New Endeavors

18 april 2011

Peace Corps is not always what you think it is.
In fact, I’ve decided it’s NEVER what you think it is. What a paradox! I thought I was coming to a developing country for 2 long years to live in a village, train some people in a probably behind-the-curve host agency, inspire some community empowerment, develop my own technical skills, and make some positive impressions and some friendships, hopefully ones that last a while. You know, like, a lifetime.
And I find myself after two incredibly short years, still here! Having lived for a while in a village, then an “urban center” (Toto is its provincial capitol, but seems smaller than the small town I went to grade-school in), having trained in some coworkers, some teachers, and lots and lots of kids, having made many friendships so profound I find it hard to imagine life without them, and having worked in an actually very professional host association and now working for a global U.S.-based one, I am STILL learning that Peace Corps has never really been what I thought it would turn out to be.
So I’m staying, in part, to find out what it actually is – to fully discover what it can mean to be a Peace Corps Volunteer. As one fellow Guatemala PCV put it, we are fully subsidized do-gooders! Are we effective as such? A common perception is that Peace Corps volunteers go out to save the world. Debatable. Unlike USAID, and a host of other development agencies, try as it might Peace Corps does not have benchmarks, does not have clear black-and-white indicators, cannot easily chart its progress, impact, and dollar amounts thrown at development over its 48 years here in Guatemala. Does that mean I won’t be able to prove my success or impact upon Completion of Service? Probably. At least I won’t be able to point to very many tangible development benchmarks.
Another common perception of what Peace Corps implies, does serving for Peace Corps mean I live in poverty? Close… but not compared to my neighbors, really. It has been a means to convince people I’m in for the long haul, because I committed to live at their standard of living (and didn’t move to Xela, the big touristy city, despite being given the green light to!). I think I’ve gained trust and local confidence, and the idea is to find grassroots ways to empower people and open their minds and opportunities toward our communities’ development.
Does being a Peace Corps Volunteer mean I train people? I have a lot to add, but I’m still learning from the people I meet here, far more than I feel like I’ve been able to teach anyone.
For instance, last week I worked as a translator for a Kenyan man who works for CARE, another international development agency. He globetrots to wherever CARE is working to do diagnostics and implementation plans of potential community forest-conservation projects, the idea being to set up a carbon credits sale or other form of Payment for Environmental Services (PES). (For those unfamiliar with the idea, it’s like setting up a financial incentive based on a forest’s environmental services like soil conservation, oxygen production, water conservation, biodiversity protection, etc. Somebody somewhere else pays the locals for these things to be conserved, to offset the immediate payoff for the timber, the firewood, and the land to cultivate.) This Kenyan has helped diagnose carbon capture and storage of forests of all sizes all over the world, and has designed and implemented many pioneer projects finally involving communities (instead of only privately owned land) in the carbon and PES markets. So what did I learn from him? We went tromping around in the forests with the local forestry technicians, and I learned how he does his diagnostics – how many trees in how many meters radius around point n, how many centimeters diameter-at-breast-height, how tall the tree, what kind of undergrowth and forest litter, what slope of the ground, and how to integrate all that into the calculations of carbon sequestration – and how he does NOT want it done (thanks to the young Guatemalan high-school grads who were our technicians whose measurement techniques were bad according to the Kenyan, and whose GPS points were wrong and led us wandering out of the municipal forest we should have been in, and caused us to walk around lost the rest of the afternoon before finally finding a road at 6pm). He told me about his environmental consultancy work and how he considers it to be the most exciting work out there. I learned from him what being a forestry consultant means, especially these days with carbon capture and climate change being such pressing issues. I learned through careful question-by-question scrutiny (and translation…my job!) how he designs surveys to carefully measure communities’ use of forest resources, and establishes baseline indicators of standard of living, income sources, sanitation, and education. I picked his brain about how community trust funds can be established in communities without on-paper ownerships of forests but de facto ownership and administration of them, as is the case in Totonicapán. And he gave me hope that communities in his experience are willing participants in economic-environmental systems that benefit them if they can trust it and have power to make decisions about it.
And as I write this, my new host agency Rainforest Alliance is sending me to the tropical jungles of the Petén province to see their community projects there and, most importantly, to discuss with their Petén personnel what processes and materials we can also apply to climate change education/environmental education with community groups in Totonicapán (and which ones we simply can’t, for cultural and environmental reasons!). I expect to mostly learn on this trip, but I can’t help but feel like the pressure is high. This is the first time I’m being employed because somebody thinks I’m valuable. With this privilege comes responsibility, and we haven’t really defined yet what they’re going to be expecting from me based on the information I’m going to see and report on and/or give my feedback on. But what could be better than be sent to learn, about how people learn, and then go implement that by teaching people, and end up learning more oneself?
So I go, not knowing exactly how all these different experiences will weave together into something coherent and well-thought-out, but I’ve decided that the point for now is to be a sponge – soak up as much information as possible, somewhat indiscriminately because one never knows when some detail may become of supreme importance. So many times in my life I’ve played the role of “sponge,” it seems! Because for now, I don’t have benchmarks, I don’t have to chart my progress, and I don’t have to prove my completion of indicators. All that will come as, I hope, the project objectives, timeline, budget, and all other details become clear. I sense that this project for which I am staying an extra year in Guatemala may actually have the tangible impacts in the end that I maybe regretted not seeing in my work in El Aprisco for the past two years. But then again, I’m still learning what Peace Corps means, what my service has meant to me and to others, and what another year might mean to my community members. Another year in poverty, here I come!!! I imagine some of you reading this were once Peace Corps volunteers yourselves… One day, I want you to tell me what Peace Corps means. I probably still won’t have it figured out by then. :)

