56 days down, 15 to go: i´m homesick. for the first time ever. not for my house or my friends at home, but for the weather to be warm and for life to be gentle again. here, the shower only spouts freezing water or scalding. when i ask the class i´m teaching what ¨contamination¨ is, one kid responds ¨fish¨and another says ¨acid rain.¨ i´m sick so i find myself in a cafe drinking rooibos tea like my mom. the past few nights i´ve been bundling up and eating dinner on the balcony with my israeli neighbors, two young guys who just got out of the army. they know how to cook, but they also know how to fire guns. i went to the zoo yesterday, which was basically like a cow pasture with animals wandering freely. my work at primeros pasos has brought me to the most beautiful and remote places i´ve ever been. things move more slowly than you could ever imagine here. i realize that i rely on summer and am deeply sad to have lost it this season. the travelers i´ve met on this journey, especially the women, have been so inspiring that they fill me with awe. they together constitute this amazing body of warmth, people with hearts so filled with love that i hope i can tap into this feeling later and draw on upon it for strength.

here, i teach kids about health...but i´m a kid too. i am nervous to go and spend the next week alone in guatemala city; i am anxious to squeeze all of the babies at the guatemala city orphanage and see how big they´ve grown. the people here are so round and smooth, they look as though they were molded from clay. medical work is something i´ll dedicate my life to, even though today was my last day of work.

it´s a beautiful and complicated time to be alone.
it´s a beautiful and complicated time to be alive.

it is usually weeks later, for me, when these experiences start to make sense. it´s easier to not begin to digest it all here, alone in my apartment in my itchy little bed. it´s easier to say goodbye and i promise to come back and visit than truly think about investing my fourth set of plane tickets, boston to miami to guatemala to miami to boston. some winter night i´ll be back at clark university - my bed won´t be itchy anymore but my thoughts will be - and this experience, all of these experiences, will begin to make sense.

i. there is an academic debate about the distinction between relief work and development work. but when the lights go out here, it´s clear that the corrupt underdevelopment of this country - the thieves stealing metal from the electric distributors lighting all of guatemala - bring some relief too. the electricity has been going out for several hours every night as we find ourselves in bed by default at 7 pm, or cooking dinner by candlelight on a gas stove that hisses and sparks in the darkness. be patient, i tell myself, because things i think need to be done today now must wait until tomorrow. i picture the thieves high on a mountain, wearing mittens to protect their hands from the lightening bolts they clutch as they scatter like fireflies. they have succeeded in robbing an entire nation of light for several fat hours each night; they have succeeded in forcing me to breathe and think and be patient.

ii. i have a sense of urgency, something i can´t shake, a blessing but a burden, to do.see.feel as if emotions have expiration dates and phenomenal things are either seen now or completely missed. be patient, i tell myself, because i have always had a short temper and a short attention span. be patient, not everything has to be done before age 25. be patient, i tell myself, because the words may or may not come to confirm the sights and sounds here, already familiar to my senses. but words are not needed to validate experiences; be patient with the thoughts swerving around in the brain, unable to be committed to a page like heated molecules bubbling and boiling.

iii. as we leave rodolfo robles, the hospital where alex works, an old abuelito is being released too. her bedding is folded and crisp, ready to leave the damp darkness of the ward for good. she turns to a younger woman to say goodbye - a new mother, a slight and struggling one with breaths labored from tuberculosis. the old woman pats her on the bony shoulder, and says simply in her scruffy voice over scuffling shoes: be patient. what she means is be patient with yourself, with your illness, with your body, your mind. she leaves through the doorless frame, but the phrase sticks with me. be patient, mamita.

this experience is going fast but i´m trying to convince myself that it´s just slowly beginning. and in a way, maybe, it is.

teaching in xecaracoj is distracting because the tall cornstalks outside lean in with the breeze, their leaves licking the classroom wall. between the quivering stalks and their hue—a green so green it is almost technicolor— my mouth speaks of health and the environment while my ears are fixated on the hush-hush of crops in the wind and my eyes on the expanse of green in all directions. the school house is just one classroom, with 35 'first graders' between the ages of 6 and 11, situated in this sea of green. there is no teacher in sight, so i begin.

