Beauty queens, Feria, worskhops, and Campur has a guest

Primary school student in the Feria parade

Finally made it back to Coban last night after a two-week frenzy of in-site activities, travel, and Peace Corps workshops. Last week in Campur was the yearly Feria, which is a Guatemalan-version of an American town fair. Carnival games, food, vendors...Feria is a big deal out in the campo. The actual fair took place over the weekend, but all week long there were anticipatory activities and events leading up to the big event. On Wednesday night there was the all-important "Eleccion de la Señorita de Campur," which, horrifyingly enough, is a Guatemalan Miss America pageant.

My good friend was a contestant in the pageant, so I found myself roped into helping with a lot of the preparations. There were three contestants, and they would compete in formal-wear, bathing suit, and summer-wear contests, along with a short speech and question and answer portion. To prevent the girls from having to walk around bikini-clad at the actual pageant, a photo shoot (of which I was unknowingly elected creative director) took place the day before with the girls in their tiny bikinis, and a powerpoint of the shots was played at the event the following night. I can't help but find this sad. Guatemalans try so hard to mimic certain aspects of American culture. And as an American, it can be a frustrating and disheartening experience to see some of these cultural aspects mirrored back at me. Especially in an indigenous Mayan community where I find their culture to be so beautiful and rich. But frustrations aside, the pageant came and went, and the new Miss Campur walked in the Feria parade Friday morning. The parade was definitely my favorite event of the week. Every school from each of the surrounding villages marched in the parade, many with drumlines, others with cultural demonstrations, others with clowns. The Tzibal students even constructed a mini-model of the bottle-school they are building with my site-mate that they carried in the parade. It was a fun event, and luckily the daily rain held off until the afternoon.

Last week my traveler friend Brien also came to visit, which worked out nicely with all of the Feria events happening. It was really cool to be able to see Campur through an outsider's eyes...a lot about life in the campo has become so commonplace to me that I forget to appreciate a lot of its beauty. Campur got some pretty good press on his traveler's blog.

This past week I was back in Antigua (I can't seem to stay away from that place, as hard as I try..) for a Curriculum Implementation workshop organized by the head of my Youth Development program. I was fortunate enough to have one counterpart from each of my three schools attend the workshop. There are many frustrations that come with my technical program, but probably the largest challenge is getting the directors of our schools to take our YD curriculum seriously enough to implement it in their classrooms as required teaching. It's one thing when I am teaching the classes myself (therefore giving the Guatemalan teacher a break), but it's an entirely different battle trying to get my Guatemalan teachers to teach the classes themselves. All in all the workshop went well. One of the central themes of the 2 days was this: "No vamos a hacer cambio haciendo las mismas cosas" ("We won't make change doing the same things"). This is a particularly important concept for Guatemalans working in development. Because like it or not, this culture can be extremely resistant to change. The information presented at the workshop was all old news to me and my fellow YD volunteers, but it was really all about driving home the central goals of our program to our Guatemalan counterparts. As a result of the workshop, I drafted three separate work plans with each of my schools for this upcoming year. It will no doubt be like pulling teeth making sure my schools actually follow their work plans, but that's part of the process. One day at a time. Or as they say here, "timil timil."