us in Granados, another town up the way, where they handled everything. Meanwhile we all piled into another microbus to head back to El Chol and didn't wait around. Only in Guatemala…

When I got home that Saturday afternoon, there was a prayer session being prepared for one of the women's birthdays. I sat through the usual incense burning, singing, and recitations with the family and enjoyed delicious tamales and hot pineapple punch afterwards.

I have decided that I don't like the rainy season. While yes, I am used to lots of rain being from Seattle, the difference here is that it is hot while it rains, the inside of your house is always damp, there are no clothes dryers to dry your clothes, the unpaved streets create massive amounts of mud, the rain falling on the tin roof is so loud you can't talk on the phone or listen to music, you have to wash the mud off your jeans by hand, lots of roads become impassable, and the umbrella I bought is the cheapest and sorriest excuse for a rain stopping device I've ever seen. Some of my clothes and towels have molded in their inability to dry. Oh yeah, and hurricane risks. The other thing that sucks is that it gets dark at 7:00 pm, while I'm hearing about how great the weather is back home and how late it stays light. I guess the upside is that it stays light til 6:00 here the other half of the year. But in general, I have to say that the rainy season here – May through November – sucks.

chequenes

My Sunday was nice and relaxing…I went for a great bike ride in the pouring rain with a 13 year old kid who is part of my family, watched some of the soccer games, washed clothes, hung out with the fam, and almost finished the seconds season of Scrubs on DVD. I'm also almost finished reading Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope, which makes a good conversation starter on a bus since lots of people are curious about the current politics in the US.

It was back to work on Monday. I updated the work calendar on the white board in our office that everybody references, but nobody upkeeps but me. People don´t really communicate their whereabouts very well, nor communicate when there are meeting, trainings, or workshops. So that´s why I put up the work calendar…at least it helps me out. Things were just as I had left them at the office…there was the familiar smell of cigarette smoke floating from the secretary's office and the soft rhythmic beat of banda music emanating from my coworkers computers. The ambiance of an all-male office remains the same with their dirty jokes and constant harassing each other about being gay and how ugly one's shirt is, talk of the latest soccer happenings in Spain, punching each other on the shoulders every two minutes, and seeing who can be the first one to beat this computer game similar to Bejeweled where a frog spits out colored balls and you have to put them in groups of three or more with the same color. Oh and some working too writing project profiles, compiling project studies, and attending to the needs of the public.

I'm finishing up the fourth municipal newsletter to go out next week, updating the database with information I've collected from the different communities relating to water and sanitation, attending various meetings and coordinating with NGOs. There is a big NGO focus on children's issues so there a fair amount of support for projects relating to youth. One of them is the creation of a Youth Municipal Council in which they will learn about citizen participation by running a political campaign and electing their representatives, just as adults do. Within the COMUDE (Municipal Development Council) there are nine commissions that in theory work on different topics such as health, education, and finances. We are working to strengthen the COMUDE commission on women's, children's, and family issues by elaborating a public policy in favor of youth.

Another cool thing that has come together is that I am now coaching a girls soccer team, or at least training a group of girls aged 9-13. I had been observing a group of boys training in the afternoons in the soccer field and thought the participation of girls was lacking. So I talked to the guy who was running it and told him I wanted to train girls. So he told all his boys to tell all their sisters, cousins, and classmates to show up at the field the next day. About 14 girls showed up the first day and we had a good time. We did some dribbling drills, relay races, and scrimmaged. It all went really well and I think we'll continue training Tuesdays and Thursdays and hopefully play games on Saturdays.Caitlin McKeehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-59518674048825245902008-06-19T14:52:00.000-07:002008-06-19T14:54:49.910-07:00A week with my cousin!I had the honor of hosting my first visitor from the States! I had a great time showing my cousin around a selection of places including the good tourist attractions and spots off the beaten path (2 1/2 hours off the beaten path on a dirt road to my site). We started out in Antigua, taking in the colonial architecture, old churches, ruins, yummy food, and a lively nighttime atmosphere. Highlights included a "típico" breakfast of beans, fried plantains, eggs, fresh cheese, cream, tortillas, and coffee and salsa dancing at a hip joint.

