The Little Corn Cries...

Alright, just so you know, I am rewriting this extra long update post because after writing an update for over an hour and a half, blogger lost the post. I think I may have the worst luck with electronics. Anyway, we are moving past that and I am going to try to rehash this whole blog post. Since I haven't updated since April, I am going to give you the highlights from each month. Here goes nothing....

April: So I celebrated my 24th birthday at a delicious pizza place in Coban with friends and Ron Zacapa (Guatemalan made RUM) and a yummy chocolate/Reese's cup cake made by my friend, Florinda, at Casa D'Acuna. Also went with these friends during Semana Santa, or holy week, to visit our region's main tourist attraction, Semuc Champey. Then, on Good Friday, we made the famous rugs in the streets with an "adopted" family in Coban (check out pics in Picasa). They served us yummy ceviche (seafood) and turtle soup, specialties for holy week.

May: MY COMPUTER BROKE. My second laptop in Guatemala broke. Thankfully I am now using a new Ipad that I got from my mom in June. It has seriously changed my life. I can download/read books easily in my mosquito-netted bed and my hammock at whatever hour, as well as check email, communicate with friends and family with skype, and so much more! With my computer breaking, my stress level hit an all time high and I had much more time to focus on my problems at work/home. I ended up meeting with PC with a few bosses and came back to site refocused and ready to do work with a different attitude. I began to focus my time on the school and our tourism alliance, Viviente Verapaz (check out the website designed by our PCV friend, Patty Cobin: www.vivienteverapaz.com). Not to say that I am not still working with the coffee tour at my co-op (because we actually made some progress with cost analysis and pricing with our coffee), but I have just decided that the sustainability of the work I am doing with them is lacking and without their interest and dedication to the project, any work I try to do is useless. So with the school, I along with PCV Evan and his friend from the states, Luis, put on a dental workshop, teaching the importance of brushing their teeth and distributing toothbrushes (donated by Dr. Tommy Braswell in Arkansas--BIG thanks again for that donation) and toothpastes. Pretty sure I put photos up on Picasa of this event. The big accomplishment of this for me was that the teachers were instructed to create an area in their classrooms to hold their brushes and pastes and to encourage the kids to clean their teeth daily. Many are actually carrying this out! My mom loves the story that one kid was walking by my place one day after school and yelled, "Hey willy, I'm brushing my teeth every day now!" If one kid has made a change then I mark it down as a success. May was filled with much planning for a tourism workshop that we put on with Peace Corps for the member sites of the alliance. The workshop was several days long and covered how to make and implement business plans in their respective tourism projects. One other progressive move in May was helping the women's artesian group make a new product: bracelets out of woven recycled plastic bags (I'm wearing two currently).

June: Hosted PC medical officer and regional security officer to see my site. Participated in a tour of Evan's site, a tea cooperative, with our guides who are currently receiving a training. Finished the application with my school for funds from Hug It Forward, www.hugitforward.com, to solicit funds and support to construct two much needed classrooms using reused plastic bottles stuffed with trash. Hosted a videographer and other PCVs, who acted as tourists, at my site to make a promotional video that will be used by the national tourism agency, INGUAT, with international promotion (haven't seen it yet so no idea what it will turn out like). I was temporarily appointed to the PC committee that is responsible for managing funds, train volunteers, and regionally encourage trainings and participation of volunteers in HIV prevention and other education. Looking forward to working more with this over the next few months. I helped plan and carry out a training with Evan and our PC boss at my school for the teachers. We trained them on how to implement an environmental education program in their classes and distributed PC published environmental education manuals that have lesson plans and ideas for all grade levels. I am hoping with this education and then a couple of hands on projects, like the bottle school, will create a consciousness in the community for trash management and natural resource conservation. In June, we also had a regional security meeting where we were informed about past/current security issues and threats, as well as the future of PC Guatemala's program development and design after recent decisions made in Washington/ current security level in central America. Also in June, I got some "malo de mayo", badness of may, which is just some bad stomach troubles due to the beginning of the rainy season and pollution of water supplies. Usually this happens in May, but the rainy season has been slow to start this year, so I experienced some troubles in June. After a visit to the doctor and some good antibiotics, I was back in to my healthy self. I decided to treat my self to one of my American favorite sweets, no bake cookies. I never want to hear someone talk badly about Walmart until they live abroad without many of their favorite american products, like peanut butter and chocolate. I obviously cannot afford to always treat myself to the walmart owned store in my nearest city center, but it is a haven of delicious treats (including the recent addition of Budweiser, king of beers). Anyway, i bought all the ingredients for no bake cookies from town and whipped up the delicious treat. They were obviously gone in two to three days!

