The end, the beginning

So here it is. Here I am, an RPCV, drafting the momentous final Peace Corps blog post. At the beginning of it all, when I was still drafting my posts on bits of scrap paper in my host family's house during training, I often thought about this post, wondering if I'd even make it through the 27 months to be able to write about it. And, in the optimistic moments, imagining my future self writing with wisdom and supreme satisfaction of having laboriously completed my service. And sure, here I am, I made it 24 months and I "finished." I have the signatures from up above that officially denote me as a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV). And no, it wasn't easy. And no, I don't have a sense of revelatory accomplishment that I once thought I'd have. I leave with the sense that I could have worked in my village for 5, 10, even 15 years and still not really finished. But I also leave satisfied, if for nothing else for the things I've learned, the knowledge I've gained about the world, about this country, and about myself over the past 2 years. I don't have any grand exit remarks on my work in Campur, because the reality of my service and of development work in general is that things will always be left unfinished. Sure, we got a lot done, but there's also that feeling that I could have done more. I just have to hope that the ball will continue to roll without me. I've left my footprint, and have formed bonds with people that I know won't fade. And I go knowing that this is, as ends tend to be, the beginning of something else.

What has Peace Corps taught me? On the ugly side, it has taught me to jump through hoops, to work the system, and to stay under the radar just enough. On the other hand (the hand that really matters, it turns out) I take away many pearls of valuable wisdom from my daily experience in my Guatemalan village. I've learned my true limits--I've learned what my breaking points are, and how I deal with stress, and sickness, and lack of control when I have no immediate support network. I've learned to entertain myself with nothing more than my own thoughts. I've learned to be humble, that failing is a part of life and admitting those failures and moving on is an important step for us all. I've learned that teaching is probably not for me--that it's not what I'm the best at. I've learned the power of human connection, of simple conversation, of awkward silences over cold coffee. I've learned what loneliness feels like. I've learned to be bolder and more demanding. I've learned to slow down. The list goes on.

Here marks the end of my PC Guate journey and the beginning of another. The PC umbilical cord has been cut; I find myself a traveler with the freedom to go where I please for the first time in what feels like forever. I find myself, also for the first time, a lone traveler with no other agenda than to explore a place, experience new things, and meet new people. And I move on knowing that despite its great imperfections, the administrative hiccups, the bad days, the frustrations, if I could go back two years I'd do it all over again; I wouldn't trade my imperfect PC experience for a perfect one. You take what you get and you run with it. If Guatemalans have taught me anything, it's that.

And with that, I'm off!

*I have decided to keep Cartas de Lejos up and running, despite my finishing Peace Corps. From this point on it will serve as a personal/travel blog, documenting stories and things from my RPCV life.

Tzibal: The next thing

Tomorrow I will be putting on my traje, perhaps for the last time in Guatemala, and heading up to Tzibal for the certification ceremony.  After five years of hard work and three generations of PC volunteers, Tzibal will be certifying their Escuela Oficial Rural Mixta as a "Healthy School" on part of Peace Corps Guatemala and the Guatemalan Ministry of Education.  The bottle school, the pilas--this certification is a culmination of all of this.  This certification will also be my going-away party, and will mark the end of Peace Corps presence in the community (at least for a few years).  It is in many ways an end, but also a beginning.  The ball is rolling in Tzibal, in more ways than one.

Remember when Operation Groundswell visited Tzibal last year?  OG, an amazing voluntourism nonprofit based in Canada sent eleven equally amazing people out to help with the construction of the bottle school and get to know life in a rural village.  Little did any of us know that the Tzibal community would win over the hearts of these eleven travelers, and vise versa.  The seeds of an idea were planted, and there began the planning process of "La Cancha:" a paved sports field meet covered community meeting center, all in one.

Thanks to the extremely hard work and devotion of a few of these wonderful volunteers (check out group leader Ben's blog on the project here), the Cancha Project has turned from an idea to a plan, and construction is planned to begin in April.  My leaving early has presented a challenge for the project, but nothing a little brainstorming and rehashing of responsibilities can't solve.  This project is going to be incredible, and come hell or high water I'm going to do my darnedest to return for its inauguration.

Please, all you wonderful folks out there, read the project details here, help spread the word, and consider donating to the cause!

http://www.operationgroundswell.causevox.com/Tzibal

Memory: X'Tamal

Christmas Day 2011.  I hike up to Tzibal to say a quick hi to Estela and give her kids a few Christmas presents.  I arrive after lunchtime because I don't want Estela to feel compelled to feed me, which she of course does anyway.  Estela explained that Christmas Eve she just wanted to relax so she and her husband and kids stayed in and hung out. She didn't even get around to making Christmas tamales, she told me, embarrassed. I told her not to worry, that I'd been eating tamales all day anyway and wasn't hungry.  She looked a bit relieved.

