Once I reached May, the feeling of momentum changed. It felt like the end of my second trimester because I had a lot to do (CAMP in June: always capitalized as it is one of those four-letter words) and, while there was a lot of work, I still had the ganas to do it. The first four months of 2018, the days were long like operas and each hour was a separate aria. During those days the name of the month would play on repeat like a skipping record: “February February February… Día del Cariño.. February.. Día del Carnival… February… Another week at school… February… another schedule change in Barrio San Antonio… February..” I always thought ahead to the next month: Oh, I will feel so much better once it’s March. March needs to end, April will feel closer. And what’s the difference what month it is? The work is still the same. But it’s the month’s proximity to the end that makes it all feel a little more doable, reachable, lighter in my steps. And when May surfaced, I could count the number of months left and not be bulldozed by the reality of time.

But with the steady inching towards the end of service comes its oddities, too. On the one hand, I feel more comfortable in Guatemala than ever before. This increases exponentially with every passing month. Each new K’iche’ phrase that I absorb into my brain folds and eject from my mouth represents a new shade of familiarity, of being at home. But making a home takes time and work, it’s not an instant reality, and I’ve worked to create this home in every greeting, in every conversation, dinner and tortilla. And at 6:30pm it is dark, all year round, and I wait for another morning to peel myself out of bed and do it again. The elements determining exactly what the day will bring: elements being school schedules, work partners, the power (will it go out?), death (will there be a funeral and classes cancelled?) or a solar eclipse (yes: we’ve delayed classes to see the solar eclipse and because of where we are located on the globe, there… wasn’t one).

This post is from May 18. I was feeling a very strange mixture of winding down but still far from the end. I had just gone home for an unexpected trip to the US the first week of May. I was sorting through the feelings for almost being 3/4 of the way through service and reflecting on WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO BE IN THE USA.

Some days in Santa Clara the power goes out from 9am until 6pm. I was taking a shower one morning in March and the water went from hot to cold on a dime, the small heater above my head stopped making that whirring sound to indicate it was no longer heating stuff and the stream of water went cold. Oh how I miss shower faucets that are installed at an angle instead of the ones that hang from the ceiling above your head like mistletoe. Turns out, things get really cold really quick when you stand under a stream of lukewarm water and your thick hair is collecting all of the water. The rest of your body has to wait for the water to hit you and it never really does until you bow your head and hope it’s gotten hotter. At some point someone dreamt up a shower head that is installed in the wall instead of from the ceiling and even swivels to your customizable comfort. If you want to think about your comforts, just analyze your shower head. Is it one of those fancy shiny ones you can see your reflection in, does it have a pulse setting? Can you take it from the wall and twirl it around like a baton? I digress. The power went out mid-shower and the hot water se fue.

But as I write this, I know I am the whiniest: There are volunteers who have to heat their water in a bucket and sponge bath, or can only shower before the water goes out because they don’t have a repository in their houses. There is a repository in my house (it’s like a big old talk) and there is a hot water heater in my shower, so I am double-lucky. And you see I still had to detail my shower perils to you.

This day-long power outage happens every few months province-wide for regular power ‘maintenance.’ In the USA heads would roll. No internet all day? Forget the lights. HOW WOULD PEOPLE WORK, HOW WOULD PEOPLE HEAT UP THEIR FROZEN BURRITOS?

And yet, it didn’t so much matter. I just got out of the shower a little bit faster than anticipated. I think the soap was already rinsed from my hair. The day went as usual, except that it was slightly darker in the classrooms in the afternoon and I think my phone went dead around 4 until I could charge it at 6 when the power outlets reinvigorated.

I have become accustomed to expecting what I don’t expect. It doesn’t mean I always like it, but I am used to it. 

Most days, my host family doesn’t notice that the power is out unless it’s nighttime. I can count the things they use electricity for on one hand: ceiling light, blender (occasionally), TV, to charge cell phone, and radio. There it is. All five. Most of which Abuelita does not use. So she doesn’t notice until it’s nighttime and goes to pick-up candles. 

