[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, so, yeah, quite, quite, quite challenging and especially hard to do if you didn't have a four wheel drive.

[Assistant] Mm hmm. And if you kept going north from there, how long would it take you to get to some other place that people might know about?

[User] Yeah. I mean, there's not much north of Chisec. You would go kind of wind around north on the road that eventually was paved all the way to Flores, Petén, which is the kind of tourist, is the capital of the Department of Petén and kind of the tourist hub. That from Chisec now with the paved road is maybe four hours, three or four hours. But back then before the paved road would have been 5 to 8 hours. There's one sort of town about the size of Chisec in between, the town of Sayaxché, which was another kind of sort of sleepy municipal town center. And a lot of small what they call aldeas or villages along the way.

[Assistant] So you're, you were greeted by the two volunteers who were already there or?

[User] I think eventually. I think we got in pretty late that first night. I think I remember meeting Kelly pretty soon after. Shonda was originally, I think, placed in a cooperative kind of agro-aquarian cooperative outside of the capital, so she, outside of Chisec, the municipal seat. So she wasn't living there full time initially. She later then did move into Chisec.

[Assistant] And how did settling in go in terms of your living situation and your job?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah. I mean, there's not much north of Chisec. You would go kind of wind around north on the road that eventually was paved all the way to Flores, Petén, which is the kind of tourist, is the capital of the Department of Petén and kind of the tourist hub. That from Chisec now with the paved road is maybe four hours, three or four hours. But back then before the paved road would have been 5 to 8 hours. There's one sort of town about the size of Chisec in between, the town of Sayaxché, which was another kind of sort of sleepy municipal town center. And a lot of small what they call aldeas or villages along the way.

[Assistant] So you're, you were greeted by the two volunteers who were already there or?

[User] I think eventually. I think we got in pretty late that first night. I think I remember meeting Kelly pretty soon after. Shonda was originally, I think, placed in a cooperative kind of agro-aquarian cooperative outside of the capital, so she, outside of Chisec, the municipal seat. So she wasn't living there full time initially. She later then did move into Chisec.

[Assistant] And how did settling in go in terms of your living situation and your job?

[User] Yeah, so the living situation was, um, it was fine. There was water, I think 2 to 3 times a week. And so had to pretty quickly get used to, you know, not flushing the toilet very often and keeping buckets of water nearby.

[Assistant] You had your own toilet?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I think eventually. I think we got in pretty late that first night. I think I remember meeting Kelly pretty soon after. Shonda was originally, I think, placed in a cooperative kind of agro-aquarian cooperative outside of the capital, so she, outside of Chisec, the municipal seat. So she wasn't living there full time initially. She later then did move into Chisec.

[Assistant] And how did settling in go in terms of your living situation and your job?

[User] Yeah, so the living situation was, um, it was fine. There was water, I think 2 to 3 times a week. And so had to pretty quickly get used to, you know, not flushing the toilet very often and keeping buckets of water nearby.

[Assistant] You had your own toilet?

[User] I did have my own toilet and shower. And those worked when there was water. Otherwise, you had sort of buckets of water that you could use. But you had to make sure you kept them full. You know, it's interesting, Chisec is a rain forest, so there's quite a bit of precipitation. But during the three month kind of dry season, water becomes quite precious because the topography, and this ended up becoming really fundamental, literally and figuratively to the work I did, the topography of Chisec is somewhat unique. It's this karst limestone topography where the ground is incredibly porous. And so water seeps down from the, from the ground level into aquifers that are quite deep and often inaccessible. So people needed to rely on rain catchment and other sort of ways to get access to water during the dry season in particular.

[Assistant] Mm hmm. And how did the municipality greet you? Did they have a clear idea of what you were supposed to be doing?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah, um.

[Assistant] Really.

[User] So that was, you know, that was a kind of a splash of.

[Assistant] Lynched because you were seen as?