Meanwhile word has quickly gotten out that I was in the village, and people start stopping by Estela's kitchen door to request my presence in their houses.  Estela, like the perfect agent she is, makes the executive decision that I only have time to make one other stop, and that stop would be with Doña Carolina.  So up we climb through the muddy jungle to Carolina's house, where they're holding a special Christmas service.  In we walk to a typical Tzibal house: one-roomed wooden shack with a corrugated tin roof and a dirt floor.  In this house are maybe 25 community members, sitting on long wooden benches facing the makeshift pulpit.  Up front, standing in front of an orange wooden bureau topped with a plastic piggy bank and a vase full of plastic flowers are five men, all in the typical campo uniform: collared shirt tucked into belted colored jeans and rain boots, pant legs tucked in.  Two of the men hold trumpets, one holds a guitar, one mans the keyboard, and the fifth stands in front holding Li Santil Hu, the Holy Bible translated into Q'eqchi'.  And alongside these men, stacked halfway to the rusted ceiling, stand a full set of giant Peavey speakers, turned up to full volume, powered by the rumbling generator in the corner. The sound level is near unbearable, but I sit it out, trying not to think of the damage being done to my eardrums. What is it about Guatemalans and their godforsaken Peavey speakers?? I've often asked locals why the volume level needs to be so high, but nobody seems to have an answer for me. My personal theory is that they're attempting to shoot the sound up to God in Heaven. That really is the only explanation to having that kind of volume in a wooden shack with an audience of twenty-five.

The service ends and we're served tamales and hot cacao.  Estela and I chow down, say our thanks, and leave, going down to the Catholic church to meet with some other women. They're all in the church kitchen getting the Kakik feast ready for later that night. We stand around the open fire pit and chat while Doña Carmen fries up some chicarrones.  They start talking to Estela and soon find out that she didn't give me a Christmas tamale, because she didn't make any.  I quickly chime in that I came to visit for the company, not the tamales, but the women are besides themselves. They start calling Estela "X'tamal," or Mrs. Tamale, laughing all the way.  "X'tamal invited Qana Jana for Christmas and didn't even make tamales!" they repeat between bursts of laughter.  The women all lost it--this, apparently, was the funniest thing ever, and they laughed and laughed and laughed.  Doña Carmen burned the chicharrones because she was too busy laughing.  And I laughed until I cried--laughter is contagious after all--for the first time in a long time.  In that moment I felt such a connection with these women, in a wooden shack standing around a fire frying chicken organs, and it was the best Christmas I could have asked for.  I felt at home.

Giving words

We all know that old adage, "actions speak louder than words."  I had to look it up to find out that it was originally coined by a Renaissance Frenchie, Michel de Montaigne, but that's really besides the point.  The point is that this idiom is moot in rural Guatemala.   

In Guatemala, at least the Guatemala I've come to know and love, there's a very present tradition of "giving words."  Commonly in meetings, church services, etc., I'm asked by the attending to "dar palabras" (give words).  I've gotten pretty good at it by now, but still quite a bit more brief than my Guatemalan counterparts.  Guatemalans are quite flowery in their speech--a Guatemalan can go on about something relatively trivial for 10, 15 minutes without faltering.  It's pretty amazing, actually, and I often find myself awed by this Guatemalan skill (I'm horrible at impromptu speeches and have always tended to be overly brief).  Now that the countdown has begun for my departure, people are starting to "dar palabras" to me.  At my women's group meeting yesterday, for example, Doña Carmen decided to give me some words as the meeting was winding down.  She stood, faced me from her spot in the corner, and delivered a 10-minute long Q'eqchi' speech, no pauses, no eye-contact, no emotional expression on her face.  I could understand only a bit of what she was telling me, but I gathered that she was thanking me for my time, for helping with the pila project, for visiting her at her home, etc.  She sparked a chain of similar speeches which left me standing there, receiving these foreign words in a strangely formal way.  But that's how it's done here.  To "dar palabras" in Guatemala is to give something meaningful, to pass on a sentiment, to speak your peace.  Words here are the action.  Words are the gift, the good gesture, and the message all in one. Actions can't speak louder than words when the action is the words themselves.  Plus, words are free. And I appreciate that.  I appreciate that 99% of the gift-giving in rural Guatemala is either food or words.  A hot bowl of kak'ik and a nice little speech is far better than some silly trinket anyway.  

