¡Hola a todos!
First off...GO TWINS!!! I have to admit that I felt an inordinate amount of Minnesota pride yesterday when I opened up my Guatemalan newspaper and read about how well the Twins were doing...
I hope this post finds each of you doing well. Sorry it has been a little while since my last post. Life has been pretty busy lately. Hmmmm….where to start???
My work at the clinic continues to go pretty well. I am still doing a lot of observing and learning; it looks like that’s going to be my main occupation for at least a few weeks to come. My supervisor really wants me to understand the community, the politics, and the people well before I get started with any sort of project. I am trying to learn more about Guatemalan Health Policies, more about the politics of the municipal government, and more about the culture of this region. On the whole, I am really enjoying learning about the work of the clinic; however, everyday has its ups and downs. The frustrating moments come when I have to go to meetings that are all in Kaqchiquel (a Mayan language). It is NOTHING like Spanish and I just sit there and try to look interested.
I’m also really enjoying my coworkers. Last Thursday, we stopped working a little early so we could get in a soccer game before it got dark, on Friday I taught some people how to play Frisbee during lunch, and then we ate “elotes” (corn on the cob) after work one day. I’m told they are “in season” now, and the whole process of preparing and eating elotes is pretty involved, but Patzuneros (people from Patzún) really seem to love it. I had elotes 3 times last week.
Though I spend most of my time just observing and asking a lot of questions, last Thursday, I actually felt like I made a good contribution to our work. The previous Tuesday we were in Tecpán meeting with a group of women from the surrounding rural communities (very poor) and asking them questions about how content they were with the way their lives were (political situation, what kind of future they hoped to pass on to their children, gender roles, etc). We wrote down their responses and on Thursday we sat down to analyze them. My coworker started out by asking me, “Well what are our conclusions?” and told her that I couldn’t know without going over this in a lot more detail. She gave me somewhat of a quizzical look as if to say “well we just finished typing all of them in…how do you not already know what it says?” So, I took her through a process I had learned in a research class from Wheaton of clustering the data into categories, looking at what the data did and did not say, and then making note of all the gaps in our data. By the time we were finished, we had a much better idea of what our data meant, and also had an agenda for our next meeting. It felt good to make my first contribution since arriving.
In other news, last week Guatemala celebrated “El Dia de los Niños.” Just like we celebrate Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, they have another holiday to celebrate kids. And rather than a single day event, activities spanned from Thursday until Sunday night. Schools let kids sleep for an extra hour, there were countless piñatas in the streets, and churches had their own celebrations too. But all these festivities made me realize something. Being 24 in Guatemala is different than being 24 in the US. In the US, you become an adult at 18 years old. You leave home to go away to college. You move out of your parents’ house. And you start to support yourself. You are supposed to become “independent.” Here, leaving your youth and becoming an adult has less to do with predetermined age brackets and professional landmarks (graduating college, getting a salaried job), and more to do with your family situation. You’re still considered a youth at 24 if you’re not married; single people still live at home and don’t really seem to move into an apartment or anything like that. But once you get married, all that changes. Here, people talk about families more than they talk about individuals.
I am also starting to feel like I am finally starting to make the mental transition from life in the States to life here; but, this process is going to take a while. On Saturday, my friend, Victor, invited me to go to Chimaltenango with him to run a few errands. I hadn’t been and decided it would be good to get to know a new place. On my short tour of “Chimal” Victor took me into this shopping mall complete with an American-style food court (think air conditioning, McDonalds, Domino’s, and Taco Bell). On the way home, I was somewhat struck by how relaxed I had felt in that environment in comparison to Patzún. I hope I get to a place eventually where I can feel as relaxed here as I do at home (maybe that’s taking it a little far), and like Paul says in Philippians “learn to be content whatever the situation.” But, for now those periods of reprieve are much appreciated.
Prayer Requests!
1.) Give Thanks! I have been having some good conversations with my supervisor (Dr. Axel) about how I, as an American Christian, should approach my encounters with poverty and how I should think about development from my own, unique perspective. I really want to spend a lot of time down here thinking about what my roll in international health and development should be in the future.
2.) Health! I have been sick the last 3 or 4 days with a pretty nasty cold. Travel sickness is getting better and better, but this cold is a real pain.
3.) Tomorrow I am heading off to San Juan la Laguna for a 4-day conference involving pastors who practice comprehensive missions (or “Misión Integral”). I am looking forward to getting to know another part of Guatemala and learning about another part of what AV does.
4.) Medical School Applications! My days tend to start early, be pretty full, and then I just crash after dinner. That hasn’t been proving an entirely effective recipe for getting my med school secondary applications done. I am making progress, but very slowly. Pray that I could just get these last three secondaries out and then focus on what I’m doing here.
5.) Patience! The whole transition “process” continues at an aggravatingly slow pace. I want to be comfortable in the language, I want to understand the politics of the region, I want to understand the culture, I want to be AOK with the food, and I want it yesterday. Pray for patience…
Alright all, well that’s it from my end. But please keep me updated on what is going on with you all back there! I love getting emails from you all, facebook posts, comments on the pictures I put up on facebook, etc…Adios!
