My Bible, Your Bible

It’s a beautiful thing that almost everyone in Guatemala trusts in the same text as their moral and spiritual guide – the Bible. It is true that Catholics have a few more books in their Bible than Protestants do, but by and large the variety of religions (I’m using religions in the way that Guatemalans use it, I really mean something more like denominations or sects, because pretty much everyone belongs to the Christian religion) in Guatemala are all based on the same stories, the same words, the same Jesus. Most houses, stores, offices, etc. in the country have signs with Biblical quotes on them, and the great thing is that merely from the sign one cannot tell what is one’s religion. On buses people often make sales pitches for anything from donations to herbal supplements to protractors. And these sales pitches are always peppered with Biblical quotes, assertions that the salesman is pastor, missionary or somehow else a man of God. And in this sense, they appeal to everyone – when the person quotes the Bible, most everyone will accept it as authoritative. This paints a nice picture of Christian unity in the country which surely, is undermined by the bad blood between Evangelicals and Catholics, but is often underestimated.

You would think in that case that I would feel great to share this same foundation of my worldview with Guatemalans. And I do – it is so freeing, after Brown, to be able to reference the Bible and have people not judge you, but rather take seriously your statement. But at the same time, I have realized that it is very hard to take the whole Bible into account, putting equal weight on all the different parts, when forming your personal theology. This arose from an interesting line of thought that I was having – is Christianity an adventure or is it a way of life that involves the “prudent” choice? In other words, does Christianity involve an active engagement with the world or does it involve a more standoffish relationship with the world? I am going to reveal my personal bias when I say that I think that being a follower of Jesus means that you engage with the world, not that you copy everything that you see going on around you, but that you are light in the midst of normal society. For many other people, and I am not talking particularly about Guatemalans, but rather just many other religious people all around the world, the meaning is more to separate yourself from the world, distance yourself from sinful behaviors and people, and focus more on following specific rules of the religion.

Once, I was having a discussion with a person who was going to the same Foursquare church that I was going to during training and I asked her, “What are your favorite books of the Bible?” I had noticed that of all the passages quoted during sermons at that church, a good 85% were from the epistles, Paul’s and Peter’s letters that occupy the end of the New Testament. 10% came from random books of the Old Testament. And only the occasional passage would come from the gospels. My companion’s favorite books, however, were Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Proverbs. When she told me Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Proverbs I’m pretty sure I furrowed my brow quite strongly. Her answering the question made me realize that those were probably the three books of the Bible I disliked most. But she said that she liked those books because they had practical life lessons. It’s true, pretty much every verse of each of those books is some kind of law or piece of advice. And it is true that that makes it easier to deal with, easier to apply to daily life. (That definitely jives with our Peace Corps Non-Formal Education training: talk about things that people know they need, and give them advice that they can easily apply to their lives.)

I’ve definitely always seen Leviticus as the foundation of Jewish law. But this law, or “Holiness Code,” according to me was to a large extent superseded by the fulfillment of the law in Jesus, and the lack of the need for God to set apart the Jewish people after salvation was extended to all the nations. I haven’t read much of Proverbs because it is often common sense recommendations, and sometimes I think that Jesus’ ministry wasn’t much about following common sense. And my favorite books of the Bible have to be Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I might not have admitted to it before, but now it definitely does seem to me like I privilege the gospels in the formulation of my own theology. In part, I think that has to do with the American emphasis on the salvation act, and in part just my own fascination with the person of Jesus and his incarnation on earth. I am also in keeping with strands of liberation theology thought that trace God’s work in historical events as a way of identifying God’s character. The Biblical narrative, or the history of God as related in the Bible, thus takes on supreme significance. Narratives, between individual stories and the overall historical arc of salvation/liberation/reconciliation described in the Bible, are more generally more important to me than individual verses in Proverbs, for instance.

This brings up a side note about a topic which people have raised for centuries: is there a difference between Jesus’ Christianity (so to speak) and Paul’s Christianity? The gospels and epistles are entirely different literary forms and are addressed to different people, so they do not look the same. The gospel writers and Paul had different interests and favorite topics. They did not contradict each other, but they have different “feels,” perhaps, which give the reader different impressions about the faith. I can definitely empathize with the feeling that reading the gospels leads to conceiving of the faith as an adventure, an exploration and engagement with the world, while sometimes the epistles can give a greater impression of an insular church that is more concerned with its rules.

In saying this, I am not trying to say that the Bible is contradictory but rather that different parts of the Bible can definitely give you different ideas if you build your beliefs around them. I definitely have my favorite parts too; now the question that remains for me is, Is it justified to build a theology around the gospels and Genesis, or should I try to view all parts of the Bible equally in my theological quest? Often when I do take into account seemingly contradictory parts of the Bible, a new understanding emerges. For those of you who spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff, I’d love to hear your thoughts about my wandering thoughts this evening.

My Site Assignment

About two weeks ago, I moved into my home for the next two years (hopefully) in the western highlands of the country.

What’s it like? Well, for one, it’s cold. Probably not exactly what you were thinking Guatemala would be like, right? But I am at over 8,000 feet elevation, which accounts for the cold. The site also has the unfortunate situation that at least during the rainy season, the fog from the coast rolls in around 11:00 am and it gets cold and wet quite fast. The rainy season is ending, but the coldest months are ahead, so we’ll see…it’s time to aguantar (withstand it).

Also, it’s Ladino (that is, mestizo or what you would normally think of as Latino). It was a surprise to me, after my positive experience in a Mayan town in training, to be placed in a Ladino site. I thought that I would do better than some other volunteers in the very conservative society that is much of indigenous Guatemala. But fate, God or my APCD (or maybe they’re all the same) had it planned that I go to a Ladino site. It was a huge culture shock especially, after months of just seeing traditional corte, or ankle-length skirts, to have my Women’s Office director show up to the Peace Corps office in high heels and some pretty darn tight pants. A big, but easy change from the light forearm pat to greet women to the kiss on the cheek. Riding around with teenage boys now entails some catcalling and a lot of hilarious attempts to ask for girls’ numbers. I’ve had to make some adjustments, but generally they’re easier ones to make – Ladino culture is in general more similar to U.S. culture than Mayan culture is, though the differences can definitely be exaggerated – everybody is Guatemalan, everybody eats tortillas and beans, and everybody is really some kind of mix between indigenous blood and European blood. The easiest adjustment of all was the non-adjustment: that is, not having to learn a Mayan language. Some Volunteers are very excited about learning their Kek’chi, Q’iche, or Mam, but I have to say that speaking Spanish is just fine by me. I can’t imagine how lonely I would feel if I couldn’t communicate with the people at all.

I work in the municipalidad (muni for short, it means city hall) of my municipio (municipality, although it might help you more to think of it as a county with lots of separated, smaller communities within it) with three offices at once: the OMP (Municipal Planning Office), OMM (Municipal Women’s Office), and UDEM (Municipal Economic Development Unit). My OMP consists of two young guys: a coordinator (21 yrs. old) and a technician (21 yrs. old). The OMM is actually vacant; the coordinator I mentioned earlier actually stopped working there the day I arrived. And the UDEM is one woman (25 yrs. old). We’re small and inexperienced, but are a fun team together, and our all being about the same age helps quite a bit. I would definitely say that I am getting to be pretty decent friends with all three.

