Site Visit

This week was the much anticipated counterpart day and site visit. As usually occurs whenever I am excited about anything, I was unable to sleep most of the week because I was so thrilled to be going to and then in Pachalúm. On Monday I woke up at 5:15 am to get myself to Peace Corps on the early bus that goes directly to Guatemala (saving me time traveling and money since I do not have to transfer in Antigua). I waited around for half an hour and the bus did not show up, so I had to take another bus that only went to Antigua and then transfer to get on to Santa Lucía. When we got to Santa Lucía we found out the reason that our bus did not come: road blockades across the city. Apparently in honor of Columbus Day (or as it is known here, Día de Hispanidad) some campesinos decided to blockade all the roads into Guatemala City and also some other towns across the country. Slowly counterparts started coming in from all over the country, but mine was nowhere to be found. After waiting around for two hours, Peace Corps decided to start programming at 10am despite some missing counterparts. I felt like one of the kids who is left at school waiting for his/her parents after all the other children have been picked up, but luckily the morning activities were pretty basic. Counterpart day is more for the Host Country nationals to familiarize them with what Peace Corps is and to make clear what they can and cannot expect from volunteers (we are not a religious organization, we are not secretaries, we are not being paid big salaries, we are not part of the CIA, etc). At lunch I sat with Laurie and her two counterparts, two ladies from a women’s group in Chimaltenango, until finally around 1pm Luz María and Ada showed up for me.

I met Luz María when I visited Pachalúm on August 29th, she is the coordinator of the OMM and my official counterpart. Ada is the girl in charge of the agriculture office, who along with working for the muni goes to school on Fridays and Saturdays to study agronomy (which is why I had not met her before). The rest of counterpart day continued to be pretty basic, but I was very excited to have my counterparts with me. Luz María has been working in the OMM for about 6 years and has had two volunteers before me, so she is well aware of what Peace Corps does and does not do, and she came prepared with a three month plan to start out.
On Tuesday I once again woke up super early ready to go to Pachalúm. The municipality was picking us up with a car, so I packed my two big pieces of luggage and left just a little clothing for the rest of my time in San Antonio. At Peace Corps we went over cultural differences and expectations a bit, and then at 1030am we got our bags and everyone headed out with their counterparts to get to site. María Alejandra, the volunteer I am replacing, and Don Miguel, the municipality driver, met Ada, Luz María and me and we all headed to Antigua to drop off some of María Alejandra’s luggage and to buy supplies for the municipality’s feria on October 24th. Before leaving for Pachalúm we went up to the top of the Cerro de la Cruz, a hill that overlooks Antigua, to take some photos and enjoy the view.

Vista from Cerro de la Cruz

With Luz María, Ada, and the cross

Around midday we finally headed out to Pachalúm, leaving Luz María on the way since she had a previously scheduled event to attend in Retalheu (another department) for Wednesday and Thursday. We drove the route that I will have to take from Antigua: Antigua to San Lucas, San Lucas to San Pedro, and then San Pedro to Pachalúm via San Juan Sacatepéquez (a large municipality and only one of 7 in the country with a female mayor). To get to Pachalúm we drove through four departments (Sacatepéquez, Guatemala, Chimaltenango, and finally El Quiché) and the ride took about 2.5 windy-road filled hours. When we finally arrived in Pachalúm it was about 4pm it was pouring rain. I spent the week in María Alejandra’s place, a house that she is living in for free since she is a friend of the owners. The family that owns the house comes to stay every weekend in order to make Arroz con Leche to sell on market day (Saturday), but otherwise the house is all hers, and it is really nice and large. María Alejandra is going to be leaving Pachalúm next week to head back home and will give me her bed, TV, and other sundry items that she is not taking with her (a toaster oven, garbage cans, mirror, stools, some shelves), which is going to help me save up money for my big investments: a refrigerator and stove top. Ale was the hostess with the mostest, taking me all over town to meet people, cooking amazing meals, and telling me about all her work and experiences in town. On Tuesday night I also met my site mate for the next two years: Tiara, the first Youth Development volunteer in the municipality. She has been in site since mid-July, is from San Bernardino, has a master’s in Social Work, and will be my company for the next 21 months once I get to site.

On Wednesday Alejandra took me around to meet people in the municipality, including a meeting with the mayor. My office is on the third floor of the municipal palace (that is what the building is called) and it is a shared office with Ada from Agriculture, and Hilario, from the Office of Forestry. Hilario is familiar with the program ArcGIS and I am really hoping that we can work together to do a census with basic socio-economic data. This will require some quick learning on my part since I have absolutely no idea how to use the program, but from what I have seen it looks really neat since you can use graphics to illustrate information (for example, I imagine doing a map with pie charts for illiteracy levels in all the outlying communities). Alejandra also took me to visit Doña Antonia, the woman whose house I will live in for the next three months. Doña Antonia lives near the muni building along with her two daughters, a son in law, and from my count three grandchildren. Above her garage is an apartment complete with a bathroom, a living room, and a bedroom, which will be mine all mine. As I acquire cooking supplies I will set up my kitchen in the living room area, and I also intend to take full advantage of having couches to recline on since in my current house we only have beds to lie on, and that is kind of gross when one is in street clothes.

