Why I Made the Decision to Leave Peace Corps (Part 2)

This post continues the story of why I decided to leave the Peace Corps. Thank you for all of the comments on the last post, both good and bad. I do not hate Peace Corps or Guatemala; I simply had a particularly negative experience with how the Peace Corps administration dealt with my situation. I want my story to be one of many added to the Peace Corps discourse, so that applicants can see all sides of Peace Corps before deciding to apply. In fact, I hope you do still apply after reading this and that you finish your Peace Corps service, something that I was unfortunately not able to do.

I told my training director about my recurring illnesses and my living situation. The reason I called him was because I knew that I could speak English and clearly state my concerns. Even though I spoke Spanish very well, I feared that I was not able to effectively voice my concerns and that something kept getting lost in the translation with my superiors. My training director was happy to help and said that he would pass my concerns onto my bosses.

After taking the medicine for the giardia, I started to feel better, and I returned to the host family's house so that I could resume my week of Q'eqchi classes. Even though the Q'eqchi classes were not very good, I was convinced, even after minimal interaction with him, that the host father who had been helping me earlier would be an excellent instructor. The family told me that he would not be home during the rest of the week but that he would be happy to teach me during his free time each weekend. I was ecstatic, and I made plans to end classes with my current teacher back at my site and switch over to this new teacher.

While I was still staying at this family's house for Q'eqchi classes, I was called by my Assistant Peace Corps Director(APCD). He told me that Peace Corps could give my association money to build a house for me. This was in early May. They would give me a 2000 quetzal advance on my living allowance so that the the junta directiva of my association could buy cement for the proposed house. He said that he would send his friend, an extremely competent man from an NGO in the area to negotiate with the junta directiva in Qeqchi the details of my house. I have a tremendous amount of respect for this man; he tirelessly worked to advocate for me, in addition to the large amount of admirable work he did for the communities in the area. Apparently he even pushed the association to provide better housing before I arrived.

The house would be a simple hut with wooden boards for the walls, a cement floor, and a thatch roof. That was all that I needed. All I wanted was a place to sleep and a place to cook my food, in order to prevent myself from constantly becoming ill.

The whole process of getting this house built became a nightmare. I would attempt to meet with the junta directiva to discuss the progress, but they did not want to meet. I couldn't really explain what I thought should happen, because I couldn't speak Qeqchi. Therefore, I had to trust that my host dad would explain everything to them. I knew that the men in the town were very busy; they went almost every day to tend to their plots of land. I didn't want to come across as too imposing, but the lack of sleep and the lack of food was really taking its toll on me. I kept reminding myself that this how the people live here and that I had no right to complain, so I continued to let the housing issue fall to the wayside.

I would say as much as I could in Q'eqchi and go farm with the men, because I wanted to earn their respect, and I wanted them to like me. I was feeling really isolated and lonely not being able to communicate with the vast majority of my town. Finally, I was able to arrange a meeting with the junta directiva. They told me that the man from the non profit never stopped by to speak with them. This was a man that they knew very well. I told them that my boss had just told me that he came to the town a couple of days ago. They told me that, if he had come, they didn't know with whom he had spoken. I didn't know who to believe. During another meeting where I tried to arrange an Engineers Without Borders project and gather more information about the progress of the house, I was told by the junta directiva that I really needed to learn Q'eqchi, because they could not understand Spanish. I was beginning to feel more and more depressed.

I repeatedly called my boss to tell him that the junta directiva did not seem to know anything about the house and to tell him that they did not even seem to know that they had allegedly agreed to build it. I told him how difficult it had been to even get them to meet with me. He told me that I had to use my host father to set up meetings for me. I told him that I had tried that and that I was not having much success. I began to wonder why my association wanted a volunteer at all if they never wanted to tell me when meetings were. During my entire time in site, not once was I informed of a junta directiva meeting. Organizations agree to a checklist of items before they get a volunteer, one of which is including the volunteer at meetings and in the organization's plans. My boss told me to tell my host father about my frustrations, and I did. My boss also told me that he did not want to hear complaints, only solutions. I struggled to maintain my composure. I was not sleeping at all at this point and hardly getting any food. I felt like I didn't have anyone to turn to, and I explained that I was calling for help.