Integration... the long haul

Five months have passed since my last blog post, and of course the temptation to use a blog as a journal is powerful...
But the description of changes in temperature and weather, the litany of events this entire fall and winter season, and in particular the itinerary of the Roske family Christmas visit, would simply bore and drive off anyone actually reading this :)

So instead I want to focus on the fact that technically my time here in Guatemala should be ending with the month of March of this year. My training group of January 2009 has its Close of Service date set for March 26th, 2011. This doesn't mean everybody is forced to go home that day; Peace Corps, if you haven't noticed, is kinda into the whole lack of definition on certain points, so some people have already gone home, some people will leave between now and that day of such significance at the end of March, and some will find themselves hanging onto life here and in their hesitation taking a few more days or weeks to really finish everything up and head home.

And then there are those of us thinking about taking a few extra months to feel "finished up" with Guatemala - twelve months, to be precise. I didn't think it would happen this way. To be honest, I took from my last visit home in July a strong need to be home and partake in life in Minnesota for a while, 8 months or so from then. And here we are, seven of those months down, and I frankly feel some days like I make a better guatemalteca than I do American. Where did that resolve to go home to Minnesota, go?
Well it's not that i just got scared of readjustment, because frankly the call home is still quite hard to ignore, and I’d happily go home to family and friends in a heartbeat. The problem is, a pretty exciting work prospect came up, and seemed like it might make more sense than going home to a lackluster work economy... go home to start looking for a job like this, or stay here for it and save everyone a few plane tickets?

If all goes well, I could be working with a non-governmental organization that works towards environmental sustainability and fair trade practices in countries all over the world. I’d be working for forest conservation, and my daily activities could pertain to some or all of the following: environmental education (with school groups, with community groups, maybe with other industry players like carpenters, etc.), corporate environmental responsibility (marketing and promotion to businesses to reduce their carbon footprint through carbon credits), reforestation (tree nurseries, trainings on proper tree planting, seed collection, etc.), and probably a range of other activities. This environmental NGO is becoming somewhat well-known (ahem, for an environmental NGO…) around the world… maybe you’ve heard of Rainforest Alliance?

If that name’s not ringing a bell, start looking for the little green frog symbol on coffee, on chocolates, etc. That symbol means the production of that good met rather strict organic and fair-trade standards, and its rising popularity and demand is the only way those standards can have a real impact on the global market for those goods that are historically exploitative both in terms of ecology and in terms of labor. What happens when businesses ask for Rainforest Alliance certified products? In the global market, they begin to outcompete products that didn’t take environmental and human rights concerns into account. This is good, right?

But no one can touch topics like this in Totonicapán if they’re seen as a foreign, external influence on a proud, historic, and effectual indigenous community structure. This is the one thing I have… people here know me! They know I came to work in El Aprisco teaching their kids, or they’ve seen me around the 48 Cantones (Indigenous Mayors’ Assembly) events or meetings and know I have good intentions. I love this town… I hope that a regional stint with Rainforest Alliance doesn’t keep me from this pueblo and all the wonderful people in it… Mom, Dad, and siblings know, they met an inordinate amount of those individuals who have made life great for me here.

So I guess I'm one of those crazy ones that has integrated too much. "Integration"... a classic Peace Corps word that has come to take on whole new meanings to me in my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Integration is I guess what happens when a volunteer develops such an identity and a sense of community in their town (or "site", in Peace Corps terminology) that they don't want to leave when their two years of service are up. Integration is I guess donning
traje for special occasions (first, letting the women dress you... then, real integration is knowing how to put it on yourself, and what it means to put it on wrong, haha). Integration is people inviting you to birthday parties, weddings, baptisms, anniversaries, etc. Integration is not complaining when you have pan dulce with café (monotonous sweet bread rolls with sugared-down instant coffee-water) for the seventh night this week. Integration is the ambulatory cheese seller seeking you out, signifying of course that you have now become another steady buyer in his market. Integration is greeting young boys in town you know with their nickname and the secret handshake. Integration is the pick-up drivers who head out of town towards your work knowing you well enough to ask you if you want a ride when they drive by, instead of vice versa. Integration is not really knowing the nearby big city full of gringos very well, because that's not where nor with whom you spend your free time. In short, integration is having gotten so used to a lifestyle...

...that maybe the one you had before gets a little forgotten.