music wafting in through the walls of my wood house

I live next to a marimba school! (this is what I'm talking about)



I got into my new site a couple days ago, been checking it out since Tuesday night. It's pretty awesome! Mostly junglish, coffee farms on all side, the geography is steep, short hills and deep ravines, everything covered in wet greenery. I like it. Not too hot, not too cold. People seem nice too.....

Anyway, so going to sleep last night, I got to hear the plunk plunk plunking of some student learning the marimba....very cool

speech!

I almost forgot - I got nominated to give the speech for our graduation ceremony on Oct. 29th! I'm pretty flattered....so now I have to come up with a good topic; I figure that something funny would probably be the best bet.....any ideas?

From Houses to Homes

This past week, my training group and I met the founder of an American house building charity that operates in the outskirts of Antigua. Known locally as De Casas a Hogares, From Houses to Homes was started by an affable man named Joe Collins, a private investigator from New Jersey who arrived in Guatemala to build houses for poor families about nine years ago. The experience impacted him to such a degree that he returned thirteen times over the next three years, then deciding to start his own 501c3 in 2005. Six years later, his organization staffs twelve Guatemalans and hosts hundreds of volunteers from all over the world. To date this year, Joe and his team have built 105 cinderblock-and-tin-roof houses measuring 13’ x 9’, each one valued at about $1750. His yearly budget is approximately $400,000.

It was pretty extraordinary to speak with Joe about his work and the growth of From Houses to Homes, which he refers to as a “miracle.” The Guatemalan government thinks he’s pretty swell, as Joe recently received the Ambassador of Peace award and is scheduled to meet vice-president Jose Rafael Espada in the near future. Personally, I’m amazed at the rapid success of his social entrepreneurship (read: business) model, especially because it runs almost entirely on volunteer effort, goodwill and fundraising. According to Joe, maybe 4% of his yearly budget comes from grants – enthusiasmprovides the rest.

It works like this: potential volunteers must first agree to raise $500 for project costs, and then provide their own food, lodging and airfare to Guatemala. It’s pretty straightforward, and while the volunteer-work-vacation scenario isn’t new, Joe’s stories about their fundraising initiatives were what really caught my attention. $35,000 walkathons in Manhattan.$10,000 house parties.An English guy bought From Houses to Homes a truck with the $18,000 donated by friends and co-workers. People have already volunteered to start branches of From Houses to Homes in Germany and Scotlan, doing their own fundraising and sending the proceeds to the central office in Antigua. It’s remarkable how motivated people can get about philanthropy.

Even more striking is that Joe has no professional development staff. A $400,000 budget and no one is busy courting large foundations for grants or seeking endowments from wealthy donors. The mission is enough; the experience of building these modest houses and witnessing the poverty firsthand is enough to make visiting foreigners pour their hearts and minds into supporting this organization. And Joe doesn’t even outline the fundraising process formally – he makes a few anecdotal suggestions, and volunteers respond with creativity and passionate support.

The bottom line is that From Houses to Homes provides extensive infrastructure to improve the living situations of thousands of poor Guatemalans. While its approach to International Development may have plenty of pros and cons, From Houses to Homes’ funding successes and volunteer inspiration are truly admirable.

Site assignment!!

I got my new site! I’m going to the department of San Marcos!

Unfortunately, due to Peace Corps Blog Guidelines, I can’t reveal the name of my community. It’s a security concern…….so…..you’ll have to email me if you want to google map the actual location.

It’s still exciting though! It’s a 6000 person town in the mountains, at 1000 meters above sea level (so it’s actually supposed to be warm!) and I’ve heard rumors that you can see quetzals in the surrounding areas (!!!!)

Here is a picture of a quetzal. This is the national bird and the national currency, i.e. what I get a stack of on payday (not the actual bird, silly):

http://cjaronu.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/quetzal1.jpg

Also, here’s some picture of the Municipal Development director Carlos Julajuj showing my training group our sites. (it was sort of a crazy day, and I got very little sleep last night because I couldn’t stop wondering)



This is it! I’m going to be living in the far west, about 50 km from the Mexican border for the next two years! My town has two internet cafes and I’m probably going to spend the next 3 months in a boarding house with hot water. Which is awesome.

Oh, and here’s some pictures from celebrating in Antigua yesterday:

Waking up part I

Today, I decided to write a description of an average morning at my host family’s house. I figured I needed to update my blog, and I didn’t want to bore you with my anxiety surrounding the impending site assignment (It comes down this Thursday! October 14th! In the A.M.! I find out where I’ll be living for the next two years!)

Anyway, so I usually get up anywhere between 5 am and 8:30, although I rarely sleep past these times.

