''Is this real life?''

Most of you have probably seen the viral YouTube clip ''David after Dentist,'' which shows a young boy on post-cavity-filling high. One of the most memorable (and hilarious) moments in the vid is when David sincerely asks his father, ''Is this real life?''

This question has sometimes popped into my head (usually in David´s little voice) during various experiences I´ve had here in Guatemala. It`s usually followed by a mental note to write down what happened so I can tell someone back home.

I´ve begun to realize that my life (during my SALT year and otherwise) is NOT just material for anecdotes. It`s real life, for me and for others. If you know me, you know I love having a good story to tell. When something exciting, strange, ridiculous, or even frustrating is happening in my life, I still think about how to most comedically phrase my description of the event and even who exactly would appreciate it the most. This isn`t wrong, necessarily, but I`m starting to see how it distorts my understanding of the real life.

It might be fun for me to talk about, for instance, ''that time......''

--....I crossed undocumented into Mexico with the host family for a party with their relatives''

but this is real life for people in this area of Guatemala who live so close to Mexico that crossing the border doesn´t make them feel like criminals, so later many are surprised at how differently it feels to be in the U.S.

--...I hiked three hours to Vega community for the first time and thought I was going to pass out.''

but this is real life for every person who doesn´t live in a town or city center, who either spends a half of their possible grocery money for a pickup ride on market day or else makes that hike with the groceries (and quite possibly a toddler) on their back.

--...I went two weeks without eating meat, which made me feel super healthy.''

but this is real life for both the urban and rural poor, for whom access to protein is a legitimate problem. Around 50% of Guatemalan children are malnourished. An average ten-year-old here in Sibinal looks about seven.

I realized that what I´m struggling with is my own default attitude that I,the young American in a foreign country, am the main character in all these experiences. All these things I experience are happening to me. It`s like I´m Julia Roberts in "Eat, Pray, Love," except that instead of eating hand-crafted pizza in Italy, I´m eating hand-crafted scrambled eggs with black beans. With this mindset, I`ll have a rollicking good time hiking mountains, have funny miscommunications across languages, and maybe meet a cute Guatemalteco, all before going home in July to tell everyone about all this crazy stuff that happened......to me.

This ethnocentricity is somewhat natural, but that doesn´t mean that it`s okay. In my culture and in this one, the effects of colonialism are still very present, and it is all too easy to keep on thinking my opinions, my time, my very life matter more than those of the rural Guatemalans around me. This is absolutely wrong. My experiences are NOT the only experiences. Others matter, as more than just secondary characters in my movie.

It has to be an internal battle to correct myself every time I think "Why on earth would they do it that way?" to keep conscious of what I really think about something versus the cultural residue that cruds up my view of things. I want to keep challenging my worldview so that in the future, ''real life'' to me can be a much more complex concept, truer of the world that I share with billions of very different others.

An Brief Update for November AND December

Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas AND Happy New Year to you all!

It has been a long time since I last updated this blog, and I´ve spent the last months traveling for various meetings, reunions, and vacations, meeting many new people and learning (surprise!) a lot. Thanks to whoever is reading this, for continuing to take an interest in my life here in Western Guatemala.

Here are some pics of my travels:

Beatiful Santiago Atitlan, where youth from MCC´s programs in Guatemala and El Salvador gathered for leadership training and cultural exchange.

I was lucky enough to spend some vacation time in Roatan, a Caribbean island off the northern coast of Honduras.

Not so much a landscape pic, but I definitely had a grand carol-singin´, cookie-baking Christmas with the VerBeeks in Tegucigalpa.

My parents came out to visit me in Sibinal, and we took the bumpy pickup ride out to beautiful  Vega.

I´m looking forward to the new projects in 2013 here in Sibinal, especially as the new long-term worker, John VanderHeide, moves out here in February. We´ll be supporting agro-ecological farms, working with school gardens in the four communities, and organizing community markets for Sibinal´s small farmers. I appreciate your continuing prayers and support!

Remember Erin Brockovich? It´s kind of like that.

In the last few weeks, I´ve settled into life in Sibinal and with the Zunums, my joyful, hardworking host family. Everyone has their chores, and there´s much to do on this family farm, which includes three pigs, two sheep, four geese, three ducks, four chickens, two dogs, five cats and about five hundred trout, as well as the crops on the land behind the house.

Just like my family at home, everyone jokingly rags on one another, hangs out in the kitchen, and fidgets in church together on Sunday morning. Plus, having four host brothers between the ages of eleven and seventeen makes me feel like I get to have my brother Seth at four different ages. I love the way Fernando hops on one leg to the dinner table, how Danny sings at the top of his lungs while he´s on the computer, how Napoleon has entire conversations with the cat and how Alexander loses his mind with high-pitched laughing when the others team up to tickle him. Just last week, there was a full-fledged water fight going on for well over two hours. The boys filled up old ketchup and maple syrup bottles to use as water guns. Poor Napo was trapped in the stand-alone bathroom while his brothers shot at him from the open windows. I, of course, was hiding out on the second floor, well out of range. These boys are so much fun.

I´ve also enjoyed my time "at the office." In reality workdays are super varied and the work takes place in many places. For example, a few weeks ago, I tagged along with Magui and Juan Pablo as they gave agro-ecology capacitations to the community cooperatives, each a few hours from the town of Sibinal. We spent hours riding in the backs of pickup trucks, rising and falling with the dusty roads and hiking up and down green, rocky mountainsides. Once there, the groups, each made up of about fifteen people, weathered, lined faces along with young, bright-eyed ones, learned how to make their own fertilizer, herbicide and insecticides out of cheap and accessible materials.

