After Half-Time

Where do I begin? I’ve now been in country for almost 13 months and only now have I found the time and adequate Internet speed to start a blog. I hope that it serves as a way for me to share my experiences with the outside world i.e. friends and family. I work, as a Peace Corps Volunteer, in a program called healthy schools. I live and work in Huehuetenango. Huehuetenango is a department, or state, of Guatemala and is located in the Northwestern part of the country along the Mexican border. My job, in the healthy schools program, is to improve health habits within the ten rural schools where I work. The Guatemalan school year is from January to the middle of October and unfortunately out of those nine months, I’d say that the kids attend about 5 months of actual classes after adding in teachers’ reunions, strikes, natural disasters, the rainy season, the harvest season, sickness, national holidays and whatever else may come up. With that said, there are a lot of hurdles and obstacles that keep us from being effective healthy schools volunteers.

Cultural differences between the U.S. and Guatemala constantly remind us, as volunteers, that we are not in “Kansas” anymore. The concept of time is something that we, as Peace Corps volunteers in Guatemala, have to do deal with on a daily basis. Here in Guatemala we have “La hora Chapina” which is in essence “Guatemalan time”. I’ll give you that in the United States we’re late to pick up basketball in the park, Church on Sunday after a night out on the town, or to meet up with friends at the local dive for trivia on Thursdays. However, in Guatemala even the “Primera Dama” or the First Lady was two and a half hours late to her engagement here in my site. She was set to speak at ten thirty in the morning, in our local soccer stadium, and arrived at one in the afternoon as though nothing had happened. In my own experience, I’ve had a teacher arrive about three hours late to a healthy schools workshop that was only suppose to be four hours long. Needless to say, I was amazed at how calm, cool, and collected she was strolling in three hours later to a four workshop all while smiling and giving me a sincere “Buenos Dias Profe”. Their concept of time is one of the greatest differences between the US and Guatemala. In the US we say “time is money”, yet I’m fairly convinced here that time is just time, money is money, and the two have nothing to do with one another. Simply understanding that there is no relationship between time and money can often allow you to understand why certain things are the way they are here.

On another note, I’m tall in Guatemala. When I say tall, I simply mean that I’m of an average or above average height. I would say that in Guatemala, I’m the equivalent of a 6’1” male in the US, which is pretty awesome because my whole life I’ve been considered short. For example, the other night in my local basketball league the team elected me to take the opening tip off. In the US, I don’t even know if I could get on a team and let’s not even think about getting playing time. That was one of the first things I noticed when I went back to the US for this past Christmas and New Years. Everyone in the US is fairly tall or maybe it’s just simply that most Latinos are short. Either way it’s nice to be able to see over people and take “tip offs” in basketball games. Speaking of height, my partner in crime and best friend in Guatemala, Damian, is a staggering 6’6” and once said while boarding a chicken bus “I feel like I’m in Alice and Wonderland” this is due to the fact that he is almost two feet taller than the average Guatemalan. All height, time, and lack of education aside Guatemala has proven to be an interesting site for Peace Corps and continues to amaze me each day. I hope that this blog lets you know what’s going on in my life and if you have any questions regarding my living situation, service, or whereabouts simply send me an email or hit me up on facebook.