Up until now, work has actually been quite busy. Four things have been happening:

1. Our current city hall is old as crap and pretty dingy. Also, I don’t really have any space to work. So it’s getting demolished and a new one will be built in its place over the next year. This means a lot of packing stuff up and moving it. Hooray for manual labor! One of my most fun and challenging activities so far was buying boxes to pack stuff in for the move. In Guatemala, you don’t go to Kinko’s and order yourself up a whole bunch of boxes. Instead, you go to all the market vendors and ask them if they have any empty boxes of plastic cups, eggs, Corn Flakes, margarine, etc. that they don’t plan on using and you negotiate yourself a price. Then you take your numerous cardboard boxes and haul them around the city until you can get them on the bus back home. In a certain way, it definitely was fun.
2. As I mentioned, city hall is going bye-bye. But there was a controversy as to where the new city hall should be built. Some said that it should be constructed such that the central plaza could be made larger so that it could hold town gatherings. However, the mayor and city council had already submitted the plans and received approval to build the new city hall on the same grounds as the old one. In an interesting meeting, the two sides debated it out and the mayor and his supporters won, although there were some allegations that the mayor had recruited his supporters from the outlying communities to come to the meeting and drown out the opposition. In any case, my opinion as an urban studies major (which translated into Spanish means much more like urban planning or urban designer) was solicited by my OMP coordinator on my very first morning on the job. (Not that I was able to voice it.) Then in the afternoon, I elaborated a ridiculously fast 3-hour urban design of the central park taking into account the assembly’s decision to build the new muni on the site of the old one. Again, the tough part has been getting the authorities to pay attention to it and get behind it.
3. I believe I described before that Guatemala has a very progressive system of community councils that supposedly identify and formulate projects that they consider important. These groups are called COCODES at the community (neighborhood, village) level and COMUDES at the municipal level. Working with each of these groups is the main focus of my OMP work. The COCODES have to be re-elected every two years, and the time has come to reelect them before Christmas. So we’re working hard to hold 17 community assemblies in the five weeks before Christmas, teaching them about the function of the COCODE and holding elections to form them. Eek!
4. Unfortunately, there have been some personal problems between a city councilman and a member of my host family which erupted into a fistfight last week. Some people think that it has to do with the controversy about the new muni building, but it actually wasn't. This has put me in an awkward position in the muni, but I’m trying hard to stay out of the drama and cultivate relationships with the city councilmen.

That’s the update on life. Exciting to be a real Peace Corps Volunteer, starting to cultivate the relationships that count for real!

Swearing-In Speech (in English)

Wendy, thank you for the introduction. Mr. Ambassador Stephen McFarland, Mr. Luis Alberto Montenegro and Adolfo Orozco representatives of INACOP, Martha, Wendy, Roberto, Salvador, Peace Corps staff, thank you very much for your presence.

A special shout out to Peace Corps’ drivers – thank you very much! And I would like to stop myself for a second to thank enormously the Guatemalan families to whom we owe so much, thank you, matiosh chihüe (thank you in Kachiquel), for being with us this morning and sharing the joy of us becoming, as we say, agents of change.

Finally, fellow trainees – whoops, I didn’t mean trainees, I meant volunteers!! Wow, isn’t it awesome that we’ll never again have to use the word trainee, right? Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to stand in front of you this beautiful morning and express a few thoughts to you.

We are here full of hope because finally, we are going to start the work that we came to do. The work that we have been planning for up to five years. And in this moment we now do feel prepared and excited. But at the same time, we are perhaps a little nervous too because of something, we are nervous too because of the so-called “the Peace Corps question” which we ask ourselves. What is this question? The question is, “Am I making change? Will life in my town actually be better when I leave in two years?” We ask ourselves these questions to motivate our work. But these questions can sometimes depress us, or at least make us question our purpose.

I’m telling you the truth when I tell you that in these first few months in the field, we are going to face confusing and depressing feelings, thinking in these questions because unfortunately, change is slow and it is hard and the majority of the time, it doesn’t look like skyscrapers nor highways but it is something invisible to our eyes.

Well then, instead of meditating on this question, I suggest that we turn our attention to something more cheerful, something happier, something more to our liking, like…love.

Speaking of love, did you all know that I am married? Yes, it’s true, I got married here in Guatemala the second weekend I was here in country. Well, as you guys know, I’m really popular with the women here and…

No, just kidding, that’s a total lie. What really happened is that my second weekend here my Guatemalan family and my Spanish teacher decided to stage a wedding – that is, do a fake typical Guatemalan wedding. And in that way Devon and I got married. Through this experience we learned the traditions and culture of our town, Santa Catarina Barahona. Everything was very nice: we dressed up in traditional clothing, there were rings, flowers and of course, pepián (the traditional Guatemalan dish).

And amidst all of this happiness, they taught us many things, one of which what is a sute, here is one (it is a traditional weaving). This weaving is used in many Mayan towns and women use it like this (I put the sute balancing on my head), to protect themselves from the sun. Yes, yes, photo op, take your pictures.

Usually the bride weaves the sute by hand and gives it to her mother-in-law the day of the wedding. She will take about one year to weave it. And if you are an artisan weaver or if you have seen the artisans of this country, you’ll know how incredible are their patience and skill to do this kind of work. The sute, then, is a symbol of the commitment which is the key aspect to marriage.

But why am I talking about marriage when basically all of the volunteers in this group are single? Because I would like us to take each one of the activities we’ve carried out in this swearing in like a commitment, like a way of marrying ourselves, like a wedding. Today we begin our marriage, even if it is a short-term one, only two years, with the people of Guatemala. We will be like a bride who gives her sute to her mother-in-law. Today, we commit ourselves to the people of our towns. And this is the way I suggest we see our service: not like a job in which we measure ourselves only for our achievements and where this so-called Peace Corps question pursues us, but I suggest that we see it like a marriage focused on our commitment to our partner, our town.

For those of us who come from a results-based culture, it’s difficult to assign importance to changes that are not concrete achievements or visible to our eyes. All the same, I am sure that our committing ourselves will lead to many concrete achievements because, well, what does our commitment mean? It means that we stay with the people, that we show solidarity with them and that we try every day in our work with and for them.

Because generally it is easy to distinguish or separate ourselves from the people, to feel superior to them. It could be our particular ways of life or our education, our cultural norms or, really, a ton of things that can make us think like that.

But we did not come to Guatemala to be superior. And really, when you think about it we haven’t been either. We are weaker than we look. For example, just look at our stomachs, or at least mine. With all of my problems, perhaps it does not surprise you that my family calls me “Baby.” Because the truth is that I depend on them.

And in this marriage that we are going to establish with our communities, in this mutually dependent relationship, we are going to realize that we do not have all the answers, that we need to learn as much as teach and that accepting the help of another person is something that is in reality beautiful. While the world strains for upward social mobility, toward superiority, toward fame and wealth, we on the other hand identify ourselves with the poorest, with him whom lacks, with him whom the outside world does not care to know.

And what does it say to the members of the community that we want to spend two years working with them for their benefit? To the community it says this. You are important to us, and we believe that you deserve all the advantages that we have been lucky to have enjoyed. When we place ourselves at the same level as the people, when we integrate, when we take risks together with the people, we show solidarity with them, and being in solidarity, we can truly share life with them, supporting them and learning from them

In Santa Catarina, I know that I have helped to effect change in a few people’s lives; however, very little of that was through our official work, simply it was the result of living together with the people.

