Peace Corps Guatemala

Blog closed

2011-07-08T15:43:00.000-06:00

This blog is closed, as I returned from the Peace Corps in August 2008. The Chiimaltenango Children's Education Fund was taken up by other volunteers, and has provided dozens of promising children with an opportunity to escape poverty by continuing their education. As a testament to my experience as a volunteer, after my service I studied development economics and public policy in order to further shape how Americans work with our neighbors.

If you want to learn more about Peace Corps, Guatemala or the Education Fund, feel free to contact me.
My email address is (written backwards for security): moc.liamg@cilbup+yelbmert.werdna

Middle Class

2008-05-26T10:04:00.006-06:00

If you ask just about anybody in the US how rich they are, you'll get the same answer -- middle class. If pressed for more, you may get "working class" or "upper-middle class." Of course, we all like to think we're in the middle. Almost nobody considers themselves rich, because they still feel a crunch at to pay their bills, be it the apartment rent or the mortgage to the summer home. Nobody wants to consider themselves poor, because it's an unpleasant idea and are aware of those poorer than themselves. But what does it mean to be middle class?

Median income in the United States in 2005 was $46,326 per household (not individual). That essentially means that for every family of living off of $65,000, there was a family living off of $25,000. One percent of all individuals make over $290,000 per year.(1)
Now, there's dozens of papers out there insisting that there is no such thing as a middle class in the US -- that half of the nation's families makes $65,000 and up, and half make $25,000 below, and almost no family makes between $25,000 and ·$65,000. But that's not what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about where the United States' "middle class" figures in on a larger scale. While one may even be average for the United States, who cares? That means you're average among less than 4% of the world's population. Even a millionaire may be in the "middle class" if he only compares himself to other millionaires. According to the United Nations Development Programme, a "middle class" person in the world makes approximately $5,800(2).

Now, to be fair, things cost a lot less in the United States. I admit I just ate a tiny bag of Cheetos priced at the equivilant of US$0.15. Luckily, lots of folks have gone out and studied what each income really buys. Essentially they go to each country to ask people how much they make, and how many each year they can buy of bags of cheetos , a pound of chicken, a house with three rooms, a tank of propane, etc. They figure out, that a guy making $40,000 in the US may be able to buy as much as if he was making $20,000 in Brazil, or whatever.

One of these lovely studies came up with the second graph. It shows the country, how much a "midddle class" person spend per year on consumibles (in US$), and how much they spend on several different products. It's a much more sensible way to look at how much you make. It doesn't matter how many zeroes are on your paycheck, it matters how often you can afford to eat steak (or anything, for that matter).

So, look at the graph. It says that the average American uses about $21,000 a year for consumption (the rest invested in things like housing or stocks or paid to Uncle Sam). a lot of that goes to buying fish, meat, cereals, and paper. Fish: Of the selected countries, we buy less fish than a Chinese, Japanese, or Singaporean. No shocker. Despite the fact we don't consider ourselves big fish eaters, We still eat more per person than a Bangladeshi, Nigerian, and an Indian put together (all coastal nations).

Hmm, meat. Of course we're the most carniverous, but how carniverous is that? Well, put a steak in front of a Zambian, a Nigerian, a Bangladeshi, an Indian, a Chinese, an Indonesian, and a Turk, and they'll split the bill. Put the same steak in front of us, and we'll ask for seconds the size of what the Turk ate. Yes, we like meat more than most. But I asked a college-educated Guatemalan what rich meant recently. You know what she said? "Eating meat every day," the same way we say, "owning a summer home in the Hamptons."

What's the moral of the story? Not that we're big, fat, selfish Americans (despite one in three of us being obese). That when we call ourselves "middle class," we would do well to compare ourselves to everyody, not just our fellow Americans. Otherwise we're just acting like the millionaires jealous of the billionaires.

1. US Census Bureau. (Census Home Page)
2. Income and Poverty 2005 [pdf]. World Bank: United Nations Development Programme. Found at HyperTextbook.

Long Distance Relationships and Peace Corps

2008-05-21T23:50:00.013-06:00

The most common reason to leave Peace Corps is because of a significant other (SO). I remember well taking the train to NYC to have my Peace Corps interview and having to fill out a special form to explain my relationship with my girlfriend and how we plan on managing living in separate nations, cultures, and lives. Since Laura and I had already managed along-distance relationship, I believe that we had a head start. Nonetheless, visits are few and far between.

During any long distance relationship, one has to learn how to maintain contact in a way that at least allows the relationship to be paused. That means letters or phone calls that communicate not just like the letters you send at Christmas, including the major events. You need to have a way to maintain contact on the mundane in your life -- how tired you are of the heat, the color of your washing detergent, letting your SO know when you're happy or unhappy.

Long distance relationships can truly take two forms:

Relationships are maintained, but problems are solved only when the two see each other, as a plant without sunlight.
Relationships grow around the distance, as a vine grows on fence.

There's advantages to both. When one adapts a relationship where a phone call every two weeks or even every week can maintain a relationship for a long time, no one can really have a relationship. At best it keeps you both waiting for the next time you see each other. The advantage of this type of relationship is that it takes much less work and can maintain a relationship where you're used to seeing each other. Also, after the stint apart, things will "return to normal" afterwards.

The other type, where a relationship works well at long distances, means frequent phone-calls, long discussions about feelings about very minute things, and a partial detachment from wherever you live, as part of your identity is connected solely over phone lines and letters. The advantage is that when fights and problems pop up, you already know how to discuss your emotions with the other person. You have incorporated the distance into how your relationship works, and therefore you see a long distance relationship as a sufficient reward to maintain it. At the same time, once you return, your relationship has to adjust to the idea of seeing the other person on a daily basis, and you have to learn how "normal" relationships work.

If you're about to join Peace Corps or be very far away from your SO, you need to ask yourself some things:

What parts of the relationship will you lose?

Physical?
Social Groups?
Emotional Props?
Sense of Identity?

What parts of the relationship are you going to maintain?
How often do you plan on communicating? Will that be enough to tell daily activities, or just major changes in life?
What are your communication options in your host country? Internet? Phone? Mail?
What does your SO expect? partial separation for two years? daily phone calls?
What kinds of problems may erupt while you're apart? Infidelity? Arguments? Long-term Decision-making? Falling in love with another? How will you deal with that, short of quitting and running home?
How do you expect your time apart to change you? Who do you expect to be when you return, and how do you think your SO will deal with it?
How often do you plan to visit? every 6 months? Never? Every 4 months?

Questions about your new host country:

How many time zones are you apart?
Can you own a telephone? Can you afford it?
Can you mail physical letters and packages? How much does it cost?
Is Internet present? Where?
Can you Skype? Can you bring a digital camera to your Host Country?
Do you want to use your vacation time to see your SO, or to go travel?
When is the first time you plan to see your SO after leaving the United States?

I was lucky. Living in Guatemala, plane tickets are under $600 to go back to visit my SO and she can afford to visit me. On top of that, phone calls to the US from Central America are under $0.20 per minute, and sometimes as little as US$0.05. We arranged to see each other every four months. We originally spoke weekly, and, as I understood my finances and access to Internet, we began to speak nearly daily. My girlfriend and I learned how to be very explicit about what we needed from each other, what made us uncomfortable, what made us happy, and how to avoid arguments over the phone. No matter how good the signal, emotions, especially anger, just can't translate over telephone calls. If you don't explain your feelings patiently, you'll never communicate what problems exist, let alone solve them.

Before coming to PC and maintaining a relationship:

Find out Internet options, bring Microphone and Web Camera if possible
Don't expect much contact for the initial months: you won't know your mediums of communication, so just count on a few letters.
Consider going to a"middle income" country, such as a Latin American one, Kenya, S. Africa, or Eastern Europe. Your communication and travel options will be much easier.
Have long talks with SO on what you expect and don't expect from them.
Discuss ugly hypothetical problems until you're sick of it -- falling in love with somebody else, hookups, lies, and mistakes.
Take a few memorable photos together.
Think of activities you can do "together" while still apart -- watch a movie, play a board game, listening to a CD, and what you need. Playing monopoly over the phone, costing $1.00 a minute, may be worth it in the end.
Talk about who can afford to make trips, and who can't

While abroad, remember this:

Unforeseen issues come up, making scheduled communication sometimes can't happen: international wires stop working, mailmen lose letters, the Internet can go down in an entire country for days. rem
These are the hardest times the relationship will have: difficulty isn't a good reason to end a relationship.
Be patient and clear when you're disagreeing. Tones of voice, body language, loud sighs, and facial expressions don't work in long-distance relationships. You have to spell everything out, and not blame the other person for not understanding. Likewise, you can't blame a person for not being able to communicate their frustrations easily.
Many Peace Corps Volunteers reinvent themselves in their host country and forget entirely about their life in the US. You never will, and that's okay. Your experience will be much more grounded than theirs.

If you want to talk about this subject more, I encourage you to contact me through this blog or my e-mail.

Update:
This post still seems to get a lot of hits, so it merits an update. I have since settled down with the person I was dating in the Peace Corps: we still often talk about how happy we are that we stayed together during the Peace Corps, as it made our relationship stronger. Also, I still think it was a good idea to enter the Peace Corps despite being in a serious relationship. When I entered the Peace Corps, about 10 in my cohort were in long distance relationships. Upon my return two years later, I was the only one. However, take a any group of people in their early twenties, and you won't see many relationships that last two years. In most cases, I don't think Peace Corps ends good relationships: it serves as a stress test for them. Good relationships can survive, and bad relationships quickly become apparent.

I no longer check comments here, but it may help you find others in the same situation. If you have any questions, my email address is still (written backwards for security):
moc.liamg@cilbup+yelbmert.werdna

My Projects: Utz Samaj

2008-04-06T20:41:00.004-06:00

This is my second post about my projects. My first post was about my work with a women's cooperative.

In Peace Corps, the village you live in, the work that you conduct, the region of the world you end up in is decided determined largely by Peace Corps. Where you end up is determined by decisions based on what your abiliies are, what interests you tell to Peace Corps, and Peace Corp's strategic development priorities . But more than anything, where you end up and what Peace Corps asks you to do is based on chance -- the time of year you apply, whether or not an interviewer takes good notes, bureaucrat's preferred countries to send people (and in my case whether or not she's busy preparing for her wedding), what parts of the country your boss likes to travel. Peace Corps will deny this -- a great deal of bureaucracy goes into deciding where sites are and filtering out sites. But, while Peace Corps has a number of limiting factors, there may have been 40 different scenaries for where and what your Peace Corps experience ends up being, and only one of them ends up being your life for 27 months.

The stars aligned so that I ended up as an Agricultural Marketing volunteer in Guatemala. I knew that much two months before I left the US. Once arrived in Guatemala, the rest of the cards had to be played out.
A major component of your life is decided by your Peace Corps boss, known as your APCD (Assoc. Peace Corps Director). He (in Guatemala they're all men) decides what town you end up in and who is your counterpart organization. Officially, this is the group that you're supposed to work with and through to change the world. They are supposed to introduce you to people in the community, help you adjust, give opportunities to work. In return, you help them with their projects in some way. For me, I was expected to help a new growers' association organize itself and teach them all about commercialization and selling their products.
My counterpart organization is known as Utz Samaj (good work). It's a well-funded organization that has existed for 25 years, which, for all I can tell, is 10 years longer than it should have.

My First Days
When I arrived at Utz Samaj, within two weeks, I had met a handful of farmers in the area, and havethem each a survey regarding their crops, land, etc. These farmers, I was told, had studied for a year in Utz Samaj on best practices and decided to become an association to sell their products together. Afterwards, my counterpart wrote up a draft of a two year plan, beginning with becoming a legal entity and ending with exportation. This was his idea on how I was to spend my two years. After successive arguments on who decides what I do, I work with the farmers on a schedule that works for them.

I had several meetings in the first months with the association, each spent mostly trying to convince them that getting flat grants from rich NGOs was not how to climb out of poverty. They called less and less, and the organization fell apart. While I would have loved to help a group willing to put their work in, it became clear to me they were looking for "proyectos" (projects), which is a term that, generally refers to development projects that people free things (from houses to vitamins) without any major commitment by the recipients -- handouts.

After the growers' association fell apart, my counterpart avoided speaking with me, and gave and asked for no more help. From what I can tell, I'm the third consecutive volunteer that Utz Samaj tried to force specific work and insisted on doing work asked for by people in need, not trusting Utz Samaj to tell us what people needed.

Computer Lab
During the first 5 months, the boss of the organization was almost never there -- he was holding down two full time jobs, and was a friend of my Peace Corps boss (which proved to be why I was sent there). After he left, a new boss, René Morales, took charge. The first new project we were given was when two men from the Ministry of Agriculture came by. They knew a member of the organizations board of directors, and offered us a computer lab. Apparently the Ministry of Agriculture had provided a "small business center" to an organization in another part of the country and didn't approve of their use. Therefore, they wanted to give it to an organization quickly and without having to worry about a lot of oversight. So they gave it to Utz Samaj, because it already had a computer lab up and running.

Here's where the problems begin... Though Utz Samaj already has a computer lab (received through donations from Rotary Club and Peace Corps), it no longer gives classes. Some argue it's because the last teacher didn't promote them, some argue it's because we don't have internet. Whatever the case, the teacher was fired a couple of months beforehand. Utz Samaj, instead of admitting this to the donor, writes up a 10-page solicitation for them, describing a beautiful plan of implementing the small business center. I assume that the donors weren't looking too hard or just didn't care about the center too much. They had a project they needed to give away, Utz Samaj would look good on their donation sheets, everyone walks away happy, though without helping anyone. A year later, the computer lab holds one class a week, supporting 10-15 students. Not a terrible project in the end, but not even close to what could be accomplished.

While Utz Samaj has improved greatly since the hiring of a new director, the wealthy board of directors' disconnect from both employees and the reality of poverty in Guatemala makes larger improvement near impossible. Many of the remaining employees also show little interest in much more than a paycheck.

My Current Work
While Utz Samaj has greatly improved over the last year, lack of accounting transparency and a handful of dishonest employees will keep it from improving much further. I still help out there with a weekly course they have for farmers. The course, the most successful project, allows farmers and young men to study improved practices in farming that are applicable to their own work -- proper use of pesticides, pest management, and product promotion. I help with the last one. I teach them the importance of marketing, the necessary steps, investigating the market, etc. In addition, I'm creating a manual that they can use in the future for giving good lessons and particularly marketing lesson plans to use once I am gone.

My Projects: Tejidos Guadalupe

2008-04-03T14:49:00.005-06:00

I've been in the Peace Corps a year and a half, and I realize that most of you don't have any idea what I actually do while I'm down here. Here's the first installment of projects that I'm involved in.

Tejidos Guadalupe
The cooperative Tejidos Guadelupe is a group of about 50 indigenous women that create textiles (artesanías). They have designs that are both traditional to Mayan cultures and modern styles that they export to a handful of stores in Europe and North America. The cooperative started during the Guatemalan Civil War as a group of widows who, after their husbands were killed by the army, hid in the hills of a nearby village together. After the violence died down in the area, they returned to their town and continued together as an association who sold their crafts. It's worth mentioning that among older generations, all women made their own clothing, and therefore had a set skill. During the early 1990's, they became a cooperative and welcome additional members. Over time they made contacts with volunteer organizations that, once returning to Europe and North America, helped connect them with a few clients.

The cooperative has grown into a clearinghouse of international aid as well as a textile cooperative. They offer scholarships to children of members, are working on a recycling project, own a bakery and a general store.

While their cooperative remains very impressive, it became obvious to me that the cooperative could not sustain itself without help of its donors. Their productive projects -- bakery, textiles, and general store -- didn't always turn in profits. Much of my work has been to help them become more steady on their feet, ensuring that if their donations don't come in, they will remain a benefit to the community by their own rite.

My initial work with the cooperative was helping them find a trainer to teach them how to grow mushrooms. Many women in the cooperative were getting too old to do needlework (because of arthritis and poor vision), and thought growing mushrooms would remain a profitable and achievable project. Unfortunately, this project never bore fruit. While I was working there, several other needs became obvious to me. Despite the number of projects the organization had, they had no overarching plan on how to accomplish them. As is often the case with women's cooperatives here, there was one woman with great vision and ability (the "financial manager" in this cooperative), and then a bunch of other members that simply do their work as their told.

I told this woman that I wanted to teach them how to do an annual plan. The trick was that I wanted the quiet little members of the cooperative to make the decisions, to make them more involved. So that's what we did. We came up with about 5 people to represent each project of the cooperative. I taught them what it means to make an annual plan, and what we need to think about. While annual plans can take a day to accomplish with people used to formal meetings, it took roughly a week to accomplish it in this organization. This was because some women were illiterate, some didn't speak Spanish, and almost none of them were used to being asked about their ideas. In the end, we had a plan for each project of the cooperative and a group of excited women, ready to work towards their goals. Afterwards, the cooperative's leaders looked over the plan, made some minor changes, and bought into it. I'm going over this week to make a giant calendar that has everything that needs to be accomplished for the month written on it, according to the annual plan.
On top of that, I'm helping them translate their website, look for buyers in the US and Canada, and may later help them get their own exporting license.

For those of you I saw over Christmas, this is the organization that I sold products for. For more information, go to their website: http://tejidosguadalupe.org/home.html
Though it's currently available in Spanish, it should be in English by August 1.

Church and State 2

2008-03-15T20:51:00.006-06:00

While I returned back to the United States, I gave a presentation to a Catholic Youth Group about Guatemala. Of course religion had to come up. Guatemala, like most Spanish colonies, has a level of Catholicism in it that seems to stick around much longer than any of the Spaniards. Guatemala's roughly 45% Catholic, 45% Born-Again Protestant, 5% that are other and 5% that the Catholics and Protestants fight over claiming.

The Protestant bug is something that didn't hit until the last 30 years. Protestant missionaries first started making big hits in after the earthquake of 1976 devastated the country by helping rebuild. Since Catholicism hadn't been challenged in centuries, plenty of people that were Catholic due to lack of options were easy pickings for Protestant sects. Since evangelical religions have made a comeback since the 1990's in the US, mission groups abroad have been an integral part of their functions. Spreading the word of God in the poorer parts of the world calls back to idealistic beliefs that the world only needs to hear the words of Jesus to be saved. Ironically, the influx of evangelical missionaries into Latin America has really just tipped the scales away from Catholicism and more greatly into conservative Protestant groups. Mainline Protestant churches -- Episcopal, Lutherans, Northern Baptists, etc. never took a major foothold into Latin America, leaving what we Americans would perceive as a gaping crevice in between Catholic and evangelical Christianity. Christianity in Spanish colonies remains a domineering force in culture.

The inseparability between Spanish government and the Catholic church was uniquely powerful until the Spanish Civil War of the 20th century. The dominance of Catholic/Christian icons permeating culture was passed on to Spanish colonies. Through Spain's civil war, religion painfully untangled its roots from the government and popular culture. Christianity in popular culture did not face this conflict in Guatemala. As a result, Christian icons remain ubiquitous here.

Saints' names are attached to everything from convenience stores to brands of rice. I eat Saint Joseph’s holy saffron rice with my dinner on occasion, while drinking from a bottle of Coke that I bought from the Convenience store of the Holy Blessing down the street. When I had to replace a light switch last week, I bought it at the Saint Matthew's Hardware Store, and get photocopies done at the Shaddei and Fatima Supply Store. When I need to go to the capital, I often get on the Saint Elena bus line, which (like many buses) has a sign overt the door telling me that God blesses me upon my entry and exit of the front bus doors. Meanwhile I take my seat on the bus, which has "those who hate me suffer" stenciled onto the back tinted windows and silhouettes of naked women posted on the mud flaps, rear view mirror, two on the windshield, and maybe another underneath the decoration on the rear-view mirror -- a decoration which consists of a color photocopy of Our Lady of Guadalupe taped to a compact disc and hung by fishing wire.

All and all, I can't help but feel a little smug regarding all of this thematic religious decoration. Am I to believe that Guatemala is more pious, full of dedicated Christians because of it? Does the sign of the cross made by the bus driver cancel out the obscenities he shouts at the competing buses? Is there a hidden Saint Francis in the teenager at the hardware store that whistles at the girls walking by? Personally, I see little morality in naming a hostel after Saint Christopher, let alone a bar after the Mary Magdalene. What's the result of naming the mundane things in life after the sacred? It simply makes the sacred appear mundane. So, what about our culture? I recently received an e-mail telling my fellow Americans that we should not accept dollar coins because they don't include the words "In God We Trust." I couldn't help but laugh and think back to Our Lady of the Sacred Oil Change a half a block up. If you want to show off your piety, go to church, tell your friends God bless, and fight every day to make yourself a more moral person and the world a little more just. Just don't mix proclaiming your belief in God with something you use to to buy Preparation H and Oreos with.

The Beginning of the End

2008-03-09T14:27:00.001-06:00

With a girlfriend Stateside, I have probably put more into planning than most Peace Corps volunteers. When I joined Peace Corps, I already knew what I wanted to do afterwards (go to graduate school) and where I wanted to do it (Madison, WI). A week ago, I was accepted to get my Masters in Science to the Applied and Agricultural Economics program at the University at Wisconsin - Madison. The program has a development economics concentration that I hope to be part of.

The question is, now what? This is my first realization that yes, there is life after Peace Corps and that there is a limited amount of time before I go home. In five months, I will be attending courses as a graduate student, so I really have three or four months to wrap everything up here and make sure that my projects don't die without me.

The most important part of development work is the dismount. After helping people along for months (or years), the ultimate goal is that they continue programs independently. It's a little like teaching to ride a bike -- You can explain away, but the most important part is to know when to let a child balance herself. How to ensure people keep planning their work? How to make sure they realize the importance? An environmental volunteer once put it this way: "I spent two years trying to convince people to throw garbage in a trash can -- now I have to make sure they empty the trash can."

I also need to honestly assess my work of the last two years. Did I get as much done as I wanted? Could I have worked harder or smarter? Did I focus on projects I wanted, or what Guatemalans wanted? I didn't take enough pictures. I should photograph everything I should see.

Soon, the next chapter of my life will begin, and I'll become one of those people that warmly remembers waiting in the rain for hours for meetings that never happened, recalling the adventure and forgetting the humidity. I'll tell stories of Mayan festivals, remembering the . As I age, I'll start to tell people younger than I that it's the best thing I ever did, and that they should do it despite reservations.

We'll see where I end up.

Jornada

2008-03-02T19:41:00.003-06:00

jornada: n. 1: A day trip 2: a day's work

While on Tuesday, March 3, classes were cancelled at Liceo de St. Sergio, it was teeming with students and parents. Why? Fifty American doctors had arrived in a medical jornada, or travelling medical group, from a hospital in Michigan for a week in Guatemala to treat their illnesses, hand out vitamins, and offer a free pharmacy for the day. I had volunteered to translate.
Upon arriving to the school, it was pulsing with by chaos. It’s not that I haven’t visited events where hundreds of barely supervised children, wandering indifferent adults, and crying babies bewilders my audible, visual, and olfactory senses – but there were gringos, and hundreds of them. The crinkled brows and tight frowns all seemed to show the collective thought, “there’s no order here.” The insanity of an ER still holds no candle to a Guatemalan school.
As I began to approach a huddle of concerned-looking gringos, a Guatemalan doctor who I know entreated me to explain to a white giant in scrubs that the patients had already been triaged. I smugly explained the situation to the doctor, who then asked me if it had been by doctors of nurses. That was when my superior smile fell of my face. I realized that I had no idea what triage was. Their navigation through Guatemalan language and culture was no murkier than the fog of bilingual medical jargon I had signed up for.
A resident who was exhibiting the symptoms archetypal of a failed attempt to live without caffeine tried to gather the handful of translators at the center of the basketball court (read cement soccer field). As the ten or twelve of us, surrounded by 400 impatient patients and 50 beleaguered medical professionals, were assigned one per room of three doctors. I volunteered for a pediatric room.
Luckily, my room included one doctor with excellent Spanish and one that knew body parts. All morning, we treated children from the school. It felt like we were treating three students over and over. In the dozens of children treated, nine out of ten followed three different patterns: no hunger and vomiting food (stomach parasites), no hunger and exhaustion (vitamin deficiency), or legs that hurt at night (bowlegs due to malnutrition as infant). Most of them also had compacted earwax (from not cleaning their ears), causing hearing problems or ear pain. Treatment? Stomach infections got antibiotics, compacted earwax got warm water washes in the ear, almost everyone got vitamins and was told to up clean water intake Any indigenous woman complaining of hunger or stomach problems was told to loosen their faja (belt), which was preventing stomach growth.
During the afternoon, I went to work in general medicine (located in the third grade classrooms). Many of the parents I saw in the morning were now treating their own health problems. If pediatrics was dominated by malnutrition and stomach viruses, general practice was dominated by neglect. One of the questions I always had to ask was how long the symptoms had been going on, and the answers were often unbelievable – poor hearing that had been unchecked since birth, urinary tract infections that had spread to the kidneys over three years, ten years without checking to see if shooting pains were nerves or a heart condition.