When the power goes out here, they say “The Light Went Away” se fue la luz.  I describe the electricity as “the power” and the lights are just part of that but now I say it like everyone else because that’s just what you say, se fue la luz. And if you will permit me to indulge in metaphor, I wonder about the other light: at the end of the tunnel of this experience and the light that’s been ignited in my soul. The second light refers to the enlightenment that Peace Corps engenders, not just living in a pueblo but being known by the pueblo, being molded by it and belonging in and to it. Oh and I do wonder about the actual power, but usually just when it’s out. (‘You don’t know a good thing’…) (okay I’ll finish it: ’til it’s gone…’).

Last year (year one of service) I imagined year two like a distant, far-off place that would be easier simply because it would be closer to the end. Peace Corps is a 27-month commitment (err 26.5 months); it’s a long time. It’s a loooooooooong time to be foreign, it’s a long time to feel out-of-place and, most of all: it’s a long time to leave behind you once it’s all over.

I am no optimist hovering over the hardships of life and relishing the flowers. If something is hard, I am not going to shy away from noting every gory detail of the hardship. It’s my personality, it’s a defense mechanism and it’s just how I am. Having just finished the epic film Gone With The Wind, I sometimes wonder where my Rhett Butler is to shake me from my apathy and whining and say: “Francamente cariño, me importa un comino.” But I try to shoot straight, not to lean too heavily to the negative or positive but what is at any moment the purest way I can describe something, whatever seems rooted in truth. But truth is a pit anchored somewhere in our guts, individually, and it buoys with the tide of circumstance, perspective and desire. Truth isn’t a ping-pong ball to circumstance but it’s no marble anvil either. I think that’s one of many reasons why people turn to a belief system, we all want to believe we are anchored in some truest, reliable truth.

I don’t believe in that. I think “the truth is a thing I invented so I could live” –The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. 

So, with my laywoman’s take on “truth and reality” described, I will explain my method of going about life: I trust my eyes to tell me some version of the truth that makes enough sense to get me by and at the end of the day, power out or power back on, I have to accept that my foresight, sight and hindsight are cooked up by nothing more than the broth of interpretation.

Where’s all this coming from? Well, the first week of May I went home to the USA unexpectedly for 8 days. Perhaps it’s because I wasn’t anticipating the trip, or because I was there to be with my family and not to enjoy the comforts of the USA, but I was entirely blindsided by my own country. All I could see were racial issues, gentrifying neighborhoods, my own complacence pre-peace corps compared to my tireless awareness of the manifestations of privilege today and just how gosh-dang comfortable everything was: drive-thrus on every corner, too many nail shops to choose from, air-conditioning, ceiling fans, something electric and built for my comfort in almost every corner of the universe. It’s like I put on WOKE glasses and it wasn’t before long that I had a headache.

I even stopped to tell a lady who was doing graffiti art: “Hey, I bet there aren’t a lot of female graffiti artists and I just want to say, rock on.” Her response? “Well there are but I don’t think they get nearly the recognition that male graffiti artists do.” And I agreed: “Yes, I am sure there are female graffiti artists but I think it’s a male-dominated art form. So- good for you.”

What the hell, Natalie? I mean, I wasn’t wrong, but two years ago I wouldn’t have said anything to a random graffiti artist, I definitely wouldn’t have considered gender roles at all, I would have just looked at a white lady spraying an electric box sky blue and thought: “Cool.” This time I pushed past my shyness, and my society’s rule of “Don’t Bother Strangers,” with my need to make a statement about the situation and perhaps to connect with another human being in a non-scripted interaction. The thing is, as disruptive as my Peace Corps brain is, I much prefer it to my apathetic, sleepwalking brain, even if it means calling out the disparity of female graffiti artists in the world and attributing graffiti to marking your territory like dogs do and how men have a need to hold dominion over physical spaces like Wendy’s dumpsters with spray cans. Or at least this is one theory I cooked up while I thought over the answer to: why do men have more of a presence as graffiti artists?

Now: even though I’ve come to trust my vision as I find myself through experience and age, there is still a matter that is entirely out of my control: the lighting. As I am nearing the end of service, the light at the end of the tunnel threatens to appear, glimmers so distantly like a tiny pin-prick, that everything around me goes dark as I squint to see what’s ahead of me. In these moments my current reality becomes shadowed and uncertain and I forget to appreciate what is still around me. That is to say: I forget to be present. 