a few minutes into the lesson, i notice more kids slowly emerging from within the thick cornfield. they pause in their day's work to come to the window of the classroom, feet dangling inside, listening. the structure and excitement of the classroom is like a vacuum in the middle of their crop field, making eyes mysteriously widen and necks tingle. at one point, one of the farmer boys even dares to raise his hand in response to a question, by timidly bending his head to his knees and poking his hand down and through the window into the classroom. as he answers, lips pressed against the pane, a muddy rubber boot slips off his foot and into the room, leaving a small pile of dirt against the wall. a young girl slowly bends to retrieve it, and quietly slips it back on the young campesino's dangling toes. this is the guatemalan cinderella story, the glass slipper as the dirty farmer's boot, with the same central juxtaposition: the haves versus the havenots. i just hope these young people can find their happy endings.

those in the classroom study to the metallic clink of hoes hitting rocks, and those in the fields need only glance over sweaty shoulders to see their academic counterparts. i wish for guatemala, for these communities, these kids and my own sense of equilibrium, to make a small change: to hold class not in the classroom with its exclusive connotation, not in the fields with its working-class association, but on the road in between. the road would then be much more than a muddy passageway but something symbolic, a neutral ground, a compromise between two worlds in the same world, a place where everyone must walk.

for the last four years of my life i´ve spent significant time each year abroad in latin america. and yet i have this life that exists back home, frozen like an ice sculpture, frozen and defrosted and refrozen again so many times its original shape has morphed and manipulated into something unrecognizable from how it began. this is me each time i leave and return, the process of reshaping hidden to all who can´t come along for the process. i am changed, and continue to change. things are happening in my life at home that i don´t even live anymore, things that don´t even apply: my father tells me my cell phone has been ringing. there are happenings in my absences that i am a part of, and i am apart of.

i am waiting for the link that stretches between what i am here, and what i am back home. i am waiting for the link to be something that grows, not something i carry alone like a drive to fundraise at home for what i was working on abroad or a photobook to display. i want a living, breathing link, dynamic in understanding. unlike my parents and grandparents at my age, i am unattached. but for the first time, i am traveling with a good friend and can see the beginnings of a bridge between here and there forming. alex will come back to my world at home, and i to hers. she will know what the streets smelled like and the simultaneous isolation and togetherness felt while sitting in the central park eating pupusas from an outdoor grill, in a central place to us in a not-so-central world in central america. she will know, as i will know, what it feels like here to never know what is coming around the corner:

yesterday, while walking, alone in the pouring rain, i round the corner and find myself face to face with three men. these scruffy figures flash a blade, and i instinctively reach for my wallet. i want it in hand so they can take it, rather than in a bag they´ll have to rough around with me to get into. we exchange no words, no looks in the eyes. they are young and unsure of whether they can successfully rob me; i am young and unsure of whether this is reality or a mirage in the fat, gray rain droplets. 100Q is awkwardly exchanged for a pass to continue walking and the retucking of a switchblade back into my fumbling robber´s jacket pocket. i bumble away in one direction, and they in another - 33.3Q richer apiece. i continue to walk to meet alex in the cafe as planned, strangely unfazed. ¨i just got robbed. or mugged,¨ i admit quietly. ¨what?¨ she inquires, concerned. ï don´t know,¨ i say; some strange dance was danced, wordless and as timid and unsure as middle school, in which money was exchanged for a license to keep walking for coffee and sugar cookies.

there´s something thrilling about being in your 20s, traveling, and being in your 20s traveling. there´s something awkward and young about every moment, yet mature and worldly beyond the age i feel or project. we wear the same clothes everyday, but never think the same thoughts. music came through our open window this morning, the knotty curtains aflutter, i got robbed, my link is sleeping the the next bed over, there are guatemalan visitors spending the night. i survey the room through sleepy eyes, glancing at my now-skinner wallet, and conclude that i have a haphazard family in this third world that has materialized over the last 4 years better than anyone could have planned. moreover, i have a family at home coming to be a third person in this third world, another piece to the puzzle. the link i´ve been yearning for is finally becoming substantial, fostered not by sweat or tears but an openness (if not resignation) to accepting whatever is around the next corner.