Through the day, I learned more and more medical terms: NSAIDS, H/A's, Hg, among others. The day was incredibly rewarding: people walk in with a problem, walk out with a bottle and a belief their problem is solved. However, I became more and more aware of snags in the long-term: not explaining what medications were, so people couldn't buy them once they ran out. We told women with babies to stop carrying them on their back, diabetics to stop eating so much sugar, and women to wear looser belts. We didn't however, explain how to carry a baby right, wear a skirt without it falling down or altering your digestive tract, or how to purify water to avoid getting stomach parasites.

Although I felt warm and fuzzy about the day, it really demonstrated to me the importance of long-term work in development. While these doctors provided an invaluable service of charity, they weren't working in development. Solving a systemic problem can't be done in a single day's work.

News Clipping

2008-02-15T18:26:00.002-06:00

I know this isn't even my own writing, but it's a good editorial from the newspaper of the upper-class of Guatemala about poverty in the Highlands (region where I live). I'm translating this article from the Prensa Libre, 3 February 2008.

Children of the Highlands: The (cold) climate is not to blame for the death
of children in Totonicapan.

Death by pneumonia of more than 60 children of the rural area reflects the
true face of the dysfunction of Guatemala, where the riches (of the
upper class) obscure the poverty in macroeconomic indicators, making the
poor of Guatemala appear to be folklore.
From the capital city with a beautiful renovated airport, in which the
construction of luxury apartment towers compete with villas of the magnates,
it's very difficult to comprehend how it is possible that a curable disease can
bring about the deaths of 60% of the children that contract it.
Nor is it easy, from the capital, to have any idea of the contions of live
of the rural communities far from the mirrors of consumerism, whose profits
depend on the decisions of a political circle that does not profit from our
understanding of such poverty, either.

This, without forgetting that the primary concern of the majority of
elected officials is not to work towards the well-being of the nation, but
to prefer to use public funds, orginally destined to the
investement in health, education, housing, and nutrition, to ensure
reelection and handing government contracts to family and friends (in
violation of Constitutional and social law).

It's very important to understand that the children of Guatemala have
been forgotten by the recent government (which left January 1) and all those
before it. If this was not true, the 62 children of Totonicapán never would have
died, because they would have access to decent health centers, equipped with the
medicines, supplies, equipment, and basic services that the entire
(Guatemalan) population has a right to have, simply by living in this
nation.
These deaths should weigh on the souls of everyone and every government
official that have committed themselves to public life. In them one can find the
negligence and apathy to make the changes to benefit the general public, their
weakness in plain sight of the circles of power and their (the
politicians) disinterest in completing the obligations of their titles.

The climatic changes have passed in Guatemala for many yearx, with varying
intensity. Everyone knows when it will rain and whin it will freeze: when the
wind beats on the houses and when the rivers flood. No government can hide
its ineffectiveness claiming these events are unforeseen... even less when the
victims (of the cold rains) are a segment of the population most harshly
punished for their poverty of every type.
It is urgent that the authorities wake from their dream and face the
national reality unflinchingly and intelligently. As such, each one of these
deaths should represent a mark on the soul of those who are responsible for
these children's protection under the law.

The above article was the only one published about the story of the sixty dead children that I could find.

The State of Education in Guatemala

2007-12-18T18:30:00.000-06:00

As many of you know, I'm involved in connecting donors in the United States with promising Guatemalan students who can't afford to get basic education. We're currently looking for donors, as the school year begins in January. To learn more about the project or donate, go to the website

http://ccefund.googlepages.com

Below, you'll find a description on the Education system in Guatemala.

The Guatemalan education system is unequivocally incapable of providing a basic education to every student. The Ministry of Education is infamously one of the most corrupt components of the government. There’s several places where the education system lacks.

Small National Budget

Nearly all government services in Guatemala are financially strapped due to a lack of tax income for the government. Property taxes are paid for by only a handful of persons, and Income taxes don’t really exist. The only major source of funds is a national sales tax, but it is only paid for by certain vendors and excludes all sales in open air markets and the massive informal economy, where the majority of transactions occur.

2. Administrative Priorities

The Ministry of Education is known to be one of the most corrupt government agencies in the nation. Thousands of dollars are siphoned off by administrative officials for personal benefit. In addition, the local and national government is known to make investments in adding classrooms, teacher in-services, and computers without supporting recurring costs such as increasing the number of teachers or covering school supplies.

Inadequate Number of Schools, Teachers and Classrooms

While the Ministry of Education claims to provide universal education, international studies show that it only serves 20% of all Guatemalan children. Classrooms are often packed with more than 40 students per teacher, and most public schools cap class sizes below 50 – leaving many students without access to public education.

4.The Family’s Response

To make up for the inadequate education system, particularly the lack of spaces for students, many children send their children to one of the many private schools. Most private schools are run by religious agencies that pull in some funds from local or international church groups. Occasionally non-religious groups also fund these schools.
The funding given to these schools does not cover most of the costs of anything beyond teacher salaries, such as office supplies, furniture, and improvements. The families of students end up footing most of the overall costs directly on top of all the school supplies, utilities, etc. Most private elementary schools (grades 1-6) cost 150-200 quetzals per month, or roughly $20-26. Middle school, none of which are public, cost roughly 300Q (US$40) per month. High school, which less than 20% of all Guatemalans graduate, costs roughly 450Q ($60) per month. On top of the tuition costs, students must purchase school uniforms, all their school supplies, and transportation.

A Glimmer of Hope

While the Chimaltenango Children’s Fund may not be able to change government policies, it seeks to provide scholarships to promising children who otherwise would not be able to afford schooling. We communicate with teachers in schools in the town of Tecpán and its surrounding villages, who help us find bright young students in need of financial support. The Fund provides 50% of tuition costs of children attending private school.

Lost in Translation

2007-12-18T18:20:00.000-06:00

I wanted to put up some of the more ridiculous misunderstandings I've had due to my poor Spanish. I obviously translated these conversations from Spanish to English. Here they go:

What I meant: Let's hurry!

What I said: Let's go poop together!

----

My Counterpart: Have you ever been to the water park?

Me: How can you visit the wind?

My counterpart: No, like a park with slides and sprinklers. Have you ever been?

Me: Yeah, I've been there: I've heard of it but never been there.

----

Trying to explain falling out of my hammock and bruising my tailbone

Me: So, I was just sitting there in my hammock reading, and they shut me up.

Friend: Who made you shut up?

Me: Nobody, I was in there alone.

Friend: So what happened?

Me: They made me shut up and hit my butt on the concrete!

---

What I meant: Do you have eggs (for sale)?

What I said: Do you have testicles?

---

On my first day in country after getting dropped off in a car at my host family's.

Host Mother: So, how'd you get from the training center? Did you walk?

Me: No, I rode in on a pig.

---

Friend: So, where do you want to eat?

Me: Do you know if the f*ckers food is any good?

Friend: What?!

Me: You know, the guy who makes f*cking food -- like Chow Mein and fried rice.

---

Boss: Does Peace Corps let you ride a motorcycle?

Me: Yes, but I have to wear an orange peel on my head while I do it.

Boss: You mean a helmet?

Me: Exactly -- an orange peel.

---

While waiting to give a computer class...

Me: I want to start class. Have bulls arrived yet?

Co-worker: Sergio already left to work with the cattle.

Me: Okay, but I want to know if all the bulls have arrived yet.

Co-Worker: You should go start class. Everybody's arrived.

---

What I meant: Is your wife an indigenous Mayan?

What I said: Does your wife just use you for your money?

---

This one is actually a friend's lack of understanding of English. He called me one afternoon and we had this conversation.

Sergio: Hey, how's it going?

Me Fine. What's up?

Sergio: I need some help with some English. What's "Prayzin eekay" mean?

Me: Prazin eekay means nothing. Tell me word for word.

Sergio: Um, Praise---Eenay---Kay.

Me: Is this something religious?

Sergio: No, it came up on the office computer. Did I break the computer?

Me: No, it means press any key. Just hit a button and everything will be fine.

These aren't mine, but still fantastic anecdotes.

---

A common saying in Guatemala is "Thank God" One may say it such as "Thank God for the nice weather," "Yes, my family's fine, thank god," etc. The saying translates in Spanish as "gracias a Dios," or thanks to god. However, a Dios, as a single word, means goodbye. One volunteer, whenever anyone would say "Yes, I'm well, thanks to God," would simply say goodbye and walk away in the middle of the conversation, both of them walking away thinking the other is rude and doesn't want to talk.

---

This story may be a little bastardized, but it's mostly true.

One male volunteer still in training, lived with a host family, which included a very attractive 17-year old host sister.

Host sister: How are you doing?

Volunteer's intended response: I'm warm, but don't worry about it.

In the greatest mistranslation ever, he actually said:

"Well, I'm horny, but I don't have a penis."

---

Race and Ethnicity

2007-11-28T15:33:00.000-06:00

Race (and Ethnicity) is a subject that has paramount importance in Guatemala, as in the United States. I’d love to write a thousand blogs on race, but would like to start with a brief explanation of the racial situation in Guatmala and a story.

In Guatemala, the population is split roughly 47% ladino, 47% indigena, 5% garifuna and 1% other. But what does ladino, indigena, and garifuna mean? To an outsider, none of these words ring a bell except ladino, which sounds like (but doesn’t mean) latino. Here’s the popular history version:

Garifuna is a race of African slaves that were brought to the Eastern Guatemalan coast from the Carribean Islands during Colonial times. Some say they were brought to conduct heavy work that proved too much for indigenous slaves, mostly working on rubber plantations. They are the only blacks in Guatemala and still live on the East coast. They speak a language that’s a mixture of French, Dutch, and various African languages. The Garifuna have little to do with the arguments below, but are a major racial group in Guatemala.

Indigenas, or indigenous people, are the descendents of the Mayans. The Mayans were a great civilization about a thousand years ago that collapsed mysteriously before the arrival of the Spaniards. For a few hundred years following, they lived in simple little villages and a couple of cities that were easily conquered by the Spanish conquistadores. They were domineered by the Spanish conquerers but became considered equal after a succession of wars for Guatemalan independence between the 1500s and the 1800s. During the 1970’s and 1980’s many were killed in an “armed conflict” (often referred to as the civil war) between the government and indigenous Communist guerrilas. Racism is minimal today in Guatemala. Indigenous people often speak an indigenous language (there are over 20 separate indigenous languages in Guatemala), women wear a style of clothing that antedates Columbus, and generally live in the Western Highlands of Guatemala.

Ladinos are the descendants of the Spanish colonists. Nearly all ladinos are a mixture of Spanish colonists and some indigenous genes. Ladinos wear Western-style clothing, speak Spanish, and mostly live in the East or the Central region.

The Case of Ingrid de Güitz
Ingrid, a friend and neighbor of mine, is sister-in-law to the mother of my host family. She is about 27 and has two children. Her husband is a Mayan priest and leads traditional Mayan ceremonies at the ruins of the pre-Columbian city Iximché. As all relgions transform over centuries, the Mayan religion has as well since 1492. It remains the clear descendant religion of Mayan civilization.

Ingrid’s children, Alicia and Juan Pablo (named after Pope John Paul II), understand and have a fair proficiency of the indigenous language Kaqchikel. Ingrid only wears traditional Mayan clothing, and her daughter wears traditional clothing on Sundays and Western-style (or Ladino style) clothing the rest of the time.

The mystery of Ingrid comes in when one learns that she identifies herself as Ladino. Despite marriage to a Mayan priest, her traditional Mayan clothing, and her children identification as indigenous, she herself does not speak Kaqchikel. But what happened? Did Ingrid change her race, or are we using an incorrect definition of ladino?

Grafting the Family Tree
Ingrid’s case is not rare. I have learned of several other ladinos who practice uniquely indigenous cultural norms, such as dress, language, and religion. Much more common, is the indigenous woman who stops wearing traditional clothing to get a job in the capital (where racism against indigenous people remains strong). A great number of young indigenous children never learn to speak the indigenous language of their forebears.

What, then, makes a person indigenous or ladino? Is it genetics? If all ladinos have a little indigenous blood from their history, that would mean any ladino also qualifies as an indigenous person, unless ladino or traces of Spanish blood made a person ladino, despite a portion of their blood being indigenous. But that wouldn’t work, because it’s been shown that many indigenous people have some uniquely European genetic traits such as blue eyes or male pattern baldness. Does that mean that families, living for centuries as indigenous, could find out they’re actually ladino?

Racial Vertigo
The strangest twist to racial definitions in Guatemala is that Ladino is even more inclusive than originally thought. The concept of Ladino grew out of the early 20th century, and was meant to represent everyone in the nation that was not Garifuna or Guatemalan. In reality, this included a mass of Korean and German families, who may have no blood from anyone from Spain or the New World. What of them?

Are races historical?
One may argue that, while racial separations may be muddled today, the major races – Asian, African, European, Indian, and Native American – have remained fairly constant and intelligible, with the fuzzy edges only existing in the past 200 years. But is that really true? Two-hundred years ago, a European would consider there to be a great number more races. Before Pan-European that became prevalent in the United States after Slavery and in Europe after the World Wars, European nations considered themselves of many races. Benjamin Franklin called Germans “the stupidist race on the planet.” During World War II, Adolf Hitler sought genocide on Jews, whom he described as a race – a common perception of Jews of the time, despite Judiasm having roots in the mother’s identification as Jewish or one’s credo. During the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the Irish and Eastern Europeans were considered separate races from other Europeans, and complained of it as “racial discrimination.”

Race is not Genetic
As dozens of social scientists repeatedly point out, race is not a genetic trait but a social trait. At best, one can say that race is a social descriptor that holds roots loosely based on family history, culture, and appearance (which, yes, is partly based on genes).

Biography: Don Alejandro

2007-11-24T19:28:00.000-06:00

Don Alejandro Tzaj is probably my favorite co-worker at my office. Don Alejandro isn’t actually his name, though – Don is simply a title for men worthy of respect for their age or esteem. Don Alejandro didn’t gain this title for his age, though – he’s no older than several of the other co-at almost forty – and his position in the organization is the groundskeeper. For some reason, though, I’ve never heard anyone refer to him simply as Alejandro. As the groundskeeper, I became comfortable around him faster than most of the others, and I admit it was partly because of I made the classist assumption that I’d be less likely to feel dumb around the guy pushing a broom.
Don Alejandro has seven children, varying from 3 years old to 18. As far as I can tell, all of his children are very bright. His oldest, a son, achieved the rare feat of completing high school, something done by less than 10% of all Guatemalans. His second child, a daughter, completed middle school and is currently taking typing classes. Meanwhile, most girls leave school by the fourth grade. She was named one of the Mayan Princesses (something like a local beauty pageant). Her father was so protective of her during the town feria dances that not even the gringo was allowed to dance with her.
I got to know Don Alejandro and his family because his son receives a scholarship to go to 7th grade through the Chimaltenango Children’s Education Fund, which I help out with (and is looking for donors). Don Alejandro comes monthly to meet regarding the scholarship and I began meeting with his third child, Otoniel as a tutor around May. Otoniel is one of the brightest kids I have ever met – I help him mostly in his worst subject (English), but helped him a little studying for some others -- any thirteen-year-old who can multiply 17 and 38 in his head in 20 seconds deserves a little help remembering how to say strawberry in English.
The family of seven children and two parents live in a house of one ten-by-fifteen feet room. It contains two large beds and is behind Don Alejandro’s parents’ house. The kitchen is a small separate shelter holding a wood stove. Don Alejandro asked me whether high school scholarships were available, since 2008 will be Otoniel’s last year in middle school. I told that we don’t right now and I couldn’t promise anything.
One of the hardest things about being a Peace Corps volunteer is saying “No.” Particularly as a Peace Corps volunteer, you find yourself frustrated at not being a superhero and solve all the problems you see. Your rewards for your work come primarily from seeing people’s lives improve, opportunities open, hopes realized. I constantly try to remind myself that while one can only do a few small things to change the world, it’s incredibly important that one still does them.

Guatemalan Elections

2007-11-05T19:44:00.000-06:00

After roughly a year of flyers, radio jingles, rallies, and outright gifts, the Guatemalan election season is over. Guatemalan elections have a dozen similarities and differences with the United States election season.

Basics of Guatemalan Elections
To understand elections in the U.S., one must understand electoral colleges, the difference between the House and the Senate, and, until recently, be able to contrast perforated and hanging chad. In Guatemala, there's a House of Representatives, but not a Senate. Elections come in two rounds: During the first round, mayors, Congressmen, and Presidents are on the ballot. Everyone gets elected that day but Presidents, who have a second round a month or two later, when the top two presidential candidates have a second vote.

The Political Parties
Guatemala's system of political parties is incredibly weak. While in the United States we complain of an impenetrable two-party system, Guatemala's political parties rise and fall with the tides. Never has one political party won the presidency more than once: On the contrary, any political party that wins the presidency is considered to have the "kiss of death," and shrinks until it ceases to exist. The party of the third to last president lost its last few representatives in Congress this election season and disbanded. What remain the same, however, is the people who run these parties. Often the party strategists, and even the presidential candidates, will come up election after election under different party names.
Even after the elections, Congressmen politicians change parties (usually due to bribes from other parties). Within two days of the congressional elections, a dozen of the new elects changed parties.

"The ____ Vote"
In the United States, there's a long list of special demographics, from racial blocks, such as "The black vote," "the Hispanic vote," and so on, to single-issue voters, such as "The family values vote," "The pro-life vote," "The women's rights vote," and so on. In Guatemala, such voting demographics are significantly less important to both campaign styles and the ultimate turnout. Special demographics sometimes are divided between Catholic and Evangelicals, those within the capital city and outside, and, to a lesser extent, indigenous vs. ladino. Of these divisions, Strict Evangelicals and those living near the capital were the only two groups seriously considered cohesive groups. Generally, geographic division can be considered a more vital. Past presidential candidates have lost for not paying enough attention to one of the three major geographic regions: the cowboy-ladino east, the indigenous highlands, or the urban capital region. In yesterday's vote, the winner captured every department outside of the urban capital region, and lost every one within.

What's in a president?
While in the United States most voters only come out for the Presidential elections and ignore the rest, the opposite is true in Guatemala. Citizens seem to feel distant from their Presidents, who determine laws and bureaucracies that little affect their daily lives. Mayoral elections, however, are very popular and have a major effect on people's lives. For the first round of elections, which included mayors and Congressman, roughly 5 million citizens voted. For the second round, electing the President from two choices, roused only 1.5 million voters.

The Issues
In the popular and reputable Prensa Libre Newspaper, there was an article yesterday arguing that there has been one primary issue in nearly every presidency since the end of the armed conflict in Guatemala. For the previous president, it was corruption. During the 2007 campaign, it was violence. All of the major candidates had to give significant lip service to how to fight the perceived rising crime in Guatemala. Gangs, drug trafficking, and organized crime have been covering the newspapers for the past few years. The common criticism of the current president has been his in ability to counter crime, particularly in the capital region of the country. More perennial issues include poverty, corruption, and jobs.

The Candidates
To simplify, I'm only going to discuss the two candidates who made it to the general elections in detail. Information is based on what I've read, heard, and found in Wikipedia and the candidate's websites

Ing. Álvaro Colom
Colom comes from a political family from the Capital. His political experience has been as the first Director of a anti-poverty government organization, known as the National Foundation for Peace, and the Minister of the Economy, one of the two largest government departments. He was best known as the second place candidate in the previous presidential election, and was considered an unlikely win due to that connection. He's a center-left candidate who had a rather traditional campaign. During the second round, he garnered support with his slogan, "Intelligence against Violence," to combat his earlier image of not facing the primary issue head on (and to suggest his opponent's lack thereof). He purported himself as the wiser of the two candidates also by widely promoting his Governing Plan, a large document detailing his plans once in office.

General Otto Pérez Molina
Perez was by far the most interesting candidate throughout the election. Leading the younger and smaller "Patriotic Party," He chose the icon of a white clenched fist, and making his slogan "Mano Dura," or strong hand. The icon and slogan had been used before in Latin America by candidates of intolerant regimes that could safely be called dictators who imprisoned hundreds of citizens in jail as suspected criminals. The firm stance resonated well with many in the urban capital who felt that their country had fallen into the hands of politicians that were inept in fighting crime or in bed with criminals. Pérez led an impressive campaign, with radio jingles that were considered responsible for winning the "children's vote" throughout the nation. His campaign was based on simplifying positions and clearly promoting his platform without bogging down in details. His later motto, "firm hand, head, and heart," sought to soften his image. Pérez easily promoted himself as the outsider to political corruption, given that his daughter was wounded by masked gunmen within days of forming his party. The same day, another woman was murdered after lunching with the wife of Pérez. Pérez, a graduate of the infamous School of the Americas, had served as the nation's director of intelligence and army inspector-general. He was one of the generals involved in the coup d'etat of dictator Rios Montt in the early 90's.

Rigoberta Menchú
Of international interest was that Nobel prize-winner Rigoberta Menchú also ran during the first round of elections, to win only 5% of the vote. Menchú, an indigenous woman who fought peacefully during the armed conflict, gained international attention for her book describing the genocide that occurred here. Breaking with tradition, she refused to support either candidate for the second round, claiming that she suffered from "black campaign" tactics from both parties. from both of them during her candidacy.

Gender And Development 1

2007-10-30T20:01:00.000-06:00

A concept that pops its head up regularly in community development is gender. Now, the word gender usually brings to mind images of glass ceilings, sexual harassment cases, and transvestites. The truth is, gender is by definition a topic of the mundane -- of grocery shopping, of changing diapers, and of signing checks.

Now, it seems impossible that any academic can discuss gender without opposing it to sex. The generally accepted idea is that gender is all of the cultural baggage (from cooking to crying) attached to a gender. I guess that’s right, but I really think that gender is just one more thing that flavors our relationships – with men, women, boys, girls, and ourselves. Anyway, I figured I’d put up a blog about gender in Guatemala.

Some economists claim that 95% of all productive work done in the world is done by women.

all, I want to say that Guatemala is not behind the United States or any other country when it comes to gender. That seems to suggest that some enlightenment exists, and that we already’ve got it. It also suggests that they’re bound to get there, which one should never assume about rights, as ideas about equality and rights have fluctuated throughout history with dictators and demands.

Men's Lives
Men in my community are the leaders of their family. They hold the final word on where the money goes, where it comes from, who goes to school, and who is old enough to date. They are the tortilla-winners, the deed-holders, and the meat-carvers. It is both their right and responsibility to provide for their families and make good decisions on their best interest. Men aren’t particularly active fathers. They are, however, expected to help care for their parents when older. Men are usually more literate than their wives, speak better Spanish, and are expected to manage any business that requires a signature or reading something. Boys often complete to sixth grade, and are often favoured in the classroom.
Men own 99% of the world's land.

Boys often start working for an income at a young age and are in charge of having the initiative regarding dating. A successful man is considered a man who makes money. His peers see his success through the man in town – what he buys, what he wears, if he owns a car or motorcycle instead of taking the bus or walking.

Women's Lives
Guatemalan women stand by their man. One marries a man that one thinks will be able to provide for you and your children. If men are the breadwinners, women are the bread-makers. Women do all of the work that doesn’t have a monetary value – making the meals, raising the children, and keeping the house clean. Some women cannot leave the house without permission. Women also often hold some official economic job on the side, such as raising chickens, selling their husband’s produce in the market, selling tortillas, or another way of gaining a small income. Women are expected to be good caretakers of their husbands and children. Food must be ready for their husbands when he wants it, children must be clothed, fed, and punished when necessary. Within the community, women maintain the community ties and news. Interfamilial ties are often maintained by women washing their clothes together or visiting each other. Women, it appears, maintain larger familial ties, as well. Two sisters-in-law are likely to be much closer than two brothers-in-law. Women never have their own bank accounts, own their own land, or run their own businesses. This would not only be an affront to tradition, but would suggest that her husband is incapable of providing. A women’s success is seen through her house and her children – their clothes, what she feeds her family, what she has in her house.
Now, no matter how hard I try, it’s impossible to explain the two roles with seeing how these two roles could end up unfair.

As with most cultural pressures, they’re unreasonable to attain. No man can provide everything his family needs and will make every decision in the form in the best interests of the wife or child and ignore his own personal preferences. Simply as the bearer of the money and land, it’s likely he’ll buy a cold drink on a hot day even though he doesn’t buy one for every one of his family members.

One may argue that each has particular powers –women have power over social affairs and how to raise the children, after all. This is true, but it doesn’t take a genius to realize that the person with the house and money holds the trump card to any major disagreement.

Review: Women are the caretakers, manage daily goings-on, more strongly affect children, and have a weaker ability to make major decisions. Men decide what to do with most disposable income, are more educated, know how to conduct business, and have the final say.

Now, when working in community development, you have to decide how to follow the cultural rules and how to break them. You can’t entirely break the rules, or nobody will listen. However, if you follow all of the rules you’re not really bringing about any change – even poverty is part of the cultural norms. Now, in culture, I want to demonstrate how the cards for economic development begin stacked against women and children.