[User]
These communities, as I later came to learn and appreciate, had been through an incredible amount of violence in the not so distant past. This was, you know, I was there in 2001 and the peace accords had been signed in 2004 [1994]. The last massacre of the civil war occurred in a community in Chisec in, uh, in 1993. So sorry, the peace accords were signed in 1994, yeah, and the last massacre in 1993. So, you know, these communities, these, the individuals in these communities, had themselves been uprooted. Many of them had family members who had died. I later found out that there were family members who had killed other people's family members within those communities or had ratted them out, you know, as guerilla sympathizers to the military or vice versa. So there were really, really complex, you know, social dynamics that I really just didn't fully understand, probably still don't fully understand.

And the other thing I learned quickly and again became another one of the kind of foundational pieces of my experience in Guatemala was in Chisec, was that they didn't, despite having been on the land for some time, a number of generations, didn't have legal title to the land. That was something that all of the communities in the region were very sensitive to and were, you know, the first priority that they had was to get legal title to their land in order to ensure that they would not be displaced again, that their children could inherit the land from them. And so for someone from the outside to come in and all of a sudden start talking about all these resources that they had and how valuable they were and, you know, I think was, um, raised a lot of concerns.

[Assistant] So you visited these three sites, one after another to start off or?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] So Counterpart was only involved in the tourism stuff. So this was Idaho State as the USAID recipient working with APROBA-SANK, our local NGO, as the local employer.

[Assistant] OK, yeah.

[User]
So that. So, Anthony, Tony Stock, kind of helped us develop the proposal for that and get it approved. And he ended up coming and living in Chisec for about six months and then he left and then Kelly, who had finished his Peace Corps tenure by that point and had actually gone back to Sarasota, Florida, where he was from, agreed to come back and work for about six months as the country director because Anthony's sabbatical had finished and he had to go back to teaching in Pocatello. And then after Kelly's tenure ended, I ended up taking that project on for about six months after my Peace Corps tenure had finished. And so I ended up spending about three years in Guatemala, two and one half of which were Peace Corps between the three month training, the two year deployment, and then three months of training the next batch of environmental management volunteers.

I then spent six months still in Chisec but with my own pickup truck and liberation to be able to drive it, which was always something that was verboten as a Peace Corps volunteer. And upgraded from the Catholic Church for the last six months to a separate house. So that was kind of the capstone to my three years was doing that project.

[Assistant] When you left, somebody else came on?

[User] Yeah. As a Peace Corps volunteer?

[Assistant] Yeah. Or whatever, what happened with the?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
So that. So, Anthony, Tony Stock, kind of helped us develop the proposal for that and get it approved. And he ended up coming and living in Chisec for about six months and then he left and then Kelly, who had finished his Peace Corps tenure by that point and had actually gone back to Sarasota, Florida, where he was from, agreed to come back and work for about six months as the country director because Anthony's sabbatical had finished and he had to go back to teaching in Pocatello. And then after Kelly's tenure ended, I ended up taking that project on for about six months after my Peace Corps tenure had finished. And so I ended up spending about three years in Guatemala, two and one half of which were Peace Corps between the three month training, the two year deployment, and then three months of training the next batch of environmental management volunteers.

I then spent six months still in Chisec but with my own pickup truck and liberation to be able to drive it, which was always something that was verboten as a Peace Corps volunteer. And upgraded from the Catholic Church for the last six months to a separate house. So that was kind of the capstone to my three years was doing that project.

[Assistant] When you left, somebody else came on?

[User] Yeah. As a Peace Corps volunteer?

[Assistant] Yeah. Or whatever, what happened with the?

[User] Oh, with the land titling project?

[Assistant] With the jaguar protected area.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The communities got title through the project. Yeah. It was under the same president, Alfonso Portillo, who was subsequently arrested and convicted of narco trafficking and murder, I think. Or at least murder, anyway.

[Assistant] One of the several former presidents of Guatemala who are in jail.

[User] Yeah, exactly. It's a long tradition.

[Assistant] Well, these are really intriguing and really valuable activities. Um, tell us a little bit more about SANK and how you got that going.

