Week 16 - Blood, Boobs, and Soccer Balls

A lot has happened in the last week. Unfortunately, much of it would be improper to write about on something as uncontrollable and public as the internet. Instead, I’m going to do something a little more anthropological than my most recent posts. Maybe it’s because I’m getting nostalgic for Carleton as it becomes almost a year since I left it, but I suddenly find it exciting to write something that would perhaps be a better fit as a term paper.

It occurred to me recently that there are only two major newspapers in Guatemala: Prensa Libre (Free Press), and Nuestro Diario (Our Diary). Of these, there is a startling division. The highly educated read the Prensa Libre, which is perhaps comparable to the New York Times: It’s large, the text is dense, and it talks about lofty issues, such as economic reform, world politics, and, about a month ago, the 50^th anniversary of the Peace Corps. The other, Nuestro Diario is far more popular in a country where less than 30% of the population complete 6^th grade. It’s comparable to a supermarket tabloid, and each issue is pretty formulaic: The first half is devoted to depicting in text and color photos the graphic murders, lynchings, and gang activities throughout the country. In the middle there is usually a full-page spread and Cosmo or Playboy-style interview of a scantily clad bikini model, and the final few pages are rounded out with in-depth coverage of the various Guatemalan soccer teams.

Some of you may remember that my senior thesis was done on the written texts of the Sephardic Jews. For those lucky few who made it through the whole thing, you might also remember me talking about the work of Benedict Anderson, a scholar who introduced a groundbreaking theory on the construction of nationalism that he called an Imagined Community. According to him, national identification is created through printed media, including national newspapers. I won’t get into the intricacies of the theory (you can read more about it here), but it would help if you’d agree with me on two issues: First, by reading a standardized text, it creates a sense of solidarity and common beliefs among the readers. Secondly, Nuestro Diario, with its huge market share and cemented position in the social imaginaire, is the de facto national newspaper of Guatemala. Even it's name implies this, since "Our Diary" explicitly suggests that its readers are somehow united in a manner beyond simple readership.

Please pretend that the previous two statements have been proven by a electrifying display of mental dexterity and the use of pretentious words like “hence,” “ergo,” and “vis-à-vis.” You are full convinced I should be the next keynote speaker at the American Anthropological Association’s annual conference. Thank you, I will be signing autographs in the lobby.

The reason I bring this up is that I saw the expected result of a pedestrian-vs.-camioneta crash on the highway as I was coming back from Panajachel this weekend. As the other Peace Corps Volunteers and I rubbernecked for a better view going past, one said with a shrug, “eh, it’ll be in Nuestro Diario tomorrow.”

My question is this: If Ben Anderson is right and national newspapers have the power to great a “deep, horizontal comradeship,” what does it mean if a community’s sense of identity is predicated upon blood, boobs, and soccer balls?

I guess I should probably have some theory that answers this conundrum if I’m going to present it, but the truth is that I’m not sure I do. I mean, there’s a lot of violence in Guatemala, a lot of treating women as objects to be harassed on the street, and a lot of soccer. Is it possible that Nuestro Diario is simply tapping into the three most crowd-pleasing topics in Guatemala? Almost certainly yes, but Anderson would perhaps suggest that the mirror of the newspaper to the reality of Guatemala is a self-reproducing cycle. That is, while the newspaper reports the daily news, it also in a certain sense makes it: Its lurid photos and stories make people more inclined to worship violence, sexualize women, and revere sports, perhaps even leading them to see it as ok to do those things.

I’m not arguing that reading Nuestro Diario turns people into zombies powerless to resist their single, driving impulse (though groaning “boooooooobs” does make it sound an awful lot like “braaaaaaaains”). Rather, I’m timidly suggesting that it inures the readers, over time, to the horrors of the first two. Soccer, for what it’s worth, deserves a rabid following.