Although this paper mache going-away present that I received today from one of my English students was just excellent.

 

Back to packing up my house bag by bag and trying to hold it together. 

T-minus 16 days

March flies to a close, and with it my time in Campur.  My time lately has been a strange mix of the norm and the new as I continue to work in my schools and communities like always while simultaneously wrapping up my life here, piece by piece.  It's become my top priority to leave things here as well "ordenado" as possible--I'm quite possibly the last volunteer that this community will see for years and I refuse to leave without crossing all of my T's.  If nothing else I owe that to myself, to the community, and to those of you back home who have invested in my experience.

Luckily, those proverbial T's were relatively easy to cross when it came to the Pila project, the Bottle School, and my curriculum work in the schools. Some last minute meetings were had, some Peace Corps paperwork filed, but I can pretty much leave knowing that these projects are "done"--I say this relatively since it's a bit of a hope of sustainable development work that no project is ever really finished--projects can, and should, be in continuous motion, continuous progress.

As I've been running around this past month, busily taking inventory on my 20 months in site, I seem to have hopped on a mental see-saw of sorts.  Half of the time I walk around seeing everything through rose-colored glasses, enjoying each steaming tayuyo as if it were my last, taking in the scenery on the hikes I've become to know oh-so-well, tearing up as locals tell me to stay.  And the other half of the time I find myself thinking "it's time for me to go home." Home to the land of soy milk and yoga classes, the land where I will no longer be the lone Gringa towering awkwardly amidst a sea of Guatemalans (conversely during my rose-colored moments I wonder how I'll be able to handle the anonymity, the absurd wealth, the iPhones..)  And then there are those rare and wonderful moments when I'm somehow able to balance myself awkwardly in the middle of the seesaw--and I realize that it is indeed time for me to leave, but that's it's not necessarily the end.  I'll be back to Guatemala, just like I won't be going home to America forever either.  A chapter is closing, and another one beginning.  As much as a part of me wants to stay here forever, there's another part of me that knows that I can't--in some ways it's important that I leave, cut the Peace Corps umbilical cord for me and my community, push us to make the next steps on our own. My teachers and counterparts now armed with the textbooks, knowledge, and confidence; and me armed with 24 months of experience and growth. After all, it's important for locals to realize that I'm nothing more than a change agent--I brought ideas, information, and motivation to the table, nothing more, nothing less.  I've often heard volunteers talking about how they feel that they leave their PC service having learned so much more than they were able to teach. And in the immediate sense, I'd completely agree. But while I leave here a changed woman, I hopefully leave the community with small bits and pieces that five, ten years down the line will snowball into bigger things. I changed at an American pace, and they'll change at a Guatemalan pace.  Students I worked with may not be spouting off Youth Development information in their spare time but maybe, just maybe, that information will one day spark a potentially life-changing decision for them. Maybe, 10 years from now, they'll be the ones leading Youth Development activities in their community. 

Remember Any's scholarship?  Here's an update.  With the help of FOG and a handful of extremely generous donors back home we were able to raise Q3,612.10 ($470 USD) for Any's scholarship fund, about 56% of the budgeted goal. It was all looking very promising, and then we got some bad news. The school in Coban where Any would be studying filled up--there were no more spots available.  Distraught, we went back to the drawing board.  Any could try to enroll in a different school in Coban, but Emilio is the best.  So we settled on an alternative plan--Any would stay in Campur and study in Campur's small bachillerato program (equivalent to an associate's degree in the States), take weekend classes in typing and computer skills, and in another year, leave to study at the University.  As for her scholarship money, she made me a proposal--since the costs of her studying in Campur's Bach. program would be significantly lower (no need to pay rent, etc.), she asked if she could share the funds with her younger brother, Gester, who would soon begin in Primero Basico (7th grade equivalent).  I considered this.  The year previous I had worked with Gester's 6th grade class and saw first hand what an exceptional student he was.  Being Any's brother, he of course battles the same economic disadvantages.  So I agreed to her proposal, with a few changes.  Any and her brother are now both receiving small monthly stipends to help cover local school fees and school supply costs.  Instead of lasting a year, the budgeted sum should last for nearly two.  That is, if we can manage to raise the remaining 44%--$350.00.

How will the scholarship be managed in my absence?  I have worked it out with FOG and Any's mother that the scholarship money be placed into a family bank account.  Any will take out her monthly stipends from this account, keeping in touch with me via email and phone about her progress and any problems that may arise. 