Since they were the last capacitations this year and because this was my introduction to the groups, many of the members explained to me what these meetings mean to them and why agro-ecology is important. Some mentioned the solidarity of the group setting for learning, the aspect of sharing the successes and of supporting one another. Many talked of returning to their roots, respecting the “mother earth,” and providing for their families. Finding ways not just to make their land produce, but to make it produce to meet most or all of their needs, in a way that does not harm the earth, is key for these farmers.

Why? One big reason is that their government has historically failed them. The people of Sibinal, along with 51% of Guatemala´s population, are descendants of Mayans who fled to the unwanted land of the highlands when the ancestral lowlands were taken, in order to live in peace. They are the people who were targeted during the 36-year-long civil war (1960-1996), not because of their involvement in the conflict, but as a tactic to starve out the guerrilla forces hiding in the mountains. Hundreds of thousands were massacred, kidnapped or raped by the soldiers who should have been protecting them. Today, rural Guatemalans are understandably disillusioned with the government. The disillusionment grows as they see large, multinational corporations given rights where theirs have been ignored, as mining companies and hydroelectric dams continue to move in where peasants have modestly farmed for centuries. These companies threaten the environment and the people, using and subsequently contaminating enormous amounts of water without any say from the communities who live around them, without any warning about the health risks they create.

Where´s Julia Roberts when you need her?

Fortunately, Sibinal is an area relatively untouched by mines and hydroelectric projects, although exploration projects are approaching more and more. I was recently warned not to go alone to a community for the threat of being chased out by villagers with pitchforks; since most of the companies are North-American or European, my gringo appearance arouses suspicion. The topic is controversial.

Hopefully, with the solidarity of the cooperatives and the resilience of improved family farms, this area can stay under the control of its people, not the highest bidder.

I write this update a little sheepishly, as I know it´s been about a month since I posted anything. Sorry, everyone! I promise to do better.

I have now been away from home for eight weeks. Seven of those weeks have been in the country of Guatemala. Four of those weeks have been in the city of Guatemala, the following two weeks were in the city of San Marcos, and the past week has been, well, all over.

After finally finishing up with Spanish classes, I was on my way to the town of Sibinal in the western highlands of Guatemala. However, after only two days with my host family, I was off again, this time to meet an MCC tour group that came to learn about migration: the journey migrants make, the context from which they come, and what people are doing here in Guatemala to create opportunites for people to stay home. This meant visits to the two cooperatives where I will be working places called La Vega del Volcán and La Linea, as well as a trip across the border to Chiapas, Mexico.

In La Vega del Volcán, I met many of the people I´ll be working with this year. Froilan Ramos (pictured above with his fish ponds) is the community expert on raising and reproducing trout, and was one of the first to take part in MCC-supported food security projects that include raising trout and flowers. In Vega and also in the cooperative in a place called La Linea, I met more small farmers who are taking leadership in their communities through agriculture and tourism initiatives.

After the energizing week with the MCC group I´ve been feeling inspired and anxious to begin serving and learning with the local team. This week, I was able to settle in with the host family, start planning with the local team and learn more of the context for the development work MCC has been involved in here in Sibinal. Sibinal is a small town less than 10 miles from the Mexican-Guatemalan border, and the fact is, migration is a way of life here. In fact, both of my host parents spent time in Georgia before returning to Guatemala. My host father, Elfego, often talks of how he enjoyed his time in Atlanta, working in contruction. Ultimately, he and his wife decided to return to Guatemala with their earnings and luckily, they were able to connect with one of the cooperatives supporting small farmers here in Sibinal. Now, they raise trout in ponds behind their house, which is the main source of earnings for the family. Elfego and Julia have been able to live a life with dignity in their own community. They are able to feed and educate their four sons, support Elfego´s aging parents, and serve as leaders in their church.

Many people here do not have such luck. As I mentioned above, migration is a way of life here in Sibinal, as many people cross the border to work long hours in Mexican coffee farms. More and more, this has not been enough to sustain families, and so people have made the perilous journey up through Mexico, to the United States. Sometimes they return and sometimes they don´t. Sometimes the money they earn makes it back to family members here and sometimes it doesn´t. More often than not, the migrant family member is gone for five years or more, and the family structure has suffered greatly. Many homes are missing fathers, mothers, sons and daughters. This happens because opportunity is missing here in Guatemala. The privileged elite have control over the  majority of the country´s resources, and use them to generate personal wealth. Very little of Guatemala´s rich resources is utilized to serve the poor majority.

The programs MCC has partnered with here in Sibinal, where I will be serving for the next ten months, have focused on capacity building and education for the peasant farmers here. They have taught the farmers the value of the resources to which they do have access and how to utilize them well in order to feed their families. This has taken the form of agricultural projects that teach farming methods and business skills, as well as community tourism initiatives that support the construction of restaurants, lodges and roads to bring in tourists from Mexico and the United States. The projects started small, but are ever growing as more and more people see what is possible within their own communities. Opportunity through farming trout, selling flowers or guiding bird watchers through the green mountains creates a way of life here in which migration is not the only way to survive. Fewer dangerous journeys can be made and more families can stay intact.

I have thus far been incredibly inspired by the leaders of these projects, who have created opportunity where things seemed so hopeless. The work is still slow going, as many have tended to mistrust the new ideas or are simply apprehensive about the risk of a new way of doing things. As I join the team in its work, I ask for prayers that God will open the hearts and minds of the communities here and that he will unite the people as they struggle against hunger and injustice.


Some pictures of my house:

The kitchen stands apart from the rest of the house.

Everything is made from scratch and cooked on a wood-burning stove.