Is there a solution? Should Nuestro Diario withdraw from the newspaper racket? Perhaps not, I just thought it was a rather odd union between what I had been exhaustively studying—or at least studying exhaustedly—during my final year of college and my life here. I’ve found myself trying to explain seemingly unexplainable oddities through the prism of culture more than I ever did at Carleton.

And while we’re on the topic of college, even though the veteran PCV’s still call my cohort “freshmen,” it won’t stop the next cohort from arriving tomorrow. Is it possible to feel like a newbie and old at the same time?

This week’s photos can be found at: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week16?authkey=Gv1sRgCPXas-HL_viJGA

Week 15 - A Vegan by Convenience

Sometimes it’s hard to come up with what to write each week. Sometimes you get entries like Week 14, sometimes you get swill. This week I will continue the trend of greater detail at the sake of more all-encompassing posts. Weeks ago I received constructive criticism to this effect, and I’m only now getting to a point where my desire for perfection is starting to outweigh my desire for complete weekly summary.

Of all the little things in my life at the moment, perhaps none give as much pleasure as the simple joy of cooking. I was never great shakes in the US at creating a meal for myself. Carleton forced me onto a meal plan for 4 years, and when I graduated and was financially forced to move back into my parents’ house—a dark, ego-crushing day—my routine mostly continued as it had in high school, save that I would go to work rather than class. Most mornings I didn’t eat, or if I did it was little more than a bagel. Lunches were brown-bagged, and dinners prepared by an industrious parental figure. I suppose, were I forced to psychoanalyze myself, that my aversion to the kitchen was born more of a lack of need than a lack of desire.

The same does not hold true here.

After three bowel-aching months of fried chicken, hardboiled eggs, instant ramen, and lard-laced breads, I am free—even forced—to provide for myself. At first it was intimidating: Do I dare make anything more than pasta with store-bought red sauce? After a few days of boiled carbs, I decided to branch out. I bought a Guatemala-specific Peace Corps cookbook off a volunteer and set to work satisfying my more epicurean palate. The cookbook may contain a few hard-to-find items, but by and large it is specifically designed for the volunteer who only has a typical outdoor market at their disposal. You won’t find very many recipes for Tiramisu (Mascarpone cheese cannot be found), but you will find six delicious ways to prepare lentils. There’s no grilled swordfish, but it does teach you how to make an impromptu oven out of two pots and a tuna fish can.

My brother, when he was in the Peace Corps, made it his culinary mission to perfect a single dish, something that was “restaurant quality,” as he called it. Unintentionally, I have found myself in a similar mindset. Again, perhaps as a tacit homage to him, I find myself copying his choice of curry. Of course, that’s about where it ends. The produce available here is substantially different than it was in Namibia, and so my dish has taken on a decidedly tropical flavor. I now make Mango Curry at least twice per week.

Carrots, onions, tomatoes, jalapeños, and rice can all be found here for between one and two quetzales (12-25 US cents) per pound. Garlic, potatoes, curry powder and mangoes cost a little more, but I’d say the average cost of preparing a meal for myself is around one to two US dollars.

No, the difficulty lies not in the cost of a meal, but the space in which to prepare it. Simply put, my kitchen is tiny. I’m sure you’ve all seen the pictures I’ve posted over the last few weeks, but I have approximately 3 square feet of counter space. If I use a cutting board, it takes up half of my prep area. Laying out the vegetables I intend to use is a careful balance; if even one tomato gets away from me, it’s liable to create a domino effect and knock all my food to the floor.

I economize the space as best I can. I was bequeathed a wonderful hutch that houses all of my spices, pans, and larder, and it has become second nature to cook “up” rather than across a table. That is, when my dishes are not on the stovetop, they’re stashed in nooks and crannies next to my dried chickpeas and oatmeal. I still sometimes run out of space and am forced to use my bed to temporarily support auxiliary dishes.

