I’m not sure how to get the dialogue started for this post. The training class that arrived in Guatemala in May 2008 is made up of the Youth Development (YD) and Rural Home Preventive Health (RHPH) programs. There are three married couples, all of whom are in RHPH. This is quite the phenomenon. It is virtually unheard of to have three couples in one training class, let alone all in the same program. That means that the couples live AND work together. Even if you have a site mate, another volunteer who you are not married to but lives in the same town, he/she/they rarely work in your program.

Having couples in the same program is not unheard of but the last couple of “marrieds”, as we call them, have either had one person change programs or ask for a separate counterpart (a Guatemalan person or agency with whom the PCV is supposed to work). So far, the three couples for our training group have been “hanging tough”, as the New Kids on the Block say. We are all living AND working together in, from what I observe, relative harmony.

It is a different experience to do this with a partner. The single volunteers are always telling us how great it must be to have someone right there at your disposal with whom to talk, bitch, and hang out. Single volunteers have to deal with loneliness and isolation more so than us marrieds. They usually travel and leave their sites more often to counter those challenges. And it is true. It is wonderful to have someone going through the same thing, being misunderstood or misunderstanding others right along with you. When, after a year of hora chapina, starting at least 1 hour later than schedule, you are still frustrated by all of the waiting you have to do before a meeting starts, you can vent your frustrations or laugh with your partner as you make dinner together. I’m very grateful to have Mat to help me through those moments of aggravation or to share in my triumphs.

But the Peace Corps is a highly individual experience as well. So it should go without saying that even the marrieds are having very different experiences. Mat and I are unique people with totally different personalities. Sure, we share many of the same values and ideas that make us compatible, but we have completely differing ways of interpreting, processing and functioning in the world, not to mention the contrasting approaches to organizing ourselves and how we work. The goals we have for ourselves are not the same either. Now, perhaps none of that would make much of a difference were we not in the same program, but since we are, these differences can be anywhere from contentious to hilarious and worthy of inspiring an episode of I Love Lucy.

When Mat first started going to our family, especially Allan family, activities, he often asked me how we (my mom, Aunts, female cousins, and I) could have conversations where everyone talks at the same time and understands each other. Until that moment, I had never even noticed that was how we worked it. But it is indeed true. Isn’t it rude to talk over others? Well, I had never considered what we did “interrupting” but merely talking while listening. This, what I like to think of as a highly evolved skill, helps me to understand how my brain in organized; there are always several projects running simultaneously in my head. I tend to think in long term goals and work backwards to achieve them. Often I process out loud, a habit born of talking to myself, to Mateo. Idea after idea with plans to implement them spill forth like the diarrhea we so often suffer from, causing Mateo to feel overwhelmed. After many months of doing this to him, we came to an agreement that I can only talk about 1 thing at a time and not jump too far ahead in the future.

Mateo has a much more focused approach to work. He likes to take one project and concentrate his energy into completing it before moving on to the next thing. This totally makes sense and works swimmingly in the US but here his approach makes me restless. It is nearly impossible to have a project that has a neat beginning and end. They are developed and worked on over months in a comfortably untimely fashion. Any one day you may not do a lot of work in a specific project, rather bits and pieces of several, but over time everything adds up and it is eventually completed (or another volunteer replaces you). Take the grant. We started the education element back in November 2008. The community seemed very collaborative so Mat and I discussed doing a grant with them. This is where the stress began for Mateo. He definitely prefers doing the type of organizing and facilitating that the grant process requires: doing research, having little meetings, setting deadlines, etc. The health and hygiene charlas or chats/presentations are not his cup of tea: planning, making posters and games, presenting the charlas. Admittedly, this type of work is more up my alley because let’s face it, Mateo thought he would be doing tech work (I owe him big time).