In any case, we are going to try as hard as we can to achieve lasting changes in our work, but we should not let ourselves be consumed by this so-called Peace Corps question. We are not going to get depressed over it. It’s better that we focus on living our commitment with the people, in being present and at the same level as them, in being faithful to them in all that we do in Guatemala. We trust that our presence in the country will be useful to bring forth meaningful changes here.

Well now, to end like a good wedding, on behalf of my fellow volunteers I will take the vows of our commitment in front of the community.

Where others are suffering, we will share their suffering.

Where they are happy, we will enjoy their happiness together.

Where there are problems, we will listen to them first.

Where we have the opportunity to feel superior, we will remain humble.

And never, never never never will we allow someone to tell us that being here was not worth it, that we didn’t accomplish anything, because our commitment is strong and our friendships valuable, and more than that, we know that change is not measured in quetzals or nor in dollars but in mothers and fathers and children and grandparents. That is how we will be. May God bless them, and may he bless us too. Thank you very much.

Discurso de la Juramentacion (Swearing-In Speech)

Yesterday I gave a speech to the Volunteers, Peace Corps staff, Ambassador and training host families during our "swearing-in" ceremony, when we trainees officially became Peace Corps Volunteers. Not wanting to brag too much, but the speech was very well received :) Here is the full text, in Spanish. I'll be working on an English translation in the next week or so.

Martha muchas gracias por la presentación.

Señor embajador Stephen McFarland, señores Luis Alberto Montenegro y Adolfo Orozco representantes de INACOP, Martha, Wendy, Roberto, Salvador, personal de Cuerpo de Paz muchas gracias por su presencia.

Sin embargo, quisiera detenerme un momento, para agradecer enormemente a las familias guatemaltecas a quienes les debemos muchísimo, matiosh chihüé, por estar con nosotros esta mañana y compartir la felicidad de convertirnos en agentes promotores del cambio.

Finalmente, compañeros entrenantes – ¡ah! perdón, voluntarios ¡qué bueno que nunca más tengamos que usar esa palabra! ¿Verdad?

Muchísimas gracias, por darme la oportunidad de estar frente a ustedes, esta linda mañana y, dirigirles unas palabras.

Estamos aquí, llenos de esperanza, porque finalmente, vamos a empezar el trabajo que vinimos a hacer. El trabajo que planificamos desde hace, quizá, cinco años.

Ahorita, estamos preparados y con mucho ánimo; pero también, tal vez estemos un poco nerviosos por la “dichosa pregunta del Cuerpo de Paz” the Peace Corps question” y, que nosotros mismos, nos hacemos.

La pregunta es: “¿Estoy logrando el cambio? ¿Realmente, será mejor la vida de mi pueblo después de que yo me vaya, en 2 años?”

Nos hacemos estas preguntas para animarnos a trabajar más duro. Pero también, ellas nos pueden desesperar o, por lo menos, cuestionar nuestro propósito. En verdad les digo que en los primeros meses de trabajo, vamos a enfrentar sentimientos entrecruzados, sentimientos así, porque lamentablemente, el cambio es lento y duro y, la mayoría de las veces, no tiene la forma de edificios ni de carreteras, sino que es algo invisible, ante nuestros ojos.

Entonces, en lugar de pensar en esta pregunta, sugiero que nos fijemos en algo de mayor regocijo, de mayor gusto, de mayor alegría, el amor.

Hablando del amor, ¿sabían ustedes que yo estoy casado? Sí, claro, me casé aquí en Guatemala, el segundo fin de semana de estancia en país. Lo que pasa es que yo soy muy popular entre las mujeres de acá. jaja

No. No es verdad. Es una total mentira, lo que pasó, fue que el segundo fin de semana, mi familia guatemalteca y mi maestra de español, decidieron poner en escena un casamiento – es decir, realizar una dramatización de un casamiento guatemalteco. Así, Devon y yo nos casamos. A través de esta experiencia aprendimos las tradiciones y la cultura de nuestro pueblo, Santa Catarina Barahona. Todo fue muy bonito – nosotros nos vestimos con trajes típicos, había anillos, flores y, por supuesto, el pepián.

Y, dentro de toda esa alegría, nos enseñaron qué es un sute, aquí tengo uno. Este tejido es usado en muchos pueblos mayas y la mujer lo usa así, para protegerse. Generalmente, la novia lo hace a mano, y se lo entrega a su suegra el día de la boda. De echo, la novia se tarda, más o menos un año, en elaborarlo. Si ustedes son artesanos o han visto a las artesanas de este país, sabrán cuán grandes son su paciencia y su habilidad para hacer este trabajo.

El sute, entonces, es un símbolo de compromiso (in English, the commitment) que es el aspecto clave de un matrimonio.

Pero, ¿por qué estoy hablando del matrimonio cuando básicamente todos los entrenantes del grupo somos solteros? Bueno, porque quisiera que cada una de las actividades que hemos realizado en esta juramentación, sean tomadas como un compromiso, como una manera de casarse., como un casamiento.

Hoy, iniciamos nuestro matrimonio, aunque sea de corto plazo, solo dos años, con la gente de Guatemala.

Seremos como una novia que entrega el sute a su suegra. Hoy, nosotros nos comprometemos con la gente de nuestro pueblo.

Esta es la manera como sugiero que veamos nuestro servicio – no como un trabajo en el que nos medimos por nuestros logros y donde la pregunta del Cuerpo de Paz nos persigue, sino como un matrimonio; enfocado en nuestro compromiso con nuestra pareja, nuestro pueblo.

Resulta difícil admitir, para quienes provenimos de una cultura basada en resultados, cambios que no sean hechos concretos, visibles ante nuestros ojos. No obstante, estoy seguro que nuestro compromiso también dará muchos logros concretos, porque, ¿qué significa nuestro compromiso? Significa que nosotros permanezcamos con la gente, que nos pongamos al mismo nivel de ellos y que nos esforcemos cada día en el trabajo con y para ellos.

Generalmente, resulta fácil distinguirnos, separarnos de la gente, sentirnos superiores. Pueden ser nuestra idiosincrasia o nuestra educación, nuestras normas culturales o, un montón de cosas que nos llevan a pensar así.

Pero, a Guatemala, no venimos para ser los superiores. Y, realmente, tampoco lo hemos sido.

Somos más débiles, de lo que aparentamos. Por ejemplo: Solo miren nuestros estómagos o por lo menos el mío. Por ello, tal vez no les sorprenda que mi familia me diga nene. Pero, la verdad es que dependo de ellos.

Y, en este matrimonio que vamos a establecer con nuestras comunidades, en esta relación de dependencia mutua, nos vamos a dar cuenta de que no tenemos todas las respuestas, de que necesitamos aprender, tanto como enseñar y, que aceptar la ayuda de otra persona, es algo realmente, hermoso.

Mientras el mundo busca la movilidad social hacia arriba, hacia la superioridad, hacia la fama y la riqueza, nosotros vamos a identificarnos con el más pobre, con el que carece, con el desconocido del mundo externo.

Y, ¿qué les dice a los miembros de la comunidad el hecho de que nosotros queramos pasar dos años trabajando con ellos para su beneficio?

