Oh, so this is for real now?

Did I say in my last post that my site wasn’t going to be super rural? Well, I take it back. I still stand by the relative accessibility to Xela, but the fact that there’s nowhere to buy tortillas or bread (both staples, you can always find at least 3 stores with them in any town) anywhere in San Ramón really says something.

The good news: I have a place to sleep, my counterpart is just as crazy as I am (probably crazier), I may have accidentally joined a basketball team in a town nearby, and there is evidently a ton of work to do RIGHT away. And by a lot of work, I mean we did 22 house visits on my first day of work and 23 on my 2nd day.

Normally, I wouldn’t be starting my infrastructure projects until the 2nd year of my service, but I’ve been placed in a town that’s had a volunteer working here for the last year. Kate’s been in San Ramon as well as 2 other towns and her own municipality working in the Healthy Homes project since last July, so she’s coming into the project phase of her service. She’s decided that she wants my town to be the first to get projects, so a few months ago, the entire area covered by the Health Post was surveyed to see what services they had within the home (water, lights, cement floors, latrine, stove – instead of an open fire on the floor). Now that we’ve selected the families most in need to participate in the project, we had to hand-deliver all 50-some invitations over the last 2 days.

This doesn’t seem like too big a task, but this isn’t like taking a stroll through Cary Town. The majority of the houses are islanded in the middle of endless cornfields and guarded by the meanest dogs to ever come out of hell. Not to mention the dogs guarding the cornfields themselves and the little paths through them. All I have to say: thank GOD I found a big stick before we found the really mean ones. My counterpart Adilia has had a bit of experience with these “chuchos” (according to the scar across her right cheek bone), so I took her advice when she told me to stay calm and not release pheromones out of the pure fear and adrenaline pouring out of me. To her credit, breathing deeply and passing by them at a normal pace worked pretty well, except for the ones that follow you as soon as your back is turned and continue to be on the attack even when I act menacing with my stick. Thus why I jumped at the little boy running out of the cornfield and then again at the cat chewing on a plastic bag under the table at dinner tonight. I'm sure my love of dogs will come back any day now...

Training Pt. 3 - The Downhill

Ahhhh so much has happened since I last wrote… where to start… where to start…

I guess I can start with FBT – Field Based Training. Myself and 6 other trainees went with a driver, language teacher, and Basilio – our Associate Peace Corps Director for the Healthy Homes project (kind of a big deal) to San Vicente Buenabaj in Totonicapán to visit Phillipa Wood. Her aldea (suuuuper small town outside of a Municipality, which are what we would think of as small towns) is about an hour outside of Quetzaltenango/Xela, which is the 2nd largest city in the country. Each trainee got to give a health talk to one of her health promoter and/or midwife groups in the area. I gave a talk about where illnesses come from in the environment around us and how we can prevent those sicknesses – aka washing your hands. The talk went okay, but I didn’t know I would need a translator for the women who only speak K’iche, so things got a little confusing at times. The big hit was definitely making your own soap from warm water, a recycled plastic bottle, and bits and pieces of cheap/used soap. It was an absolutely gorgeous area, but real chilly at night and in the morning. Evidently Phil regularly finds ice in her “hot” water bottles for her bed and her pila (or water deposit) during January and February. Too bad Peace Corps doesn’t come close to paying us enough to cover the ridiculous electricity bill a space heater would rack up.

The other week I went to visit another volunteer, Esther, also right near Xela in the department of Totonicapán for Independent Directed Activities. Our Tech Trainer, Carolyn, said Michelle and I would have an IDA on crack, and she was right: we visited the Area de Salud (main health office for the department), did a radio show, gave 2 trainings in Dynamic Education, did home visits in one of her aldeas, and climbed like 7 mountains (only, only like 2, and it was gorgeous, but both were unexpected). Esther’s amazing, and incredibly busy – girl’s got all her work around her site that includes a few health promoter groups, a youth group, and starting to figure out her infrastructure projects, as well as being the President of the HIV/AIDS committee. But that’s pretty much like every volunteer you meet – you’re just continuously impressed by how much they’re doing it and how well they’re doing it, you just keep wondering if you’ll ever do as well as them or be at the point they are.

After just over 2 months in country, I found out where I will be living and working for the next 24 months. The aldea is called San Ramon: it’s right outside of this big town called San Cristóbal in the department of Totonicapán. It’s not a completely new site, because a girl named Kate has been working there for a year, but I’ll be able to focus all my efforts on just this area. I’m super close to Xela, only about 30 minutes, so I’ll have the best of both worlds: a super rural aldea, but only a short bus ride away from a huge market that will sell things a lot cheaper than out in the country (because everybody goes to Xela to buy in bulk then go to smaller towns to sell, the price gets jacked up). Also, my plans to learn the drums while I’m here, have a gym to go to once in a while, and maybe find some dance classes will go a lot smoother with this site. Not to mention being a central meeting point for the majority of volunteers. I’ll be honest – I wasn’t so excited when I got my folder. All along I’ve been expecting to go to Huehuetenango (near the Mexican border) to a suuuuuper rural town, a new site that’s never had a volunteer before, and live and work in a completely different environment than I’ve ever known. This is pretty much the exact opposite of that haha. That said, this site has a lot of pros: I have a SUPER energetic local counterpart that’s really excited for me to come and start work right away, and my director has said there is literally too much work to do there.