Suppose that all the income in a small town comes from farming potatoes, and a group comes in and promises to teach the farmers make 30% more potatoes on the same land. The community project is approved by the World Bank and the U.S. Agency for International Development because it requires the farmers to invest some of the time and money themselves, and it teaches the farmers. This is lauded as a move towards sustainable development. The donor, however, accepts the town’s gender roles and doesn’t want to be seen as forcing their culture on the town. . The donors expect income to go up, and measure their success using the percentage of malnourished children and number of children completing the 6th grade.

Five year later, the plan is a success and each farmer is making roughly 25% more every year. In the town, income has increased, school attendance has increased slightly, and malnutrition is roughly the same. Donors don’t understand why the school attendance is up only a little and confused why nutrition is no different, but consider the project a success, because it does has some measurable impact.

What’s the story through the lens of gender? Men were given the opportunity to make more money. They go to classes, making them around the house slightly less and temporarily making less money. Men then make more money. They initially spend a large portion of their new income on luxury (as we all do) and then increase a portion of their luxury and a portion of what goes to the family. They even learn that education is valuable, since education enabled them to grow more potatoes. They send their sons to further schooling to speak better Spanish and maybe acquire a technical skill to possibly get a good job in the town. The daughters do not receive more education, because minimal literacy and arithmetic is all one needs to care for children and the house. Daughters leave school by 3rd grade and never are fully comfortable writing or reading.

Now, the interesting part of this scenario is that no moral criticisms can be made. A person received more money, used a portion for luxury and a portion for necessities and investment in their children. The money for investment in the future went to more or less replicate the situation. Had a woman received a greater income, her disposable money would have gone to buying more meat for her family, a bed, and new clothes for her children. In addition, the situation would be further replicated. If schooling was necessary, more girls may go to school. If freedom from the house was required, women would receive greater ability to go outside of the house.

Many fear that by changing ideas about gender, class, and race, we’re imposing Western ideals on other countries. While yes, we are impressing different ideals, development projects always affect culture. Any project that does not challenge a cultural norm is going to reinforce it in some form. While projects can’t seek to massively change cultural norms, one must be aware of how it is reinforcing and challenging cultural norms.

It is often argued that gender, race, and class should be considered in development work on moral grounds. The best argument for considering these components of a culture, though, is because development projects that understand them are more likely to succeed in whatever their goals are.

Ferias: Church & State in Colonial Guatemala

2007-10-08T14:33:00.000-06:00

As a former colony of Catholic Spain, Guatemala’s culture and history are richly steeped in Roman Catholicism. During the colonization of Latin America,( which coincided a peak of Roman Catholic power in Europe), political and city planning was heavily influenced by the Church. As n most of the world’s major religions, they were one of the first international bureaucracies, with political with administrative procedures more advanced than most nations.

While Spain may have had a system of dividing its conquered lands up, appointed governors over vast provinces, and systems of taxation, it was the Catholic Church that held a strong role in more active and direct connection with its citizenry in other means. For instance, it was the Catholic Church that throughout colonies was responsible in converting local populations into those with a personal allegiance to European colonialist culture (through baptism). As for the subdivision of vasts regions into smaller municipal units, every town in Guatemala is recognized by a significant Catholic Church in its town center. While a municipal office was likely also present, it was going to Church regularly that gave reason for people living outside of towns to give make them feel an identity and attachment to the town, as well as to create communal bonds with its larger residency. In addition, the evangelical fervor of Catholic missionaries made them often the first representatives of Europe ever seen by most populations in Guatemala.

One of the most obvious influences religion has had on Spanish colonies is the naming of towns, made obvious even by maps in the United States. The former Spanish colony that made up of much of California includes the towns of San Francisco (named for St. Francis), Los Angeles (The Angels), San Diego, San Jose, and Sacramento (as in The Holy Sacraments). Further Southeast of California, they founded Corpus Christi, and San Antonio. While these names are those of the cities, they are also the patron saints of the first churches erected in the town. As church and state were much more blurred during colonization, it's worth noting a person of the time would refer them as the patron saint of the entire town.

For those of you not familiar with Roman Catholic tradition, each church is given a particular patron saint (or sometimes miracle or mystery). That saint is usually given special consideration by the people of that church, asking the saint for particular help or guidance in prayer, as well as celebrating one day a year that is recognized by the entire Catholic Church as that Saint’s special day every year. Generally, this gives the congregation a feeling of special relationship with that saint. Don’t think too hard on these realities, because they’re truly more complicated. Simply put, a church is to a patron saint as a high school is to a mascot.

In Guatemala, it’s safe to say every town has one church, and therefore one patron saint. During that particular’s saint’s day, the town has a large celebration. Just like Christmas and Easter didn’t start out with spiked egg nog and mashmallow rabbits, these celebrations started out purely as religious services.

Somewhere along the way, a fireworks stand, a carnival owner, and a taco stand got together and decided to make a buck from the holday.
The week to two-week long period building up to the day of the patron saint are now known as the feria (pron. fairy-uh), which means fair or holiday. While I suspect that the word originally translated better as holiday, travelling carnival rides, funnel cakes and junk food stands, concerts and dances, have transformed the week to better resemble the former translation.

In Tecpan, the patron saint is St. Francis of Asisi, whose official day is October fourth. The carnival rides began setting up 10 days before hand. Before the end of September, three ferris wheels had been erected within a block of the town center, in the town plaza and nearby empty lots. Stands selling peanuts, cotton candy, rock candy, lollipops, (lousy) pizza, and dozens of local sweets had filled the streets within a block of the town center, closing off all traffic. Even before the junk food and the ferris wheels came, stands holding decade-old arcade games that appeared to had been refurbished into new machines were put up in the town center, attracting every boy from 6 to 16. Every day, more vendors appeared, transforming the downtown into an unrecognizeable midway.

I’d like to give interesting anecdotes about the feria, but I felt like I was at a fair in the States. People from all the nearby towns came, we laughed till our stomachs hurt on the ferris wheel, and made ourselves ill from too much grease and sweets.

I did get a couple of photos of a tradition I’ve wanted to capture for a little while, known as the Torito. Torito, meaning little bull, is something out of an 11-year-old boy’s dream. A small wooden encasement that resembles a doghouse has a bamboo cube attached around it, resembling the dimensions a telephone booth (the doghouse two or three feet high inside the six-foot telephone booth). Then, dozens and dozens of bottle rockets, spinners, and other firecrackers are atached to the “telephone booth.” A long, slow-burning fuse is then connected to the hundreds of fireworks,. The doghouse may be painted to roughly resemble the top half of a bull. The night of the celebrations, two men lift the contraption, revealing that the bottom of the “dog house” has no bottom, and the bravest (read dumbest) person on hand has the contraption placed atop him. The doghouse portion on the bottom of the booth is meant to act as a shield against him against what happens next. A crowd gathers round and, you guessed it, the fuse is lit. The man inside walks to music, resembling a bull. The fuse, which takes 10 minutes to get to the final fireworks, goes around, lighting pounds of gunpowder-propelled rockets, which are designed mostly to shoot into the air or spin. However, these contraptions are not exactly NASA-designed, and rockets frequently go astray and hit or nearly hit watchers. One torito used during the feria I saw launch a rocket directly into a man’s chest – and did it again three minutes later to the same man. No injuries have occurred in any of the torito showings I’ve been in, but the odds are that it happens. During one of these showings, I watched a large portion of lit fireworks actually fall off of the contraption, spinning and jumping into a large crowd of people, who actually moved toward it to see it better. It’s possible the man inside the booth is actually the smartest person at the event, considering he has some level of protection against the object of destruction. The fuse usually winds upward through the booth, and a large, more awe-inspiring fireworks display set on the top of the booth. The aerial rockets, wihle impressive and exciting, are hard to watch while trying to be prepared for whatever next may fire off the dancing bomb and fire into the crowd.

Culture Shock

2007-08-11T16:39:00.000-06:00

So I'm back in the States for a brief vacation until the 19th of August. For anyone curious, My phone number while here is 608-460-9390. Feel free to call!

My visit in the States has been very relaxing for the most part. I'm in Madison, WI, and spend quite a bit of time in Coffee Shops and just sitting around. I have to say, though, that culture shock has definitely affected me here. Just my day of getting here was very odd, because I woke up in one culture and went to bed in another. I wrote a list during the of oddities that happened through the course of my day travelling from my Guatemalan town, through airports, and to Madison, WI. Below is a list of things that struck me as strange in the course of the day:

A person speaking English to me in the airport, without first asking me if I speak English in Spanish.
While buying Cuban rum at Duty Free, saleswoman telling me "Its only $8.00," which is more than I spend on weekly groceries.
Speaking with an English speaker that spoke no Spanish
Speaking with a woman who recently adopted a Guatemalan toddler
Immaculate Floors in public spaces
How much more space airplane seats have than Guatemalan public transportation
That everyone has a sexy new cell phone or some other techie toy
That no one questioned me bringing tortillas and tamales through.
Upon seeing the nonresidents customs line being shorter, the American saying, "wish I was an immigrant."
That nobody working on the ground for American Airlines could speak Spanish
Nobody saying "you're welcome" -- ever
How tiny US coins are
How silly gringos in suits look siting on the floor in airports
Every time I hear English, I assume I know the speaker
Not being treated special because I'm white

That's it for now -- call me if you want to talk on American phone rates!

Biographies.

2007-07-15T20:02:00.001-06:00

After living in Guatemala for 9 months, much of my life feels (and objectively is) mundane. While shopping in an open-air market and eating tortillas and beans three meals a day may at first seem exotic, soon you're reaching for something to spice things up (Chile Cobanero works well).

While much of my life feels mundane and leaves me with little to write, I'm going to write a few entries on a subject that never ceases to surprise and amaze me: people. Following will be the first of a series of brief biographies of people that I meet.

One of the reasons for this is because I find that while many of us think of the situations in many developing countries tragic, we see the tragedy in a way that we can't humanly cope with: Starvation of hundreds of millions and lack of basic education for more may affect us for a moment, you can't sink your teeth into unfathomable statistics. The stories of friends and acquaintances, however, are something we can relate to and carry with us through our understanding of the world. B

esides, people have found math boring since it was invented, but have talked about other people since we evolved vocal chords.

The names in my biographies will be changed due for the sake of privacy and a poor memory.

Earthquake on 13 June 2007

2007-06-14T20:15:00.000-06:00

On the 13th of June, a massive event changed the temporary face of Guatemala: At 2:30pm Eastern Time, CNN reported an earthquake of massive and deadly porportions -- a 6.4 on the Richter scale that rocked Guatemala and would likely result in the deaths of hundreds if not thousands.

The problem with this report was that it wasn't exactly true. Furthermore, CNN Latin America apparently translated the word Earthquake to Terremoto. In Guatemala (and I suspect all of Central America), there are three words for earthquakes: temlor (like tremor), sismo (as in seismic event) and terremoto, which is an earthquake that has caused some manner of destruction. In addition, the US Meteorological service, which reported as a 6.4 on the Richter scale, overestimated, as it turned out to be a 5.6. Now, while a 0.8 difference doesn't seem like a big issue, one must remember that the Richter scale is logarithmic with a base 100, which means an earthquake at 6.4 is roughly eighty times as strong as a 5.6. Oops.

After the CNN report, other news stations issued similar reports, and Guatemala went into a panic. Everyone from the Capital City police to the Department of Agriculture issued alerts, and the news interviewed locals nearest to the earthquake and how they faired. Turns out not one house was destroyed, and not one person in the nation has been reported injured, not even slipped in the bathtub. Well, better safe than sorry.

2007-06-07T20:23:00.000-06:00

This is a long-ago set of photos from Easter and when Laura was here last. Enjoy!

Another Day in the Life

2007-05-17T20:28:00.000-06:00

I was recently told that I don't put much about myself in the blogs lately, so I thought I'd give a personal account. Lately, I've been invited to be part of a project by the health team of my host organization. They are working in roughly 25 rural communities around Tecpán. While the health workers offer inexpensive medical consultations and give classes on how to improve family nutrition to women, an agriculture technician and I work with the husbands on various topics. For the most part, the men were offered help making an experimental field where they can try out new crops. As most projects don't work quite as they are originally designed, I was invited along to facilitate talks on commercialization.
This has given me a great chance to see the dozens of rural communities of my area that I otherwise would have no invitation to visit. It lets me drum up business to find groups that need my help but don't live as close to a major municipality (and therefore are overlooked by most groups offering support).

I recently went out to a community roughly two hours away from my town (and any other significant town). We rode out for about 45 minutes on paved road, and then completely left any familiar civilization. We rode on this one-lane path for a while, where I fell asleep. I thoroughly enjoy my time with those of the health workers. They kid me about cooking my own food and I kid them about having a dozen children. All and all, I've learned how strong of an impact you make on people through idle conversation. We pass through beautiful countryside, and we pass a point that has became familiar on these trips: where concrete houses end. Concrete, the most common building material in Guatemala, is not used by the poor. The poor likely live in houses made of sod and stone (not unlike those of homesteaders in the United States) and of wood. The wood houses concern me even more than the dirt houses, because they are usually so sparsely covered that the light and smoke from their kitchen fires stream out between the cracks at night so that you can see them preparing dinner or children playing on the dirt floor. I don't know how anyone in these houses can sleep on the cold, windy nights. In these areas, children have little black spots on their faces and arms, a disease simply caused by not washing enough. While you can't help but feel sympathy, I admit it makes me happy to be reminded that I am lucky enough to be able to help people in such a situation.

Once we arrived in the tiny town, we parked the pickup, with its six passengers and bed full of medical supplies, we park at the three-room school. There we meet up with two other compatriots that arrived on motorcycle before us. We all help prepare the school's office as the doctor's office. Meanwhile we met the head teacher, chat for a few minutes and shared the requisite morning snack (today, a hot corn drink and sweetbread). We find chairs to set up outside as a waiting area, and bring a few groceries to the school's kitchen where the women meet and learn a new recipe. Today we're working in a community that grows a lot of lettuce, so they are teaching how to make a salad with mangos, peanuts, sweet peppers and mustard. The other agricultural technician and I scope out an area that we can use to work with the men. We usually find some form of small office. Today we find a small wooden building that has a light inside, but we find out halfway through the talk that it also has a lot of africanized (killer) bees. No one gets stung, but it is undoubtedly distracting. I give my standard workshop, which has the main point of convincing farmers that good products mean nothing if you sell all of your product to the only guy in the area with a pickup. You're still going to get lousy prices if you're at the mercy of one buyer.
My charla went extremely well and the group decides to talk over the ideas of organizing into a cooperative or finding a way to rent a pickup themselves. I'm always excited when people begin with these prospects, because they sometimes think this the window of how to get out of the viscous cycle of being a poor farmer. Of course, it's only a part of it, but it's a good start. Sometimes they think they're putting the cart before the horse by worrying about selling a product before having their panacea product (broccoli if you're a lettuce farmer, lettuce if you're a carrot farmer, carrots if your a broccoli farmer, etc.), but sometimes not.

After we all finished up our work in the community, we packed the pickup and went to a tienda. After buying corn chips and sodas, we joke about our project designed to help poor families eat better. The doctor of the group says he wants to stop at a church we drove by on the way. After about 20 minutes of driving, we pull off the road near an nondescript house. We all get out of the pickup and chat with the woman of the house, who is sifting stones and leaves out of a bag of corn that was obviously the family's harvest and primary food. Just beyond the house is a concrete shack of roughly 15 x 15 feet inside. The floor, we notice, is an odd-looking old orange square tile. We realize that this is be beginnings of the remains of a small compound for the church. Just past the shack is a small white chapel.

The chapel has beautiful cedar woodwork inside, and a small altar with various pictures of
the Virgin Mary and Jesus pasted on the walls behind it. A small piece of twine hangs down from a bell just above the entry to the church.

Turns out the chapel was built four or five centuries ago. We suddenly notice the strangely ornate pila (concrete reservoir used for keeping water) The pila is obviously part of the colonial ruins. It was likely part of a large Spanish colony on the land.

Someone mentions that in the past, Spanish colonists built churches near or on top of important Mayan sites to ¨compete¨ against Mayan visitations and to encourage another way. We look around and notice various ruins of houses on the field in front of the church, now enjoyed by two grazing mules. They appear markedly different from the Spanish ruins, and we notice several retaining walls made out of a familiar rectangular rock. It looks very similar to the stone used in Iximché, the ruins of a Mayan city near where I live. As we left, we noticed several other ruins of one civilization or another, including a few other pilas in the middle of fields of corn.

Indigenous Guatemalans have something only a handful of people in the Western Hemisphere have: the ability to trace their history for centuries, and know where they, as a people have come from.

AIDS and Guatemala: Demographics

2007-05-05T17:48:00.000-06:00

This will likely be the first in a common future topic: HIV and AIDS. Peace Corps Guatemala is starting to provide resources for volunteers to have secondary projects to help deal with the AIDS pandemic.

HIV is a problem in Guatemala?
HIV is a problem everywhere. The only place where less than 1 in a thousand people have HIV is the island of Svalbard.

In Guatemala, the World Health Organization estimates roughly 80,000 people live are infected, or 1.1% of the population. In the United States, the prevalance rate is about 0.7%.

Generally, there are three different demographics to be discussed with AIDS. The highest-risk group includes men who have sex with men, sex workers, and needle-users.

Men who have sex with men (MSM): We are not talking about all men who have sex with men, but those who have unprotected sex. In places where this is a very taboo topic, the rate at which it spreads is much higher because there is no education on the risk.

Sex Workers: While most people imagine prostitutes in Times Square, the vast majority of sex workers in the world don't consider themselves prostitutes. It's generally women who have sex with multiple men who support them in some way. In Guatemala, it may be a relationship somewhat like a mistress or a woman with a job that pays a little and she has a few lovers that take care of her in some economic way. Imagine a truck stop waitress who knows a few men that visit and help her pay the light bill.

Needle-users: While in rich nations we're talking about drug users only, tatoos and unclean practices for medicine have been a major problem as well in some places. In Honduras, for example, drugs using needles don't exist, but tatooing has posed a problem.

While these groups are at the highest risk, a medium-risk group is actually a higher number of people with HIV very often. These are people who have exposure to high-risk groups.

Generally, we're talking about people that have sex with multiple partners. One may imagine the woman you see at the bar night after night, but that's the rarity. We're usually talking about people that consider themselves monogomous, but practice what is referred to as serial monogomy. The way a serial killer is someone who kills multiple times, someone who practices serial monogomy is monogomous with multiple people. You may have unprotected sex with one partner, and then break up and have unprotected sex with another partner five months later.

In Guatemala, we're often discussing men with either a mistress or who has ever solicited a sex worker. I would guess that this demographic includes a third of all men.

The third group is that, while the lowest percentage of people in Guatemala, is still the fastest growing demographic infected with HIV.

Generally this lowest risk group generally refers to people who practice unprotected sex with one person, but does include the small percentage of abstaining people (since no one is at no-risk). The primary way one contracts the disease, sex, is usually by having sex with someone in a higher-risk group. Most often, it's an unfaithful spouse.

It's interesting to think about what group you're really in: while we generally consider people doing clearly risky behavior (heroine usage and soliciting prostitutes), what about if you've had several boyfriends with whom you had unprotected sex? How do you know you don't have it?

AIDS testing, while imperfect, is offered by most state clinics (in county seats) and countless other organizations. To find a nearby testing site in the US, visit the link below.

http://www.hivtest.org/

Stations of the Cross

2007-04-16T18:34:00.000-06:00

I constantly struggle to find topics to write in my blog. When I began living in Guatemala, and every day I was learning something new and overwhelmed by people, geography, and history. After seven months, however, everyday things, instead of inspiring curiousity and reflection, have simply become everyday things. Washing dishes in a pila is done without thought, complex polite greetings and discussions are integrated into daily conversation, and your stomach becomes so accustomed to tortillas that you don't know how to eat without one in hand.
Of the two big religous holidays (Christmas and Easter), the Catholic Church has always claimed that Easter is the more important of the two, despite Europea and North American traditions of moving trees indoors, covering presents with shiny paper, and obnoxious music outshining an egg-laying rabbit. In Guatemala, they got it right. In addition, the related celebrations (Palm Sunday, The Last Supper, The Crucifixion, and the 40 days in the desert remembered as Lent) are celebrated, creating a 51-day season of religious remembrance.
Every Friday, as in the United States, The Stations of the Cross (known simply as The Procession) is/are celebrated in Guatemala. However, instead of practicing the stations within the walls of the church, each station is a place in the town, usually in front of the house of a member of the church. Various men of the church are selected to carry a large (roughly 8 feet by 10 feet) platform, on which a statue of Jesus, dressed in a crown of thorns and a cross, is carrying the cross. During Holy Week, the men wear bright purple robes (For those who don't know, purple is used by the Catholic Church to represent the sorrow of the suffering of Christ).
The stations are made out to resemble a funeral procession. Sad songs to the tune of dirges are sung, weeping and candlelight are used (candles are linked to funerals in Guatemala), the platform often borrows styling from caskets, and the men carrying it resemble pallbarrers at a funeral.
In general, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus in Catholicism represent a fascinating paradox between joy and sorrow, victory and defeat, king and common criminal. The statue of Jesus is often dressed in kingly robes while wearing the crown of thorns and carrying a cross. The masses take the roles of both the saved and the murderers of Jesus during Holy Week, which in turn pair guilt and gratefulness within its participants. Anthropologists often link the ideas of crucifixion and resurrection with a cultural universal of death as a requisite for further life, but paradoxes found in Holy Week seem to go much further than most belief systems, connecting a much wider range of disparate ideas.
On Good Friday, a tradition in Guatemala is to make “carpets” on the streets, which the procession walk through. The carpets can take hours to make. They are made out of colored sawdust, flowers, and pine needles. Those of sawdust often use stencils to make drawings of religious symbols such as the Eucharist, crosses, roman soldiers, etc. As the procession walks through the street, the pieces of art are destroyed by those carrying the giant diorama of Jesus. During Holy Week, many processions occur, and the larger ones include a statue of Mary on a different platform following from a safe distance, can include Mary Magdalene, and can also include St. John on another platform, running around the simulated scene like a chicken with his head cut off (ironically it's a statue of St. John the Apostle, not St. John the Baptist, who was decapitated).
During the procession, the story of the Passion is recounted through the traditional 14 events marked by each station. Slight variations from the story I grew up hearing, however, do exist. For one, at the moment of Jesus' death, it is said that earthquakes, lightning, and unusual darkness fall, and the angry mob realizes that they just killed the Son of God. In addition, St. Joseph, Jesus' stepdad, supposedly helped pull Jesus down from the cross, who I was always told was dead before then. Other minor details were changed, such as “King of the Jews” wasn't written above him, but “King of Kings.” Though these differences are incredibly minor, I admit that I was surprised at the variations between stories told by the Catholic Church, despite their slightness.
I have a Jewish friend who wouldn't go to the processions because she found them to be very anti-Semitic. Though historically the execution of Jesus has been used as a reason to torment Jews, I never considered the Stations of the Cross particularly anti-Semitic, because the people of the church take the blame upon themselves as sinners for his death, not it to be the murder by an external group. I'd love to hear others' comments on the idea of the Stations as anti-Semitic.

All The Kings Horses

2007-03-27T15:30:00.000-06:00

Lauren, the suspected volunteer to be "the one who would meet the man" called me up a few days after the e-mail saying only one volunteer would meet Bush. She invited me to dinner at a local street vendor with three former Peace Corps Volunteers that were in town. When I arrive at the restaurant made of plastic tarps, I found out that the three former volunteers were current employees of the US Department of State. The purpose of the meeting was to let them get out of their local hotel where they were staying with roughly 50 other Americans working for the Secret Service, Department of State, or the White House directly. How nobody in town noticed four dozen gringos skulking around Tecpán is beyond me. They had been preparing for the visit of the head bean of the free world and needed some good Guatemalan food. They openly discussed some of the theatrical touches that had been placed on the visit, as they explained always are. In Guatemala, storefronts and rooms during holidays and celebrations are decorated with pine needles on the floor. To mimic this ´local´idea to an extravagant extreme, they covered over a kilometer of road with pine needles to which George Bush's limo was originally planned to drive on.
The following day we were invited to have pizza and beers at "there place," a hotel out of town that had been rented by the Americans and converted into the "operations center." A room adequate for a small wedding was converted into a computer lab and office, including clocks of varying time zones, computers covered with USAID stickers, and an excessive number of manila folders. And, within 2 hours, rapidly emptying pizza boxes and roughly four coolers of Guatemalan beer. While chatting over beers with various employees with the West Wing, I personally couldn't help but feel a little confused. All of them were under 35, which I was explained was young people are most likely to work campaigns, and therefore end up getting the appointments. Security workers were (unsurprisingly) all men who were (unsurprisingly) usually ex-soldiers. Other odd theatrical issues that were taken up included the issue of the stray dogs that live in the Mayan ruins that the President was visiting. While the issue of a dog attacking the leader of the free world may have entered the discussion, the larger concern was that the bomb dogs used by the secret service may end up fighting with the strays. While these military dogs likely knows 100 ways to kill a mammal with its tail, secret service warned that they would shoot the strays if they came near to avoid the risk. However, gunfire going off in a place of religious importance to the Mayan population (over 90% of the local population), especially given the U.S. support of the civil war/genocide 20 years ago. When the stray issue was mentioned to the mayor, he assured them that they would be gone by the President's arrival, which they after realized meant he would likely leave out spoiled meat to kill them. More humane ideas, such as temporarily trapping them, were tossed around afterwards. Far as I know, the stray dogs get what many Guatemalan strays get sooner or later in their life: meat marinated with anti-freeze.

