Saturday we spent the day in Guatemala City doing a training in GIS with ArcView. I love maps. I could stare at them all day. I made a nifty one of the extreme poverty levels, by municipalities, of the country and printed it out to reference when we find out our sites TOMORROW. After the workshop we drove around the city in the Peace Corps van to see everything like the central plaza, presidential palace, all the important big buildings, and so on. One of the most impressive things were the vendors and street stalls of EVERYTHING you can possibly imagine. Clothing, household good, pirated DVDs, you name it. On the way out of the city we saw a huge crowd of people by a bus stop with police and a body on the ground covered in a white sheet, with just his Nikes poking out. Very disturbing.
Gotta run...Im in the training center and the bell just rang for our next activity. More later....
Monday, October 29, 2007
Friday, October 26, 2007
Rain and the week in review
Im having a fantastic week this week and on one of "up" times that everyone talks about in the roller coaster of adjustment. It rained for like 16 days straight, which was quite depressing for awhile. The rain here is different because it doesnt feel refreshing like Washington rain, it just feels sticky and damp and the opposite of cleansing. Nothing ever dries! Which results in problems such as my entire red Jansport backpack growing mold practically over night. It had a charming white and green fuzz covering the whole surface and I had to scrub it quite vigorously with detergent with get it all out. Disgusting. But now the sun has come out and some things are drying out. A few highlights from the previous week...
Sunday: Went to mass at a huge old church in Antigua called La Merced, its pretty famous...the big yellow one in pictures of Antigua. I had never been to a Catholic mass before, even in the states, so I figured I might as well go check it out for cultural explorations sake. I couldnt really hear much since the acoustics were echo-y and the priest had deep and mumbling voice. But watching the ceremony of it all was very interesting. Ive still yet to check out an Evangelical service here, but is the other main religion. I hear theres lots of crying...my mom invited me to go with her some time so Ill report back on that later. After mass and a divine almond latte and cinnamon roll from a cafe in Antigua, we headed to Chimaltenango for their market day, about one hour outside Antigua. Well, evidently its more of a morning market place and got there as everything was closing up. We managed to grab some black tortillas, made from that dark purple corn, which taste exactly the same as normal tortillas. So we headed back to Antigua and did some market shopping there. I got some adorable woven items for my soon-to-exist niece. So cute!
Monday: Day at the training center per usual. The US amabassador to Guatemala joined us for a Dominos Pizza lunch and chatted with us about what the emabassy does here. Besides the normal administrative stuff like visas and all that, they also administer the USAID programs and some USDA programs. The neat thing about Peace Corps is that our program does not fall under the "US Mission" in Guatemala and there is a healthy distance between us and the embassy since interfering with that might undermine the very work that we are trying to do. Our swearing in ceremony will be at the ambassadors personal residence on November 16th. In the afternoon some of our Guatemalan Spanish teachers did a workshop with us on how to teach AIDS education in a culturally sensitive way when we get to our sites. This was very useful since AIDS and sex in gereral here are such taboo topics and the need for accurate information is high.
Tuesday: Lovely morning run along our usual route. In the morning we participated in another baking workshop with the womens group in Alotenango. This NGO has been around for over 20 years with the assistance of international support. They have several different sites where they do trainings. In the afternoon we did a great training on how to train group of youth or women on small business techniques.
Wednesday: All day trip to Pachalum in the southern part of the department of Quiché, about a 3 hour drive away. We met the mayor of this town who is very young and very visionary. At only 31 he as elected for his second term (this is quite rare to be elected a second time) and he is also the president of the national association of mayors. He has done some great things for his relatively small municipality and see social projects as highly important (as opposed to most mayors who only value physical infrastructure projects). We also met with some women who have successfully started their own small cooperative business in sewing with the assistance of the Municipal Womens Office and a Peace Corps volunteer. Inspiring work. The muni was generous enough to feed us lunch and then we spent the afternoon at a nearby park with a swimming pool and water slide! I was in heaven and was even able to swim laps in the large pool. It felt so good....I miss being in the water. As always, there are fun times to be had laughing hysterically in the vans that we drive around in with Peace Corps.
Thursday: Yoga in the morning in Kellys room overlooking our two friendly volcanoes. Our final womens group meeting with our group in Alotenango. We gave a presentation on the components of starting a small business that we had talked about on Tuesday like capital, location, primary materials, and organization. I think they liked it, but only 5 women showed up this time which was a little disappointing. Overall I think we had a great experience working with this group, I only wish we could have stayed longer with them since they have so much potential and are such warm people.
Friday (today): Lovely morning run along normal route - with sunshine! Then we went to a very well done museum in Jocotenango, just outside Antigua. There were nice exhibits on Mayan culture, especially music and information on all the municipalities in our department, Sacatepecez. There was another side with tons of info about coffee since there is a coffee farm there which is served all over Antigua. Some interesting coffee facts from the museum. Guatemala is the seventh worldwide producer in quantity of coffee. Of every dollar that is spent on coffee, 16 cents goes to the producing country (8 cents to labor, 5 to farm costs, and 3 to exporting). The other 84 cents goes to the consuming country (6 cents to transport, 11 to the wolesale or retailer, and 67 to the importer). 6.5 pound of coffee "cherries" yield one pound of roasted coffee beans, which yields about 40 cups of coffee. A Guatemalan worker earns about 4 US dollars for every 500 pounds of coffee picked. After the museum we went to a nearby town called Pastored to buy cowboy boots!!! I bought the most beautiful handmade brown leather boots with white and yellow stiching for around 35 dollars. Im in love with them and I think this means I have to be a cowgirl for Halloween.
Some hot topics right now....
Adoption. There is LOTS of it that goes on from primarily poor indigious communities giving babies up to US parents. Adoption of Guatemalan babies is relatively easy for US parents, thus a popular option. US parents may pay up to $40,000 for a baby, so it is concerning that Guatemalan mothers may give up their children not because they cant care for them, but for financial incentives. Theres lots of controversy and talk about this issue.
Remittances. A gigantic portion of the Guatemalan economy comes from Guatemalan workers in the states sending money home, about 11%. 1.5 million Guatemalans are estimated to live in the US out of a population of 12 million. Only about 350,000 of these are documented workers. About 150,000 try to enter the US every year, the same number are deported every year. These figures are from the Prensa Libre from October 11th (I think).
This Tuesday we find out our sites. Im so nervous!!!!
Sunday: Went to mass at a huge old church in Antigua called La Merced, its pretty famous...the big yellow one in pictures of Antigua. I had never been to a Catholic mass before, even in the states, so I figured I might as well go check it out for cultural explorations sake. I couldnt really hear much since the acoustics were echo-y and the priest had deep and mumbling voice. But watching the ceremony of it all was very interesting. Ive still yet to check out an Evangelical service here, but is the other main religion. I hear theres lots of crying...my mom invited me to go with her some time so Ill report back on that later. After mass and a divine almond latte and cinnamon roll from a cafe in Antigua, we headed to Chimaltenango for their market day, about one hour outside Antigua. Well, evidently its more of a morning market place and got there as everything was closing up. We managed to grab some black tortillas, made from that dark purple corn, which taste exactly the same as normal tortillas. So we headed back to Antigua and did some market shopping there. I got some adorable woven items for my soon-to-exist niece. So cute!