Weeks later my APCD came to my site for his first site visit. I acted confident and pretended like everything was alright in my site even though it really was not. I still did not want to appear weak or be viewed as a complainer. I listed communication issues as the first item on the agenda. I wanted him to tell my association the importance of telling me about meetings. I spoke some Q'eqchi in the beginning of the meeting to show my boss how hard I had been trying to learn the language. The meeting consisted mainly of my boss talking to the junta directiva. He went through the points on the agenda that I created. After realizing that he could not communicate with almost everyone at the meeting, he directed everything toward my host father and one of my counterparts. It was clear that those who could not speak Spanish were not paying attention; some even got up to walk around and look out the window. The APCD site visit is supposed to be a big deal, but certain members of the junta directiva could not have been less interested. I hoped that my boss would realize what kind of issues I was facing with the lack of communication in my site.

After he left, I really thought the communication issues would disappear. They did not. I still stumbled upon meetings that no one told me about. Those involved in the meetings did not want to translate. Thus, I had no idea what was going on. I wondered what I was doing in Guatemala.

Eventually, the living situation was so unbearable that I called my APCD to tell him that I could not stand one more week in the house with the sometimes 16 other individuals. I kept beating myself up, telling myself that I was a bad person for not being able to deal with the situation. I kept telling myself that this is what Peace Corps is supposed to be like, and the fact that I can't handle this living situation means that I am culturally insensitive.

My boss said that he could move me into a room in the ecohotel that the association ran. There were 6 rooms to house tourists that chose to spend the night in the community. It was a tiny room; there was barely enough space for my bed and a small table, but I least I could get some sleep. I was thankful that my APCD got me switched into the ecohotel, but I also felt that he should have done more to secure adequate housing in the first place. I still really wanted to have enough space to cook my own food, but I decided that I would continue to wait it out. In the meantime, the house was not being built. I didn't know who I could talk to get it built. I was conscious of the busy schedules of the men in my town, but I also could not be effective at all living out of my suitcase. I continued to talk to my host father and my 2 counterparts, in addition to one of the members on the junta directiva who could speak Spanish, with whom I became good friends.

Now with a friend in the junta directiva, I finally had someone who could advocate for me. Progress started to be made on the house, and I saw that some sticks were collected; they were to be the support beams of the house. I continued to inquire about the rest of the materials. I was told by my friend on the junta directiva that the town would have to wait for the full moon until the wood could be caught, because the wood is stronger during a full moon. This is due to the fact that there are no bugs in the wood when the moon is full. I believed this and said that I understood. I also said that I would be happy to go with them to cut the wood, that I really wanted to learn how to build a house. I knew that they could build a house quickly, because I had a seen a wooden hut go up in 2 days in a nearby community. The only step in the process that would take time would be the buying and laying of the cement.

This whole time, I traveled 3 hours away to have Q'eqchi classes with this new teacher. After the 1st class, I realized that he did not have a lesson plan at all. I had to tell him what I wanted to learn, because if I didn't do that he would teach me in a scattered manner, teaching a little bit of everything. He may have been able to speak many languages, but I had had a lot of language classes over the years, and I knew that I would never be able to learn this way. I switched yet again to a third teacher. It turned out that she had an excellent system, and I finally noticed myself significantly improving each week. It was a hassle to get to classes, the classes being 2 hours away, but I desperately wanted to have a work life and social life. Plus, it was interesting learning a Mayan language. Still, I wondered why Peace Corps did not help me more in finding a Q'eqchi teacher.

Meanwhile, I kept getting sick and kept traveling to a city to give stool samples. The house was still not being built. I decided to make a deal with the women in the one comedor in the community to start making me food. It was not a typical comedor; the people in the town did not eat there. It was only used by the tourists. It was staffed by only one woman, the women in town would take turns working there every month. I was now able to get a little more food, and the food was clean, but I did not like eating all my meals there, because I would have to eat alone. I did like spending time with my host family, but I decided I could no longer eat all my meals there. It was difficult to explain to them that I did not want to eat all 3 meals with them each day, because they did their best to welcome me into their home and provide for me what they had. Later on, right before I left the country, my boss criticized me for deciding to eat so many meals with them. I felt that a big part of being in Peace Corps was sharing experiences with the families in the community, and I did not want to completely cut myself off from them and make my chances at integrating that much more difficult. I found myself in a predicament. My host family did not seem to like that I was going somewhere else to eat some of my meals. I asked myself, Do I stay with them to appease them, or do I worry more about my own health? To this point, I always tried to put my needs after everyone else's, because I thought that is what you had to do to be a good Volunteer. Mentally, I did not think I could wait much longer for the house to be built, and I was hating myself for having these thoughts.

I'll put up the conclusion in the next couple of days.