A la gente de la comunidad le dice que, ellos nos importan muchísimo y, que nosotros creemos que se merecen todas las ventajas, que por suerte, nosotros hemos disfrutado.

Pero, cuando nos colocamos al mismo nivel de la gente, cuando nos integramos, cuando nos arriesgamos junto con ellos, nos solidarizamos y, siendo solidarios, podemos compartir verdaderamente la vida con la gente, apoyándonos y aprendiendo de ellos.

En Santa Catarina, sé que los cambios que he ayudado a efectuar cambios en la vida de algunas personas; sin embargo, nada de eso es trabajo oficial, simplemente es el resultado de la convivencia con la gente.

Sin embargo, vamos a esforzarnos hasta el máximo para lograr cambio en nuestros trabajos, pero no debemos dejarnos consumir por la “dichosa pregunta de Cuerpo de Paz”. No vamos a desesperarnos por ella. Es mejor que nos enfoquemos a vivir nuestro compromiso con la gente, en estar presentes y al mismo nivel que ellos; en ser fieles a ellos y, en todo lo que hagamos en Guatemala. Confiemos en que nuestra presencia en el país, será útil para propiciar cambios profundos.

Ahora bien, para terminar como un buen matrimonio, en nombre de mis compañeros voy a hacer los votos de nuestro compromiso frente a la comunidad.

Donde otros tengan dolor, lo compartiremos con ellos.

Donde tengan alegría, la disfrutaremos juntos.

Donde haya problemas, los escucharemos primero.

Donde haya oportunidad de sentirnos superiores, permaneceremos humildes.

Y nunca, nunca, nunca, nunca, dejaremos que alguien nos diga que no valió la pena estar aquí, que no logramos nada, porque nuestro compromiso es fuerte y nuestras amistades invaluables; además, sabemos que el cambio no se mide en quetzales ni en dólares, sino en mamás y papás, niños y abuelos. Asi seremos. Que Dios los bendiga a todos ellos, y a todos nosotros también.
Muchas gracias.

Small Note

I apologize to those of you who attempted to access the blog in the last two days. I had to briefly close off public access preemptively. The blog is now back up and running, but there will be some posts which will be accessible with a password only. I will probably put these on another blog linked to this site. If you would like to have access, please e-mail me at PhilipBurns77@gmail.com.

I've been very, very busy in the last few weeks, but next month there will certainly be posts as my schedule slows down, I move to my new site in the west of the country, and I have a bit of time to reflect on all that has happened during Pre-Service Training. Until the next post, que Dios te bendiga.

Field-Based Training

This past week we Municipal Development Trainees visited northwest Guatemala for our Field-Based Training. This was an opportunity for us to go out and see current Municipal Development Volunteers to find out what kinds of things they are doing, what successes and failures they’ve had, and what their lives are like. It was also a big opportunity for all of us Trainees and our Associate Peace Corps Director (APCD) to get to know each other better. Our APCD is the one who places us in our various sites, so it’s important to get to know him so that he’ll be able to place us in a place that’s comfortable for us with coworkers that we can get along with and a job that matches our skills.

We visited five Volunteers’ sites and passed through another one. Though they’re located in the same part of the country, they are all very different. They ranged from very hot to pretty cold, almost exclusively Ladino to a famous Mayan town, Todos Santos Cuchumatanes, which is the only town in the country where men still wear traditional dress. By the way, their traditional shirt and pants are awesome – I can see why they wear it there. If I lived there, I would definitely try to wear them too. Some of the sites were quite developed, communities with lots of remittance money or close to cities that generate jobs, and one was 5 hours from the nearest city, accessible only by very windy dirt roads, where you couldn’t buy purified water. Generally, though, living conditions were pretty nice. One volunteer even had an apartment that would be considered modern and good in America. The term “Posh Corps” is sometimes applied to places like Eastern Europe, where Volunteers live pretty well. The volunteers’ living arrangements weren’t Posh Corps (except for that one, maybe) but they were a far cry from the living in a hut without any kind of water or electricity that the name Peace Corps conjures. We Muni volunteers have it easier than others, too. We work in municipal offices, so we have to live in the municipal cabeceras, as they are called. Guatemalan municipalities are really more like American counties than cities (at least if you are from the West Coast, in New England there exist “towns” that are more like these municipalities) in that they cover large swaths of land and there are a number of distinct communities within them. Generally there is one large town, the cabecera, which is the municipal seat, and a bunch of aldeas, or villages up to three hours away from the cabecera. Volunteers in other programs, especially agricultural ones, often work and live in aldeas, which are generally poorer and more indigenous than the cabeceras. They also have many fewer amenities, generally.

Some of the more interesting projects we’ve heard about: starting a radio station and/or hosting a municipal radio show, building a library or getting it stocked with books, painting maps of the world/country/department/municipality on blank walls, improving municipal grant-writing, a million different types of trainings and guidance for women’s groups and community development councils, budgeting issues, conducting a census, doing serious GIS analysis in order to inform municipal decision-making and strengthen their project proposals.

The guessing game about who goes to what site has begun in earnest. Our APCD was always dropping hints and asking questions about what kinds of things we liked/didn’t like: hot/cold, Ladino/Maya, first volunteer in a site/second/third, women’s office/planning office, close to Antigua/close to a city/isolated, community participation work/planning office type work, etc. All of these questions and hints which were given out to some trainees pretty much put us into a frenzy toward the end of the week. Unfortunately, we won’t know anything more until October 8th, when they announce the sites where we’ll be placed.

This week we got to do a lot of the bonding which we would’ve done had we had the old setup of training – everybody lives in the capital city and meets up every day for class. That was nice. It was especially nice for me to spend more time with men, since I’m in a training site with only women and often times I spend more time with women anyway. I think we’ll have to wait to see where we are all placed until I find out who my closest friends are going to be, but now I have a much better base with a lot of the training class (and some of the current volunteers). Our hang out time was very American, going out to eat tacos, Domino’s, fried chicken, cake, etc. We even got to have some beers which is a luxury seldom afforded here, and got to dance in a bar once. Hooray for getting to have a little American bubble.

Training Work Update

I feel like I should provide an update as well about my work as a Municipal Development Trainee 1 ½ months in to Peace Corps training. Training is hectic and busy, juggling a bunch of different calendars all at once. It will be quite a shock to get out to my site and not know what to do with myself in November. At least it’s still nowhere near as busy as college for me; if I didn’t have a 6- and 10-year-old to play with two or three hours a day, I would actually have a very nice schedule.

The Municipal Development Trainees meet up with the Food Security and Agriculture Marketing Trainees once a week to receive cultural, medical, security and historical training about Guatemala. Then us Municipal Development Trainees have an additional meeting or two per week to talk about our technical topics. What is our technical? Well, it consists of a couple of different things. Our main objective as Volunteers will be to strengthen municipal planning and women’s offices as institutions, and to work with citizens’ groups, strengthening them as well and encouraging healthy relationships between the groups and the offices. So we are talking a lot about organizational development and strategic planning. It isn’t learning water management in semitropical forests, but it is actually something which is probably going to help me a lot in whatever job I have in the future. With our offices and citizens’ groups, we will be primarily training them and guiding them in processes of establishing themselves, establishing strategic direction and plans, and project development, fundraising and management. I know it doesn’t exactly sound like what you think of as Peace Corps, but I actually am very excited to be learning about it and hopefully in the future I’ll be excited to do it.

