The Real World (Guate style) Week 6 Satellite Site: Xela

“This is the true story... of nine adventurous college students... picked to live in an apartment...work together and have their lives taped... to find out what happens... when people stop being polite... and start getting real...The Real World (Guate Style)”

So we arrive to Xela, also known as Quetzaltenango, and find out that we are staying in a bombass apartment. The living room itself was about 5 times my dorm and even though I had to double up with Chris, it was honestly one of the better, if not best living conditions I have had in my life. In fact, I kind of like having a roommate (Albert, if you're out there, I miss you.) Living in the apartment has definitely been an amazing experience. I’d like to think of team esperanza here in Xela as a reality tv show with that narration opening every episode. But unlike the Real World, it’s been great living with each other—there really is esperanza love. We might have had one dispute because we literally went through 3 toilet papers in a day, but that was promptly fixed when someone just jacked a whole roll from a nearby restaurant. The apartment also has wifi so I’ve been pretty wired for the past few days. It’s weird, I can’t be without it for more than 6 hrs now and I actually feel….connected to the world once again(what the hell is going on in California?, palin, and just the GOP in general?).

Xela is a beautiful city, pervaded with bustling market places, bars and salsa clubs. From the looks of its architecture of massive columns decorating most of the buildings, the city is definitely very colonialized. There is also a bakery called Xelapan where you can literally buy all the bread and pastries to feed yourself for a week under 3$. I drop a dime or so every morning for breakfast. Last, but definitely not least, there is…..(wait for it, wait for it) MCDONALDS! I can’t believe so many good things can be packed into one of our work sites.

Who wants to be the next Iron Chef?

The weeks leading up to Xela, we were all extremely excited about how cooking was going to be fun—how we would make Chicken Parmesan, Linguine, and a bunch of other gourmet dishes. Now this all sounds very cute…a group of college students scurrying around the kitchen stove throwing ingredients here and there while excitedly jumping up and down saying “this is gonna be good!” Sadly enough, we discovered abruptly Monday night that quite frankly, we suck at cooking. In fact, all we could actually decently cook was pasta, which we had for 2 nights straight. I hate bland food and carbs, and for the first two nights, I flirted with the idea of just buying 3 hamburgers or chicken sandwiches from mcdonalds. By Wednesday, my diet consisted of xelapan for breakfast, 2 medium pizzas for lunch, and 3 hamburgers for dinner. Mcdonalds had become my primary source of protein and nutrition, and you know that’s bad news bears when that statement rings true. So what did I learn from this experience? One, I love my mom very much. And two, I need to learn how to cook. I’ve never felt so pathetic in my life. Josh, Austin, Tim, ya’ll best be learning to how to cook this summer.

Spanish schools and Weaving Co-ops

One week-long Spanish school, called El Portal, supports single destitute mothers and their children so that they can pay the fees to attend school. Unfortunately, the school’s business has not been even breaking even. They need to increase their students per week by an average of 11 just so they can support these 6 mothers. Due to h1n1, and just the overall downturn of the economy, less tourists are traveling to Guatemala, let alone Xela. On top of that, there are plenty of Spanish schools here which have way more resources, more university connections, etc. We’ve been trying to offer support as to how to cut costs in unnecessary areas, and how to leverage their social agenda to attract more students. (Sidenote: talk to me if you want to learn Spanish in Guatemala so I can give you their info)

We’ve designed a brochure for them, and tried to get them on the major tourist networks such as lonely planet guide and what not. I like to consider myself an out of the box thinker, so when I looked at their somewhat bleak situation, I figured, why don’t we just try to train the single mothers to be entrepreneurs so they can support themselves and their kids to go to school. That way, we bypass the middle man (El portal) so they won’t be having trouble paying their own bills and supporting these women. I’m not sure how good this idea would go over for an organization that has built so much time and effort into this cause, but I told Luke this after our initial meeting.

In addition, we’ve met up with this one weaving coop, to help them paint their place and refurbish it. Although quite honestly, they aren’t going to be having many tourists go all the way out there to buy some woven goods. Perhaps what would be more helpful would be to set up some sort of distribution channel so they can export to the states.

A Hard Day’s Night (And I’ve been working like a dog)

Coming off of two lackluster campaigns in Antigua and Nebaj, I finally had my breakthrough campaign experience last Saturday in a town 2 hrs out of Xela. On Wednesday, when Kaveh and I were doing publicity, I already sensed something different. We were really forming substantial relationships with people who had legitimate eye problems and were eager to be helped. Arriving there at 8:30 am on Saturday, we immediately found out we had the SWEETEST site based in the town’s hospital. The whole vision/product campaign immediately quadrupled its legitimacy in the town’s eyes. On top of that, we already had about 25 people waiting outside. We knew we were in for one hell of a day.

