A reminder about why I'm in Peace Corps

There are certain days throughout your service when you’re reminded…this is why I’m here. When those days happen, you’re on top of the world; suddenly, all of those moments of frustrations disappear as a smile appears across your face. Today was one of those days.

After lunch a former co-worker of mine, Alex, invited me and Juana (one of my counterparts) to his classroom to pick up some eco-bricks. As all of you are aware of, I’m in the midst of constructing a Mayan Educational Center which will be made primarily out of eco-bricks (plastic bottles stuffed with trash). Our community is in charge of collecting about 7,000 to 8,000 eco-bricks. Alex had told me that his class was going around collecting bottles and I remember being frustrated because they were not coordinating with me. I had no idea when they were collecting the bottles and most importantly part of my job was to go around to the schools to teach the children not just about eco-bricks but about the environment and the effects of trash. Eventually, I put all that aside and figured that I’d appreciate any help in the overwhelming task of begging people to stuff bottles.

As we entered the classroom we were asked to sit down and the students began a short presentation they had prepared for us. To my surprise, these students went incredibly above and beyond any expectation I had of their bottle collecting process. This class went around to 16 communities and the urban center and collected a total of 3,000 bottles! Not only did they collect all of those bottles but they used their creativity to teach all of the children about environmental preservation and the negative effects of trash in the environment! They dressed up as clowns to make it lively and entertaining for the children, one student used a magic trick of changing a 5 Quetzal bill into a 100 Quetzal bill as a metaphor for the potential everyone has to change the municipality for the better, it was awesome! Everyone in development work talks about how the goal is to work him/herself out of a job and this is precisely what happened! Here I was thinking I was missing out on an opportunity to educate children when these students had put together their own environmental education workshop that was phenomenal! I felt so proud! (Can’t you tell by all the exclamation marks!)

After the presentation, Alex asked a simple question, “Do you remember who told us we could make a building by using these plastic bottles?” Everyone looked around without saying anything. There was an awkward silence and someone in the Mayan Council mentioned that they had worked together to propose the idea of building a center but then Alex repeated the question again emphasizing the use of the bottles. Alex finally said, “Carolina!” at which point everyone understood the question and said “Oh of course! This wouldn’t have happened without Carolina.” It was great! At first, you may think it’s disappointing that they didn’t immediately say Carolina but I was glad that the Mayan Council referenced themselves first. Why? It’s their project!! I’m just a facilitator, I want them to own it, I want them to tell everyone how they built this amazing center not that some American came in and built it for them. I’ll never forget Senator McFarland’s advice when I was a trainee “you can never want it more than they do.” So true!

But I digress, we filled the entire trash truck with our 3,000 bottles and went picture crazy! The students were swimming in the bottles they were so proud of the hard work they completed. I, of course, was beaming with pride and taking pictures as well while emphasizing how awesome it feels to accomplish a goal and how anything is possible with teamwork. We rode through the town to the municipal salon where we are storing the bottles so the entire town was able to see the Mayan Council and their new-found bottles.




The community has been involved in this process 110%, I couldn’t ask for better collaboration and it was a good motivator on my part that I can’t let them down. I’ve been sulking about trying to find funding but now I’m pumped again and ready to continue the search to get this thing built!! (Shameless plug: donate here!! C’mon are you gonna spend $20 to buy dinner or are you gonna help empower the Mayan population!?)

Below is a collage of pictures but you can see more and in better quality if you check out my Facebook profile.

