HIGH FIVES WE DID IT. You and me, 6 months!

You know the moment in School of Rock when Jack Black high fives all his students and runs out of the school before they’ve even packed up their bags? He skedaddles the second the last bell rings. Worst sub ever. But that’s kinda how I feel in this moment. I feel like bounding out of the building high-fiving and clicking my heels in the air when I should be staying back to plan for the next day of class. It’s not ‘cuz I want to bolt. It’s because it feels like there should be some sort of passage into a new territory, a celebration. 6 months?? That’s 1/4 of my service. High-fives, pizza party, let’s dance! But no such party. Instead, I will celebrate by recounting some of the details between my arrival and today.

It’s impossible to capture 6 months in a handful of categories.
If you want to relive it with me, chapter by chapter, there’s a whole blog for that.

I had two months of training in Guatemala before I moved to my site. I moved from urban to rural, a Ladino household to a Mayan one, and an entirely different way of life. The categories below reflect the discoveries from site arrival to my six month anniversary (December 6, 2016-present day).

I’ve constructed a new reality in 6 months, lucked into a precious connection with new friends, in site and in service, widened my understanding of poverty, education and development work served with an awakening of what it means to be a woman, to be a US American and to be myself, all this dispensed through the unwieldy delivery van of foreign language.

Everything about my situation is different now. I hesitate to use the word ‘life’ in place of ‘situation’ because it feels like I’m merely passing through. But this is 2 years. If I can set roots in Southeast Alaska in 5 months, I must admit to myself that 2 years is enough time to call my reality “life,” not situation. But still, it feels somewhere in between. I feel better about “current life,” perhaps. My Current Life.

If you want or need to change your current life situation universe understanding existence reality, joining Peace Corps promises that. Or just move and get a new pet. This is your life!

Therefore, this is a summary:

I want to describe this current life situation universe understanding existence reality under a 6 month umbrella because when I look back at this entry, I’ll think: “Oh yeahhh I remember when that feeling was new (or oh-so-old)!”

An Important Reminder: I had two months of training in Guatemala before I moved to my site.
In that transition I went from urban to rural, a Ladino household to a Mayan one and an entirely different way of life. To be honest, as great as my host family was during training, I don’t really count it as part of my service. Training and service are like two planets orbiting in separate universes with distinct elements.
Therefore, my reflections begin at site arrival and last through my six month anniversary (December 6, 2016 to June 6, 2016).

Belly Wellbeing: 

I will start with bananas. I HAVE EATEN SO MANY. I have easily eaten 300 bananas in 6 months. At first I loved eating them and now I go through phases where I like them and others where I care never to see one ever again. When I first arrived it was avocado season so my host family was literally giving away their avocados to me. I didn’t have to pay for them because there was such an abundance. And the avocados themselves would make amazing dodgeballs, cosmic in size and tough-shelled until ripe. Sometimes I’d make guacamol (no pronounced ‘e’ on the end. Apparently we added the last syllable), but most of the time I’d scoop out the mantequilla and use it as topping on whatever I was eating.

Vegetables are oh-so-affordable and diets can be so healthy here in the campo. I eat platanos, refried beans, tortillas, avocados, tomatoes, zucchini, and always onion. I can get a pound of onions for Q2= 20 cents USD. I repeat: a pound of onions for 20 cents. And you wonder why ex-pats retire here? Folks snack on mangos, banana, pineapple but not so much apples. I do miss apples. I believe they’re all imported from somewhere else so they’re not nearly as lush or cheap as other produce. The animals here are allowed to grow naturally and eat what they’re meant to eat, and they’re not rushed to get fat and get killed. And that’s beautiful.

My host family eats boiled hierba, beans in all forms of preparation and has taught me how to prepare broccoli en vuelto (dipped in whipped egg- it’s delicious). They eat quite a variety of food, more than I expected. I’m glad because I can’t live with eating beans and eggs every day, I’d never survive, and being around people who ate beans and eggs every day would make me sad. And I do love beans and eggs but this professional eater needs variety. Another of their favorite dishes is chilmol: it’s cooked tomato flavored with small, fried fish. It’s not for me: I see the fish in the markets and the subsequent flies batted from them. My family removes the tiny heads of the fish before they mix them into the tomato sauce, thank God, but when they cook bigger fish, you guessed it, the heads stay on. Eyeballs and all. And they are bony as Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker, so eating them is a lot like extracting a boneyard from your mouth.