I’m starting to get the hang of viewing my living situation as cozy rather than cramped. I set my laptop on top of my bookshelf (filled with clothes) and play music while I chop my vegetables into unequally thin slices. I usually start with the hard, drier produce, things like carrots, because they don’t make a mess of my single cutting board. Next comes onions and potatoes, and when the three are sliced and the frying pan is hot, I toss them in.

Later come the moderately juicy foods like tomatoes and garlic. They leave my surface feeling damp and slightly sticky, but it’s nothing compared to the mango. I still don’t really know how I’m supposed to cleave the mango meat from its large, oblong pit, and it leads to a rather messy butchering. I can usually peel the thick skin back with my hand, but then I’ve got a soupy yellow mass about half the size of a football and far more slippery. Little by little my paring knife cuts chunks off, though when it’s done it looks not unlike the murder scene of a badly jaundiced Mr. Potato Head.

At this point I usually have to run to the pila and wash my hands, or the entire meal will digress into some kind of amateur comedy routine where everything I touch ends up sticking to me. Until now the meal has had a slightly rushed feeling to it, like I’m dueling against the clock. Will I finish dicing the onions before the olive oil begins to burn? What if I haven’t finished with the mango before the rice has to be taken off the burner?

It’s a wonderful feeling to have the rice fully cooked and the curry sizzling away fragrantly. I toss in some spices: A couple dashes of curry powder here, a dollop of cumin there; I never measure them out precisely. Cooking for me involves a sense of exploration, and I’d never want to dumb it down to simply following a recipe. It’s far more exciting to ask myself what putting in some basil and parsley would do than feel confined to the pages of a cookbook. I look to mine for the broad strokes, not the specifics. Perhaps God is in the details, but perfection tastes so much better when I stumble upon it.

When the meal is ready I usually turn 90 degrees from my stove and eat it while sitting on my bed. My water bottle, the only beverage I have, sits between my feet. I own no table, and my dinner guests are usually Biggie, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, or Manu Chao. They’re very articulate, but sometimes the conversation feels a little one-sided. I’m not complaining by any means; my landlords have made it very clear that I’m welcome at their table, but I kind of like the solitude at the moment. I’m no longer a bag of potatoes as I sometimes felt with my earlier family, and can decide what I eat and when. I am free to make salt-free, sugar-free, meat-free, dairy-free meals for myself, especially since I have no refrigerator in which to store most of those things. I never thought it was possible, but I’ve become a vegan by convenience.

Check out the pictures for this week at: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week15?authkey=Gv1sRgCM-98oDVn9-mkgE#.

Week 14 - Adventure and Other Mind-Altering Drugs

I suppose I should warn that this is going to be a more introspective, perhaps even self-indulgent, installment. Relatively few exciting things have happened to me in the last week, which I suspect will be an increasingly common phenomenon as my schedule slowly evolves from unique to routine. The teacher strike continues, and must post a correction from last week: Teachers get paid quarterly here, so apparently it’s normal for teachers to go 3 months at a stretch without pay. In this particular instance, however, (most of) the teachers of Guatemala have now gone nearly eight months without a paycheck. They are holding out for a 14% increase in salary yearly. That is, if the average teacher makes Q10,000 per year currently, they’d get Q11,400 next year, Q12,996 the year after that, etc. Now I’m no economist, but even I am a little skeptical at the sustainability of an exponential pay structure. Maybe they deserve it, maybe they don’t, but I’m willing to bet doorstops to danishes that the Guatemalan government has neither the desire nor means to pay out that many Quetzales. I guess we’ll see what kind of compromise they come up with, but it’s an election year, and this doesn’t exactly make President Álvaro Colom look very good. Not that he’s able to run for another term, but his ex-wife—the one who divorced him in order to legally run—is on the campaign trail…just sayin’.

But back to introspection: I had a moment this week that bordered on the mystical. It’s not as exciting or perilous as running from gang bullets, or as beautiful as Lake Atitlán, so as I describe it please keep in mind that it was more the stream of consciousness that I experienced than the actual activity that held me so entranced:

On Wednesday night I got a ride back with a nearby town’s basketball team.