So if you'd still like to be a part in helping Any AND Gester continue their education, please please please consider donating a small amount to their FOG fund.  All donations are tax deductible and will go directly to Any in the form of a monthly scholarship payment.

Donations should be sent to:

Friends of Guatemala          
P.O. Box 33018
Washington, D.C. 20033

*Please write “Any Caal – Cat. II” in the subject line of the check so that Friends of Guatemala know which scholarship student the donation is for.

Thanks again for your continued support--I couldn't have done it without you!!

Hannah

Pilas for Tzibal-Thanks!

Five weeks and counting. As the immediateness of my departure becomes a reality to my local counterparts, they've started, like me, to evaluate my time here. From day one, locals have taken me under their wing. As the resident gringa in a village of indigenous Guatemalans, they wanted to make sure I was safe and content during my stay. I was their gringa and if something happened to me, if I was unhappy, or lonely, or sick, it would be their fault, their public shame that they didn't take better care. Now that I'm leaving they're looking back to see how they did, self-evaluating by evaluating me. The result is a daily commentary on how I've changed in the eyes of the locals I live and work with. "You know how to walk now," Estela and Carmen told me yesterday, as we trudged up a rocky mountain trail to a baptism. "You know how to eat Kak'ik now," Margarita told me as we sat in the wooden shack on a log-bench, eating hot caldo and tamalitos. "You really like our culture now, don't you" my student Any told me as she looked around my room at the local weavings and tapestries I have hanging on my walls and covering my tables. As I find myself immersed in the utter chaos of wrapping up my service, writing up lackluster technical reports of my work over the past 20 months which often leave me with that pit-in-the-stomach feeling that I didn't accomplish enough, this commentary has made me feel a little bit better somehow. In many ways I feel that what's important isn't how good my time here looks on paper (because you can make pretty much anything sound good or bad on paper, let's be honest) but how it's viewed by the people in my community. And if that's measured by the fact that I can now walk up a mountainside wearing traje, rubber caites, and toting a banana-leaf of leftover meat, then I'm going to take that for all it's worth.

So I begin here an exercise of reflection, wrap-up, and evaluation. What have I learned, how have I changed, and what have I "accomplished" since arriving to site 20 months ago?  I'll start by recapping one of the projects from which I learned the most, and for which I still owe a great big thanks to those of you back home who made it all possible.

 

The pila project in Tzibal took over a year of creativity, patience, and many many meetings. There were hiccups, there was a bit of "winging-it" on my part and theirs, and there were a lot of delays. But at the end of it all, we reached our principle objectives: to provide 38 women with pilas, to build local capacity to use and maintain the pilas, and to empower the participating women through the planning and implementation of a small community project.

This project started way back in the fall of my first year, in September 2010. I was meeting weekly with the women doing cooking classes in hopes of forming a women's group and making some local friends. After one of these classes Estela, the leader she is, announced that the women had gotten together and come up with an idea. She proposed the project to me, hiked me up to Carolina's house where they showed me how they washed clothes with a rock and slab. I was sold. We wrote up budgets, a timeline, a Peace Corps Partnership grant, and waited. Meanwhile I continued meeting with the women and did talks on household budgeting, healthy food prep, and environmental awareness. 

Finally in March, 2011 I went back to site after the State of Siege and the money came through. But the exchange rate had changed and so we raised more (remember this?) Soon after, the first truck of pilas rolled up the rocky path to Tzibal. The pilas were hauled laboriously to the women's houses, one by one. Roofing sheets were purchased and distributed. The cement "planchas" or platforms were made by husbands and brothers and cousins of the women. Drainage ditches dug, filled with rocks and charcoal to prevent groundwater contamination from soapy water.

The project, as hoped, was very much facilitated by the women's group.  They organized a buying committee which went with me to get price quotes and purchase materials.  They organized the distribution of the materials (which was a significantly complicated task due to the pilas weighing so much) and checked in with me on their progress.  The women have become stronger as a group and more involved in the community (the women's group played a huge role in the bottle school construction, from collecting and filling bottles to putting in the bottle walls). The project wasn't perfect, and it wasn't always easy. But in many ways, it went along in the spirit of sustainability that we PCV's are always hoping for. At the end of the day these pilas weren't a hand-out to be taken for granted. The women worked long and hard for them, which assured me that pilas were something they needed and wanted. The project built local capacity and brought the community together. It is more their "logro," their achievement, than it is mine. And that, if nothing else, I can be proud of.

