Long-term and short-term future happenings

So I’ll start with the longish-term happenings first, as it’s kind of the bad news.  Our Country Director called all the ag and municipal development volunteers into a meeting at the main Peace Corps office last weekend (well it was a Friday afternoon, which is when my weekend usually starts!) to inform us that they will not be continuing the ag marketing or muni programs after my training class.  Actually after traveling all morning, Stephen and I walked into the meeting a few minutes late looking all frazzled apparently right after the Country Director made the announcement, to the entertainment of everyone in the room lol.  But more seriously, as Peace Corps approaches its 50th anniversary this year, the agency has completed a self-analysis and concluded that it needs to focus more on its strongest programs, namely health, youth development, and education, and phase out the more technical programs for which it can’t always find skilled applicants (i.e. marketing or economics backgrounds for ag marketing, city planning for muni).  There will still be food security, environmental, and HIV/AIDS programs for countries that need them, so the ag program in Guatemala will not be completely cut, just diminished.  I still find it hard to comprehend why PC would severely cut back on ag programs worldwide when I would imagine all of the countries in which the agency works have ag-based economies, but such is Washington policy.  We had already been expecting the end of ag marketing as the program was to be under review anyway this year with negative expectations, but it was a total surprise about muni, and all of them were quite expressive about how upset they were.  All in all, it was definitely a downer, but at least we got an approved night in Antigua out of it!

Other long-term bad news include an extension of the state of siege in Alta Verapaz, meaning at least another month of waiting for the volunteers with sites there.  On the bright side, I’ve also made the long-term decision that I want to go into photo-journalism in 2 years, but mumsy has made it clear that she’s not too keen on that… :)

The very short-term happenings are much more exciting: feria has arrived in Cunen!  It technically starts on Sunday, and the actual date is Wednesday, February 2nd (Happy Almost Birthday, Darren!), but the festivities began this past weekend.  Saturday was a town-wide (though really only for the Catholics, among whom I have honorary standing thanks to my host dad) lunch of traditional Cunen caldo and tamalitos de 7 camisas (tortilla dough rolled up with black beans inside) sponsored by one of the town’s cofradías – kind of like a religious brotherhood.  Then Sunday, members of the cofradía including my host dad drank quite a bit, donned their incredible costumes, and performed the traditional dance of venados (deer) all day, which will apparently continue until the end of feria!  I’m attaching some photos of the dancers in action.  The weekend’s activities afforded lots of time with the host family, sitemates, and new Guatemalan friends :)  More details to come on the ridiculousness that will become Cunen over the next 2 weeks!

PS - you HAVE to watch this YouTube video about Peace Corps that had me dying because of it's accuracy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-wDq17zyN0

Hola dos mil once…oh hey 2011!

It’s a little late, but Feliz Año Nuevo!  People are still greeting each other that way, particularly if they haven’t seen each other since 2010, so I feel like it’s still appropriate :)

I held out a bit on a New Years update in case anything exciting happened since, but nothing really has lol.  It seems that the new year has not brought new work, but as one of my resolutions is to be more productive and take more initiative with work, hopefully that will change soon!  So far I’ve only managed to set my sitemate Kate up with more work – a Save the Children health project – not myself.

But as expected, New Years in Pana was pretty awesome, and I was a little upset to return to site after 4 full days/nights at that incredible lake.  There was an excessive amount of eating, drinking, lounging around, and sunbathing (I’m finally starting to be kind of morena!), all of which ensured a good time had by all!  It was also really refreshing seeing so many of my friends from training, many of which I hadn’t seen since the end of October.  It’s so weird that I’ll see them again in just about a month for our Reconnect at the PC office.

In fact, I was lucky enough to be with my friend Whitney at Pana, though it was actually quite unlucky for her.  Her site is out near Coban in Alta Verapaz, where, as you might have seen in the news, the government declared a state of siege in December to combat the heavy influence of drug-trafficking gangs in the region.  As a result, Peace Corps consolidated all the volunteers in both Alta and Baja Verapaz, so Whitney was able to take a little vacation way farther than normally allowed.  They’ve been out of site and waiting since just before Christmas, and it seems that those in Baja Verapaz will be able to return this week, but those in Alta Verapaz, where the issue is concentrated, have to wait at least another week!  I feel terrible because while I’m not really working and a consolidation would be a sweet vacation, Whitney and a lot of the others were actually making progress!

Another kind of unfortunate event is that my quasi-sitemate Jared has decided to what we call “early terminate” and go home early.  We were all pretty surprised as he only has about 9 months left, and will miss him quite a bit.

But anyway, on the bright side, it’s summer here and I’m sunburnt and not freezing in the snow!  Moreover, this week’s photos include:

1) a woman weaving in Santa Catarina, one of the 12 towns on Lake Atitlán named after the 12 Disciples; 

2) me and my two closest friends, Whitney and Noor, on New Years Eve (the sparkley dress was originally bought as a joke for Q20 at a paca, FYI mumsy!);

3) the lake at sunset; and 

4) my adorable little host brother…it’s too bad he’s too shy to dance in the children’s convite during the upcoming feria because he loves to dress up and dance to marimba music, puro convite-style!