Monday: Day at the training center per usual. The US amabassador to Guatemala joined us for a Dominos Pizza lunch and chatted with us about what the emabassy does here. Besides the normal administrative stuff like visas and all that, they also administer the USAID programs and some USDA programs. The neat thing about Peace Corps is that our program does not fall under the "US Mission" in Guatemala and there is a healthy distance between us and the embassy since interfering with that might undermine the very work that we are trying to do. Our swearing in ceremony will be at the ambassadors personal residence on November 16th. In the afternoon some of our Guatemalan Spanish teachers did a workshop with us on how to teach AIDS education in a culturally sensitive way when we get to our sites. This was very useful since AIDS and sex in gereral here are such taboo topics and the need for accurate information is high.
Tuesday: Lovely morning run along our usual route. In the morning we participated in another baking workshop with the womens group in Alotenango. This NGO has been around for over 20 years with the assistance of international support. They have several different sites where they do trainings. In the afternoon we did a great training on how to train group of youth or women on small business techniques.
Wednesday: All day trip to Pachalum in the southern part of the department of Quiché, about a 3 hour drive away. We met the mayor of this town who is very young and very visionary. At only 31 he as elected for his second term (this is quite rare to be elected a second time) and he is also the president of the national association of mayors. He has done some great things for his relatively small municipality and see social projects as highly important (as opposed to most mayors who only value physical infrastructure projects). We also met with some women who have successfully started their own small cooperative business in sewing with the assistance of the Municipal Womens Office and a Peace Corps volunteer. Inspiring work. The muni was generous enough to feed us lunch and then we spent the afternoon at a nearby park with a swimming pool and water slide! I was in heaven and was even able to swim laps in the large pool. It felt so good....I miss being in the water. As always, there are fun times to be had laughing hysterically in the vans that we drive around in with Peace Corps.
Thursday: Yoga in the morning in Kellys room overlooking our two friendly volcanoes. Our final womens group meeting with our group in Alotenango. We gave a presentation on the components of starting a small business that we had talked about on Tuesday like capital, location, primary materials, and organization. I think they liked it, but only 5 women showed up this time which was a little disappointing. Overall I think we had a great experience working with this group, I only wish we could have stayed longer with them since they have so much potential and are such warm people.
Friday (today): Lovely morning run along normal route - with sunshine! Then we went to a very well done museum in Jocotenango, just outside Antigua. There were nice exhibits on Mayan culture, especially music and information on all the municipalities in our department, Sacatepecez. There was another side with tons of info about coffee since there is a coffee farm there which is served all over Antigua. Some interesting coffee facts from the museum. Guatemala is the seventh worldwide producer in quantity of coffee. Of every dollar that is spent on coffee, 16 cents goes to the producing country (8 cents to labor, 5 to farm costs, and 3 to exporting). The other 84 cents goes to the consuming country (6 cents to transport, 11 to the wolesale or retailer, and 67 to the importer). 6.5 pound of coffee "cherries" yield one pound of roasted coffee beans, which yields about 40 cups of coffee. A Guatemalan worker earns about 4 US dollars for every 500 pounds of coffee picked. After the museum we went to a nearby town called Pastored to buy cowboy boots!!! I bought the most beautiful handmade brown leather boots with white and yellow stiching for around 35 dollars. Im in love with them and I think this means I have to be a cowgirl for Halloween.
Some hot topics right now....
Adoption. There is LOTS of it that goes on from primarily poor indigious communities giving babies up to US parents. Adoption of Guatemalan babies is relatively easy for US parents, thus a popular option. US parents may pay up to $40,000 for a baby, so it is concerning that Guatemalan mothers may give up their children not because they cant care for them, but for financial incentives. Theres lots of controversy and talk about this issue.
Remittances. A gigantic portion of the Guatemalan economy comes from Guatemalan workers in the states sending money home, about 11%. 1.5 million Guatemalans are estimated to live in the US out of a population of 12 million. Only about 350,000 of these are documented workers. About 150,000 try to enter the US every year, the same number are deported every year. These figures are from the Prensa Libre from October 11th (I think).
This Tuesday we find out our sites. Im so nervous!!!!
Friday, October 19, 2007
Soccer, womens group, eating flowers
Guatemala beat Mexico 3-2 in the qualifying soccer game!!! They haven't beat them in 31 years....so it was quite the celebration. We watched it on TV with Kellys dad and I was so excited!
Yesterday we had another successful meeting with our womens group where we gave a participatory presentation on discrimination against women and strategies to combat it. The women are definitely becoming more comfortable with us, but unfortunately next week will be our last meeting with them.
Last night we got together with our families and bribed them with brownies to do some activities with us. It was a really good time since they hadnt had brownies before and thought they were great, paired nicely with coffee. We had them draw a map of Alotenango with the places they visited most frequently, places they liked, dangerous places, and places they would like to see improved. We did two different maps, one for the women and one for the men and it was interesting to see the differences and get to know the community more through their eyes. Kellys dad made us a great snack of sauteed flowers with garlic and onions put into tortillas. Hes doing all the cooking right now since his wife broke her ankle and is on crutches.
Were in the training center all day today and looking forward to a relaxing weekend with some soccer playing and another birthday celebration on tap.
Yesterday we had another successful meeting with our womens group where we gave a participatory presentation on discrimination against women and strategies to combat it. The women are definitely becoming more comfortable with us, but unfortunately next week will be our last meeting with them.
Last night we got together with our families and bribed them with brownies to do some activities with us. It was a really good time since they hadnt had brownies before and thought they were great, paired nicely with coffee. We had them draw a map of Alotenango with the places they visited most frequently, places they liked, dangerous places, and places they would like to see improved. We did two different maps, one for the women and one for the men and it was interesting to see the differences and get to know the community more through their eyes. Kellys dad made us a great snack of sauteed flowers with garlic and onions put into tortillas. Hes doing all the cooking right now since his wife broke her ankle and is on crutches.
Were in the training center all day today and looking forward to a relaxing weekend with some soccer playing and another birthday celebration on tap.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Field-based training, tortillas, pacas and cake
Field-based training this week was wonderful. We spent a week We got to see a lot more of this beautiful country, spend time with our municipal development training group, learn more about our work, and get tons of ideas for projects.
The day before we left, we had the opportunity to go swimming at a private pool in this country club type place that Kellys family belongs to. It felt so good to be in the water and swim a few laps, even though there was no deep end. We nibbled on tortillas with salt, lime, and chicharrones (fried pork skins). It a pretty populular snack. Coincidentally there happened to be a girls first communion party going on at the same time...so we were treated a youth dance performance of a series of strange themed dances like cowboys or the generic Asian dance. That is a strange thing about here, is that there is no such things as political correctness. They dont have much contact with Asians, so everyone of any Asian descent is known as a "chino" and there is no social limitation on making faces with squinty eyes. Being raised uber-PC it still grates on me.
