Adam Ventures

Last week I went on a trip to my new site for the next 24 months of my life. I will live in Aldeaan outlying rural village of a larger municipality Loma Linda, El Palmar, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. (Aldeaan outlying rural village of a larger municipality means “small town/town that isn’t a municipality”. El Palmar is the name of the municipality. Quetzaltenango is the departamentoit's analogous to a state in the United States Loma Linda is in.)

We started out, though, on Monday with the Meeting of the Counterparts. On the day before our counterparts were to travel to Antigua in order to meet us on Monday and take us our sites on Tuesday. I had two friendly and helpful counterparts who, as is common with people from smaller towns, were kind of shy.

Monday was a day for Peace Corps to set their expectations for the PCVPeace Corps Volunteer, an active volunteer serving in country-counterpart relationship and for the PCVPeace Corps Volunteer, an active volunteer serving in country and counterpart(s) to get to know each other. Tuesday was a day for our counterparts to help us with our luggage and make it safely to our site. On Tuesday, we left the Peace Corps offices at 11:30am and finally made it to our site at 7:00pm after a long and hot drive in un-airconditioned buses along the southern coast.

Coast, I said? Yes, coast. My site is technically on the Boca Costathe strip of land in between the mountainous highlands and the southern coast, "The Mouth of the Coast", a name given to the spit of land in between the mountainous highlands and the coast. My site, however, is spared much of the heat and humidity of living on the coast because it’s up in the mountains at 4000ft of elevation and situated to the south of an 85-acre cloud forest. From the nearest cabeceramunicipality or departmental capital city (Retalhuleu) it’s an hour’s ride north on a pot-holey paved road that eventually turns into a pot-holey dirt road. About 3 kilometers from my town you have to cross/ford a river. The river is thankfully low but we haven’t yet hit the rainy season. After you cross the river you have to go up switchbacks, which are basically hairpin turns in the side of the mountain that help make it easier to get up and down. At the top of the hill (Loma Linda means “Pretty Hill”) you find my new home.

Aldea Loma Linda's main street

What you see above is the main street of my town and more or less the only street. There’s one other dirt road that branches off this street but few people live on that street. Behind the camera is the town’s only Catholic church which the town has since outgrown. The yellow house on the right is the 4-room albergueour 3-room hostel where tourists can spend the night where tourists can stay when they visit. Behind that is the beneficioa building where they process coffee from the coffee fruit through to toasting, where they process coffee. The paved area is where they put the beans to dry after they have been depulped. The white building at the very end of the road is the school and marks the other end of the town.

A little bit about my town:

• population: 1200
• language spoken: 100% Spanish, 5% K’iche, 5% Q’anjob’al
• elevation: 1250 meters (4100 feet)
• founded: 1970
• roads: 1.5

A little bit about what I’ll be doing:

• worm composting (we take the unused coffee pulp and the worms turn it into organic, potent fertilizer)
• gardening (radishes, cilantro, and various other herbs and vegetables)
• trail maintenance and construction in the surrounding forests
• bird watching/aviturismobird watching (Quetzals!)
• environmental education in the schools
• teaching English in the school

Resplendent Quetzal (Pharomachrus mocinno). Photo by Steve Bird

Needless to say I’m pretty pumped about my new site. My project sounds amazing! I’m sure there will be upsets and downtimes but I’ll just have to stop and take a look around.

The only thing I’m not looking forward to are the cold showers. And if that’s my biggest worry, then I have it made.