[User]
So we started with a youth group called the Movimiento Juvenil de Chisec, or MOJUCHI, that sort of Ernesto and Kelly and I kind of set up to be a place to try and kind of build leadership among some of the sort of junior high, high school age students in Chisec. Many of whom I had gotten to know because I was doing some education in the schools as part of my environmental management project. Many of whom, of course, Ernesto knew just through the local connections. And so we had projects that we did with MOJUCHI. We got a Peace Corps grant to build a playground, for example, and for three months we would wake up super early every morning with these kids and go, you know, mix our own cement and create playground equipment.

And yeah, and so basically that kind of together with the need for a local implementer for some of these projects that I was starting up around ecotourism, um, led to the development of this NGO. And so we, you know, went through all the legal process of associating under Guatemalan law and creating bylaws and mission and all of that kind of stuff.

[Assistant] Was there a board?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And it just struck me as very thoughtful and a very sweet guy. And so he ended up. becoming a partner for SANK. And as I said, I did some consulting with them after I left. And I think to this day, SANK may still be doing some work with Veterinarians Without Borders.

[Assistant] Hmm. Interesting. Um. I do recall hearing something about unionizing the shoeshine boys.

[User]
Yeah, so that was another little project. So that was really Kelley's initiative primarily. But we worked in this municipal center that had been rebuilt, kind of white elephant project at some point, and stood kind of on a hill in the middle of the town in front of the park. And, you know, one of the few kind of big buildings in town separate from the church and the hospital. And so it was sort of a gathering, central gathering place. Um, these, I mentioned communities would come, you know, travel hours and hours with their smudged up handwritten solicitude asking for a road or a water well or whatever. And they would want to come in and see the mayor. But, you know, they'd come with their dusty boots and want to make sure they were looking their best before meeting with the concejales and the mayor.

And so they would, there were these shoe shiners that were all little kids who would hang out and shine shoes and, you know, so they were often kind of bored and just hanging out. And so we would chat with them. And, you know, it was very notable that in a culture and community that was extremely conservative, these kids from a very young age had to learn to be very social, you know, kind of aggressive, to be able to convince people to procure their services and be sort of quick on their feet.

[Assistant] Uh huh.

[User] And so they were quite bright, but they were also obviously not in school because they were there shining shoes. And so they were kind of the poorest of the poor from some of the poorest of the poor families.

[Assistant] How old would they be, do you think?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Amy.

[Assistant] A-N-D-I-E?

[User] Amy. A-M-Y.

[Assistant] Amy Olson.

[User]
Yep, who also kind of became involved in a number of these projects. And then of course, Kelly came back to run the Idaho State Project. So we had kind of a big group after a while. And then when I left, I trained the group of incoming PCVs, environmental management PCVs, as I departed. And then one of them became my replacement in Chisec, which was great. And then we actually had a second environmental management volunteer who we put in a nearby community to work with some of these communities that were getting land title. So there ended up being quite a few Peace Corps volunteers in the region.

And one of the volunteers who later came in, uh, was a woman by the name of Megan Ybarra, who ended up coming back to the region to do her PhD fieldwork in anthropology around land conflicts, including studying the Candelaria conflict. And she's the one who sort of looped me back into the situation with Arturo and the ongoing conflict there. And she's now a professor of sociology at University of Washington in Seattle.

[Assistant] Oh my. Have you read her dissertation?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Amy. A-M-Y.

[Assistant] Amy Olson.

[User]
Yep, who also kind of became involved in a number of these projects. And then of course, Kelly came back to run the Idaho State Project. So we had kind of a big group after a while. And then when I left, I trained the group of incoming PCVs, environmental management PCVs, as I departed. And then one of them became my replacement in Chisec, which was great. And then we actually had a second environmental management volunteer who we put in a nearby community to work with some of these communities that were getting land title. So there ended up being quite a few Peace Corps volunteers in the region.