All the Kings Horses

2007-03-17T09:46:00.002-06:00

Pay No Attention To the Men Behind The Curtain

Recently, I had the unique opportunity to meet two presidents: that of the United States and of Guatemala. Both of them visited three communities near where I live. The entire event was incredibly interesting, but the most enlightening and fascinating parts were long before Air Force One touched ground in Guatemala. In preparation for the President’s visit, a large troupe of workers from the U.S. Embassy to Guatemala, the West Wing of the White House, and the Secret Service among others to ensure that the visit was a success from a standpoint of security, media, and politics.
My first exposure to the possibility of a presidential visit was roughly a month beforehand. I received a phone call telling me that I was to have lunch with the Country Director of Peace Corps the following day. Actually, I thought I received a phone call to have lunch with him two days from them, but either way I was the one who looked like I forgot about the meeting. At the meeting the director and five Peace Corps volunteers were informed that there was a “possibility” for Bush to visit our town, Tecpán. Immediately following lunch, we visited the sites of all four volunteers with the director, who was supposed to make a suggestion to the ambassador on which site. We went from site to site unannounced, which made each of our partner organizations feel like the Peace Corps director had caught them with their pants down. Little did they know that his visit had virtually nothing to do with them. The Director was, under orders from the ambassador, to be more concerned with if it was too far from the road for security purposes and what each place “looked like.” It was ultimately decided that of all our sites, mine was the most photo-friendly and, being on the highway, security friendly.
The other volunteers and I were told to remain in town for the weekend (which included a person who didn’t live in our town), and that we would likely have a meeting with the attaché of the ambassador the following day. It turns out that the director decided that my site was the most, ahem, attractive site of the three for the visit. Though my office was mostly deserted this Saturday morning, I did find the three men on the grounds crew celebrating a birthday alongside 36 mostly-empty brown glass bottles (which was when I decided to work more Saturdays). They cleaned up the empties and unlocked the necessary offices.
At twelve-hundred the black American-made SUVs pulled in for our 11:00am appointment. While walking through the offices, the attaché told me of great ideas he had for photo opportunities, such as women dressed in full traditional Mayan clothing working in our computer lab, I explained to the man with the title of a handbag that the organization was affiliated with Opus Dei and had an unwritten policy of not working with women, but I was sure that we could rent-a-group from a neighboring women’s organization.
After an hour long visit which did not include a free lunch, he told me and the other volunteers (who said less than 20 words combined in that hour) that nothing was guaranteed but I’d likely meet with somebody else Monday morning at 10 o’clock, and he’d let me know as soon as he knew.
Monday morning at 9:00am, I received a telephone call telling me that they weren’t going to visit, after all, and the person calling didn’t know whether that meant I was off the visit list (note: caller was the Peace Corps Director). All was well enough, because that meant I didn’t have to go to the office and explain one more group of people. When I did arrive at the office, I was politely reminded that when white visitors come, we make sure there’s coffee and snacks available and that nobody is caught with said pants down. I told them that the visit was unannounced, and that my pants were in a similar position. I wasn’t however, allowed to tell them the president may come and that my pants were more likely soiled than theirs.
In the following three weeks, I received no contact from the Peace Corps director, the Embassy, or Secret Service. Neither did any volunteer. A week before the arrival of President Bush, I receive an e-mail saying that possibly one volunteer from the Tecpán area would meet the President, but not indicating which.

Immigration and Guatemala

2007-03-06T17:44:00.000-06:00

Recently I have been approached by several Guatemalans for help or advice on immigrating to the US. While there is little you can actually do for a person who seeks help, the experience can help learn a lot about the phenomenon of immigration.

Immigration to the United States is not only a common issue in Guatemala, but one of the largest sector of income to the country (by remittances). Guatemala is one of the 10 countries that represent over 50% of all immigration to the United States. Of the 160,000 Guatemalans that immigrated to the United States in 2000, roughly nine percernt were legal immigrants.

Why does immigration seem like an impossible matter for our country to manage? Is it that easy to get into the country?

First of all, it should be recognized that immigration is a very important topic to voters. The two effects of this are: immigration policy is constantly being reformed and reconsidered, and no politician will advocate an unpopular opinion or bill on the subject. While the first would suggest that sooner or later we should get really good at figuring out what to do, the second may suggest that experts, complicated suggestions, and unseemly ideas may be rejected outright.

We should also differences in perception of immigration between illegal immigrants to the US and residents. In the United States, it is shameful to be an illegal immigrant or hire illegal immigrants, because unemployment in the USA still exists. The sources of immigrants are assumed to be poor and full of unskilled labor.

In Guatemala and many other places, illegal immigration is considered a respectable way of providing for your family. In addition, illegal immigrants are from upper-middle class to the poorest of Guatemalans. Masons, construction workers, farmers who graduated high school, considered skilled labor in Guatemala, may leave careers if they are able to immigrate and get a job in the US.

Another difference is the presumed length of time. While in the united states we discuss "immigration issues," the vast majority of those working illegally in the States don't consider themselves immigrants, and most aren't. They are migrant workers. A large portion seek to enter the States, work for a brief period of time to build up a nest egg, buy a house, etc. and then return to life with their families. After all, while making money in the States is better than in Guatemala, life without your family is hard. In addition, the pay only gives you an advantage because of converting dollars to another form of money. With a minimum-wage pay in the states, you can live like upper-middle class in Guatemala, or dirt poor in the US. There is no advantage of moving your family to the US permanently in most cases.

The reality is a mix of both immigration and migration. Often, while in the US, migrants make new families, and find it very difficult to leave and return illegally for holidays, etc.

Of the 21 million immigrants in the United States, nine million are there illegally. One last point I want to make is that anything short of shooting at least 5% of all immigrants that enter the U.S. is not sufficient to convince people it's not worth the legal and physical risk to get to the U.S. People will risk a lot to feed their loved ones. Unless it is physically impossible or a higher risk of death, people won't stop.

These ideas don't provide many answers, I know. Personally, the temporary worker program is a good idea, but still so many bureaucratic barriers and the small number of immigrants that can use this program hinder it. If you have any better ideas, write your federal representatives.

For more information:
Migration Policy Institute

For Fact Sheets:
Legal Immigration
Illegal Immigration

Article:
"What Are `The Jobs Americans Won't Do?´"

The Right to Return to New Orleans

2007-03-01T19:08:00.000-06:00

Most of you know that I spent a bit of time working in New Orleans after the hurricane. This article was sent to me by a friend, and it illustrates both her experience and hers.

By BILL QUIGLEY

Each morning, Debra South Jones drives 120 miles into New Orleans to cook
and serve over 300 hot free meals each day to people in New Orleans East,
where she lived until Katrina took her home. Ms. Jones and several
volunteers also distribute groceries to 18,000 families a month through
their group, Just the Right Attitude. Who comes for food? "Most of the
people are working on their own houses because they can't afford
contractors," Ms. Jones said. "They are living in their gutted-out houses
with no electricity."

Why do thousands of people need food and why are people living in gutted-out
houses with no electricity? Look at New Orleans eighteen months after
Katrina and you will realize why it is so difficult for people to exercise
the human right to return to their homes.

Half the homes in New Orleans still do not have electricity. Eighteen months
after Katrina, a third of a million people in the New Orleans metro area
have not returned.

FEMA told Congress that 60,000 families in Louisiana still live in 240
square foot trailers usually at least 3 to a trailer. The Louisiana
Hurricane Task Force estimated in December 2006 that there was an "urgent
need" for 30,000 affordable rental apartments in New Orleans alone and
another 15,000 around the rest of the state.

Eighteen months after Katrina, over 80 percent of the 5100 New Orleans
occupied public housing apartments remained closed by order of the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) which controlled the
Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) since 2002. HUD pressed ahead even
though internal HANO documents revealed the cost for repair and renovation
was significantly less than for demolition and redevelopment. A professor
from MIT inspected the buildings and declared them structurally sound.
Architecture critics applaud the current garden-style buildings. Yet HUD
plows ahead planning to spend tens of millions of Katrina dollars to tear
down millions of dollars of habitable housing and end up with far fewer
affordable apartments a clear loss for the community.

Over $100 billion was approved by Congress to rebuild the Gulf Coast. Over
$50 billion of that money was allocated to temporary and long-term housing.
Just under $30 billion was for emergency response and Department of Defense
spending. Over $18 billion was for State and local response and the
rebuilding of infrastructure. $3.6 billion was for health, social services
and job training and $3.2 for non-housing cash assistance. $1.9 billion was
allocated for education and $1.2 billion for agriculture.

Louisiana received $10 billion to fix up housing. Over 109,000 homeowners
applied for federal funds to fix up their homes. Eighteen months later, less
than 700 families have received this federal assistance. Renters, who
comprised a majority of New Orleans, are worse off they get nothing at all.
Some money is scheduled to go to some landlords and apartment developers for
some apartments at some time.

There were uncountable generous and courageous and heroic acts of people and
communities who stretched themselves to assist people displaced by the
hurricane. Many of these continue. However, there are several notable
exceptions.

Obstacles to public funding of affordable housing came from within New
Orleans and in neighboring parishes. Many in New Orleans do not want the
poor who lived in public housing to return.

St. Bernard Parish, a 93 percent white suburb adjoining New Orleans, enacted
a post-Katrina ordinance which restricted home owners from renting out
single-family homes "unless the renter is a blood relative" without securing
a permit from the government.

Jefferson Parish, another adjoining majority-white suburb, unanimously
passed a resolution opposing all low-income tax credit multi-family housing
in the areas closest to New Orleans effectively stopping the construction of
a 200 unit apartment building on vacant land for people over the age of 62
and any further assisted housing.

Across Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans, the chief law enforcement officer
of St. Tammany Parish, Sheriff Jack Strain, complained openly about the
post-Katrina presence of "thugs and trash" from "New Orleans public housing"
and announced that people with dreadlocks or "chee wee hairstyles" could
"expect to be getting a visit from a sheriff,s deputy."

With rebuilding starting up and the previous work force still displaced,
tens of thousands of migrant workers have come to the Gulf Coast to work in
the recovery. Many were recruited. Most workers tell of being promised good
wages and working conditions and plenty of work. Some paid money up front
for the chance to come to the area to work. Most of these promises were
broken. A tour of the area reveals many Latino workers live in houses
without electricity, other live out of cars. At various places in the city
whole families are living in tents.

Many former residents of New Orleans are not welcome back. Race is certainly
a factor. So is class. As New Orleans native and professor Adolph Reed
notes: "With each passing day, a crucially significant political distinction
in New Orleans gets clearer and clearer: Property owners are able to assert
their interests in the polity, while non-owners are nearly as invisible in
civic life now as in the early eighteenth century."

New Orleans is now the charter capital of the U.S. All the public schools on
the side of the Mississippi which did not flood were turned into charters
within weeks of Katrina. The schools with strongest parental support and
high test scores were flipped into charters. The charters have little
connection to each other and to state or local supervision. Those in the top
half of the pre-Katrina population may be getting a better education. Kids
without high scores, with disabilities, with little parental involvement who
are not in charters are certainly not getting a good education and are
shuttled into the bottom half - a makeshift system of state and local
schools.

John McDonogh, a public high school created to take the place of five
pre-Katrina high schools, illustrates the challenges facing non-charter
public education in New Orleans. Opened by the State school district in the
fall, as of November, 2006, there were 775 students but teachers, textbooks
and supplies remained in short order months after school opened. Many teens,
as many as one-fifth, were living in New Orleans without their parents.
Fights were frequent despite the presence of metal detectors, twenty-give
security guards and an additional eight police officers. In fact several
security guards, who were not much older than the students were injured in
fights with students. Students described the school as having a "prison
atmosphere." There were no hot lunches and few working water fountains. The
girls, bathrooms did not have doors on them. The library had no books at
all, not even shelves for books in early November. One 15 year old student
caught the 5am bus from Baton Rouge to attend the high school. "Our school
has 39 security guards and three cops on staff and only 27 teachers," one
McDonogh teacher reported.

It took two federal civil rights actions in January 2007 to force the state
to abolish a waiting list for entry into public school that stranded
hundreds of kids out of school for weeks.

Healthcare is in crisis. The main public healthcare provider, Charity
Hospital, which saw 350,000 patient visits a year, remains closed, as do
half the hospitals in the city. It is not clear it will reopen. Plans are
being debated which will shift indigent care and its state and federal
compensation to private hospitals. Much of the uncompensated care provided
by Charity has shifted to other LSU hospitals with people traveling as far
as 85 miles to the Earl K. Long Hospital in Baton Rouge which reports a 50
percent increase in uncompensated care. Waiting lines are long in emergency
rooms for those who have insurance. When hundreds of thousands lost their
jobs after Katrina, they lost healthcare as well. A recent free medical
treatment fair opened their doors at 6 am and stopped signing people up at 8
am because they had already filled the 700 available slots for the day.

Mental health is worse. A report by the World Health organization estimates
that serious and mild to moderate mental illness doubled in the year after
Hurricane Katrina among survivors. Despite a suicide rate triple what it was
a year ago, the New York Times reported ten months after the storm New
Orleans had still lost half of its psychiatrists, social workers,
psychologists and other mental health care workers.

In the months after Katrina, the 534 psychiatric beds that were in metro New
Orleans shrank to less than 80. The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention surveyed the area and found 45 percent of residents were
experiencing "significant stress or dysfunction" and another 25 percent were
worse.

By default, the lack of mental health treatment facilities has forced more
of these crises towards law enforcement. "The lack of mental health options
forced the New Orleans Police Department to incarcerate mentally ill people
who normally would have been taken to Charity," said James Arey, commander
of the NOPD crisis negotiation team. "The only other option is to admit them
into emergency rooms ill-equipped to handle psychotics who may have to wait
days for care. This is past the point of being unsafe," Arey said. "It's
just a matter of time before a mental patient goes berserk in one of the ERs
and hurts some people."

With day care scarce down 70 percent, and public transportation down 83
percent of pre-Katrina busses, there is little chance for single moms with
kids.

It is impossible to begin to understand the continued impact of Katrina
without viewing through the lenses of race, gender and poverty. Katrina
exposed the region,s deep-rooted inequalities of gender, race, and class.
Katrina did not create the inequalities; it provided a window to see them
more clearly. But the aftermath of Katrina has aggravated these
inequalities.
In fact if you plot race, class and gender you can likely tell who has
returned to New Orleans. The Institute of Women,s Policy Research pointed
out "The hurricanes uncovered America,s longstanding structural inequalities
based on race, gender, and class and laid bare the consequences of ignoring
these underlying inequalities."

The pre-Katrina population of 454,000 people in the city of New Orleans
dropped to 187,000. The African-American population of New Orleans shrank by
61 percent or 213,000 people, from a pre-Katrina number of 302,000 down to
89,000. New Orleans now has a much smaller, older, whiter and more affluent
population.

Crime plagues parts of the city and every spoke of the criminal justice
wheel is broken. Hundreds of police left the force and several were just
indicted for first degree murder of an unarmed mentally retarded man during
Katrina. When the accused police reported to jail, they were accompanied by
hundreds of fellow officers holding up signs calling them heroes. The DA and
the police are openly feuding and pointing fingers at each other. The judges
are fighting with the new public defender system. Victims and witnesses are
still displaced. People accused of serious crime walk out of jail because of
incompetence and the fear of witnesses to cooperate with police.

Others are kept in jail too long because they are lost in the system. For
example, Pedro Parra-Sanchez was arrested six days after he arrived in New
Orleans to find work in October 2005. He got in a fight and allegedly
stabbed a man with a beer bottle. He went through the local temporary jail
in a bus station and two other Louisiana prisons. Under Louisiana law he was
supposed to be charged within 60 days or released. However, he never went to
court or saw a lawyer. When he did not show up for his original arraignment
date last May, a warrant was put out for his arrest, but he was already
incarcerated. He was found by a Tulane Law Clinic attorney and was released
in November 2006. Lost in the system, he was doing what they call in the
courthouse "Katrina time."

Though crime is issue one in most of the city, crime is not the cause of a
city dying. Crime is a symptom of a city dying. Crime is the sound of a city
dying.

There are major problems with the drinking water system eighteen months
after Katrina. According to the City of New Orleans, hundreds of miles of
underground pipes were damaged by 480 billion pounds of water that sat in
the city after Katrina. They were further damaged by the uprooting of tens
of thousands of trees whose roots were wrapped around the pipes.

The city of New Orleans now loses more water through faulty pipes and joints
in the delivery system than it is uses. More than 135 million gallons are
being pumped out daily but only 50 million gallons are being used, leaving
85 million gallons "unaccounted for and probably leaking out of the system."
The daily cost of the water leaking away in thousands of leaks is about
$200,000 a day.

The second major water problem is that the leakage makes maintaining
adequate water pressure extremely difficult and costly, particularly in tall
office buildings. Water pressure in New Orleans is estimated at half that of
other cities, creating significant problems in consumption, sanitation,
air-conditioning, and fire prevention.

Insurance costs are skyrocketing for homes and businesses. So are rents.
Though low-wage jobs pay a little more than before Katrina, they do not pay
enough for people to afford rent.

The overall planning process for the rebuilding of New Orleans has been
derailed by several competing planning operations. The Mayor initially
created a Bring New Orleans Back Commission, which met for months. While the
Bring Back New Orleans Commission was underway, the Urban Land Institute, a
D.C. based think tank, created and released a report of recommendations in
January 2006. After several months of hearings, the Bring New Orleans Back
Commission issued a report issued from the Mayor,s Office, but it was never
funded. In April 2006, the New Orleans City Council awarded a $2.9 million
grant, funded by federal grant money, to a Miami consultant to create a plan
for the 49 neighborhoods of New Orleans. A fourth planning process, the
Unified New Orleans Plan, was launched in spring 2006 with funding from the
Rockefeller Foundation to integrate all the planning processes. In September
2006, the City Council plan was released, while the UNOP process was just
getting underway that fourth plan is starting to wind up now.

These problems spread far beyond their most graphic illustrations in New
Orleans throughout the Gulf Coast. As Oxfam documented, government neglect
has plagued the rebuilding of smaller towns like Biloxi Mississippi, and
rural parishes of Louisiana, leaving the entire region in distress. In
Biloxi, the first to be aided after the hurricane were the casinos, which
forced low-income people out of their homes and neighborhoods. In rural
Louisiana, contradictory signals by government agencies have slowed and in
some cases reversed progress. Small independent family commercial fishing
businesses have been imperiled by the lack of recovery funds. The federal
assistance that has occurred has tended to favor the affluent and those with
economic assets.

Visitors to New Orleans can still stay in fine hotels and dine at great
restaurants. But less than a five minute drive away lie miles of devastated
neighborhoods that shock visitors. Locals call it "the Grand Canyon effect"
- you know about it, you have seen it on TV, but when you see it in person
it can take your breath away.

Our community continues to take hope from the resilience of our people.
Despite lack of federal, state and local assistance, people are living their
lives and repairing their homes. People are organizing. Many fight for
better levee protection. Some work for affordable housing. Some are workers
collectively seeking better working conditions. Neighborhoods are coming
together to fight for basic services. Small business owners are working
together to secure grants and low-cost rebuilding loans. Others organize
against crime.

We graciously accept the kindnesses of strangers who come by the hundreds
every day to help us gut and rebuild our homes. Churches, synagogues, and
mosques from around the country come to partner with local congregations to
rebuild and resource their sisters and brothers.

The new Congress appears poised to give us a hand. Congresswoman Maxine
Waters, head the House Subcommittee overseeing HUD, delivered pointed
questions and criticisms to federal, state and local foot-draggers recently
and promised a new day.

Young people are particularly outraged and activated by what they see they
give us hope. Over a thousand law students alone will come to the gulf to
volunteer over spring break with the Student Hurricane Network.

The connections between the lack of resources for Katrina rebuilding and
Iraq and Afghanistan are clear to everyone on the gulf coast.

Despite the guarantees of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal
Displacement that people displaced through no fault of their own have the
right to return to their homes and have the right to expect the government
to help them do so, far too little progress has been made.

As U.S. Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver of Kansas City observed in a recent
public hearing, "When it is all said and done, there has been a lot more
said than done."

But still each day, Ms. Debra South Jones and her volunteers drive into New
Orleans east to dish out hot food and groceries to people in need. In the
past eighteen months, they have given out over 3 million pounds of food to
over 130,000 families. We never dreamed we would be still be so needy
eighteen months after Katrina. We look forward to the day when she will not
have to feed us, when we will not need volunteers to gut and fix up our
homes, when we can feed ourselves in our own fixed up homes in a revitalized
New Orleans.

[ If you would like to learn more about Ms. Debra South Jones and the work
of her organization Just the Right Attitude, see http://www.jtra.org ]

Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University
New Orleans. He can be reached at Quigley@loyno.edu

2007-02-21T18:28:00.000-06:00

How to donate online:

For those of who who are interested in donating online to help local children go to school, click the button above to send a secure payment through Paypal. You don't need anything but a credit or debit card nor sign up for anything. Any amount is greatly appreciated!

¡Matiox chawe!
(Thank you in Kackquikel)

How to be a smart donor

2007-02-21T18:26:00.000-06:00

So, how can one donate without feeling ripped off? Here’s some easy hints:

Find the organization’s website. Websites of nonprofits are directed towards donors, and provide a great deal of information. Usually they provide some basic financial information, the mission and vision of the organization, and current and past projects.

Know if the nonprofit is tax-deductable [501(c)3] or not. This may sound confusing, but many nonprofit organizations aren’t actually tax-deductible charities. The term 501(c)3 just refers to the IRS code that means tax-deductible. For example, The Sierra Club is not a 501(c)3 organization because though it is an environmental group, it lobbies hard enough to qualify as a political organization. Almost every pamphlet and website a tax-deductible organization has usually mentions that they are tax-deductible or says 501(c)3 somewhere on it, but don’t presume.Also, always ask for a receipt for tax-deductible donations to anybody. Except the bell-ringing Santa at Christmas.

Go to Guidestar.com Though Guidestar is designated towards investors, they provide vital information of the NGO from a business perspective, including detailed financial information. Trial subscriptions to use the website are free.

Ask people you know: Though not everyone knows a Peace Corps volunteer, lots of people have been exposed to high-quality, and often obscure but important organizations.

Know how to read basic financial information of nonprofits. Though there isn’t anything complicated about the financial data, it’s important to know how it measures up to other organizations. Administrative costs are roughly 10-12% of any nonprofit’s costs. Anything above 15% requires close scrutiny and may be the result of overpayed personnel or wasteful purchases. Also look for strange categories that should be considered administrative costs, such as retraining or travel. Other categories include labor and capital costs, and can help you figure out better if more of an organization’s costs are, say, in buying people housing supplies or retraining them.

Look at previous projects for success or failure. While many nonprofits will remind you that a 90% failure is a 10% success, look for past documents or programs and really try to compare numbers – or just outright ask about recent failures or problems. Most nonprofits would rather answer an uncomfortable question than give up a chance at your donation.

Visit offices. If it’s a local nonprofit, go visit the office. Flat-screen monitors or a basement office are the easiest giveaways to know where your money’s going.

Donating to nonprofits: A recent history

2007-02-21T18:22:00.000-06:00

One of the most common reasons people give for not donating is not knowing what organizations are trustworthy. While donating to U.S.-focused agencies surged immediately after September 11^th, corruption and mismanagement of funds were discovered in of the United Way and American Red Cross of each of their September 11^th funds. In addition, hundreds of false websites for September 11^th funds popped up. Since September 11^th, major media sources intimated that some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the Middle East siphoned money to terrorist organizations.

Many donors are more guarded in what organizations they give to than in the past. This causes several changes:

Donors demand financial reports of nonprofits before donating. Particularly large and donors and those that give year after year spend more time researching nonprofit organizations and expect to be kept updated on their projects. This may include tax filings, annual organizational reports, and project reports. The relationship between nonprofits and donors now resembles the relationship between an investor and his investments

Donors are more likely to give to specific projects or place limitations on the use of their funds. As a result of both a marketing technique of nonprofits and lowered donor confidence, many nonprofits offer the opportunity to sponsor particular projects instead of the organization as a whole. This allows donors to feel like their gift is more personalized, as well as piece of mind that their money isn’t going strictly to administration costs. This allows donors to fund political organizations without funding lobbying, and allow donors to help build a school without funding morally ambiguous programs such as birth control.

