Thursday, October 6, 2011

Picking up the pieces...

Happy October everyone! Incredible, isn't it, how the months just seem to fly by.  I am definitely missing the autumn weather as it is one of my favorite seasons. But I will be home in exactly 13 days (unbelievable!) to visit family and friends, and my new nephew (!), for 2 weeks. Hopefully I can still do some Fall things like pumpkin and apple picking. 


Getting back to business, these past 2 weeks have been a whirlwind for me. It all started 2 weeks ago. I went to my favorite school, Monjas Panimaquito, to have my first workshop with the women's group I had started there. I was excited to finally get started with them. The workshop was a success with about 30 women showing up. Afterwards I got to hang around the school and play with the kids, whom I love there. When it was time to head home, I left with a teacher in the back of a pick up and prepared myself for a 25 minute ride on a bumpy dirt road. We had been driving for about half the trip's length with big truck behind us that was carrying merchandise for local stores (chips, sodas, etc.). We were about to go up a big hill and so our driver decided to let the truck pass us so as not to slow him down. The truck passed and went around a bend in which we lost sight of it for a minute. All of a sudden, as we are chugging uphill, we hear a loud bang. Now, this is Guatemala folks, you hear loud noises allllll the time from either someone setting off a massive firecracker or shooting off a canon ball (not really but it sure sounds like it at times). So no one really thought twice about the noise. As we round the bend there is a man stumbling in the road with an oversized hoodie on and his face completely obscured by said hood. At this point we driving really slow due to the incline and partly due to this man being in the way. As we got closer I realized the man had a gun in his right hand. Initially, denial hit, "No, that's not a gun." Then shock. Holy shit, he has a gun! We were going so slow it felt as though we had stopped. He started waving the gun, first in the air, then at us. I was terrified. I remember thinking, "Oh my God, please don't let him shoot me." I closed my eyes and put my head down and just prayed because it was all I could think to do. For some reason unknown to me, he put his gun down and waved it on with his hand signaling us to pass. As we drove by, still in fear for my life, I refused to open my eyes, frightened still by the fact that he might shoot from behind. Once we were well far off from him, I opened my eyes and reminded myself to breathe. After a few minutes we ran into that truck that had passed us earlier. The driver was out of the car and wanted to check if we were alright. Apparently, after we had let him pass he went around the bend and was confronted with two armed men in the middle of the road, one of whom shot at the truck. The truck driver swerved to hit them and one man jumped off the mountainside while the other got knocked to the ground. The man we saw stumbling was the man that had just recovered from being hit to the ground. After much discussion everyone assumed that they were probably trying to rob the truck. All I know is that I am so thankful that the truck passed us in the last minute and that it was the truck that faced the men first and rattled them before we did. 


I got home that day and was a complete mess. I was in shock, scared, confused, angry and upset. In shock as to what had just happened, having a gun that close to me and putting me in danger. Scared because of the reality that I was so close to getting hurt and possibly even having my life taken. Confused because I've been to that school so many times and nothing like that had ever happened. Angry at the violence that prevails in Guatemala and makes my living and working here difficult and frustrating. Upset because it happened and because it most likely meant I wouldn't be allowed to go to that school or community for some time. 


Turns out I was right. I had a duty to report what had happened to PC so as to take the proper safety and security precautions and so that they know what is going on. After talking to various people on the phone, I finally talked with my boss from the program. He decided that since the school year was finishing, that it would be best to postpone going to that community until January, when the new school year starts. If this had been any of my other 11 schools, I would have been fine with this. But it wasn't. It was not just my favorite school. It was the school I had made all my work plans for keeping busy during the school vacation. It was where I had just started and established a women's group with whom I had just made a month's worth of plans with. It was where I was planning to host a girls camp in December and had been talking to the director about it. It was where the students knew me and trusted me, so the camp would have been fun and successful. I now felt like everything I was excited for, had been working on, and had been passionate about was just stolen right from under me. It is the biggest blow and setback I have experienced in my whole Peace Corps experience as of yet. I don't think ever in my life I have felt so defeated and so hopeless. The thought of having to tell my women's group I couldn't come back this year would just continually bring tears to my eyes. This was the biggest obstacle yet and the biggest challenge PC had ever given me. 


I cried for days and didn't leave me house. I tried to distract myself from thinking about it and avoided confronting my reality. After a few days I realized I had to get out of the funk. I was happy and thankful to be alive. After all, I didn't get hurt and was still here now to work and help others. I am a true believer that everything happens for a reason and I just knew I didn't understand just yet why this was happening to me. Yoga and meditation got me through that troubling week and cleared my mind and got me re-focused. First of all, I decided to go to the Office for Women at the town's municipal building; a place I had once considered going to but once I had my own women's group decided not to go. I got there precisely when the women in charge of the office was about to have a meeting with the women's board. I briefly talked to her asking about what sort of things they worked on and explained my role as a PC volunteer and that I would like to help and get involved. I ended up introducing myself to the board of women and explaining what services I could provide and support them with. I left with a feeling of excitement because they wanted to work with me on several things. If all works out well, I will be working with about 16 women in a nearby community teaching them how to read and write. Post depression days, I also went to give a workshop at one of my schools that is nearby and that I also really like. I pitched the idea to them of doing a girls camp and they were really interested. I was so excited about the idea of doing a girls camp and so the new prospect of being able to do one again was great news for me. 


Now, don't think that I totally forgot about my other school, Monjas Panimaquito, because I most certainly didn't. I wanted to find a way to still work with them and so I wrote the women's group a letter stating what had happened and that I could no longer make it to their community until January. I also proposed that I would be willing to host the workshops at my house on Thursdays, which are market days, because I knew most of them came into town to sell. Turns out they were very willing to do that because they wanted to keep receiving the workshops. We made a plan to have the women come in two groups. Today was actually my first meeting with the first group. We ended up having the workshop in a municipal salon in town that I got help arranging with the woman in charge of the Office for Women. The workshop was on nutrition, malnutrition, how to disinfect vegetables and fruits, and nutrition for newborn babies. It was a success and the women enjoyed it. Next Thursday group 2 will be coming to receive the same workshop. As for the girls camp with this school, I still haven't figured that out. I am trying to see if we can also somehow host it here in town but it proves to be more complicated. I'll have to keep trying and see what I can get. 


All in all, things turned around for the better. It's crazy to think about how I felt two weeks ago and how I feel now. It was a true test of my determination and will to keep working here when it had felt that everything had broken apart. I somehow managed to see the light through it all and persevere. I picked up the pieces that were left from that mess of a situation and put them together in a new way. I now am thankful that I have another school in which I can bond closer with the students and that I have broader connections with women's groups through the Office for Women. My crisis forced me to reach out more and now I have more doors open then previously before. Man, I knew PC was gonna be hard but it does not cease to amaze me with all of its leaps and turns it sometimes throws at me still.