That night we got together to make pretty posters for the presentation that we were supposed to give to our womens group. Our tech trainer has emphasised the importance of making things pretty when we go to give presentations, so we went all out with construction paper flowers on our agenda. Lucky enough, my mom made an amazing pizza from scratch with ham, red peppers, and onions. Delicioso...I was in heaven.
We left Alotenango early Sunday morning to make our way to Huehuetenango, another department in the Western Highlands. (Sensing a theme with all the places ending with -tenango? It means "place of" in a Mayan language). So there is some serious highway construction going on with long waits and precarious looking piles of dirt and rocks. In fact, at one point we had to dodge some falling rocks and it was a rather close call as we all screamed and leaned away from it, as if that would help. Another close call with an unweary bulldozer coming at us. Road construction here is a bit more chaotic with "flaggers" being random people who wave pieces of fabric at the opposite sides of traffic whenever they feel like it. I made use of the five hour trip to read a manual on the functions of the Municipal Womens Office.
In general, I can't count the number of times a day that I say to myself, "this wouldnt happen in the US." Its pretty funny. But thats why you travel, right?
Our first day in Huehue (for short) we visited the Mayan ruins of Zaculeu. The lighting was magical with late afternoon shadows falling over the stone steps of ancient temples. Its fun climbing and crawling on them. Im realizing that we when learned about the Mayans in school, they were clumped together with the Aztecs and the Incas. They are all very distinct cultures and the way we studied them it was as if they were all dead cultures. The Mayans are still very much a present day vibrant culture with lots of variation among them, including like 22 different languages. Its sad that US schools are teaching about them as if they no longer exist....very much not the case.
Monday morning we went to a pueblo nearby to see the amazing work a volunteer has done creating a municipal womens office in her site. It was quite the accomplishment with her counterparts. Right now only about 60 of the 333 municipalities in Guatemala have womens offices, even though it was put into law five years ago. We had a guest speaker of a recently elected woman who is the first and only sentator for her department (the equivalent of a state in the US). She talked about the role of women in politics and the challenge that its been for her to advance in the male dominated arena. The municipality was kind enough to give us a great snack of tamales and coffee and lunch too. That night while we out eating dinner, the power went out everywhere and we had a romantic dinner with the group by candlelight. Im assuming the pizza was from a wood fire stove, otherwise Im not sure how it came out cooked. Power outages are rather common here.
Tuesday we visited another pueblo in the area to see the work that another volunteer had done with womens groups in her community. We were all supposed to give presentations to these womens groups, but there was a little snafu. The water had been shut off by a group of angry citizens who were generally pissed off, as far as we can tell, because the person they wanted didnt get elected and there's an international mining company that wants to set up shop in their area. Consequently, 20,000 people who have nothing to do with all that have been without water for over and a week and they say that it could be a month more. People are forced to buy jugs of water, stretching already tight budgets, or try to collect rainwater at the end of a drindling rainy season. Tough times, but an effective way to get attention. So basically, the womens groups were in meetings about how to get water which should obviously take priority over our little plans. The other groups gave their presentations to trainees and the couple of women that were there, but since we had already given ours to our womens group in Alotenango, we were off the hook that day, even though we had put in all that work on making the pretty posters. That afternoon we were supposed to go visit another town, but rumblings about a lynching mob prevented us from going to that activity. These little examples show that sort of environment that we're working in Guatemala....unpredicatable.
The next day we visited more volunteers, met their mayors and counterparts and got ideas of some successful projects in their muncipalities. Then we drove to Quetzaltenango, more commonly known as Xela (Shay-la). We were thrilled to go to Hiper-Paiz, the mega-uber-super store (sickenly half owned by Wal-Mart) and get breakfast makings and whatnot and enjoy some tastey fresh Subway for dinner. That night a few of us went out for a free salsa lesson and enojoyable dancing experience.
The next afternoon we took advantage of the bountiful market in another pueblo that we visited to purchase a giant bagful of veggetables to make dinner with the hostel. We threw together a bangin peanut sauce that we put over the mounds of stirfried veggies and rice. Its amazing what you can come up with with a few local ingredients and a splash of creativity. Overall, I think each of us spect the equivalent of like 40 cents on that delicious meal. Its always fun cooking in hostels too where you get to meet people from all over the world and hear about their travels and what not. We met a guatemalan women who is studying to get her masters degree in Municipal Development in the capital. Rather a neat coincidence, and she invited us to visit her classes sometime.
Friday we went to the university in Xela to use their computer labs for a ArcView GIS training which was really fun. I think I could look at maps all day long. That afternoon we met with the governor of the department of Quetzaltenango with all pomp and circumstance. We arrived to the meeting room with the welcoming of a live marimba band - seven guys dressed up in suits playing two giant marimbas that were 75 years old. The marimba is basically a giant wooden xylophone played with 2-3 mallets a person. The marimba is one of their patriotic symbols and this music is heard everywhere in Guatemala...including on the camionetas, in tiendas, at parties and throughout the neighborhoods through thin walls from houses. After the marimba playing, the governor spoke for a while, thanking Peace Corps for the work that they have done. A few other people spoke, mostly consisting of thanking other people for other things. Generally wherever you go, there is lots of formalities for meeting with the welcomes, thank yous, and closings. Men can speak at length about really any topic, without really saying anything sometimes. Generally it starts out with "Very good welcome to our lovely town. We hope that you like it and feel at home here. I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to thank...." and then ends with "The doors are always open here and you are welcome at any time. If you should need anything, we are at your service. Gracias....gracias...gracias..." Its all very nice to hear and Im sure its well meant, but sometimes I wish we could just cut out some of the fluff in every meeting that is had. Men in general speak much more than women and women are expected to wait for their turn to speak. This is evident both in formal situations and at the dinner table in various families. After all the talking and thanking, which was very nice but seemed to go on for hours, we were fed a nice meal consisting of corn in various forms. (Savory tamales, sweet tamales). For our last night in Xela we went out and had a good fun rowdy time filled with salsa and reggaeton.
Saturday we were supposed to go to these cool hotsprings on our way home, but due to heavy rains and landslides around the country, the road there was blocked and alas, we couldnt make it.
Now we're back in Alotenango with less than a month left in training. I cant believe that the time has gone so fast. We find out our sites in like two weeks and we're all getting very anxious to know our fate for the next two years.