And one of the volunteers who later came in, uh, was a woman by the name of Megan Ybarra, who ended up coming back to the region to do her PhD fieldwork in anthropology around land conflicts, including studying the Candelaria conflict. And she's the one who sort of looped me back into the situation with Arturo and the ongoing conflict there. And she's now a professor of sociology at University of Washington in Seattle.

[Assistant] Oh my. Have you read her dissertation?

[User] I did read a version of it, I believe, back in the day because, yeah, she had, she had interviewed me for it and had said it's a. It became part of a broader book that she has since published.

[Assistant] Ah. Uh huh.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
Yep, who also kind of became involved in a number of these projects. And then of course, Kelly came back to run the Idaho State Project. So we had kind of a big group after a while. And then when I left, I trained the group of incoming PCVs, environmental management PCVs, as I departed. And then one of them became my replacement in Chisec, which was great. And then we actually had a second environmental management volunteer who we put in a nearby community to work with some of these communities that were getting land title. So there ended up being quite a few Peace Corps volunteers in the region.

And one of the volunteers who later came in, uh, was a woman by the name of Megan Ybarra, who ended up coming back to the region to do her PhD fieldwork in anthropology around land conflicts, including studying the Candelaria conflict. And she's the one who sort of looped me back into the situation with Arturo and the ongoing conflict there. And she's now a professor of sociology at University of Washington in Seattle.

[Assistant] Oh my. Have you read her dissertation?

[User] I did read a version of it, I believe, back in the day because, yeah, she had, she had interviewed me for it and had said it's a. It became part of a broader book that she has since published.

[Assistant] Ah. Uh huh.

[User] Yeah. There's a number of folks who I met through that period of time who are still involved in the region. Another guy, Brent Woodfield [Woodfill], was one of the archeologists working with Vanderbilt around Cancuén, specializing in cave archeology, who's now a professor at Woodford [Winthrop] University in North [South] Carolina. So yeah, there continue to be a number of folks from that period who are still engaged in such.

[Assistant] Uh huh. Interesting. Very interesting. Anything further about any of the other volunteers in the area? Did you have much contact with any other volunteers or were you pretty much in your own little world there?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It moved to Antigua, I think, or maybe Milpas Altas, I'm not sure. But in any event, it's, you wouldn't want to spend much time in Guatemala City if you didn't have to. So we would all go to Antigua and hang out there and go out to the bars and stuff. So, you know, I, I wasn't totally disconnected from my cohort and from other volunteers, but I was probably more removed than most.

[Assistant] Uh huh. Yeah. When you were about to leave you, they asked you to work on the training program for the next group.

[User] Mm hmm.

[Assistant] Did you, did you leave and go back to the States and then come back to Guatemala? Did you just stay around? How did that work?

[User] Yeah, I think I stayed. I did go back to the States at one point because I had to. I remember I had to go to Pocatello, Idaho, to kind of get all my HR paperwork done. I remember also that that visit also served for Tony to try and convince me to become a, you know, to apply to become a PhD student in cultural anthropology there which I, you know, was, there were some things that were attractive about that. But ultimately, I didn't think I had the attention span for doctoral work. So I ended up applying to law school from Chisec. And you know, and then ended up going after I, after I got back but.

[Assistant] Did you do the LSAT again?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Was it just once?

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] Kit came down. I had a number of visitors. So you guys came down. It was Christmas, I think.

[Assistant] Christmas, yep.

[User] One year. And then we went up to.

[Assistant] Killed the turkeys.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] One year. And then we went up to.

[Assistant] Killed the turkeys.

[User] Tikal. We killed some chickens, I think, and then went up to Tikal and then went over to Belize. That was a nice trip. And then Kate had come down separately.

[Assistant] Sister Kate.

[User]
My sister, who had just graduated from college herself and came down to take some language classes and we traveled a bit. My cousin Rick came down at one point. A number of friends, my friend Byron Carr came down and happened to be there during 9/11, so was stuck there for a little bit. Um. Yeah. So we had a number of visitors, a group from Northwestern actually. Byron, who had been two years younger than me at Northwestern, had such a kind of impactful experience that he went back and helped recruit a group from Northwestern that came down and worked with me and with SANK as kind of a mission trip, so that was great.

