Peace Corps Guatemala or Peace Corps Nursery?

At any given time of the day, there are one, two, three or four children crying in my house. Peace Corps Volunteers in Guatemala are required to live with a host family during the first 3 months of service, which is in addition to the mandatory 3 months with a host family during pre-service training. The rationale makes sense; some of us, myself included, live in tiny communities, and living with a host family is a great way to ease the assimilation process by facilitating the introduction to neighbors and the attendance of community events. The noise in the house is constant, and I am beginning to become accustomed to it, but I sometimes feel like I joined Peace Corps nursery( There are two babies crying at the time of writing). Most PC Volunteers, naturally, choose to move out of the host family house after three months in order to give themselves more privacy and a certain degree of autonomy.

This, unfortunately, is not the case for me. I live in such a small town that there are no other safe places for me to live, at least no places that I know of thus far. I was initially disappointed and frustrated with this predicament, but I am forcing myself to treat my dearth of options as a series of two-year games. Some of the games I play include, How Many Days Can I Eat Beans and Tortillas in a Row and How Many Goals Can I Score in One Soccer Outing. Free time activities are seriously lacking here, and my welcome packet even stated that the two typical ways to enjoy oneself in the town is by playing soccer and “enjoying nature.” Since, I live on the side of a main road, and I can only walk the one path to the caves so many times, soccer is how I pass my afternoons, so it is a good thing that I love to play the sport. My record number of goals scored is 5 in one afternoon, and I have become a local celebrity of sorts on the soccer pitch. Playing soccer is my primary confianza building activity, and it gives me a great opportunity to interact with the guys in my town.

Another favorite game of mine is the How Big Can My Beard Get Game. I bathe in the middle of my front yard with a bucket, and it is a challenge to shave regularly. I have solved this problem by choosing never to shave. Instead, I am going to return to olden times, and use scissors to trim my manly, jungle beard.

I view my living situation as a test of willpower. Each additional day here eases my tension, and I believe that if I can maintain my composure here, most situations in the future will hardly seem challenging. The cast of characters in my abode includes the following: Don Santiago(host father), Dona Paulina(host mother who is frequently topless when I talk to her, because she is constantly breastfeeding), Tuco(3), newborn baby(3 months), Joseline Lucrecia(1.5), Julio(5), Efrain(10 or 11), Marta(7 or 8), Martin(21, father of Joseline), Marta(mother of Joseline and wife of Martin), Mystery woman who I believe is Martin’s sister(appears to be in her 20s and it is surprising that she is not married yet, as most girls have children at 14 or 15 years old)

So, there you have it. There are 11 other people in this small house, which consists of a room in the front of the house(my room used to be part of this common room until Peace Corps required that Don Santiago nail up some boards to separate the two), a kitchen, and Don Santiago’s room. There are 5 people who sleep in the front room, 4 who sleep in the kitchen, and Don Santiago and Dona Paulina sleep in their room, although I have seen children simply crash down onto beds like they have fallen victim to narcolepsy, thus forcing others to sleep wherever there is an open bed, which can be more accurately described as a wooden table.

I find myself repeatedly suffering moral dilemmas, as I watch my family members sleeping on incredibly uncomfortable wooden slates, jammed into small rooms. It was difficult for me to decide to buy a regular mattress and a fan for my room, because everyone else has nothing. I wrestled with the idea for weeks, but I eventually decided that I needed those two comfort items. Peace Corps allots us a settling-in allowance to buy everything we need for our rooms, and I am prepared to sacrifice and live to the standards of those around me in my community, but I could not adjust to sleeping on a wooden slab and the oppressive waves of heat in my boxed-in room. Indeed, I have barely used any of my settling-in allowance.

Although the house is overcrowded with people, it is comforting to have that family presence here. Everyone has taken a liking to me, and I enjoy their company, even if most of the time is spent listening to them speak Qeqchi’, struggling to discern what they are saying and straining to recognize just one single word. The children, albeit loud, have their endearing qualities, and I love seeing how happy they are as they gallop around the house. Plus, they make for some funny moments. Nowhere else can I look outside my door and see Tuco, the 3 year-old streaking past naked chasing 2 chickens and a duck, only to trip on a rock, crash down face-first into the mud, and then laugh and keep running. Then, I look past Tuco, and I see my substantially overweight topless mother walk past. I still haven’t gotten used to that. Man, life is a hoot sometimes.

Some of you have asked, Jordan, what do you eat in your town? Well, not much. Families do not have much money here, and everyone farms for their food. Typically I eat beans, soup, eggs, rice, more beans, and, very rarely, a piece of meat. You might be saying, “Meat! Wow, what a delicacy for you!” Au contraire, my friends. Everything is boiled, so every piece of meat takes 20+ minutes to chew. The Chew the Meat game is not in my Top 5 list of games. The lack of food would be a serious issue if it were not for the abundance of tortillas during every meal. Tortillas are served during all three meals in Guatemala, and when I can’t fill myself up on the other food, I devour tortillas. I’ve been known to throw back 8 or 9 massive tortillas at one time. To give you an idea of the importance of tortillas to the Mayans, the world for tortilla, “wa” can be found in the verb “to eat,” which is “wa’ak.” Cool stuff.

The women spend most of the day in the kitchen, where they cook over an open fire, unfortunately inhaling massive quantities of smoke on a daily basis. One of my secondary project ideas is to construct stoves that direct the smoke away from the women in the town and through the ceilings of their houses.

That’s my living situation in a nutshell. Can you picture it? Joseline, the 1 and a half year old, is telling me something. “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” Maybe she’s yelling for a tortilla.

The kitchen
This is what surrounds the main road that I live on
The scorpion that I accidentally stepped on while walking near my bed
And here´s seven of the eleven who live in the house