We made our way to El Chol, enjoying the greatness of what is the Guatemalan public transportation system. In my town she accompanied me to my English class where she helped me run a game of Jeopardy using vocab words and simple grammatical questions. She reminded me that "quantities" is spelled with a "q" instead of as "cuantities", as I had written on the board for the category. That is what living in Guatemala for 10 months will do to your English. We made the trek to La Ciénega where we baked an incredibly successful batch of coffee cake that thrilled all in attendance, so much that they all wanted to take more home with them and we were left empty handed. The usual pigs, chickens, turkeys, and dogs were underfoot and the fact that that community hadn't received water in a month and the electricity project still isn't finished isn't keeping them down.

She got a great taste of the local culture during a big town activity that was the election of the queen of the intermediate schools games. The event included the usual parading of young girls in elaborate "fantasy" outfits and their speeches to the public. In addition there were demonstrations of poetry reading, oratory, lip-syncing, singing, and musical groups. It's a great opportunity to see everyone from town all gathered together in the market in their usual fashion of all the women and children sitting on the ground floor and all the men and adolescent boys leering from above on the second level. Everyone comes dressed to the nines and you can observe all the social interactions and young couples in the making with text messages flying. We had a couple fun sporty afternoons with running, soccer, and basketball with my co-workers and English students and an enjoyable experience of making a pizza from scratch (including the dough and sauce) for a couple of my co-workers that came over for dinner and cards. Everyone loved her and thought how cool it was that she wanted to visit their town and I also received lots of comments on how pretty she is and inquiries on when she would be returning.

After saying good bye to El Chol, we made our way down the construction-infested inter-American highway in a crazy bus that like to pass other buses with oncoming traffic to Lake Atitilán. We had a splendidly tranquila night in the tiny town of Santa Cruz at the awesome lakeside hostel, La Iguana Perdida. We enjoyed running into other Peace Corps volunteers, having an amazing family style dinner with 4! kinds of curry, sleeping in rustic bungalows with no electricity, and doing yoga in the morning on the patio that was open to gorgeous lake views with towering volcanoes. We scored some homemade scones with strawberry jam before catching a boat to the other side of the lake to the hopping tourist town of Panajachel. Another tranquilo day with yummy food, souvenir shopping for awesome jade and coral jewelry, a live local reggae band with good social messages, and a crazy night out dancing to thumping reggaeton music.

We hit up the giant market of Chichicastenango a little ways north of the lake where we did some browsing of the beautiful traditional woven textiles and other artisan goods. Unfortunately I got robbed for the first time after being here for 10 months. I didn't realize at all when it happened, but when I went to get on the bus as we were leaving, the 250 Quetzales that I had had in the front pocket of my jeans were gone. That's about 30 bucks, so it's not that big of a deal, but it is half my rent for the month. The market was super crowded and basically a body pack in some parts, so I guess it would be fairly easy to exact the cash if that's what you do for a living. I was pretty ticked off though. We made our way back to Antigua for our last night, enjoying a very nice traditional Guatemalan meal with chiles rellenos, pupusas, fried plantains, beans, tortillas, and cheese. All in all we had a great time "paseando" and I loved having the opportunity to share the beauty, quirks, and charm of this country with people back home.Caitlin McKeehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-16131871286951850062008-06-06T18:19:00.000-07:002008-06-14T12:47:19.022-07:00CODEDE, trainees visit, rainThis month it was El Chol´s turn to host the CODEDE meeting, the Departmental Development Council. So all the mayors from the eight municipalities came to our town, along with representatives from all the ministries of government, NGOs, senators, and representatives from indigenous groups, women, workers, small businesses, etc. It was a super long meeting but also good to be informed as to everything that is going on. The meeting was held in a primary school just outside of town since the muni here doesn´t have a meeting place. So of course, classes were cancelled for the day since it is perfectly acceptable here to cancel class for really any reason. I got there at 6:30 in the morning to help set up and the meeting lasted until 2:30. It was long and draining. They discussed all the infrastructure projects that the Council approved and all the mayors and representatives had chances to talk and discuss, at length. After the meeting, the mayor provided a rather elaborate lunch for all in attendance with options of carne asada, seafood soup, or whole fried fish. I had the opportunity to talk with representatives from the ministries that work directly with women´s groups.

