January 19 was an awful day in the news, in case you didn’t notice. We generally read the BBC online because it’s free, and they’ve got very broad coverage. It’s my habit to read articles throughout the day when I find myself with time, in order to keep up. Early in the morning I read about the Taleban burning schools in Pakistan in order to keep girls out of them. The teachers won’t teach and the parents won’t send their children (read: girl children) where the schools are still standing for fear of retaliation. Also in the news that morning, the Lords Resistance Army operating in DR Congo and Uganda burned down a church full of people during an important religious ceremony, killing them all. The LRA has also kidnapped a reported 150 children since Christmas Eve, presumably new trainees for their army.
In the afternoon, Gaza is in ruins (could not find original story but this doctor’s story is also harrowing) after this complicated and confusing conflict between Hamas and the Israeli goverment, who planned to have all their soldiers out of Gaza before Obama swore in. Nice that they could make such a strategic political move out of that. Pictures were of old women sitting amongst the rubble that remains of their home. Robert Mugabe, self-appointed Lord of Zimbabwe, continues to find a million ways to not share power, to not back down to the man who won the most votes in the last election all while denying the cholera epidemic that is killing hordes of people in the country. And what made me most upset, who knows exactly why, a Russian human rights lawyer was shot dead in the street after speaking out against the early release of a soldier who killed an 18 year old Chechen woman (or was she only a girl still?) during an interrogation, strangling her out of frustration. Also killed was a journalist who was walking with him at the time.
By late-afternoon I began to wonder, “What am I even doing here?” Really, can we do anything substantial? There are times it gets to me so badly. We aim to be positive, to be sure that we can make a difference as volunteers, that what we’re doing really matters. But sometimes amidst all the noise coming in from everywhere, reports of violence so twisted, so far reaching into the past it seems they’ll always mangage to continue into the future as well, how can we be sure? Maybe it’s that we can’t be sure, and this is all an act of faith we hope doesn’t amount to delusions of grandeur in the end.
I keep thinking about the crisis the United States is facing, this economic crisis. I want to understand so I keep reading, but I fail to have nearly as much as sympathy for US citizens. We’re talking lost homes in the states, but did those people lose every memory object: pictures, trinkets, a family member (or 29 family members as in some of the worst cases in Gaza)? I’m certain it’s emotionally harrowing to have your home repossessed, I’m not denying that. But at least it wasn’t bombed with everything or anyone in it. Not to mention, the fault of a repossessed house can often be attributed, at least in part, to an owner who wanted too much. Not really the case with bombings. Our children aren’t being kidnapped and made into soldiers. Our girls are not sitting uneducated, trapped by fear for their lives and the thought that maybe it’s not natural for them to be learning things. The human rights lawyer and the journalist really get me though. How many educated professionals walking the streets in the US are worried about losing their heads, literally, over doing their jobs to the best of their ability, with a sense of moral responsibility? It does happen, sometimes. I know it does, but it seems so infrequent. We do have a military engaged at the moment in Iran and Afghanistan. We mourn for the soldiers we lose, as we should. But how many families are able to see beyond that; to mourn for the situation itself rather than the single incident that most affected them?
In my last post I talked about how different places need to be held to different standards, and I think it’s true. But should we ignore the difference in standards because we live in one place and not the other? I guess I am most disturbed by the thought that the majority of Americans are not privy to these news stories because our media often fails to report them, and in general we’re not readily taught to go beyond our immediately available sources.
Two days ago, January 20, our new president gave his first address not only to the United States, but to the world. How many swearing-in ceremonies of foreign presidents stop the United States’ media from commercial interruption for full-length, live coverage? Is that telling? Anyway, one of the things he said addressed this nagging pain in the pit of my stomach: “[W]e can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders…” This beautiful quote was preceded by what could almost be my job’s mission statement: “To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.”
In the afternoon as coverage of the US’s historical moment waned, we went to give a talk on healthy pre-natal habits to the women of our village. Remember, the highest maternal mortality rate in Guatemala is right here. We began as always by asking questions to get them thinking, to make the broad subject personal. The question to their own experiences was answered with 94 women and girls’ expectant stares, not a single word issued forth. Our two translators re-phrased and re-re-phrased the question. Nothing. Finally one of the translators, also a teacher, said to us in Spanish, “They won’t answer the question. They’re not animated to answer the question because for their whole life they’ve been taught not to participate, not to speak.” I found myself close to tears on accident, in what is probably a classic Peace Corp experience for many a volunteer, of nearly losing my cool. I wanted to cry, or fight crying by jumping around and hollaring, I don’t know what, something like, “SPEAK! THIS IS IMPORTANT! YOU CAN’T SOLVE PROBLEMS IN YOUR COMMUNITY WITH SILENCE!”
Even if I’d yelled, it would’ve made no sense to them, or not enough to affect a change, I know it. How am I supposed to get them to suddenly speak? If only they had any idea of the value in their stories and experiences; if only I could help them realize that. But sometimes these tasks seem too huge, too beyond me. And in that moment, I realized the women here have much in common with the women of Afghanistan, even if they will never know of each other or their shared experiences in life. You know, the funny thing is the women here thank us profusely before, during, and after every talk; but though our talks are meant to be largely participatory, it’s like pulling my hair out to get them to send one woman up as a volunteer to complete the easiest task. I felt tremendously defeated.