We had another person who was from Northwestern who ended up coming down to work with us for a little while, a guy named Jeff Seelbach, who was a radio television film student, and he came to help us because we were trying to create a local community television station. This was another sort of side project of ours and we had gotten a grant from Apple and gotten some equipment. And he helped us kind of get it set up and train kids in how to video and edit and stuff like that.

[Assistant] And that really worked for a while.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Tikal. We killed some chickens, I think, and then went up to Tikal and then went over to Belize. That was a nice trip. And then Kate had come down separately.

[Assistant] Sister Kate.

[User]
My sister, who had just graduated from college herself and came down to take some language classes and we traveled a bit. My cousin Rick came down at one point. A number of friends, my friend Byron Carr came down and happened to be there during 9/11, so was stuck there for a little bit. Um. Yeah. So we had a number of visitors, a group from Northwestern actually. Byron, who had been two years younger than me at Northwestern, had such a kind of impactful experience that he went back and helped recruit a group from Northwestern that came down and worked with me and with SANK as kind of a mission trip, so that was great.

We had another person who was from Northwestern who ended up coming down to work with us for a little while, a guy named Jeff Seelbach, who was a radio television film student, and he came to help us because we were trying to create a local community television station. This was another sort of side project of ours and we had gotten a grant from Apple and gotten some equipment. And he helped us kind of get it set up and train kids in how to video and edit and stuff like that.

[Assistant] And that really worked for a while.

[User] It worked for a little while. So yeah, there were a number of outside visitors who came in and I would, you know, if I needed a break, I could always go to Coban or go into Antigua. So I don't, I don't remember feeling too isolated, even though I was physically somewhat isolated.

[Assistant] How was your health during all this period?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It worked for a little while. So yeah, there were a number of outside visitors who came in and I would, you know, if I needed a break, I could always go to Coban or go into Antigua. So I don't, I don't remember feeling too isolated, even though I was physically somewhat isolated.

[Assistant] How was your health during all this period?

[User]
I was probably at my most physically fit in terms of, you know, I was living in a rainforest. It was hotter. It was very hot. I didn't do a ton of physical manual labor because I was working in the municipality. But between playing soccer in the evenings, the little pickup games and projects like this playground project or the trail building projects that we would have that I always wanted to not just supervise but be there and actually help work on. I got a lot of exercise. The only hiccups were dengue fever, which I got twice, I believe, although in neither case were they able to confirm it through blood tests. But that's fairly typical with dengue. The second time was the most serious. And I was fortunate because I had actually traveled into Guatemala City before the fever manifested.

I was actually there to pick up Jeff Seelbach, who I just mentioned. And I was staying with Brian Ruder, my USAID friend. And I woke up that morning just feeling terrible and I had a really high fever and I was vomiting and diarrhea. So Brian helped me get to the local private hospital, which is where the Peace Corps volunteers would go. And fortunately, I think, picked up Jeff and kind of gave him a place to sleep for a couple of nights while I was in the hospital. But I was there with a 104 degree fever for, I think I was in the hospital for three days, maybe four.

[Assistant] In Guatemala City?

[User] In Guatemala City.

[Assistant] Was it a private hospital, government hospital?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The other time, I was also in Guatemala City. Fortunately, I didn't have to be hospitalized but had sort of similar symptoms. It wasn't quite as bad. But it was very familiar when it happened the second time.

[Assistant] Hmm. Well, no other major health problems?

[User] No, no other major health problems. I mean, somewhat miraculous for the kind of amount of caves that I was stuffing myself into and kind of cliffs that we were scrambling down. I never had any kind of major physical, you know, I didn't break any bones or twisted ankles or anything like that.

[Assistant] And nothing has popped up since you left Guatemala and resulting from Guatemala?

[User] No, I don't think so. You know, and I know Kelly actually has since had malaria, which he never knew he had in Guatemala. He got it and probably just dismissed it as a fever of some sort and, you know, kind of sweated it out. And then, you know, eventually after coming back to Sarasota, got very, very sick and fortunately thought to tell the doctors that he had lived for a while in a malarial area. And they diagnosed it as malaria.

