July Landmarks

A few landmarks have recently passed in my world here: I have officially been in my new site for three months now (a Peace Corps "magic number"), and my Reconnect Conference for my training group is coming up. It was also recently my birthday. Combined, these two events call for a lot of reflection on my life here in Guatemala and self-evaluation on how I'm doing. Now that I've lived in my community for over three months, do I feel as integrated and connected here as I had hoped to be by the time Reconnect rolled around? Do I feel I've built relationships and trust, do I feel I belong and that the community accepts me?
Well, frankly, not as much as I had hoped. Maybe my standards for myself were a bit high when I envisioned myself at 3 months, maybe I had "delusions of grandeur" of how great a PCV I was gonna be. Or, on the other hand, maybe I just got lazy at some point and called a quits on really trying to branch out past my host family and my work in the park, to get involved in my community. I suspect there are truths to both those scenarios...
It kinda goes without saying, but I would like to emphasize that trying to integrate into a new community is HARD! At first, I expended an awful lot of energy on being friendly, chatting with everyone I ran into, trying to remember faces and names - just generally putting myself out there, a little vulnerable-feeling, open to new experiences and people. But I guess I didn't go much beyond that, and it's starting to feel like my current reality hasn't grown or been shaped by anything new in a while now. As human beings, we naturally settle into a rhythm and when we're satisfied we leave it as-is. But life as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I'm realizing, means constant analysis, constant brainstorming, constant creativity about what ELSE I could be doing, or who else should I meet or talk to - and therefore also requires constant courage to try out those ideas. It's quite a dilemma: still seems I don't know that many people in my town, which is not satisfactory to me, yet it's intimidating thinking about trying to go and meet them all. It's also intimidating to commit right now to new project ideas when they aren't related to my assignment - these are what Peace Corps calls "secondary projects." For me things like teaching English, working on community building projects, or working with the local women's group would be examples of secondary projects. But as I'm still holding my breath for things to pick up with projects in my park, I seem phobic of these other project ideas that have been coming my way, not wanting to get overcommitted. It's like I'm holding off waiting for the moment to be right, when it's not going to be any more "right" than right now!
But giving myself credit and recognizing successes, albeit small ones, is also an important skill for me to start developing. Last week a group of women biology students from the main university in the country came to study bees in our park, and Don Nico (one of the park guards) and I also took them to a certain sunny spot in the communal forest. And in explaining to them all kinds of things about the environment here in the highlands of Totonicapan, and then all the details about my community and who's who, I realized I actually do know a great deal... and that it would be awful hard to do the kind of work I do (or the kind of work these biologists came to do) if I didn't have a brain stuffed full of all that stuff. Furthermore, when we walked around my town, people recognized me, even if I didn't know them! And so for once, at least in comparison to these biologists from the capital, I wasn't the strangest-looking stranger in town! A good sign.
And last but not least, my birthday... turned out to be a lot more eventful than expected! It started with inviting my good friend Brittany to come to my house for the day to help me celebrate. I've stayed at her house several times now and gotten to know her family pretty well (we get along splendidly). But I've always lamented the lack of a good premise for Britt to come visit me and get to know MY host family, because they're such good people and I knew she'd love them. So the birthday was our chance... but that's not all. Apparently the evening before, Brittany's host mom Doña Horalia mentioned the need to go make purchases for her small clothing store in one of the bigger city's markets, but was undecided where to go (Guatemala City? Too far, a bit dangerous; Quetzaltenango? Always goes there, never anything new; Totonicapán? hm...) Britt mentioned she was heading to Toto the next day for my birthday and encouraged them to consider coming too - and that settled it! They called us to propose the idea, and we decided to have a big lunch at my house for our new guests (and I suppose for the birthday girl...☺) Now this was a major and rather gracious undertaking by my host family. Not only did we find out we'd be making a big lunch for six guests at 9 pm the night before, but they also had plans to be at church that entire Saturday morning, and my host mom wasn't going to be around due to her enrollment in a Saturday university class. So it fell to my host dad Arnulfo, sister Ixchel, Brittany (who came early) and I to make lunch... and it was actually kinda fun! But the real joy of this day was that Doña Horalia, Don Miguel Angel, and their 3 teenage boys ALL came the whole way up the mountain from Toto in their little car, traipsed through the milpa (corn fields) with me to get to my house, sucked in their breath in amazement at the view and commented continuously on how beautiful it all was... They kept telling me how good it was to see where I lived and to meet the good people I live with, kept saying how special a day it was because it was my birthday. And I felt so loved that my family would go to such great lengths and greatly inconvenience themselves to accomodate my unexpected guests and make it a special day, and that another family had come a long way to the house of complete strangers to help me celebrate - it means a lot to me and helps me feel like I have a place here in the hearts of a few Guatemalans. And they too definitely have a place in mine. It's interesting that in this small event I see the manifestation of a much bigger purpose: Doña Horalia said that because of Brittany and I being such friends and opening our hearts and friendships with both these families, "Through you, we have the opportunity to get to know another family of our own countrymen that we never would have met otherwise. How good it is that you bring us this opportunity!" And so sometimes, just by opening our hearts to new friendships and new people, we create lasting relationships between other people in our lives too. It felt like we built a bridge there. It reminds me that sometimes things other than my work, my actual assignment, might matter more and have a more lasting impact. And that relationship-building and "secondary projects" don't have to be intimidating at all - sometimes they're just inevitable and delightful, and that's the whole point.
So frankly this is a good point of reference, a good time to take the lessons I've learned from all kinds of little events like the ones I've written about here, and re-focus myself toward being a better Volunteer. It helps me be more intentional at how I'm living my PCV life, instead of just letting myself sail on through it and allowing it to just pass me by. After all, the unexamined life is not worth living. So I keep on examining... and encourage you to do likewise.