Santa Maria Chiquimula, Totonicapan

July 10, 2009

I can now call Santa Maria Chiquimula, Totonicapan my new home for the next 2 years! I just finished my last night here and then I return back to my training cite for the last week of my training. I can’t believe it has only been 3 months, it feels like much longer. I was in Santa Maria Chiquimula (or for name sake, SMC) for 5 days visiting the town, finding a family to live with for 3 months and visiting the health clinic. My experience so far has been wonderful. I am about 3-4 hours drive away from my training cite and my town sits on top of a mountain! There are only about 3,000 inhabitants that live in the central part of town, or urban area if you will, and there are about 35,000 indigenous people that live in the outlining 20 or so communities. The language in these communities is about 85% Quiche, which is one of 20 Mayan languages here in Guatemala, and the rest speak Spanish and Quiche. So I found out today that if I want to gain the trust of the community I am going to have to start learning Quiche, oh yeah, let’s first work on learning Spanish…
The towns are immensely poor. For instance, the other day a woman was dropped off at the health clinic after her roof collapsed on her. I also found out after later her 11 year old son died in the same accident 3 months earlier. These homes are made out of water and dirt and when the raining season comes homes cannot withstand the rain and there is no money to buy better materials for a roof.
I am really excited to be in this town! The people in my health clinic seem really excited to be working with me and I think we will all make a great team. I keep coming up with millions of ideas but I have to keep reminding myself that I have 2 years here but there is so much that needs help here, SO much. I spent the whole day interviewing everyone in the health clinic in order to get a better perspective on how the health clinic functions and how they work with the community. I am really glad I paid attention in Spanish class because I think I would be freaking out with all the Spanish I have been trying to comprehend. Everyone here thinks I am a native speaker…. until I start actually speaking. Then when they realize I can pretty much comprehend what they are saying they speak even faster!
They didn’t waste any time when I got here with introductions. I had to present myself, in Spanish, to all of the health clinic staff, I spoke in front of all the mayors representing each outlining community (there were about 100 men in this room), each time there was a group of women they made me give a speech… ugh, it was an exhausting week. I am heading back tomorrow but first I am having lunch with some of my PC friends in a neighboring city.
I am going to make French toast and corn bread for my host family this week, I’m kinda excited J I started to learn how to cook for myself since I’ve been here for 5 days, mom, you would be proud J and I’m sure dad, you are laughing. Poco a Poco….