That’s it. Ostensibly, that’s all it was.

I had been at the feria (fair/carnival) of a town about 45 minutes down the road and up a mountain. One of my new friends, a veteran PCV, is stationed there, and she invited me and a few others to come and see her site. I was the only one to accept, but two other PCVs showed up because they are on the basketball team from Malacatancito, which was scheduled to play the local favorites.

Malacatancito won, but it was an ugly game. I won’t get into it, because really the only important detail of is that they offered to drive me back to my site when the game was over.

I subsequently found myself squished into the far corner of a pickup bed with four large players while four more rode in the cab. The night was inky black, the darkness thick enough to hold save for a lamppost every mile. The blanket of stars above lent a pale luminescence to the men around me. The road unfurled behind us, close enough almost to touch. Whenever someone casually flicked away their dying cigarette butt, a tiny eruption of sparks—an ephemeral volcano—would briefly light up the history of our path.

I sat there, exhilarated beyond words at where I was and why. I relished being alive in that moment, in this country, as the wind whirled around me. Looking up at the virginal purity of the celestial bodies mixed with the brooding shadows of trees and mountains made me feel in binary oppositions: Colossal and tiny; counterfeit. Genuine.

It was like my inaugural ride to site a couple weeks ago: I was walking in the footsteps of giants, simultaneously following the paths of others and carving my own, terrified and electric at the thought. Many months ago my most trusted confidant told me that the possibilities for greatness and the possibilities for awfulness are greatly amplified in this place; whatever would happen would not be merely ordinary. She was right, as she so often is, and I have felt more alive and vibrant since my arrival than at any other point since freshman year of college, when I watched my parents pull away from my dorm that first illustrious fall. Like then, I was inebriated on my own maturity. Excitement and possibility really are potent drugs.

I felt noble about what I am doing here, even as I feel self-conscious for saying so. The romance of the Peace Corps has infected me more than it did when I was applying, but such romance is not necessarily born of aspirations to the philanthropic or the humanitarian. It’s the most thrilling adventure upon which I have yet embarked, further heightened because of the hardship and loneliness that I am already becoming accustomed to.

In the pickup I was moving forward, towards a home and a future that is unknown and exotic. San Se signifies for me what site has signified to fifty years of my compatriots: It’s a personal relationship, an arranged marriage between fate and providence. Like a relationship, it can end, perhaps unexpectedly or at the behest of either party, but it can also polish and accentuate the best in both. I don’t know if I’ll become my best me while I’m here, but I feel like I’m at least on the right path.

All this I thought about while gazing up. Of course I also had pangs of isolation as I spotted familiar constellations: There’s Orion, the same one that my friends at home must surely also see. I traced north via the Big Dipper, towards cultural fluency and linguistic simplicity. Then we passed the base of a large mountain and it was obscured by its bulk. For the best, I think. Homesickness does me little good at this point in my journey.

The trip was nearing its end, but my stay here is still beginning. As I clambered out of the truck, pounding fists and cracking last minute jokes, I did one last inventory: Backpack? Check. Cellphone? Check. Emotional growth? Check.

I started up the hill, bathed in the soft radiance of the streetlights which nonetheless caused me to squint.

I found my way to my apartment room, pausing to soak in the night one last time before going inside. The stars winked, the trees swayed, the road unfurled.

“This is a pretty great time to be alive,” I spoke to no one in particular. And it is.

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Though they don't have a lot to do with what I wrote about, this week's photos can be found at: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week14?authkey=Gv1sRgCL6SrbT8y6DP0wE#. There's another piece of good news: By Saturday night I will have my own personal source of internet. That also means that starting Sunday you have no excuse not to sit around and Skype with me. Your social lives have been warned.

Week 13 - Fíjese Que...

