¨You need to take your watch off¨

I have to admit – I asked for it. I really did. When I said I wanted a ton of work RIGHT when I got to my site, I was worried about being lonely, about having too much time to sit and think about what I’d gotten myself into, about feeling useless and like I wouldn’t be able to find enough work to fill up 2 years. Well, my boss took that request to heart. Since the day I arrived at site, I have had something (more like 3-5 somethings) to do every single workday. And most weekends as well.

The good news: I took off my watch. You’d think after living in a few different Latin American countries where time is relative, very few people wear a watch (and those that do are doing it for style), and it’s a complete accident if everyone is on time to a meeting, that I would let go of some of my anal-retentive tendencies when it comes to time. But, no. Last week I was stressing out about how we were going to provide 500 people with snack and tie off every detail of the Reproductive Health march coming up, and Adilia (my counterpart) finally said, “You need to take your watch off.” So, I did. And I was 85% stress-free. Until the day of the march, of course.

So, the march: the idea of simply having a health talk for all the Mi Familia Progresa groups in my town (which is a government-run subsidy program that basically pays women to take their kids to the health post for checkups, receive health talks, and make their kids go to school) to celebrate Reproductive Health Month turned into a 500 person march celebrating the month as well as women’s rights and self-esteem. Each group of Mi Familia Progresa was given a talk on a certain topic (breastfeeding, self-esteem, women’s rights, family planning, etc.), made their own materials for the march, and then were told it was a mandatory activity (and thus wouldn’t have to come for their checkups in September).

You should have SEEN the giggles in these meetings when we told them what we had planned. I mean, for this town, it’s weird if a woman talks much above a normal level unless she’s yelling at one of her kids, so it’s a pretty ridiculous idea that a ton of women would get together and parade around the town shouting things like “MY BODY BELONGS TO ME,” or “NO ONE DESERVES ABUSE,” or “IT’S MY RIGHT TO DECIDE HOW MANY KIDS I WANT.” We were a little worried about the authorities being into it, but they ended up making us invite every school band in town. Not only did the local mayors lead the parade, the Municipal Mayor came all the way out as well. We invited about 5 more organizations (before begging them for materials and snacks, of course), so we added another 250 participants to our groups to make it a 500-person march. Even though my group did not win most animated (it took us the entire route to get our chant down pat), it was so crazy to see these women marching through their town holding signs up with things like “INCEST IS WRONG,” and “I AM NOT AN OBJECT,” and “I HAVE VALUE.” Yeah, they were still pretty meek and didn’t shout as loud as I’d have liked. But at the very least, they did it. Sure, we pretty much made them, but the fact that they know that something like this is possible now, is pretty awesome. Now only if we could convince them without having to bribe them with snacks and threaten taking away their monthly stipend…

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.

Training – Pt. 2 – 2 Natural Disasters in 30 hours

One month down, 26 to go. I’m finding my friend’s words to be more truthful every day: The days are long and can be slow, but the weeks fly. Days fill themselves up quickly with things to do (even though those things may not be numerous but they almost always take longer than you would think), and then next thing you know, it’s Friday again. Aka time for my weekly visit to the only ice cream place in town.

So some of you might have heard about Volcan Pacaya erupting this week. I woke up this morning to four missed calls and three new text messages from my training director, safety and security coordinator, and group members in my town making sure I was okay and to please call if I heard anything more than rain falling on my roof (possibly referring to the rock showers that killed a reporter). Evidently Alotenango and a few other training towns were in the most danger due to proximity to the volcano, but I just thought there was a big thunderstorm out. Speaking of thunderstorms – Tropical Storm Agatha made landfall close to the Mexican border around 7 p.m. on Saturday night. My house is pretty big and stable, so we didn’t have to deal with too much water. The houses along the rivers weren’t so lucky – lots of people have lost everything to the storm. My language professor’s house was filled with 6 feet of mud. He lives in the next town over which was hit pretty hard. The death toll’s over 100 now for the country, and we’ve heard news that Honduras has it worse. Evidently there hasn’t been this much damage from a storm around here in 38 years, so my host dad’s hoping people will start to realize how bad the forestation and it’s consequences really are.

