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I have been saving the emails I´ve been sending to my family and then decided to turn them into a blog, so this is not going to be the most organized (which i never am so I guess being unorganized is still my way of doing things ha). During our first 3 training months its difficult because we don´t have a lot of free time here, maybe an hour or so after our classes and work before we have to get back to our host families before dark, and then its dinner and homework then off to bed since our days begin by waking up between 6-630am, so I´m usually in bed by 10.
I have been here for about 3 weeks or so now but it feels like longer since we have been doing an incredible amount each day! We get sundays off which is always a nice break at the end of a busy week, but typically our days include training in language, culture, medical, security as well as working with the local health centers, helping the nurses and health technicians in the schools when they give vaccinations, pass out vitamins, give health talks and we met with the midwives and get to shadow them during house visits.
Each spanish class has 5 peace corps volunteers and we each live in the same community, and each community is about 10-45 minutes from eachother and then we see the whole group of 52 once a week on tuesdays at the peace corps office for our medical-cultural-security-technical meetings, and otherwise i´m with my small group of 5 everyday for our spanish classes and various health related community group projects. So I have become pretty close with these 5 girls and I feel so blessed to get along with each of them so well! We are already planning are trips to travel together around guatemala after training ends in a couple months!!
It is beautiful here, surrounded by 3 volcanoes, lush trees and lots of coffee plantations, tropical plants, fresh fruits and vegetables and my personal favorite all the places that sell delicious and inexpensive chocobananas! We live near Antigua, which is the old capital of Guatemala and was change in the early 70s to Guatemala City. My spanish group went on a little field trip to guate (guatemala city) last week and it was a very interesting experience to be in a lage city of 2 million, it actually was a lot prettier than i expected, and reminded me of Portland a bit with all the trees through out the city and how green it is driving in and out of the city, however it is much much dirtier than portland and recycling doesn´t really exsist. Actually nor really do trash cans becuase there´s trash everywhere, even shoved in any type of hole in the sidewalk, the rivers are greatly contaminated and also full of trash and who knows what else may be floating along in it. Oh and a little side note.. toilet paper is never to be flushed down the toilet anywhere in guatemala so there is always a trash can next to each toilet (however it is a rarity and quite the splendid surprise these days to find toilet paper in the banos so i have gotten in the habbit to always carry toilet paper or tissues with me) and i´m glad its a unconscience habit now for me to automatically throw away the toilet paper instead of flush it down like we do in the states. so fyi for any of you who come to visit remember to do the same.. never flush the toilet paper because it will block up the water and drainage systems.
Overall things here have been going very well! I love my family i´m staying with, I´m blessed to have made close friendships with the girls in my spanish class already only after almost 3 weeks and I am really starting to get the hang of the culture in terms of how to act, what to say and have been enjoying learning about even the simplest of things about a new culture! My favorite foods are definitely the pan dulce (sweet breads) which we dip in either coffee (which is made from rice, wheat, coffee beans and one other plant i can´t remember at the moment) and we also dip our sweet bread in Atol, which is a hot drink that can be prepared with various things such as plantains (this is my favorite atol drink), rice, oats (this is refered to as mush here), corn, beans, vanilla extract mixed with corn, cinnamon... the list continues, i think my host family and i had a 20 minute conversatio about atol at the dinner last night haha. We usually bond over all the new foods i need to try here in guatemala. I also really enjoy all the bananas, i´ve had about 5 different ones, and my family has a banana and coffee plantatio neary by so we have fresh bananas quite often 😊 I had 6 through out the day last friday although each banana is the size of a finger so its easy to eat a lot and makes a pefect snack to carry along and eat in class.