Immediately, we got crackin’ and I (get this) got my own private doctor’s office to perform the eye examinations. I’m not gonna lie, I was scared. I had never done this alone before and I felt so much responsibility on my shoulders. Granted, comprehending slurred and rapid spanish was difficult. But maintaining focus and diagnosing people with the correct eye problems, providing the appropriate solution and ultimately selling them necessary products was more difficult than I thought. Needless to say, after 4 hours of this my head was literally spinning.

I’d like to say I was pretty independent and could handle all the patients by myself, there were so many occasions where I just couldn’t assume anything. I had to ask Luke or someone else with more experience to determine the correct problem. I can’t stand the thought that I might screw someone over or waste his or her money on something that wouldn’t help. Personally, I find that you can’t give people just what they want; you have to give them what they need. What’s sad for a lot of these people is they have eye problems behind our capacity to solve. It’s difficult explaining to people that glasses won’t help, that nothing we have here at the campaign will help and that they need our doctor contact in the city to get surgery or something to that affect.

Nonetheless, I have to say this has been my favorite campaign yet. The people were so amiable, so responsive, and valued my advice so much to the point where I felt the gravity of each word fall from my mouth. On top of that, all the girls and woman were incredibly kissy, I’ve never really been into the whole hug and cheek kiss thing here, but now I’m sort of liking it. Results-wise, this campaign was one of the most successful in the Xela region yet. We sold over 40 glasses, and completely sold out of the eye solutions, some solar lights, and a water filterer. The only bad part (and probably an also integral part) about the campaign was that our assessor, or woman entrepreneur we were supporting decided to quit. She had come off of a lousy campaign a few weeks before, and even though we made her more than 2 months wages in a single day, she decided this wasn't for her. When I heard this, I was infuriated...she had not contributed a single thing to the campaign. Chris and I decided it would've made a hella more sense to take her profit from the campaign and use it to pay the DJ at La Rumba to play calle ocho 90 times straight(and that makes no damn sense at all). The lady only tried this entrepreneur stuff because a peace corp volunteer pressured her into it. Whats hard about development work is that you can't just go to a country and push and pressure the people into doing stuff. There needs to be mutual exchange of information and both the recipient and the consultant have to be passionate and take initiative.


America , F*CK YEAH!!

I’ve never felt so patriotic till I had to spend 4th of july in a third world country. In all honestly, I do love America. We decided to demonstrate our patriotism by obnoxiously singing American songs like “Proud to be an American,” "Star Spangled Banner", and even some Team America (Don’t ask me why). Luke, who’s from Liverpool, couldn’t take it and left after about 15 min. After the patriotic festivities, Pav, Tracey, Chris, Luke, Dan and I decided to celebrate our beloved nation’s independence by going clubbing. We went to a bar then went to a club called “Rumba” to which we immediately requested that the DJ play some Calle Ocho. We freaken rumbaed that club up hahaha. I even met a friendly Guatemalan chica, patricia who spent some time in Venice, CA learning English or something. Though she probably thought I was quite pathetic as I awkwardly gyrated my hips to the lively salsa music. I gotta add this to my checklist of things to do before leaving Guate: learn salsa.

Pathetically enough, I have decided not to climb the highest volcano in Central America due to feedback from other groups that this was in fact “the worst experience of their life”. Four of them, Kaveh, Marjorie, Annie, and Amanda left last night at around 10 pm to climb so that they could reach the summit for the sunrise. It’s going to be lame when I go back to the states and people ask “omg did you climb volcanoes in Guatemala that sounds so hardcore!” to which I will answer…”no…..not really. I just ya’know, used internet.”

Spiritual Epiphanies...expecting God in the unexpected

So a few weeks ago I made the claim that I was here in Guatemala to offer long term sustainable solutions to the poor. I had been laser focused to producing actual results and to solving complex problems associated with poverty that I had refused for the most part, to view this as an experience. But in essence, my whole experience here in Guatemala has just been an opportunity for me to meet God in the most untraditional places. It has really allowed me to see that we have a multi-dimensional, multi-faceted Creator. Examples where I have encounted God:

-through developing close relationships with amazing individuals with different interests, morals, lifestyles, and perspectives. Their dedication and passion to development work has really reinforced the idea for me that God manifests himself in people of every religion and culture, whether atheist, muslim, or Christian. I have definitely experienced God’s love through witnessing the moral impulse of all humanity.

-through finding peace in the midst of frustration with this program as well as myself. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I had a very different idea about how this program was going to work and who it was geared towards helping. I also overestimated just how much I was going to contribute to the country of Guatemala. Nonetheless, forcing myself to really wake up each day with a sense of purpose as an act of worship has really allowed me to find God in almost any circumstance—whether after a lackluster day in which I felt nothing was accomplished, or after an amazing campaign like the one we had on Saturday.

-in isolation. Isolation from a fellowship or church has forced me to see God through in my own eyes. To really develop a relationship based on my own experiences and my own testimony. Instead of having a community as a crutch, I’ve really been forced to understand the depth of my spiritual poverty and to deal with it and pray about it. (perhaps more explanation later)

I'm back in less than 2 weeks. It's been one hellof a ride! I miss you all....I'll see you guys soon! Leave comments.