Let me explain. Cheese man  — from here on out referred to as, we’ll say, Hurley — runs a successful farm and tourist attraction in Acul, El Quiche, Guatemala. Often referred to as the Swiss Alps of Guatemala, Hurley greets dozens of hiker-happy tourists each week in his humble abode with tortillas con queso and tasty lunches (I don’t work for the Quiche Tourism Board, I swear). As a result, Hurley comes to know many of the long-term gringa development workers, and is able to sit back as they literally hike hours to see him. A stereotypical Latino man in his desires, he was nearly groveling at my feet due to my blatant disinterest and general disregard for his come-ons (though I was thrilled when the courting process progressed to free wheels of cheese and gallons of milk. Hey, I’m a Midwest girl after all). Like I said, the lack of romantic options can grate on you, and in the end my Spanish has never been better.

Fresh cheese in Acul, Guatemala. Photo from Flickr user Larry Bird's Mustache.

So back to my hypocrisy. Hurley invited me to his cousin’s farm with him one Sunday after he finished playing a soccer game. I had a vague idea of where the farm might be located, but otherwise was completely in the dark. He only told me to bring a bathing suit because of an alleged pool and hot tub, but being skeptical, I didn’t expect much. This is Guatemala after all.

I started getting suspicious when we passed a hydroelectric dam. Having studied Environmental Science, I immediately asked if we could get out and look. “Oh don’t worry, it’s on my cousin’s land. We’ll look at it once we get there.” I’m sorry, what Hurley? Your cousin owns a dam? A dam that ruins ecosystems, creates lakes where rivers should be, and sells electricity to the cities while the community members alongside suffer in adobe homes? “Please don’t ask him any questions. My cousin and his wife are good people, and I am certain you will like them. But don’t ask questions.”

First of all, this is always a bad sign. Second of all, please never tell an outspoken, precocious, little redhead to not ask questions. It’s generally not good for anyone involved.

It turns out, dude’s cousin is a Brol, an extremely powerful, wealthy, and infamous family in Guatemala. Their participation in the 36-year armed conflict made them many enemies, and they lost three family members to guerrilla attacks. (On this particular farm to which we were going, Finca San Francisco, the Brols allegedly sought revenge on a guerrilla and put him through the coffee drying machine alive. This wasn’t a part of the tour.) We roll up to San Francisco, and pass into a mini-village. Enrique Brol provides houses, an industrial kitchen, public pilas, schools, two churches, shops… basically an entire village for the 100 families that live and work on the plantation. Over 700 people.

Having spent the past seven months enjoying tortillas and tamales in one-room adobe homes, a two-story Spanish colonial style home surrounding a 20′ x 20′ inner courtyard with pool and hot tub was a bit much for me to handle. After being served fruit and fresh coffee, we toured the caged animals, including deer, hedgehogs, some mysterious Central American carnivorous rodent, and a a spider monkey. Environmentally destructive engineered construction? Check. Domesticated wild animals? Check.

After visiting the animals, we went on four-wheelers, dirt bikes, and an off-road 6-person golf cart to one of the waterfalls on the grounds (Gas-guzzling recreational vehicles? Check). I took this opportunity to ask Quique the questions Hurley said I wasn’t allowed to ask. Who cares for the dam? Who is the contract between? How are you making up for the environmental damages? Is your coffee organic? Do you steep slope farm? Who do you sell it to? Who is that lady? The answers were brief, but seemed to be genuine. I imagine he wasn’t so accustomed to Hurley’s guests interrogating him. Following our gourmet dinner at the 20-person dining room table, we warmed up in the hot tub, played pool, and slept in our overstuffed, down comforter beds.

