It’s a little crazy that this will be my only full school year here in Guatemala.
I won’t lie – this month was a bit difficult to get going and motivated. But I have a lot to look forward so I should be more upbeat. I think I’ve been a very positive volunteer so far, but these last few weeks were slow and long, depressing and happy, up and down, on and on.
One challenge, well more like a problem, I have had is with one of my directors, but I think I resolved it very well. He did not bother to re-hire his English teacher for this year and said I could be the English teacher. I explained that I am happy to help out in English classes when I am able, but that my job is, first, to help the teachers implement the Life Skills Curriculum (mandated by the Guatemalan Dept. of Education) and that I am not allowed by both the Department of Education in Toto nor by Peace Corps to take the place of a full-time teacher (i.e. you actually have to pay someone to do that job). We went back and forth on this for what seemed like forever – even the other teachers there got my point and tried to back me up. He would just not listen until finally my new counterpart and head of all the Institutos Cooperativos spoke to him. As my language speaking and comprehension skills improve, I am realizing how many people have terrible communication skills – some do not know how to listen, others don’t know how to speak properly, some both – and that it’s not just me as a non-native speaker.
Mr. Pu is still sneakily trying to get me to do the job of the English teacher – and honestly I don’t mind doing them when I have a period free from working with the Ciencias Sociales classes – by scheduling all the English classes for Tuesdays (the day I go there) and Friday afternoons (the day he is trying to also get me to go there). I will be really surprised if he ever hires someone.
One more thing about this director – I just have to say it. Last week he was supposed to have a meeting and bring up the question of purchasing more computers. As I’m the go between and need to get back to this organization right away about whether we want them or not, I called him the next day to get the go-ahead. He said he was unable to discuss this important topic because there were only women at the meeting.
Overall, though, things have actually started off very well in the schools, even in Nimapá (despite that director, I do like the teachers and kids I’m working with there). I have a lot to say, but also a lot of nothing to say about my schools so I’ll just skip that for now.
Xesacmalja
A recent secondary project I have started is mentoring a girls group through the Population Council. I and the two other Youth Development volunteers were invited to a meeting in Antigua a few weeks ago, along with the señoritas from some communities in Toto, to see if we could collaborate. Population Council (http://www.popcouncil.org/) is an international NGO, and here in Guatemala they focus particularly on women’s/girls’ issues and empowerment. The director of the Guatemalan Population Council who hosted our meeting is the niece of Guatemalan President Colom. At the meeting were two teenage girls in charge of a group of 20-30 younger girls in Xesacmalja, which is the community where I teach English to 5th and 6th grade primaria Friday mornings (another secondary project). Already somewhat familiar with and working in that community, I said I’d take on developing projects with this group if they were interested. Juana and Angelica were really shy at first and not very forthcoming with what they’d like to work on. I threw out several ideas related to gardening, environment, map projects, cooking, and they said they wanted to learn to bake cookies. So today that is what we did. Xesacmalja is a little further out than the other communities I work in, and it shows. Everything out there is much stiller, calmer. The air is cleaner; the land wider, more open; the faces you see more weather-worn, and the voices all in K’iche. At first the girls were all pretty timid, much more timid at first than most of the girls I work with in my schools, but by the evening they’d really opened up. While the cookies were cooking (they took forever in various pans propped in pots of boiling water on a plancha since there was no oven), we played “pato, pato, ganso” (duck, duck, goose) during which I was the goose every other turn, and after our snack we “played basketball,” but since there were no basketball nets it was really just 4 vs. 4 keep-away. After our meeting in Antigua none of us were really sure how things would play out, but I am quite optimistic after our first meeting today and excited to work with this group of girls again. They were all eager to have me come again and teach them something new; I just need to work out some scheduling because I normally visit one of my basico institutos Wednesdays, but to accommodate this group today rescheduled for Friday of this week. Juana, Angelica, and I have a meeting scheduled for next week along with the other Toto volunteers and the Population Council girls group leaders from their communities to plan a couple of activities we have scheduled for the next two months.
