Random thoughts:
1) My parents have nothing to worry about for a little while...I am definitely not interested in having kids for quite some time. In the four houses in front of mine there are seven children under the age of 4 and six more between 5 and 10. The older ones don't cry too much (unlike their younger siblings), but the repeated, "Mami, Mami, Mami," cries calling for attention or the opposite from the mother yelling at the kid to come here, "María, venga; María venga;" get quite old. As I type there are no fewer than three crying children in hearing distance. Due to the thin cement or adobe walls and the fact that the kids only go to school for a few hours if it is a good day and the teachers showed up (and this only goes for the older ones), the crying children is really an around-the-clock issue. A veces, no aguanto. (Sometimes, I just can't hold out.)
2) We are in the rainy season and at risk. I love rain, really, I do. And I'm glad to finally be in the winter again (winter = rainy season). However, it comes with some concerns. My clothing is one of them - it is hard to get it dry with all of the rain and thus regularly it gets moldy and stinks. But, this is definitely not my biggest concern. Last Saturday night we had a rainstorm that reminded me of the one that hit Verapaz in November (look at blog post from November). This should let you know that there were bad thoughts going on. I woke up Sunday morning to men in my community gathering to go up the road to clean up the landslides. I had issues of my own (water poured into my house and created a bit of a lake), but I got on clothes and spent most of the morning moving mud. My town has one road and there were about five landslides that night that covered the road and made it impossible to pass. Not that many cars come in and out anyhow (it is too steep and when it is raining the road gets VERY slippery), but it needed to be cleared for access. Here's my concern: it is June and the soil is already saturated and falling of hillsides and the rain lasts until October...I'll keep you posted.
3) I get lots of joy from watching my women doing something that makes them happy. Yesterday a small group of women that I've organized got together to make their very first batch of shampoo. It was so nice to see them all joking around, learning something new, and just hanging out in the afternoon. And I think it motivates them too. This morning we bottled up, labeled, and distributed the shampoo among the group and in the afternoon I already had a quarter of the sales in my hand. We were going to meet in a week with all of the bottles sold to talk about finances and the future and we've moved the meeting to Monday. What a reward.
4) Food can really change one's mood. Sometimes when I eat the same meals over and over again here it makes my whole life and work here feel monotonous. When I do something special it makes me feel productive, experimental, and encourages me to keep going. Last night I made a batch of lemon-vanilla-walnut cookies (stellar!), and right now I've got a three bean chili with tofu simmering on the stove. It makes me feel successful. Plus, the good food is always tasty and gets lots of inquiring faces in my windows (since they don't know that food doesn't have to be monotonous).
5) Not only is there are wealth disparity between the people in towns/cities and those in small communities, but there also seems to be one within the small communities. In my small town (285 total inhabitants), of the five people that own a vehicle two of them also own motorcycles. Those two motorcycles are the only two in my town. Sometimes I wonder, "How is it that there are maybe 10 families that are significantly better off than their neighbors who daily are scraping together enough food for their family to eat?" Work. Someone in those "wealthy" families has a job. But how were they lucky enough to get one and not a different person? They have been to the United States, which gave them a jump start. For example, my host dad is one of the ones with a car and a motorcycle. He buys and sells cows, pigs, and whatever else he can get his hands on, for work. The only reason he can do this is because of the truck he owns. How did he buy the truck? He saved up money from going to the States one time. It's one of those things that makes you think.
6) Last one, I swear (my beans are about ready for the tomatoes and). I never forget how hard learning a language is, but I often forget how cool it is to be able to even just a little bit. Every day I ask at least 10 times, "What's that word?," and it is generally preceded by a "Huh?" I think this is normal and will last my entire service. But I was on the phone with a friend today and she said, "I bet your Spanish totally rocks." And when I think about, she's right, my Spanish kicks butt. I know at least thousands of words and can conjugate hundreds of verbs in no fewer than nine tenses. So even though there is sometimes a daily struggle with language, I need to stop and appreciate how much I already do know. On the same topic, I am teaching my boyfriend English...very slowly. It is quite a process, but there are small little rewards. Yesterday we were watching a movie in English with Spanish subtitles and after a sentence one time he said (in Spanish), "Hey, I knew what she said without reading the subtitle." Proud little moment.
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