www.clarku.edu/activelearning/

Note: this day's e-mail is directed to a number of people on Jesse's email list

here is a description and shameless plug for the wonderful agency i have come to feel a part of:

i´m here on a grant from my university´s holocaust and genocide studies department, and lately my meager method of fighting genocide has been gathering in various fields, buses and offices with 30 people under 30 years old brainstorming. these 30 people then disperse across guatemala and the united states to find money, materials and methods to keep 15,000 people in 10 communities living under the guatemalan national poverty line free of parasites, cavities and unwanted pregnancies. plans are hatched over guacamole and rich dark coffee, over screaming children on chicken buses in the countryside, over skype late at night. half the battle as an on-site volunteer is physically getting myself from point A to point B, waiting at point B for an hour until the person i´m meeting with actually shows up, then being directed by person A to point C to find person B, to collect kids, gather supplies and deliver medicine. it is literally like trying to find a needle in a haystack, except it´s a 5 cc syringe in the city of xela. this is typical latin america - a million different things, all in different places, and much time spent waiting, thinking, running around, being directed and redirected.

primeros pasos is run entirely by students, be they foreign volunteers or medical students from the local university, san carlos. it runs on an annual budget of $30,000, and all medications and services provided are free of charge. because primeros pasos runs on such a small budget, all employees have a second job or are lucky enough to have grant money behind them. despite the fact that the clinic operates in an abandoned building we have simply overtaken without payment or permission, it is in grave danger of not being able to stay open next fiscal year due to lack of funding. talk about guerrillas is usually limited to the civil war in guatemala, but primeros pasos really is a guerrilla medicine operation, storming communities and abandoned concrete offices to set up shop. it repairs genocide, parasites, and detrimental medical myths by empowering people through providing health services. but, the message of solidarity primeros pasos continues to send to the communities it serves is even more empowering: we will travel great distances, steal office space, and speak up about the government´s lack of health care for mayan people to keep the palajunoj valley happy and healthy. if you want to learn more or help, check out primerospasos.org.

today, we spent the day trekking to 15 day cares the size of my kitchen at home. bus routes fell short as we walked for hours across the countryside, addressless buildings with peeling paint, squished limes melting on street corners. my notes, so i can return alone this week to deliver medications and classes, say: walk up a hill, see a cabbage patch, take a left at the construction site where men cart sacks of cement mix on their shoulders in circles all day as sweat beads form along their hairlines and harelips. but there are many construction sites, and many lefts to take.

a dead man lays on the side of the road, where the dirt meets the onion fields. mosquitoes feast on his eyes and the day care kids´ eyes are barely visible above plump apple cheeks and below colorful knit hats. they are pink with altitude, pink with freshness, pink with pulsating life. their mothers spend 10Q, a little over $1, to keep them in day care from 8 am to 5 pm for a month. the streets are sprinkled with ditches, rocks, puddles and banana peels. men grunt and push wheelbarrows full of dirt and carrots; there is not one modern convenience in sight. my feet hurt from hiking but it´s nothing compared to the stout women cloaked in colors, dust tucked into the intricate wrinkles of their cheeks as they balance baskets on their heads and stride steadily on mangled, bare feet. tears well up in my eyes because the natural grime and beauty of this place and people makes me feel privileged to have hurt feet and dirty hands. it´s a privilege to view these mountains and volcanoes, blanketed in green. it´s privilege i share with indigenous farmers, whose skin melds with the land in a way that makes me jealous that mine never will.

i´m reading my cousin andy´s blog for inspiration. i´m going to places that make me feel vibrant and uncomfortable at the same time, as he must have felt in africa, eastern europe, and more. i´m weighing kids on cloth slings hung from doorways, i´m eating tortillas cooked on hot rocks in the fields and waiting, sitting, thinking a lot. things are slow and fast in this life: my older colleagues hold american doctorates yet lower positions at the clinic. while they talk about academia and marriage, i can´t help but think about what it might feel like to sleep in the cornfields overnight. i fight an urge to ask a campesino to work a day in his place, to sit down in the earth and muddy my jeans. maybe this is the difference between doctors and me, and why i will never be one: because age and place and status are meaningless compared to these skies, these kids and their apple cheeks, these dirt roads muddied with rain.

yesterday we walked to a school in the mountains to deliver meds and toothbrushes and health classes. my coworkers ooh constantly over how cute the kids are in the schools. but they´re not cute: they´re beautiful. in all senses of the word, almond eyes and hair specked with dirt. everyone wants to take pictures of them, but you can´t capture this beauty on film, the smell of burnt fields and fried bananas. you can´t capture the earthquake that made me feel as though i was stuck inside a vibrating cell phone in my apartment last night. you can´t capture the glow floating in the air between two young women as we shop for our vegetables in the market—so in love but not with anyone, just in general. you can´t capture the sneaky smiles through windowpanes our students flash, or mango ice in the central park. these are things beyond words and images—a flutter in the chest, a belly of love, an ache of anxiety.

