Looking for things to do..

In the last few weeks, I’ve been dealing with a little bit of guilt at not having accomplished much so far. I feel like having been in site for almost three months now, I should have seen more progress in the work area, but I consistently come up disappointed. Adhering to Peace Corps rules, I’ve had to rearrange the structure of my work, mainly for not being allowed to ride on a motorcycle for safety reasons. Luckily, my counterpart Marvin was very understanding, and helped me to find several other outlets for work within my site and the surrounding villages. I now have four commitments to which I’m promised; two community organizations in the villages surrounding my site, a women’s group looking to commercialize in site and the co-op of the local coffee producers that’s just getting off the ground. Unfortunately I find myself planning more than actually doing. Hopefully that will soon change.

In the meantime, in order to cope with that guilt, I’ve started to engage in more tangible activities, like giving English class and receiving more Kaqchikel class. As of right now I have two consistent English students and will soon start to give weekly classes to a group of interested students at the school where my Kaqchikel teacher gives classes. While I’m excited to begin actually giving back, after having received so much in terms of cultural learning and language practice, I’m nervous to begin teaching something in which I can’t call myself an expert. If I’ve learned one thing about languages while being here, it’s that speaking a language from birth does not necessarily qualify you to teach it. If anything, it’s completely the opposite. With the seldom opportunity to speak English lately, I’ve been more observant of my own grammar in speech and I have to say, my high school teachers would be ashamed.

With that on the horizon, I’ve begun to plan a basic curriculum along with small activities I can conduct in class to help the students. With the two willing subjects I have right now I began by saying, “look, I know what it’s like to think you sound funny when you speak another language, but it’s part of learning that language” because I most certainly do. For the first 20 hours of Kaqchikel class I could not pronounce certain words that end in ‘l’ because when I heard myself making that specific sound, I sounded like I had a serious speech impediment. I’m just now getting over it, much to the relief of my teacher.

Hopefully work will pick up soon. I’m having daydreams that one day someone will knock on my door and say, “Come now, I have a project that will consume 8 hours a day of every work week until November 2010. It’s urgent, and we need your help!” But I’ve started to realize that the chances of that happening are about as high as me making the Guatemalan Soccer team. I’m going to continue finding my own work and identifying needs on my own in the meantime, and in the offchance that someone actually does come to me with that urgent need, I’ll always have the weekends :)

Until next time…