Last week we had the opportunity to travel to a current volunteer´s site for the day and meet her counterpart and visit the puesto de salud (health center) in her town where she works 3 days a week. Then we also went and visited a 6th grade classroom at a local school where they have been working for the past year teaching them about basic hygiene because that is one of the biggest lacks here and thus can help fix and prevent many of the continuous sicknesses and patterns of illnesses occuring here. Today we used local aloe vera plants to make a shampoo because a good majority of the kids and adults suffer from lice and flees because they do´nt reguluary wash their hair. It is very easy to make, we cut leaves of aloe vera and took out the gooey middle part and mixed it with water, salt and a good smelling soap base they sell here the in stores in bulk (lavendar or eucalyptus can be used too, there are many eucalyptus trees here as well as lavendar plants) and then each of the students brought an empty coke or water bottle from home to fill up with shampoo to take home and use to wash their hair. I love aloe vera.. all of its naturally occuring remedies and cures such as rashes, stings, burns, moistureizer and a good base for soaps and shampoos! We also gave them a natural recipe composed of local plants to make a medicine for their chickens when they get sick with a flu (most familes have chickens for eggs and meat) so they wrote that down. Then at recess we went and played soccer (futbol is veeerrrryyy popular here) so that as fun to play sports during break with them as well as i drew some pictures with one of the girls, they loved having a group of 12 gringos today for 2 hours at school, it was very rewarding to help out. I am excited because my future job will also most likely be entailing working with kids as well as adults, so it will be nice to be involved with various ages here in terms of health related topics and what not.
However, there are also the hardtimes here, too. Not being able to communicate with family and friends very often due to lack of time, computer access and lack of phone credit but I guess the fact that we are so busy is good for keeping our minds off the ones we love and miss. And another thing, the bed bugs and fleas have been a constant struggle since they love to live in my clothes and in my sheets so I have to shake out everything before wearing anything. I don´t think it helps that my house is outside next to a river so there are also tons of mosquitoes so i´ve been reving up the bug spray these days.
As far as spanish goes, it can be very frustrating to not be able to express what you want to say to the people i´m living with in another language. I really enjoy the way my teacher has been teaching our classes, she has been teaching spanish for over 10 years now and always is creative with the topics we use for our conversations as well as different methods of expressing new vocabulary and verb tenses. She never uses English so it really is a great way to force yourself to learn and submerse in a new culture. However our brains work twice as hard because to listen, translate, then think about what I want to say then translate it back into spanish and talk.. i hope this process becomes easier and wont take as much effort. I had my second Spanish interview and moved to the intermediate-medium level and I came to Guatemala and tested in at the intermediate-low level so I´m glad I´m making progress!
We had our first Charla last week, which is a presentation given in spanish about a various health topic. Charlas here are very participatory with the audience, especially because many are not able to read or write so we have to use a lot of diagrams and pictures and fun activities to teach about a specific health topic. Our first Charla went well overall for being our first; however, the people we were giving the talk to were in a hurry to meet with the doctor at 8am which is when the nurse planned ou charla for so they weren´t really interested in participating in our nutrition activity and we were forced to do it in the hallway leading outside where there was a lot of loud construction going on, as usual, so they told us we were hard to hear but those who did participate seemed to have understood the majority of our presentation about the basic food groups of carbs, proteins and fats in eating a well balanced diet. I have noticed the majority of the meals here consist of mainly simple and sugary carbohydrates, so we tried to emphasize to add more of a balance with their local foods.
My host family consists of the parents, the grandma, aa 23 year old son, and two daughters ages 20 and 18. They are very supportive and patient with me learning Spanish and practicing with them, it is so great to live with such welcoming and loving people!!! My host family here weaves many various items such as bags, clothes, table covers, belts for their income by selling their products to vendors at the major markets in antigua so they made me a servilleta with my full name on it full of many bright colorful designs. It is a large hand woven napkin which are typically used for carrying hot tortillas from the tortilla makers and then also are used to serve at the table so this will come in handy once i move to my site in 2 months because i will buying tortillas quite often since it is the staple food.
I have been given a few opportunities to make tortillas with my host mom and sister, and we´ve also made tamales and tolmatillos, which both consist of corn meal, tomatoes and beans or carne. The tortillas are a lot harder than it looks because it sticks to your hands and you have to do it at the right speed and get the perfect round shape but i somewhat successfully made a decent amount, and I guess it will only get easier the more you do it! For the tolmatillos we put pureed black beans inside the masa (tortilla dough, made of ground corn and water) and wrapped it in a corn leaf and put it in a big pot with water and cooked over an open fire for an hour then ate them for dinner, a very common dish here. (i do not think i´m spelling it right though, i will have to check on that). The tamles are masa, tomatoes and pork wrapped in a leaf then cooked in a similar type of pot for 2 hours.