I knew that as I was being served lemonade in the hot tub, people just outside these fenced-in walls were bucket bathing with cold water. We all miss the comforts that we have at home: we might not all have hot tubs, but we don’t refuse to enjoy them. I spend weeks trying to find sponsors to provide our students with Q75 a month to pay for their schooling, but I don’t shy from buying a Q60 bottle of wine. Clearly my experience with the Brols is a bit dramatic, but how far is too far in terms of hypocrisy? As we all try to integrate ourselves into the cultures and communities of the developing world, do we leave behind the luxuries of our own culture? Is it wrong for me to be upset over having spilled water on my Macbook?

Bridget Barry is currently a Program Associate with Limitless Horizons Ixil in Chajul, Guatemala. To read more about Bridget’s time abroad with limited economic means, check out her past entries.  Or peruse posts by other La Vida Idealist bloggers to learn more about Guatemala.

Photo from Flickr user 100Wasser

A few months ago I left my volunteer position with Ya’axché Conservation Trust in what I think was a career upgrade. I moved to Guatemala to start a position, hold your hats readers, with pay! Now, being the polite albeit devastatingly curious people that we all are, I’m sure you are dying to know what sort of pay a cherub-faced, 22-year-old know-nothing has been able to earn in this unforgiving economy.

But you probably wouldn’t ask in fear of breaking the sacred code of money-talk etiquette often seen in the West: Never ask how much. Conversely, Guatemalans will ask how much your left shoe cost you without a second of hesitation. Living in such a money-obsessed, impoverished community has been difficult and bitter, and at the increased exposure to the question “How much?” I find myself fretting for my personal financial future. How much will graduate school applications cost? How much will I make as a barista working part-time? How much will I possibly be able to make with a degree in sustainable development?

To quench your thirsting curiosity, I earn Q2000 a month, the equivalent of $250. Over the course of the next year, I’ll be making less than the cost of one semester of schooling at my university. The following year, I plan on spending ten times as much for graduate school. After that, I expect to pay more dues through internships and entry-level jobs making a pittance.  I seem to be welcoming a decade of debt, with wide open pockets.

I’ve been talking a lot about an article the New York Times Magazine published last weekend that shed light on the current predicament of us “emerging adults:” no spouse, no children, no financial independence, and no determined financial stability in sight. Though our paths are all different, what we have in common is our dwindling bank accounts and idealistic views leading us in directions that offer little pay, but great reward. Though I sometimes curse my inability to enjoy two bottles of wine and a wheel of cheese each week, it all comes back to the knowledge that I am working towards something I think is important, enjoyable, commendable, and just downright good.

Please don’t let small paychecks and missing comforts guide you away from a challenging life in the field. At the end of the day, you’ll know that you are accomplishing something grand.

Bridget Barry is currently a Program Associate with Limitless Horizons Ixil in Chajul, Guatemala. To read more about Bridget’s time abroad with limited economic means, check out her past entries or posts by other La Vida Idealist bloggers in Guatemala. For more on the financial challenges idealists face after coming home, check out Patrick Furlong’s “Dueling Realities” and Kimberly Friedland’s “The Well-Planned Life or Summoned Self?“

First of all, Golden Stream was filthy hot. By 8 a.m., I would have sedentary sweat – the inexplicable kind of sweat that forms while doing nothing more than breathing. Conversely, Nebaj is cold and rainy. After one night of shivering in bed, the question “I left Chicago for this?” has already crossed my mind.

In the jungle, nightly entertainment included stream swimming in daylight, reading books, or playing games.  Bedtimes at 7:45 p.m.were not unheard of, and often times I felt like I could have been channeling Laura Ingalls Wilder. With my newly acquired electricity and “big city” life, my evening options have been expanded to things like TV shows online (hello The OC re-runs), trips to a local comedor or café for a cerveza, and cheese (yes, cheese is an activity).

This brings me to the most fundamental difference: food. A refrigerator and toaster oven have opened all sorts of doors for my culinary arts, but not without an initial crippling shock. I staggered around my new mercado as a bewildered gringa, not really knowing what to do with such different produce. Where are the plantains and sweet pepper? I fell into a panic when offered yogurt and milk while visiting the nearest store for groceries. These are things I can buy now. I will never have to eat another bowl of oatmeal for breakfast again.

