This was my site mate, Adam’s, last week in town and he spent the past couple of weeks saying goodbye to work partners and friends here before leaving early in the morning to travel back to Peace Corps Guatemala headquarters in Santa Lucia. This past week, after medical examinations and presentations on how to adjust to life back in the United States, Adam got to “ring the bell” a Peace Corps Guatemala tradition.

Before Adam left, he had to decide to whom to give away a lot of the stuff he purchased during his time as a volunteer. One of the quirky rules found in the Peace Corps Handbook says that if volunteers use their Peace Corps provided funds, such as the moderately generous moving-in allowance, to buy any personal property, such as a guitar or books, we must gift these to another volunteer or to people we know here before we leave and we are prohibited from selling them. Here is a photo of the back of a truck that will deliver some of Adam’s stuff to me, and also a good chunk of it to the father of my host family who is getting a nice bedside dresser and a space heater.

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One appliance I accepted is this small refrigerator which has apparently been passed down through a series of Peace Corps volunteers in my town.

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I don’t need to use it right now, but thought it would be a good thing to keep in the Peace Corps family, and if headquarters sends me Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs) in April, then I can use it then to store food or beverages for them without imposing on my host family. Currently, I am paying my host family an additional 50 Quetzales (less than $10) a month to use the stove in their kitchen when I need, and they also made their refrigerator available to me though I rarely use it.

The decision not to plug in the mini-frig is a calculated one as families here in Guatemala receive subsidized electricity, up to a point, each month, and if they go over a certain number of kilo-watt hours then their bill for “luz”, or light (electricity) rises exponentially (or maybe it’s arithmetically?). I bought an efficient LED bulb to use in my room (which is actually better than a CFL in terms of energy usage) and I use my electric cooker sparingly, such as to heat water to make oatmeal, though some volunteers use them in slow-cooker mode to cook their beans. Space heaters are electricity hogs and during our training we were told the story of a Peace Corps Volunteer who had a space heater plugged in for a month and was shocked with the sky-high electric bill he or she was obliged to pay.

Adam stopped by to say good-bye to my host family (pictured below). He has known them longer than me as he also visited my house when the former MCH volunteer lived here, and the father is a teacher and knows Adam through work. In total, I am the fourth Peace Corps Volunteer that my family has had living with them! Unlike most Peace Corps Volunteers, I will see my former site mate again in 2017 when he will return to Guatemala to work for an NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) in Xela, and also to complete a project in my town which will involved the construction of a cement basketball court in a local elementary school by a group of high schoolers from the states!

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