We got to Guatemala, and they told us that we would have 30 Quetzales a day as “walk around money” during training. They explained that our housing and food would be covered by our host families, and that we were allowed to spend the 30Qs on whatever we wanted, meaning all the rest of the expenses we could possibly have on arrival.

30Qs is less than $4. We all worried that this supposed “spending money” wouldn’t make it past a cup of coffee and some pan to share with our families over dinner.

I was so wrong in my worries. Despite the conversion rate, I’m living relatively well as long as I stay away from American brands. I bought some pan de banana (banana bread muffins) for 1Q each and a pina (pineapple) for 7Qs. (Reflect: pan de banana for 12 cents and a pina for less than a dollar).

We get our second “walk around” allotment next week, and I still have around 300Qs from my first (of 390—and I only spent that much because I bought stamps for about six months). I’m going to be so rich. Possibly rich enough to buy a wireless router. We’ll see.

Anyway, that brings me to the larger point of this blog post which is twofold:

1)      Think of what this means for families. My family here lives on about 75Qs a day for a family of 6. That’s a single person’s income here. That’s less than $10 for a whole family. The Peace Corps pays each family 75Qs a day to house and feed us all our meals (That’s under $10 for housing, food, and utilities). Our pithy living fee has basically doubled this family’s income. Furthermore, what I spend on a relatively inexpensive lunch in Chicago is approximately what this family lives on for a day.

 

2)      Think of what this means for the economy. Even though it is possible to live (and live relatively healthfully) on 75Qs a day in Guatemala, because the Quetzal is so powerless in comparison to the US Dollar, this means that all the best produce is exported (because Guatemala produces broccoli, avocados, bananas, figs, lettuce, cabbage, all kinds of produce). Right now, the price of meat is rising super quickly because it’s more cost-effective to sell it to Mexico. The economic benefit of selling abroad rather than consuming is one of the factors that contributes to the massive malnutrition in the pueblos. Because families can earn a living by selling the eggs their chickens produce, they may sell—even at the cost of their child not getting enough protein to grow and develop.

Before I even arrived, my project changed. If you read that whole description of Healthy Homes (please say you didn’t), throw it out of your mind. Now I’m doing Maternal and Child Health.

As you can see from the post about statistics, maternal and infant health, including: nutrition, prenatal care, and childbirth is a huge problem here in Guatemala, particularly in the more rural regions.

My official title will be Facilitadora de Capacitacion en Salud (Health Training Facilitator). Our job is to help coordinate the resources that already exist and help better the efficiency of these initiatives. Depending on the needs of the community I work in, I might be working to improve the understanding of the importance of breastfeeding. Or I could be promoting better hygiene habits to help eliminate preventable illnesses.

These initiatives already exist in Guatemala. Some of them are through the Ministry of Health, but sometimes they are disconnected with the community. It’s our job to promote better training for health promoters and to help the Ministry of Health connect better in the community and to the community government.

It is difficult for women in rural areas to access health care because the majority of hospitals and the best ones are in the capital city, which can be up to 5-6 hours on the winding mountain roads from cities in other departments. Some of the municipalities (which are made up of several towns) have only one doctor who serves the entire municipality.

At some times, whether because of corruption in the government or because of local tradition of using comodronas (midwives) for childbirth instead of (predominantly male) doctors, there is still some mistrust in the current health care as it exists in Guatemala today.

Despite the unemotional tone of this post, I’m super excited about this project, and I think it’s incredibly important for women and families in rural parts of Guatemala. I’ll tell you more as I learn more about the project!!

Life up to now. It’s pretty great.

Our group is phenomenal. There are so many brilliant minds, motivated thinkers, and vibrant personalities in this group of young people. Everyone has so much to share. The staff of the training program is absolutely magnificent. But everything moves so fast.

But I could not be happier. My host family is amazing. An energetic, relatively young couple with 4 boys under the age of six (the youngest are twins at 15 months). The boys: Erick (6), Rodrigo (4 next week), Jeffrey, and Eduardo (the twins). There’s so much energy running through this house.

I wake up with the cockadoodledoo of the gallos at about 5:15. We gringas try to run every day at around 6:00 (we’re at altitude—about 2,000 meters, so every exercise counts a bit more). We have language, culture, and technical training classes from 8:00-3:00 or 5:00 depending on the day. Then it’s time with our host families, homework, and asleep by 10:00 on a late night.

Sometimes, if I’m feeling daring, my Peace Corps companeras and I damos un paseo around the village or if we’re feeling especially salty we walk over to the next town.