All of the trainees are broken up into groups of four, approximately, based on their Spanish level. Each group lives in a separate town. This model of training is only used in some Peace Corps countries and is called Community Based Training. The idea is to not establish an American bubble during training, but get you more into the local culture in order to ease your transition into your site. I’m in the high Spanish level, so we are expected to accomplish something substantial during our training months. I’ve been working with one other trainee in our planning office on various things, but the most exciting is a citizen proposal to establish an ecological park in some mountains just outside the town. It’s supposed to protect mostly virgin forest (although some areas are farming, orchards, etc. in order to teach people about agriculture), Mayan culture in the area, which is tied to the land, and draw tourists to pay the bills. It’s a great idea, but my companion and I have some serious doubts about whether it is financially feasible. We’ve scaled the mountain in the park (which, trust me, was not at all easy. We went up in a big group, and the architects and the Americans struggled mightily, while the farmers sped up and down the steep, tiny paths like it was nothing.) and done various types of analyses of the project. It’s not either of our specialties, however, and we do wonder some of the time whether we are qualified to be the trainers in this case. In any case, it’s a very interesting project and we will try to help by training them how to develop their own citizen organization and improve their project proposal for grant writing.

As you read this I’ll be in the western highlands with the Municipal Development Trainees visiting Volunteers in the field. We’re hoping to learn directly from them and also get an idea of what our lives are going to be like in 1 ½ months when we’re out by ourselves in our sites. Stay tuned for an update on that experience.

Gossip as a Means of Social Control

As I mentioned in a previous post, news travels fast in my training town. And I use the word ‘news’ broadly; anything from the doings of the mayor to the whereabouts of any member of the community to whose husband was seen with another woman is usually known within a matter of days, if not hours. A better term for this ‘news’ might be gossip. What is the difference between news and gossip anyway? Is it about public vs. private information? In this culture, like a lot of others around the world, I think, privacy is not a very important social value like it is in the U.S. Here they are pretty conscious about saving face and people don’t usually just blab out their life problems to acquaintances. At the same time, however, in order to get along with and work with another person, you have to know who they are in a holistic sense. There is no such thing as “just a work relationship.” You can’t be associated with someone’s public persona while distancing oneself privately. (At least that’s what I think now, but we’ll see.) Maybe the difference between news and gossip is whether it’s flattering or unflattering information. Gossip would be associated with the unflattering stuff.

In the sense that gossip is people talking about other people’s dirty laundry, it actually plays an important role in encouraging people to follow the right path in life here. The “right” path, of course, assumes that you’re making a pretty big value judgments about the way that people live. It’s a big change coming from Brown culture, where one had the idea more that people’s different behaviors were just different choices, different paths. Or at least the idea that people had differing worldviews which had them live in different ways. Here, though, a lot of the values behind gossiping about another person have wide consensus. And it makes sense – it could be that I’m around children more now than I have been in a long time, but so many of the things I find myself talking about or hearing about in others seem like relatively clear-cut choices between good and bad: kids going to elementary school, staying faithful to your spouse, not getting pregnant as an unwed teenager. Surely there are still tough moral dilemmas and hot-button moral issues: drinking and migration to the United States (when you have dependents) are among the biggest. But it is interesting to be in a more homogeneous culture where people are going to be duly warned when they start going down a path deemed bad by the majority of the town. This can work very well, I think. I spent a little time earlier in my stay talking to people whom the community deemed unfit for me. Other people noticed and through the grapevine, the word came to me that I should not be spending any more time with said people. I felt a little violated to have my casual conversations scrutinized so much; it seriously violated my notions of privacy and personal freedom. But actually it was very helpful – those people actually wouldn’t have been good people to spend more time with – and the gossip stopped any further involvement which might have affected my reputation and ability to work in town. It was a very effective means of social control on me. I don’t use that term in any kind of negative way. People who studied sociology will know that all societies have some kind of social control, and a healthy amount of social control is necessary to any group. I also don’t find it so bad when people talk about more serious and more cut-and-dry issues than mine such as the three I mentioned earlier. And with regard to those topics, it sometimes definitely seems that gossip is a weapon for good in the fight against wrong ways of living in town.

A side note to that: I’ve had a grand total of three beers in Guatemala and no other alcohol. Drinking is generally seen as OK by Catholics and as a sin by Evangelicals, so I’ve had to steer clear in order to keep my name clean and keep myself in the culture, especially since I’ve been going to an Evangelical church. On the one occasion when I had to drink a beer in town, I went as far as humanly possible away from my house to buy it in hopes of diffusing the talk. So to you friends who said that I wouldn’t ever have to give up drinking here, I think I really may be moving toward having to do it and not drink at all once I’m at my real site.

The third distinction between news and gossip, however, is its veracity. And that’s the problem with gossip as a means of social control; you never know if it’s accurate or not and if you’re blaming an innocent person. People can be very self-serving beneath a thin veneer, and it’s probable that some rumors are made up by those with something to gain from them. But nevertheless they often catch on and become common knowledge in town. And then it becomes a matter of whose word do you trust? Many of your friends and neighbors or the subject of the rumor, be it your husband, child, etc.? Tough distinction. There are no courts of law to settle such disputes. Few paternity tests to determine who fathered a child. So it can certainly be very unjust.

Also, gossip is not very forgiving, and for this it has earned the ire of (at least) the evangelical church. A central tenet of Christianity is that God “forgets” or “buries” our prior sins when we come to God, and likewise we should forget the sins and shortcomings of those around us. But the point of gossip is often to scandalize and isolate bad people to protect the good ones. Once someone is scandalized, it is hard to become clean. And this is certainly an anti-Christian aspect of Guatemalan culture. Jesus sought to bring out the best in people, sometimes through miracles, sometimes affirmation, sometimes harsh criticism, but many of his works were reserved for people who were social outcasts and victims of others talking bad about them. I recently read a biography of Gandhi, and the characteristic of his which struck me most was how much he always assumed the best about people. As someone striving to live the example of those two figures, it brings up an interesting dilemma. Affirming the down and out in rural Guatemalan communities would be a serious manifestation of the Gospel in today’s world, yet my ability to contribute to Guatemalan communities in general (a.k.a. the down-and-out globally speaking) depends on my being respected by them and associated with the right people.

The social pressure to “conform” (I guess that’s how we’d say it in America) makes it so that people who want to live alternative lifestyles usually geographically resituate as well. The two big magnets are Guate, the capital, and the United States. Some people want to move north just as much for the adventure and the freedom to explore life in a less restrained fashion than for the money. At some point, I’m going to write an entry all about the U.S. here. Our country is ever-present in the minds of people here in Guatemala.

