Just a quiet night

The only sound interrupting the rain right now is the thunder and my typing. It's been a good day. My partner and I met with the director of our one certified school (a Healthy School that complies with all aspects of the first phase of the program). We're trying to start up a recycling program in both municipalities that we work in, which is a pretty lofty project but vale la pena (it's worth it). We also met with the mayor who will likely support us in some way because he's a really great guy. Then back home for a lunch of leftover spaghetti with ground beef, veggies and cheese, followed by some laundry, an episode of "Twin Peaks", grad school research, and paperwork.

The whole process of working with the Healthy Schools program here in Guatemala is making me reflect a lot more on development work. It's been over a year and things have progressed. All of the schools have their rincones de salud (area where students store their toothbrushes, toothpaste, towels, soap, etc) and we are currently giving health lessons to the teachers for them to use with the students. The theme of the year is trash management, something that pretty much everyone asked for. As part of this curriculum, teachers are giving lessons on organic vs. inorganic trash, how long trash lasts, the three R's, where trash is in the community, etc. There are lots of fun activities, like making a map of the community outlining where most of the trash is located, playing a relay game involving correctly classifying trash, older students coming up with a trash management plan for their community, etc. We have contacts with a recycling center in the city who have agreed to come to our community if we collect enough recycling, which shouldn't be too hard because they take almost everything: glass, aluminum, plastic, paper, nylon, copper, general scrap metal. Unfortunately, the municipality I live in, which is closest to the city, has a mayor that doesn't do anything other than build hotels in other parts of the country and slowly build a road here in town. This means it will be unlikely that he will find a place where we can store trash, have a truck to pick up trash to bring it to the center of town, have support for raising awareness in the communities. But we'll start where we can, with the schools. Things won't work out unless Guatemalans take ownership of the projects and decide that it's a worthy cause, and some people have definitely shown interested and shared ideas of how to go about implementing the program. It will be a slow process, one that will certainly not bear any fruit while I'm here, but hopefully it is something that will change some mentalities here about trash. Changing mentalities is the hardest thing to do, so maybe nothing will happen with it. Vamos a ver.

So, I have internet for this week thanks to my partner/site mate/friend Yuna who is in the States for a bit. This means I can catch up on emails and write some blog posts. And I may have more permanent internet soon. It's kind of slow and at times makes me want to pull out all of my hair in frustration, but I have learned to be more patient, so it should be okay.

Those are my reflections for the day. Tal vez I'll post more tomorrow. Have a great evening!