Small donors are less likely to donate. A lowered sense of trust has resulted that many people that used to give small amounts without a strong interest or attachment to an issue or organization no longer give anything. Many nonprofits have had to restructure how they acquire funds due to the disappearance of the funds from these donors.

Donors give more to large, well-known organizations such as Oxfam, Red Cross, and The Salvation Army. Regardless of the efficiency of the organization, donors feel more comfortable giving to ‘household names’ than lesser-known organizations.

The new environment for donors has both helped and hurt many nonprofits. While demanding financial reports has made nonprofits look harder at their own books, a general decline in donations has forced many good organizations to cut programs or close doors. As a response to these difficulties, however, nonprofits responded with ways of making it easier to learn about their organizations and finances.

2007-02-16T21:50:00.001-06:00

How to donate online:

2007-02-16T20:40:00.000-06:00

For those of who who are interested in donating online to help local children go to school, click the button to the left to send a secure payment through Paypal. Any amount is greatly
appreciated!

¡Matiox chawe!
(Thank you in the local Mayan language)

Google Adsense

2007-02-08T19:09:00.000-06:00

I recently added Google Adsense to the side of the blog. I'm not allowed to make money of this website according to Peace Corps. All of the money's going to aforementioned project for kids' elementary school tuition.

The Guatemalan Education System

2007-02-05T20:24:00.000-06:00

According to the Ministry of Education of Guatemala, the country has a universal education system. In my area, every community has a primary school (grades 1-6). There is less than a dozen public schools beyond grade six in the country.

The public education system is riddled with unsurmountable problems. It’s not nearly the size it should be given its population. On registration days, schools have to turn away more students than they accept due to a lack of books, desks, and classroom space. Parents sometimes bring in their own desk and chair so that their child will have a chance

In many of Guatemalan’s poorest families, parents make some grim decisions for their children. The dream of most poor parents is to have sons go to school to grade six and daughters long enough to read and write. Costs of schooling unfortunately make that nearly impossible.

Item	Monthly Cost
Wood for Cooking	$40
Rent for Small Concrete House	$70
Income of a Farmhand	$120
Tuition & Supplies for 1 7^th Grader	$34

To send a child to primary school it costs $13 per month, or $130 for one school year. To send a child to middle school, it costs $27, or $270 per year. Schools provide virtually no supplies, so students pay about $7 per month in supplies. Though these numbers appear paltry, one must remember that the standard wage for unskilled labor is $120 per month, and the average poor family has 6 children. If a family sent all six children to primary school the same year, they wouldn’t have enough money left over to buy wood to cook.

The owner of my house is a school teacher, and she told me all of this while we washed dishes one night. She also told me that she is part of a group of schoolteachers who organized a program where people from around the world would sponsor the children and, in turn, would receive letters and photos of the child. The children would be selected by the teachers from their classes as those with the great dedication but little financial means. Of the group of 15 students sponsored, 13 eventually graduated from high school, something accomplished by less than half of Guatemala’s population. Now adults, these graduates are able to provide for their families the opportunities their parents couldn’t provide without help.

Over time, connections were lost and the program stopped receiving donations. She decided a few months ago to start it again, and asked me recently if I could help her find a grant or organization interested in sponsoring such a program. However, there’s no time for that for this school year (school starts in January), and am asking anyone interested in donating any amount of a year’s tuition to this cause. I personally rarely donate to such groups because I don’t know where the money’s going, but I know that every dollar of this goes straight to pay for children’s tuition. To donate, you can send a check to my parents’ house (below) written out to me, and I promise to pass the money along before the next tuition due date (at the end of February). Also, if it interests you in maintaining contact with a sponsored child, simply let me know.

Tuition Fund for Children of Chimaltenango

c/o Andrew Trembley

240 Beechwood Rd.

Hoosick Falls, NY 12090-4710

Another Day in the Life

2007-01-20T11:34:00.001-06:00

Thursdays are market days, which means the entire town gets turned upside down. I remember being little and going to Hutchinson for the sidewalk sale days in the summer with you and thinking that the world had gone mad. Well, Tecpán is like that on Thursday to an exponential degree. So, I get up a little earlier if I'm good, shop in the market, and get to work an hour late or so. Today I wasn't good so I got to work a couple of hours late, which really doesn't matter. So, I got up, ate the granola and milk that serves as my breakfast almost every day, which is so good I just sit and enjoy still without rushing sometimes. I'm to the point where I've forgotten what it's like to not drink powdered milk every day. So, after breakfast, I got all the stuff I knew I'd need for work, put it into a costal (which is a bag that is made by cutting one of those woven plastic seed bags in half and attaching a handle). That meant my USB card, my newly-purchased fancy agenda, my English-Spanish dictionary just in case they found another document for me to translate, and a good pen. Then, I grabbed the wrong costál (I have several) and headed out the door. I realized I brought an empty bag when I was at the market. (remember, exchange rate is 7.5Q per dollar) No matter, my plan was to fill the bag with my purchases at market and go straight to the bus, but now I'll just bring my purchases back to the house. First I bought good looking bananas. My most important thing to buy was charcoal, but I couldn't find it. I used buying bananas an excuse to bother the busy woman selling them to tell me if she knew where to buy charcoal. I've been meaning to make beans for a week, but I make them on my host mom's little charcoal grill. They really taste a lot better because it's over a low fire for a day instead of a hot fire for only 2 hours. I bought two big old bags of charcoal (5Q each) , which will last me at least cooking one dry pound of beans. Walking around, I bought a dozen bananas because they were cheap and looked good, some avocados because they looked like quality, are out of season, and were dirt cheap (2Q each). I also bought a chucho, which is like a little spiced tamale, so I'd have it for lunch (1Q).
Like I said, market day was crazy. It took me about an hour and a half to do all of that, and I came back absolutely exhausted. I set my stuff, down next to the bag I meant to bring, and went to the bathroom. I remembered that I clogged my toilet the night before, and then realized I don't own a plunger. I went outside and found a stick and stabbed it into the toilet water until I got the thing working again, went to the bathroom, and grabbed the right bag. I put my chucho, an avacado, a couple of torillas in a bag with some salt (salt for the avacado), and a spoon. I decided that to show up late to work could be fixed by staying through lunch, so that's what I did.

Like i said, market days are nuts. Since the market expands for blocks and blocks of the town, and take up the entire street, the buses have to change their normal stops. I still haven't figured out exactly where my bus stops, so, to save time, be kind to my exhausted body, and avoid walking all around and outside of town looking for my bus, I took a taxi. Well, not exactly. It's actually a tuk-tuk, which, if you've been to Europe, you'd have seen. It's looks like a moto-tricycle with a small metal frame and a cloth roof. It cost me 3Q and got me almost to the right corner for the bus. I still had to ask directions from a little old lady that spoke much less Spanish than I did. I got there nonetheless and was to work before eleven. I show up, my counterpart is not there, but the newly hired secretary and three of the guys are there. I had one reason to go to work today: to talk with my counterpart and my boss, who has two offices, one in Tecpán and one in Guatemala City an hour and a half away. He was supposed to come the day before, and my counterpart and I were to ask for permission to start going to the little towns where I hope to actually work for the next two years. Without my counterpart there, I could ask him, and give me a chance to speak with him without anybody else around, which is nice sometimes. I went to the computer lab and continued my weeklong project of telling my co-workers that I was going to fix all of the computers to make them run faster. I spend about 10 minutes doing that and then start playing video games to pass the workless time. Sometimes they come in after an hour, sit down, and start playing videogames too. After a few hours of that, I realized that I hadn't eaten lunch. So I went outside, where two coworkers were lying on the grass watching another coworker dig a hole for (presumably) another shrub for the office that no one comes to see. I sat down, ate my tamale and left the avocado for later. After a bit, I went back to playing video games until my boss came. After another hour of this, everybody said that they were ready to call it a day, and I realized that there was no chance that my boss was showing up. So, I went with them. I forgot that they had invited me to play soccer with them today, so we all went back in bus to an indoor soccer field and played until around 6:00. I'm terrible and they made me switch teams once because the other team was scoring too many goals with me playing against them, so it evened out. I generally try not to care because it's nice to do anything with other people that can be loosely defined as fun. Afterwards, one of my coworkers asked me if I wanted to go to the computer lab with him. we hung out for an hour. I called my landlord, who wanted to meet me in an internet café to learn more about how the Internet, but he told me he didn't have time tonight after all but could I do him a favor and check the price for something online. So I did, and then wrote this e-mail. Now it's 8:30, I'm going to head back for my leftover spaghetti that I proudly made last night, and clean the kitchen (which I didn't do last night. My landlord's dog will be waiting because he's hungry and hasn't had anything but a couple of old tortillas since I fed him last night.

Remember the importance of Christmas!

2006-12-24T16:22:00.000-06:00

In all the insanity of the holidays, don't forget who's birthday we celebrate on December 25: John IV Lascaris, the emperor of Nicaea from August 18, 1258 to 1261.

Here's some Christmas photos.

Christmas Pictures

2006-12-20T16:53:00.001-06:00

My House

A Friend's Pictures

2006-12-17T17:05:00.000-06:00

Click here to see pictures of my training class (courtesy Amy Ostrander)

My Address

2006-12-17T16:57:00.000-06:00

If not known to everyone yet, below is my new address:

Andrew Trembley
Voluntario del Cuerpo de Paz
Tecpán, Chimaltenango
Guatemala, Centroamerica

Though it has no numbers, it will get to the town's postmaster, who is a nice guy, and then to me.

2006-12-17T16:53:00.000-06:00

Dia del Diablo

On December 6, I received a text message from the Peace Corps Guatemala Security Coordinator that read, "Tomorrow is Dia del Diablo. Pyrotechnics, mischief, and worse. All volunteers should stay indoors after 6pm." I knew nothing of the holiday, except that I wasn't staying in.

December 7, a holiday known as el Dia del Diablo, or day of the Devil, is celebrated in various parts of Catholic Latin America. The explanation often given for this day is that the following day is the Roman Catholic Feast of the Virgin Mary. Before Mary is welcomed, however, the devil must be cleared away in all of its places residing.

El Dia del Diablo resembles Halloween in many ways. Many youths take to the streets to cause whatever mischief they can find at night. The air of the whole day is one of bad luck and bad things. During the late afternoon, people take out previously bought or made life-sized pinatas(assuming he's about 5 feet tall) of the devil and hang them in the street on ropes hung earlier, crisscrossing the street. At 5:30, I was with some co-workers in town, and watched some rowdy teenaged boys stop playing soccer (a rare occasion) to take out a gigantic red pinata to hang in the center of their street, hopelessly blocking traffic.

In my town, you could see a devil hanging within eyesight of any given place. Old garbage, pine cones, and newspapers were placed below the pinatas as the "bed of the devil". At exactly six o'clock, the bed is lit on fire, the flame inching towards the pinata. As the pinata burns, you can hear crowds cheer throughout the town. Another tradition, which I didn't know about until I was standing downwind and near the engulfed pinata, is that the pinata is filled with small firecrackers similar to black cats. As the pinata burns, fire crackers jump all around in a terrifying, exploding effigy. As the clock strikes six, you hear thousands of firecrackers exploding throughout the village, in every neighborhood, followed by cheers.
By time the last effigy is nothing but a defeated, hollow wire of an effigy, the night is dark and people are milling about buying food from the street vendors or heading home. Soon, the only people not heading away from the town centers are the teenagers about whom I was forewarned. By 7:30pm, I decided that a night of burning things that resembled devils was a bad night to be a gringo wearing a red shirt.

Dia del Diablo got me thinking about how important opposites are to religion and culture still. While in the religions of centuries ago and dozens of belief systems we consider simpler than our own contained a constant war between good and evil, light and dark, physical and magic, we usually consider our own understanding of the world significantly more complex. If you look at many of our traditions, however, we maintain that all things must be offset by their opposites. In Catholicism, 40 days of penance (Lent) exist preparing for Easter, the day representing forgiveness of man's sins. Even in Protestant Christianity, the pain and suffering of Jesus is required to offset the joy and happiness of those entering heaven. Opposites dominate collective knowledge so much.

Nonreligious collective knowledge use the same contrasts to explain away problems and be thankful for solutions. In much of popular culture, the 'Roaring 20's' were given as a time of great prosperity of the country. New forms of art and music flourished, and America prospered. In October of 1929, however, the stock market crashed and all good was offset by the Great Depression. In reality, the 1920's the country's industries did not grow that much differently than it had the decade before. The difference is that we sought to be able to contrast the two. Though financial speculation in the 1920's did have something to do with the crash of 1929, this wasn't a case of days of gluttony being offset by days of hunger. It's not that there are no times that two opposites create a clear sense of good and evil, but this is not the requisite, or even norm of phenomena.

A typical day in Peace Corps

2006-11-22T14:54:00.000-06:00

I thought I'd leave a quick anecdote for a common day in the life of a Peace Corps volunteer. I spent last week with a fellow Peace Corps volunteer. On my second day there, I spent the morning simply talking with her counterpart, learning a great deal about how the organization works. After talking with him for about 2 1/2 hours, it was 10:30. He told me that he was going to talk to a group just preparing to organize into a cooperative and that I was welcome to come. The other volunteer, who knew this man much better, agreed and we both went. The cooperative owned a pickup, in which the president of the cooperative, the general manager of the co-op, and we two volunteers sat in. We left the small town and had to drive through a larger town to get there. It took about 40 minutes to get to the larger town, where we decided to have lunch at a small restaurant. After a 45-minute lunch, we got back into the truck and headed off for the aldea. We drove for another hour when we started seeing signs of life again. We kept driving until we saw the school. Upon approaching the school, we realized that the gate was locked and no one was there. So, we found someone walking along the road and asked them if this was Escuela Itzapa. It turned out there was another school further up the mountain. We continued driving for another half of an hour, asking two or three more people where the school was. We drove by the first paved road we'd seen in an hour, which was blocked off. We asked the nearest pedestrian where the school was, and we were told that it was up said paved road. So, we turned the truck around, parked in front of the road, and commenced hiking up the road, which turned unpaved after 100 yards. We found ourselves on a beautiful made of obsidian pieces and a gorgeous view overlooking a large valley. We continued walking for about 25 minutes, upon which we approached the school. Upon arriving at the school, we find no one. We call the leader of the cooperative group, who told us that the meeting had been cancelled and he had forgotten to call to tell us. We walked down the mountain, found a shorter road to get back to the main town, drove back to our own cooperative's office, and decided to call it a day because it was 4:00pm and there were other things the president & manager needed to worry about. Such is my life for two years.

On Ancient Mayan History.

2006-11-17T14:32:00.001-06:00

Mayan history is of great interest to many people. There are several great ancient civilizations of Central America (Olmec, Toltec, Maya, Aztec). The ancient Mayan civilization leaves most people with several major impressions:
The first should be their impressive calculation of Mathematics. As is the case for most civilizations, Astronomy serves as the first road into mathematics. The famous Mayan Calendar was calculated to measure lunar cycles with an error of a day off every ten thousand years or so (making it more accurate than the twelve-month solar Christian calendar).
A second impression is of an impressively complex social organization and urban areas. Though buildings rarely exceeded two stories in Mayan civilization, cities of hundreds of thousands of people existed, and Central America at one point in history included the largest cities in the world. Cultural enclaves, clear economic classes, and industrial districts all existed in these enormous cities.
Inextricably linked to the complex social organization was religion and government. The governmental structure included a system of taxing its rural hinterlands through labor -- one month per year of labor was demanded of all male adults-- as well as religious-governmental ceremonies and clear ruling classes.
Upon contact with Europeans, most Mayan groups were destroyed outright or formed alliances with the Spanish that were terminated once they had served the needs of the conquerers. Unlike most cases of European invasion, however, the population was not entirely destroyed. While in Tanzania, Australia, and North America the population was almost entirely wiped out, in Guatemala, India, and most African colonies (which can be considered a fundamentally different type of colonization), native populations remained dominant. There are three reasons for this that I am aware of.
During much of Spanish domination of Guatemala, religious Friars and Jesuits were the only Westerners to infiltrate the areas more difficult for military or economic domination. The bulk of the native population throughout Central America lived in such places. The famous Bartolome de las Casas was one such friar in Guatemala. Moved by the suffering of enslaved natives, he made the (likely inevitable) suggestion of using African slaves for the labor of cutting down the forests and mining the resources of Guatemala. He made this suggestion due to the natives' increased risk for dying due to European illnesses and the idea that African slaves were of better composition for hard labor. So began the most contentious industry of the Western Hemisphere of the millenium.
Another significant reason is the physical geography of the nation. Due to the isolation of many areas, Guatemala was a difficult colony to dominate. Mountain ranges and impenetrable forests made the dominance of every region of Guatemala more trouble than it was worth for the Spanish, so they maintained the areas easier to dominate or of particular economic value (such as the Western gold mines). As a result, the indigenous people living throughout the bulk of the country lived without the everyday dominance or even contact with the Europeans that claimed to own the land. Some areas may have scarcely been aware of the existence of Europeans.
The third reason is also linked to the physical geography of Guatemala. Race is a strange idea that demonstrates its independence from biology throughout Latin America. The two primary races in existence in Guatemala are ladino and indigenous. The biological definition usually given of each is that ladino, or mestizo, are a mixture of indigenous and European, while indigenous people have no European blood. However, actual identification with race has much more to do with cultural points, such as belief system, language, economic class, and upbringing. As blacks in the United States are rarely without any white ancestors, indigenous people may have one European ancestor generations back, and ladinos may have few or no European ancestors. Nonetheless, each group has undeniable sociocultural differences. Given a lack of biological requisite to maintain one's identity, an indigenous population may maintain its identity without concerning itself with biological purity.
This places Guatemala in a rare circumstance where people identifying themselves as indigenous make up roughly half of the population of the country, and demand a right to practice and live according to customs that associate themselves with pre-Columbian contact. A particularly interesting component of this is the heterogeneity of indigenous groups. The indigenous groups of Guatemala lack cohesion because of linguistic barriers, historical conflicts, resource competition, and class infighting due to poverty, and I'm sure other reasons. In Guatemala, 21 languages are spoken, each as unintelligable as English is to French is to Spanish. Dialects of each language vary from area as well. These barriers have served as barriers to organizing for their rights since European contact and have prevented organization throughout the past century.
During the middle decades of the 20th century, indigenous peoples were relocated similar to reservations in the United States, placing poor indigenous groups on poor land, only to be moved a decade later onto worse land. During the 1970s and 1980s, the basic makeup of indigenous groups was altered by the 'Civil War.' By the early 1980's, the war clearly had been won by the government, but small groups of guerrilas survived sufficiently to give the government an excuse to continue murdering suspected traitors (translate: an unwanted indigenous population). Entire villages were destroyed and a diaspora of indigenous people relocated cultural groups throughout the central and western parts of the country. While murder and poverty all but eliminated some populations, diaspora and stealing land moved many indigenous groups to areas foreign to them, some never returning.
As a result, cultural and linguistic groups in Guatemala today hardly resemble the populations or geography of pre-European Guatemala in any way. In addition, considering that one's identification as a Mayan today is voluntary instead of genetic and geographical, and is somewhat based on the idea that a person is not ladino. Also, the historical affects of centuries of Spanish colonialism and current Western (mostly American) economic dominance have left an indelible mark on all Guatemalans. As a result, to be a Mayan today is very different than being a Mayan 500 years ago.
I personally can't help but equate it to being a Catholic today versus being one 2,000 years ago. While one may be able to trace a historical continuance, cultural schisms (such as the idea of non-Catholic Christians), influences of dominant cultures (such as Romans), and demographic changes (due to conversions of entire continents), and the drift of time have all contributed to a very different culture, despite great efforts to maintain contancy.

2006-11-04T14:32:00.000-06:00

Todos Santos

November 1st is a day of importance in Guatemala. All Saints' Day, known to all Catholics, has mixed in with various other traditions to make it a day of sadness, joy, and superstition. For Todos Santos, the center of all festivities is the cemetery. For days before, people prepare flowers and various decorations for the graves and tombs of loved ones. I have been told that in parts of Mexico, the floral arrangements and decorations are even more elaborate and often take the entire morning simply to set up. The dominant decoration are marigold flowers, known here as el flor del muerte, the flower of death. The holiday is celebrated by all, and, considering that cemeteries are owned and managed by the local government, the day can be considered relatively ecumenical. There is, however, a Catholic mass given in the cemetery at some point in the day.

Outside of the cemetery, vendors of all sorts are selling their wares, but mostly food and beer (not acceptable except on holidays). In some towns, bands are present playing in the streets as well. People may spend their nearly their entire day in or near the cemetery. Many men of all seemed to do so drinking. Most of the women, however, returned to their houses to continue various chores or cooking the food of the holiday.

The traditional food of Todos Santos is fiambre, which is a 'salad' that includes most of the following ingredients: onions, lots of beets, mini-corn, carrots, strings of tinier mini-corn, red peppers , beef, shrimp, hot dogs, lettuce, peas, asparagus, other various meats and various beans, all soaked in lots and lots of white vinegar for hours. It's actually pretty tasty, but you have to really like vinegar. I liked it just because you have a chance of getting a good portion of vegetables. Another typical food of the day is jocotes and other small fruits soaked in a mixture water, cinnamon, and sugar. These are delicious.. Lastly, a type of mole (MOL-ay) is also served. Mole is a common dish throughout Spain and many of its former colonies, but each region seems to define it differently. The basic universal of mole seems to be chocolate. Here it also includes lots of mild peppers, some corn flour, plenty of sugar, onions, garlic, and some pureed beans I think. It is served tepid, and large slices of plantains. I believe that most mole usually includes meat, but here the plantains take its place. It is mostly sweet but a little salty and has the consistency of thick gravy over chunks of plantains. It is really delicious.

Besides the traditional religious superstitions of graveyards and remembering the dead, legends suggest that there is a lot of spirit activity in the graveyards during the days (and nights) of November 1 and 2. Both good and spirits are out and about during this time. Kites are traditionally flown to scare away the bad spirits. These kites include noisy streamers and often have whistles built into them to scare the spirits more. In addition, babies and infants are often kept away from the cemetery in order to avoid the risk of being possessed by the wandering evil spirits. Though it doesn't appear these beliefs are strongly held by the majority of the population, their traditions remain, and children, if no one else, are rather unlikely to let an excuse to fly kites go by.

In Santiago Sacatepequez, a tradition has developed over the past century of flying bigger and bigger kites. At some point this evolved into one of the largest annual tourist events in Guatemala. Kites often feature Guatemalan cultural values and shared cultural history and legend. Kites featuring Jesus, patriotic symbols, anti-drug messages, Mayan or Spanish cultural references, and business advertisements filled the sky over a beautiful valley. Kites are made out of tissue paper and large bamboo sticks. Kites could be as large as four stories tall and, once in the sky, were usually only manned by one person. Children all had their own normal sized kites, and run around the cemetery trying to get them to fly. Even when the wind was too low for the large kites, dozens of children's kites were in the air. Pictures to come soon.

Gifts

2006-11-02T16:29:00.000-06:00

I'll happily accept any book, but I have a list to the right in my links. Feel free to look at any top 100 list, of fiction, nonfiction, academic or scientific works) saves some creativity. You may want to know that I've recently read 61 & 66, and probably could recite number 88. You can buy them on Amazon.com and send them pretty easily. Also, any book in Spanish that you know of is well-welcomed. A good start may be One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad) or Harry Potter (any volume but 1-3) in Spanish (they're easy reads).

Site Visit in Tecpán

2006-11-02T12:29:00.000-06:00

My host organization, Utz Samaj, is funded by USAID, European groups, and various private interests in Guatemala. Utz Samaj's space include an office for its half dozen technical advisors, a large classroom where farmers take weekly classes, Greenhouses used for classes on how to manage them, demonstration fields, and a bodega where various products such as fertilizers and seeds are sold at a discounted cost to the farmers.

My preceding volunteer made an interesting, though cynical observation about NGOs in Guatemala: that they primarily serve to give middle class Guatemalans jobs. This appears essentially true.

So here's how my week went in short review: I spent three half-days in the office, and the rest of the time wandering around Tecpan, often with the 4 other present volunteers, or alone, and often meeting many various Tecpanecos. Many voluneers introduced me to their Guatemalan friends, who embraced me very quickly. By the end of the week, i was eating dinner with the neighborstelling them stories about snow in between games with the five-year-old. I find Tecpan a very friendly city, but I am excited to find my way in the small towns in which I work. It has become clear to me that an easy path lays before me of little work and hot showers if I so desire. I definitely seek the other path.