Having people know about all your business is kind of fun, though, too, at least when you’re staying within the boundaries of the community. The mayor, for instance, knew that my fellow trainees and I were going on a hike in the local mountains, so he sent a guide from City Hall with us and then arranged to have a segment of a cable TV show taped in the mountains while we were there. This led to my being interviewed on TV for about five to ten minutes in muddy clothes. Second, we just finished the national holidays, which were great fun. The highlight of the holidays, at least in this town, is the election and crowning of the town queen. For those from Pasadena, it’s pretty similar to being crowned Rose Queen. There’s a pretty serious beauty pageant element, but the cultural element is all about promoting Mayan traditions and culture. Each of the candidates gave a speech in Spanish and Ka’chiquel (the area’s native language) about Mayan traditions, prophecies (2012!), the need to preserve the Mayan languages, the oppression of the indigenous woman, etc. I came away very impressed with the girls, especially given that they were on showcase in front of thousands of people in a culture where women rarely take leadership roles or speak up in any kind of mixed group setting. Anyway, the night of the coronation a well-known ranchera band came to play after the ceremony. For the first few songs, the queen and her court, for lack of a better term, dance with local dignitaries. I was invited to be one of those dignitaries and had a great time dancing on stage in front of thousands of people and on TV! I had never danced to ranchera music before, so I have no idea how I looked, but I feel pretty comfortable with it. Then I got invited to the mayor’s VIP party following the dances. It was very strange, but at least it kept stroking my ego :/

Prayer Requests: September 5, 2009

Thank you for being a part of my support community in the United States and Chile (shout out to Alexis, Pato and María!) I am far away from home, but I know that I am not alone. God is with me, and I need you with me as well. From now until October 2011, there are going to be a lot of ups and downs. Right now I’m feeling pretty good about everything, but there has already been a down moment (when I got sick) and there are certain to be more, especially when I lose the support group of other Americans at the end of October. So I would really appreciate it if you could support me with your comments, letters and e-mails. I don’t want to lose touch with the life I was/will be blessed to have in the U.S., and it’s important to me to know what’s going on in your lives. My contact info should be visible on this blog.

A big way to support me is to pray for me. I’m going to list prayer requests on this page quite frequently, and I would love it if you did support me in this way. I’m glad to return the favor, or to pray for you even if you don’t pray for me J. For the first time in my life, I’m having some measure of success with daily devotionals and am praying a little bit every day, and so I can remember you in that.

My prayer requests:
1. Thanking God for leading me here and for the standing in the town which I enjoy
2. That I resist temptations of any kind
3. For meaningful connections with other PCT’s/PCV’s
4. To have the strength and patience to be outgoing and social every day
5. For the two girls and the elderly man I mentioned in the post “Wrestling with my Limits”
6. Also, remember my brothers and sisters in Christ at Brown as they start a new school year

Thank you very much!

Age and Gender: First of Many Reflections

My first day in my training site I found myself singing that blink 182 song “What’s My Age Again?” I already know that I’m young. Out of 33 Peace Corps Trainees in my group, I’m the second youngest (I’ll turn 23 later this month.) Most of my fellow trainees have Master’s degrees. Even though that makes me feel young, it’s nothing compared to living in my training site. I first met my host family, including my six- and nine-year-old host brothers and was struck by how young my host mother looked. I then found out that she is 25, only quite marginally older than me. But age is just a number. How old, how mature is she really? At age 7 she left her family to work and at age 14 she got married. At age 25, she’s got two school-aged children and helps to run a bakery and shop with her husband. It’s interesting, because she often has a childish personality and loves to joke around, but she at the same time handles a ton of work and responsibility between the family business and the household. And then you ask her what she has been through, and it is impressive. It’s no wonder that they call me a nene, or baby/kid. They automatically assumed that my peer would be the 14-year-old girl who works in the bakery, not the mother or her 26-year-old husband, even though my age is much closer to them than to her. When I referred to my popularity with the women in town two weeks ago, those women were all teenagers. It seems very weird to Americans. But on the other hand, I only know one woman my age in town who is still single, and she has an 8-year-old son. So how old am I, really, in this town? Perhaps this perception that I am young (being half Asian, I do probably look younger than my years too) helps fuel many people’s perceptions that I am studying Spanish or something else in Guatemala. Of course, I am learning, but I’m doing that by working in the field of international development. If I was married, I might be taken more seriously. But I have to be thankful – my 28- and 29-year-old female companions have it a lot worse than me. And among well-educated people, there seems to be less of this attitude. I’ve made good friends with the two architects in my office, who at 28 and 32, are married (to each other) but have no children. People I’ve met in City Hall or in other places related to work haven’t had this confusion.

Gender is a big topic in Peace Corps Guatemala. Across the country, men are without a doubt those who have the power. However, the relationship between men and women is different in Ladino and Maya communities. In Ladino (what you would probably normally think of Latino) communities, men are more stereotypically machista (macho): they carry around guns, they are strong and dress like cowboys, they defend their women and try to keep them away from the grime of life (which includes sometimes the “dirty girls” who are their mistresses), and they also demand that their women run the house. In Maya communities, men are not as brash and aggressive (possibly not as unfaithful?), but they do seem to have a quiet superiority over their wives. They make decisions. Women do all the housework, period. Including when the men make a mess, it’s going to be the woman who cleans it up. Of course, men are supposed to support the family financially, but since so many people are self-employed, women and children usually help out with that too. In Ladino communities, it seems like a lot of women despite the machismo make it through school and into professional jobs, but among the Maya the majority of women are illiterate. I live in a Maya community, and right now I’m the only male Municipal Development trainee here. All of us have a good relationship with the mayor, but I’ve got it by far the best. He always remembers my name, and got me an interview on cable TV. This is really nice for me, of course, but is very frustrating for my colleagues.

It’s largely about power, but it’s also about ideas about gender roles. Lots of women say that they don’t want the “liberation” of American or European women. And that’s their prerogative. Under the Peace Corps methodology, we should to some extent accept that and work with it. However, if there is any value that Peace Corps is going to paternalistically push on Guatemalans, women’s rights seems to be the one (so far). As you might expect, I’m less worked up about it than most of the women. But still, I’m starting to ask how I can promote women’s rights here. As for now, I’m starting small. Yesterday in the central plaza, I was playing freeze tag with my host brothers and some other boys from the town. We had finished and were tired, but some girls sitting on a bench asked if they could play too. I told the boys that we’d play another game of tag with the girls. They said one after another, “If they’re playing, I’m not playing.” But then I said that I was going to play with the girls regardless of them, and they then said one by one, “I’m with Felipe (me).” So we all played together, and after a little bit of coaching to each side, they were playing just like it was normal. Today we played soccer with my gringa companions and another girl from the town, and there was almost no resistance from the boys. We actually played the boys against the girls and me, and the 10-year-old girl from the community led us to a big victory. Maybe it’s little moments like that which are the measure of change. I hope so.

Wrestling with my Limits

As I mentioned in a previous post, my goals as a Peace Corps Trainee/Volunteer are primarily personal. I have acknowledged before many of you my doubts about being able to bring about positive change in my host community. Many of my fellow Trainees came in with the same thoughts. But of course, the training process is primarily designed to make you a more effective “development professional,” and we do a lot of thinking about how to maximize (respectful and wanted) impact on our communities. We go to visit current Volunteers, and it is impossible not to evaluate them based on their effectiveness in accomplishing things in their municipalities. This part of the equation is scary, because it is hard to imagine exactly what I will be doing, and this week I began to come face to face with some of my limits in being able to help.