This week the newest group of Peace Corps trainees in the Youth Development Program was in El Chol for the week for their field-based training. It was fun to get to meet the newbies, spend time with them, show them my house, and give them a few tips now that I'm a ripe volunteer with six months in site under my belt. I watched some of the presentations they gave in the middle school and was impressed with their execution. It was really cool because the high school invited the whole group a dinner and dance they were having to celebrate their school´s anniversary. So we all went and ate dinner with them and attended a Guatemalan high school dance. The dancing and intermingling were fun. Good times! The next night we collaborated to put together an intercultural talent show. They did some singing, folk dances, and lip syncing. We had some people sing "Yellow Submarine" (with my guitar), do a hilarious skit, and we did our own traditional folk dance of the "Electric Slide" and then taught it to them. They all whooped and hollered as we demonstrated the dance and had a little bit of a tough time learning but there was lots of laughing throughout the whole experience. It was quite amusing and good times were had by all.

So there were a bunch of tropical storms that passed over Central America. We didn´t get hit by them, but it rained a ton and the temperature finally dropped a little. In town the streets turn to rivers and the roads leading into town become pure mud. There just isn´t the infrastructure and drainage to handle the amount of water. I washed a bunch of clothes on Saturday and they didn´t really dry til Thursday cause the air is so humid.Caitlin McKeehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-63733965741650159582008-05-30T10:03:00.000-07:002008-05-30T10:05:23.884-07:00Half Marathon, IST, winter, Contradictions
I ran the half marathon in Cobán! (All 13.1 miles or 21 km – the second time in my life). It was super fun because there were SO MANY spectators! I've never participated in a race with such great support from the crowd. Cobán is a fairly good-sized city and the whole way all the Guatemalans were shouting at us "Ánimo! Ánimo!" and handing out water and juice and hard candies not from the official water stations, but just cause they wanted to. It makes such a huge difference to have such great support from the spectators in a race like that. Km 11-17 were pretty brutal since before the race I hadn´t trained more than 10 km, but then getting toward the end and hearing all the people, it was just one foot in front of the other, knowing that I was going to make it. The whole city was like a big carnival with a parade, food stands, and everything imaginable for sale as vendors take advantage of the influx of people. The night before they put on a pasta dinner for all the race participants and really anyone in the community who wanted to come in and eat. The pushing and shoving to get in the door to the free food was unreal. Once inside there was a gigantic table piled high with Styrofoam plates piled six high with cold pasta. Pretty impressive. There was a marimba band (like in any social celebration in Guatemala) and it made for a generally festive atmosphere. That night there was a great live band in the central park.

The one weird thing about big public events here, is that no matter how many people are gathered, there are never places to go to the bathroom. Even at the pasta dinner, which was held in a convent, there were no restrooms available. I had been drinking lots of water all day, trying to hydrate myself for the race, so I really had to pee. Sometimes stores or other places will rent out their bathroom for one or two quetzales, so I found a "hotel" right off the park that was renting out theirs. I paid the woman, and she directed me down below. When I entered the hallway, it because apparent this was not an overnight type hotel but rather an hourly hotel with row upon row of tiny little numbered red doors. It was a creepy experience and I was relieved in more ways that one to get out of there.

  Recently we had our Peace Corps In-Service Training where all of us from the Municipal Development Program got together with our counterparts for three days in the PC office in Santa Lucia. My counterpart had to go to Honduras for another training that week so I brought another coworker from the office with me. It was funny with the dynamic between all the volunteers and their counterparts. We were all together during the day listening to hours of PowerPoint presentations, but didn't hang out together in Antigua at night. As always it was great to see all my friends and here about what's going on in their sites in such various parts of the country.

The workshops in the high school have been going well. It's nice to feel like I'm accomplishing something tangible and directly related to my program goals. The last time we talked about different ways citizens can get involved in their government. I gave them scenarios of hypothetical problems in the community that they had to make skits of to solve using one of the manners of citizen participation. It went really well, but I told them 5 minutes max for their skits and some groups took 20 minutes because Guatemalans have an amazing ability to talk forever.

The municipal newsletter that I put together has been going really well. We get lots of positive responses from it. Last issue covered what is the COMUDE, the interscholastic games, convocatory of teachers positions, an informe about one of the NGOs, a new systems the treasury's office is using to increase financial transparency, among other notices.

Every month we gather all the institutions and NGOs that work in El Chol for an interinstitutional meeting. This month my counterpart couldn't be there, so I had to run the meeting. Now that I've been here long enough, I've figured out the protocols of running a meeting in Guatemala. It went really well and we got a lot accomplished.