The Light At The End of the Tunnel is causing problems for me at this point in the process of Peace Corps. It’s because there is still work to be done, life to be lived here. But it’s difficult to trust my eyes when they are focused on a distant twinkle of light that is LIFE AFTER PEACE CORPS. 

– – –

Let’s step away for a moment with talk of light and electricity as I am about to drop the truest truth bomb I know. It’s been simmering long enough and I want to expose it: 

And let me point out the most salient reality of all, underpinned to each post I have written in service: This year it is harder to write for a very specific reason. With every passing day, I feel more rooted to this place. And with every fibrous tissue strengthened between myself and Santa Clara, I feel less like an outsider. With each invitation to lunch or dinner, an afternoon to play or to stay the night, I feel like I have been invited into to the secrets of this life. And writing about the realities feels disloyal… Last year I definitely felt like an outsider because I was, and therefore a reporter, a journalist; but this year, writing makes me feel like a spy. And while this is a very straightforward life where there are very little mysteries afoot, writing about some of these realities feels like I am exposing Santa Clara in tiny betrayals.

It’s because I imagine how people will read my posts at home and be slightly disgusted, or confused, or surprised. But now I’ve been here long enough to not only know what’s going on, but now I understand why they are going on. And this has built up in me a ruthless defensiveness. Against what? I’m not totally sure. But mainly, what I recognize is the fight of living every day life here. And writing about it exposes that I do not have to fight with the same bravery, fear or doubt because of my privilege. If that doesn’t totally make sense it’s because I don’t know how else to say it without painting this life as more primitive than my own… And I am tired of doing that. Because of what this life has given me, simpler yes, but oh so much purer than the reality back home. And it stings to imagine returning from it.

– – –

Now, back to writing about life as I found myself in July:

I am at a new place, through trying moments with work partners, frustrating classroom sessions with teenagers and grappling over the reality of every day foreignness, I made it to the end of July and I reflected the following:

NOW, on this side of July (Sunday July 22), I am in a new corridor where the lighting has turned a shade of sepia, and nostalgia is setting in. The problem with nostalgic light is that it’s really good for a photo, but it’s difficult to maneuver for everyday life. Sepia tones is not meant for commonplace tasks, just for photo prints or instagram filters. But I must say with all certainty that working in the classroom is still hard and it still sucks. It’s crazy-making to yell over 20+ teenagers who won’t listen and don’t care, in two foreign languages. And at this point in service, that is not going to change. My host family tells me that I shouldn’t ever joke around with my students, and while they are correct, I didn’t join Peace Corps to be serious and stern. And if the only way to get their respect would have been to be serious the second I walked out of my house (because I run into all of them on the street) then I wouldn’t have done it if I had the chance to do it differently. Plus, when I got to site I was juggling the insecurity of my Spanish language debilities by being funny. Yes: coming in loud and clear, funny faces are a coping mechanism. I didn’t realize how much so until this experience. 

And in August, work came to a frustrating halt:

So… I write verbal constipation seeing as my life in June went from work (albeit frustrating but also rewarding) to an essential halt out of obligatory deference to the reality of Féria.

Féria, as much as I have tried to write about it, cannot be explained but must be experienced. We don’t have a US equivalent because we don’t live in community in the US the way Guatemala does. But essentially, féria can be encapsulated as the biggest event of the year in the pueblo. It is a Catholic tradition as it is the day of the town’s patron saint on the catholic calendar. While half of Santa Clara is evangelical and doesn’t technically celebrate féria, it is still a town-wide event.

The patron saint of Santa Clara is Santa Clara de Asis and her saint’s day is August 11. Celebrating Santa Clara de Asis means connecting to the roots of the pueblo, as it is the name of the town, the connection to the clothing: the traje of Santa Clara. Women buy new traje to estrenar, debut, during féria, families cook special plates of pepían which takes no less than a full day to make. They kill the roosters and chickens they’ve been feeding over the last 8 months to serve in the big meal. There are different marching bands doing parades through the town each day, presentation of the bands on the 8th, a different parade on the 9th, a parade with the elementary schools on the 10th, and the BIGGEST PARADE on the 11th. It’s four mornings of parades which means four days of brass instruments playing Won’t You Take Me To FUNKYTOWN? (Won’t you?) and Despacito and whatever the latest Latin pop song is.

