Of all the exasperating questions I get asked by volunteers at the community center where I work (“is it very dangerous here?”, “can you really be vegan here?”, “will I get sick if I eat chicken sandwiches from a street vendor which have been chopped up with a dirty knife and then set out in the sun all day covered with flies?”*), none carries the potential murk of “why aren’t there more male volunteers?”**** It’s a tricky subject, often asked by very well-meaning, young and lonely male volunteers during their first week. Unsurprisingly, I have my own opinions on that, but I am more interested to hear it straight from the mouths of Y chromosome carriers. Operating on the admittedly shaky assumption that if you are a man you may have some greater insight into what men do, please enlighten us. Why are there more female volunteers than male in Guatemala and elsewhere? Or is this just a skewed perception/false presumption? Discuss.
*Well, it’s a Central American city, and you are a foreigner with a shiny iPhone. Exercise the same caution you would in any unfamiliar place where you’re richer than 95% of the population.
**You can be vegan anywhere. Places like Fair Play, Missouri might be difficult.
***You probably deserve to get diarrhea if you ask that question.
****It’s kind of a trick question, because while we do have fantastic male volunteers quite often, women always outnumber the boys—and not just at El Nahual, at all of the volunteer agencies in town except for maybe Quetzaltrekkers, which seems to have a pretty good balance. What I believe many people who ask this question are referring to is the perception—which I share—that female-to-male ratios in volunteer projects and helping professions are, in general, higher. For example, the gender breakdown in my cohort at the School of Social Work at Michigan was 8:1 female-male. I would like to point out that the tenured faculty, however, was 3:1 male-female.
My New Year’s Resolution in 2008 was to stop dyeing my hair. Two years later, I have long, somewhat brownish hair (I think the correct term is “mousey”) and sometimes I still don’t recognize myself passing by storefront windows or mirrors. Until 2008 I hadn’t seen my natural hair color since about the age of 13, unless my roots were starting to grow out. I thought once I got to this point all temptation to slather scalp-searing chemicals on my skull would have diminished to nothing but a passing whim, but these days I find myself in an all-too-familiar situation: wanting nothing more than to slather scalp-searing chemicals on my skull.
My green St. Christopher medal went missing for a little while today. I was boiling oats for my breakfast when I heard a faint metallic clink on our concrete floor, but I didn’t think anything of it. Later I felt for it, as I sometimes do absentmindedly, realized it wasn’t there, and immediately set about looking for it. I was somewhat surprised at my reaction. My gut feeling was that I had to find this medal, that I couldn’t go anywhere until it was located and back on the chain around my neck, that losing it was somehow a bad omen. But why? I haven’t seriously believed in any religious being for many years now. Although it’s only been within the last eight that I’ve admitted to myself and others that I don’t believe in God, I have never truly felt connected to a higher power in the universe. I feel strongly about many things, I have a pretty strict moral code (I’m a feminist vegan social worker, of course, and I always say “yes ma’am”), I have no plans to cover up the religious symbol tattooed on my wrist, and many of my closest friends are Christians. But I have never experienced the kind of spiritual sentiment that most people describe when they “have faith”.
Lake Atitlan is one of the most gorgeous places I´ve ever seen–perhaps the one thing I have in common with George W. Bush, who said the same during his first and last visit to Guatemala last year. I headed to the Lake for the Christmas weekend for some relaxation and (slightly) warmer climes. The village where I stayed is called San Pedro la Laguna, and due to flattering Lonely Planet write-ups, it is unfortunately overrun with dreadlocked tourists. As in, the ¨bohemian¨types who do hallucinogens, play bongos, and wear tie-dyed harem pants. The strip of cafes and bars running along the lakefront were more reminiscent of Lake of the Ozarks tack than anything resembling Guatemala, especially since there were few Guatemalans in sight–either as shop owners or employees. It made me feel pretty icky.
Despite the dust and the somber Germanic architecture of the city, Xela is brightly and dramatically colorful. The landscape surrounding the city is largely undeveloped, which at least has one advantage: miles upon miles of forest, steep volcanoes and sweeping valleys so green it almost hurts your eyes to take it all in. Even the trash people toss into ditches from their houses or passing chicken buses has a certain vibrancy against the countryside. People are not afraid to paint their houses dubious colors of hot pink, coral, sky blue, or some combination of all the above (this comes in handy for postal delivery, as instead of giving your address as “29 Avenue A”, which no one will ever find, you can simply say, “the orange and green house next to Tienda Mary on Diagonal 11”).
Fairly sizable and cosmopolitan university town that Xela is, I haven´t run into too much trouble finding things to eat. This had been a major concern of everyone prior to my arrival in Guatemala because of the whole vegan thing–my mother especially was concerned that I would come back in the advanced stages of starvation documented in every National Geographic about Ethiopia since 1981. Vegans of Color has posted before on the intersection between poverty and vegetarianism-out-of-necessity, which is certainly a factor here in the staple diet of corn (tamales, tortillas) and refried black beans. Some families only eat corn tamalitos for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and save the occasional piece of chicken for Sunday dinner. Naturally, gringos who choose vegetarianism are seen as a bit of an oddity by many Guatemalans, despite the economic necessity many families face of defaulting to a largely vegetarian diet.
I have now been living in Xela for close to six weeks and am more or less getting accustomed to the rhythm of life here…suffering daily linguistic breakdowns, perfecting my sign language (”Quisiera algunas…{frantic hand gesture toward object of desire}, por favor? No…no…este, alli!”), searching in vain for clothes and shoes that fit (this is a country of tiny people), the daily rainstorms, and getting used to sights that used to seem somewhat whimsical, like watching two girls in K’iche dress racing up a dirt road on their motorcycle, the one in back balancing a basket of plantains on her head.
…is the sign posted outside my future boss´s office, the director of El Nahual Community Center in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. I can´t decide whether I should be flattered or apprehensive about the fact that I am the first person they have ever hired for this position (the title of which is ¨cordinadora¨, as in ¨coordinator¨) who does not speak Spanish. Yet.
One part of my job involves keeping office hours three afternoons per week at one of the large subsidized housing complexes in town, a.k.a. “the projects”. I have discovered that when a building full of people with mental illness, substance abuse problems and some status with the corrections system who are living so far below the federal poverty line that most of them cannot afford local telephone service have a captive audience with a social worker, shenanigans ensue.
Since President Obama’s trip to Mexico this week, immigration(that is, immigration concerning people from Latin America), never too far from the news these days, has become the sexy topic du jour. Or del dia, rather. If I had a shot of tequila for every time I have heard the phrase “comprehensive immigration reform” since Tuesday, I would be having my stomach pumped right now. Says Obama, we need it. Says Calderon, the U.S. needs it. Says Lou “Ass Hat” Dobbs, we need it. But at this point, what is anyone really calling for when they say, “we must have comprehensive immigration reform”? Like most buzzwords employed ad nauseum by the political establishment and mainstream media in this country, it has become so vague and stripped of meaning that it may as well be framed (or not) and hung in a gallery for post-modern art.