 Well, "winter" here has started…meaning the rainy season. It will rain many afternoons and the streets turn to rivers for lack of good drainage. The dirt roads turn to mud and traveling around become more difficult. The water pours off my tin roof in great quantities. Talking on the phone in my house is impossible due to the noise it makes. A giant frog the size of a kitten lives behind my pila. You have to strategically wash clothes in the morning so they dry before the afternoon. Everyone at the office was fascinated by my red Marmot rain jacket. I broke down and bought an umbrella.

So I love living here, but of course I have my bad days when I just hate everything about this place too. It's funny because the aspects that I love about Guatemala are also the things I can't stand about it. It's really a big contradiction for me. For instance…

· I love how family oriented they are here, but I can't stand how they can't be independent and how mothers will do their sons´ cooking and laundry til they get married, no matter how old that is.

· I love how people are so generous with their money and belongings, but I hate how they are so irresponsible with it too.

· I love how people don't focus on accomplishments and getting things done and they enjoy their time leisurely, but I hate how nothing ever gets done and takes forever.

· I love how in a small town everyone greets you in the street, but I hate how people are always in your business and gossiping.

· I love that they use lots of natural remedies for their health, but I hate all the untrue superstitions like how pregnant women shouldn´t drink too much water.

· I love that everyone watches out for you, but I hate how you feel like you can't do anything without everyone knowing about it.

· I love all the rich cultural traditions, but I hate how everyone is afraid of change and taking risks.
Caitlin McKeehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-42902021358707703152008-05-14T10:29:00.000-07:002008-05-14T10:34:04.596-07:00Women´s Office Approval and other happenings
So we have approval for the Municipal Women's Office! I sat through a four and a half hour City Council meeting. I was given the opportunity to speak at the beginning as the first order of business. It was a really hot day, so I was sitting there sweating buckets attributed to the heat and my nervousness. I was very nervous, since it was jut me and the City Council in a small office. They had all received copies of the project profile beforehand, so I explained the project and why it was important, they asked some questions to which I responded, and then they all said it was good idea and gave their support. I'm waiting to read the official written declaration before I get over-excited about it. I've been waiting for this for months, so I am quite happy and ready to get started on this new project. While tiring, it was interesting sitting through the rest of the meeting and observing how things went, the topics that were discussed, how decisions were made, and hearing financial information of the muni. We snacked on fried chicken, white bread and Super Cola (I couldn't have come up a more unhealthy combination). It was good to get to know the Council members and have their support.
 I accompanied the mayor to the Departmental Development Council (CODEDE) meeting. Typical for here, I had been told that the meeting would be here in El Chol, so I showed up to work early to get prepared for it. When I arrived, people vaguely told me that it was actually in Rabinal. So I asked the mayor to take me with him to the meeting so the two of us hopped in his pickup and made the hour´s journey up and over the mountain on the dirt road to the next town over. There I sat through a couple hours of talk about projects, reorganization of the working commissions, etc. But when it was over I made good contacts with the women who now work as delegates in the department of Baja Verapaz for the national women's office and office of social works of the wife of the president. We planned a meeting with them and the coordinators of the women's offices in the department.
 The day of the meeting came. I was sitting in the microbus waiting to leave for the meeting in Salamá (two hours away), I had talked to the coordinator of another women's office and she was going to meet me in El Chol and we were going to go together. When the bus was about to leave and she hadn´t showed up yet, I gave her a call and she told me that the meeting had been postponed. So I almost had spent four hours traveling (on my own dime since the muni has temporarily stopped giving money for work-related transportation), for nothing. Such is the way things go here…

 This week was the first big rain of "winter". It had been unbearably hot all day long, and in the afternoon it started to cloud over. While I was in the middle of teaching my English class, the rain started pounding on the tin roof so that I found myself screaming to be heard over the din. The lightning and thunder was impressive as well. When class was over, we all waited in the doorway for the rain to calm down and when it seemed that it wouldn't, I decided to make a run for it. I rolled up my jeans and went dashing out across the community soccer field, which had turned into a lake, while all my students watched incredulously and laughed at how weird I was. I made it the two blocks back to my house dripping wet and laughing. I couldn't even have a conversation with the family the rain was so loud. I drank a cup of coffee with them but no one was talking since it wasn't worth trying.

