Field Based Training

Last week I spent five days at Field Based Training (FBT).  This was an opportunity to see what volunteers actually do, because, as you may have guessed, we don’t sit in language classes and cultural trainings for two years.  So, it was so refreshing to get out and see real, live volunteers and their work!

We spent Wednesday, Thursday, and half of Friday in a small community in the Occidente (Western Highlands).  A volunteer, Elana, showed us some schools that had really excelled under the Healthy Schools program with which we will be working.  A few teachers really excelled at incorporating the participatory learning strategies the Peace Corps helps to teach.  Additionally, it was touching to see how deeply the teachers and principals cared about the health of their students.

However, we also saw a few schools where things weren’t going as planned.  One school in particular left me with the chills.  They were an afternoon school, which meant that a different school used the same school building in the morning.  However, there was absolutely no cooperation between the morning group and the afternoon group.  For example, the parents in the morning group had helped to build handwashing stations and each day, they locked them up, so the afternoon kids couldn’t use them.  As a result, we saw children spitting in their hands to wash them and also using the spit to wash their hair.  Furthermore, many of the children were malnourished and, because of this, had tiny bodies and the faces of middle-aged men and women.

This is the school where I gave my first “charla”, or mini lesson.  I talked to the children about the importance of brushing your teeth and we sang a toothbrush song together.  When I asked the kids in the class what they brushed their teeth with, all of the kids responded in unison, “Colgate!”  Colgate does a lot of philanthropic work down here and has apparently cornered the toothpaste market.  Anyway, I was super excited that my Spanish was good enough to give a whole lesson and that the children actually understood!  Yayyy! 

However, this excitement was dampened by the fact that there was no teacher when I arrived in this class of thirty first graders and there was no teacher when I left.  The children were simply sitting there with a few words to copy off of the board.  We never got a completely straight answer as to why there teacher was missing, but it did not appear as if she was going to return that day.

After our 2.5 days in the field as a group, we were split up further and were sent to farther away places to live with a volunteer for two nights.   Miyaunna, another trainee, and I were sent to an awesome site just about an hour outside of Xela, Guatemala’s second largest city.  The site was beautiful and rural with a very large indigenous population.  We stayed with a volunteer, Kathy, and we spent the whole weekend talking about what it’s really like to be a volunteer, eating great food (not tortillas), and just generally relaxing.  On Sunday morning, we slept til 9am, which is definitely the latest we’ve slept since leaving the US…. AND Kathy brought us coffee in bed.  It was GREAT!  

The other great thing that we did was to help Kathy with her kids group.  There’s a pic of us below.  The kids group was super low key and fun.  We taught the kids about Ireland and St. Patrick’s Day by making shamrocks, putting on a leprechaun skit, and eating Irish soda bread.  The kids were so excited about learning traditions from other parts of the world and they totally adored Kathy.  I can not wait to have a kids group of my own when I get to site!

Today we had interviews about what we would like our site and work to be like… Only two more weeks until we find out this very important part of information!  Let the sleepless nights begin!