Despite all the differences, the similarities of such disparate regions are uncanny and beautiful. The shy kindness and giggling of Mayan niñas and the carefully-made, colorful outfits of Mayan women are something familiar and comforting. Even hundreds of miles apart, transcending political boundaries and languages, these similarities are what remind you that we’re all cut from the same cloth… and that tortillas are good everywhere.

To check out my new organization, Limitless Horizona Ixil, visit our website at www.limitlesshorizonsixil.org. For more information on how life really was in the jungle, peruse previous entries from Belize.

Before coming to Belize, my cooking repertoire included peanut-butter and banana sandwiches, burritos, and a mean tostada. In a particularly gutsy endeavor to make hard-boiled eggs last summer, my roommate and I innocently plunked a couple eggs into a pot of water and watched in horror as they cracked upon sinking to the bottom. Needless to say, I lack a basic culinary swagger.

Transitioning to a land of raw ingredients (flour, corn, squash, plantains, sweet pepper) has forced me to learn my way around a kitchen. This has not been painless, and I’ve lost a lot of good meals out there. This is straight-up jungle cooking, stovetop and four pots. Have I mentioned that we have neither an oven nor a refrigerator?

Here are a couple of snacks and tips that I have found to be comforting even in the darkest of refrigerator-less, oven-less times:

No-bake oatmeal cookies: Stovetop cookies, anytime, anyplace. The one stressful moment is the rigid timing of the boiling process, but you can handle it.

Dutch-oven cakes: Beyond the giggle factor of what the phrase “dutch oven” means (this took some explaining to my British roommate), this is the miracle process for baked goods. Take one large pot and boil 1-2″ of water. Place an object in the water that will be able to hold a smaller pot above the liquid (bent fork, upturned pot lid, big rocks, etc). Complete recipe in smaller pot and then place in larger pot, above the water. Cover larger pot and let cook for >45 minutes. The trick is the patience to let the heat do its work without lifting the lid and letting out all the steam. All recipes remain the same (here’s a good banana bread one).

Kamal cooking: A kamal is a big, cast iron flat surface used to make tortillas. It was a glorious day when we figured out a way to cover the kamal with an overturned pot to be able to melt cheese and make pizzas over a tortilla. Be sure to grease the kamal a bit so that the tortilla doesn’t burn while waiting for the pizza goods to cook.

No refrigerator substitutes: Powdered milk is not Wisconsin dairy, but it does the trick and lasts as long as the ants don’t get to it. Oil can be used in the absence of butter. And it’s key to get over the Westernized paranoia of refrigerating everything. Eggs can be left in tropical heat for >1 week and still be good. That said though, be sure to always crack your eggs into a separate bowl first, so as not to spoil the rest of your meal in case the egg has gone bad.

The all-powerful curry: Cook any bean (lentil, black-eyed pea, pinto) with an abundance of water and chuck in any vegetable. Seriously. Anything. Squash, zucchini, carrot, potato, coco yam, plantain, raisin, eggplant; sky’s the limit here. Douse everything in curry and you’re instantly serving an exotic dish.

My cooking has gotten better, but I’m still short on diversity. Due to my enthusiasm for the curry, my roommate gets nauseous at the mere mentioning of it. So if anyone has some recipes to suggest, I think he’d appreciate it.

Any tips from other countries?

Bridget Barry is currently a volunteer with the Ya’axché Conservation Trust in Southern Belize. For more snippets of the day- to-day lives of volunteers, check out these other posts by La Vida Idealist bloggers.

On the conservation front, we have been under attack because of the restrictions we put on access to the Bladen Nature Reserve (BNR). Only researchers and students are allowed to enter the park after being awarded very specific permits. Belizeans are putting pressure on Ya’axché to open up the protected area for use by all locals. As we continue to emphasize that we are protecting the natural resources of BNR for future generations of Belizeans, we are reminded that most researchers and students entering BNR are foreigners.