Anyway, it was those pesky cultural differences that occasionally ruffled Mateo’s feathers. For example, we work with a leader who is 19 and Chapí­n, another term for Guatemalan, and has no prior experience with this kind of work. So sometimes he would arrive very late for meetings or not at all and not call to warn us (usually because he didn’t have any saldo, minutes you buy for your cell phone, to call). Or a couple of times the COCODE tried to shirk some responsibility for the grant onto us and we would indirectly refuse it. Those are the kind of things that annoy Mateo, mostly because when it came to talking about the grant with the COCODE, he was the one who had to communicate with them. Since I am a woman and obviously have little knowledge of these things (please note the sarcasm), the all-male COCODE always deferred to Mateo on matters pertaining to the grant. Roberto will discuss the grant with me, but the older members of the COCODE will literally pull Mateo aside and talk about it to him without me, at which point Mat says, “hold on, let me go get the boss.”

And I have to admit that those things get under my skin too but I try to be calm one for those frustrations. And after the initial frustration, we are able to put things in perspective. Guatemalans have a different attitude toward time and it is our own inability to adjust to it that causes our frustrations. And that is usually why we get annoyed, not because of the way the society functions but because we are so indoctrinated with our own rigid cultural norms that we are impotent to change. Alright, that is pretty dramatic. We have adjusted a great deal but every once in a while those things get to you. For the most part, I am better at not sweating the big stuff. If Mat gets upset or frustrated he shuts down. So luckily, this is when being a team has its advantages. I take over and set to work, relieving Mat of responsibility until he has calmed down. As for me, everything adds up over time and then one day I can’t keep the cookies I am baking from sticking to the cookie sheet and I freak out. Really? That is so ridiculous, I know. This is when Mat is there to keep me calm and remind me that they are just cookies and will still taste delicious even if they are in pieces.

This is our life. It is sometimes hard to understand each other and what we go through as individuals. But it is amazing to have the chance to try to figure it out together. I’m sure this experience could wreck some couples, but for Mat and I, we have used this time to learn more about ourselves, each other, and our relationship. The experience is life changing and I am so happy to change and be pushed to better myself with and by my partner.

Finally, a work post. It certainly has been a while. It is funny how true it is that for the first 6 months in-site life and work are pretty slow. Mateo and I spent those months trying to navigate our town, meet and find people who could/would help and/or work with us, etc. There was not a whole lot of tangible work, which always drove us crazy. We wanted to see results. Eventually we came to terms with what working here means.

After the New Year, things started picking up for us until we reached March. Since mid-March we have gone non-stop: having ideas for projects, implementing them, sometimes failing, re-working projects and so on. We are very excited to announce that we turned in our SPA grant to build 22 concrete floors in a small community called El Limón (The Lemon-named for the many lemon trees in the area).

So what is SPA, besides three months of stress and anxiety? Well let me explain. A SPA (Small Project Assistance) grant is a grant of up to $3500 through USAID. It is tri-partida or three parts/organizations that must be involved in order to obtain a SPA grant. First, obviously, there is the SPA fund.

Second, there is a community organization. This can be a virtually any group of people as long as they are legalized. Being legalized refers to being a group recognized by the government of Guatemala. In order to become recognized as a legal group, there are the essential trainings and bureaucratic paper work. This process can take a couple of months. Luckily, we have been working with a COCODE (COnsejo COmunitario de DEsarrollo or Community Development Advisory Board). The COCODEs are always legalized because they are like auxiliary governments for the municipality (a municipality, or muni, consists of the main city and the surrounding communities-our muni has 66), voted on by the small communities that they represent. So when there is a mayoral election, the COCODEs change too. The COCODE includes a president, VP, treasurer, secretary, and several other voting members.

The third part or organization involved in the grant is usually the municipal government. If for some reason the mayor decides that the muni does not have sufficient funds and/or resources to help, there must be a document verifying it. The muni must also provide a document saying that they see the benefit and approve of the project.

Ideally, each part would provide 1/3 of the resources. This could be in cold, hard cash, but usually only SPA provides the actual cash. The community organization and municipality tend to provide the materials (like sand or wood that can be gathered in the area), transportation of materials, labor and masons. Each of those things can be valued monetarily in order to measure the percentage of their participation in the grant.