I awake to the slight beeping of my travel alarm clock, which rests on the plastic stool next to my bed. Sunshine filters through two pieces of plate glass in the wall high above me, which were included by my host father Francisco in the house’s original construction. It’s the closest thing I have to an actual window, which is too bad, as it represents pretty much a single square foot of translucence. None of the bedrooms in our house have windows, so I asked why and Francisco explained that neighborly privacy, both yours and theirs, dictates that most rooms are windowless. I guess I can understand why – buildings tend to crowd one another here.

My room is concrete, both the floors and walls, with a pair of latched metal doors that open inward. The room is about 12’ x 12’ and the floor is smooth, covered with a scuffed layer of deep red paint. The walls also have blemishes, accenting an off-white tint that covers a rough finish of coarse sand and plaster. I have a small table, an armoire, a plastic trash can, a 5 gallon bucket where I put dirty laundry that my host mother will wash by hand, and the bedside stool (which doubles as my desk chair). I’m the only person in the house with a room to myself. It smells faintly, damply, so I try to keep the doors open and air it out whenever possible.

I sit up in bed and turn out of the cocoon I form each night before going to sleep. When my host mother ushered me into my room for the first time, she gave me two thin blankets and I hesitated for a second, knowing that I sleep cold. But they appeared sufficient and I’ve haven’t asked for another layer thus far, both out of respect and as a sort of personal challenge. I’ve been fine. On frigid nights I pull on my long underwear and appreciate that my sleeping bag is also available. Most nights, though, the two blankets are fine - I fold them lengthwise, and once under the sheets I roll side to side, tucking the blanket edges under my body and making a little impromptu sleeping nest. It never seems to get below 50 degrees here and I’ve gotten used to the weather. I will, however, buy myself plenty of blankets when I get my own place.

I stretch my feet towards the floor, slip my toes into the wedge of my flip-flops, and then I begin to collect the things I need to brush my teeth……

(I’ll write more about my mornings another day – here’s the best pictures from the trip I took out to the department of San Marcos last week….)

Municipal Development possibilities

Here's an email I recently wrote to a professor at GSU, just another basic update on what my life as a Municipal Development volunteer should look like:


Things are going well for me here in Guatemala – although I’m still in training, I’m pretty excited about the capacity building I’ll be doing in my forthcoming assignment as a Municipal Development volunteer. Working in the equivalent of a county planning office, I’ll be helping to not only share some basic U.S. office culture (punctuality, organization, professionalism) but I’ll also probably be doing some civic participation facilitation with grassroots community groups which are known as COCODES (Community Council of Development). COCODES are basically any group of Guatemalans that organize themselves to pursue a given activity, whether it be civic or recreational.

Guatemala’s government was formally decentralized in 2002, and in pursuit of that goal, I’m supposed to encourage these community groups to form, register themselves with local government, and begin to understand the planning processes associated with identifying their own needs and understand how to share them with the appropriate authorities. Over the next two years, I’ll be working with communities to achieve some pretty interesting processes - community mapping and diagnostics, needs assessment and prioritization, training and preparation, project design, project funding solicitation and hopefully, some project management. I’m pretty excited.

I’m really excited about Peace Corps model of Development – heavy on the capacity building and community-based relationships, light on the financial support. Maybe I’ve already drank the Kool-Aid, but I’m concerned about infrastructure focused Development that relies on the influx of cash and physical results, as I worry about the “money falling from the sky” effect that doesn’t encourage stakeholder buy-in or active participation. At any rate, it’s still early (I haven’t even been here two months), but I’m excited about the possibilities of what I’ve been learning thus far. We’ll see how things progress.

waterlogged

It’s been raining a lot lately – today makes eight days in a row.

Rain, in theory, is fine. God knows I lived with it for three years in Portland. In fact, it’s not that I’m complaining about the rain itself but more its side effects here in Guatemala.

First of all, an abundance of rain will inevitably create landslides, which occur regularly due to unfortunate conditions like deforestation and inadequate drainage systems. Thankfully, recent weather hasn’t inflicted much destruction in the last few days. Secondly, and far less alarming (although somewhat more distressing on a personal level) the presence of rain means that there will be no sunshine. And without sunshine, wet clothes don’t dry (there are no dryers here – come on people)

What I’m trying to say is that my host mom did a load of my laundry on Monday (read: hand washed it at the public water fountains) and it’s still wet right now, Friday night. There’s not much you can do to dry it faster. Up on the top floor, where there is no roof and the laundry flaps in breezes blowing through the valley, afternoon rains would soak and re-soak the family’s laundry. Now clotheslines line our living room, strings of pants and shirts and socks decorating our walls, and we wait for the damp air to gradually, if barely, dry out our clothes.

Let’s just say that my fingers have been crossed for sunny weather since Tuesday.