FBT

Howdy do blogophiles,

I spent this past week in Huehuetenango for Field Based Training (FBT), a week of visiting different sites and getting to know volunteers in their first and second years in the muni program. Huehuetenango has a pretty good concentration of municipal development volunteers and they are doing a variety of projects, so we went around from Sunday through Saturday muni-hopping and talking to volunteers and their counterparts. I was pretty concerned before the trip started about being in dirty hotels and physically uncomfortable having to use gross bathrooms, so it was pretty ironic when I woke up on Sunday morning with the flu. If that is not a cosmic sign that I need to stop worrying so much, I do not know what is. On Sunday we headed out in micros around 11am, took a lunch break in Los Encuentros, and then chugged on to Huehuetenango, arriving around 5pm. According to the guidebooks, there is absolutely nothing to do in the city of Huehue and one should not bother to visit unless going to Todos Santos, and I reconfirm this suggestion having spent four nights there. The city is not especially nice, it has decent food but nothing of any touristy interest whatsoever, and it is kind of dreary and ugly. We stayed in a dorm-like hotel, with shared rooms and bathrooms, and the first night everyone went out to dinner and then had a mini dance party on the roof with ipod selections. It was really liberating to dance without being stared at and I also liked breaking some preconceived notions of my fellow volunteers who did not realize that I enjoy gangster rap and dancing like a fool.

On Monday bright and early we headed fifteen minutes out of Huehue to a small municipality where a first year muni volunteer is working in the OMP (Oficina Municipal de Planificación). David is the second volunteer in his site and during the site visit we got to see the first of many cool secondary projects that volunteers are doing.
David’s predecessor worked with local school children and his site mate to do a world map in the town's cultural center. I am really interested in doing a similar project, and later in the week we saw other examples of world maps, maps of Guatemala, and maps of Huehuetenango that volunteers have made at their sites. David’s big secondary project is a radio show (he was inspired by another volunteer who’s radio show is broadcast online as well as locally for the many expats). David does a weekly radio show to talk about local issues and then also has a music program one night a week. Both the secondary projects in his town really appeal to me and I hope I will be able to undertake them when I am finally placed in my site.

On Tuesday we headed to a much larger municipality fifteen minutes outside of Huehue in another direction. This town is famous for it’s silver-plated virgin in the Catholic Church and pilgrims go there every year for the saint day. I thought that the angelitos morenos painted on the wall looked cooler than the virgin itself.

Cynthia, the volunteer in this town, is finishing up her second year and will be replaced in the OMM (Oficina Municipal de la Mujer). Her office sounds really developed, they have created a council of women’s groups and have done a lot of development with the women’s groups to increase their voice in the community, and they also provide help for victims of domestic violence. Cynthia was the first of a few female volunteers I met this past week who are strong and opinionated, and it made me feel better knowing that they have had successful runs as volunteers even though they are more direct than people here in Guatemala (a concern of mine). Cynthia’s secondary projects included establishing a summer camp for children and giving HIV/AIDS charlas in the community.

On Wednesday we packed up and headed out for our longest day, driving through Todos Santos (the municipality is well known for the traje típico that the men wear) and on to the most remote of all volunteer sites. The road to Todos Santos is absolutely stunning, you have to go up through the mountains and then down into the valley where Todos Santos is located. There was a mist in the air and all the men and women in their traje típico made me feel like I was in an edition of National Geographic. I did not take any photos in Todos Santos since they do not like having their pictures taken, but I did get a few nice shots on the road up over the mountains to Todos Santos.

Driving above the cloud line

The top of the mountain before heading down into the valley to Todos Santos. These plants served as fences to demarcate territory.

Kelly, the volunteer who is finishing up her two years in Todos Santos working in the OMM, will be replaced by someone in our group, and despite my initial desire to not be far away, I had really wanted to be placed there just so I could live in National Geographic. It actually reminded me a lot of Chiapas, Mexico, with really vibrant and impressive weavings and stunning mountains all around. From Todos Santos we headed on to a new municipality that is only four years old. The road to this muni is what one would expect as the Peace Corps experience, it is all dirt and rugged. In this town, my group gave a presentation to a women’s group about Communication in Groups. After the mini-disaster of our presentation in our local middle school, this talk went over way better, with smooth transitions and the women actively participated.

Leading my part of the charla with a participant from the women’s group

The mayor of the young municipality really wants two volunteers (one for the OMP and one for the OMM) but I do not think any of the girls were really inspired by the location. The town is perfectly nice, but it is really retirado (far away) from everything and it does not even get tambos of water (5 gallon jugs of clean water). On the other hand, it is guaranteed that whoever goes will have tons of work for the next two years and will most likely see the results of his/her efforts. The volunteer in this muni has done a lot of work with the forestry office to replant pine trees and has also helped start up a municipal library, another project that a lot of volunteers take on since even municipalities that do have libraries often do not have books.

This town and the next two towns we visited are all really close to the Mexican border and we could see the Mexican influence. The towns were a lot more ladino, with men wearing big belt buckles, matching boots and hats, and the women dressing is more skimpy outfits (this was also due to the heat) and less traje típico.

Almost all the girls from the group on top of the municipality

We spent Wednesday and Thursday nights in a town that is currently hosting its third and last muni volunteer. The town is very nice, with a lovely plaza and really good Mexican food and ginormous bugs of all kinds (including cockroaches!!). The previous volunteer in the town did a really good job with ArcGIS to map the town and all of its aldeas, and the municipality has excellent statistics on socio-economic data thanks to the work of that volunteer. We also met a volunteer finishing up in anearby town who also did a lot of mapping on her own and who learned how to use mapping software while in service.

On Friday we drove up to 10 km from the border to see a town that will not be replacing its volunteer due to lack of cooperation from the mayor. Despite the mayor’s politics, the volunteer there has done a really great job working in the OMM and capacitating her counterparts to give charlas with women’s groups. We went along with herand two of her counterparts to an aldea where they gave a charla about nutrition with a relatively newly formed women’s group. After the charla, we had lunch at a local pool and then drove back to Huehue for our last night. That day was a perfect example of the contrasts that we are seeing here in Guatemala. We started out the day in a less-developed aldea where the women spoke Mam Maya, then spent lunch in a pretty nice resort-like setting next to a pool, had dinner in a pupuseria with cockroaches, and then went out to a gringo bar to celebrate a birthday. I know that in the U.S. we have many contrasts in quality of life, but rarely do we go out of our bubbles and really see how others live.

Aldea of La Democracia

On Saturday we did the long haul back home, leaving Huehue at 8am and making it back around 3pm with one bathroom break and a lunch stop on the way. Huehue is definitely far away from the center of the country and I understand why so many of the people that we met during the trip were self-described site rats (not getting out much) because it is a heck of a long trip in a mini-van, so on a bus it must be even more tiring. Returning home was really exciting; I missed my guacal (bucket) baths and enjoyed using a non-public restroom for the first time in a week. Mamatina was happy to have me back home and made me tamales and hot chocolate for dinner (the same dinner she made for me the previous Saturday for the despedida). Getting to know everyone better this week and seeing how volunteers are doing different projects in their sites and adjusting to different environments was really cool, but at the end of the day the best feeling after a week of travel is coming home.