A few weeks ago I attended a meeting at the Peace Corps office of the volunteer-run "Gender and Development Committee." The committee produces materials and advises on how to incorporate issues of gender into our development projects since there is so much gender inequality and machismo in Guatemala. They are heavily involved in HIV/AIDS education and also sponsor leadership camps for adolescent girls. I hope to get more involved with their activities.

So I when I got off the bus in front of my house coming back from the meeting, I was greeted by a plague of insects that had arrived. The air was full with little four winged insects that didn't bite, but swarmed and invaded the houses. Supposedly they signal the coming of "winter", known to us as the rainy season. Usually all the doors to the family's house are open during the day, but that day they were all shut. To get in their house I opened and shut the door super quick to avoid letting too many in. But still they were all over the floor, half of them dead and swarming around the lights. Up at my house they covered the outer walls of my house and a great number of them had succumbed in my pila water. I'm still picking their little wings off of everything. Gross.

I gave my first workshop in the high school on the Decentralization Law and the System of Development Councils. One of the goals of the Muni Development program is to improve and increase citizen participation, which starts with education on how the government works. I did a PowerPoint presentation on what is the State, how the government is organized, the Decentralization law, and then an activity on the Development Councils. They I broke them up into group and gave each group a section of the law that they had to read, summarize, and present to the group. They I gave them homework where they have to go interview the Community Mayor/COCODE president of the community that they live in. All things considered, it went pretty well. They were well behaved and participated. I didn't have any moments of serious Spanish lapses. At the end they asked some good questions, which makes me think they were at least paying attention and analyzing the information. It was a huge relief cause I had put a ton of planning time in and had been pretty nervous about it. I´ll go back next week for another workshop with them.

The latest baking adventure was Guicoy bread. The guicoy (We-coy) is a vegetable identical in flavor and texture to the zucchini, but instead of being zucchini shaped, it is a little spherical squash, about the size of a mini pumpkin. They were surprised that I didn't peel the guicoy first, and were interested to learn that the most of the nutrients of fruits and vegetables are in the skin. The women were thrilled with this new idea and thought I was brilliant, but I told them that no, it was my grandma's recipe, so she was the brilliant one.

 The director of my program, Municipal Development, came for his routine visit to El Chol to see how things are going with my work. We had a good meeting with my counterpart and the mayor to discuss various projects.

It´s been ridiculously hot here again recently. One of the things that makes it bearable, is that sometimes someone from the office will go to the house next door and buy for everyone chocolate covered frozen bananas with peanuts, called "chocobananos" in Spanish. They are delicious and sell for one quetzal, or about twelve cents.

It was Melany´s 9th birthday last week and we had a party for her. Instead of a piñata we celebrated with "dinámicas" or interactive games, such as blowing up a balloon and popping in between two peoples tummies. There were a bunch of kids there and it was an all around merry affair. There was the usual snack provided with chicken salad sandwiches on white bread and cake and punch. It´s crazy being here long enough to watch these kids grow up. Already I've noticed how they've grown taller and how the little ones speak better. I've watched Gaby learn how to read starting with learning her letters and now she can sounds out just about any word. I feel so proud!

There is always some reason for the schools to cancel classes and celebrate – be it mother's day, interscholastic games, or the anniversary of the school. (All of which happenened in the past month). The anniversaries are reason for cancellation of classes, various athletic and cultural activities, and of course, the election of the "queen". I watched the election of the queen for both the middle school and the high school. Both events had a "talent" component, which was lip-synching to popular songs. The middle school girls had a "fantasy" outfit component where they dressed up in elaborate colorful costumes with feathers, glitter, and sequins, with most of their bodies exposed. As they parade themselves about, all the men in the crowd whistle and holler. It's a fun to go to community events since the whole town comes out to watch, but the young girls dressed as such and dancing as such just doesn't quite sit right with me. It's behavior that is encouraged and further cements the stereotypes and rigid gender roles here.

One of the interesting things about living in a small town where it's hard to find things that you want to buy, is that selling door to door is quite popular. People come from other areas of the country making a living with these kinds of sales. The other night I came home from my English class and a man was selling clothes, towels, socks, and underwear at the house. All the women were excited about the stuff he had and bought a bunch of it. Other people come around selling herbs, cheese, pots and pans, and other randomness.