El Limón

We began doing health charlas in El Limon last November. The charlas range from hand-washing to preventing respiratory infections to having a healthy pregnancy. The focus is on health and hygiene habits and basic health knowledge that can help one avoid preventable diseases. In our municipality last year, over 500 of the total deaths were related to upper respiratory infections and over 300 deaths that can be attributed to gastrointestinal complications like dehydration caused by diarrhea. These were the two leading causes of death and are both preventable.

Why concrete floors? We originally thought of doing latrines, but the President of the COCODE, Roberto (who is only 19 by the way), told us that a different structure would be better for the community. Apparently the muni built latrines in the community once before. However, they did not have an educational element to the project so the people had no reason to believe there were any advantages to using them. There was also no training on how to maintain the latrine. In the end, the latrines went unused and fell into disrepair. Roberto suggested it would probably be better to go with something else like floors or stoves due to their past experience with the latrines.

So then there was a serious discussion about improved wood-burning stoves. Of all the homes we have visited, only 1 family has one. Everyone else either cooks on an open fire on the ground or on a comal, a flat, round iron plate placed directly on a fire used to make tortillas. Obviously they do not have chimneys. Women cook all of the meals (1-3) and can spend up to 6 hours in the smoke filled rooms (they make and eat tons of tortillas which is time intensive). Not only does this affect the women, but since women primarily rear the children, the youngest children/babies are around the smoke. For the youngest children, they are normally strapped to the back of the mother. Respiratory infections are far more dangerous for young children and cause an overwhelming number of deaths each year. On a daily basis, just walking in the street, one can hear the cough of a 5 year old that sounds as though they have been smoking cigarettes for the last 30 years. The other benefit of the improved wood-burning stove is that it uses less firewood. Deforestation is a big problem in all of Guatemala and definitely in El Limón. There is no firewood so they have to drive an hour to the other side of the municipality to buy a tarea (or about two weeks worth of wood) for 200-250Q. That is a lot of money!

El Limón was promised a stove project from the muni’s OMM (Oficina Municipal de la Mujer – Municipal Woman’s Office) so they decided on floors.

El Limón is a subsistence agrarian community. They mostly plant corn and beans. Some of the families are ganaderos (raise cattle). There are 30 homes and of those 20 have men working in the US. Despite that, there has been very little to no development (few remittances?). So there are 20 homes without husbands, fathers and/or brothers. The homes are made of adobe, mud bricks, with compacted dirt floors. Dirt floors can cause or increase the severity of respiratory problems because of the amount of dust they produce. Carried in the dust can be fecal material that can be ingested and cause gastro-intestinal ailments. Also living in the dust are, as we say here, animalitos, little animals, or tiny insects like fleas. The importance of concrete floors is often overlooked. We will be building 22 floors in kitchens and bedrooms, the two rooms where the most time is spent.

I would like to mention here that Mat and I really struggled with even the idea of doing a grant, especially one through USAID, and feared being paternalistic. We have seen Governmental and Non-Governmental Organizations give things to communities without asking what they wanted/needed and without any training whatsoever on the structures. For example, during one of our trainings we went to build improved stoves and arrived in a community that literally had them thrown at them. The NGO did not do any diagnostics on the community so there were people who already had a good stove and were receiving another! Of course no one is going to turn down a stove, even if they don’t need it. We did not want to be a part of irresponsible, paternalistic development. So how would asking for funds through the US government be beneficial to the community?

One of the main requirements for USAID’s SPA fund is an educational/training element. We have been doing and will continue with the education after the floors are completed. The community has learned the health problems caused or aggravated by dirt floors, the benefits of concrete floors, and how to clean/maintain the floors, along with the myriad other health topics covered. The SPA grant must also be written by the community organization, NOT by the volunteer. I’m not going to say that some volunteers don’t do all the work, but Mat and I do not see any benefit for the community by doing it for them. From the beginning, the COCODE was responsible for the vast majority of the work involved, while we acted more as organizers and gave advice on the process. And the SPA grant is so insanely bureaucratic and intense that any other institution from which they want to solicit funds (and there are plenty in Guatemala), the COCODE will have no trouble repeating the grant process. By training both the community and it’s leaders, we feel confident that it is sustainable, the ultimate goal of development.