Returned from my site

2006-10-31T14:34:00.000-06:00

So, i just returned from my site visit and want to write a brief description. I am going to be living in the area of Tecpan, Chimaltenango (Español English) for the next two years. Tecpan is a city of nearly 20,000 people and another 30,000 in its surrounding rural towns. It is in an area where the dominant language is Kakquikel, but a large portion of the population (mostly the men) learn Spanish in the school system and for various transactions outside of their home. Tecpán is known by tourists for some great restaurants and as the home to the ruins of Iximche, the capital of the Kak'quikel empire for the 50 years before Spanish invasion. It also served as the 'first capital of Guatemala,' meaning the first capital of operations of Spanish invasion.

I am working with an organization called Utz Samaj. Utz Samaj is a well-funded organization with its parent organization headquartered in Guatemala City, which receives funds from USAID, various European aid groups, and members of its executive board. Utz Samaj has I believe 6 technical advisors who give charlas about improved agricultural methods, help maintain gardens at various schools, and help acertain funds for said projects and greenhouses.

My job is to fill the marketing side of the organization. Though farmers know how to grow things and have technical and capital to do so, they generally sell their products to guys who drive into town with a pickup or haul it in on the bus system and sell it in Tecpán on market days. My job is probably going to encompass a lot more than that, but you only learn so much in two days in the office.

The Process of Acquiring or Becoming a Volunteer

2006-10-30T14:30:00.000-06:00

I recently received an e-mail from someone concerned about ´who determines what development needs to be done´ by Peace Corps volunteers. I thought I would explain the process a little bit on how Peace Corps volunteers are placed. The process essentially starts in two places at once: In the US, where volunteers are applying, and in host countries where volunteers are placed.

In host countries, agencies throughout the country officially are the first group who ask for help. They acquire a form to request a volunteer, turn it in to the Peace Corps in-country offices, and begin a long courtship with the Peace Corps via people known as Associate Peace Corps Directors (APCD). Now, in reality, there is often a relationship existing before hand. Usually, the APCDs have ongoing relationships with various NGOs and government offices in the country. As is usually the case, information passes by word of mouth. Maybe there was a Peace Corps volunteer at another organization in a nearby community, and often the same organization asks for Peace Corps volunteers several years in a row. These 'who you know' relationships greatly determine who ends up getting a volunteer. That doesn´t mean that there is not a need for the volunteers, but, at least in Guatemala, there is no systematic plan of placing Peace Corps volunteers in places of geatest need.

Organizations that apply for Peace Corps volunteers are advanced enough to have hired staff, not-for-profit status, and usually links to some type of international aid. Agencies have repeated visits with an APCD to ensure that they are 1) have adequate and appropriate work for a volunteer and 2) can provide the basic requirements of security and health. Agencies do not have to provide any funds to acquire a Peace Corps volunteer, as opposed to the Americorps process.

In the United States during this period of time, Jane Idealist usually catches wind of the idea of Peace Corps, and starts applying. First she meet a recruiter or talk on the phone, who then sends out some information (takes a month or two). If Jane is already sure about the process, she hops online, skips step one, and begins filling out her online Peace Corps application at www.peacecorps.gov, which is a very useful website for applying volunteers but no one else. Once done, will get a phone call from a Peace Corps volunteer within a few weeks and then will set up either a phone or in-person interview within the following couple of months. After her interview, she begins the real application process, which is long and very miserable. Once medically, legally, and financially cleared, you are assigned to a person whose job it is to determine your program. Everything Jane has said up to this point is in a folder that is given to this person. I found, however, that a long conversation with this person is the best way of getting a site that fits you. They select your site based on a few cookie-cutter descriptions (for me, Agriculture Marketing Facilitator) and a region (for me, Central or Latin America). She then mails you a folder with a little description and your country name, after which you have 10 days to accept or decline.

Next, you just wait until Staging & Training. In training, you are trained for your position, usually at the same time of other people taking similar positions (for me, Agricultural Marketing). During Training, you are assigned a site. You meet somebody that works at your agency, and then learn about the agency, the type of work they had in mind when they applied, and they learn about your abilities and what kind of work you have in mind. At this point, Peace Corps steps out in many manners, and leaves it between you and your host agency to determine your work. Some agencies seek volunteers for specific projects, but, in my experience, they usually have a rough idea of what kind of work they want you to do, but you can have the final say on what projects you do work on and what projects you don't. So, in review:

Peace Corps serves as a gatekeeper between agencies in various countries and trainer.
Various `Host Country Agencies´ have varying degrees of what they hope the volunteer will do in two years
Volunteers, in the end, determine what projects they work on and the methods used in their work.

Once placed, if there is a disagreement between agencies and volunteers, Peace Corps serves as a mediator, but the only recourse Peace Corps has is terminating a volunteer, which rarely happens for reasons linked to work.

A recruiter once told me it´s best to think of Peace Corps like an employment agency that provides basic training and placement in various situations, but doesn´t have a direct hand in the day-to-day basis of a volunteer.

My Site Assignment

2006-10-24T15:29:00.000-06:00

I have just received my site assignment. I am working in the aldeas of Tecpan, Chimaltenango. My counterpart organization, Utz Samaj, has a website (believe it or not) that can be viewed in English (believe it or not).

www.utzsamaj.org

My Address

2006-10-24T09:42:00.000-06:00

I have posted my address under my complete profile, if anybody wants to send me stuff. You're not supposed to send homemade goodies, but it's a rule broken all the time. Other nice things to receive are: Crest Citrus Toothpaste, nuts, good chocolate, and anything at all personal. The truth is, I can buy about anything I want down here, given that I can scrounge up the money, so I would love letters from loved ones more than any other thing.

Field Based Training #2, Day 5

2006-10-24T09:40:00.001-06:00

On our final day of FBT #2, we visited a tea cooperative, one of the most successful cooperatives in the country. Roughly 80 families are members. It is a former finca ran by Germans until WWII, and after the not-defunct government helped organize and train the cooperative. There are two types of land here: land owned by the cooperative and rented cheaply to members to maintain for a year, and private land of the farmers who may also bring their tea crops to the cooperative. Tea requires a lot of care, however, and no single farmer could own the necessary means of processing the tea. Therefore, the cooperative owns the machines to dry, curl, and package the tea. The cooperative maintains elected committees of internal affairs, various committees for operations and administration, a committee for teaching farmers improved methods, a committee for microcredit, and a committee for women's issues and rights. The cooperative had a hand also in convincing the government to put a school in -- a rare amenity for a country town of indigenous people. The mix of community involvement and a democratic business model (many would say communist) has helped this community and its members greatly improve their quality of life, their capacity to live inependently, not to mention their lifespan.We also visited some local caves that are still used today for various indigenous ceremonies. I feel very honored by anyone willing to share such a personal part of their lives with me for no reason but hospitality.

Field Based Training #2, Day 4

2006-10-24T09:39:00.000-06:00

Today went badly, so I'm not writing much. We went to a coffee plantation, and learned a lot about varieties of coffee. Some of us will be working with this important crop to Guatemala. What I can't help but remember about this plantation is how many more men with guns there are here than the small cooperatives we visit.

Coban, Day 2

2006-10-23T12:17:00.000-06:00

Back to Coban.

On my second day in Coban (co-BAHN), three other volunteers were due to present to an association three charlas (presentations). This experience reminded us of how flexible we need to be. The charlas were to be done in Spanish, but none of the women who we presented to spoke it -- the language Ca'qui'kel (ka-CHI-kel). We had a translator. This part we knew about before hand. However, we were planning on presenting to about 10 or 15 people in an association. Instead, we presented to roughly 40 women and about a dozen children who were nursing, playing with sticks, or dancing through much of the presentation. In addition, the charlas were given on a long narrow porch of the house of one of the women. We realized about halfway through the second presentation that the back 1/3 of the women had simply been too polite (or shy) to mention that they couldn't hear a thing anyone was saying. So we moved the chairs and continued. We presented on customer service, leadership in committees, and cooperation -- more or less.

All the presentations are abstracted and made as entertaining as possible. Considering that few of the women were accustomed to classroom learning, and many had never been in a classroom in their life, lectures are out. We pretty much have carved out a template of Introduction, Icebreaker Game, Explanation of Subject, Game, Review of Explanation. The games obviously have to be as closely linked as possible. A game may be a ridiculous role-play, a name game, or physical cooperative games. I heard a good story of a game once where a male volunteer hoped to convince these little old ladies in conservative traditional mayan skirts to make a human pyramid. It didn't work.

The goal is usually to get at half of the people to remember one thing from the presentation. If you get that far, your ahead of the game. The goal is to provide one idea that may make them alter how they currently do things. That may mean a nicer label on a package, to ask their neighbors how much they sell their chickens for, or even remind people that you don't always have to like the people you work with. If you can get some of them to remember one thing out of an hour presentation, you're ahead of most teachers, professors and pastors in the world.

Field Based Training #2, Day 3

2006-10-23T09:38:00.000-06:00

On the third day of FBT #2, it was my turn to present. I presented to the junta directiva of the a small women's cooperative that sells soymilk. God knows why there is a local market for such a product, but they carved a niche and they seem to make sufficient money. The problem, however, is that the five board members got into a fight a few months ago, and now two of them are not speaking to the other three, and vice versa. The problem appears to be very serious, and the volunteer that has worked with the group for a year still can't get anybody to tell him what the fight was about. So, three of us presented to them, again, they spoke little Spanish but plenty of Ka qui'kel, so we broke out the nice translating woman again. The first presentation was on Leadership, and, after breaking some ice, at least got the women to a point where they were making thinly veiled criticisms of various leaders in the group. Sometimes complaining is better than ignoring. My presentation was next and on the imoportant but difficult subject of Conflict Resolution. Pretty much I had to try to get everyone talking to each other again and discussing the different perspectives of the group on any subject and hope that it would make a little bit of headway on the idea that they could work anything together. My primary triumph is that they all were forced to work together towards some common games and goals, which at least forced more interaction between them. Though I'm sure they didn't all get together and make up after the charlas, maybe a few seeds that were already in their head when they asked for the charla started to germinate. We presented at their office, which had no product made, because they haven't been able to work together since they can't talk to each other. A volunteer is going to be assigned to the site, so we'll see if they can make any headway.
In the afternoon, we went to a place called ForesTrade. It is a for-profit business with a strong component of social responsibility. I can't figure out for the life of me why they chose to be for profit, but I'm sure there's a reason. They work with small coffee farmers in remote locations to get them to become fair trade certified and organic certified. Well, organic certification is easy in the sense that most small farmers can't afford pesticides or unnatural fertilizers, and therefore grow organic coffee without consideration. Unfortunately, the certification for organic is pretty tough to acquire and requires detailed records of field history, constant sampling of product, and internal audits. It has been made more difficult because next year is an election year: As always in democracies, politicians use their clout to buy off constituents with capital improvements, economic development, and, in a country where 60% of the population are farmers, free fertilizer.
The next step is Fair-Trade certification. I want to provide a little math about Fair-Trade coffee. The average pound of rousted coffee in the States in the grocery store is about $7.00 a pound if it comes in those cute little bags and is freshly ground, If you buy it in a can, about $5.00 per pound. Usually you can't buy fair trade coffee except in the pretty bags for $7. The basic requirement for that fair-trade sticker is that the farmer is paid $1.30 per pound of unroasted, dry, shelled coffee, in a freight on a ship. If it is organic, they receive a $.05 premium. Therefore, about 1/5 of the price of coffee goes to the farmer, minus the costs for transportation, drying, and packing.
There's two reactions you can have to this: One, that fair-trade coffee is a gimmick that helps only the rich. Maybe you're right. If you're really interested in helping poor small farmers, maybe you should just ask for their address and mail them two bucks for every pound of Folgers' Crystals you buy. The other reaction you can have is that Fair Trade simply isn't enough, that the coffee industry must really be ripping of the non-Fair Trade farmers, and that there's miles more of work to be done. But, until it's closer, you can at least know you scratched at the problem if you didn't put a dent in it. In countries with lower standards of living, $1.30 is a good portion of money and can completely change your family's situation, but your kids in school, and feed the family. . In Guatemala, it's the difference between eating one tortilla a day for three hungry months or eating one tortilla a day for two hungry months. In my opinion, it's still worth far more than two American dollars, no matter how far away it is from true justice.

Field Based Training #2, Day 1

2006-10-21T09:37:00.000-06:00

I went on my second field based training last week. It was week 8 of 12 of training, and it serves as a milestone in the training process. It is the final component of general training, and the last activity used to measure our abilities, interests, and needs in a site. During week 9, you are assigned a site and begin preparation specifically for the work you will be doing for the next two years. This field based training was focused on showing us various typs of volunteer sites. We visited sites of a volunteer working for a massive cooperative as well as one working for an international NGO. These were two sample sites that are similar to what some of us will be seeing.
Monday
On Monday, we had were assigned an activity similar to what we will do early in our site: learn about your area and various services. I went to an institution known as Intecap, or Instituto Tecnico de Capacitacion y Productividad (easy enough to translate). It is a public-private partnership that offers low-cost training for anything from becoming a hairstylist to how to implement best agricultural practices in your radish fields to starting your own business. It was a well-funded looking place that appears to provide really useful classes to those wise enough to know how to request and organize a group. While it maintains economic attainability it caters to groups involved in development and community groups instead of unorganized farmers. Granted, most farming populations are not an easy market to convince to do anything, it helps to remember that clientele aren't nonprofit groups and development workers such as Peace Corps volunteers, it is farmers. Often, such agencies provide useful information but rely on various development groups to refer people in need.
I may as well use this as a springboard to talk about two subjects: Government contracts and Patchwork development.
Public-private partnerships, a shiny new term that often refers to specific types of government contracts, have become very popular both in the States and Guatemala for difficult subjects such as tourism, social services, capacitations, and even education (read charter schools) . The justification often used for such partnerships is that governmental offices often prove inefficient in managing components of the economy that hold a high economic potential.
For example, if a city may pour tax dollars into a tourism board, but there truly isn't any motivation for anyone to accomplish anything at the tourist board except enough to avoid getting fired. If the tourism board could take a cut in profits from, say, promotions of local events, however, you could hire 'salesmen' motivated to improve the economy. Oh, but that's asking for corruption to be openly lining public servants' pockets with private dollars. What if we could have both at once? What if instead of paying a department, we 'subsidized' a private company. Sometimes these sort-of governmental agencies happen by government agencies contracting already successful companies. Sometimes they do it in a manner that only reminds me of exocytosis.
In a pragmatic sense, however, it usually happens in a way that is unlike how we like to think government contracts occur. For many government contracts (public servants please correct me), there are regulations that the govenment has to publicly announce it is seeking contracts, such as in the classified ads that nobody reads. They usually get a few estimates from various companies, and they are required to contract the lowest bidder. Granted, there are various ways to beat this system: usually you are comparing apples to oranges because different groups offer slightly different products, such as timetables or minor details, allowing boards to select whom they want on other bases. For thing such as major as private-public partnerships, however, there is rarely more than one agency capable of handling the capacity the government needs. For tourist boards, it may be an agency spawned out of the government and the Chamber of Commerce.
Two examples of this: In New Orleans, the education system is essentially being contracted out. However, to prevent any yahoo starting a charter school, only organizations that have being providing charter schools for five years may open charter schools. That eliminates all but two organizations in New Orleans but sets up a welcome mad for national companies such as Edison Schools. Edison Schools' capacity for taking a lion's share of the protfit in New Orleans is strong, despite the fact that they may not truly be the best fit. A more infamous example is the no-bid contracts given after the invasion of Iraq by the United States. Halliburton was given an enormous contract (if I recall the initial contract alone was $40 billion) for a number of various services, from transport to oil well reparation to security. It is worth mentioning that Halliburton, I have read, has more security employees in Iraq than the United States has troops. Now, many people feel very indignant of the President's friends receiving billions of taxpayer dollars, but the reality, as it has been explained to me, was that no other company truly had the capacity to handle a contract of that size.
While this is mostly the result of a competitive market, considered a cornerstone to democracy, it serves as a penalty to those working competitively. Moreover, it is to be remembered that many markets (military, aircraft, construction) heavily rely on government contracts as a large components of the industry, and companies often seek to cater their company only to government contracts. With the government giving out single large contracts, instead of many smaller contracts, they are setting themselves up to create monopolies within industries by simply handing companies a share of the market. Monopolies can be borne out of this that dominate a private market, but, more likely and equally damaging is that they build monopolies of subsectors of the market -- for example, once a company grows its capacity twofold because of one enormous government contract, the government will return over and over to that company because it holds the capacity, and, with its newfound capacity, it can then beat out smaller companies for government contracts. That also means it can inflate its prices to just below the cost of its initial capacity investment and still get the contract. Hence government waste without even using government employees.The solution: many small government countracts instead of few big ones. If a company truly is the best fit, it will win all the contracts. If, however, it isn't, a more competitive market will prevail. Many logistical contacts in Iraq have followed just this context, and now many companies do the work initially done only by Halliburton.
I have to stop myself on the subject, because this only refers to certain public-private partnerships. The ideal and the modus operendi of many of such partnerships are very effective, transparent, and fair.
Patchwork Development
Like any business, nothing is more powerful than word of mouth. Often, development work is the same way. In the past, much development work has been criticized because it throws money or work into a project or community without getting to know the people, companies, or region. This has resulted in many strides in learning about exactly where money is going, a lot of paperwork, and an aversion of the unknown in people whose job it is to determine where money/labor/capital goes. People who determine where the money (or Volunteer) goes rely on informants they have known for years to tell them of useful projects in their area. Often NGO workers rely also on hearing from good 'leads' from other NGO workers. This system of word of mouth is based on trust and, usually, someone's intimate knowledge of good ideas in a handful of communities. It is undoubted that this set up has avoided many unknown projects where aid could go to projects not helpful or be sifted out by corruption, but it has created a system where often a few communities are well maintained and become dependent on aid, or become inundated with aid in a short period of time, while other communities don't even show up on the radar of anyone in the world of development. Due to lack of centralization of NGO work, a lot more small-scale, and more effective projects occur now than, say, fifteen years ago when development was defined by massive loans by the World Bank to corrupt governments. However, this lack of centralization has created an envirnoment where there is no systematic plan for development of many areas.
The solution; UNDP, the United Nations Development Program. This organization organized the Millenium Development Goals, as well as many other highly detailed plans for dozens of countries throughout the world. These programs are usually very well researched and well thought out. However, they don't have buy-in by many groups, including many NGOs and, when it disagrees, the United States government. The UNDP, like much of the UN, it succeeded in pumping out dozens of well thought out reports that nobody will ever read. If you work in development, however, you should read some of the Millenium Development Goals for the country you work in. If not to follow it, to learn from it. I will admit, however, I haven't yet read Guatemala's.

Ladino

2006-10-09T07:32:00.001-06:00

The term ladino deserves an explanation. The very existence of a race known as ladino truly drives at the reality that race is not based on genetic makeup, but arbitrary social constructs and a crude alchemy based on cheekbone structure and melanin.When I first heard the term I thought it was just a variation of latino, but it is different than how I understand that word. Many people equate it with the term mestizo. Mestizo technically refers to people of descent from both Europeans and indigenous (North, South, or Central) Americans. Historically, mestizos were the people that the Spaniards trusted to serve as underlings -- not considered smart enough to learn as a scholar but smart enough to be trained like a Labrador. Mestizos were given preferential treatment and absorbed the culture of their oppressors as a means to better their own lives. The most interesting thing is that ladino culture has evolved itself into something qualitatively distinct from both Spanish culture and Mayan culture. Even though as a race it was borne as a mixture, it developed into something that considers itself qualitatively distinct and not truly attributing its history and culture to Mayans and Spaniards, but more as if they have no cultural ancestry before 1600.Other racial groups such as mulattoes and other cleaves can be found in textbooks. There was a final rung, however, that often played little role in Spanish colonies due to their avoidance of anything colonial. They were seen more solely as occupants of land that had to be cleared away like trees with shallow roots. Those were the indigenous groups. While generally considered one race, it cannot be forgotten of the enormous variation among indigenous peoples. The primary characteristic of groups usually labeled indigenous is separatism -- an avoidance of absorption of a dominating culture. While mestizos mimicked, the maya avoided. As time progressed in Spanish colonies, often groups were subdivided into subgroups -- those of pure Spanish blood born in colonies in some parts eventually were considered second to European blood born on European soil. Though as unsustainable as such a separation sounds, it was indeed maintained. The image of these biologically separate groups is completely unsupported by reality. While it is unlikely that Spaniards tolerated much mixed blood at the highest racial rung, the genes of black slaves, mixed ladinos, and indigenous groups was mixed greatly and your social attainment resulted more in what you appeared to be, what your parents were considered to be, or, also of great importance, your willingness to mimic the ruling class.An aside on the idea of hypodescent. As anyone who took sociology 101 will happily tell you, hypodescent is a rule commonly used to weed out the difficult questions about biological race. The basic idea is that if someone of the dominant race and a another race bear a child, that child is of the other race. During over half of the 20th century laws were maintained in many states in the US that if a white person bore a child with someone of another race, that child was not white. One long-lost grandparent was enough. The idea still holds true in our minds, if not on our birth certificates. Just as something more similar than different can still be different, something clean than dirty can still be dirty, something more white than black could still be black. While many mestizos were clearly victims of hypodescent, Mayans maintained their own form of hypodescent. Ladino, according to what I have read, was used by Mayans to refer to anyone that didn't maintain Mayan practices. A person could have even 100% Mayan blood, if they had moved to a town and given up their traditional Mayan ways, they were ladino, and no longer Mayan. There was no returning for them or their children.The chasm of hatred between ladino and maya was very wide. Ladinos were essentially considered traitors and, once no Spanish were left, oppressors to Mayans, while Mayans were in turn considered poor (which always walks in hand with lazy), drunk and untrustworthy. Even the poorest of ladinos could be proud that at least they weren't Mayans, and Mayans maintained that ladinos shamed their ancestors and took all they could from Mayans. No one benefited from these ideas. The Mayans naturally were harmed the most by racism because they held the least power, but both groups focused their hatred borne of misery on the other, occupying them both well enough to prevent them from fighting anyone who actually had any control over the misery of the poor.One last interesting note on power structures of race is how common the story is of two dominated groups pitted against each other. In Rwanda, indigenous groups were picked on arbitrary physical qualities by the colonists -- to hire a class of Rwandans to be administrators, managers, and mediators between the masses and the actually colonists. These people absorbed more of the culture of their colonists but developed a unique cultural identity from either group. The Tutsis grew to believe themselves better than the Hutus. In a historical anomaly, the Hutus were left in control of the country upon the colonists' exeunt, which resulted in the mass exterminations known of today.In what is now known as Guinea-Bissau, a colony was started. Natives of the nearby islands of Cape Verde, who had been long been in contact with Westerners, were shipped to mainland and treated as a superior race. Again, not smart enough to rule, but smart enough to fetch the morning paper. Even as generations of descendants of Cape Verdians lived on the mainland, they maintained themselves drastically different -- more intelligent and industrious -- than those of Guinea Bissau.The ladinos of the past served well as the administrators, and ladinos still dominate the political scene ten-to-one. However, barriers between the two appear to be falling quickly. Several people have told me that there has been so much intermarriage between ladinos and mayans that they find it very hard to tell the difference between the two anymore. There's still a number of barriers between them, but I'll write about that another time.