On the humanitarian front, I have been concerned that we may be creating a “culture of dependency” among our buffer communities. As our projects focus on poverty alleviation, community development work is integral. This includes agro-forestry projects, organic gardening endeavors, gender-specific programs, and business development training. Because our funders like to see the direct benefits to the villages, we are often just handing free tools, seedlings, machinery, irrigation systems, and supplies to our participating farmers. While this really helps to jump start enthusiasm, it doesn’t build ownership of the equipment. It isn’t surprising to see a $3000 rotor-tiller sitting dormant in utter disrepair because no one takes responsibility for its care. But even so, communities are starting to just expect these “benefits” of their impoverished condition and are putting Ya’axché in the role of a reluctant Santa Claus.

Despite these hard days, it pays to have just one farmer attending an integrated pest management training express particular interest in organic gardening, or one young girl on a marketing field trip ask me to help with establishing a women’s group in her village. It reminds me that we are doing good, and that we’ll continue doing good.

For more information on conservation work in Southern Belize, check out the Ya’axché Conservation Trust website.

I am by no means a heavy consumer – living on the $0 wage of a volunteer, my oatmeal, beans and rice are all bought in bulk. But seeing one of my used cans of refried beans being chucked into a pile of rotting garbage, I instantly was compelled to consume nothing whose packaging was not biodegradable. This, of course, is an outlandish claim to make, something that cannot be reasonably, or sanely, upheld. But it speaks to the root of my primary struggle – striking a balance between conservation and being a mere mortal.

Belize, like many Central American countries, has no nationally implemented solid waste management system. Household trash is usually burned or taken to a nearby open-air dumping place. Batteries are tossed in rivers, and pristine landscapes are littered with plastic bags and Belikin bottles. If I pick up one piece of garbage and bring it back to our garbage can, where will that can be dumped?

In our efforts to reduce our contribution to the rubbish problem, Ya’axché has conducted composting trainings in many surrounding villages, instructing community members on how to reuse their waste. As part of a marketing campaign for organic vegetables in the area, we are giving away reusable, canvas bags to each customer who buys more than $5BZD ($2.50 US) of organic vegetables at our market booth. A new project is underway that will bring inland villagers on day-trips to the coastal reef, as a way to illustrate how interconnected the water system is and where the garbage may end up. These actions may seem small in the beginning, but hopefully they’ll lead to a greater consciousness of consumption and disposal.

Any other grand ideas for a country that lacks solid waste management?

For more information on the conservation strategies implemented by Ya’axché Conservation Trust, check out our website at www.yct.bz. Interested in more creative solutions by other volunteers? Check out these entries: All-Female Transport in Mexico, It All Started with Our Apple IIGS…, and When Microenergy and Microfinance Meet.

Interesting surprise on a pair of shorts.

One of the main reasons I chose my volunteer position was the free housing provided at the field center.  Prior to making the move, I asked my standard first question: “Are there tarantulas?” The response was just short of laughing in my face. Aside from tarantulas, we are also the proud hosts of visiting rats, bats, scorpions, moths the size of birds,  and an array of mystery creatures that seek refuge in our clothing.

After a fellow volunteer got stung by a scorpion in the shower two nights ago, I thought it might be a good idea to offer a peek into the world of jungle accommodation, being sick abroad, and how best to coexist with our beastly little friends.

An important consideration before choosing a volunteer position should always be international health care. Whether your program offers it  (Jesuit Volunteers Corps and Peace Corps both provide excellent health coverage) or if it is easily accessible from your location is definitely something to keep in mind. For less serious health concerns, I have found Ibuprofen, anti-diarrheal medication, vitamins, aloe, bug repellent, anti-itch spray, and a bug net to be my weapons to alleviate all discomfort.