Politics as Usual – Staying Apolitical while working in the government

Yup, that’s right I am APOLITICAL. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to repeat this to people in my site recently. You see, this year is an election year and I have found myself in the most political environment I’ve ever experienced in my life. Not only are small town elections an incredibly big deal, but it’s even more of a big deal when you work with the local government. Unlike in the States, in my town, if another mayor gets elected they wipe out all municipal staff and start fresh. Whoever gets elected mayor will fill all these new positions with people that he’s promised jobs to throughout his campaign. So, my “pilas” (hard working) co-workers will suddenly be replaced by such and such’s cousin or daughter of so and so who donated tons to the campaign and never mind if he or she is qualified or not for the position (nepotism at its best!). Aside from being incredibly frustrating, this process is incredibly unsustainable because all the knowledge that was acquired from previous staff members is lost in an instant. Documents are deleted and papers are shredded as the previous mayor hands off the municipality to the new mayor. Oh, let’s not forget to add chisme (gossip) to the mix as well! What better way to win an election than spread lies about the other candidates? Now, I’m not going to pretend that the electoral process in the US is perfect and candidates don’t spread lies about the other but I’d like to think in the US it’s more of a twisting of the truth than straight up lies (although now I’m thinking about our president having to show his birth certificate to shut up certain members of government so perhaps I’m wrong). Either way, it’s just a whole new level of gossip. Today I heard that if one candidate doesn’t win he not only is going to kill the candidate who wins but also kill himself because of the debt he has incurred over the past months. Two days ago, the national news station announced that the current mayor couldn’t run because he failed to turn in paper work (completely false) causing the mayor to have to run an emergency programming where he literally showed his paperwork on television.
Another tragic, but interesting, aspect of elections here is the voting process. Many people in the rural areas of Guatemala cannot read or write and the way people vote here is by using a pen to mark an “X” on the party symbol you want to win. You get four different colors of paper that represent a different level of election (president, mayor, etc). Writing an “X” doesn’t seem so hard right? Wrong! We did a workshop with a group of indigenous women and of the 20 women that participated, only 3 women voted correctly during our mock voting activity!! That means 17 votes would have been nullified. Obviously, this is only an issue in the rural, poor, less educated communities and it is precisely in these communities where they especially need to exercise their right to vote because they are incredibly under-represented in almost every way! We made fake political parties and some would draw that symbol within the square (i.e. a heart) or mark an “X” on the back of the page or pass the lines. I mean imagine, you’ve never held a pen in your life and you have to mark an “X” within a box. It’s like asking a two year old to color within the lines, it takes practice! Therefore, there’s lots of work to be done.
On a national scale, things are quite interesting as well. There’s tons of drama about the candidates. One candidate divorced her husband so that she could run because it’s illegal to be president if your spouse has served as president. One political party is under fire because two mayoral candidates have murdered candidates of other parties. Another candidate was heavily involved in the civil war and lord knows what sorts of atrocities he committed in the past. A lively crew! This morning I got to watch a little bit of the presidential debates and I was suddenly reminded of how church and state are so intertwined in this country. They were discussing homosexuality, gay marriage and adoption and almost all the candidates mentioned God and how in the Bible God only created man and woman, etc etc. I found myself getting more and more frustrated with the way questions were asked, the content of these questions and had to leave the room (why the hell are you cracking down on gay rights, do something about the safety and security of your country!!! NOOOO do not go back to just teaching children about abstinence only prevention methods!!!!) I’ll continue to take a deep breath and pause for a moment for the next couple months in order to remain sane.
In the meantime, I’m counting down for September 11th to get over with so elections can be over and done with (at least on a local level, and yes September 11th is election day here).

Food in Cuerpo de Paz

Eating beans and eggs every day for weeks? Or how about being served a meal with potatoes, rice, spaghetti and endless tortillas? Here’s another one, in the middle of your cooking session your gas runs out or the power goes out. Oh wait, and every volunteer knows this story, you’re invited to someone’s house and share a meal with them only to find yourself scrambling to the nearest bathroom to well, you know, I’ll save you the details. There are numerous reasons why food in the Peace Corps can be a bit of a personal challenge. Last week my host mom told me that she will no longer be able to cook lunches for me anymore (lunch is the big meal of the day and when I eat meat) so it suddenly dawned on me how differently I think about food here than I did in the US.

During training all of my meals were provided by my host family, sometimes it was delicious and sometimes it was a bit strange (spaghetti with hot dogs, ketchup and tortillas). Either way, during training I never had to worry about grocery shopping or how to prepare my next meal, it just sort of appeared. Upon arriving in site, I had to figure out a way to set up a kitchen in a limited space with limited materials. Thank goodness I replaced someone (thanks Cali!) and inherited a stove top and some necessary cooking materials. Thus, I have the necessities but I could certainly use more Tupperware and pots and pans (my spaghetti pot, is my sauce pan, and disinfecting bowl). Anyway, I thought it may be fun to go through how I have to prepare a meal here in site.

Market here is Saturday and usually on Friday nights you get a sneak peak and can buy most of what you need ahead of time. Market days are kind of a big deal, some people even get dressed up for them! I guess it’s when you run into community members and chit chat while also picking up what you need for the week. I prefer shopping on Friday nights in order to avoid the heat and get first dibs on veggies. I usually buy: bell peppers, carrots, pineapple, strawberries, onions, beets, jalapeños, green beans, avocadoes and sometimes broccoli. That usually holds me for the week (well at least it used to because I never had to worry about lunch). I don’t cook meat here. If someone else prepares it, that’s fine, or if we kill the chicken ourselves then obviously I’ll eat that too (ever tried killing a chicken with a dull kitchen knife?…I have! I totally apologized to the chicken god for it taking a little while!) I just don’t want to deal with meat here, where to get it, how long it has been sitting out in the market, the smell, storage, etc.

Access to food here is limited. If I have a craving for something in the middle of the week and I didn’t plan for it…guess what, not happening. Also the types of veggies here is limited, in Antigua or sometimes even in the department capital (2 hours away) you can find mushrooms, eggplant, mac and cheese, wheat bread and other oh so delicious awesomeness. There is no grocery store here; instead there are lots of little tiendas where you can usually find spaghetti, basic spice mixes, rice and white bread.

For breakfast I usually make smoothies: either strawberry-banana or pineapple, carrot and beet (it’s yummy for real, try it!) with a scoop of protein powder. Dinners are pretty small for me because lunch is so big. When I had protein bars from the States I would eat one of those, beans and egg, soup, and there have even been times when I have peanut butter from Antigua that I have literally just taken a spoon full of peanut butter and dipped it into honey or home-made strawberry jam (who needs bread when you have spoons!)

So now my challenge to you all is: what can I cook for lunch!? I’d love your vegetarian recipes! Remember, nothing too complicated and I’d prefer for it to not include the use of an oven because I don’t own an oven. Either send them to my email (ckent0601@gmail.com) or just post them as a comment. Thanks!!

Oh and here are some fun food pics from the past several months!