Thank you to all of you who donated to this project. A very special thanks to the Flossmoor Community Church's Outreach Board for their generous support, undying patience, and for agreeing to fund this project through thick and thin. Because of your support, 38 rural Guatemalan families now have pilas to wash their clothes and dishes in, and most importantly have had the experience of planning, designing, and managing a community project. I could not be luckier to have been able to share this experience with them.

Bantiox eere!!  

(Q'eqchi': thank you!)

Doña Carmen test-driving her newly installed pila

For more photos of this project follow this link: Pilas for Tzibal.

Febrero loco

It was right around the end of January when I started mentioning my upcoming birthday to locals. It's not that I was hinting at anything, but it just came up in conversation; my dad was coming to visit and both of our birthdays would fall within his visit. Besides, I definitely didn't need to give anybody more reason to question my single, no-children status. "Twenty-five?!" they'd say. "Twenty-five and you're all alone?" When I did speak of it to my closer local friends, they almost unanimously replied, giggling at their own hilarity, "Entonces eres loca, verdad?" ("So you're crazy then, right?")  I was missing something. So I asked Olga what she meant. "We say that people born in February are crazy, because February is the crazy month." Wonderful, I think, yet another thing to make me the crazy gringa. "February," she explained, "is the crazy month because the weather is so unpredictable. Some days it's very hot, some days it's cold and rainy. You never know what you're going to get. Also, February is known as the month of love, because everybody's falling in love, celebrating Valentine's Day. It's a crazy month." Hi, nice to meet you, I'm love-hungry and bipolar, just like the month of February.

Dad the ladies-man with the Tzibal women

This year, Olga's theory is holding up. Things have been crazy this month, myself included. Time has been flying faster than I can track it these days, in a whirlwind of work, play, and COS paperwork. My mind is constantly being tugged in all directions. My handy-dandy "focus on the now" mantra doesn't really work when I'm being forced to plan my post-PC future while simultaneously looking back on my service in order to write up my site reports. I came down with gripe (the flu) despite the fact that I'm NEVER sick in Guatemala (stomach issues aside). I'm stressed and I can feel it. Time is slipping through my fingers like the proverbial sands in the hourglass, and I feel like I'm on the verge of an ataque de nervios. Plus, as a friend so kindly pointed out, I'm now closer to 30 than I am to 20.

Dad's new retirement plan

Dad's first jumping shot

Backing up a bit, the beginning of February was a delight. Papa Gdalman came to Guatemala for a visit and we had a grand old time. Dad is a super low-maintenance traveler, so I didn't really do much planning for his trip (not that I would have had the time/energy to do so otherwise). In Antigua we stayed at the budget hostel that I usually stay at with PC friends, wined and dined at favorite PC restaurants and bars, took a chicken bus ride to Pastores (the Guatemalan hub of leather-working) where I placed an order for a fabulous pair of custom-made cowboy boots ("I'm not a cowboy-boot kinda guy," Dad claimed), and did a lot of bumming around the market. Then we hopped on Caesar's shuttle (we lucked out and got a private ride, if you don't count the tables he was transporting) and headed up to Coban where we spent Super Bowl Sunday in a slightly shady hotel before heading up to beautiful Campur. On Dad's birthday I dragged the poor guy up the the mountain to Tzibal to meet the women's group, see the bottle school, and eat a special Kak'ik birthday meal. He sat patiently through the women's group meeting and afterwards posed individually with about 15 of the women who were just over themselves with giddiness (apparently Doña Margarita got a little frisky during her photo op and grabbed his derrière). He remained unfazed when we jumped in the back of a pick-up to get back down to Campur in time for my English class, or when I showed him how to heat up his bucket-bathe. He fearlessly gobbled down street-food (Doña Ana's tayuyos) and practiced the little Q'eqchi I taught him on local families. He was a trooper, and it was a great visit. Happy 60th, Dad!

Dad took off on the morning of my birthday, but I enjoyed my day anyway. After the market I spent the afternoon reading and napping in my hammock, and that evening headed over to Pastora Isabela's house where they threw me a party complete with chicken stew and a beautiful chocolate birthday cake from Coban. After they sang the birthday song to me in three languages (English, Spanish, and Q'eqchi) Isabela gifted me a gorgeous hand-stitched huipil. I couldn't have asked for a better day.

My very yummy birthday cake!

That same weekend I headed to Lanquin to meet up with some PC friends to celebrate Alison and my birthdays and despedir (say goodbye to) Evan and Winfrey. It all pulled me back to the reality that I have mere weeks to wrap up my life here and move on. If only I had a clue what it was that I'm moving on towards..

Celebrating in Lanquin.