Coming down with a bug net for my bed was a result of it being foisted upon me by my mother. At first I regarded it as merely contributing to ambiance, but it has proven to be a lifesaver. It has protected me from bats flying overhead, tarantulas lurking on the floor, and persistent biters buzzing around the room.

The boys have taken to calling him Randolph.

Often times all of these unwelcome visitors create a battle to get a good night’s sleep. There are times when I feel like I could stay up all night scratching. Additionally, sleep isn’t quite as sacred in these cultures. Therefore, the morning rituals of slamming doors and blasting the radio aren’t considered even slightly inconsiderate. To combat this, I always have a book, my headphones and iPod in bed with me. If it’s just too early for me to rouse myself or if I need a distraction from the painful itching, I settle in with soothing music and hope for another hour or two of shuteye before stumbling awake. It also has become quite natural for me to start winding down as the sun sets, and I’ve gotten over my initial resistance to 8 o’clock bedtimes (just one more hour! Please Mom!). Changing sleeping patterns can make all the difference.

In the end, no one is strong or lucky enough to avoid all health mishaps abroad. It might always be upsetting being sick without the comforts of family, friends, or Full House reruns to watch on T.V. We all want to remain tough, but sometimes you have to break down and give yourself a day or two to deal and heal.

For more information regarding life abroad, check out these other La Vida Idealist posts: “The Experience: Enjoying Your Time As a Volunteer,” “Seeing the World in New Ways,” “Living in Two Worlds at Once,” and “Talk to Me!”

-“Right now” does not mean this very second in Belize. In fact, very few actions are completed in a timely fashion. I’ve noticed that one of the hardest cultural differences to which we Americans have to adjust is that this part of the world moves a little bit more slowly.

Clutter is king with limited workspace at Ya'axché

- A lot of my time has been spent rewriting sentences and attacking spelling and grammar. Coming from a country where it is expected to receive at least a high school diploma, it was a bit of a shock to find that many of my colleagues have very limited education. I have found it very rewarding, albeit time-consuming, to revise and discuss documents with my coworkers. A little effort now will help them infinitely in the future.

- Handcuff your laptop to your body and start introducing it to people as an extension of yourself. As most international organizations are strapped for cash, it is unlikely to find a good, reliable computer. Having a laptop is a luxury, but I might say a necessary luxury in order to maintain control over your work and have a haven of personal organization.

-The funder is God and therefore must be treated as such. This means that if they want you to put their logo and a paragraph of recognition on every single document, you go that extra mile and start putting it on your résumé and your Facebook. If they want you to produce monthly progress reports in addition to comprehensive follow-up reports each disbursement period, you thank them for giving you the opportunity to get carpal tunnel from typing so much. We all know the principle: Help grandma reorganize her photo album every couple of weeks and count on a fat birthday check each year. The same goes with tedious requirements from grant providers: Jump through their hoops and you, and your organization, will be rewarded.

I came to Belize after the job market forced me to realize that either I could get paid to do nothing in the USA and endure the winters of the Midwest, or I could get paid to make a difference while living in the tropics. Having majored in Spanish, I set my sights on Central America, but somehow I ended up in the only English-speaking country on the isthmus.

My placement is with Ya’axché Conservation Trust, a community-oriented organization that advances integrated landscape management for equitable development in Southern Belize through sustainable land use management, strategic advocacy and awareness, and by supporting socially innovative and economically viable enterprises. In short, Ya’axché is a unique organization that understands the need to work and cooperate with those occupying the land in order to successfully protect it.

Home sweet home for the next six months!

I receive free housing in the rural field center located in Golden Stream, Belize. It is solar-powered, quite austere, and home to tarantulas, rats, bats and fellow volunteers. I have been dabbling in project management, community resource planning, creating income-generating projects for women, freshwater monitoring, and sustainable agriculture efforts. I also hope to gain experience in sustainable development and working with women in the developing world.

Okan (Welcome!) to my blog. I hope it proves to be a helpful resource to those out there considering joining the ranks of the unpaid in Latin America!