Saturday, February 23
Yesterday (Saturday) I slept in. I know there is healthy sleeping-in and unhealthy sleeping-in, the second I’ve been privy too more often than I’m proud to say. I do think that sleep is for more than just energy, sometimes it’s what I choose to process change, overstimulation, stress, anger or sadness. The month of February has been quite unexpectedly gravid with a garden variety of many of these and I decided that I would let myself sleep in on Saturday. I felt like I ran an emotional marathon the last two weeks and now it was time for rest.
None of these feelings (sadness, overstimulation, stress, anger etc.) have been brought on by the oncoming end of Peace Corps. I am barely scratching the surface on all of those emotions, change and tumult that perhaps is in store. However, on the surface, I feel calm about it all. Leaving my host family is going to be a certain rupture of the heart, but what option do I have? I came into this knowing that 2 years was the mark and I got bonus time with them. Plus, I was consistently lucky throughout service. It’s amazing how many medical and safety reasons come up for volunteers and results in them leaving before COS (Close of Service). Broke your arm? Can’t get PT in Guatemala, must be med-sep’d. Mental health challenges? Better to get treatment at home, probably will be med-sep’d. And the list is long as my actual arm. I count myself lucky, another reason why I can’t be too sad to go.
In 2011, I took time to invest in a holistic therapy program, and I learned a phrase I like to remind myself in the face of change: “With Change Comes Loss.” I think it’s normal to be excited about what you gain with change, but we forget the inherent loss associated with it (especially unwanted change). I am ready for my volunteership to end. I invested in my community and they certainly invested in me. But it will be a tremendous loss, in many ways a loss that I can’t anticipate until I am in the midst of it. That is to say: when I am gone.
So. I got up late on Saturday and followed my typical wake-up regimen: (decide to) get out of bed, look at the rumpled blankets as indication of how I slept, tidy them at the foot of the bed and swing open the door to my other room. I pour water from my Camelbak into my thin, tin pot and secure the top, strike a match, turn on the gas and toss the smoky match into the trash. Then I pour the necessary grains of coffee into my Bodum French-Press, Thermos and Traveler-in-One (I highly recommend this, Peace Corps or no Peace Corps). Then I walk to the bathroom, potty, wash my hands, prepare my toothbrush with just a sliver of toothpaste (you know you don’t need a lot..), bring my retainer case to the pila (sink) and hear the water boiling. Pour the boiling water over the coffee grounds and leave the thermos, brush teeth, clean retainers, ready my coffee mug and pour in the necessary Hazelnut creamers which I bought from home. Drink coffee. Maybe eat something with it.
I pulled up Shutterfly on my computer and continued work on a present for my host family, a picture book of our two years together.
It wasn’t before too long that I heard the host family calling for me “Natalia baja a comer!” They get worried about me not eating, especially this month when eating was a Herculean effort at points. I ate chicken and rice (it’s pepián, a typical Guatemalan dish) with tortillas topped off with my favorite hot sauce (Picamás) and finished the meal with “Muchas Gracias” to my host families’ “Buen Provecho” as I got up to wash dishes.
I readied myself to walk to Paquip. Paquip is an outlying village where I worked for two years in a middle school. It’s about 40 minutes walking if you’re fast about it. Today was gray, has been most of the week, and I grabbed my bag with some markers, coloring pages and framed photos (from Christmas), left my phone face down, a reminder that I should not focus on messages, on top of my every-use table and set-off. I brought my old school ipod that helps me connect to music and unplug from everything else. I love it so much. It has songs that takes me back to old pains and old wonders I haven’t felt in a long time, and they remind me of what I’ve grown through and passed in my inchoate adulthood.
If you google Paquip, the first word to appear is Paquipleuritis. Yes, it’s a disease. But the walk to Paquip is my healing. I had a hard time working in this village: the school staff never really accepted or knew what to do with me. But I loved the walks. I would walk there in my work clothes and sweat as I mounted the steep hill and come to the beautiful, calm clearing: only corn crops. No houses yet, just a panoramic view of mountains and sky and where the two meet. I listened to Podcasts or often called my sister. She was patient enough to deal with my out-of-breath drivel. And it felt like it was just me on a thin road to a place that google first recognizes as a type of fibrosis, but to me, feels like home.
I think it’s easy to understand Paquip’s significance: a road you never thought you’d walk but you continually traverse with enough wide open space to unpack every thought tightly crammed in the dimensions of your skull.
The walk wasn’t particularly beautiful today, but the place was still all mine (save a few farmers who called out to me in K’iche’). The corn crop is dry and the stalks are leaning lazily on each other, ready to be cut and used to get fires started. The clouds fell between them like a knowing blanket. It wasn’t very green like October at the end of rainy season. The few flowers I saw were like statement pieces on the part of Madre Naturaleza. “With every season, turn turn turn.”
But my favorite part, however overwhelming at points, is passing the Velazquez family. The Velazquez family is an 8-sibling group with a living Abuelita and a host of grandchildren. The kids always noticed me first, walking at a quickened pace to work. They saw my “teacher briefcase” and my wound-up poster paper with my lessons, and they always asked me where I was going even when the destination never changed. They wanted me to stop and play, and one day, I obliged them. I brought coloring pages, some colored pencils (inherited from various trainings) and I brought myself.
We would sit and color, or chat, and they always gave me sugary, watered-down instant coffee, bread or fruit punch. One of the kids, 6 year-old Nataly, we call her my ‘namesake’ even though of course, well, she’s not technically. But they accepted me like a member of the family and the kids always plucked flowers from the vines and we stuck them in my hair.
I didn’t bring my cell phone so I couldn’t take pictures, but it forced me to be present. I couldn’t check the time, messages, emails, how many steps I walked, the date, anything. I couldn’t hide behind my camera and take myself from the moment. I just sat, colored, and was. The kids did the same (there were three there that day). I helped them paint Elsa, Ana and Olaf, and Abuelita Coco and Jazmin (Aladdin). We colored for probably an hour and a half.
Doña Lidia, Nataly’s mom, heated up three small stalks of corn for me, golden yellow, next to lime wedges and a small pile of salt. Truly, I’ve never eaten corn that tasted so fresh. People say that the bananas here are so much sweeter than in the States (volunteers) but I think you can find a pretty dang good banana in the US. However the corn, corn like this, I’ve never tasted anywhere else than in that moment.
I left around 4:45 to catch a quick jog at home before nightfall. I got home, put my dirty clothes in a bin with laundry detergent and fabric softener, to soak. I put my running clothes on, grabbed my OG iPod and headphones and stepped out onto the street. I saw that my Eggplant Dealer was still out and I owed her three Q from last week. I told her I’d be back and jogged up the main street to my white house on the corner. I grabbed my wallet and ran back down to the market. I selected three more eggplant and later on I cooked dinner. I talked to Adrienne for a bit on the phone.
Then I had a fairly disrupted night of sleep. There’s something beautiful about being able to turn off your phone but I use the ‘White Noise’ app to sleep, and I’m not all that disciplined. I cuddled up under the same blankets: my blue sleeping bag, my purple sleeping bag (used as a blanket) and the fleece for my face and ears. It gets cold at night. And it was a tough one, too.
But it was a beautiful day and it was Saturday.