A couple other random things...One day we went to the "Pacas", the giant sale of used clothes in Antigua. Its basically appears to me to be all the reject clothes from Goodwills in the states. Prices are ridiculously cheap and there are tons of American brands. One particular table we were searching through seemed to be straight from Texas since most of the t-shirts had some sort of Texas team or some relation to it. I found a great American Eagle t-shrit of the exact same size and style of one that I had at home that was one of my favorites and bought it for about 50 cents. Most of the hanging clothes are on Old Navy hangers, which makes sense with the fact that Old Navy makes a new hanger for every clothing item that it sells and doesn't recycle them in their stores, so I suppose Guatemala makes a good market for getting rid of them. Its so weird to see all those American clothes and people walking around with no idea what their t-shirts are saying. For example, a young girl sporting a nice piece of apparel that stated, "I've got game." It makes you think about all the crazy connections in this world and how when you drop your clothes off at Goodwill, you never think about them again and don't think that some random Guatemalan will be wearing your hand-me-downs. I keep waiting to find one of my old soccer shirts with "McKee" pasted on the back.
We've had the opportunity to do some interesting cultural activities in Erica's house. One day, her host mom taught us how to make tortillas (literally the verb is tortear, meaning "to tortilla.) We went through the whole process of putting the corn in the grinding machine, forming it into a ball of dough, then slapping little balls of it between our hand repeatedly to attempt to form round circles. The pancake like pieces are put onto a comal, a heated piece of clay over an open fire. Many people cook with open fires in closed in areas, which results in lots of lung problems for the women who are in the kitchen with the trapped smoke all day long. Lung disease and early death from years kitchen fire smoke exposure are unfortunately common. Its a lot harder than it looks to make a good tortilla and ours definitely weren't as rico as the Guatemalan experts. The family handed us a few ripe avacadoes and some salt to enough the fruits of our effort with.
Another thing we did at Erica's house was participate in the cake baking class put on by a local NGO that works with skils training for women. They have these cooking and sewing classes in her house several times a week for income generation projects and we've seen them working during our Spanish classes. Now that our Spanish classes are over since Peace Corps says that we have a high enough level of Spanish, we have some time for "self-study" for language, cultural, and technical things. So today we participated in a cake-baking class where we make pastel de almendras - Almond Cake. It was absolutely divine with a creme filling and merrangue topping and if any of you know how much I like almond extract you can imagine how pleased I was. It was a cool opportunity to hang out with the group of about 25 women (plus babies on backs) and see the working of the organization.
Something scary that I just found out in an email from a friend from the states who came down here to study abroad...after being in Guatemala for like 3 days and on their way back from visiting Tikal to the capital, her microbus van was stopped by a group of men with guns, they were forced into a pickup, taken into the forest, tied up, had all their valuables stolen, and then the guys took off. Other than being very emotionally shaken, everyone was okay and they made it back to the capital. Very scary stuff. The security situation here is very frightening, but the bright side is that if you do get robbed and you willingly give up your stuff, usually they dont hurt you. Gotta keep it positive.
In general things are going very well and its crazy how fast you get used to things and how I dont even think twice about most things that struck me as odd at first. There was this house in Alotenango that Ive walked by many times, and I just noticed that walls are made of corn husks and the fence around it is made of the side panels of an old school bus. Ive been running and doing yoga and trying to stay in shape. Im very comfortable with my spanish now and my host mom commented to me this morning how how much it has improved just in this time. The rainy season is supposedly coming to an end, but its making a good show before finishing up. Its been three days and my washed clothes still arent dry. Several times a week my host family asks if Im coming back for Christmas. Id like to, but Ill have to see how far out in the boonies my site is.
The day before we left, we had the opportunity to go swimming at a private pool in this country club type place that Kellys family belongs to. It felt so good to be in the water and swim a few laps, even though there was no deep end. We nibbled on tortillas with salt, lime, and chicharrones (fried pork skins). It a pretty populular snack. Coincidentally there happened to be a girls first communion party going on at the same time...so we were treated a youth dance performance of a series of strange themed dances like cowboys or the generic Asian dance. That is a strange thing about here, is that there is no such things as political correctness. They dont have much contact with Asians, so everyone of any Asian descent is known as a "chino" and there is no social limitation on making faces with squinty eyes. Being raised uber-PC it still grates on me.
That night we got together to make pretty posters for the presentation that we were supposed to give to our womens group. Our tech trainer has emphasised the importance of making things pretty when we go to give presentations, so we went all out with construction paper flowers on our agenda. Lucky enough, my mom made an amazing pizza from scratch with ham, red peppers, and onions. Delicioso...I was in heaven.
We left Alotenango early Sunday morning to make our way to Huehuetenango, another department in the Western Highlands. (Sensing a theme with all the places ending with -tenango? It means "place of" in a Mayan language). So there is some serious highway construction going on with long waits and precarious looking piles of dirt and rocks. In fact, at one point we had to dodge some falling rocks and it was a rather close call as we all screamed and leaned away from it, as if that would help. Another close call with an unweary bulldozer coming at us. Road construction here is a bit more chaotic with "flaggers" being random people who wave pieces of fabric at the opposite sides of traffic whenever they feel like it. I made use of the five hour trip to read a manual on the functions of the Municipal Womens Office.
In general, I can't count the number of times a day that I say to myself, "this wouldnt happen in the US." Its pretty funny. But thats why you travel, right?
Our first day in Huehue (for short) we visited the Mayan ruins of Zaculeu. The lighting was magical with late afternoon shadows falling over the stone steps of ancient temples. Its fun climbing and crawling on them. Im realizing that we when learned about the Mayans in school, they were clumped together with the Aztecs and the Incas. They are all very distinct cultures and the way we studied them it was as if they were all dead cultures. The Mayans are still very much a present day vibrant culture with lots of variation among them, including like 22 different languages. Its sad that US schools are teaching about them as if they no longer exist....very much not the case.
Monday morning we went to a pueblo nearby to see the amazing work a volunteer has done creating a municipal womens office in her site. It was quite the accomplishment with her counterparts. Right now only about 60 of the 333 municipalities in Guatemala have womens offices, even though it was put into law five years ago. We had a guest speaker of a recently elected woman who is the first and only sentator for her department (the equivalent of a state in the US). She talked about the role of women in politics and the challenge that its been for her to advance in the male dominated arena. The municipality was kind enough to give us a great snack of tamales and coffee and lunch too. That night while we out eating dinner, the power went out everywhere and we had a romantic dinner with the group by candlelight. Im assuming the pizza was from a wood fire stove, otherwise Im not sure how it came out cooked. Power outages are rather common here.
Tuesday we visited another pueblo in the area to see the work that another volunteer had done with womens groups in her community. We were all supposed to give presentations to these womens groups, but there was a little snafu. The water had been shut off by a group of angry citizens who were generally pissed off, as far as we can tell, because the person they wanted didnt get elected and there's an international mining company that wants to set up shop in their area. Consequently, 20,000 people who have nothing to do with all that have been without water for over and a week and they say that it could be a month more. People are forced to buy jugs of water, stretching already tight budgets, or try to collect rainwater at the end of a drindling rainy season. Tough times, but an effective way to get attention. So basically, the womens groups were in meetings about how to get water which should obviously take priority over our little plans. The other groups gave their presentations to trainees and the couple of women that were there, but since we had already given ours to our womens group in Alotenango, we were off the hook that day, even though we had put in all that work on making the pretty posters. That afternoon we were supposed to go visit another town, but rumblings about a lynching mob prevented us from going to that activity. These little examples show that sort of environment that we're working in Guatemala....unpredicatable.