I contracted a local carpenter to build me a bookshelf for my house. I went over to his shop, chatted with him for awhile about how he had been in the States, drew him the design of what I wanted, and he made it exactly how I asked. It´s made out of pine wood with four shelves, one foot deep and three feet wide. He had it done in a week and only charged me 250 quetzales or like 30 dollars for it. To get it from the workshop to my house, I called a tuk-tuk, one of the little three wheeled moto-taxis. Now I have all my books, DVDs, and materials are organized. I got a nice little typical woven fabric piece to lay on top.

The half marathon in Coban is this weekend! I've been training to some degree…I run about 3 miles every morning and have gone 6 – 8 miles a few other times. We´ll see how the 13.1 miles treats me this Sunday.

A few comments on the ways Guatemala has changed me so far:

 -I have developed a fairly good sense of time without a wearing a watch.

 -I wake up early without an alarm.

 -I have acquired massive amounts of PATIENCE.

-I focus less on accomplishments and "getting things done", but on enjoying time and people leisurely.

 -I have learned appreciate and enjoy time being alone.

-I am not picky about fruits and vegetables to be found in the market.

 -I have developed a strong appreciation and admiration for the USA and American institutions.

 -I am better read with free time that I have to read.

<o:p> </o:p>
Caitlin McKeehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4951614189517423448.post-53911580930343610642008-04-29T17:27:00.000-07:002008-04-29T17:32:16.253-07:00Manure truck, professional soccer game, muni finances, library project, corn bread, PC meetings, immigrating friends
A couple weekends back I made the trip out to Xela again to visit some friends. We went on a great hike to a sacred lake in the community of Chikabal. You aren't allowed to swim in it due to its sacredness to the indigenous people there. The hike was beautiful, first up a mountain from town on a dirt road, then continuing up through the forest, including a climb of no less than 580 stairs in the intense mid-day heat! On the way we encountered three young boys, maybe like 8-10 years old all carrying huge loads of firewood on their backs. One of the boys was looking delirious, sweating, had bloodshot eyes, was staggering, and obviously severely dehydrated. He stumbled up to us and asked us for water, so we obviously gave it to him and his companions. Since firewood is the main cooking fuel in Guatemala, you often see men, women, and children loaded down with cargo twice their size trekking up and down the mountains. It's insane what they can carry and many people have only firewood collecting as their livelihood. It's also a huge contributor to the severe deforestation in Guatemala. When we arrived to the lake it was covered in clouds and as we sat there the clouds lifted and revealed the lake. Magical. We were in a hurry to get back down the mountain to get to a soccer game in time so we flagged down a passing pickup truck. The bed of the truck was filled with sacks, which I assumed to be full of corn or seeds or something. After getting on and clinging to the sacks as we bumped down the mountain, I asked the guy what was in the sacks and he responded, "fertilizante orgánico." So we rode back to town on top of piles of manure.

That night we went to the professional soccer game of the Xela team, Xelajú ,against the team from the capital, Comunicaciones. We actually watched two games, the first was the backup team on which plays my good friend's boyfriend. So we sat right behind the goal to catch all the action and yell encouragement at him. Then the main team played after that. It was awesome! Before the game even started there were fireworks, strobe lghts, and fire extinguishers spraying colored foam. The Pepsi girls paraded around in the their blue spandex suits throwing t-shirts into the crowd. The fans sang and shouted throughout the entire game and I learned lots of new colorful words and phrases that shouldn't be repeated. No alcohol or water is served at the game, only sodas. And when you buy a soda they open the can and dump the contents into a plastic baggie and give you a straw. I think it's to prevent people from throwing the cans onto the field. But plastic baggies with straws are used often here as drink containers for beverages whether it's buying a fruit smoothie on the street or being given a fruit juice at an event. Unfortunately they usually end up on the ground and in the rivers.

Back to work….things are going well. It's a little slow and requires massive amounts of patience, but I've got a few projects going. For the municipal newsletter I went around asking everyone who works in the muni and every other institution here to contribute an article, informe, or anything. We'll see who comes through for me. The third edition will be coming out in mid-May. One of the NGOs that works here came by for a meeting with me about trying to include financial data from the muni in the newsletter to increase transparency in the muni. This is very challenging since the finances by law are public information, very rarely in practice are they accessible. We'll see what we can do about that. Right now this muni is in a tight financial situation…there are lots of debts built up from big projects like a new central park and municipal market and hotel from a few years ago. The municipal employees haven´t been paid since January and we usually can't get money to cover the costs of transportation to visit the rural areas or attend trainings.