I have been talking a lot with my host sisters who are both learning english so we are helping eachother learn and they are very patient with me and teach me soo much everyday! It really helps living with a host family to learn the local language since we are able to constantly and repeatedly hear phrases, so i can pick up a lot just listening during each meal! They showed me a whole bunch of pictures from their trips around guatemala and I´m soooo excited to visit El Peten where the Tikal Ruins are.. its a tropical rainforest which is the northern part of guatemala full of beautiful clear rivers where you can see the rocks beneath, colorful fish, lush plants and trees, several waterfalls and best of all... MONKIES!!!!! The flowers are bright colors and the muesums and artwork is breathtaking, and this is just from photos so i can´t imagine what it will look like in person! That is one of the first places i hope to visit, as well as Coban which is known for its waterfalls and caves and is just beneath El Peten.
As far as our work here, we have our health techincal meetings 3 times a week which is where we are given lots of sessions and information, as well as lots of reading and worksheets on our healthy homes project. This project includes building stoves, latrines (outside bathrooms to help stop fecal-oral contamination which is one of the biggest reasons for a lot of the gastrointestinal diseases), water systems, sump pits and building concrete floors. Then we have medical sessions once a week about learning the different ways we as volunteers can stay healthy and adapt to living here successfully. We also have culture and history classes several times a week so we can continue to understand the background and foundation of why the culture is the way it is, learning about their almost hundred year civil war which has several layers full of a lot of pain and suffering for many of the people here in Guatemala. Obviously these subjects are very sensitive here, especially for the Indiginous people since the war only ended in 1996, so I am trying to learn as much as I can about the history but have to be careful with who you talk about things with because the wounds are still fresh. We have several readings on it but there is so much information an background that it is hard to learn about it all, especially on top of everything else we have to do. It´s really sad but is necessary to help get a grasp on what they went through as well as their ancestors and relatives.
Also included in our technical meetings are looking at community diagnostics when trying to implement new health programs and see where the city feels they need assistane. They include figuring out a community´s typical daily activities, seasonal calendar and community needs assessment when trying to implement new programs. It is necessary to take all 3 into consideration when starting new projects such as building stoves or latrines because you want to learn as much as you can about a culture including the gender roles and where and what people do on a daily and seasonal basis. If you just go in and build something and then leave it may either not be what the community needs or wants and it could be a waste of time and it doesn´t include the cultural aspects of a certain community. We are here to live and work with various communities by seeing which areas are in most need, such as contaminated rivers or continuous sicknesses from intestinal diseases if there is lack of hygiene. So the first few months of peace corps are mainly learning and gaining trust from the people we are living with and here it is called "confianza", or building the trust with the community members.
We do a lot of community analysis diagnostics which is what we are learning and reading about during our sessions on tuesdays and practice putting together community needs assessments for the communities we are currently living in before going to our sites and living there. I really have been enjoying the training sessions for each will be very applicable once i get sent to my site and want to implement new health programs and start building the stoves and latrines that are necessary in the most effective way possible. It is through working with our counterparts in the communities we will be living and teaching them how to keep these projects going as far as bettering the overall wellbeing of the community. The biggest words are sustainable development, and that is what we are hear to do and that is why the peace corps is a 2 year service.. the first year is building the confianza with our communities and doing community analysis to see which areas are in the most need of help, and the second year is building and constructing and carrying out the projects. So it is all a learning and teaching process... and patience is key!
I hope to update this more frequently instead of just copying and pasting from previous emails, and the computers here that I have tried so far are too slow to upload any pictures yet but I may ask to borrow my friends computer to upload my pictures soon so I can add them to the blog to share!
Note: The opinions on this website are mine and do not reflect the position or opinions of the Peace Corps or the U.S. government.
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Rich Ward
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I am enjoying your blog Allysa. An adventure of a lifetime. Atta girl.