The next day we visited more volunteers, met their mayors and counterparts and got ideas of some successful projects in their muncipalities. Then we drove to Quetzaltenango, more commonly known as Xela (Shay-la). We were thrilled to go to Hiper-Paiz, the mega-uber-super store (sickenly half owned by Wal-Mart) and get breakfast makings and whatnot and enjoy some tastey fresh Subway for dinner. That night a few of us went out for a free salsa lesson and enojoyable dancing experience.
The next afternoon we took advantage of the bountiful market in another pueblo that we visited to purchase a giant bagful of veggetables to make dinner with the hostel. We threw together a bangin peanut sauce that we put over the mounds of stirfried veggies and rice. Its amazing what you can come up with with a few local ingredients and a splash of creativity. Overall, I think each of us spect the equivalent of like 40 cents on that delicious meal. Its always fun cooking in hostels too where you get to meet people from all over the world and hear about their travels and what not. We met a guatemalan women who is studying to get her masters degree in Municipal Development in the capital. Rather a neat coincidence, and she invited us to visit her classes sometime.
Friday we went to the university in Xela to use their computer labs for a ArcView GIS training which was really fun. I think I could look at maps all day long. That afternoon we met with the governor of the department of Quetzaltenango with all pomp and circumstance. We arrived to the meeting room with the welcoming of a live marimba band - seven guys dressed up in suits playing two giant marimbas that were 75 years old. The marimba is basically a giant wooden xylophone played with 2-3 mallets a person. The marimba is one of their patriotic symbols and this music is heard everywhere in Guatemala...including on the camionetas, in tiendas, at parties and throughout the neighborhoods through thin walls from houses. After the marimba playing, the governor spoke for a while, thanking Peace Corps for the work that they have done. A few other people spoke, mostly consisting of thanking other people for other things. Generally wherever you go, there is lots of formalities for meeting with the welcomes, thank yous, and closings. Men can speak at length about really any topic, without really saying anything sometimes. Generally it starts out with "Very good welcome to our lovely town. We hope that you like it and feel at home here. I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to thank...." and then ends with "The doors are always open here and you are welcome at any time. If you should need anything, we are at your service. Gracias....gracias...gracias..." Its all very nice to hear and Im sure its well meant, but sometimes I wish we could just cut out some of the fluff in every meeting that is had. Men in general speak much more than women and women are expected to wait for their turn to speak. This is evident both in formal situations and at the dinner table in various families. After all the talking and thanking, which was very nice but seemed to go on for hours, we were fed a nice meal consisting of corn in various forms. (Savory tamales, sweet tamales). For our last night in Xela we went out and had a good fun rowdy time filled with salsa and reggaeton.
Saturday we were supposed to go to these cool hotsprings on our way home, but due to heavy rains and landslides around the country, the road there was blocked and alas, we couldnt make it.
Now we're back in Alotenango with less than a month left in training. I cant believe that the time has gone so fast. We find out our sites in like two weeks and we're all getting very anxious to know our fate for the next two years.
A couple other random things...One day we went to the "Pacas", the giant sale of used clothes in Antigua. Its basically appears to me to be all the reject clothes from Goodwills in the states. Prices are ridiculously cheap and there are tons of American brands. One particular table we were searching through seemed to be straight from Texas since most of the t-shirts had some sort of Texas team or some relation to it. I found a great American Eagle t-shrit of the exact same size and style of one that I had at home that was one of my favorites and bought it for about 50 cents. Most of the hanging clothes are on Old Navy hangers, which makes sense with the fact that Old Navy makes a new hanger for every clothing item that it sells and doesn't recycle them in their stores, so I suppose Guatemala makes a good market for getting rid of them. Its so weird to see all those American clothes and people walking around with no idea what their t-shirts are saying. For example, a young girl sporting a nice piece of apparel that stated, "I've got game." It makes you think about all the crazy connections in this world and how when you drop your clothes off at Goodwill, you never think about them again and don't think that some random Guatemalan will be wearing your hand-me-downs. I keep waiting to find one of my old soccer shirts with "McKee" pasted on the back.
We've had the opportunity to do some interesting cultural activities in Erica's house. One day, her host mom taught us how to make tortillas (literally the verb is tortear, meaning "to tortilla.) We went through the whole process of putting the corn in the grinding machine, forming it into a ball of dough, then slapping little balls of it between our hand repeatedly to attempt to form round circles. The pancake like pieces are put onto a comal, a heated piece of clay over an open fire. Many people cook with open fires in closed in areas, which results in lots of lung problems for the women who are in the kitchen with the trapped smoke all day long. Lung disease and early death from years kitchen fire smoke exposure are unfortunately common. Its a lot harder than it looks to make a good tortilla and ours definitely weren't as rico as the Guatemalan experts. The family handed us a few ripe avacadoes and some salt to enough the fruits of our effort with.
Another thing we did at Erica's house was participate in the cake baking class put on by a local NGO that works with skils training for women. They have these cooking and sewing classes in her house several times a week for income generation projects and we've seen them working during our Spanish classes. Now that our Spanish classes are over since Peace Corps says that we have a high enough level of Spanish, we have some time for "self-study" for language, cultural, and technical things. So today we participated in a cake-baking class where we make pastel de almendras - Almond Cake. It was absolutely divine with a creme filling and merrangue topping and if any of you know how much I like almond extract you can imagine how pleased I was. It was a cool opportunity to hang out with the group of about 25 women (plus babies on backs) and see the working of the organization.
Something scary that I just found out in an email from a friend from the states who came down here to study abroad...after being in Guatemala for like 3 days and on their way back from visiting Tikal to the capital, her microbus van was stopped by a group of men with guns, they were forced into a pickup, taken into the forest, tied up, had all their valuables stolen, and then the guys took off. Other than being very emotionally shaken, everyone was okay and they made it back to the capital. Very scary stuff. The security situation here is very frightening, but the bright side is that if you do get robbed and you willingly give up your stuff, usually they dont hurt you. Gotta keep it positive.