We eat a lot of beans, rice, tortillas, and platanos, as I’m sure you can imagine. Starch has become a main source of calories in my diet from all the bread and patatas on top of the tortillas and arroz. Today I ate a soup of rice, potatoes, and vermicelli noodles with a side of tortillas. Mmmmm carboloading.

Right now, I’m in training, so everything is pretty constant. I’ll report back when I have more to say J.

Let me just throw some numbers at you real fast:

Largest source of income in Guatemala: Remittances from the US
Percent of People living at less than $1.60 per day: 56.2% (74.2% in rural areas)
Number of Volcanoes: 38
Average Number of Natural Disasters Each Year: 200
Number of People left Homeless by Hurricane Stan: 2,723,000
Life Expectancy: 68.9 years
Percent of Guatemala made of Indigenous Peoples: 41% (43.4% of whom do not speak Spanish)
Percent of Guatemalans who have Bachelor’s level college education: 3%

Rank of Guatemala in the following categories:

Regional (Central America and the Caribbean)

Number of Luxury Vehicles Per Capita:  1
Income Per Capita: 1
Malnutrition: 2 (behind Haiti)
Infant mortality: 2

And Globally:

Helicopters Per Capita: 1
Chronic Malnutrition: 5
Inequality Index: 11

More Stats about Nutrition in Guatemala:

The municipality with the highest chronic malnutrition rate in the Americas is San Juan Atitan with a rate of 96% of all school children surveyed
2,244 children in Guatemala are currently assessed as acutely malnourished—which means they run the risk of death by malnutrition
48 children under the age of five have died this year from malnutrition
Percent of Children between 3 and 59 months with chronic malnutrition: 49.3%

Maternal Health in Guatemala:

Women are 11x more likely to die in labor in Guatemala than in the US
Infants are 6x more likely to die in Guatemala than in the US

I just wanted to give you a statistical picture of some of the things I’m about to narrate in other posts. I hope this helps you to understand the scale of inequitable distribution of resources here. I’ll try to give a more personal account in future blogs, but I found some of these number shocking and wanted to share them with you.

(All my data comes from training materials provided by the Peace Corps)

Let's be clear: I don't feel very brave right now. 

I feel loved. I feel clung to and isolated, anxious and calm...and then scared--and ultimately so proud of the amount of luggage I smashed into 2 excessively large (and about 49.7 lb) suitcases. I'm feel so many emotions--both profound and shallow. It's just that brave and adventurous aren't among them.

I haven't told a ton of people about my emotions heading toward the Peace Corps, though I'm sure many can imagine. ---Are you excited?---Yes---Are you nervous?---Yes---Are you ready?---No. That's about as honest and deep as I've gone with anybody. I think my lack of sharing is because it's hard to lean on somebody when you know that they won't be around when you're finally having real homesickness. I'm really sorry to anybody who currently feels undervalued because I haven't opened up.

I don't know what I'm feeling, and I'm not totally sure how to address it, so my goal for now is to enjoy the time I have left (for now) with the people I love most and to get prepared to fall in love with the volcanoes, tortillas, textiles, and especially the people of Guatemala.

Thanks for reading this one. I realize it's a doosy. I promise to be more narrative than reflective in the future.

There are about 5 questions I get asked these days. I thought about making a business card of sorts to hand out to everyone, but I think I'm just going to answer them all here.

Why are you going to Guatemala? I'm off to join the Peace Corps like the 1960s hippie liberal I really am.
What city are you living in? Meh. Don't know. Probably some rural Mayan village in the mountains. It'll probably be the most gorgeous little village in the world. Just wait. There will be pictures.
How long are you there?  27 months. 2 years plus 3 months of training at the start.
Will you come home at all? I can. I get paid vacation and the option to take leave. We'll see if I do.
What will you be doing? I'm on a health and wellness outreach mission. We take for granted in the US good nutrition, wellness, and hygiene education. They say that the vast majority of deaths under 5 for rural Guatemalans are preventable by basic healthcare. I imagine myself doing a lot of toothbrushing demonstrations and toting a chart of the food pyramid wherever  I go. Ya veremos how accurate that is.

Other Questions:

What are your living arrangements? I'll be with a host family. I'll likely be the only American within yodeling distance. (I have no idea how far other volunteers will be from me. That's just an approximation)
Do you get paid? Yes. I get paid a modest salary--equivalent to what people in my village might be earning.

If I haven't answered your questions, let me know. I'll be happy to!