Estela

Photo courtesy of Jareau Hall

Host country counterparts.  They can make or break your service.  Without them, forget about getting anything done.  As volunteers, we are change agents; we're here to act as catalysts for the changes that host country nationals already envision for themselves.  Without HCNs, the idea of sustainability is lost.  Unfortunately, however, I've found that many of my counterparts that I was assigned to work with are little more than totally useless.  That's not to say they're anything but extremely hard-working, smart, and capable people.  But despite these facts, they simply don't possess the time, desire, or commitment (or perhaps combination of the three) to work with me and get things done.  As a PCV in a community of thousands of Guatemalans, I have to choose my battles.  If Director X, after several meetings in which I've thrown out ideas, resources, and advice, still can't find the time to get the school's library up and running (despite the 200+ donated books graciously secured by previous volunteers rotting in boxes beside her desk), why should I keep trying?  I'm not going to waste my time pulling teeth when I could be better focusing my attention on projects that may as well be driving themselves. 

I've met two individuals in my time here, neither of whom were in that list of people assigned to me by Peace Corps, who have made my work here so enjoyable, so easy, and so rewarding, that I often find myself resisting the urge to bear-hug them.

Estela Xi Cul.  She started off as the translator and coordinator for the Tz'ib'al women's group.  She has since become my good friend, go-to person, and personal idol.  As a poor indigenous Guatemalan woman, Estella represents a most-inspiring anomaly.  She's ballsy, sarcastic, a go-getter, and a natural leader.  Somehow between tending her store and taking care of her three children and husband she manages to play the role of community leader without, of course, being acknowledged as such by anybody besides myself.  If I have a problem, no matter how complicated, she will solve it.  For example:

One of the women from the women's group stopped by my house and invited me over for the following day.  I must have been distracted with something because I accepted her invite without getting the woman's name or house location (there are 38 women in the women's group..I unfortunately still don't know all of them).  So the following day I go up to Estella's house and tell her "Estella, I know this is a bit weird, but one of the women from the group invited me to her house today and I don't know where it is.  I don't know her name either."  After laughing at me for a minute or two, she broke into problem-solving mode, and within 30 minutes of investigation (in a village sans cell phone service, I would like to point out), had walked me over to Doña Carmen's house just in time for lunch. 

Or take last week.  On Monday, the day after Nola died, I was up in Tzibal meeting with the woman about a sand purchase we were making for the pilas.  Estela managed to be the first and only person to immediately understand the implications of Nola's death for me.  At the beginning of the meeting Estela interrupted the women's typically giggly gossip (I had just announced why Nola wasn't with me) and scolded the women for being insensitive about my dog's death.  From what I understood from her Q'eqchi' tirade, it went a little something like this: "To Gringos, dogs are like children.  That's why Seño Hannah was always carrying the dog around like a baby, and bathing her, and giving her filtered water.  She was a good mother to that dog.  Therefore you all need to be sensitive and nice to the Seño, because she is obviously very sad.  Do you want to make her cry?  You shouldn't bring it up for a while because it will make her sad.  The dog was her company, she is here living on her own, all alone, especially since Yaro's left.  You need to be her friends now."  After the meeting she made me stay over for lunch during which she told me she understood I must be sad, just like she was sad about her oldest son (who two weeks previously had fallen into a large pot of boiling water and just returned home after 15 days in the Coban hospital burn-unit).  "Bad things happen to us, and nobody knows why…it's hard being a parent because things happen to your children just like with my son and your dog.  That's why you're sad, isn't it."  "Even though Nola was your compania here, I'm your friend so you're not really alone.  Now here, eat another tortilla." 

She's such a kick-ass woman.  Because take away the indigenous dress, the dirt-floor house, the language barrier, and stick Estela in corporate America, and she'd still kick ass.  I'm sure of it.