Living and Speaking

The room that I basically share with 4 other people. Note the gravel pile in the middle of the house.

A typical bed in the house

My room is on the other side of those boards. If there is a light on in this room, it is on in my room, and if there is screaming and crying in this room, there is screaming and crying in my room.

I know. I missed my weekly update, but I have been busy this past week. For those of you just tuning in to my Peace Corps saga, I have been struggling during these first two months at my site. I was given a very challenging site, and I have spent the majority of my time making my living situation bearable. My frustration stems from two big issues: housing options and my inability to speak Q’eqchi.

I described my living situation shortly after arriving to my site, and not much has changed since then. Although I run the risk of sounding like a whiner, I want to give an honest assessment of my location. The extremely cramped, impoverished conditions forced me to call Peace Corps and ask for help. One of my main arguments was based on the fact that living with this host family is preventing me from getting two necessities: adequate sleep and adequate nourishment. I will typically wake up very early or have trouble falling asleep because of crying and screaming children in the room next to mine. Technically it is all part of the same room since the only thing that separates me from 4 other people sleeping a couple of feet away from me are five wooden boards nailed into place; boards that do not even reach the ceiling. I am quite literally living on top of this family of 10 in a very small house. In addition, I believe that I am repeatedly getting sick from the unsanitary conditions in the kitchen. The kitchen is a dirt floor, and I have seen children urinate on the group, in addition to having noticed wild dogs and chickens walking around the fire where the women cook the food. I signed up to be a Peace Corps Volunteer with the understanding that I might be asked to live in conditions of hardship, and I have in the past lived in conditions of hardship in Africa, but I had no idea I would have to constantly be so worried about maintaining my health.

Thus, in a cry for help, and a desperate attempt to make things more bearable, I called my Peace Corps bosses to inquire about my options in changing my living situation, the underlying dilemma being that there is no other viable option in my small community of 300. After firmly explaining my overwhelming situation, my boss was receptive to my concerns and supportive of my arguments. He told me that Peace Corps would be willing to pay for a house to be built. I have never heard of this happening before, thus leading me to believe that my situation is extreme. I do not need much; I simply need a 5 square meter shack that gives me enough for a sleeping area and a kitchen, because right now there is not enough space to make even those partitions.

Moving on to my frustrations with Q’eqchi, Peace Corps arranged for me to spend the week in a city to take an intensive Qeqchi course with an ostensibly highly qualified instructor. The teacher turned out to be horrendous. He was unable to answer what I consider very simple questions, and he had to refer to a book after every single one of my questions. He was seemingly incapable of thinking for himself, and he tended to agree with whatever I said, perhaps to rid me of my urge to ask more questions.

Luckily, during that week, I stayed with a host family who was very welcoming. The father of the host family is also a Q’eqchi teacher, and he was able to teach me during my first night in their home. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that he was a capable teacher who was very dynamic and engaging. I immediately felt like I was learning. Throughout my scholastic career, I have taken my fair share of language classes, and I have an idea of how they should be run. While grammatical exercises and translation are an unavoidable part of any language class, a language class should be focused on conversation. After all, children do not learn languages from flashcards and memorization. They see an object, learn the word for the object through repetition and then slowly began to learn the verbs that relate to that object. This is the method that Rosetta Stone utilizes, which simplifies the process of learning a second language later on in life.

Later on in the week of classes, my inquisitive host family sensed that classes were not going well, and they suggested that I take classes with Don Gerardo, the host father. They told me that he works away from home Tuesday through Saturday, but that he would love to give classes on his two rest days. I ecstatically jumped on the opportunity and called Don Gerardo to finalize the terms of the classes.

The next step was to get Peace Corps to approve my taking classes in a city 3 hours away from my site. They would need to pay for transportation, housing for one night, and provide money for the instructor. After a bit of haggling with Peace Corps staff, I convinced them that it is critical to my success as a Peace Corps Volunteer that I receive quality Q’eqchi classes. As I have mentioned in other posts, there is hardly anyone who speaks Spanish in my site. This includes the members of the organization that I was assigned to work with. Frankly, I find it astonishing that Peace Corps did not provide me with any Qeqchi classes before sending me off to my site. I understand that I am only one of a handful of Volunteers – probably less than 5 – in all of PC Guatemala that need to completely rely on a Mayan language to be successful, but neglecting to provide us with even a base in our respective languages is a bit absurd. Sometimes I feel that PC Guatemala spends too much time thinking of us numbers and statistics that get sent to Washington and not enough time considering us as individuals that have the potential of becoming very, very lonely when deprived of the ability to communicate. This lack of empathy dehumanizes the Peace Corps staff/volunteer relationship.

So, starting this week I will be spending one night away from site each week in order to take Q’eqchi classes. I really hope this helps me learn the language quickly. I can only take social isolation for so long. I’m not asking to become fluent; I only need to be able to express myself a little better.

There you have it, friends. Things are difficult right now, but I am doing my best to stay proactive and discover the best way to put myself in a position to serve this community. Stay tuned for next week’s post; I had one of those experiences that everyone who waits to become a Peace Corps Volunteer hopes for. I may very well learn more about these people than I can ever possibly teach them. Is it that a bad thing? I am still deciding. I am certain of one thing. This experience is already changing me, and I have only been in my site for 2 months and in Guatemala for almost 5 months. In the months and years to come, what you will read here will be the unadulterated tales of my Peace Corps experience, a combination of my story and the stories of the people in my community. My reader base has grown larger than I ever expected it would, and it makes me happy to know that my fears, frustrations, breakthroughs and successes are being appreciated by others. From my friends and family to the students and workers in my father’s school, thanks for taking the time to read what I have to say.