In general things are going very well and its crazy how fast you get used to things and how I dont even think twice about most things that struck me as odd at first. There was this house in Alotenango that Ive walked by many times, and I just noticed that walls are made of corn husks and the fence around it is made of the side panels of an old school bus. Ive been running and doing yoga and trying to stay in shape. Im very comfortable with my spanish now and my host mom commented to me this morning how how much it has improved just in this time. The rainy season is supposedly coming to an end, but its making a good show before finishing up. Its been three days and my washed clothes still arent dry. Several times a week my host family asks if Im coming back for Christmas. Id like to, but Ill have to see how far out in the boonies my site is.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Coffee plantation, tech training, and birthday celebrations
Yesterday we had the privilege of visiting the "terrenos", or land, of Kelly´s host dad. He owns several acres outside of Alontenango so we all piled into the back of his pick-up truck for a trip to the "campo." He grows coffee that we sells in the raw form to an intermediary which de-husks it and dries it, which then sells to Starbucks which roasts and sells it. It was a huge learning experience for me to hear about the entire process first hand from the guy who plants the seed himself. He talked about the difficulties with the prices on the world market and the poor prices that the intermediary pays to him. In turn, he cant pay a good wage to his two helpers that work with him. The intermediary makes the greatest share, but Starbucks pays a lousy price. The coffee grown in the this area (available at Starbucks as the "Antiguan Blend" - ask for it) is supposedly world-renowned and very unique due to the special growing conditions of a high altitude of 3000 feet and the fertile volcanic soil. He talked about blends of different beans that he grows that are mixed together to obtain the desireable blend. "Aroma, cuerpo, sabor..." meaning aroma, body, and flavor. It actually seems a lot like cultivating grapes for wine in some ways. Coffee likes to grow in the shade, so there are lots of other types of plants growing in with the coffee trees. limes, bananas, poinsettas, avacadoes, and jocotes (a small bitter fruit with a giant pit that is very popular here to eat with salt). Right now the coffee is almost ready to be harvested...it is bright green and big and some of the pods are starting to turn red, meaning they are ready. We bit some open and took out the white beans inside which are covered with "honey". Unripe, untoasted beans are not very tasty, FYI. But is was absolutely fascinating to see the process and talk about it...at the source!!! He invited us back in December or January during the harvest to hang out for a day and pick with them. I hope to take him up on that, depending on where my site is, of course. We wandered around his property for a awhile down to the river and we talked about the problems of deforestation (due to people depending on firewood to cook over open fires) and contamination (Guatemala has virtually no water treatment and everything from the toilet goes directly into the river in Alotenango. Not the swimming type river.) Before leaving, we sucked honey out of bright red flowers and he gave us some parsley, jocotes, and carrots to take home to our families. Very kind.
In case is sounds like Im having too much fun here and Im not working....dont worry, Im working very hard. Every day we have four hours of Spanish class in the morning and in the afternoons we have technical trainings or we work on projects.
In the afternoon yesterday we led our womens group meeting on The Importance of Women in the Community. I led a participatory activity on self-esteem and we all played a part in a skit where I had a baby doll on my back like a local woman. They thought that the ginga carrying a baby like that was hilarious and they generally enjoyed the whole presentation I think. This was a practice run of sorts and we will give it again for a different group of women during our field-based training next week.
Today we received our first formal GIS (Geographic Information Systems) training and went around Antigua gathering GPS points. We can get ArcView (the GIS program) for free from an organization if we prove that we will actually use it in the municipality. So that is cool. However, the data in Guatemala, as you can imagine, is not of the highest integrity...so it can be rather challenging. The different government agencies use different projections of the flattened world, so their data doesnt match up. Such is life in the developing world. Still, its a great opportunity to be able to use GIS both for the municipality and for my own professional development.
As since today is my birthday, Im spending the entire day in Antigua coincidentally for Spanish class in the morning and the GIS tech class for the afternoon, and coveniently hanging out here for the rest of the evening. Thus, last night was my Guatemalan family celebration. When I came home in the evening with my three other trainee friends, I was greeted at the door with of large number of my "cousins" (kids) all handing me flowers and singing some celebration song in Spanish. It was a adorable and very touching. My mom made hamburgers, french fries, and strawberry cheesecake! that we all endulged on. Of course everybody sang "Feliz cumpleaños" to me with some additional verses that translate as, "we want cake now, even though it may only be a little piece" and "and chocoate too." I received nice cards from a bunch of people and gifts of jewelry and underwear from my sisters and aunt. Overall, I felt very celebrated and appreciated and really part of the family. Im about to go meet up with a bunch of people for dinner and drinks for the rest of the evening. Happy birthday to me!
In case is sounds like Im having too much fun here and Im not working....dont worry, Im working very hard. Every day we have four hours of Spanish class in the morning and in the afternoons we have technical trainings or we work on projects.
In the afternoon yesterday we led our womens group meeting on The Importance of Women in the Community. I led a participatory activity on self-esteem and we all played a part in a skit where I had a baby doll on my back like a local woman. They thought that the ginga carrying a baby like that was hilarious and they generally enjoyed the whole presentation I think. This was a practice run of sorts and we will give it again for a different group of women during our field-based training next week.
Today we received our first formal GIS (Geographic Information Systems) training and went around Antigua gathering GPS points. We can get ArcView (the GIS program) for free from an organization if we prove that we will actually use it in the municipality. So that is cool. However, the data in Guatemala, as you can imagine, is not of the highest integrity...so it can be rather challenging. The different government agencies use different projections of the flattened world, so their data doesnt match up. Such is life in the developing world. Still, its a great opportunity to be able to use GIS both for the municipality and for my own professional development.
As since today is my birthday, Im spending the entire day in Antigua coincidentally for Spanish class in the morning and the GIS tech class for the afternoon, and coveniently hanging out here for the rest of the evening. Thus, last night was my Guatemalan family celebration. When I came home in the evening with my three other trainee friends, I was greeted at the door with of large number of my "cousins" (kids) all handing me flowers and singing some celebration song in Spanish. It was a adorable and very touching. My mom made hamburgers, french fries, and strawberry cheesecake! that we all endulged on. Of course everybody sang "Feliz cumpleaños" to me with some additional verses that translate as, "we want cake now, even though it may only be a little piece" and "and chocoate too." I received nice cards from a bunch of people and gifts of jewelry and underwear from my sisters and aunt. Overall, I felt very celebrated and appreciated and really part of the family. Im about to go meet up with a bunch of people for dinner and drinks for the rest of the evening. Happy birthday to me!
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Feria in Dueñas, Volcán Pacaya, and other musing about the conditions in Guatemala
The big news this week in Guatemala is that Carlos Peña, a young Guatemalan chico guapo, won Latin American Idol!!!! Id been watching with my family after dinner and when they made the announcement, we all jumped off the couch and started screaming in excitement. It was a proud moment for the nation and that kid is definitely the talk of the country and the envy of the chicas.
I had a fabulous weekend of carnivals and volcanoes. On Saturday evening I had the pleasure of going to the pueblo of Dueñas for their "feria"...the festival-carnival of their patron saint. Every town has their patron saint that is usually part of the full name of the town which they celebrate every year...for a whole month in the case of Dueñas. We visited some other trainees that live in town and played some rousing card games before venturing out into the crowds. This intriguing event was complete with rusty and creaky rides that looked like they were from the 1940s and were turned by hand or with a foot pedal. The ferris wheel was going way to fast to look safe. You couldnt pay me to go on it. The streets were filled with carnival games and delicious but hygenically dangerous street food. We started the dancing in the middle of the crowd in front of the stage with a live band and danced with some old drunk Guatemalan men. Good times. I have never seen so many people drunkenly passed out in the street before. (Sara, Im sure it pales in comparison to your Oktoberfest experience). Those guys seriously just lay down wherever and sleep it off. There were shines set up with candles all over in honor of San Miguel and the streets were covered in pine branches for....something siginificant Im sure.