First, as part of the last week of Spanish class, my training group of four and our teacher visited a nursing home. Guatemalans are much less individualistic than Americans, and children generally consider it their duty to care for their elderly parents regardless of the cost and effort involved. So the elderly who are in nursing homes come often from broken family situations and enter with few economic resources. They do not pay to be in nursing homes; the homes have to raise funds from outside. They have a lot of trouble doing so, especially of late. The home that we visited had recently cut one of their two locations and had reduced food rations. It was a pretty depressing place. One man, in particular, shook me. He had a medical condition which was causing him to shake somewhat violently all day long. When I met him, he told me that God was punishing him for his sins with this illness. He said that he had committed a lot of sins in his life and this was what he was getting for them. I tried to argue with him that God doesn’t work that way, but I think eventually I had to concede that he had a point. Somebody always pays for our misdeeds; it’s not always us, but sometimes it is. Who knows – maybe his lifestyle had led him to become weak and susceptible to diseases. He continued then by saying that he didn’t think God forgave sins or at least some of them were unforgivable. I argued with him pretty strongly on this one, with some success, but he then said that he wanted Jesus to come down and heal him and started cursing the fact that this wasn’t happening. Even though we know that those types of healings are quite rare, it is still a bit jarring to hear that frustration coming out of the mouth of someone. Certainly, his negative attitude wasn’t helping him recover. But then he added another twist to the story. He more or less said that I could be his Jesus, his healer if only I would buy him some medicine. The nursing home had previously provided him with medicine to stop his shaking, but since the recession began had stopped providing it to him. And so I was faced with a dilemma of whether to buy him medicine. Our Spanish teacher had said when we entered the nursing home that we were not there to provide financial assistance, but only moral support. And, though it didn’t cross my mind at the time, I actually couldn’t have bought him prescription medicine myself. (But this did not enter my decision.) I was well tempted to give the medicine: a) so that he would know that God does still heal people, just sometimes through the actions of other people, b) to cure him, c) to change his whole life point of view, and d) because my grandmother in the U.S. takes this medicine every day, and I would gladly spend for her to stay on it. I wanted him to stop focusing on the drugs, but how fair was that? I probably wouldn’t have asked the same of my grandmother. He was asking for a medicine which cost a lot (Q.250). But by U.S. standards, it was very little ($30). Am I holding Guatemalans to a higher standard? Guatemalans in general are held to a higher standard because any slip-up or bad luck can ruin your life here. There is an incredible safety net in the developed world which turns the average person into a success, whereas in the developing world it seems like only the exceptional succeed and the average fail. I wrote about this in my Chile blog, and I’m sure I’ll write more about this later. But back to the decision to give or not give money, I first thought that I was limited by the policies in place – we were not at the nursing home to provide cash assistance. Secondly, I wondered if I respond financially to this person, could I be able to respond to everyone? Obviously not. It pained me very much to leave him with an empty-feeling “I hope that God blesses you,” when giving might have meant so much to him. But on the other hand I felt confronted by my own limits in the situation.

Second, I had come to know quite well two teenage girls in the town. They were the only friends I had who were anywhere close to my age. One day, I talked to one of them in the street, and unfortunately this caused a minor scandal. It seems that the girls had a quite troubled past and present, and it was not good to be seen with one of them. I had to stop talking to them, though it pained me to do so. The same reasons for which they were unfit to be seen with were the same reasons for which they needed help and a friend. Here, the first people I actually could have helped in Peace Corps and social and interpersonal limits stopped me from trying. Out of respect for them, I cannot divulge more information publicly on this blog, but if you would like to pray for them, please e-mail me. Prayer is the only mechanism of help I have left with them.
Out of all this, I am very glad that “God is breaking my heart for the poor” in Christian lingo, or rather I am very glad that I am feeling something when people need help. I’m not really the kind of person who weeps upon the sight of a child left alone or upon hearing that some people live in garbage dumps. I’ve always been very intellectually convinced of the necessity for social justice, but now it’s coming to the heart too. It’s still about statistics, but slowly it’s becoming about María and Héctor and Guadalupe. At this point, even as I’m getting very used to my house and thinking of it less as “Third World and difficult” and more as “middle-class and comfortable,” I don’t think that I’ll have a hard time identifying needs. Rather, the question will be, “Where am I not constrained? Where can I actually make a difference?” And that’s going to be a really difficult question to answer. That’s why they say that “Peace Corps is the hardest job you’ll ever love.”

The Adventures of Don Juan Casanova Burns

Well, that last post was a little sad and depressing so I am going to write now about some of the happier aspects of my first week in Guatemala and at the training site. Such as, I am the hottest thing to come through this town in some time.

OK, I’m going to back up and tell you a little bit about the town and its culture. For security reasons, I can’t tell you exactly what it is, but it is a town of about 5,000 to 10,000 mostly Mayan/indigenous people. This is a small town. There are, as far as I know, only two restaurants in the whole place. Still, it feels urban because of its relatively narrow streets and robust street life and pedestrian activity. Also, there have to be easily 100 corner stores (of which our house is one). Combine the small size with the highly-used social spaces of the plaza, street, corner stores, tortilla makers and the bus and this means that everybody knows everything about everybody and gossip spreads ridiculously fast. One morning, I decided to help out selling bread in the corner store before I went to class. About 15 minutes after I started, a classmate came to the store on her way to class. She said, “Oh, I heard you were working this morning so I decided to stop by.” Apparently, news had already spread that the gringo was selling bread and had reached her house, which is about 5 minutes away, before she left. As I said, news travels fast in this town and your business is everybody’s business.

Guatemala is a conservative country, rural and indigenous areas even more so. This manifests itself in a lot of ways with respect to gender relations. Generally, single men and women don’t just go walking around town in pairs. Combine this with what I said earlier about gossip, and what that practically means is this: if you walk around town with a girl, within a day everybody in town will think that you and said girl are novios (boyfriend and girlfriend) and treat it as accepted fact. Having a novia when you’re as old as I am (22) is a serious thing, too; there aren’t so many men and there certainly aren’t many women my age who are not married yet. There is an important caveat, I think, and that is that if I walk with a gringa classmate, it should be OK because everybody knows that gringos do weird things. But do that with a girl from the town, and I think we would have an item on our hands.

So you can imagine the dilemma that I felt when I got repeatedly asked out by girls to pasear, or go for a walk. It might be fun to get to know them. But having a novia after a week in town isn’t necessarily the best plan. Especially for a town where I will only live until the end of October. And if it doesn’t go anywhere, everyone will know. And will that hinder my ability to work in town and integrate into the culture? Probably there is some culturally appropriate way to proceed, but I have no idea what that is. And in any case, it seems like the cultural boundaries are being stretched anyway – it isn’t common for a girl to straight-up ask a man out. It’s a complicated situation.

There is also the question of, “How much can I really have in common with a person with only a sixth-grade education?” Women’s education levels vary a lot, but that seems to be about the level that a lot of women I meet have (or less). Over my time in Peace Corps, I certainly hope to be surprised with more positive responses to that question, but for now it remains open. We all know how enamored I am of the world of ideas and intellectualism.

These are all dilemmas I’m going to have to sort out pretty soon, but as for now it’s pretty cool to be the town heartthrob and celebrity. Also, it’s pretty cool that by doing something as simple as selling bread, I can meet lots of people and get to know the community in a fun way. There’s no dilemma there; I’m going to keep doing that for some time.

Darn! Living in a Third World Country is Hard

I’ve been here in Guatemala for nine days now, but it feels like a few months in some ways. There’s something about changing your setting so drastically that makes the experiences you had just a few days or weeks ago seem very distant.