A Guatemalan Wedding

2006-10-09T07:28:00.000-06:00

I've been trying to come up with something to write about for a while, and it is beginning to get more difficult. Mostly it's because I've fallen into a routine here, and much of my formal training has entered into technical aspects that I doubt many other people care about.
I went to a Guatemalan wedding last Saturday, and the differences were minor but interesting.
We received an invitation for the wedding roughly a week before the wedding. It was a simple invitation but not simpler than I have received for some weddings in the states. When I first saw that the wedding was within a week I presumed it was hurried because of a pregnancy or impatient couple. It turns out that it is rare for invitations to be sent out much before or preparation in general to be much longer, either. It's not that couples are hurried here as much as there's no reason to send out invitations 3 months in advance. Nobody has to arrange a flight (or hardly a bus ride) to get to the wedding. I've been told that a cake can be very expensive -- roughly Q1000 (minimum wage is Q35 per day).
The service was a Catholic mass and resembled any Catholic wedding, which mostly resembles every Catholic Mass with a few more decorations and a more obvious theme of readings. Going to Catholic mass here is difficult for me, because I know every single response and prayer, but have no idea how to translate it. And there are no missals. It should also be remembered, that you don't say things in mass the way you normally talk, so translating is out. While I can translate how to say
Our dad that lives in paradise has a holy first name,
I can't for the life of me figure out what on earth everybody is saying. I can't even figure out how to pronounce Hallelujah here. The good news is I still know the routine of stand-sit-kneel. I'm good at that.
The first time I went to Mass here, I severely messed up the "Peace be with you" part, too. In the States, you say it while grasping hands. It's not a handshake exactly, but you grab hands. For people you really like you can hug them. If you don't want to stretch to a really far pew, you just say it and sort of nod your head. Here, instead of shaking opposite hands (right hand to right hand), you grab their left forearm with your right, or vice versa. Though this sounds simple, imagine that you walk into a room and everybody wants to shake with the wrong hand. Every time you try to switch to the correct hand, they switch too. Peace has never been so stressful.
Back to the wedding. After the ceremony at the church, we walked 100 feet through the park to the town social hall. Anything old in Guatemala was built under the influence of Spain, and architecture clearly demonstrates that Spaniard colonists didn't like to walk any farther than they had to. My town's center is a park with a church and a school on one side, the town offices on one side, the open-air market on one side, and a bakery & arcade on one side (I don't think the Spanish were responsible for the accessibility of Street Fighter II).
Inside the town hall there was a DJ set up with stupidly enormous speakers, a smoke machine, about 120 plastic chairs and folding tables for guests. This part confused me because the wedding was only about 40 people. Apparently it's very common to skip the ceremony and show up for the party. In addition, it is also acceptable to show up to the party without being invited. Since there's only one place in town to throw a big party, and the aforementioned speakers, anybody on a Saturday night knows there's a party going on. Since there's no open bar (or any booze save a dixie cup of champagne), it doesn't really change your costs that much. The doors are wide open, which unfortunately means that homeless alcoholics and stray dogs can and do wonder in. They are both seen as similar annoyances to be ignored if harmless and chased out by anyone larger than them if they get into too much unattended food or champagne.
There's this tradition of the couple getting rice in their hair -- a Mayan vestige, I was told, but it seems too familiar to me. They put a bird and rice in a bell-shaped pinata and then stood under it, pulled a string so both fell out. They must use the same bird because it appeared unfazed and sat on the bride's finger right afterward.
Most everyone danced, and not in any Latin-hip-swaying insanity either. They just danced with a hand at the waist and a hand in a hand and appeared to be more or less like North Americans. The party lasted from roughly 5pm to midnight I was told, but most of us cleared out by 10pm. When I got sick of dancing I played with little kids who had ripped down most of the balloons by the fifth hour.
About the lack of bar. While Guatemalans generally maintain a temperance, I sort of expected it to come out at the wedding. If it had been a Protestant wedding, I would have known better, but the only person who had a buzz was the aforementioned alcoholic who showed up that way and two guys who brought in about 5 beers from the convenience store down the street.
One strange thing about marriages here is that it is perfectly acceptable to marry someone with significantly older or younger than you. My host mother is roughly a decade younger than my host father, but I have seen plenty of cases of the opposite. I'm not sure yet what the normal phases of life are here and when you get married. This couple was 30 and 25, which I've been told is pretty old.
So as cross-cultural as you would expect the bonding of two lives would be, it really just demonstrated to me how much white Western culture has influenced Guatemalan ladino culture.

Day 3 Field Based Training

2006-10-02T10:31:00.002-06:00

The third place we visited during our field-based training was a large-scale cooperative that had evolved in the past 20 years into providing an association for farmers, a group purchasing agency, a credit agency, a packing & processing plant, an exporter, a scholarship foundation, and a medical clinic. In my mind, it served as an excellent place to serve as close to an ideal for us. It had a cooperative of some 800 farmer families.
I could write a lot of uninteresting details of how the business ran, as I spent time working in the finance office, the packing plant, quality control, and four other jobs, I'd rather write a quick bit on one little office: Servicios de Sociales. This actually wasn't an office of social services at all. It was actually a 15x15 room that served as an office for loans, sales contracts, payments, and seed & fertilizer distribution and ran by two women for one subgroup of farmers. What seemed so strange to me was that there were about 13 other rooms that served the same purpose in the entire building: vookkeepers, CPAs, and a warehouse of seed & fertilizer for the other farmers. Why don't these farmers go to the bigger offices for the same services instead of waiting in this line for hours?
The answer was simple: all of these members of the association were women. I thought about this through the entire day and thought about how unfair it was that all their work was relegated to this little room that was printing contracts on a secretary's printer as a favor. If this cooperative was advanced enough to provide scholarships and medical clinics, why couldn't it at least streamline the process so that women could wait in line with the men? What seemed stranger was that, in the finance office, there were women who were waiting in line to turn in paperwork for their husbands. Upon talking with a few people, I learned that the system was actually kept to better maintain equality.
It turns out that there was no rule saying that women couldn't go to the main office, nor were their records kept separate, nor were they paid prices any different or were any of the services offered different. However, since most people who graduate high school in this area were men, there are few bookkeepers who were women. The office and the warehouse in general were vastly dominated by male employees. However, experience showed that male bookkeepers and weighers were less helpful when women needed help with something or didn't understand why their bills didn't add up to them. It sounded like sometimes men genuinely were unhelpful, sometimes it just came down to the fact that women & men here conduct business differently. Whatever the case, women members sought to work with women because they trusted them more, and male staff members were happy to not have to deal with them.
This doesn't mean that the system qualifies as separate but equal: As I mentioned, the women members have longer lines and their offices appears to have a smaller budget. And, hopefully, women will work in offices and warehouses as much and have an equal opportunity to get a higher education someday. For now, however, they seem to found a culturally appropriate solution, no matter how politically incorrect it appears to a North American.

Day 2 Field Based Training

2006-10-02T10:30:00.000-06:00

On the second day of field based training, we went to a nonprofit organization in Santiago, an aldea of San Lucas, Sacatepequez. The entire area was known as El Teja, which means (roofing) tile. The dirt there is heavy in clay and is ideal for making the classic clay roofing that you can see in lots of architecture in the parts of Central and North America where there was Spain held a sphere of influence and there was a lot of clay. El Teja was supposedly named during the mid-1500s as Antigua was being built because it served as the source for the needed tile.
The center was originally opened by a European development organization in order to serve as a model to show the community methods of living that were more environmentally sustainable and healthful and provide a source of income for women.
One of its primary 'products' was the improved stove. In many poorer parts of the world, food is cooked over an open wood fire, often indoors. This causes numerous health problems because people (usually women) cooking over these fires suffer lots of respiratory problems because of all of the smoke. The second demographic affected is children. In addition to prolonged smoke inhalation, children frequently are badly burned from the fires. To remedy this, there are campaigns in many areas to have people switch to using 'improved stoves -- woodfire stoves in which you build a (usually concrete) casing and put a metal top that resembles the tops of traditional woodstoves. While the health concerns serve as a convincing measure for developers, the most convincing aspect of these stoves is that they use approximately 1/2 as much wood as the traditional way of cooking. The cost of these stoves is about the same as a month's supply of wood in Guatemala, which means that families make the money back on the investment within the first two months.
The method of community involvement is excellent: the center tries to make itself known both to people involved in development and to communities it hopes to serve. Usually they are approached by groups neighboring the communities they have already served. If a group can round up at least eight people interested in getting a stove and paying for the supplies, a trainer sets a date to go to the site. Often the people interested in the stoves are asked to acquire the concrete, lime, and stovepipe needed on their own. If appropriate to the area, some people make their own brick beforehand or use some other masonry technique common in the community. The one component they cannot easily acquire, the stovetop, is brought out by the trainer. The trainer spends 1 1/2 days at the helping them build their stoves. This usually simply entails either using a lime & stone mortar to stack cinder or adobe blocks or making the cement walls and making a hole in the roof for the stovepipe to go through. Trainers work to ensure that people are confident enough that they could make their own again if they needed to. This is so that if other people in the community desire to make their own as well, the only dependence on outside help is to acquire the stovetop. Contact information is given to anyone who will take it.
A less successful subject are above-ground dry latrines. Urine & feces don't actually stink as bad if they're kept separate, so the latrines have 2 compartments for feces and urine in a bottle. After defecating, you drop a few of ashes down the toilet. Once one compartment of feces is full, you switch to the other. About 4 weeks after being full, the feces has decomposed into incredibly rich fertilizer. In addition, the urine can be diluted and used to balance the pH of the soil, creating a latrine with zero negative impact or health risks.
Environmentally-conscious development agencies fell in love with this technology a couple of decades ago and promoted their use in much of Guatemala. Many agencies went to communities all over and set these up (often for free) for families.
The problem with the latrines is that they're a bit more work than regular latrines, and really not worth the effort for most people. The bulk of the reward for the work is the personal pride some people may feel for having zero negative environmental impact -- a trait found much less often in farmers than environmentally conscious development workers.
NGOs often didn't spend enough time explaining why ash was needed and what to do after four weeks, how to dilute the urine, and why it was worth the effort. In addition, since these latrines were put up for free by agencies, communities were indifferent to the success of the program. In the end, many of these latrines ended up getting filled once and never used again. Even worse, some farmers that weren't properly taught dilution of the urine ended up just spraying straight urine on their fields, which can kill or stunt some of the more delicate seedlings.
Eventually most organizations scrapped the above-ground latrine model and accepted that the old method was more practical for normal life. The primary lesson learned is that what sounds like a good idea to a bunch of helpful people can be a bad idea for people who live in the slightly harsher real world. At this particular organization, the above-ground latrine is still used by staff and is a source of pride, and some members seem to not understand why the rest of the campo isn't using them.
The Center also also has a garden of endemic medicinal plants frequently used to cure various ailments. Most Mayan families living in the country have a small garden of medicinal plants used non their own, and Mayan women grow up learning the uses of each plant. Natural antiseptics, antacids, analgesics, antihistamines and hydrocortisones are grown by each family in small quantities. Women in the community often go there to purchase more when their families are running low. The plants serve the same purposes as most over-the-counter drugs, but cost one-tenth or one-hundredth of the price. (Pharmaceutical companies maintain unreasonably high prices in lower-income markets on both prescription and non-prescription drugs for dozens of reasons that I won't bore you with here.) The most interesting component of the medicinal plant project is that it actually pays for itself.
The final and most relevant project was that of shampoos. Another common knowledge to many women here is how to make your own shampoos, pomades, and soaps. By combining this with the medicinal plant garden, the company began making its own shampoos. It began selling them at the center for Q15 per bottle (US$2) and planned on selling its shampoos to a big-box store here (purchased by Wal-Mart on Jan 1 2006) called Paiz. To sell to Paiz, they had to obtain a Registro Sanitario (Sanitary Certification) for their manufacturing techniques.
In Guatemala, most people buy most of their goods in open air markets and tiendas (general stores). Neither of these venues require a Registro Sanitario. As a result, most small companies don't bother to go through the government hoops to acquire such a thing. This results in two markets of products -- the 'informal' market where most transactions occur for medium quality, low-priced goods and a formal market full of regulations where you generally higher-priced and high-quality goods. Transactions are usually smaller on the informal market: producers, distributors, retailers, and consumers all purchase on smaller scales.
Because most small businesses don't bother with a Registro Sanitario, the rules for Sanitary Certification have reacted by setting qualifications appropriate for large-scale companies: separate rooms for various procedures, capital-intensive investments such as connecting to sewage lines, etc.
In the case of the shampoo business, they were a tiny organization that ended up investing thousands of dollars to obtain certification. After six years of inspections and fundamentally changing their facilities, they have obtained their certification. In the past six years, however, the business has never profited due to the enormous cosn ts to meet certification. They finally are at a point where they may make a profit, but they can hardly pay the electric bill.
The mistake made by the organization is that it tried to move from a tiny market to an enormous one. Had it maintained its smaller markets and sought to increase its size to sell in, say, 25 tiendas before it even considered getting its Registro Sanitario, it may have been able to make it. As it stands, the shampoo business may not be able to enter Paiz due to its financial burdens.
The financial situation of the entire organization is also a great case study for one of the most common mistakes made in development in the past 20 years. A European agency and several expatriate development workers came to the area and paid in full for the building of the agency. Afterwards, they paid a mix of local and expatriate staff well to maintain the program for roughly ten years. Partly because so many things appear cheap compared to life in Europe, they supplied the organization with most everything that they needed to thrive as an organization. As years trudged on, the European organization realized that the local nonprofit wasn't making adequate steps towards self-sustaining, and tired of footing the bill, so it terminated funding of the project. The program managed to stay alive but has shrunk considerably and, years later, has yet to have a year it didn't have to shrink.
The good news is that now that they have their Registro Sanitario, have pared down their costs to a bare minimum, an employ entirely local staff, and have one full-time volunteer whose job is to expand their markets and turn a profit, they have a pretty good chance of reinventing themselves.

Antigua

2006-10-02T10:29:00.000-06:00

The city of Antigua was part of a run of bad luck of colonial capitals. The original capital, now known as Ciudad Vieja, was founded in 1527. When Volcan Agua erupted 14 years later, it deluged the town with rocks and mud, leaving little standing but the church. The second capital, humbly named La muy Noble y muy Leal Ciudad de Santiago de los Caballeros de Goathemala (now Antigua), remained the capital of the Spanish colony from 1541 to 1773. Though the three volcanoes that surround Antigua (Agua, Fuego, & Acatenango) provide a beautiful vista, they don't provide safety. Antigua suffered several earthquakes in the 1700s, and an enormous earthquake in 1773 toppled what was left. The capital was moved about 30 miles east and named it La Nueva Guatemala de la Asuncion (now Guatemala City). Mother nature doesn't consider 30 miles a significant move, however, and earthquakes in 1917 and 1918 rocked the capital. An earthquake in 1976 rocked the entire region, killing 23,000 and leaving over 1 million homeless. Politicians have since given up moving around and have accepted the fact that the whole country is a tectonic disaster area.
After being deserted and scoured for parts to build Guatemala City in 1773, some Antiguenos remained in the city and it flourished again in the 1800s. In the last half of the 20th century, it was recognized as a major heritage site for Central America. In the past 30 years, Antigua has made its name as home of the best schools for foreigners to study Spanish. Ironically, this has resulted in an influx of tourists and a city where anyone speaking English can get around fine.
As most tourist towns, Antigua can be divided into two parts: one for tourists and one for locals. Naturally Antigua's prices are much higher than the rest of Guatemala -- one can buy a bottle of water for Q10 in one part of the town and for Q1 in others. This generally is credited to the fact that most tourists think of costs in terms of their own currency, and therefore condier US$1.50 acceptable for a bottle of water, even if that's ten times the going rate in the country. Antigua hosts dozens of great restaurants of every ethnicity you can imagine (also at American price levels), Internet Cafes, guided tours, museums, as well as crafts 'tipicos' (meaning typical to Guatemalan culture). The arts & crafts sold in Antigua are absolutely beautiful, but are not necessarily typical. As is the case in most countries, its people have all Westernized much more than tourists ever want to think.
The other side of Antigua is closer to the bus terminal. As in most Guatemalan cities, the bus terminal has a nearby open air market where you can buy almost anything. Though foods and crafts expectedly dominate the open air market, kitchen wares, watches, cellular phones, house decorations, clothing & shoes, radio antennaes, and CDs are all available there as well.
All in all, Antigua provides a nice respite when you just want a burger and speak English, but be prepared to spend in a day there what you spend in a week anywhere else.

Field-Based Training Week

2006-09-28T17:32:00.000-05:00

During the fourth week of training in Guatemala, you have a Field-Based Training week. That means that you essentially go out to places that resemble sites or as models for what you want to make your site. While there you learn about methods and practices as well as get your feet wet. I'm hoping to put a little bit about each day in here.

On Monday we returned to a site that we had visited for an afternoon. It was in an aldea known as Estancia. It is near San Martin Jilitopeque, Sacatepequez. You say it hill-it-oh-PEK-ay, I guess.

The site is of a cooperative of about 80 farmers. The cooperative got started about eight years ago. They were organized for a while as a growers' association. The association started organizing their crops so they could sell to larger buyers like distributors, etc. instead of the one guy with a truck that gives them lousy prices. Thanks to free money from USAID and technical help from a mostly local NGO called ADHIL, they have a building that they now can use as a center of their processes. To improve the prices they get, you have to start following standards of best practice in all of your fields. If you follow them all, you can get certified, which means that supermarkets will buy from you. It's really hard, though. It's rarely worth it for a single farmer to get certified, so most farmers only sell in street markets and tiendas, which is where most people buy their food here. When you're organized, since you can sell more product, larger buyers are interested.

After you get your certification, are part of a legal business , and a bunch of other miserable steps, you make good money selling to supermarkets and packing plants. The ultimate prize is if you can also pass requirements for selling to either the EU or the US. This takes many years. Shockingly, this relatively young and small association has successfully passed all of these certifications and is currently exporting to the United States. Since they can obviously sell at a lot higher price, they guaruntee a premium to their farmers. In addition, they have a truck that drives around to the farms and picks up the product. The product then goes to the centro de copia (the donated building), where it is weighed, classified into exportable and nonexportable, packaged, and then driven to either the airport in Guatemala City or to a port.

Unfortunately, the organization currently has so few farmers that it can't keep up with the demand. Generally, when you're working with large buyers such as supermarkets and importing companies, they want product year round. For 80 farmers without greenhouses, it's very difficult to keep up in the poor growing seasons. To export over water, you are charged by the container (like the ones you see on tractor trailers) -- they can't come close to filling even one. Since their quantities are so small, it is actually cheaper to airmail them to the States. The cost to airmail is still so high, though, that they lose money during their off-season, which is 6 months of the year. The good news is that the ideal growing season for their crop (green beans) is during most producers' off season -- October through March. Therefore, they receive roughly 10 times the market price that their receiving now for their product when their fields are full of it. In the end, they profit, but this is very hard because you can barely pay your bills and buy the lime for maize and the wood for the stove. Nonetheless, two months of struggle is better than 12 months, so they keep exporting their green beans.

Estancia is a very rural area whose most of itspopulation is on the hills of her valley. It was an area deeply hurt by "La Violencia," which is how most people refer to the 26 years of civil war. In fact, they really are usually referring to the last 10 years of the war, where the fighting was really mostly one-sided: the government murdering mayans. Though mayans have been an unrepresented group throughout most of Guatemala's history, when Communism spread to Cuba, Guatemala was forever changed. The United States' fear of Communism spreading to Central and South America led to them (like in much of the world) supporting any government that pledged its allegiance against Communists. This often led to well-funded dictators who used their power to "fight Communism," which resulted in them fighting any opposition -- effectively killing democratic states in order to save them.

In Guatemala, the Mayans, who were entirely culturally separate from the political and legal institutions that called itself the government of Guatemala, were perceived by those in power to be at risk for becoming Communists. In other words, because there were many of them and were most likely to oppose their ongoing exploitation, they were feared. Many speculate also that because the Mayans were culturally distinct they were feared.

At the end of the 1970's, a group led by Rios Montt came into military power. In 1982, Rios Montt and a group of military officers seized power after (likely rigged) elections gave power to someone else. Rios Montt promised order to the country, and delivered. He gave weekly 'sermons' and used religious and moral speech in much of his work. He maintained a moral agenda and pleased the ladinos, who represented vast majority of power. After Rios Montt was ousted by a military officer, the ladino minority had become the majority -- Rios Montt had successfully murdered roughly 14% of the mayan population of the country in the name of fighting Communism.

It is worth mentioning that the United States provided more money than all Guatemalan government revenues during the Rios Montt campaign. After democracy came to Guatemala, Rios Montt ran for president. One of his campaign strategies was to include pictures of him with an ally when he was in power -- Ronald Reagan. Just to ensure that no Democrats can complain, it is worth noting that while Jimmy Carter was threatening to revoke humanitarian aid to Guatemala, the CIA was feeding more than double the amount of the humanitarian aid in the name of fighting Communism.

New Option

2006-09-28T17:16:00.000-05:00

For those of you interested, I am making my daily calendar available via a link on the right side of this webpage. It's only semi-public, however. Everyone who has left a comment already has access, but if you don't have access, leave me a comment or send me an e-mail to join and I'll put you on the list.

perfection

2006-09-25T07:45:00.005-05:00

perfection, originally uploaded by andrewtrembley.

bridge

2006-09-25T07:45:00.003-05:00

bridge, originally uploaded by andrewtrembley.

viewleft

2006-09-25T07:45:00.001-05:00

viewleft, originally uploaded by andrewtrembley.

water2

2006-09-25T07:44:00.001-05:00

water2, originally uploaded by andrewtrembley.

Agricultural Marketing

2006-09-23T18:39:00.000-05:00

After three weeks, my occupation here is becoming a bit clearer. While Ag Marketing volunteers do have a ridiculously wide set of circumstances in which they work, I'm at least getting ideas of things I might be doing in the future.
CharlasCharlas are meetings that just about every ag marketing volunteer seems to end up doing to some extent. They're meetings in which you're trying to teach a concept or develop a skill. Usually you wait until you have a little bit of a sense of what kinds of things people are interested in learning about. Generally, you're trying to impart a sense of some business practice on them.
In most developing countries nowadays, it's rare that you find the fabled "subsistence farmer" -- somebody who grows what they eat and only that. Usually, you find small family farmers who know technical aspects that allow them to grow on whatever size of plot of land most small farmers have ended up with. Sometimes they have that size because of government land reform or just because that's all the land their father & grandfather could farm, and therefore all they ever had. Very often, you find the farmers all growing the same crops. Sometimes they're crops of tradition, like maize in Guatemala, and sometimes they're crops that the country was somehow convinced to grow, such as lettuce here. Lots of people grow iceberg & leafy green lettuce. They know how to grow it and know what price they'll get for it. Usually, however, the price is low compared to if they chose to grow a slightly rarer crop, such as romaine or mesclun. Risk aversion makes this a rare choice. Farmers usually eat a little bit of what they grow and sell the rest to people who hold monopolies on things like transit and marketing. It appears that while a need to have more actual cash to pay for the things you either don't make yourself anymore like clothes or can't make yourself such as electricity has pushed most farmers to selling the bulk of their crops. However, this doesn't truly make them mercantilist farmers. They're all trained like subsistence farmers -- how to do a good job with one or two crops, which is all you need to eat. To be a cash crop farmer, you need to understand that you've got to consider things other than being really good at growing a crop. You've got to see everything as dollar signs -- seeds, labor, trips to markets -- and not food. Even if you work really hard and 99% of your lettuce grows healthy, you may be worse off than if you worked just enough that 40% of your organic certified radishes grow. This is obviously counterintuitive for anybody who is used to just trying to feed themselves. If only there was a way to explain this to people.
Oh yeah, that's me. They give you a book of pre-made lesson plans on things like figuring out what your costs are, how to get certified for various sanitiary practices, how to look for new markets and new products, et cetera. They also teach you how to do most of this stuff. Peace Corps Guatemala really tries to focus its basis on "capacity building development," which means that you go in and facilitate their learning, but you really try to set it up so that in the end they do it all themselves. You try to help them learn, but at the same time play as little role in the process of achieving a goal as possible.
I believe that's very important, too. There are, however, some obstacles in Guatemala that simply cannot be easily overcome by subjegated groups such as the Mayans, who constitute about 45% of the population. This is because 1) Mayans are constantly discriminated against due to their race, 2) most mayans are at a severe economic disadvantage, 3) Mayans suffer a major language barrier, most speaking an indiginous language primarily and sometimes no Spanish whatsoever, and 4) Mayans, as often are disenfranchised groups, suffer from poor systems of education. In the end, they just can't get appointments with some people that many ladinos can get, and have no hope of getting the respect a gringo can get here.
I heard a story today of a friend of a volunteer who was a backbacking drifter in Asia until he decided to start a language school in Guatemala's capital. He had no business skills, but his business was a thriving success because he could impress any ladino entrepreneur if he just spoke a little English on the phone or wore a suit to match his white skin. Ideally in community work you try to use your privileges, such as race, to turn such inequalities on their head -- such as showing up with a K'ekchi woman and letting her run the show.
The agricultural training here holds the perspective that there is a progression of development of farming. For example, on one end is the farmer who grows maize, eats what he wants, and sells the rest to some guy who owns a truck & comes to town and rips the farmers without trucks off. In the middle of the spectrum you have cooperative farmers who have eliminated some middlemen and are selling to supermarkets and have some levels of certification of best practices. The fully developed farmer is organized into legal cooperatives, often conduct value-added work such as packaging on their own, and sell to Wal-Mart and export to the United States. With this I don't agree entirely. For some groups of farmers, exporting isn't always the best solution. Sometimes you're better off taking a little bit of your own land & growing some of your own food in a little garden. Truly, quality-of-life improvements gained from the profits you receive from supplying Americans with bok choy and radishes sometimes is smaller than the quality-of-life improvements you can get by holding back a little plot and growing your own broccoli so your pregnant daughter gets enough folic acid.
In the larger sense, one truly hopes that Guatemala is going to further become a larger source of products for the states for their sake. With CAFTA approved, nonagricultural industries will hopefully grow -- but that doesn't mean that every family's goal should be to take full advantage of free trade with a country whose economy can't help but create a hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. That´s all for now. Let me know if there´s problems with the new site. It doesn´t look very different, but it´s base is different.

Comments

2006-09-22T12:36:00.001-05:00

I just wanted to give an update on giving comments. I really appreciate them, because it's one of the only way I know if anyone's listening to me. I got several e-mails from people saying that they had to make a username to do so. I changed it recently so that you no longer need a username. Just click Comment, write what you want, and then click "Anonymous." The Username & Password spots will disappear and you can just click Send or Publish. Thanks to everyone reading!