Okay, we decided on the project and which grant. Now comes the hard part. Back in March we started discussing the project with our boss/APCD, Basilio, and got permission to go ahead with the grant process. Since that time until July 1st (when we turned it in to Basilio) we have been working diligently with the COCODE and the community as a whole. We set deadlines with the COCODE for everything they needed to accomplish. José (COCODE Secretary) and Roberto went to the municipal office to ask for some sort of help. The muni approved the project but could not provide very much. They did agree to provide transportation of the materials. El Limón is both money and resource poor, which means they can’t provide any materials. However, they do have a mason in the community who can train the rest of the community on how to lay the floors. So El Limón’s third is all of the labor involved.

The COCODE wrote the grant (description of the community, the project, why it is needed, benefits, and objectives). Roberto, the president, is the only literate member of the COCODE and did all of the writing. He is an amazing kid: leader of his community AND a teacher. Sometimes we was a little flaky but, come on, he’s 19! Basically he is awesome. The COCODE got the muni’s support, support from the community, and the agreement to provide all of the labor. Mat and I went to the hardware stores for the price quotes and made a plan of action that details the process. When and if we are approved on July 10th, the COCODE will be responsible for obtaining the check, buying the materials, distributing materials, and laying the floors. Afterward, they will evaluate the project. We will be there to collect receipts and organize everything that needs to be turned in to SPA at the end. Essentially, for us, the hard part is over.

And there it is folks! It is such a relief to have that done. Hopefully we will have a little more time now to write about the other projects that we have going or life in general.

Official shout-out to Ellen Ostrow: Without you we couldn’t have done this! Thank you for all of your advice and listening to us bitch and moan. We still owe you dinner and a bottle of wine.

During the last weekend in May, almost a month ago, Sarah and I had the opportunity to visit our friend Thea in Alta Verapaz. Alta Verapaz is another departamento located to the upper-right of Quiché.

Semuc Champey is host to a 300m natural limestone bridge, under which flows a sumidero, which literally means “water that flows underground” in Q’eqchi’ Maya. Fun fact for the morbid: Three tourists have died in the past year by getting too close to the entrance of the underground river, and because of that there are employees standing around to make sure nobody does anything stupid. The road to Semuc turns into a washboard after about two hours outside of Coban, the department capital of Alta. It winds through lush and picturesque fields of cardamom, one of the most beautiful crops I have ever seen – especially with the sun setting on them in the late-afternoon light. Guatemala is one of the largest cardamom producers in the world, with an export total of US$137.2 million, and almost 80% of the crop goes straight to Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates for use in their all-important coffee blend used for social gatherings and meetings. After passing through a couple hundred acres of cardamom fields, then you arrive in the neighboring Q’eqchi’ Maya town of Lanquí­n, forced to find transport in the back of a pickup or a freelance micro-bus driver who happens in the middle of town. We hooked up with a group of French tourists and some guy from New Zealand for the hour-and-a-half remainder of the journey to the pools.

I’ve read a few accounts saying that Semuc is the most beautiful place in Guatemala, I definitely have to agree. It’s not as awe-inspiring and jaw-dropping as a Lake Atitlan sunset, but floating around in a crystal clear turquoise pool in the middle of a noisy rain forest in the middle of nowhere has a magical feel to it. Also, it was surprisingly jammed full of Guatemalan tourists when we were there, making it seem all the more undiscovered and out-of-the-way

The park also has a Mirador (“lookout point”) over the falls. After a sweaty, humid, buggy hike up to the top you are treated with a gorgeous view.

We also spent a day doing some light spelunking in the Grutas de Rey Marcos (“Grottos of King Mark”). Alta Verpaz has tons of dramatically steep hills and geological activity, and underneath is a huge network of caves and grottoes. Some photos:

I’ll add more pictures as I get more time. Just so you all know, we’re not always traveling and doing fun stuff, but pictures of us stuck in front of the laptop working on Small Project grants in Spanish aren’t as pretty or exciting.