A day in the life of...

The music is cranked up, fireworks go off sporadically, men laugh and talk loudly as the dogs bark and play relentlessly and the cocks crow to compete with one another from opposite ends of the village. It seems like the perfect party, albeit the missing women and children. That’s because they, as I, are still in bed trying to get the last minutes of precious sleep before the long day begins.

It’s about 4:45am and I roll around in bed, trying to savior my last hour of sleep that I can get if the neighbors finally leave to Guatemala City; maybe the music will suddenly turn off and I can wake up to my $20 Nokia phone beeping annoyingly and not the neighbor’s music cranked up like there’s a Latin disco with Mexican marimba music playing right next door.

But if it’s not the music, the “chuchos,” or street dogs, are fighting off one another from each other’s territory, howling, barking or just playing with one another while all the roosters in town decide it is indeed the best time to see who can crow the loudest. The old American school buses, now used for day-to-day public transportation Guatemala, honk uncompromisingly on the main road outside of the house just before they reach a corner, as to avoid a run-in with another “camioneta” trudging down the other end of the road; in an hour and a half or so, people will be soon hanging out the emergency exit door of the camionetas and hopping on while it’s still going slow enough to jump on from behind. It’s stuffed with people, but the more people, the better!

Just as the noise comes to a dull roar and I start falling back asleep, I hear gun shots- short and quick, one after the other. As if trained for a gun raid, I automatically duck lower into my bed covering my head with my arms, as if it would provide me any more protection from any stray bullets. As I cover my head, I hear the gun shots getting faster, like popcorn, and sink further into bed with a sigh in relief. Independence Day is just around the corner and the sound of “bombas,” or fireworks are not uncommon to hear; the closer it gets to Independence Day, the more rehearsed I am for covering myself in a fire out. But if it’s not a national holiday, it’s someone’s birthday, which in this town, seems to be everyday of the week.

And so, my day starts. I turn my MP3 player on to listen to some Led Zeppelin, Soundgarden, Guns ‘n Roses and whatever comes on and start off my day. One of my three site mates, Sara, and I, go on our morning run (which really turns into an elongated walk) around town at 6am. As if perfectly rehearsed every day, we see the town drunk eating his sweet bread at the corner near the park, sitting on the side of a building and mumbling to himself; a few minutes later, we see the guy in town we have dubbed Rambo, or Genghis Khan, as I like to call him, due to his very “distinct” haircut. Machete in hand and work boots on ready for a day of hard labor, he walks confidently, smiles, and greets us as we walk past one another. As we walk on, we are greeted by two pet parrots perched on the tin door of the entrance to their owner’s home. We pass numerous people and greet them all, and they greet us back smiling back in delight that the “gringas” have spoken to them.

At home, we get ourselves ready, eat breakfast with our families and then meet in the park at 7:30am to walk to the training center, a 30-minute walk from our training town. Just as we get outside of town, heaps of schoolchildren greet us.

“Hello lady, how are you?,” “Good morning!” and even “Hello, love” are called out to us by prepubescent boys whose eyes light up in disbelief as we smile and greet them back in Spanish.

Further on, before we reach the Pan-American Highway (which runs from Panama to Alaska), I hear a motorcycle drive up close to me; thinking it’s going to run into me I start to turn around to see what’s going on, but before I can move, or do anything, I feel a hand on my toosh, a firm squeeze and then the mystery man on the motorcycle disappears off into the dust. I stand in place for about five seconds to process what has just happened and Sara bursts out laughing at what she has just witnessed.

It’s something that is bound to happen to almost every woman in Guatemala, foreign or not, and although I told myself I would confront it when it happened to me, I was violated in such a way I didn’t know what to do in the moment.. No one ever told me about drive-by groping, and as I would find out later, the PC Training Staff had never heard about it before, either.

As we reach the Pan-Am highway, we look to make sure when it’s safe to cross, and when it is, we bolt across to the other side, as if making a run for it from Mexico across the border to the US. We reach the PC Training Office and start our day: two hours of technical training, two hours of health training, and then lunch.

Training in general is quite interesting. We are learning an immense amount of information, cultural and technical skills, as well as people skills, but in many ways it feels like we have been placed back into middle school, never allowed to stay overnight at a friend’s house, no partying since it’s not safe to be out after 6pm, lots of homework and studying, and of course trying to communicate with our host families, to whom we must sound like a 5-year-old child to when we open our mouths and try to explain to them the complexities of our lives back home in the US and the cross-cultural ordeals.

At lunch, we meticulously compare what our host moms have packed for us in our hand-weaved lunch baskets that we carry on the “Guatemalanised” school buses-turned public transportation. Almost everyone has at least five tortillas back in their lunch, regardless of the main course, which could be black beans, beef, chicken or even spaghetti. As much as I got frustrated with the bland corn tortillas when I first arrived, I have acquired a taste for them, especially when fresh from the tortilleria, the store where the women “tortilla” all day long. In Guatemala, they have created a verb, “tortillar,” which plainly means “to tortilla.”

As we sit outside eating our lunch on the picnic tables, Doña Rafaela sits with her homemade jams placed out, ready for sale. She is one of many successful Peace Corps projects, now with her own small business of selling jams and carrot cakes in the market, and coming in every Monday to the Peace Corps office to take advantage of the trainees.

The rest of the day goes on with more training geared towards cultural sensitivity and awareness, and at 5pm, we are finished for the weekly Monday common training session.

Training is close to half over, which in many ways is quite frightening, but also very exciting. We still do not know where our future sites will be for our 2-year service, but we should know those by the second week of October. Until then, all we can do is learn Spanish better, learn as much as possible about our assignment/duties, and form closer friendships with one another before we get split up and sent off to our respective communities, which could very well be 12 hours from each other.

So far it’s been very exciting, and I know from here on in it the speed will just accelerate faster and faster each day. There are many things that we are doing in training, but as David, the Agriculture Marketing training says, it’s not what you do, but how you do it. For development work, this is especially true. People see and copy things they see as successful, and if that happens, it will spread like the plague through a village, and hopefully people will be able to see the benefits of doing something in a “different” way than they are normally accustomed to.

This being just the beginning of my two-year experience here in Guatemala is making me look forward even more as each day approaches. The people are warm, kind and have the biggest hearts, so I am really looking forward to getting to my site, my new home for the next two years.