And at first, digestion was a lesson in ‘you never love something good ’til it’s gone.’ My underpants have experienced things that cotton should never know. I’ve produced the cold sweats across the forehead that come from emergent poops. I’ve clenched hoping that my intestines would stand by. I should have never left the house without a siren and flashing light. A true regret. I’ve felt the pena of the moments leading up, filled with the waves of diarrhea and the anxiety that you might not make it, not to mention the shame that would surely follow. You feel a short-lived relief when you DO make it, but only momentarily, because you still have to survive the act. Not to mention, you have to consider several factors: is there enough toilet paper in your bag, will the toilet flush or do you have to fill a bucket with water to dump into the tank so you don’t leave evidence, and do you have any hand sanitizer? Lastly, can anyone hear you? Yes, I love it when my basico students watch me run to the bathroom as I arrive to the school. It’s hello or hell, so I run.

I perfected the lunge from the bathroom door to toilet seat like the olympic run and jump. But time and tush did not always align themselves. I landed onto the thin plastic lid so often, either in the midst or beginning of bowel upheaval, to eventually crack the toilet seat. Diarrhea in Developing Countries, The Podcast: Reporting Live From My Porcelain Throne.

Living without Internet/Data: 

First I read a lot of books. And then I spent more time talking to my family. And then I realized that 80% of the stuff I wanted to look up online, when I didn’t have internet, was for entertainment purposes. And I was able to live in a quiet sort of peace, distanced from politics and social media and online window shopping. And those were all supremely positive changes. And the times I have bought saldo/data for my phone, I use more of it up on instagram and facebook. It’s almost all for play! I had no idea because I’ve never spent an extended amount of time without internet. Not since we got wifi in my house when I was 15. The first time in 15 years since I’ve been ‘unplugged.’ About time.

Catholic or Evangelical? 

In Guatemala, you are one or the other. If you say you are agnostic or not religious, or worse, that you don’t go to the church your parents go to, well that’s a sure way to raise red flags in their minds.

Catholic or Christian, they will sometimes ask. I explain that Catholic and Evangelical are both branches of the Christian faith. But nevertheless, the question is always asked. You’re one or the other. And the two faith populations don’t really jive together.

Language & Learning Names

When I got to site, speaking Spanish was like playing poker with a blindfold on. I didn’t have confidence because I feared I sounded like a drunk dreidel. I’m not sure if that made the language worse but it was a head trip. With my years of studying Spanish in school, I was still not used to speaking in a professional environment, the municipality or the classroom, without having a grasp of basic concepts I’ve always been able to express effortlessly in English. I knew I couldn’t speak at the level I wanted, and sometimes this required that I just smile and shut up. Not to mention my two site mates (at the time, now they’re not here) were proficient in Spanish- they both grew up in Spanish households! #Hometeamadvantage AND I think going on mission trips in Spanish-speaking countries gave me a false sense of confidence coming to country. I’d never studied abroad, never lived with a host family and certainly never worked in Spanish. That’s not a 10-day mission trip. That’s not a weekend in Mallorca.

Now I look back and I’m proud to recognize that I have accomplished a lot learning Spanish!

But then again I’m learning that every language has it’s context. That is to say, I’m learning the language Spanish in rural Guatemala with K’iche’ speakers. When I hang out with Guatemalans who live in big cities, they will respond to some of my phrases and say: “We don’t really say that…” And it’s important to remember that having “dominion” over Spanish is quite relative.. “Hey, I work with youth in classrooms, I learned Spanish in Guatemala with folks who speak it as their second language.” I imagine I will explain this a lot when I’m back in the States. One should never brush with broad strokes when they talk about a language, culture, religion.. If you sent a foreigner to a rural town in the US to learn English, the style would be very specific and bulky in an office building or the concrete jungle.

So I try to keep that in mind as I learn. I’m no authority on The Spanish Language nor English.
I’m only a reliable source on my use of it.

When I arrived to Santa Clara there was a lot I wanted to say but I still had to halt the conversation to type into my SpanishDict! app or to ask my host sister “What does that mean?” Or how do I say… this? And describe it with whatever words I could reach and stack them up like jenga blocks to construct the meaning I struggled to depict. Now my Spanish app has all sorts of terms saved from 6 months of searches: What is “grab” in Spanish? Apretar or agacha. Estorbar= to be in the way, menear= means to stir, wasp=la avispa, traslado= transfer or commute, perjudicar= to cause damage. I might look up 20-30 words a day, the ones I can isolate and remember to look up later.

