It has been three weeks now since I have been back in Guatemala and life has been busy…meaning that I have fallen behind with my blogging:/ This morning I held the first (of what will hopefully be many) Encuentro de Liderezas, and it was causing me a good amount of stress…but all went well, so now I can finally blog to my heart’s contentJ I got back to Guatemala on August 14th and immediately got back on saddle working with my four women’s groups Monday to Thursday afternoons. One surprise when I got back to the office was the hiring of three new employees who are now going to be working in conjunction with the Women’s Office. Save the Children, an International NGO, has just started working in Pachalum, and the three people hired are all youth recently graduated from high school. The office I work in now has 8 people (11 if we count in the three high schoolers who are doing their ‘practicas’ for the month of September), so it is nice and cozy, but hopefully this way we will be able to work with more of the communities in Pachalum and with Save the Children do more activities with youth.
For those of you who have not been listening to the news lately, this has been an especially wet winter for Guatemala (interesting since last year was especially dry and was the cause of food shortages). Tropical Storm Agatha occurred really early in the wet season and caused a lot of damage that was not fully repaired when the new storms started coming through. This past week a State of National Emergency was announced in Guatemala due to the bad road conditions (lots of mudslides due to deforestation along the highways and saturated earth).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11189918
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11193592
Due to the perilous road conditions, I have been keeping it local, but limited travel has not limited my fun. Along with working hard, I have spent all my weekends in Pachalum, hanging out with friends and their babies.
A small road-trip up a dirt road that no other cars can go up due to bad road conditions. This Range Rover can take the heat, one of the most exciting rides of my life.
One day I went down to Rosy’s house just in time for bathtime!
On August 24th I celebrated quite possibly the best birthday of all time. In the morning I went on an extra-long run, and then was called into the muni (I was not planning to go in) for a surprise birthday party! It was a wonderful surprise, with two(!) cakes, tostadas, donuts, and arroz con leche. Everyone from the muni showed up and it was fantabu-tastealicious…but since I was not prepared I obviously did not have my camera:/ For lunch, Doña Tona invited me to eat a special meal with the family, the third time since I have lived in Pachalum – the first two times being in honor of my parents’ visits.
Doña Tona at my bday lunch
All play and no work makes Athalia an over-stimulated birthday-girl, so in the afternoon, I headed out to one of my communities where I am working with the women on identifying needs in their community.
In the evening I was already birthdayed out, but my friends decided to throw a party of their own for me at one of the two tourist-centers (ie pools) in Pachalum, so off I went.
On Thursday August 26th, half of the new group of PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees) from the Municipal Development Program came to visit Pachalum for their first site visit. They had some technical difficulties on the way – one part of the road is full of mud and since the Peace Corps van is not 4WD they had to get out and push! – but when they finally made it, I took them around the muni, to my house (where I fed them home-made rice crispy treats), and down to the radio station. I remember when I visited Pachalum a little-over a year ago and how I immediately fell in love with the site, so I was really excited to share my town with them and be the first volunteer they got to see in a site.
On Thursday afternoon I headed up to Las Minas de Ciprés, the smallest community I work in, but one of my favorites. In Las Minas I have been talking to the ladies about sexual education (parts of the female and male body, contraceptives, what are STDs and how to use a condom). These women had never seen a condom before, and they had no idea that contraceptives could be acquired in the Centro de Salud! After doing a contraceptive talk, we made paper necklaces and I got them to pose with their new jewlery (which is not appropriate for the current wet season, but is very fashionable nontheless!)
On the way down from the mountain, I got stuck in some mud, which makes me ever so grateful for my Keens.
After prepping my tires to make a tire garden and a compost pile, I finally got some dirt and seeds together and planted radishes, my first of what will hopefully be many crops! In my next post I will show how my little rabanos are growing! I am very excited to make radish salad from homegrown radishes, I will continue to update you all on my progress.
In car going thru river
1 comment:
I am tres jealous of your Range Rover - that is a pretty sweet mode of vehicular transportation! Also, LOVED the candle on the chocolate cake! You are NUMBER ONE! But next year, tell them to strentch the birth celebrations out over several weeks instead of several days/hours. Birth-months are where it's at!
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