Volunteers

Wellll. It's pretty late for me (past 10 PM!? what am I, still a teenager? My butt should be in bed by now!) but if I'm in the mood, I've got to write or else I won't do it later, it seems.

Last Saturday AMA picked up some new volunteers: 1st is a woman from Virginia who wanted to come with the groups but couldn't work it out with her schedule, so she came by herself. Hilda and a driver in the truck picked her up at the airport and she's been staying in the house in the room Lupe used to be in. She's a 7th grade civics teacher in the DC area, and has plenty of pluck, as Hugh puts it. She's really just normal. Everything you'd expect a 7th grade civics teacher to be except that she's not phased at all by Guatemala, has a good sense of humor about the things that are annoying, and is one of the more adaptable 50 year olds I've met. Oh yeah, her name's Bonnie. Bonnie wanted to help with the kids in the MAP program, so she's been tagging along with Dilma (the new art teacher we hired, and my old student) to the schools with her on her first week of working with the kids (Dilma was only just hired.) Hugh's also been tagging along as translator. She actually knows sufficient Spanish to function, but it seems like having someone fluent is better for everyone, plus he likes going. They've come back with lots of stories of well, and poorly behaved kids. Smart kids, dumb kids, manipulative kids, and I hear a lot about runny noses. Bonnie and Hugh are also really pleased with Dilma, even with it being her first week of work. Ben expressed reservations to me about hiring her because she was so quite and calm, thinking that she wouldn't be able to entertain a classroom, and that she'd be too dull to latch on to the project, which was wrong wrong wrong wrong, and I have pain for it. I tried to tell them that she was super smart, and expressed to Lupe that maybe it was a better idea to have someone calm and collected in a classroom full of screaming kids with paintbrushes than one that's egging them on, which seemed to sooth her at the time. Now Bonnie's taking every opportunity to tell Ben that Dilma's perfect, perfect, and so patient, and a good teacher too in many respects besides being able to control children gone mad. I was very relieved to hear this. She has done a bit of a personality transformation since she's been working too, where she came in shy and quiet and scared to mess up. After a week of being in front of kids, and in charge of the lessons, and getting used to working in the house she's so relaxed and confident and smiles all the time. I love talking to her, now that I kind of can, and I can understand her spanish more than when we were in classes. I still don't know if she wants the bead-superviser job. I'm afraid it's going to be a no, but I'll get to that when it comes.

Then there are the two girls from Seattle- Ashley and Sara, who have come independently of AMA, but are working with them, doing a photography project with the women's group in Espumpuja. They are grad students studying art-therapy, and two people who I have really connected with in a fast and sweet way in the last week. I'm really, really happy to have met them and look forward to living together for the rest of the month. Anyway, they came with the project already planned and funded, and were placed in Espumpuja by Hilda because of a past project with this girl named Sharon. Sharon had a photography project there that functioned really well and the women loved, but then she got a job in the East and just up and left without ending it or even giving the women their pictures. What it's come out as is that she was using this project more for her portfolio than to help the women.. Anyway, she promised to return in October (which is a 6 month wait for the poor women, and not good for the organization, blah blah blah.) So the but the new girls there not only because the women already had some experience, but also because it was a well structured plan that would give closure to Sharon's project that left the women feeling abandoned. So at some point Sharon found out about the new girls in Espumpuja, and actually called Hilda's phone WHILE she was introducing them to the women, and started screaming at HIlda (who screams at Hilda??? ) about how it was HER project, and how DARE these girls steal it, and WHY didn't they talk to her, and how stupid of Hilda to forget she was coming back, repeating the phrase "MY PROJECT. MY PROJECT. MY PROJECT." to which Hilda (by witness angry but within voice control) "MY organization! MY time! MY passion! I've built this community and this group for 7 years! this isn't your project! I didn't forget you! I chose to move these women on, you're not seeing it from their eyes, and shame on you!" She told me this later over lunch, saying to me "I don't let foreigners talk to me like that. She was trying to make me feel stupid and below her and it's discrimination." So good for her. This Sharon girl's a trip. She's like the most difficult person in Guatemala from the rumors. She hates all the white people who live here, as if they don't belong and she does. She came to the house one day, totally iced off Vladimir who was the friendliest guy ever, and when she passed me I said "hola!" and she just looked at me like I was a child and said "HELLO." and very deliberately walked away. From the sound of it AMA's done with her. Poor Ashley and Sara for being caught in the middle of it. They were actually standing right next to Hilda, in the community, in front of the women, when the whole conversation happened. They say the women looked embarrassed, but kind of happy, as if they were really relieved Hilda was standing up for them. They're going back tomorrow to continue with the project and pick up the pictures to develop them. We're all anxious to see them.

In other news, I've been participating in none of this, doing minimal work besides cleaning with the jewelry project, and weaving my little fingers off. I'm happy to say I've become famous at the weaving school, as "la chica con la tejida verde" (the girl with the green weaving.) Because I actually know how to weave, enjoy it, and have done a lot harder patterns than this, and they love giving me a challenge. Mom, imagine trying to teach 5 Guatemalans a day who don't speak your language and just don't get it. Gross. Frustrating. I picked the hardest project they offered, a table runner with embroidery, for which they looked at me doubtfully and asked me more than a few times how much time I was planning on staying in the city. It didn't seem appropriate to begin my first conversation with them with "You say this project takes 20 hours, and then most people need a few weeks? I can put 20 hours in in 3 days." So I'm almost finished now a week and a half later, and they're cute around me. Oralia, one of the women who I refer to to other people as so Zen it's amazing, calls me maestra.

Well. the two women that run the organization are Oralia and Amparo. Amparo is short and squat and Ashley says she laughs like Gus-gus from Cinderella. She tends to explain better, and scoots around like a little bumble bee. Oralia is so Zen. She speaks more or less in a calm, sweet monotone, and does more floating than scooting. She dresses traditionally, is really, really pretty, and somehow just reminds me of a geisha or something. She's also got three kids, the youngest of which, 2 year old Carla, get's her kicks and her babysitting in among the students and volunteers. For a kid who has so many emotions, it's hard to believe she doesn't know any words. We'll have whole conversations with her, us speaking English and her speaking gibberish. And she's the sassiest baby EVER. She'll plain put her hands on her hips and tell you what's up. The opposite of her calmer than calm mother.

I should be finishing my table runner tomorrow, which I'm SOOO excited about. Then hope of hopes, Hilda will have a loom for me from Espumpuja for me to practice with and take home. I can buy one from Trama, but it's cheaper and has more street cred if I get it from the village. By the way, fun note for mom and other weavers- The warp in Spanish is called the pie (pee-ay) or translated-the foot, and the weft is called the trama (trah-mah) which also means food. If you think about it, when you put the weft through the shed, it's like you're feeding the weaving. So the joke in Espumpuja when we were there watching them weave was that after they had the loom set up and someone was winding a shuttle for them, they complained that their scarf was hungry.

ENOUGH I SAY ENOUGH.
bedtime.