Peace Corps Guatemala: Daily Activities 5: Training of Trainers

Today I traveled in a chicken bus through winding dirt mountain roads and paved highways to the capitol of my department, the city of Totonicapán in the department of the same name. There are actually 22 departments in Guatemala, and they are often compared to states in the U.S.. However, as Guatemala has about 15 million citizens, or about the same population of my home state of Arizona, you can also think of them as counties in terms of geographic size and number of people. Departments are also divided into municipalities, and my department of Totonicapán is divided into 8 municipalities.

It’s not unusual for a PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer) to travel to different departments each month, such as if there is a need to visit either the Peace Corps regional office in Xela (Department of Quetzaltenango) or Peace Corps Guatemala headquarters in Santa Lucia Milpas Altas (Department of Sacatepequez), or when visiting a fellow PCV in another department. Here is a video of a chicken bus on a mountain road.

In fact, a couple fellow MCH (Maternal and Child Health) PCVs live just “over the mountains” from me, or a half-an-hour bus ride, though in a different department. Today, to get back to my town, I had to travel through one department, Quetzaltenango, stopping in the regional Peace Corps office in Xela, before catching a final third bus back to my town.

Jess, a fellow MCH volunteer in Bak’tun 5 (how we label our training groups here in Peace Corps Guatemala, I’m in Bak’tun 6), will be leaving in less than two weeks and today was her last day working with our Totonicapán group of TSRs (Technicos Salud Rural, or Rural Health Technicians), a job which she has done on her own for almost two years! I, and the other MCH volunteer in Totonicapán, will take up this job when we resume TSR meetings in January. Here is a picture of Jess on her last day.

And a picture of Jess with Don Jesus, who heads-up the TSR training sessions.

PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) spend the last month, or so, giving “despedidas” or farewells to the dozens of Guatemalans we get to know during our service.

I’m really glad that I will be able to attend the monthly TSR meeting in Totonicapán as this activity is what Peace Corps calls a “Training of Trainers” event, whereby us, PCVs, are able to impart new skills to TSRs who can then teach others. In my health center, our TSR is very well respected both in the health center, and in my town in general. Here in Guatemala, TSRs are involved in a number of activities, such as promoting house visits by nurses to give health talks, organizing school health events such as mass vaccinations and distribution of vitamins and de-worming medications to children, as well as health fairs for the general public.

After this meeting, we stopped at Café y Canela (Coffee and Cinnamon), and ran into some other PCVs, including a group of PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees) who have yet to be sworn-in into Peace Corps service as they are still in the middle of their training.

Here’s a photo of, from left to right, of Abbey, Jess and Colleen.

On December 1st, under the appreciative gaze of the U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala, they will become bonafide PCVs when they take their oath of service and, a few days later, head to their individual sites where they will spend the next two years. These PCTs hanging out in Totonicapán (about five hours from Peace Corps Headquarters) were doing their FBT (or Field Based Training) part of PST (Pre-Service Training), which allows them to live with a PCV, who is in the same Peace Corps program area (either Maternal and Child Health, Healthy Schools or Youth In Development) to see what their everyday life will be like in the field.

Supposedly the pizza is very good at Café y Canela, but this was my first time and I just ordered a beverage.

Above is a photo of the “Chocolate Artensanal”, and it was quite good, very rich and moderately sweet. As if Willy Wonka and Santa Claus worked on making the perfect hot chocolate with the best ingredients, it would have been perfect for a cold autumn day, though it was only in the mid-60’s. Where’s a snowy-day and a roaring fire when you actually need one! Here in this equatorial “Land of Eternal Spring” the temperature differences betweens the seasons are much smaller, and save for the drying corn stalks rustling gently in the breeze as we walked through “Toto”, as this city is referred to by locals, it is easy to forget that it is actually November back in the states.

Although we all have our “best friends” back in our towns, (often work partners that we interact with on almost a daily basis), it’s a lot of fun to sit-back and shoot the breeze with fellow volunteers and compare notes about life in our individual sites and which projects we’re thinking about tackling. Here is a picture of the streets of Toto.

I had my FBT (or Field Based Training) experience almost a year ago in the beautiful town of Santa Caterina Nueva, and had a great time with two fellow MCH volunteers, Paul and Ann, and Megan a PCV in another program. I lived in Paul’s house for less than a week, with Charlie a PCV in my training group, and we both got a good feel for what Peace Corps life is actually like. We both also really wanted to get posted to the larger town near Paul’s site, Nahauala, though now I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else than my current town. I think that most Peace Corps Volunteers here do their FBT in an area other than where they will eventually be posted. Here is a picture of Santa Caterina Nueva.