Here is a long side-story that will connect to all of the above in the end, I promise:
As we were making our way south to come home for Christmas, this sort of beautiful, funny thing happened. We were at Subway in the mall in Xela. I was actually in the bathroom, but had left Fletch seated with our food at a two person table. I came back to find him standing over a table of Guatemalan women in indigenous dress and a few young boys speaking Q’anjob’al with wild hand gestures. I thought, “What is he doing? No one here speaks Q’anjob’al.”
Turns out there was a Swedish boy with the family who had come over and asked Fletch where he was from, in English. He said he was from the states, and this pasty, slightly plump Swedish kid said the table of indigenous women had sent him over to ask. So Fletch asked him the next obvious question, “What are you doing with them? Do they speak Spanish or Swedish or what?” The kid informed him that they speak Spanish, Q’anjob’al, and one of them speaks Swedish. So Fletch jumped up and said, “Watx’ me hak’ul?” or “How are you?” The women stood up and pulled our table up to theirs, as they began interrogating him as to how he learned their language. This is when I walked in. They were thrilled almost to tears, no exaggeration, that a couple of whiteys were sitting here in the mall speaking their language so far from where anyone even knows it exists. The mother asked, “Would you like to come visit my house?!” We all spoke at length as they bought coffees for themselves and me, and we figured out everyone’s stories.
The mother and her adult daughters where born in Santa Eulalia, speaking Q’anjob’al, but moved further north to Barrillas at one point, presumably to make a living on the warm land crops there, as the civil war settled down. It was a hard time to live in Barillas, much harder than living in Santa Eulalia. The mother began working with a Swedish employee of the United Nations, who was there to help the war refugees that had fled to Mexico move back into Guatemala and re-establish their families with land. I can’t begin to imagine how difficult a job that would be, though I had a glimpse of it in a book I read before coming called Voices from Exile. Anyway, the Swedish man met the oldest daughter, they married, and moved to Sweden where the daughter works as nurse and has learned the ways of more liberated women–her words, not mine. They moved their mother to Xela where life was easier, for reasons of more accessible healthcare and better infrastructure. She misses her home though, which was why she was almost in tears when we spoke her language and called her by her Q’anjob’alese name, Anix, instead of Anna. She said the disturbing thing about living in Xela is the number of people who not only don’t know that Guatemala suffered a civil war (incredible, sad, true), but they even voted for Rios Montt in the last elections (president blamed for much of the worst killings of indigenous people). She said she also misses the coffee from up north, and was so pleased to find that I buy it green and roast my own. She says they brought a quintal of green coffee with them when they moved; that’s a one hundred pound bag for those of you who don’t know. Sadly, they’ve run out.
Anix shared her disdain for the word gringo, and shared with us the comments of some of her friends when her daughter, who moved to Sweden but still wears her indigenous clothing at least while at home, did not have children right away. “Could it be that gringos are not good at making babies? Is it harder for them?” she laughed at the absurdity of this. Her views and ideas were so astoundingly liberal. I spoke at length with her daughter, Xuin, Juana in Spanish, about her experiences in Sweden. She was so wonderful to speak with. She was in Guatemala at the moment because her gringo husband had finally managed to impregnate her (read sarcasm here: nothing is wrong with the reproductive organs of either partner) so she had a liberal European maternity leave which she chose to spend most of in Guatemala. As great as the conversation was, we had to get going, so we began saying our good-byes. Xuin said to me, “The work you’re doing here is wonderful, thank you so much. But please, don’t despair. Sometimes when I go out and see women standing in the hot sun with their babies strapped to their back waiting for buses, I begin to cry. My mother says maybe I just shouldn’t go out, but I can’t do that. Just don’t despair, stay hopeful.”
Like some of Obama’s words, Xuin’s were beautiful, but so much easier said than done. So here I am, despairing a little, sometimes a lot. I always bounce back, so don’t worry much on my account. I just feel this is worth sharing because this blog would be a false representation of our time here if I didn’t include this stuff too. I don’t think the world is coming to an end; rather, I realize it’s always been a pretty rough place and it’s always been rougher in some places for some people than for other places and people. I just want to yell, “PAY ATTENTION!” and yet, I don’t want to be preachy, so I’m sort of stuck. These are just my thoughts. Do as you will, please.
I’ve been thinking and thinking, mulling things over for the last few days really, and a light spot came when Lina, Galindo’s teenage sister, came over to our house for baking lessons before going to school. We’ve been doing lots of biscuits lately, but decided to shake things up and do cookies. It’s been fun explaining things to her. She’s really willing and excited about things while we’re baking, and we get to talk about all sorts of things. And then I started thinking, these are cookies for peace, really. We’re just doing the best we can, to share and learn and grow, right here, right now, January 22. We can’t do anymore than this at this moment, just bake cookies for peace.
Best to you all.
Emily
*A related note*
I came across this book about a month ago that blew me away. It’s called What is the What? by David Eggers, the story of one of the Lost Boys of Sudan and how he made it to the US. It’s an eye-opener on so many levels, but written in a way that you’re dying laughing often and in tears at a few very select moments. What was amazing to me were the similarities between being a Sudanese immigrant in the US and a Guatemalan immigrant US. The way they conduct their communal meetings, they way they have to deal with so much in their new country yet their homeland never lets them go. If you want something poignant and mind-boggling this book is it. Read it, if you please, and you’ll feel you have a better grasp on some things we experience here.