After that wonderful cultural experience we got up at dawn on Sunday morning to climb a LIVE ACTIVE volcano, Pacaya. After several hours on several camionetas chugging their way up the mountainside, we arrived at the national park entrace. Pacaya is the second-most visited natural attraction in Guatemala besides the ruins in Tikal. There is a Peace Corps volunteer who works in the ecotourism program who met us on the bus on the way there. To climb the volcano you pass through cool, moist, green jungle on a very steep path. All of a sudden the trees just end and you come out staring right into the black crater. After snapping some photos that do no justice to the beauty of the view, you descend INTO THE CRATER! and walk across the cooling lava. You can feel the heat through the bottom of your shoes and see the heat waves across the rocks. The cooled lava looks like the ripples of how brownie batter falls. When you touch it its sharp like tiny shards of class. We took advantage of the earths natural heat to roast marshmallows!!! Yes, thats rights, I roasted marshmallows over hot lava and made peanut butter sandwiches with them from the special Jiff I brought from home. ¡Qué rico! This was seriously one of the coolest things Ive done in my life. Its absolutely unbelievable to witness the action of MOVING MELTED ROCK up close and personal. Its a bit nerve wracking with every step you take across the lava field since some times it makes cracking noises under your weight and you just hope that its solid enough underneath. The lava just seeps out of below at different areas. Ive never been to the volcanoes in Hawaii, so I dont know how it is there....but it seems like one of those things that wouldnt be allowed in the US. (Like many things I come across in Guatemala). Or at least there would be a sign saying something about"...at your own risk" and dont sue us if you fall in. Anyway, it was cool.
Other things that Ive been doing....Kelly and I ran to Ciudad Vieja and back, about 10K (6 miles-ish) one day. There was a dead dog on the side of the road that we had to leap over which made me almost vomit on the spot. The street dogs here are in such horrible shape. Ive never seen such emaciated, diseased, bleeding sore-covered beings.
Weve finally gotten some chances to do some relaxing in Antigua and Im starting to get to know the restaurants, bars, and sites of this nifty colonial city. Its good to be able to spend time with other trainees and volunteers and have some down time and reflection time on everything that we are experiencing and dealing with here.
This was not a good week for camionetas. There was two accidents along the highway that we go on to get to get to the training center in Santa Lucia. Lots of people seriously injured and some fatalities, I think. The drivers just have no sense of physics when they rip around those mountain curves. I find myself crossing myself like the little old catholic ladies, even though Im not even close to being Catholic, but somehow it makes me feel better since theyre doing it. Peace Corps called us on our cell phones to make sure that we werent on the bus that crashed since we hadnt arrived at the center yet. We had passed by the accident on the way and called our host families to let them know that we were okay before the town gossip of the news got to them. The other horrible thing about these accidents is that the drivers and their helpers flee the scene so as not to be held responsible. Very, very sad. And then today on the way to Antigua to go to the bank and use internet right now, there was smoke coming into the bus from under the dashboard. We debated whether we should exit the bus and I asked the helper if everything was okay before I paid. But generally in these situations I look around and see how the locals are reacting. If they think the situation is nornal and no cause for alarm....generally its okay. Hopefully.
In our group in Alotenango weve been busy planning our presentations and activities for the womens groups. This week weve been working on our "charla" on self-esteem and the importance of the role of women in the community. It been fun and challenging coming up with good participatory activities for the topics, but I think it will go well. Were doing a practice session with the womens group in Alotenango before we give the official one to a womens group during our field-based training upon which we will be evaluated.
Today we met with the coordinator of the Municipal Planning Office for the first time and got to know the different offices and departments of the municipality. It was a good experience and I think he means well, but the focus of the department is on big construction projects that people can see. The muni´s main concern is reelection of the mayor, which didnt happen in Alotenango, which they hope will be accomplished by the people seeing the completion of big projects. There is little thought to long term planning, or even planning of the year. When I asked, there is NO PLAN that exists for the municipality, even though they are techinically required by law to have annual opperating plans. Coming from the perspective of having read and studied so many comprehensive plans of cities in the states, its hard to see the lack of long term planning. This is an area that hopefully I can help the muni in which i will be working in my site.
Yesterday in the training center we had a very intriguing guest speaker come from Infopress, a infomation service provider active in Guatemala. The guy is an American who has live in Guatemala for like 25 years working in the media here. He also works a lot with cooperatives. They provide news bulletins to mayors and municipalities and has a very interesting perspective on international development. They also do trainings for communities and municipalities on corruption, political issues, and citizen participation. He made some very thought-provoking points in the course of his talk and according to him...
-Salaries in Guatemala are so low that people cannot purchase what they produce. In Guatemala only 25% of the people make the per capita GDP of the country, where in the US it is 60% so people have much more purchasing power in the states i.e. Fords idea of paying the workers enough of a salary so that they could buy the cars they were making.
-Planation owners often pay for the campaign costs of the mayors in order for exemption from taxes when they are elected. Sound familiar?
-In Guatemala you would have to pick 300 lbs of coffee to earn enough money to purchase one pound of coffee in the United States.
-Producers of products make very little money (semicolon) intermediaries make the bulk.
-The rich control the mainstream media, which supposedly controls corruption, which supposedly controls democracy. Thus corruption is rampant here. Hmm....
-One of the problems with international aid, is that it encourages "supply-based collectivism" where people come together in groups because there is money or stuff to be had, and disseminate when that source dries up. He thinks that collectivism only works SUSTAINABLY when it is demand-based, meaning that there is a reason or advantage to working together. In this way capitalism can generate collectivism. It is interesting to muse where Peace Corps fits into this and how we can promote demand-based collectivsm rather than supply-based, and if that is possible. This seemed to tie into William Easterlys book that I read on international development titled The White Mans Burden. The reason why "big plan" development has consistantly not worked, despite the billions of dollars being thrown into it. Local grass roots projects seem to have more "success", maybe because they are demand-based instead of supply-based. When tons of money or stuff is thrown at a country, there is no accountability of the people who provide the "development service" to the people receiving it. Thus, inefficiency, wastefullness, laziness, administrative problems or whatever hinder it from working because the client cant demand it to be any different.
Some good things to think about.
So far, being in Guatemala confirms and strengthens my love for the United States and its institutions in a non-holier-than-thou way. But it also shows me that the way we do things is not the only or best way to do them.
