What's happenin?

Just thought I would give you all an update on my work and life here in Guatemala. I am continuing in giving my health talks to my four different groups in my two communities and trying to figure out how to best educated these groups of individuals, most of who are illiterate. I have been working on a schedule of two health talks a month but now I am taking a step back and realizing that that is a lot of information to cover in a period of a month and expect these women to remember it at a level that they can share it with other community members and give health talks on the topics in a similar manner as I do. I have decided that it would be worth slowing down and arriving at our goal a little latter and have the women better prepared then to stick with the current plan and be left with health promoters that are not ready to work in their communities. I have decided to cover one topic a month and use the second meeting time of the month for a review and potentially a cooking or craft activity. Also, during the review time I will pick out two group members to help give the review of the topic covered in order to build up skills and get them ready to work in their communities.

On another note, when I was heading to one of my groups, I was approached by another women that wasn't apart of my group. After talking with her, I learned that she was a part of a group of women that exist in one of my communities and that they want to work to help get a better drainage system in place in their community. She didn't ask me for money (a huge relief as this seems to happen a lot!) but for the guidance to help secure funds for these projects they wanted to take on. I was excited to be approached and excited to take this on. She also asked about me starting charlas with the group she was a part of. It was a great feeling to have people understand my job and seek me out instead of me trying to find participants. We didn't get many details of how we are going to work together but she was supposed to call this past Friday but didn't. I hope we can get something going with her and her group. Another reason that I really hope this works out is that the community she is from doesn't have a woman's committee as part of the leadership in the community and apparently according to the municipality, every community has a right to have one of these. A woman's committee will help out when it comes time for me to do projects because they will be more aware of the needs of the women in the community and forming a committee is a step to becoming official and will allow them to ask for funding from the municipality.

Living Intentionally

Trying to figure out what I want to gain by being here in the Peace Corps. I guess I have the typical vies of what a PCV expereince should be like (gained from a book from PC the includes short stories about past PCVs called "A Life Inspired") but is that what I want and can I be satisfied if that's not what I get out of all of this? I feel like coming into this experience as a Chrisitian I am already set up to have a different experience. I feel like I am still adjusting to everything here, it's a slow go like everything else here. :) I still don't feel like I have it all together and I am not sure that I will ever truly get to that point here. After watching presentations from others in my department over what we have all done with our first 6 months in site, I feel like I can't help but compare my accomplishments to theirs. Why do I feel like I need to? Can't I be happy with what I am accomplishing? That I have women who to come to my twice a month meetings and participate and thank me for teaching them? Why should the volume of what I accomplish be the factor by which I measure my time here?

I have decided to live more intentionally here. I think this will help me in my challenge of comparing myself with others and will help me to be more content in my work here. I feel like I am so ready for the next step that maybe I am missing what the here and now has to offer. Now I have not totally figured out what an intentional life looks like for me but I would dearly like to get there. I think a good start would be setting some reasonable goals here and now that I can work towards.
Just thought I would leave you with a picture of the sun setting as seen from my health center. Enjoy!

Perspective is everything

Learning contentment is always a challenge, but I feel like things are coming more in to perspective with my time here in Guatemala. There are many things that I have to be thankful for and there are situations that I just don't want to deal with that could be much worse. Life is all how you look at it.

After reading the blog of a fellow PCV friend who is terminating her service early and understanding her struggles, I feel like I can get a better perspective of my time here and how great of an experience it has been. I am truly thankful for all of the great friends that I have made with Guatemalans. I love the health center staff, with the exception of a few who get on my nerves every once in a while, and I love just hanging out with them a sharing life. It is also nice to have the staff that are behind what we are doing as PCVs and seeks to support us in our endeavors. And, though I am not a huge fan of living my my host family, they are nice and give me some space.

Speaking of my living arrangement, I check in today on my other place hoping for some good news. I was thinking the news had to be good because they had been working on it as I passed it this past week, but to my dismay, I was informed that it would still be 20 days. I feel like I am dealing with the boy who cried wolf. They have told me a handful of times before that it would be completed by a certain day and that day would come and go with no significant sign of progress. I just can't help but sit in that mindset that it won't really be done in 20 days but part of my really wants to. All I can do now is wait and trust in God's timing, knowing that I am where I am supposed to be at this point in time. He has me here to teach me and allow me to grow closer to the person he created me to be.

Please pray that I may continue to have patience and trust God with His timing in this situation and others.

Much love to all,
Kelsey

A quite day at the health center

I am finding it pretty easy to focus today, working on a powerpoint presentation to present to the people in charge of the health center for all of my department. There is hardly anybody here working at the health center because they are out protesting in the area of the market. The health workers have not been paid for two months, going on three. The educators that work with Marlaine and I have not been paid at all since they started here in January. I can't imagine working like that. I feel like sometimes getting the paycheck and compensation for my time is the only thing that keeps me going. If I didn't get paid while working in the hospital back home, I am pretty sure I would have left to find a job somewhere else that would have paid me my wages. It would never happen in the States, there would be such an uproar that changes would have to be made or the people just wouldn't work. I guess it's just so different here. We now have a working laboratory here at the health center (very simple by American standards but it gets the job done) and the lab tech has not recieved 8 months pay from his previous job. If we were in the states I feel that there would be some serious action taken against this former employer so that one could recieve their wages due.

