Site Visit

On Thursday we went to visit Amanda, a current volunteer in the Youth Development program who is finishing her service in July. This means that one of us will be replacing her in her site which is called Estancia de la Virgin and is part of the Municipality of San Martín in Chimaltenango. It's one of the closest sites to the Peace Corps compound and also one of the warmest. Amanda works in 4 very small schools and lives in a very rural area. They have told us to let them know if we prefer to work in and urban or rural setting and while of course I want to be flexible, after seeing this site I think I would like to work in a rural setting as well... We visited one of the schools Amanda works at and got to do some activities with the kids. The school was very small with only three classrooms; one room for each first, second, and third year kids. This would be about the equivalent to middle school in the US. The kids were very polite, and told us about all the great things they learned from Amanda. It seemed she had a really strong connection with her students and with her community because it was so small and intimate. This is something I really value, and while I know I could work effectively in any site, I would really like to work in a small community like this one. Amanda lives a very simple life. She has her own large room in a house that she shares with a family. She has a great deal of privacy and cooks for herself, but also has a god connection with the family and spends time with them. Just outside her bedroom door is a lovely patio with fresh fruit trees, flowers, and one of the most breath taking views I have yet to see in Guatemala. Her house sits up on a mountain and over looks a vast valley of forest and farmland. It is mountains in every direction you look and she said you can see the rains coming from miles away. There is very little traffic in the pueblo, and nothing but dirt roads. Most community members are farmers and are quite poor, which creates a unique challenge for a volunteer working in this site. Another factor is isolation... Amanda said she has to take a 30 min bus ride to use the internet once a week and that she has a lot of alone time. Of course she goes to community events often but usually is back home by 630pm each night. She says she is grateful to not be so "connected" to the world of cyberspace and that this has allowed her to slow down to the pace of the community.
This sounded really wonderful to me and I had so many questions for her. We all went for lunch afterwards and were able to reflect on the visit and talk more to Amanda about how her service has played out. I think the experience made all of us anxious to know where we will end up and really begin our lives as volunteers