Yesterday I went out into my second community to do home visits. I covered one section on Thursday and another on Friday. I have one more left to cover that will get spread over two days next week because of the great number of people/houses to visit. This community is a lot more spread out than my other one. It was a test of endurance both days, walking uphill a lot and through corn fields and down steep slippery paths. I have slipped many a times, catching myself many and avoiding any bad spills, and have the constant anxiety that with each step down the steep downhill trails my feet may come out from under me and leave me painfully on the ground. I follow the Guatemalan women accompanying us through these trails, carrying small children on their back, wearing simple plastic shoes that have little purpose other than to cover their feet, and maintaining complete and perfect balance. I wonder how they can do it, jealous of their ease of step. There are some paths we walk up that I have to push myself through and then when we get to a house or a point of flat land I silently cheer in my head and struggle to grab my breath as I don’t want the others with me to hear how out of shape I am. On the positive side, it’s been great exercise and I am happily tired by the end of the day feeling like I have made the day count. I talked with my sitemate yesterday about the fact that this is my work and I totally could have spread out these home visits over more days, oh well, I guess they are done now. Hopefully my visits next week will turn out to be a little bit easier, or not, I guess that’s supposed to be part of the experience here.
On another note, I have been wondering how the people here perceive me as an American and a guest, in particular the ones that I will be working with. The meeting last week with my first community (of interested individuals) left me wondering how the people felt. The majority of the meeting was carried out in the traditional Mayan language and I had little understanding of what the conversations entailed, but trusted my counterpart, who speaks the language and facilitated the meeting, with the matters at hand. I tried to pay attention to the emotion of the conversation and the non-verbal clues and also a few Spanish words that are thrown in as the conversation runs on (many times it is a mix of the Mayan Language and a few Spanish words as the Mayan language is simple and lacks the means for clearly expressing modern day thoughts), in order to best determine the topic of discussion. It is also a challenge to understand because Guatemalans are not very direct in what they say but they like to walk around and around a point and hope the receiver of their words can pick up what they are really trying to say. My counterpart is really good at this. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy working with him but sometimes I have some mild frustration in him not saying exactly what he means and leaving the interpretation up to me (which can be a challenge due to my lack of proficiency in Spanish and lack of cultural competency). I think I will just have to leave it to time and see how it all carries out with them. Then we have my second community. After having the initial meeting there, I had a better feeling and was excited to get starting working with them. I was really touched on the second day of home visits with them (yesterday) and had a moment that really made me feel that I was glad to be here (that has been a challenge for me, trying to find my purpose here when I didn’t feel very productive, but things are picking up) and that they really appreciated it. There were three women from the second sector that went out with my counterpart and I to help us locate the houses. We followed them to 17 different houses that were spread far and wide throughout the country side of this town. It was a lot of work and I am truly thankful for their time and dedication to my work, especially because they don’t even really know me or what exactly my work entails here, though they have a very basic understanding.
The part of the day that got me the most was when we tried to figure out what to do for lunch. It was around 1pm and my counterpart was asking me what I would like to do (we still had houses yet to visit) and I told him that I was ready to eat and would love to get lunch somewhere, and the women that had accompanied us were also lacking in the department of having food with them for lunch. One of the women called a nearby friend and had them start preparing food for us. I was really excited for this as I had worked up a good hunger from hiking to all the different houses and this would give me a chance to spend some more time with the women. We arrived and after a short wait for fresh warm tortillas that were being made on the stove and the preparation of the rest of our food, we were served a fried egg with a simple tomato sauce, tortillas and a glass of Pepsi. Guatemalan hospitality is something that I have been taking for granted, but now I am getting a better grasp of what it means for them and also for me. After we were done eating, which I was the first to do (I really need to work on slowing down, because it can get awkward sitting there waiting for others to finish), we inquired as to how much lunch would cost. There was some conversation in the Mayan Language and then my counterpart gave me the answer translated into Spanish which ended up being that we didn’t have to pay, but that this was a gift to us for the work we would be doing. I was really touched and I got a little teary eyed. I also noticed the women my counterpart was talking to was tearing up a little too. At this moment I felt like I was really getting to know these women and got excited for my opportunity to work with them and help to improve their quality of life and also that of their families.
So I guess I can say things are looking up, slowly but surely this is becoming the “toughest job that I will ever love.” Thank you everyone that has kept me in their thoughts and prayers, it keeps me going :)
Love to all,
Kelsey
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