It has taken me a while to get around to writing this, partly because I haven’t had the time and/or energy and partly because I haven’t had my thoughts straight to really explain my experiences thus far to anyone else (plus I doubt that more than one or two people are actually reading this). My first day in Guatemala was pure excitement. I arrived in Panajachel where I stayed the first night with a team from VCU. Apart from taking a boat to San Juan to tour a coffee cooperative, I spent tons of time talking to Ben Blevins (exec. of Highland Support Projects) about the different projects I might be working on and about Latin America, economics and politics in general. You can have some very interesting conversations with this guy…and I quote, “Hayek and Friedman were Nazi assholes.” When I came I was under the impression I mostly be helping out with teams and creating a database of contacts for AMA, but Ben informed me that that was “below my IQ level” and that instead I would get to do research for one of HSP’s newer projects, which include a community health initiative, an artisan business, and a project involving carbon tax programs and reforestation. I’ll try to describe these in better detail later. Needless to say after hearing all of this and getting to speak Spanish, I was ecstatic. However, moving to a new city by yourself can change all of that very quickly.
To be completely honest the past two days have been really rough. First, it’s really cold here which can put a major damper on your mood. Xela is in the highlands so it’s one of the coldest cities in the country, around 70 or 80 in the day depending on cloud coverage and much colder at night. The sun is pretty bright during parts of the day, but it is the rainy season here so you can also count on it raining for at least an hour a day. My first two days in Xela I accompanied the VCU team to a Quiche community. It’s even farther up in the highlands, even colder than Xela and covered in fog so that sometimes you can’t see the houses ahead of you. The first day we watched/participated in a Mayan ceremony, which is basically a fire, prayers etc. lead by a Mayan priest, and we helped plant trees as part of a reforestation project there. The second day I was supposed to be working in the office with Claudia to get started on my project but they needed an extra translator (which they realized last minute so I ended up running out the door in the clothes I wore the day before, without having showered or brushed my teeth, WIN) so I ended up going to the community again to translate for Hilda while the VCU teams built stoves for women there. This was actually really interesting because the families in this community don’t speak Spanish, they speak Quiche, so Hilda would talk to the families in Quiche, translate it to me in Spanish and then I would tell the teams in English. Also, because I had already built stoves before I was able to be of pretty significant help to the teams, who are really nice (even though they definitely have a stereotype of Uva students being rich kids with trust funds haha). At one point Hilda and I sat in the kitchen of a family and I just sat and listened to them speak Quiche, which, don’t be fooled, is nothing like Spanish. All of this sounds pretty great now that I take the time to write it down, but it has actually been pretty lonely and unsettling.
This is a crazy busy time of the year for AMA and they have two teams here right now so I kind of got thrown into things really quickly. It’s easy to feel really lonely when you aren’t part of a student team here, you don’t know the city, and you aren’t very close with the people you’re working with yet. Combine that with waking up at 5:50 in the morning, the cold weather, relatively cold showers, long bumpy bus rides, and staying in a big concrete building practically by yourself and trust me you’ll be missing your own bed and your mom pretty quickly. I haven’t gotten a chance to go out and explore and the city so I’ve definitely been feeling pretty stuck, just going wherever I’ve been told to go and I found myself thinking entirely too much, which those who know me well know isn’t that abnormal. Thinking is dangerous. Should I have studied abroad in Valencia instead? Am I cut out for development work? Is ignorance bliss? Basically, I’ve been asking myself who am I and what I want to do with my life. In reality, those are pretty stupid questions because I know I’m going to figure it out along the way. Equally, I know that the first few days of being anywhere can be rough and that things are going to get much better very quickly. I just keep reminding myself that I chose to be here for a reason, largely to learn a lot of these things about myself. God works in mysterious ways and I guess I have to appreciate the fact that I’m realizing my weaknesses now.
On a much brighter note, things are looking better already today. Juanita and I set up my desk in the office and Ben, Claudia and I are going to go over the details of my project. Later, another American working here, Cader, is going to show me around the market and the town so that I’ll be able to go shopping or meet up with people or even go to the yoga classes they have in town haha. Cader lives with Kirsten, who also works for AMA, and they have a lot of friends in town so when things slow down a little bit I’ll be able to hang out with them more, going for runs and hikes in the morning : ) And of course, I’m getting to practice Spanish practically 24/7. My listening skills are so much better already because everyone around me is speaking in Spanish…I make tons of mistakes in my spoken Spanish, but it will get better with time. Well I’m going to leave things here for now since I’ve made this too long already. I’ll fill you in on my project and the city in my next post!
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