This may sound hokey or whatever, but living abroad is making me really good at hokey. The element of living in Guatemala that I most appreciate is the consistent learning. Sometimes I don't appreciate so much being humbled by the complexities that I don't understand of any given issue, but I feel that over the last year I've simply absorbed so much perspective about the worldview, assumptions, cultural mythologies, and experiential knowledge that color Guatemalan perspective.
I live with the assumption that a given child has some kind of intestinal parasite, at least one parent living in "El Norte" and a (very basic) education based in a language he does not speak natively. I assume all children have 'retardo de crecimiento' or stunted growth due to malnutrition and that their parents don't understand that potatoes and corn are carbohydrates and not vegetables. I make these assumptions in all cases until proven otherwise.
I assume that all of you understand what a clean cook stove is, what I mean when I say I'll be giving a charla to comadronas, and the complexities of family planning and alocholism in a machista culture experiencing extreme poverty. And all these assumptions are based on the normalization I'm experiencing here as I see more perspective-twisting norms every day.
And certainly Guatemala is not struggling with the same problems as certain war-stricken or drought-riddled African nations, but the daily struggles of the people here affect their decision-making and cost-benefit analysis. Even my own behavior and habits have changed dramatically with the society I'm living in.
A few examples: when I was living in the aldea of my community, there was no market. I'm talking not just no grocery store, no place to buy a single fruit or vegetable even in the open air. You could sometimes buy tomatoes off the families that owned corner stores, but for the most part if you ran out of onions, carrots, or anything else you were SOL until the market came to the nearest town on Saturday.
And I also didn't have a fridge--just like most of the rest of my community.
So what did this mean practically for me? It meant I never bought green leafy vegetables. They're sold in quantities for families and in the humid climate here they don't last more than 2-3 days out of the fridge. And halfway through the week when I ran out of veggies, I either waited an hour for the bus and traveled an hour and a half to Xela, or I just waited until Saturday. Which means I waited until Saturday. And past it was or the rest of the week.
Moving to the pueblo that has a market and better transportation, I lost ten pounds within two months of the fifteen I'd gained here. Not sure how I'm doing on that but still! That just with access to produce more frequently.
Another example: getting to work on time. I'm great at being on time. I operate on the early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable mentality. But here, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I make the early camioneta just to sit for 20 minutes and wait for the puesto to open. Or I get on a micro 40 minutes later and when I get there the puesto is (usually) open. And it bothers no one that I'm 20 minutes late.
Or running. In the States the mentality is "haven't run in 3 days better get a workout in" here it's "oh! I'm finally not pooping and the shower facet is working properly and there's water! Better run this morning before it rains at 2 or I might not get another chance like this for a month!"
I guess I'm also commenting on the difficulty of behavior change given limited resources. Look at me. I understand nutrition--maybe not well enough to be a licensed nutritionist, but well enough. And I have a culture and habit of eating a diet based mostly in fresh vegetables, yet I still spent my Fridays eating cheese puffs and white sweetbread.
Imagine in the situation where most don't even know that sweet white bread isn't healthy just because it's made from what they understand as "natural" ingredients. Imagine changing from eating 2-3 or 4-6 of these white panes every day on top of the tortillas, white rice, and pasta to more veggies when you have to travel 45 minutes to buy veggies, they're only available 2 days a week, and they go bad a whole lot quicker than pan or corn meal. And you really don't have the quetzales to waste on spoiled food, seeing as your trying to make 80Q (about $10) provide for your whole family. Of 10.
Yeah.
I live with the assumption that a given child has some kind of intestinal parasite, at least one parent living in "El Norte" and a (very basic) education based in a language he does not speak natively. I assume all children have 'retardo de crecimiento' or stunted growth due to malnutrition and that their parents don't understand that potatoes and corn are carbohydrates and not vegetables. I make these assumptions in all cases until proven otherwise.
I assume that all of you understand what a clean cook stove is, what I mean when I say I'll be giving a charla to comadronas, and the complexities of family planning and alocholism in a machista culture experiencing extreme poverty. And all these assumptions are based on the normalization I'm experiencing here as I see more perspective-twisting norms every day.
And certainly Guatemala is not struggling with the same problems as certain war-stricken or drought-riddled African nations, but the daily struggles of the people here affect their decision-making and cost-benefit analysis. Even my own behavior and habits have changed dramatically with the society I'm living in.
A few examples: when I was living in the aldea of my community, there was no market. I'm talking not just no grocery store, no place to buy a single fruit or vegetable even in the open air. You could sometimes buy tomatoes off the families that owned corner stores, but for the most part if you ran out of onions, carrots, or anything else you were SOL until the market came to the nearest town on Saturday.
And I also didn't have a fridge--just like most of the rest of my community.
So what did this mean practically for me? It meant I never bought green leafy vegetables. They're sold in quantities for families and in the humid climate here they don't last more than 2-3 days out of the fridge. And halfway through the week when I ran out of veggies, I either waited an hour for the bus and traveled an hour and a half to Xela, or I just waited until Saturday. Which means I waited until Saturday. And past it was or the rest of the week.
Moving to the pueblo that has a market and better transportation, I lost ten pounds within two months of the fifteen I'd gained here. Not sure how I'm doing on that but still! That just with access to produce more frequently.
Another example: getting to work on time. I'm great at being on time. I operate on the early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable mentality. But here, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I make the early camioneta just to sit for 20 minutes and wait for the puesto to open. Or I get on a micro 40 minutes later and when I get there the puesto is (usually) open. And it bothers no one that I'm 20 minutes late.
Or running. In the States the mentality is "haven't run in 3 days better get a workout in" here it's "oh! I'm finally not pooping and the shower facet is working properly and there's water! Better run this morning before it rains at 2 or I might not get another chance like this for a month!"
I guess I'm also commenting on the difficulty of behavior change given limited resources. Look at me. I understand nutrition--maybe not well enough to be a licensed nutritionist, but well enough. And I have a culture and habit of eating a diet based mostly in fresh vegetables, yet I still spent my Fridays eating cheese puffs and white sweetbread.
Imagine in the situation where most don't even know that sweet white bread isn't healthy just because it's made from what they understand as "natural" ingredients. Imagine changing from eating 2-3 or 4-6 of these white panes every day on top of the tortillas, white rice, and pasta to more veggies when you have to travel 45 minutes to buy veggies, they're only available 2 days a week, and they go bad a whole lot quicker than pan or corn meal. And you really don't have the quetzales to waste on spoiled food, seeing as your trying to make 80Q (about $10) provide for your whole family. Of 10.
Yeah.
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