Promoters, Tallers and Kittens

This week was a bit mad. It started with me trying to prepare my charla for my first Promoter meeting. I found a group of women who are super pila about becoming promoters in my caserio of Pasac. I am very excited and hope they keep their enthusiasm up.

I started it by having them identify what they thought the dangers or the areas in need of change where they live, in three levels of the community. 1. the house, 2. Pasac and 3. San Vicente. It's good for them to feel like they're in control and making the decisions, because who am I, an outsider, to come in and start telling them the things they need to change within their lives. So I hope they got something out of that, and the next step is (once we've identified what needs to be changed) to start making changes.

Vamos a ver.

In addition I made a trip up to Kiki's site, San Bartolo Aguas Calientes, to help with a domestic abuse taller (taller = workshop), with a woman's group in one of her Aldeas. It went really well, and was totally worth going, even if we didn't have a ride back and had to walk for about 2 hours in the heat. (Peace Corps!).

Anyway, drama upon return, as the kitten climbed over Ferney's brilliant wall up to his roof and escaped. He was gone for about 24 hrs before we found him/her locked in a house under construction across the street. He didn't make it easy for us to get him either, but he's back and safe so that's good! In fact I'm watching him torment a chicken outside as we speak. All is back to normal.

Spanish Week Complete

This past week has been a whirlwind...

First we spent last weekend at an idyllic beach resort, with lots of hammocks and walk on access to the beach (for all of 50Q a night = about USD$12) at Tulate for Adrians birthday (photos to come, but are already posted on facebook if interested).

I then went to Xela Saturday night for a COS-ing party (COS = close of service, for the volunteers who have completed their 2 years) and on Sunday morning Kiki and I headed down to the Peace Corps Office near Antigua for a week of Spanish class.

I stayed with my homestay family from San Miguel Duenas which was SO NICE. Just to have a home with a family and to see them again and feel like it was still home was exactly what I needed. Unfortunatly there was a death in the family while I was there (Sylvia's nephew fell off of a camioneta and hit his head and died) but I'm glad I was able to be there and help out with the cooking, because here in Guatemala, when someone in your family dies, the entire village comes to your house and expects to be fed.

But apart from that sad tragedy, it was nice to go out in Antigua and celebrate St. Patty's day and see people who are based in Chimaltenango, a muni closer to Antigua.

HOWEVER, it is SO NICE to be back in site and in my own bed. And, while I was away Ferney made 2 discoveries about my kitten: 1. it's a girl 2. she's in heat...BIG TIME.

So right now she's wandering around the house rubbing herself against all sorts of objects and holding her butt in the air as she makes weird purring noises. It's quite off putting, I would put her outside, but am afraid of the neighbors' male cat (also most likely an uncle to mine, so ewwww) as I do NOT want kittens, especially if they're inbred. We really have to go to the vet.

Anyway, I'm back in site after a long week Spanish class (I almost cried whilst trying to understand past perfect subjunctive...) and am very happy to be here!

International Woman's Day

What a success! The last few weeks I've been organizing a parade for international woman's day, and got the Centro involved by having a Jornada, bringing in extra doctors to give out free pap-smears and HIV/AIDS tests. I thought about 25-30 women would show up for the parade, however about 100 women came!

It was so much fun, we started in the Centro by the Municipality building and marched behind the pickup (with a loudspeaker) up to the Centro de Salud. I had some of my women from my women groups make posters last week and they carried those with them (see example below!)



It says, "Women too, have the right to be the Mayor of San Vicente!"

The other women just marched with us, then up at the centro de salud, we had little charlas about domestic violence, HIV/AIDS and the importance of pap-smears.

Ferney and I put on a skit (socio-drama) about domestic abuse and then we talked about breaking the cycle of violence.



(above, image of women listening to charla!).

In addition, Ferney is working on a mural at the Centro de Salud, with paint donated by a friend of Esther (another volunteer who lives in San Andres Xecul), so he's started working on that with some of his students.



Great day! - also haven't had time to post the photos on picasa, but that'll come later, to check the photos out now, Click HERE!

Getting my hands dirty

Last week I went down to another volunteer's site, Favi, she lives in San Martin Sacatepequez, to help her build stoves. Favi has been in site one year longer then I have and has therefore been trained etc. in building projects (my IST or in service training will occur in April), and I really wanted to get some hands on experience in building projects as it seems I will probably be doing one (older relatives get your purse strings ready to donate and younger uni friends start saving up for a plane ticket down to Guatemala to help me build!).

It was great to see what materials we'll need, what we need to mix to make the different types of cement, to talk with the families receiving the projects and to really get my hands dirty carrying cement blocks mixing cement and generally building.

I think that doing a stove project would be needed in San Vicente, and I know that a lot of families are in need, but I don't want to be like Santa Clause and just regalar stoves, so I have to find a process of finding the families most in need (thus the census I suppose) and see what materials/labor they can provide and see who'll come to my charlas to learn how to use it and learn about preventative health etc.

It's going to be a long slow process applying for grants, finding the families, organizing the charlas, completing the censuses, getting the material and doing all the labor. However, I hope it will be worth it to the community in the end of the day if (fingers crossed) I am able to do it!