I had a fabulous weekend of carnivals and volcanoes. On Saturday evening I had the pleasure of going to the pueblo of Dueñas for their "feria"...the festival-carnival of their patron saint. Every town has their patron saint that is usually part of the full name of the town which they celebrate every year...for a whole month in the case of Dueñas. We visited some other trainees that live in town and played some rousing card games before venturing out into the crowds. This intriguing event was complete with rusty and creaky rides that looked like they were from the 1940s and were turned by hand or with a foot pedal. The ferris wheel was going way to fast to look safe. You couldnt pay me to go on it. The streets were filled with carnival games and delicious but hygenically dangerous street food. We started the dancing in the middle of the crowd in front of the stage with a live band and danced with some old drunk Guatemalan men. Good times. I have never seen so many people drunkenly passed out in the street before. (Sara, Im sure it pales in comparison to your Oktoberfest experience). Those guys seriously just lay down wherever and sleep it off. There were shines set up with candles all over in honor of San Miguel and the streets were covered in pine branches for....something siginificant Im sure.
After that wonderful cultural experience we got up at dawn on Sunday morning to climb a LIVE ACTIVE volcano, Pacaya. After several hours on several camionetas chugging their way up the mountainside, we arrived at the national park entrace. Pacaya is the second-most visited natural attraction in Guatemala besides the ruins in Tikal. There is a Peace Corps volunteer who works in the ecotourism program who met us on the bus on the way there. To climb the volcano you pass through cool, moist, green jungle on a very steep path. All of a sudden the trees just end and you come out staring right into the black crater. After snapping some photos that do no justice to the beauty of the view, you descend INTO THE CRATER! and walk across the cooling lava. You can feel the heat through the bottom of your shoes and see the heat waves across the rocks. The cooled lava looks like the ripples of how brownie batter falls. When you touch it its sharp like tiny shards of class. We took advantage of the earths natural heat to roast marshmallows!!! Yes, thats rights, I roasted marshmallows over hot lava and made peanut butter sandwiches with them from the special Jiff I brought from home. ¡Qué rico! This was seriously one of the coolest things Ive done in my life. Its absolutely unbelievable to witness the action of MOVING MELTED ROCK up close and personal. Its a bit nerve wracking with every step you take across the lava field since some times it makes cracking noises under your weight and you just hope that its solid enough underneath. The lava just seeps out of below at different areas. Ive never been to the volcanoes in Hawaii, so I dont know how it is there....but it seems like one of those things that wouldnt be allowed in the US. (Like many things I come across in Guatemala). Or at least there would be a sign saying something about"...at your own risk" and dont sue us if you fall in. Anyway, it was cool.
Other things that Ive been doing....Kelly and I ran to Ciudad Vieja and back, about 10K (6 miles-ish) one day. There was a dead dog on the side of the road that we had to leap over which made me almost vomit on the spot. The street dogs here are in such horrible shape. Ive never seen such emaciated, diseased, bleeding sore-covered beings.
Weve finally gotten some chances to do some relaxing in Antigua and Im starting to get to know the restaurants, bars, and sites of this nifty colonial city. Its good to be able to spend time with other trainees and volunteers and have some down time and reflection time on everything that we are experiencing and dealing with here.
This was not a good week for camionetas. There was two accidents along the highway that we go on to get to get to the training center in Santa Lucia. Lots of people seriously injured and some fatalities, I think. The drivers just have no sense of physics when they rip around those mountain curves. I find myself crossing myself like the little old catholic ladies, even though Im not even close to being Catholic, but somehow it makes me feel better since theyre doing it. Peace Corps called us on our cell phones to make sure that we werent on the bus that crashed since we hadnt arrived at the center yet. We had passed by the accident on the way and called our host families to let them know that we were okay before the town gossip of the news got to them. The other horrible thing about these accidents is that the drivers and their helpers flee the scene so as not to be held responsible. Very, very sad. And then today on the way to Antigua to go to the bank and use internet right now, there was smoke coming into the bus from under the dashboard. We debated whether we should exit the bus and I asked the helper if everything was okay before I paid. But generally in these situations I look around and see how the locals are reacting. If they think the situation is nornal and no cause for alarm....generally its okay. Hopefully.
In our group in Alotenango weve been busy planning our presentations and activities for the womens groups. This week weve been working on our "charla" on self-esteem and the importance of the role of women in the community. It been fun and challenging coming up with good participatory activities for the topics, but I think it will go well. Were doing a practice session with the womens group in Alotenango before we give the official one to a womens group during our field-based training upon which we will be evaluated.
Today we met with the coordinator of the Municipal Planning Office for the first time and got to know the different offices and departments of the municipality. It was a good experience and I think he means well, but the focus of the department is on big construction projects that people can see. The muni´s main concern is reelection of the mayor, which didnt happen in Alotenango, which they hope will be accomplished by the people seeing the completion of big projects. There is little thought to long term planning, or even planning of the year. When I asked, there is NO PLAN that exists for the municipality, even though they are techinically required by law to have annual opperating plans. Coming from the perspective of having read and studied so many comprehensive plans of cities in the states, its hard to see the lack of long term planning. This is an area that hopefully I can help the muni in which i will be working in my site.
Yesterday in the training center we had a very intriguing guest speaker come from Infopress, a infomation service provider active in Guatemala. The guy is an American who has live in Guatemala for like 25 years working in the media here. He also works a lot with cooperatives. They provide news bulletins to mayors and municipalities and has a very interesting perspective on international development. They also do trainings for communities and municipalities on corruption, political issues, and citizen participation. He made some very thought-provoking points in the course of his talk and according to him...
-Salaries in Guatemala are so low that people cannot purchase what they produce. In Guatemala only 25% of the people make the per capita GDP of the country, where in the US it is 60% so people have much more purchasing power in the states i.e. Fords idea of paying the workers enough of a salary so that they could buy the cars they were making.
-Planation owners often pay for the campaign costs of the mayors in order for exemption from taxes when they are elected. Sound familiar?
-In Guatemala you would have to pick 300 lbs of coffee to earn enough money to purchase one pound of coffee in the United States.
-Producers of products make very little money (semicolon) intermediaries make the bulk.
-The rich control the mainstream media, which supposedly controls corruption, which supposedly controls democracy. Thus corruption is rampant here. Hmm....
-One of the problems with international aid, is that it encourages "supply-based collectivism" where people come together in groups because there is money or stuff to be had, and disseminate when that source dries up. He thinks that collectivism only works SUSTAINABLY when it is demand-based, meaning that there is a reason or advantage to working together. In this way capitalism can generate collectivism. It is interesting to muse where Peace Corps fits into this and how we can promote demand-based collectivsm rather than supply-based, and if that is possible. This seemed to tie into William Easterlys book that I read on international development titled The White Mans Burden. The reason why "big plan" development has consistantly not worked, despite the billions of dollars being thrown into it. Local grass roots projects seem to have more "success", maybe because they are demand-based instead of supply-based. When tons of money or stuff is thrown at a country, there is no accountability of the people who provide the "development service" to the people receiving it. Thus, inefficiency, wastefullness, laziness, administrative problems or whatever hinder it from working because the client cant demand it to be any different.
Some good things to think about.
So far, being in Guatemala confirms and strengthens my love for the United States and its institutions in a non-holier-than-thou way. But it also shows me that the way we do things is not the only or best way to do them.
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