Not that I haven’t tried to recreate those experiences from Los Angeles or Las Vegas, though. It might seem like a no-brainer to you, but I’ve been surprised at how hard it has been to live here without the physical comforts of the U.S. I thought that I would be much more challenged emotionally than physically (although I am still only about 1% into my time here, so how can I really say anything?). To be sure, one of the values I am working on cultivating is independence from material and physical pleasures. I’m just learning that that’s going to be hard.
When we first arrived in Guatemala, we stayed for a couple days with introductory families near the Peace Corps office. I stayed with a pretty rich one, as far as Guatemala goes. That wasn’t too hard. But then I moved to the training town where I’ll be living until the end of October. I’m by no stretch of the imagination living with a poor family (again by Guatemalan standards, remember that international agencies say that 80% of the country lives in poverty and 66% in extreme poverty). The family owns a bakery and corner store, both of which are part of the house. They employ eight people in this work. I have electricity and running water (even a shower!). I have the luxury of living in a house with a concrete roof. Most houses have corrugated tin roofs, which can make quite a symphony in rain. Per Peace Corps regulations, I’ve been given my own room. But even this plush living situation did me in.

I’ve always prided myself on being able to eat anything. My motto has always been, “I’m going to eat it, and then you can tell me what was in it.” Well, on Saturday night, my first night in the town, my host family gave me an innocent-looking tamale which they had received as a gift from another family. I ate it and then had a great discussion with my host mother and one of the girls that works in the story until late at night. (Note: this post is about to get a little gross. I apologize in advance, but this is the stuff of Peace Corps.) Everything seemed great until about 3:30 am, when I awoke with a bad case of diarrhea. I tried to go back to sleep, but I would be consistently woken by ever-worsening episodes of the aforementioned condition. At about 4:55 came the worst episode of all, punctuated by a couple of bad vomits. In the middle of this episode, promptly at 5:00, some very loud music started playing right outside. A man was playing keyboard, singing praise songs and speaking voiceovers proclaiming our great privilege to be able to worship God. He also proclaimed God’s deliverance of people from their jails, from the things that bind them in this world. I later found out that the sound was coming from the speakers that hang on top of the town’s Catholic church. Sitting inside the shower (because that’s where the toilet is, there isn’t a bathroom), I couldn’t tell if the song rang hollow or was perfectly placed and reassuring. One thing that’s for sure is that it made the whole scene seem completely surreal. And there I had my first thought that Peace Corps just might be too hard for me. Our training director had told us that we would have moments, perhaps many, in which we would want to pack up, call it quits and go home. As many as 1/3 of people that make it to Washington, D.C. do leave before their time is up.

In any case, after the song, I did get better. I stumbled around for a while in the house trying to find some purified water to ward off dehydration and eventually got it. For the rest of the day, though, I remained without energy, with head and stomachaches, and with some lingering diarrhea. The people around me prescribed all sorts of remedies, none of which seemed like the “take some medicine with a corporate pharmaceutical-sounding name” remedy that I have been used to in the United States. Many of them were really useful. None of them were like other remedies which you hear about across the world which have to do with curses and witches and such. The weirdest I got was, “Get up early, those who get up before dawn usually live to be 100.” I’m not trying to bag on these beliefs, but when you are sick all you want is the comfortable. So eventually I did take my Peace Corps-provided American medicines. I couldn’t, however, take that long, luxurious hot shower which all of a sudden now became a memory from America that was firmly implanted in my mind. Since then, I’ve been kind of sick on and off with gastrointestinal issues. It’s going to take a little while for my stomach to get used to the new conditions of food in Guatemala.

One remedy that my host family insisted on (and which I didn’t follow much) was to stop being sad and instead start laughing. At night, once I felt better, I had a long conversation with my host mother and one of the shopworkers, and I found out that they are incredibly sarcastic and funny people who are always laughing. I also found out that they each work from 4 am to 10 pm six days a week and hardly ever sleep. How could this be? How could they be the ones laughing and I be the sad one? Even though I think my sickness was a good excuse to be sad, I think they had a great lesson there for me. A 108-hour work week to live in conditions worse than 99% of Americans, and they find so much to laugh at in life. It is really impressive. The patience I have seen from the people of this country is just incredible. One woman was stitching a traditional cloth that would take several months of 6 am to 6 pm days to finish. I have a lot to learn.

I have a lot to learn because Peace Corps is hard. So said our training director, and between the sickness, the work that our Municipal Development training coordinators are giving us, and the book I’m reading, I am realizing this in a fuller sense than I could have before I got here. A word about the book: it is called Living Poor by Moritz Thomsen and it is the inspiration for the title of this blog. To me, the title carries both the meanings of “the poor, living” (in the flesh, as opposed to abstract; also, surviving, creating, enjoying, defeating the odds) and of “I am living without money.” The book is considered by many to be the best description of the Peace Corps experience; however, it is from the late 1960’s so it is a bit dated. If I can make it, this is the kind of experience that should form me well.

Setting Up Me

Well hello and welcome to my blog. It means a lot to me that you are visiting this blog. Little did you know that by doing this you are in fact helping me achieve one of the three goals of the Peace Corps - to help Americans develop a better understanding of foreign people and cultures. In return for your generosity, I´ll try to thank you by keeping this blog interesting. I´ll try to focus on ideas, impressions and relationships rather than the minutiae of my day-to-day schedule (which at times will be rather boring). Hopefully then, you can accompany me in the project of cultural exchange and interaction which I am on even if you can´t be on the ground helping people here in this beautiful country of Guatemala.

I want to set out for you some of my personal goals for the 27 months that I will be "living poor," as well as encountering the "living poor" in the rural communities in Guatemala.
Goals:
1. To become the person I want to be. I have several ways of expressing this: to live out my convictions (thus the title "living poor" - this in opposition to the "abstract poor" which I´ve studied to death at Brown. Now I can be meeting with real people and experiencing real life, interacting with humans instead of with theories), to follow the example of Jesus as best I can in my life, or to develop and practice certain values in my life.
I made a list of some of these values. You are all welcome to ask me to make sure that I am cultivating these values.
a. From accomplishment-focused to "being"-focused
b. From dependence on material and physical pleasures to independence from them
c. From idea- and task-focused to relationship-focused
d. From independence to dependence on God
e. From self-centered to other-centered, to compassion
f. Patience

2. To become a part of my community. I could write so much on this, but my internet cafe time is running out. Suffice it to say that this is a requirement of liberation theology and Christianity in general, to be incarnational - that is, enter in to the same reality of those that you are trying to help. We don´t help with paternalism from a comfortable distance but rather through proximity establish trust and a sense of brotherhood with others. We follow the example of Jesus who mucked it up with regular working folks and even outcasts of his community. Not to mention that this goal is the biggest feature of the Peace Corps´ methodology, essential to success in other areas, and something which the Peace Corps trains you well to do.

3. To help out the town at my site. Much more to come on this later. I´ll be putting a lot of energy toward helping out in whatever way I can, of course, but I am also trying to be realistic about what I can really accomplish. It is likely that whatever I am actually able to do will come in the second year of service, so I won´t expect much from the beginning of service.

Well, I am in the town of the Peace Corps office and am at day 2 of living in Guatemala. Many days lie ahead, but I hope that these goals to guide them! Again, thanks for reading. Feel free to comment or hold discussions. Like I said, you are a part of this Peace Corps mission.