Cara Piedras Guatemala

On Sunday morning, I had the pleasure of attending a really special mass with my host family at a church in Antigua. I returned home from my daily early-morning run in a rush to get ready for Mass in my town when my host mother told me that we instead got a “special invitation” to a service in Antigua. Having no clue what was really going on that day, I went along with the family on the bus and we arrived at the Temple de la Merced in Antigua. It was complete mayhem! There were national TV channel vans parked outside, hundreds of people, and news reporters giving commentary outside the church. Pardon my lack of knowledge of the exact significance of this day, but they were taking out the Virgin to parade around the streets, and apparently they only take her out once a year so it was a really big deal. Inside the church was so packed that I couldn’t really see or hear what was going on to understand well what the service was about, but it was worth standing against a marble column for three hours to experience what happened afterwards. There was a parade of hundreds of people all from different area churches and dressed in robes and everything. They also lit a ton of firecrackers (a Guatemalan favorite pastime) and released small hot air balloons made of tissue paper (the second of the three balloons didn’t catch the wind correctly, and came flying down with such speed, luckily the people below were paying attention and were able to escape the fire quickly coming down on them!). The most impressive part of the whole thing was that a bunch of streets of Antigua were closed for the occasion, and “alfombras” (carpets) made out of ornate flower arrangements and decorated sand covered the streets. Basically, people spent over an entire day laying out a lot of sand, and then using stencils to create an intricate design that looked exactly like a long carpet covering the street. The people carrying the huge Virgin idol would then walk down the street and through the alfombras. I may not be explaining this so well, so see below for pictures! (click to enlarge) I was completely awed by how beautiful and impressive it all was. It was really cool to experience. And my family told me that for Semana Santa in March, the streets of the city are even more covered by the beautiful decorations!

Besides spending some weekend time with my family, my schedule has been pretty much completely devoured by Peace Corps’ trainings. Some interesting things we’ve discussed lately have to do with PC’s vision of sustainable development. Basically, our role as volunteers is to go into certain communities that have requested our help and guide them in different areas of work. So whichever municipality I am placed in to work with the municipal government will be because they have requested for a Peace Corps volunteer to be there and help them. This is a type of sustainable development that I really believe in, because we will be helping communities who both need AND want us to be there. And Peace Corps’ goal is not to send volunteers to different areas to do big grandiose projects, but to help people to help themselves. They call this “capacity building”. We should not be doing any work ourselves that we can’t just train others to do once we depart. Otherwise, once we leave in two years, whatever work we do will stop completely and if it’s not sustainable, it’s pretty much a huge waste. So in a way, Peace Corps kind of breaks the idealism that some trainees have to do big projects and shows us how to redirect those good intentions to be good capacity builders. So, much of what we volunteers do, whether we’re working in municipal development, agriculture, public health, etc. is giving community presentations and helping people find their own solutions to the problems which their communities face. And with the solutions that they chose to implement, we are here to support and guide them. Another important thing that PC has been discussing with us is how we can maximize the benefits of the experience that WE receive as volunteers. Will the people in the communities in which we serve always remember us and the work we do? Maybe. But will we always remember them? Without a doubt, yes.

On Monday, instead of afternoon Spanish class, we had a current Muni volunteer come speak with us about the work that he’s been doing in Guatemala over the last year. He provided us with some really valuable and practical advice related to our technical program, such as certain challenges of working within the culture here, the structure of the municipal government, specific projects which he’s worked on and plans to work on over the next year, and how to make the most out of training. While so much of what we do as volunteers depends on our actually site, these three months of training are intended to prepare us for volunteer service as much as possible (or as the Country Director here recently told us, “training is the engagement period before a marriage in which it’s time to decide if PC Guatemala is REALLY the right fit for you”). While the discussion with this current volunteer brought out many new anxieties and new excitements about working in my future site, one thing is for sure – that no matter the work we do, one of the best parts about being a Peace Corps volunteer is finding solutions to new challenges, and experiencing and being part of a different culture.

Now having been in Guatemala for two weeks, I feel that the training period is definitely an interesting adjustment and rather exhausting. But, it is not without fun! Today, we went to my Spanish teacher’s house for the first time and his mother taught us how to make tamales, which was really awesome. If you come to visit, I promise I’ll make them for you! A fun Guate fact is that if a house has a red light hanging outside, it means that they sell tamales there – a rather different meaning than red lights hanging in places like Amsterdam or other parts of the world!

Other thoughts…

- There is a dog that lives in my house, his name is Valentín, because they got him on Valentine’s Day. I never pet him because he’s really dirty, but I feel badly for him because he’s chained up during the day and for breakfast and dinner they feed him bread and coffee. It is one hyperactive animal! Toro seems like a comatose pet in comparison.

- One of my many “aunts” asked me to do some of her son’s homework because he was assigned with too much. And this particular aunt happens to be a teacher. Go figure. Fortunately I had plenty of Peace Corps homework of my own, so that gave me an easy out!

- I’ve been going running every morning and will be participating in a 10K race in my community in October!

- My fellow community trainee’s little five-year-old neighbor asked his mother “Why didn’t we buy a gringo?” Haha I guess we Peace Corps trainees are in hot demand!