All of this activity means work shuts down for a month. Yes, we still have school, but it means that I am yelling over band practice to teach my sessions, half of my students are outside playing the same 5 songs on their trumpets, and no one in the class cares what’s going on. Féria means: MIDDLE SCHOOL BAND rattling past your bedroom window at 6am . It means BOMBAS, day and night, loud firecrackers that make you jump out of your skin because you don’t know when they are coming. It means streets blocked off for the ferris wheel, the traveling pizza vendor who will pack up and leave after féria ends and the viking ride which has the boat that goes back and forth (a machine surely purchased from some old carnival in the States who rendered the ride a lawsuit waiting to happen, so they sent it here). Popcorn machines, pupusas, streets clogged and dirty and noisy and stinky with drunks cavorting about midday asking you for pisto so they can buy another gallo. But really, you can sense my sentiment loud and clear, huh?

Meanwhile, I am writing with plaque build-up in my veins called homesickness and fear of returning. I am sick over the thought of missing my sister’s 30th birthday, I missed my mom’s 60th last year, and not being able to just be there and drink a beer and speak English with my friends and not a SINGLE BOMBA or marching band in earshot. Meanwhile, I consider what it will be like once this isn’t my reality anymore and it makes me equally seasick: Did the prodigal son go through all these waves of emotions on his long journey home? I am not eating out of a trough with pigs, though I do have to listen to pig cries and screams from the house across the street (they are butchers but I can’t bring myself to say that the pig butchers live in earshot from my window. Oh my gosh I said it and it felt just as horrible as I thought).

As work has slowed down ahem THWARTED by féria, I show-up and my classroom time is stanched by ensayo (band practice), I have less to do as I sit around and BE PRESENT but not productive. And yes it is a recipe for my mind to wander to unlit streets in the map of my future that I can only conjure up through imagining as I know nothing of the future. I try to study for the GRE to pursue the scary/weird possibility of a Master’s Degree, juxtaposed with the setting of a pueblo where literacy rates are low. I’m inside sitting above and between the noise studying English flashcards rejoinder: response, pastiche: spoof imitating other works, investiture: inauguration and trying to imagine using simple, everyday English at some point again.

Meanwhile I feel more comfortable than ever in Santa Clara. The other day I ended up in a clinic with toothpaste on my face (acne-cure) looking for prenatal vitamins in my cheetah print pajamas at 8:55pm ending in a conversation about vibrators with the man who owns the clinic and wants me to give him English classes. And while I found it all hilarious, it was totally normal making it more hilarious. Weird little anecdotal things happen like that most days and I just shrug, smile and think: “I wonder where and how this will make it into the blog…” My own voice in Spanish doesn’t even sound weird to me anymore.

Now I write to you from August 17, 2018, I haven’t been able to give my class in bachillerato for SIX Fridays in a row due to extra-curricular stuff + other féria + evaluaciones, etc. A bit useless and getting over a cold. Meanwhile, to throw the weightiest wrench in the works, I applied for an extension for 4 months of service because I am a glutton for punishment. That’s what one part of my heart says, the other part says I would be crazy to ever leave and I will need those 4 extra months to get myself together to leave this place for good. Another Christmas away from home, another January waiting to learn what staff changes will happen in schools… One last coffee-picking season, one last avocado and mango season. One last season in Guatemala. More days when the lights go out and we reach for candles.

AH it’s all too much! Will I say goodbye to my egg lady? How many times will I be asked: “But will you come back?” and not know how to respond. “Do you mean for good? No. To visit, perhaps.” Chicken bone dagger to the heart. Dodging, between all of these questions, the perpetual question: “Will you take me with you to the USA?” another chicken bone to the heart which must be saved for an entirely different post discussing the border conflict, immigration, separated families and my privilege separating me from these struggles.

Sigh. There it is. That’s the current lighting.