And when I stepped into the classroom, I faced a new set of language obstacles:
I had to change tenses to lead exercises. Teaching calls for commands and vocabulary I’d not so quickly encounter if I weren’t working with youth: untangle= desenredar, spiderweb= telaraña and a different tense: “I hope that you have a good day.” The verb changes to subjunctive in this case: “Espero que cada uno de ustedes tengan un buen día” Whereas “Did you all have a good day?” Is “Tienen ustedes un buen día?” “I want you all to listen”: “Espero que todos escuchen la licenciada” but escuchar is a verb that ends in -ar, why is it changing to end in -en? SUBJUNCTIVE! for you language enthusiasts out there.. And this is simply one example of one step in the mental language workout going on in my head constantly. It can be dizzying and slows my system down. My mind and my tongue run out of choreography and I begin to speak in sloppy syllable.
Tunneling out new language pathways in the brain, like with more things than I’m willing to admit, takes time. And vulnerability. And time.

I can finally rattle off my phone number without giving it a thought. Such a small thing but there are a million small things that make up a language. I remember when I’d pause after folks asked for my number, a pause of uncertainty. It took me forever to memorize the number in English, much less Spanish. Then of course there were double-digit numbers in Spanish which I haven’t used in 10 years. If I had dedicated myself to 2 minutes of memorization, it would have been easy. But I never did that and then in the moment my supervisor asked my ‘datos’ I thought: “did I just say 62 or 72? Hmm. I might have given my boss the wrong number.” So I wrote it down for him. Just to be sure. Cuz I’m a grown-up.
I remember when my host mom told me: “I’m going upstairs to get the firewood. See?” and I thought she was saying “Do you see the moon?” at 3pm. Leña- firewood, luna- moon. Mehh.

And then you realize that your point of reference will always be how you say things in English.
In Germany, you don’t say you’re ‘riding’ on the train, you say you are ‘driving’ even though you’re not driving the train. You’re a passenger. So when my German friend texted once to ask if I was ‘driving’ to his apartment, I was very confused. He knows I don’t have a car.. And I’ve had to learn that I can’t directly translate phrases from English to Spanish here. Some carry over and some attempts come up blank. If I translate the words directly from English (which is enough of a task), the expression won’t carry the intended meaning.
I had to learn how to ask: “But how do you say this?” when what I wanted to ask was: “How do I express this?” And those too are hard to connect. “Dropping like flies” does that work in Spanish? Soltando como moscas? Somehow I doubt it.

And let’s add the insecurity of being culturally maladroit in a place where everyone’s watching foiled by the other 2 volunteers who speak Spanish with a golden tongue. You would think 9 weeks of training would have prepared me for this, but my host family in Ciudad Vieja had a pet dog with a collar and pet birds in cages and 2 bathrooms and here my host family has one cat that they keep around to scare the rats away. So.. apply that difference to everything.

And then it occurred to me that moving to site presented the challenge of learning 200 first names, all at once.
I have 140 students and a whole community introducing themselves to me. interaction by interaction. And let me add some extra spice: everyone has two first names! I repeat Two First Names. Heidy Sulameta, Jeimy Maria, Juana Ixmatá. Which was very confusing. “Okay I thought her name was Maria but the director just called her Catarina. But her friends call her Maria. And her name in K’iche’ is Wi’j.” That was just rude, universe. And to add black ice to a frozen sidewalk, SOME HAVE TWO LAST NAMES. I swear to Pedro Anthony de Jesus, I’m in a maze of names. Did I mention that there are K’iche’ versions of many names? We’re at 5. THAT’S 5 NAMES EACH, UNIVERSE, IF YOU THINK I’M NOT COUNTING. Pedro is Lu’, Maria is Wi’j, Nicolas? Kulax. Gaspar, Par. Miguel, Mik’el. Juana, Xua’n. Catarina, Talin. Who you kidding?
And if I’m done there, first names are repeated in families like I’ve never experienced in the States. I have 2 cousins named Clara, a host sister named Clara, and a grandmother named Clara. And most of the ladies I meet are named Clara, Maria or Juana. And I’ve already been over the other names.