One week has passed, and I’m still here. We lost a few more over the last week because of the failure of expectation and reality to coincide, bringing our total up to 7 or 8. San Se is struggling, but getting to the point where I need it to be to feel comfortable. My room is still as tiny as it looked in the picture, but where the first adjective that described it was “cramped,” now it’s “cozy.” San Se as a town was “sleepy” and now it’s “tranquil.” Even Lauren, where I would have originally described her as “jerkface,” is now “less so”…That last part is a joke; she’s great and continues to be so.

I will admit that I had aspirations to greater efficiency than in retrospect was reasonably possible. We’re about 35 minutes away by camioneta from Huehuetenango (Huehue for short), the nearest big city, and I’ve been at least half a dozen times trying to fetch what I need. I was lucky enough to inherit a stove, some food to start me out, shelving, and a bed. Others, including Lauren were not so lucky. It’s amazing how hard it is to outfit a home on Q3000 (375 dollars), and transport everything you need—beds, stoves, blankets, etc.—via public transportation. It forces you to relentlessly conduct cost/benefit analyses between the expected resiliency of a bed’s foam and the unforgiving nature of its support structure beneath; it makes you think long and hard about the need for a third burner on a stove—how often will I want coffee with breakfast, too?—versus the minimal two; But mostly it obliges you decipher exactly how much you envy and despise the people who were grandfathered into a 6^th, 7^th, even 8^th generation Peace Corps house who have slowly collected all the beautiful conveniences of mostly-modern living: 13-inch TV’s with built-in VCRs, mini fridges to store their perishables, couches, coffeemakers, and electric water heaters for their shower. Indeed, it makes you despise them all the more that they get the same Q3000 as we mere plebes.

Unfortunately, I haven’t really gotten into a routine yet. It makes each day pretty unique, but it would be great to start working in some of the 34 schools I’ve been assigned. Alas, I need to shelve that kind of thinking for the time being. We were waiting for our CTA (superintendent/boss man) to meet us, introduce us to the bigwigs in San Se like the chief of police, the mayor, and the head of the COCODE, which is like a mixture of the PTA and the school board, as he promised to do when he was admitted to the Healthy Schools program. On Monday he didn’t show. On Tuesday we stopped by his office, spoke with his secretary who very politely answered our questions with “fíjese que…”, which roughly translates to “be advised that…”. Usually, though, it precedes decidedly bad news, so perhaps “unfortunately…” is a better translation. We’ve heard it a lot since we got in country—first with phone delays, with site placement delays, and of course site visit cancellations—but it had an ominous ring here:

“Fíjese que the CTA won’t be back into the office until Thursday at the earliest, and probably more like Friday.”

There has been worse news, but Lauren and I were chomping at the bit. We were essentially hamstrung without his introduction to the town and, more importantly, his directions for how to get to schools. Still, there were things we needed to get in Huehue, and we could use that time to do so.

Thursday came and there was no one in the office to open the door, much less to act as CTA.

Friday came and there still was no one. We called the CTA’s cellphone with no response. Where exactly was he?

Not knowing what else to do, we started introducing ourselves to all the community leaders we could think of (and, well, find). It lent us less legitimacy, since we didn’t have his introduction and, by extension, his pledge of support, but it felt wrong simply sitting in the park all day. Manifest destiny!

We finally got in touch with him by sitting in his office on Monday and refusing to move until he saw us. Once we had his attention he was actually pretty gracious, and took us on a two hour tour of the town, introducing us to the people we were looking to meet. When it came time to get directions to our schools, he began again with a “fíjese que…”

Uh oh.

“Fíjese que the teachers in all the schools of Huehuetenango are scheduled to go on strike starting tomorrow (Tuesday). We hope that this matter will be resolved in about two weeks, but the last one persisted for approximately six.”