July: So the end of June and first of July is always a busy time of year for PCVs in Guatemala. We all travel to Antigua and have a few meetings, this year I had to participate in a focused security meeting where we brainstormed how we were going to change behaviors in PC Guatemala so that there were fewer incidents, as well as an all volunteer conference that focuses on various topics related to volunteers' experiences. Then we have a big cookout and party to celebrate our nation's independence. We had delicious burgers, hot dogs, pasta salad, potato salad, french fries, cold beer, and brownies brought by the USA ambassador, his famous specialty. I really appreciated the festivities this year and I'm not sure I'll every be as patriotic as this year. I literally got chill bumps when a group of volunteers sang our national anthem a cappella. I began thinking about how awesome it was to be in a room with over 200 PC volunteers serving their country in an interesting way to help international development and celebrating our independence all together. Anyway, after the celebration, I went to the beach for a couple of days with other volunteers to enjoy soaking up some rays, eating some seafood, and relaxing. We even had a bonfire and fireworks on the beach for the fourth. It was a great celebratory weekend! In regards to work, my work with the coffee tour and tourism alliance has kind of fallen to the wayside. I'm not sure if it is just the sense of general apathy that everyone has because of the low number of tourists in the region or if it is a combination of several factors, including many people's active involvement in the current political elections and disinterest in their daily work, but I am currently figuring out new strategies and plans of actions for my work plans for the last 8 months of my service. Hopefully this will all work out for the best. With a lot of down time at work, I have had the chance to sit and chat over coffee more frequently with my co-workers.

By now you should be thinking, why is the title of this post about corn crying. So I have been discussing problems with our co-op, with this developing country, and just all around life problems with my longest running co-worker, Gloria. She and I are the most senior in our coffee tour. Anyway, today we were discussing agriculture and what plants were cultivated in our village. We don't have a market so everyone must carry their products they want to sell to Coban, the nearest city center. However, I wanted to know about how community members cook the vegetables they do produce and what kind of variety they cultivate. She told me about several crops people don't like to grow because they don't know how to or don't like the different vegetables: yuka, camote (or sweet potato), malanga, etc. Then she started telling me about how so many indigenous people in our community do not respect their crops, especially corn. As many of you already know, corn has always been very important to the mayan peoples. The whole process of cultivation and harvest is typically a very reverent process, except she told me many people here have let those traditions fall to the wayside. Then she shared with me an experience in which her dad taught she and her siblings of this important process of corn. She said they were harvesting the crop and her brothers weren't picking the baby corn that wasn't fully developed. Her father told them they must pick ALL of the corn because even the baby corns were gifts from God. Her father said that if they didn't pick the baby corns, they would cry and God would hear them and that this would not be pleasing to him and that God would not bless them with rich corn crops.

This story and experience is an example of the little precious moments I have experienced here that remind me of the cultural beauty and history of Guatemala. This type of experience outweighs all the frustrations and bad experiences I may have had that are frequent when trying to create change in a developing country. I am not sure that I will look at corn the same ever again. Her father's point that we must be grateful for every crop that we are given and able to produce to sustain our families is so basic, yet so powerful.

Anyway, wanted to leave on that note. Hopefully I will update everyone and share experiences more frequently over the next 8 months of my service. Check for photo updates in the picasa album also. Hope everyone is doing well!