I just thought I would share the contrasting culture here in Guatemala. Oh and I also heard from PC security that Peasant Farmers were threatning to protest today, probably an issue of wages as well. Guess I can say that I am glad to be supported by the American Government.

The great gain of contentment

"Godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into this world and we can take nothing out of it."

I just finished reading a devotional about how our sub-culture as Christians is focused so much on the future and not in the present. At the end of the reading, there was a question presented:

How can you balance living fully today while still hoping for your future?

I thought about this for a second and contentment came to mind. If we are content in our current place in life and trust that God knows what He is doing, I believe that we can find the balance between our mindset of the present and the future.

My thoughts also traveled to the thought of why contentment is so hard to come by. Why do we live in a culture that constantly tells us that more is better? When we get more we find that we are not satisfied and continue to want, until we bring trouble and hardship upon ourselves from living beyond our means. I believe that these messages make it a challenge for any follower of Christ to find true contentment, not that it isn't possible, just super hard to come by.

I feel as though God has been cultivating contentment in me as I am here serving in the Peace Corps. Making the choice to be here serving was also a choice to leave by things that I have always know, loved ones, familiar surroundings, and familiar habits. Contentment has been a challenge here, but I am learning to see what it is that I really need in life and to be truly thankful for all that I have. It is through this experience that I am able to see how much God has supplied me well beyond my basic needs. I should be more than content in life as I have many blessings from an amazingly awesome God.

I am hoping that as I continue here that I will continue to grow in contentment and be able to return to the States at the end of my time here as a changed person, one changed for the better. That I may be able to live out more than just the length of my life but also the depth, that when I finish my time here on earth, I will be remembered as one who lived life for all that it was worth, who squeezed every drop out of it and that all in all ran the race of faith to the finish line without ever letting up.

Life Update

Its raining tonight, a reminder of the upcoming rainy season that I wish could come a little less intense than the last one I experienced here.

I thought I would give you all a general update on life here in Guatemala. Today we celebrated the day of San Valentin or Valentines day. It isn't as much of a lovey dovey holiday here but more of a celebration of friendship which I really like. We had a small party at work and exchanged small gifts amongst the group of people I work with. They gave words like Guatemalans always do. They give a mini speech, thanking others for what they do and saying how much they appreciate everyone. This goes on as all of the others reiterate the same points and it can get very time consuming and boring from my American perspective. Marlaine and I went to the closest town and picked up pizza for our lunch. It was a lot of work to get there and back with the pizzas but I think it was worth it for the taste of American food.

On Saturday, I traveled to the capital of my department which is a two hour ride. I met up with another PCV to get some workout DVD's in hopes to get into better shape. I spent the rest of the afternoon with the only two girls left from my training town. We started out as five and are now just three, but the three of us that are left aren't going anywhere. I took my laundry along with me and dropped it off at a place to get washed. I am over the "cultural experience" of washing clothes by hand in the pila and then hanging it on the line and waiting 2-3 days for something to dry (or more during rainy season). My jeans haven't been through a dryer in a while so I figured it was time to get them back close to their original size and jeans can be difficult to wash in the pila. I also got my sheets washed there too. Because of their size they are just awkward to wash in the pila. I am thinking that I would like to make this a more frequent experience in my life here in the Peace Corps, especially when rainy season comes along. There is a spot closer to me that I can get my clothes washed and it's near the lake. I am thinking a Saturday trip there will be much better than to the capital.

I have figured out how easy it has been for me to slip in to the mentality of "do the minimum you need to to get by" way of thinking. Things happen a whole lot slower here in Guatemala and so it's easy not to feel the need to push myself when I am working on my own plans and ideas. I don't want it to be like this. I am hoping to take more inititive instead of just spending my day sitting around the health center conversing with fellow workers. It will be a challenge, but I am starting at the beginning of March with my Mayan Language classes. I also want to start doing monthly charlas at the high school. After doing the HIV/AIDS workshops and seeing how receptive the students where, I think this is a good place that I can play my part in the prevention of alcoholism and domestic violence. I hope to cover topics like: making choices, respecting yourself, setting goals and others. These are topics that the Youth Development volunteers work in and I was able to get some materials from a YD volunteer. I am looking forward to my potential work in the schools.

Hope you all had a great Valentine's Day. Feliz dia del carino!

Kels

Working with Promotor groups

I covered my first health topic with one of my promoter groups today, the first group of the week. It didn't go as well as planned and it made me re-think how I am going about my job. My plan is to create health promoters by educating them on various health topics in terms of prevention. After receiving this education, they will begin to work in their communities educating others in preventive health. My original plan was to give six months of health talks, meeting twice a month. After giving this first talk, I am not sure that six months will be enough time to get these women to a level that they can work in their communities on their own. My first group is more of a challenge to work with. My translator didn't speak Quiche but another Mayan Language close to Quiche. I don't think the women understood too well because they were having many side conversations and not really paying attention and when it came time for me to ask questions they just had a lot of blank stares, although a few did speak up and answered. I am trying to find the best way to educate these women because most if not all of them are not accustomed to formal education. They aren't used to learning lot of new information. I try to keep in mind when I give my talks that even if only one or two people understand and gain even the littlest amount of knowledge that it was worth my time to teach them.

I have found that in this job as a PCV, it's a lot of learning as you go and quickly implementing what you've learned, for the best results, it's got to be a quick transition from learning to putting into practice. It keeps me on my toes and challenges me to constantly evaluate and improve what I am doing.