With a little more digging, I discovered that the teachers in our department—perhaps the entire country—haven’t been paid in over three months. The government instead takes payroll and puts it into a bank account to collect interest. At some point they eventually pay out, but the educators are understandably upset, especially since the money has not yet been forthcoming. I tried to think about this in an American structure of government and educational system and soon gave up; I can’t see teachers in the US going a quarter year without pay, either. It’s terribly unfortunate for the students, who are trying to get an education, since they’re the unintentional victims of this social action. Further, after about a week it’s likely that the strikers will begin blocking roads throughout the department of Huehuetenango as further protest, so more and more people will be affected by the government’s malfeasance. I talked to our security director about this and he didn’t seem too worried about it, so I won’t be either.

I guess in all truth I don’t know how I feel about the situation: I am really anxious to begin my work and shudder at being forced to wait around until the strike is over, but I can see where the teachers are coming from; I am scandalized by the fact that the instructors don’t seem to give one whit to their students’ educations, but I am scandalized more by this egregious governmental account padding. Were I forced to take a side, I would ultimately say I don’t agree with the strike: Well-founded though it may be, it’s already an institutionalized practice to have virtually every other day off for one reason or another. Teachers, with few exceptions, never meet outside of class hours, so if there’s a one hour staff meeting, they’ll usually cancel school. If one of the teachers has to grade homework, they’ll simply not show up. Each “holiday” is wryly christened by Guatemalans as well as PCVs the Holiday of the Pencil, the Holiday of the Blackboard, the Holiday of the Eraser, etc. It seems indefensible that students miss even more school.

So there you have it. A week has passed, and for better or worse I’ve done a week’s worth of activities. That’s all I’ve got for this week, but check out the pictures at: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week13?authkey=Gv1sRgCKnprqLI1-yGDw#.

Week 12 - Without Reservation

Well, I’m in site. After an opulent swearing in ceremony, a rowdy weekend of celebration, a day of meetings, and a hair-raising car ride in the back of a pick-up on the intercontinental highway, I’m finally in San Sebastián Huehuetenango, my home for the next 2 years.

Unfortunately, I only arrived in San Se (SAHN-say, as it is usually called) less than 48 hours ago, so I don’t know very much about the town yet, other than what’s in my dossier that the Peace Corps gave me. Demographically, it’s about 90-95% indigenous, with people hailing from the Mam indigenous group, there are a little less than 25,000 people in the county-like municipality (though I have no idea how many actually live with me in the cabesera (municipal capital)—perhaps 1,500-5,000?). We are at approximately 6,000 feet above sea level, which means that the days are warm and the nights cool-to-cold. I know these details are pretty impersonal, so I’ll try to describe the few things I’ve seen and fill in the rest during next week’s installment.

As per the Peace Corps rules I must live with a family in San Se for 3 more months before I can live on my own, though it’s such a small town that it’s unlikely that I’d find a residence removed from a family compound even if I wanted to. Lauren and I are replacing Mark F., another Minnesota native, who ironically went to St. Olaf, Carleton’s crosstown rival. Despite this, he seemed pretty nice when I met him, and I’ve been lucky enough to inherit some of his stuff that he chose not to take, including a portable propane stove, various herbs and condiments, and the family that he lived with for the entire 2 years of his service.

The dynamic of this homestay will be very different than my last one which, frankly, is a good thing. I have no ill will towards my family in San Lorenzo, but almost anyone would chafe under the constant supervision of “parents” when you’ve already tasted the sweet, sweet freedoms afforded to you during college. I still haven’t gotten a handle on how many actually live here, but it would appear to be at least 3 generations, with the oldest about 65 or 70 and the youngest not yet 12. Names too will be forthcoming, but I know that the people I pay rent to are named Don Romeo and Doña Enriqueta.

Lauren lives about 4 blocks away from me up a gently ascending hill. Her house is perched both above and behind a pharmacy and a comedor (independently-owned restaurant), spilling over the two family-owned businesses not unlike a distended belly over a belt. She has more space than me, as well as a truly fantastic rooftop balcony overlooking the park, but I’m not too jealous. We had no choice in the matter of where we live—Peace Corps approved 2 houses, and the CTA (Coordinador Téchnica Administrativa, basically the superintendent and our boss) picked where we would go based on those two choices. Her landlord/host mom gives off a liberal vibe and we both liked her immediately.