Alejandra also took me to see the year-old school for children with special needs, which was established with the help of the OMM. Ale and Luz did a survey last year and found that there were at least fifty children who would benefit from such a school, though only ten or so actually attend now that it has been established. The school has two teachers and a physical therapist, and it is downstairs from the library. Since I am arriving to site as soon as summer vacation begins, it looks like I will be spending a good amount of time at the school with Luz for the first month to continue classes with the children while their teachers are on break. I really want to try and do tire gardens and world map murals around the school area and hope that some of the children could help with that process.

On Wednesday afternoon, Tiara took me to see her apartment and the empty apartment next to it where I might move after three months. The apartment is super nice, upstairs from a store with a private entrance; two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a nice kitchen sink area. Ale lived there before her friends offered her use of their house and I am thinking that it will be my future abode so that I can host guests (hint hint readers). Tiara also took me to see the post office, greet the national police, and by the school where she has been working. At the post office I found out my new mailing address for anyone who wants to send any letters or packages (and I recommend sending items there since there has been a lot of theft from mail going to the Antigua address). The mailing label should read:

Athalia Markowitz
Voluntaria de Cuerpo de Paz
Municipalidad de Pachalúm
Pachalúm, El Quiché, GUATEMALA
CENTROAMÉRICA

On Wednesday evening Ale and I headed over to 107.9, Pachalúm radio, to do a broadcast of La Voz de las Mujeres, the weekly half-hour broadcast of the OMM. The broadcast can be found streaming live on pachalum.net.gt, and the show currently airs on Wednesdays from 5-5:30pm, though we are going to change it to the morning since a lot of the times if one is going out to the communities it is hard to get back in time. I was really excited and nervous to do the radio show, but I think it went pretty well despite not really practicing at all (not that I got any feedback from the guestimated 200 listeners or so, but I’d like to think of myself as a natural). Ale and I discussed Breast Cancer and how to do self-exams and it was really fun. When I get to Pachalúm I plan to taking some basic radio classes that the muni will be offering to youth to figure out how to operate the equipment, which Ale says is pretty easy to handle.

Before the radio show

On Thursday morning Ale and I headed out to visit one of the communities where she has been working with a women’s group called Cipres del Campo. Pachalúm has about thirty communities outside of the municipal center, or cabecera, and they are somewhat difficult to access without a car. Around fifty families live in Cipres del Campo and maybe 13 women showed up with their children to meet me on Thursday morning. Ale helped create a pila project for these women, a proposal that needs to be approved in the budget to get these women pilas for their houses. If the project is approved I will be the one continuing it with the women in this community and another one.

On Thursday afternoon Ale and I went to the Parque del Paisano Ausente (the Park for the Missing Countrymen – in reference to all the people in the USA) for a big celebration. Over fifty women and men were graduating from CONALFA, a government run program to eradicate adult illiteracy. Along with CONALFA, there is a Cuban teacher working in Pachalúm with the Cuban program ‘Yo Sí Puedo,’ to help eradicate illiteracy in the municipality. There were officials from all over to help officiate the ceremony, and the mayor took the opportunity to introduce me to the assembled masses.

Being introduced at the CONALFA Clausura

The ceremony was lovely, and at the end all the graduates were given viaticos, bags filled with basic food items, as an extra incentive for having participated in the program.

Most of the graduates with their certificates

On Friday Luz finally came back and we discussed some of the work that we would undertake my first few months in site. We are probably going to start with two women’s groups, work with the special education school for the whole month of November, do some summer camp activities with all the children of the municipality (I volunteered to give swim lessons – I am secretly hoping to teach all the kids to swim and then start a water polo league!! This will require me to brush up on the rules of the game since all I really remember is how much fun it is to foul), and start doing a census of the population. Friday was Ale’s birthday, so we set up a surprise birthday for her, complete with gifts and cake to celebrate both her birthday and her impending departure.

At the birthday party I got to know one of the muni workers’ baby, Emilio, who might very well be the baby to help me get over leaving Kenny in San Antonio.

Emilio and Rosy

Friday afternoon the mayor gave Ale and I a ride all the way to San Lucas, which was very nice of him and will make my return trip to Pachalúm exciting since I have still never gotten there by bus. Two more weeks of training to go, but my heart is already in Pachalúm!