The World of Politics: 

This will be brief because politics are like a nasty hashtag, they aggregate everything bad (sensationalism, vices and rumor) and pool them in one place for anxious, litigious and chismoso types. But it must be mentioned: I arrived in Guatemala while my country was in political heat. The campaigns were at the climax: the debates. Two evocative characters at the helm fighting to turn this ship around (The United Ship of America). When I lived in Alaska this summer, one ambitious cruise ship tried to port at dock three and kissed the dock instead. Crash, burn: a million dollars worth of damage. The ship was hardly scratched but our season was affected so tremendously: now one less ship could dock and we had to compensate and change around all of our plans until the dock was repaired. Giant cruise ships don’t understand the impact they have on small island towns (metaphor about the USA implied to its full extent).

And while my country was in such a state, I was learning how to twist the shower cap correctly to make the hot water come out. I was working on Spanish and going through a very controlled 9 weeks of training. And then Trump was elected. While I will not make any political comments, many have been made TO me since my time here. It’s as if I am an ambassador or that I have any control over the political situation in the States (and to be fair, I have a one-person-sized portion of control which is not nothing). But Guatemalans have said: “I’m so glad that Trump is president because I will get to see my family again.” They think Trump’s sending all of the illegal immigrants home. His reputation is that he doesn’t like and doesn’t want Guatemalans in his country. And I am faced with the question often: “is it true Natalie? Does he not want us there?”

Work Ethic: 

Making money in the campo is hard. There are not a lot of job opportunities for folks unless they go to the capital of Guatemala. I not only understand but empathize with the plight of anyone who moves to another country to support their (often malnutritioned) families. And it’s not for trying that they don’t find work: my host mom has the work ethic of Mr. Clean on three cups of coffee. Guatemalans work hard and don’t tire. Siesta is not a part of Guatemalan culture. I repeat: siesta is not a part of Guatemalan culture. My host family doesn’t own a sofa. Yes, they actually own an old tv (with cable service) that takes several minutes to ‘warm up’ before the picture focuses. She watches the tv from a small wooden chair next to her bed. My host mom does not read or write, she loves to watch the news. Spanish is her second language, and the Spanish of the campo is not the Spanish of the news, so I wonder how much she understands. I struggle to understand the news. But she loves to know what’s going on in the capital. It fascinates her. She wakes up at 6am and cleans, takes her cooked corn to the molina/grinder machine, pays 50 cents for the service and comes home and tortillars. This is how her day starts. I wake up and brush my teeth closer to 9 (if I’m honest).

Culture of Caution: 

Fear is concentrated around getting sick or getting hurt. Dying is not nearly as serious as being sick. Death is natural, but while sickness can be treated, it is very expensive. They feel mounds of pena about me walking outside when the rain is drizzling: “you’ll catch a fever!” eating cold things at night: “If you eat that avocado it will sit in your stomach and you will feel bad” or forms of diagnosis: “maybe you’re getting these bumps on your body from eating chiles??” (when I know they are flea bites). My host sister is 38 and she’s never driven a car, she doesn’t know how to swim and approaching the edge of a hill makes her too nervous. “Cuidado!” she says every time I try to touch my saucepan on the stove. “No te vas a quemar.” After 6 months, it’s the same warning: “Cuidado! No te vas a quemar..” Like I WANT to burn myself or I’ve never used an oven. It is a cautious culture in this way.

I wish I had a video of the reactions of Host Mom & Sister when a wasp came in the kitchen. It was a battleground as my host family leapt into action. In K’iche’: “Close the door, Clara. Turn the light off, Mama. Don’t go out there! Here! Bring this!!” I sat there with Abuelita and watched the scene. “Fijese que Natalia, one time my host mom got bitten by esos animales and she got a huge HUGE bump on her skin near her wrist. And what if this bug bit my grandmother! Dios guarde.” My host mom wound up a heavy towel, stepped outside and took both wasps out in one foul swoop of that towel. She slammed them against the wall. I was trying so hard not to laugh because I grew up in Florida and while some people freak out about wasp encounters, most of us know they are going to go away if you ignore them.

Jóvenes and Classrooms: 

Kids bring their own toilet paper to school. While I shouldn’t at all be surprised, it’s on everyone’s dime to bring their own papel higienico in their bag. Teachers are responsible for their own markers and erasers because they switch classrooms while the students stay in the same room. In the States, this is unusual in middle school. The bells are not systemized, instead one of the teachers will push the bell that looks like a doorbell in the principals office (a room shared with the computers for technology class). We’ve got computers but we don’t have printers with ink or connection to wifi. I’ve never seen a school lunch room because school is always half-day here, at least at the elementary and middle school level.

