Would you like to make a tax deductible donation to my future projects?

Hello Fellow Blog Readers:

To those of you who are interested, I will be setting up an account that will allow you to make tax deductible donations to the projects I will be working on my second year. I will be spending my first year working on education. Then in my second year, I will determine families that are in need of a project in order for them to better their health. Projects could include, an improved cook stove, latrine, cement floor, water storage system, or drainage system. Criteria for recipients of projects will also be based on families dedication to the educational health talks that I will be giving and how great their desire is to better their health. More details to come concerning cost break down as it becomes available.

I am giving you a heads up so that you can start putting money away for this now if you so desire, maybe you have something you can give up and instead of spending the money you can send it towards a good cause. I will be setting up a fund when the time gets closer to begin my projects.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Wishing it lasted forever


We live our time here pretending we’ll be here forever. We long for this time and feeling to continue on and never end, but it was never meant to be like that. Our lives are full of experiences and moments that we had wished would have lasted forever. If only we could have held on to the feeling a little longer.

That is how I feel about my experience here in Guatemala and it doesn’t help that it is getting cut short. For those of you who haven’t heard, my new end date is now the end of March.  I found out Tuesday that we will officially not be getting a replacement volunteer after we leave site. I was hoping and planning for our work to be continued. I mean we have put so much into our work here that it should be continue, but it just wasn’t meant to be that way. I just have to accept the reality. It makes me feel like a person who had a crush on someone and then one day finally got up the nerve to ask and the other person said ‘sorry, I just don’t feel that way about you.’ You see, up to that point, when the reality set in, the one with the crush was able to imagine that the other person felt the same way about them and dream of what life would be like if they were together. These dreams and hopes could have gone on and on if not for the sting of reality. Reality gets us back to where we need to be, kind of like a gentle shake or a slap on the face, with it we wake up from our dreams and are forced to stand with reality. It’s hard but it’s for the best.

Sometimes reality is better than our dream world but sometimes it isn’t. My current reality isn’t. Getting my time cut short means that I will no longer be able to carry out my projects. It has really shaken up what my plans are between now and when I finish. Before this change, I had my time planned out to finish the end of June but after the wrench was thrown in, I have become a little apathetic in trying to revamp my plans. Last week was a bit difficult and went really slow. It was also really cold and cloudy the whole week which didn’t help at all. This week is going a little better and things seem to be coming together a little for me. I had a meeting with one of my communities on Wednesday informing them of my early termination date and what that meant for their projects. I expected the worse but I got a pleasant surprise. I was hoping that the women would have gotten to know me well enough that they would understand this drastic change wasn’t coming from me. When I gave them the news, it took all that was in me not to cry. I felt horrible not being able to come through on my word. They seemed to understand, with the help of a translator, that this was not coming from me but from the higher ups of Peace Corps. I gave the women the option of trying to do the projects on their own (with support from me until I head out) and they seemed to be willing to run with it. I wasn’t really sure what their reaction was going to be once they found out they were no longer getting this sort of hand out. I had the feeling that a lot of them might not really be willing to work for their projects but really just wanted the hand out. I guess my feeling was a little off (in a good way!) and they seem willing to take on the process of the projects themselves. They wanted to get started right away in order to make the most of the rest of my time here. It looks like those seeds of empowerment that I planted are starting to come to life in some of the women. Now that just puts a smile on my face!

Prayer request:
-That I would be able to make the best use of my time left here (I will be leaving March 24th!)
-That the women would stay motivated and be able to find some financial resources for their projects.
-For Peace Corps Guatemala as they try to make improvements in terms of safety and security of volunteers.

Peace out,
Kels