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#.