The muni has a "library", but it is very out of date. The room that it is in triples for the muni as library, meeting room, and storage facility so it really can't function well as a library. When there are municipal meetings, the room is completely full and students couldn't enter to do their work. There are only two computers, without internet access, and the books are ancient and yellowed. The building itself is old and the roof leaks when it rains. Needless to say, it could use some improvement. So my site mate and I have been talking to community members about getting together a committee to take on the project. We were thinking that it would be really cool if we could incorporate the project into the curriculum of the highschool, in which all the students are studying to become primary school teachers. The committee could be made up partly of the students and it could be an continuing project for future students to give it sustainability. So we´d been chatting with some of the high school teachers about the idea so we set up a meeting to give a PowerPoint presentation to them about a potential foundation that could help us out. We showed up, just thinking it would be a few people, and it turned out that the entire junior and senior class had been invited along with some parents. So we gave the presentation to about 70 people and did some brainstorming about the importance of a library in the community and what needed improvement. It was a bit nerve-wracking. That was the most people I've spoken in front of in Spanish. But it all went well and it seems like there is lots of interest on the part of the students to get this project going.

In the conversations with the teachers about the library and the opportunity for student participation, we decided that it would be beneficial to them to receive some workshops on topics of citizen participation, the decentralization laws, and the structure of the system of development councils in Guatemala. Since this corresponds exactly with the municipal development project, I'll be going in and giving a series of workshops on these topics. I'm excited to be doing it, since educating the youth is the best way of informing the communities since these are the future teachers and leaders . So far we have a series of three dates set where I'll go in for 80 minutes each time. Now I've got quite the task to prepare for.

Last week in La Ciénega corn bread was on the curriculum with my women's group. Another successful trek that resulted in a few dozen sardine cans of perfectly browned tasty bread. They are a fabulous group of women. We get along great, despite the huge difference in life experiences. A few of them have never attended school in their life and don't even know how to write their own name. When I ask if they are interested in learning, they just sort of shrug and say that they are already too old and have kids and aren't really interested. It's hard to hear that since so often here I encounter the attitude of just not caring that much which is frustrating and saddening.

Last week we attended the twice yearly mandatory Peace Corps regional security meeting in Cobán, our regional consolidation point. We went over the emergency action plan and statistics of all the crimes against volunteers in Guatemala. (Mostly petty theft). Peace Corps does a good job at trying to keep us as safe as possible.

The next day the Volunteer Action Committee (like Peace Corps student council) hosted a great Professional Development conference. It's weird thinking about life after Peace Corps already, it feels so far away (19 months, to be exact). They brought in speakers from the UN, USAID and various other organizations, including some former Peace Corps volunteers, to talk about their work and the path that brought them there. It was good to make some contacts and be informed about options post PC service.

Lots of volunteers were in town from the security meeting and the conference, so we took advantage of having everyone together to welcome the newest group of volunteers that swore in in April. We rented out the cabin in Tactic again and had a merry time. There are eight new volunteers in the Alta and Baja Verapaz region working in programs with ecotourism, environmental education, and healthy school s.

I had a saddening conversation with one of my friends this week. She told me how she has been planning on going to the states illegally.  The coyote that was supposed to take her last week bailed, so she ended up not going yet, but it still planning on it. She comes from a poor family from one of the rural areas, her dad isn't in the picture, her mom is ill and she has three younger brothers and sisters. Her motive for going is that there are few jobs here and she wants to pay for her siblings to go to school. It is very worrisome for me since she knows no one there, would be traveling by herself, doesn't speak any English, doesn't know where she would live or where she would work. And if anything were to happen to her, her family would be worse off. The journey to the states is ridiculously dangerous, especially for Central Americans who have to cross through Mexico first, which is more risky than just crossing into the states. All this has become more concrete for me here talking to people about their experiences and also reading a fascinating book that I would highly recommend called Enrique's Journey. It´s about a boy from Honduras who travels to the states riding on top of trains through Mexico to find his mother in the states. It details the brutality of the corrupt police , immigration agents , gangs, bandits, and hostile neighbors. Most migrants are assaulted and/or robbed and one in six women are raped during their journey. It´s so hard talking to people who want to badly to go to the states. It´s hard to convince them not to go, even talking about all the risks and challenges. It´s hard to understand the desperation that brings people to leave everything that they know and undertake such a difficult and dangerous journey. My friend started tearing up when we were talking about it.
Caitlin McKeehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com