Jóvenes (teens/youth) are intimidating everywhere, and they are MORE terrifying when they speak a language you don’t know. You think I’m talking about Spanish and I’m. not. even. I’m talking about the Mayan language K’iche’. Spanish has been challenging enough, feeling vulnerable and exposed in front of a group of teens because TEENS but also because SECOND LANGUAGE. But let’s kick it up, Emeril (old reference), a third language (for me): K’ICHE’.

But I’ve discovered something: my students seem to regard me as a really funny (laugh at funny more than laugh with) strange friend who has little authority but who is extremely amusing and is interesting to talk to. You know how boys pick on little girls (if you’re heterosexual) because they just want to get their attention? I think that’s why they pick on me so much, because they are intrigued but also because they have this impression about the United States as The Land of Opportunity. I’m a connection to the place where they want to someday work, the place where their parents live, the place they see on TV. They also think I’ve got tons of money and my iphone 6 (which is crazy expensive here) proves it. I’m not saying their wrong, I’ve been enlightened as to my privilege, and I need to recognize it for what it is.

But Jóvenes are pretty much the same everywhere. Sure some have more money and more screens and more ‘saldo’ (data) BUT kids want to date and play sports and not sit behind a desk and make fun of weirdos (in this case yours truly in the flesh). And talking to them is just as intimidating and off-putting here like I remember it being in the US.

My Host Family and Fire:

I’m obsessed with my host family.

I can attribute my bad day bounce back to one thing: dinners with my host family. We prepare our food around the wood flames and we sit and slowly eat. Correction: I eat fast, they eat slowly. Smaller bites and no rush. But I eat quickly I guess because there’s always something to do ‘next’ in the United States. Even if it’s putzing around on your phone in the name of checking work emails. But here eating is rest. Eating is a chance to sit down.

My host family can work a fire like nobody’s business. They employ nature for different purposes: dried cane sticks to incite the fire, dried wood to catch the flame, corn stalks once the kernels have been cleaned, and sticks of pine thick with sap. Those things all catch fire quickly. And we burn our trash and toilet paper. Plastic is a difficult thing to get rid of because it’s really horrible to burn it but we have to pay for it to get taken away.

And I’ve learned that eating food is so much more rewarding when it requires time to prepare. Time and effort and patience to wait for the fire to do its work. And meals are the most rewarding when you’re in good company. My host family always accompanies me when I eat, they will come and sit with me, even in silence, just to accompany me as I eat.

I’ve learned so much from them and we’ve shared so many of our stories together: our losses, our accomplishments, our histories.

Losing Sitemates: 

I’ve lost 2, and more folks keep leaving from my training class. It’s not unusual for folks to ET- early terminate- for one reason or another. But losing both my sitemates (one in January, the other in May) was an unexpected twist. It has been sad, but it has also oddly reinforced that there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

But it’s additionally difficult become some sort of ambassador for the volunteers who’ve left. But this not only applies to the volunteers who have ‘early terminated’ during service but also any volunteer who served in site before you. “Do you remember Patricio? He taught zumba. Do you teach zumba?” “No, no I don’t… Not here, not anywhere.” “Chelsea used to have a very specific work schedule, do you want to make the same type of schedule?” “We had a volunteer where I used to work in Chacaya.” And we’re all sized up to each other in some weird line up, even though we’re from very different places in the US and have never met.

The Perception of Privilege: 

I did not know how strong white privilege was until I was the only white person around. It’s not about being white so much as being from the United States. But being white IS the most straightforward way to appear as Estadounidense. I could talk for miles and miles about privilege but I’ve learned that it’s not a question of fancy cars or big houses, sure they do imagine those as well, but it’s a matter of how much work opportunity there is. And they aren’t talking about working in buildings, they are talking about cooking and cleaning for a living wage. They’re talking about enough money to cover their necessities. And that is perceived as privilege. And it can’t be denied, I’ve never wanted for food on the table. I’ve got a 401k from my old job. My mom has my old car waiting for me if I need to use it again.

And I have to recognize that I am working from a point of privilege. I know what the inside of an airplane looks like, the med office would send a helicopter to an open field in my site if I needed to be medically evacuated. And my parents would never let me go hungry or homeless.

And that’s where I find myself at 6 months. Yep.