The park is a leafy affair with several cement paths bisecting it in quarters, each about 50 feet in length, leading to the town’s administrative and social centerpieces—the municipal building, or muni, and the cement, brightly painted cancha (court) that serves as the field for virtually all sports in the community, though most notably soccer and basketball. On the east side there are bleachers for the scores of townspeople who attend every game.

I know this is slightly out of order, but I figure I should probably talk about what swearing-in was like, even though it was chronologically before my arrival to San Se. Both Doña Mayra and Don Tereso accompanied me to the ceremony at the US ambassador’s residence, which was also doubling as the 50-year anniversary party since the establishment of Peace Corps. Virtually all of the 220 volunteers in country were expected to be there as well as dignitaries, plus ones, and, of course, us.

The ambassador’s house is in one of the better parts of Guatemala City, and its front façade betrays little of the opulence inside. As we passed through security, the Ambassador, the PC-Guatemala director, and the chief of staff for PC-Washington shook our hands in welcome and congratulated us on getting to this point.

It might seem expected to be reaching the end of training successfully, but more than 10% of our group did not. Each manner of flaming out has its own parlance: 2 quit within the first two without prejudice, which we call Early Terminating—or ETing for short; 1 was declared unfit for service by the medical staff  and sent home (Medically Separated, or MedSep’ed); 2 were fired by a combination of PC-Washington and PC-Guatemala due to conduct unbecoming of a Peace Corps Trainee/Volunteer (Administratively Separated, or AdSep’ed); Finally 1Trainee was very politely told that he did not successfully meet the criteria of their technical program and Peace Corps did not think that they would perform adequately during their service (we don’t have a clever abbreviation for that so we call it with grim humor what we would in the US: Getting shit-canned).

So there you have it: 6 people were removed from our surrogate family here. I’m not going to say which separations I agreed with and which I did not, but there were some that seemed well founded, and others that in my mind almost certainly did not.

But I digress; the Ambassador’s backyard is comparable in size to a football field, and had a pavilion-like tent to protect us from the harsher solar rays. It seemed as though everyone in Guatemala spoke about how great Peace  Corps was, but only a little of the ceremony was devoted to us as about-to-be-sworn-in volunteers. Still, the reporters sneaking around the front of the stage with their huge cameras and lenses seemed to find no end to the number of opportunities to take people’s photo when they were least expecting it. The next morning we’d find the story on the front page of the Guatemala’s national newspaper, Prensa Libre. In the print edition, you can clearly see me, which is pretty cool. I am now a celebrity.

When the time finally came to stand, raise our right hands and repeat the oath given to us by the Ambassador, I found myself grinning like an idiot. During the more indecisive moments after my acceptance of the Peace Corps I always wondered about the part of the oath—the same taken by military personnel and the president—that says I take this oath “without reservation.” I think it was born of nervousness at the gravity of my decision, but while I was still in the US I assumed that I would hate Peace Corps service by this point, but be too constricted by my pride to ET.

The moment approached and I found myself saying those weighty words with an almost careless exuberance. I reflected on my service thus far: Training was both a terrible onus and exactly the type of hand-holding I needed to become comfortable here; For the last 3 months I have found myself among some of the coolest and adventurous people I have ever known, becoming their surrogate family and them mine. Mostly, though, I thought about the sense of mutual obligation and trust to each other that we had formed through our darker moments: They’re here for me, and I am proud to be here for them.

The fateful words were uttered, and they were among the most emotionally substantial that I have ever spoken: “I take this oath without reservation.”

I am now a Peace Corps Volunteer, with all of the rights and obligations afforded to one.

There’s only one picture of my room in San Se,  but there are several of the swearing-in ceremony. See them here: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week12?authkey=Gv1sRgCK_alauY-rzuygE#.