Peace Corps Medical Procedures

2006-09-22T12:35:00.003-05:00

The official stance of the Peace Corps is to wash your hands every 4 minutes and avoid eating or touching anything for 27 months. The unofficial stance is that you might as well accept that you're going to get sick and there's nothing anybody can do about it.As far as vaccinations, they wait until you're in-country and then give you shots for everything they can think of. In Guatemala, they update your tetanus no matter what, give you shots for rabies, measles-mumps-rubella, rabies (sequence of 3), and others I'll try to remember. Personally I mind it strange they don't require this beforehand, because you're still at risk while waiting for the vaccinations to take effect.The Peace Corps requires volunteers before leaving the US to sign a form saying they'll comply with all medical requirements. That means in almost all of its countries to take chloroquine anti-malarial pills. These pills are known to have some side effects but are less harmful than most other anti-malarial drugs. From what I hear, it is hard on the kidneys and liver and for many people results in vivid dreams. Though likely a psychosymmatic effect, it does seem to be true for about 1/2 of our trainees.When Peace Corps Volunteers get sickPeace Corps volunteers are really spoiled when it comes to medical treatment. Here's the sequence for Peace Corps Guatemala volunteers when you get sick. First, you call a cell phone that's being held by one of two nurses (known as Peace Corps Medical Officers, or PCMOs) at any hour of the day. You tell them what's wrong and they help you through the process. If you need lab tests, they call you in from your site to Guatemala City, Antigua, or the center in Santa Lucia to have some tests ran. You get a little extra pocket money for such occasions. Within 24 hours most tests results are reported to the PCMO. If lab tests aren't necessary or just too inconvenient for an ill volunteer, the PCMO just tells the volunteer over the phone exactly what to purchase. If you need a prescription, they speak with the hired on Peace Corps doctor, who writes a prescription. The PCMO fills the prescription and has it delivered to the volunteer (usually by a Peace Corps staff person), or the scrip is filled at a local pharmacy by the volunteer.I was ill from Saturday to Monday with a gastrointestinal nightmare. I called the PCMO Sunday afternoon. She immediately explained in Spanish to my host mother how to make Gatorade and told me to take acetomenophen to break the fever. Within three hours a driver came and had me give him a stool sample (lucky driver). The next morning I received a phone call that the results indicated a bacterial infection and antibiotics were on their way. Within two hours the driver delivered antibiotics and I began feeling better.

Common Practices to Avoid Disease

2006-09-22T12:35:00.001-05:00

For anybody who's never been in a country that doesn't have water your body is accustomed to readily available, this explains the basics. First, you don't get to enjoy any fresh or raw food without a degree of concern. You can eat most anything normal that's cooked all the way through for more than 5 minutes. You can eat most things if you just soak it for 5 mins in chlorinated water (doesn't really affect flavor). You can drink anything that's been boiled for 5 minutes. The hard part is (1) being certain that this is true of anything you are served and (2) being certain that every single utensil, plate, cutting board, and hand, has also gone through proper procedures. Generally that means washing with only purified water or soaking it in chlorowater for 5 mins as well (kind of a pain for hands).Eating out under these circumstances is an adventure that usually entails crossing your fingers now and crossing your legs later. Don't trust any word you can't translate or doesn't list the ingredients. In Guatemala many untranslatable words are animal organs and some secret ingredients are feces (eg homemade alcoholic punches).Other inconveniences include brushing your teeth with purified water and washing your hands with purified water if you eat with them (kind of a pain in a country who has had a religious attachment to the tortilla for millenia).The nice thing is that all you have to do is boil your water for 5 mins you're fine.In the end when you follow every rule you might get sick and when you bend every rule you might not -- and in the end you bend every rule.

Geography

2006-09-16T12:34:00.000-05:00

Geography is a surprise here. I am nestled between Guatemala City (Guate) and Antigua. Though Antigua is small, it is a major tourist attraction and the road between is therefore heavily trafficked. Santa Lucia, where the training center is, is about 2/3 the way to Antigua from Guate. It's roughly 45 mins by car to Guate and 20 mins to Antigua. Santa Lucia is roughly 5,000 people and is mostly small farms and fincas (plantations) and all of those businesses that a town needs to be a town (barber shops & utilities, etc).Just a 10 minute walk to (I think) the south is Santo Tomas, where I live. It also is about 4-5,000 people. Many people walk from one town to the other every day for work, or take a bus for 1 quetzal. Each town has an internet cafe, panaderias (bakeries), and in the town center a tiny farmers market in the morning. On top of that, there's a tienda (convenience store) about every 100 feet that sells the few things you need every day like flour, sugar, and salt, as well as a ton of the things you never need like Pepsi, chips, and other junk. During the daytime (and weekend evenings), there are gobs of street vendors all over selling things that look both delicious and suspicious. Volunteers are told to never eat at these vendors unless you need to do some reading and have a comfortable toilet seat.There's at least two more towns on the other side of Santa Lucia that are about the same size. Its strange how close they are. When we drove from Guate, it seemed like there was no space between towns. When we arrived, I wasn't sure if we had even left Guatemala City yet. The mountains are all green without much for outcropping, but are much higher elevations. You can see the Volcano Agua from here: it's very close, and the sheerest incline of its size I've seen except for near the Grand Canyon.

El Dia de Indepencia (September 15)

2006-09-15T12:36:00.000-05:00

El 15 de septiembre is celebrated fairly similarly to the 4th of July in the US. There's a big build up throughout the country up to it, and activities occur throughout the week to prepare. Bands parade through the streets, re-enactments occur in some towns, flags get placed on everything, and local officials wear silly looking sashes.The day before, torches are carried by groups (organized by the schools) from local towns to other towns as well as one from most municipalidades (read townships or countis) to its department (read state) capital and often to the nation's capital. It's a very exciting tradition that seems to effectively connect community pride to nationalism.On the day of in my aldea, it began with a parade of marching bands, young girls in pickups, and little children in homemeade floats throwing candy.The marching bands here are fantastic. There don't appear to be school sanctioned sports, but you're pretty cool to be in the marching band. Bands are mixed sex, but appear to usually have more guys than girls. Most bands practice twice a day for months in advance. The primary day of performing is the 15 of September. Bands are all percussion -- dominated by bass drums, snare drums, and marimbas. Often there are a few tri-tom players who are stars, and often a group of girls heading up the front in outfits particularly demeaning for 15-year-olds. The amazing thing about the bands here is their dancing. No matter how heavy the instrument, the constant movement and constantly changing beats are both impressive and exciting to watch. Though the beats are unmistakably those of centroamerica, the melodies were often of popular American songs.For the afternoon bands performed in the park and food vendors filled the streets. In the late afternoon, they erected a four-story pine pole rubbed with grease in the center of the park. One thousand quetzales were put on top of the pole, and people tried to climb the pole to get the money. One thousand quetzales exchanges to roughly $120, but it's purchasing power here is more like $300 or $400. The pole proved virtually impossible to climb, so people would stand on each others shoulders until they were close. Apparently last year a Peace Corps volunteer won, so there was considerable pressure to find a gringo this year. Another volunteer and myself ended up serving as the bottom row while 9 Guatemalans climbed on top of us and each other. There were some really dirty feet climbing that pole. Somebody got to the top and the money was split between us all. After winning, we were pushed around in a crowd full of people speaking Spanish fast enough to make me dizzy. Afterwards we went to the town hall where a marimba band was playing. Marimba is the official music of Guatemala, and tons of people were dancing. It quickly became clear that it was impossible for me to not stick out anywhere, so I called it the end of my night.

Parade

2006-09-08T12:32:00.000-05:00

I swear that there's a 9-page blog that's coming, but for some reason I've been having troubles with my USB drive. I just found out that my Camera will function as one, so I'm going to start using it.Once a year, there is a big parade in my town (Santo Tomas). It was Sunday. Okay, parade isn't quite right. It's a band competition of all the schools in the pueblo (think county). 15 bands parade into town adn then perform. The best wins a trophy, and the children are exhausted for at least 24 hours, which i think is the real reason any such competition exists. I'm uploading pictures and a video if it's possible. Oh, there's also some pics of us with a pinata. We got a pinata for no good reason except that they're fun. Write your Congressman and thank them for letting you pay for it. The coolest thing about the parades was to watch 10 year olds playing marimbas. They practice constantly. Sorry the pictures aren't from the back, but the alto gringo would be a jerk to be in the front.

Host Family First Impressions

2006-09-05T12:34:00.000-05:00

Here in Guatemala, we are a little spoiled, because (probably like most center-based training areas) our families have had volunteers in the past. Sometimes it's a regular part of the family's income. It's worth noting that generally peace corps volunteers enter each country three times in the year: August, May, and February(?). That means that each family goes through three trainees a year. My family has a room in the house that is always used for a trainee. My family is incredibly well seasoned, as I am their 45th volunteer (therefore 15 years of 3 volunteers each). In some ways, they know what I'm doing in these 12 weeks better than I do. They know that my second week I'm going to be bored with watching telenovelas & want to go out more. They know that I'm going to play soccer once with them and then realize that I play as well as the family dog. I also suspect that it's less interesting for me to talk about my life because there's nothing exotic about an American to them. It's sort of like being a stepbrother. I know a lot of this is my insecurities.The Peace Corps screens every house and makes sure that they're hard to get into, each person has some level of personal space (usually we get the biggest bedroom in the house to ourselves, and I'm no exception). They give the families oodles of 5-gallon jugs of purified water and we always have some. I've got a big old jug in my room at all times. The biggest thing is the women have to be trained how to cook in a way that won't make us require our own toilets. All fresh veggies have to be soaked in chlorine water, all water has to be boiled or purified, dishes washed in boiled water, stay away from certain local recipies. In addition, I'm given a lock on my door and a bathroom that rarely anyone else uses. Additional amenities at my house include:Indoor toilets. the way most toilets work in Guatemala is that, instead of pulling the handle, you do just like when there's a power outage in the States. You take a bucket of water pour it into the toilet. the force of the water takes it past the elbow joint thing in the back of the toilet and it flushes. You can also just empty the bucket into the back of the toilet and pull the handle, but why bother?Refrigerator. I have yet to open this, because I was told a frightening story by a girl volunteer of the bloody animals inside. Also, it's hard as a guy to know when you're stepping past your boundaries by, you know, being a useful human being.Regular Electricity. It goes out when it rains really hard, and you have to remember it rains every day six months of the year. All our lights are fluorescent and all in all we likely use less electricity than most coffee makers in a day. I have an outlet in my room even.Tile Roofs. This means that you don't get the leaks that tin roofs are prone to.A big pila. Okay, pilas really need to be explained. The general gist of water here is that you get it at rare times. Either you only turn on your well pump at times or you wait until a good rain and then collect gobs of water. The primary way you collect the water is in a pila. Imagine a big rectangular tub that can hold somewhere between 20 and fifty gallons of water. Now imagine that you build two sinks into two of the corners above the water level maximum. The drains of the sink, however, do not empty into the pilas, but go to pipes that empty into the sewage system (read ground). You have one sink that you put dishes in and one you put clothes in. You take little bowls and dip them into the big tub part of the pila, which is full of clean water (not gringo-drinkable clean, but clean) and then empty the water into the sink or onto the dishes or the clothes, etc. The part that was the first mystery to me about pilas is where do you spit your toothpaste? The answer is you move the clothes out of the sink and then put it in. Unfortunately, I didn't have this question until my mouth was full of toothpaste, which, believe it or not, didn't help my Spanish. They don't teach you the word spit in college Spanish classes. The advantage of two pilas for my family is that they can keep more water in the dry season. The nice thing about two pilas for me is that I don't have to feel guilty about spitting in the same sink that my host mama washes her favorite dress.Religion:In Guatemala, almost everybody is either an Evangelical Christian or a Catholic. While Catholics considered the least fun sect of Christianity in the United States, Evangelicals here (and many in the States, though less known), beat Catholics at their own game. Catholics here come to Mass in nice jeans or real pants & other normal attire, spend an hour, and go home. Catholics have parties because you've got sacraments and 365 saint's days in a year, you're in the religion that reminds us that Jesus' first miracle was at a party.While in English Evangelist is a word used to describe zealous proselytizers in the United States, Evangelistas (pronounced ee-van-hel-eestas), is used only because it's impossible for anyone to say. Try it. Out loud. Quickly. If you're not saying something that resembles van halen-istas, you should be down here in my place. Though Catholicism has a much larger history in Guatemala, its entrenchment in the government during the most atrocious times in the Country's history and the surge of evangelist missionaries worldwide of the past thirty years has contributed significantly to diminishing it to just under 50% of the population.Evangelists have a lot more churches around here, but they're all a lot smaller. I saw one that was just a tin roof. You spend the bulk of Sunday in church, and, depending on how conservative you are, avoid drink, dance, music and television. I suspect that, given the un-Christian reputation of much of America, most host families are Catholic.Though I don't know any Mayan families, from what I've read most Maya are christian but maintain many of their traditional Mayan beliefs. Though this may not make sense if you don't know much about Christian mission work in the world, it's the norm for indigenous communities. While it may never be easy to convert someone over to the idea that God lived on earth 2000 years ago and had never heard of where you lived, it's infinitely harder to convince them that the supernatural forces that guided their lives and the lives of their families for millenia were actually were misguided ideas or worse, distractions given by the devil. Usually indigenous groups end up (sometimes fervently, sometimes begrudgingly) going to weekly church and believing that there is at least some good in the religion, but doesn't necessarily explain the everyday good and bad fortune and often inextricably linked systems of medicine, science, art, luck, and family.

2006-09-03T12:33:00.000-05:00

Note: This is a continuation of "beginning Training," written before. our days start at 7:30, not with lunch.We have lunch between 11:30. Those of us who live in Santa Lucèa, the town in which the center is in, either walk home for lunch or have our mamás bring us our lunches. Most of us, however, live in the neighboring towns. Our host mamas pack us lunches like we're little kids. Down here they say that lunch (almuerzo) is the biggest meal of the day, but it doesn't seem true for me. I don't know if that's because my food must be portable, but they all seem about the same to me -- big. Dinner (cena) is the biggest meal for me because you have a mama asking you if you want seconds. We all peek into our little sacks looking to see what they gave us. Almost always there is bread (pan). The first time I saw normal bread here I assumed that somebody in the familia worked at a bakery (panaderia) and had just brought home leftover hot dog rolls. In retrospect, I'm very glad I didn't know the word for hot dog rolls to make that mistake. The other pan, bread. It's more like those sweet breads that you can buy at the bread outlets because nobody buys them in stores except little old ladies. Today my host brother was eating one that looked like a gingerbread fish. They are all really good with coffee, though.Besides the pan, I usually get some leftovers from the night before, which is in no way a bad thing. Always another carbohydrate, such as boiled potatoes or other things like potatoes. In addition, I've gotten a meat nearly every meal. I'm very surprised by this and kind of hope that they stop. It's not that I don't enjoy the food -- it's amazing, but I know that meat costs a lot and don't want them to empty their pockets on something that I don't often eat stateside. Often there's some fruit besides, such as a couple bananas, which are tiny. I think they're just like the bananas in the States, but it makes me wonder if our bananas are freakishly large and the Guatemalan banana is what they're supposed to look like. The best, though, is when you get some pineapple or papaya. Sometimes you get pineapple with cinnamon on it, which is the best. I think you can't do that as much in the states because it's not always so sweet, but if you have a good pineapple some time, cinnamon it up! After lunch, we do four more hours of class.It's usually technical time, which means I'm out with people in my program (agriculture marketing) and often together with the food security program as well. The primary difference is that food security teaches skills in agriculture itself, while we worry about things such as more efficient packaging, finding new markets in cities, and possibly identifying crops that are more profitable. Each program has a person who is identified as their trainer. He or she is almost always a host-country national, or HCN (which is our term for local. Unfortunately, it seems like every not-for-profit has a word that means them, as in not us.)Spanish classes work like this: there are about five people who speak some English but are from the area. That's really nice because they not only speak the language, but knowwhat sounds a little weird to say. Spanish varies so much between countries and between regions that you really need somebody who understands what just sounds awkward. The Master Teacher (which is like the administrator of all of the classes) is actually Argentinean, and you can tell there's a difference in his accent.Anyway, there's five or six teachers. Each program (or pair of programs in my case) is divided among five teachers, based on the ability of the students. At times, if you fall behind or jump ahead of your classmates, they move you to a different class.Aside: I expect to fall behind once probably, because they put me in the second smartest class.Particularly because the smartest class is full of fluent speakers who just need to know cultural idiosyncrasies. One of the girls who is fluent told me that she found out the hard way that the word for cool in a country she had lived in means sex in Guatemala. Hey, kid, your bicycle is really sexy. Oops.Average class size is three. There aren't any books, and the classrooms are smaller than my closet at home. Tio Esteban, you were absolutely right.We stress vocabulary more than anything. The teachers are wonderful and very frank.Other aside: there is one vowel difference between "don't worry about it," and "you shouldn't have a male sex organ." That one's bad to either gender.Safety & security training are the least interesting as far as content, but we have a very amiable security coordinator that keeps things interesting without realizing how entertaining he is. He's a former Peace Corps volunteer (RPCV) and keeps our attention because we're all a little terrified of getting held up on a chicken bus (more later).Health is at least as mundane, but I've been told that the diarrhea lecture is coming up and is supposed to keep us on our toes -- mostly because it's likely one of us already has it but hasn't admitted it. Mostly health time right now is dedicated to giving us vaccinations. I swear that the veins in my arms are going to collapse like a heroine addict's. It's always around lunchtime and there's been more than one joke about the fact that our schedule always includes "Lunch & Shots."Aside: Unfortunately for women here, they can't drink in the cantinas without being considered a "woman of ill repute." What I think stinks about that is that they can't even see inside them, then. As an hombre, at least I don't have limitations on places I can see, even if the guys might think I'm a little weird if I am helping make the tortillas.While homosexuality is unacceptable in most of the country, there is a "gay scene" in the cities of Antigua and Guatemala city (Guaté), but only for men. While Americans will tolerate Ellen but gag at men, Guatemala somehow goes the opposite way. Maybe it's because doesn't have the stereotype of HIV as the disease of gay men. They know HIV as the disease that somehow they think no Guatemalan gets. Fact: Guatemala has the second highest HIV rate in Central America.We also have days called "Community Integration" days, which I really like the idea of. It's the hands-on stuff. We go into the community and get to work on fitting in and working with people who don't get paid to coddle us with kind words in English. We may have to help out with a community garden, work in a field, or do things that are everyday here, like learn how to ride a bus, ask a favor, make a friend out of a stranger, make a meal, or even dance the way Guatemalans dance.We have other classes about how to keep stress levels down, history of the country, and what exactly is development, but they are rare & I haven't had any of them yet.Just a final note our training: This is known as Center-Based Training, and is one of the two ways Peace Corps volunteers go through training. We have a center which is like a mini-campus. Many of the PC Guatemala offices are in the center and classrooms. In the center, toilets flush like normal, just about everybody speaks at least some English, and you get to pass your time with your gringo peers. In other countries, all the learning is in the community without permanent teachers, substantial contact with other trainees, or actual classrooms. The upside to center-based training is that you are less likely to drown. The downside is that you're less likely to take off your floaties. It sounds like lots of people end up hanging out with the other trainees, speaking in English in all with the other volunteers.Being close to the city of Antigua, which is a tourist center, you don't even need to pretend that you live in Guatemala during your weekends if you try. I try really hard to hang out with my family and people that will speak Spanish to me, but sometimes it's really hard. Sometimes, you just struggle to find a Guatemalan that wants to put up with your terrible language skills and, well, lack of anything clever or interesting to say. Also, you don't even have the cultural cues to know what is funny & what is rude. The funniest story I heard all day was that one of the volunteers ate beans all summer to prepare his gastrointestinal tract for Guatemala. Since he arrived, he has eaten no beans, and, therefore, has been going through fiber deficiency and has pooped once. I know that I can tell my host brothers (hermanos) this story, but I really struggled to decide if when my host mother asked if anyone was sick if she would find that funny or crass. Luckily this time my host mother thought it was funny and my host father was around too and he thought it was hilarious that a stupid norteamericano would eat beans for three months for no good reason.

Beginning Training

2006-09-02T12:32:00.000-05:00

Okay, this one's got to be short because this is supposed to be the time class ends, but last time that I stayed after class officially ends, my host father (henceforth papá) was waiting with an umbrella so I wouldn't be caught in the rain. I was five minutes late and he had to stand around waiting & thought I was lost. It's cute, but it rains here every day, so I hope that he doesn't end up doing this daily.Training spoils us. We have Internet at the center, speak english for roughly half of the time we're in classes, and have host mothers (henceforth mamas) that pack us little lunches. One of the other trainees here got mac & cheese yesterday -- cute, no? So here's the basic rundown:6am: Wake up, take a bucket bath (bano con cubeta). I take them cold because it feels rude to ask mi madre to boil up water when everybody else takes them cold. Mi mama makes me a hot breakfast -- sometimes tortillas & beans, sometimes hot cereal, always pan (bread).7am: Begin walk to the training center in the next town over. Run into other trainees. "Gringos on Parade" commences.7:30 first class of the day. We have generally have a class for two hours each: two sessions before lunch. Classes vary from Safety & Security, Health, Cross Cultural awareness, Spanish, and technical training. Classes (except spanish) are all in english. I hope that it changes.Okay, it looks like it's raining & internet is in & out, so I'm signing off. More to come.

Staging

2006-08-31T12:32:00.000-05:00

This is the point where my blog entries become less preplanned and organized. I'm at what as known as Staging, which is just an orientation that Peace Corps HQ makes everybody go through. This may not be very interesting to many of you, but is important to post for people who plan on being Peace Corps Volunteers.Staging is a 1.5 day orientation that you've got to go through before you go to your country with all of the other people who are about to start volunteering in that country. For me, there's 31 people going. Half of us are doing Agriculture work (including me) and half of us are working in Municipal Development. Like any workshop or orientation that you have ever been to, activities heavily include group discussions, markers, and those Win-Lose or Draw sized tablets and role-playing. Lots of coffee and your peers help you survive this mundane component of what you expect to be anything but mundane.They put you up in a nice hotel, give you more money than you need to live on for two days, and then tell you the immedite stuff you need to know such as where you will be living for the next three months (they still don't tell you where you will live for the subsequent two years). Much of what they tell you is to help you see the next two years of your life in stages, such as training, learning the language, and actually doing what you want to do, instead of one giant campaign of being an international savior. It's good that it incrementalizes your Peace Corps time.When you're all done, you hop on an airplane and prepare for thre months of learning the technical, language, and cultural stuff you'll need for the real two years.

What do you pack?

2006-08-28T12:31:00.000-05:00

When preparing to go somewhere completely unknown to you, what do you pack?A flashlight? Well, if I pack a flashlight, I better bring batteries. That means I should get rechargable batteries & a charger. Oh crap, I bought a headlamp that takes Lithium batteries. I should bring a couple of extra lithium batteries. Who knows if they sell those down there. Maybe I'll be one of those traveling general stores that a guy packs on a mule & brings from town to town like the movies. No, that's me romanticizing a developing country -- they probably have supermarkets. Right?Okay, I'll come back to the batteries. What about shoes? Well, I need muckboots, and they said bring extra tennis shoes b/c nobody within 100 miles besides me will have size 12 shoes. And they said one pairs of sandals, even though it's culturally insensitive to wear them, and a pair of hiking boots. That's 11 pounds out of my 80 allowable. Hmmm. Maybe I should just pay extra & go over 80 lbs. Nope! I'm not going to be the stupid American bringing more shoes than anybody Guatemalan has & trying to slip a quetzal to convince a 10-year-old to carry my fourth bag. I'll just make up the weight somewhere else. Maybe I'll take less batteries.I've had about 600 conversations like this with myself (sometimes other people assume the voices -- my mother telling me to bring more, my friends from New Orleans, bringing less) trying to figure out what to bring. After going to New Orleans with over 80 lbs in my suitcase and needing about 20 of them, I'm very wary of overpacking.More than anything, I keep going back to the idea that the baggage I bring really is mostly just "baggage" -- preconceived notions of what my life is going to be while living there. Given the lack of information that I have going in, I know that the best thing I can bring is an empty mind.I'm trying to let myself accept whatever I'm getting myself into at face value, and not bog down my experience with unrealistic expectations from travel books and postcards and silly notions of what people in poor countries live like. I understand that that can seem like intentional unpreparedness, but it's more about trying to be prepared for all of those things I can't be prepared for -- like the first time I will get lost without the ability to describe where I need to be.I've edited this post three times thanks to Netscape locking up, I hope it makes sense at this point.

My first posting

2006-08-26T12:31:00.000-05:00

This is my first blog that I'm starting out for the Peace Corps. This is definitely a work-in-progress. I rarely read blogs, so starting one's a little foreign to me. So, I feel like I should give a little background of where I'm coming from starting the Peace Corps bit, but this is just a test blog. So you'll have to wait. Suspensefully.