Last time I was talking about how we might get a bit more freedom in our training schedule. Well, no longer even have language classes (even though we sometimes meet with the head of the language department for a few hours or send her emails to proofread our formal letters/invitations) and are pretty much completely free to work with the Health Center however we please. We go to every event we can – ranging from information sessions for young pregnant women to watching the local police use religion to coerce school kids into behaving.

In other news, we received our Field Based Training Assignments. Six others and myself will be heading to Aldea San Vicente Buenabaj for 7 days in the department of Totonicapan (an aldea is a super small town, rural, usually indigenous). It’s about a 3-4 hour drive to the town where they speak Kiche and Spanish. Other than giving health talks, we’ll be hanging out with the volunteer who lives there, doing whatever she does, and I’m sure asking her a million questions. I’m excited to get up into the mountains into a bit colder climate and talk to someone who’s been at this for a year. My program director happens to have been assigned to my group, so it should be a pretty tame week. Then again the World Cup starts while we’re gone, so let’s not fool ourselves.

I’m not sure who I’ve given my cell phone number to, but in case you’re looking for a way to use up your Skype credit, my number is:

5384-3642 (not sure what the country code is)

Would love to hear your voices and know how you’re doing!

Training - Pt. 1

Atlanta. Guatemala City. Santa Lucia de Milpas Altas. Alotenango.

In 3.5 days.

Now that could sound stressful, but between moving around so much and the warm tortillas at every meal, I’ve managed somehow to not completely lose my mind over the fact that I’ll be living in Guatemala for the next 27 months. And most likely in a town hours away from any “city” and people who speak Spanish. Electricity and water? That’d be super, but lets not get our hopes up.

Now that I’ve sufficiently freaked you out, I’ll tell you about my host family/living situation for my 11 weeks of training: it’s awesome. That about sums it up, but to name the highlights of the Toledo casa: a bed that doesn’t smell in my OWN room with a DOOR, TWO TVs (both with cable), and a view of the volcanoes in the morning. I’m currently living in Alotenango which is about 20 minutes in the bus past Antigua, which I have to pass through on my way to the Peace Corps office in Santa Lucia de Milpas Altas (which is about 45 min. outside of Guatemala City). Alotenango means “between volcanoes.” It resides in the valley between 2 adjacent volcanoes – Fuego and Acatenango, and Volcan Agua. Fuego is the only active one, which erupts and sends tremors out pretty often.

I’ve been placed in the most advanced language group with other Healthy Homes volunteers, so we’ll be doing a lot of Field Based Training over the next 11 weeks - preparing practice presentations like the ones we’ll give in our communities, going on cultural excursions, practicing riding the camionetas (chicken buses), and occasional Spanish classes (which is really just sitting down with our professor and talking about random stuff). We’ll spend a week with a current Healthy Homes volunteer near the end of May/early June, and then a 4 day visit to our future site once we receive our assignments in the 2nd half of June.

Other than that, life is pretty uneventful. Training has been pretty boring so far, but we should get more time in the Health Center because we need less language instruction, so hopefully things will pick up. The Toledo family’s favorite volunteer of all time left a few weeks ago, and evidently, she was a great cook. If anyone has any ideas of simple (American) things I could make for a family that don’t include ingredients that I can only find in the states/would we super expensive here, I’d really appreciate it. Hope everyone is well and I miss you all more than you know.

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I'm officially a blogger. I'll try to keep the witty commentary and pithy diatribes to a minimum, but I'm only human.

So I leave at 6 a.m. on Tuesday, April 27th for Atlanta. I'll be there for about 24 hours before my flight to Guatemala, and then it's only a mere 27 months before my Welcome Home party.

Please, please, PLEASE send me emails about how you're doing. I know my life will be loads more interesting than yours, but I'd still like to hear about it: awsprinkel@gmail.com

Love you all and miss you already