our health education classes work to disentangle words and images. we don´t preach abstinence, but aim to disassociate moving into puberty and physical maturity (images) with childbirth (an obligatory rite passed down through words of tradition). this is challenging, because breasts are designed for nursing and the sperm and egg may eventually join. the dominant narrative here is that when your body is ready, the babies must come. the girls we teach are absolutely silent and the whites of their eyes brimmed with longing. they aspire to be mothers, and so do i (eventually). but we are forcing them to question their timeline, to understand their inner workings, to live as individuals before living as wives, mothers, housekeepers, homemakers, or second class citizens. if this concept sparks confusion, rebellion, freedom, inspiration, or curiosity, we may have succeeded.

but, i´m not fooling myself by thinking that my blond, white words resonate with these preteen women. they can´t relate to me, my fleece zip-up and hiking shoes as they traverse the same rough roads barefoot. they wear striking woven skirts and aprons of embroidered flowers which hold their school notebooks and hard candies. by their standards, i am a failure: a spinster, a mess of floppy hair and sunburnt cheeks. you can´t capture this dichotomy on film: words versus images, right versus wrong, earthquakes, love, cultural understanding and misunderstanding. i am a single, childless foreign wanderer with flutters in my chest, a belly of love, and aches of anxiety. they are round, pregnant, pulsating, colorful teenagers. nobody´s right, nobody´s wrong, nobody´s a snapshot.

I have arrived safely in Guatemala! Flying into Guatemala City a few days ago was an interesting experience. It is the rainy season in Guatemala, and it has been a notoriously bad one this year. We had to circle over the airport in Guatemala City for over an hour because visibility and weather were so bad that we could not land. The pilot even mentioned that we might have to reroute to El Salvador! Luckily, we were able to land in Guatemala but as someone who really hates to fly, it was not a fun experience!

The next day Alex and I made our way by (very bumpy and old) bus to Quetzaltenango, or Xela, where we'll be working and living. The city is so adorable...a mix of urban and tough like Guatemala City and intimate and funky like Antigua. It is highly indigenous here, and the sight of the Mayan people in beautiful traditional dress on the street, in shops and in the park is colorful and remarkable. Alex and I have found a cute but very modest (no hot water!) apartment near the city´s central park, and we move in tomorrow...very exciting.

On Thursday I met my boss, the executive director of Primeros Pasos, for dinner to discuss what I´ll be doing at work, and the following morning I had my first day of work at the actual clinic. I had to take a local bus about 20 minutes outside of the city to reach the clinic, which is well-equipped given the circumstances here but simple and sparse by North American standards. It services thousands of kids and their families from 10 nearby, Mayan communities each year. My title is children´s community health educator, and I am beginning to learn how and what I will be teaching the classes of kids that come into the clinic everyday—topics such as nutrition, puberty, domestic violence, water filtration and more. Everything is taught through creative games, hands on activities and entertaining lessons. It is intimidating to begin but sounds like it will be amazing.

My supervisor also explained that some schoolchildren are unable to travel to the clinic because of poor roads and/or lack of transportation. In these cases, I will trek with another health educator (sometimes up to an hour over the mountains) to the school to deliver medicines and lessons!

This seems perfect given my interest in international development and public health, and I feel that my purpose for coming—to help rebuild the essentials which were promised to Guatemalan Mayans in the wake of the Civil War —will be addressed well through this wonderful organization!

It's the Monday afternoon before I leave, and I'm not even close to packed yet! Have been running around trying to make plans with some Guatemalan friends to pick me up from the airport and help me get on my feet before I take the 5 hour bus ride to Quetzaltenango, or Xela, where I'll be living and working. Everything seems to be falling in place though!

My friend Alex, another Clarkie who also took a gap year, will be coming with me. She is doing some development work though a different organization in Xela, but it will be nice to know someone there and have a roommate. She's coming from her house in Maine tonight to my house in the Boston area so we can leave together early tomorrow. I think she and I both are feeling quite nervous at this point, but very excited as well.

Talk to you next from Guatemala!