[Assistant] Mm hmm. You mentioned 9/11. It would just be interesting. How did you learn about 9/11?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, no other major health problems. I mean, somewhat miraculous for the kind of amount of caves that I was stuffing myself into and kind of cliffs that we were scrambling down. I never had any kind of major physical, you know, I didn't break any bones or twisted ankles or anything like that.

[Assistant] And nothing has popped up since you left Guatemala and resulting from Guatemala?

[User] No, I don't think so. You know, and I know Kelly actually has since had malaria, which he never knew he had in Guatemala. He got it and probably just dismissed it as a fever of some sort and, you know, kind of sweated it out. And then, you know, eventually after coming back to Sarasota, got very, very sick and fortunately thought to tell the doctors that he had lived for a while in a malarial area. And they diagnosed it as malaria.

[Assistant] Mm hmm. You mentioned 9/11. It would just be interesting. How did you learn about 9/11?

[User] Yeah, so I was mentioning my friend Byron Carr was visiting at that time and September 11th happens to be my birthday. So that morning at about 5:00 in the morning, he, Byron, was staying with me in my little Catholic Church room. He and I were both literally kind of jumped out of bed at the sound of fireworks, sort of cascading in the narrow hallway outside of my door. Because the youth group, the MOJUCHI youth group kids had come to serenade me, which is a kind of customary thing to do on your birthday. So we awoke to a start. And then went out and, you know, had a little had some cake with the kids and then kind of went back to sleep or at least to bed for a little bit. And then I remember, you know, it was probably 8:00 in the morning or so, we were kind of making our way up from my, from the church to the municipal building. And somebody sort of came up and said, did you hear all the buildings are falling?

[Assistant] Some Guatemalan friends?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah. So there was. So I think initially it was I would go into Coban once a week for my language classes or whatever and I would just do my email at an internet cafe while I was there.

[Assistant] They had an internet cafe there?

[User] Yeah, there there was. And there were these one or two private satellite phones, basically entrepreneurs in Chisec who you could pay however many quetzales per minute and make calls. I don't know that we made international calls. I remember using that to talk to some other Peace Corps volunteers within the country. But eventually sort of towards the middle of my time there, USAID actually funded the installation of a satellite internet cafe that became kind of a. You could go there and pay per hour to log on. And the connection was pretty spotty because if it was cloudy, you didn't get signal. And even if it was clear, it was still satellite upload speeds, which were pretty slow. And I remember being very frustrated, completing my law school application from there because it would constantly fail to upload and then delete.

[Assistant] Oh my gosh.

[User] And I'd have to rewrite it all and just spend hours and hours at one point doing that. And then towards the end of my time, cell phone towers came in. And so you could do these prepaid cell phone plans. And so I had a cheap, so I think I had a cell phone pretty much from when I got there because I, you know, in the training center, we had cell signal there. And even when I would go to Coban, I would have a cell signal and I could get calls for free, including international calls. Making calls, of course, you had to pay for the minutes and then if it was international, you'd have to pay above and beyond that.

[Assistant] And who knew you were going to get a call?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And just anecdotally, including from Arturo, the guy from the community near Candelaria who's here now, it's just become much more common. And I think it's partly that continuous population pressure. It's partly the fact that, um, this is something new from when I was there. Apparently there's been a huge influx of African palm plantations. So basically large industrial.

[Assistant] Oh, really?

[User] Palm, plantation palm oil companies have come in and bought up a lot of this land, again from communities, some of whom had title, some who didn't.

[Assistant] Right.

[User] And then created these big palm plantations. And the people, you know, sell the land because they see this big windfall of cash, but they don't think about what they're going to do next. And they might be promised, you know, a seasonal labor job on the palm plantation, but you're making minimum wage and it's only certain number of hours a week for certain months of the year. And it's not enough to support a family. And so quickly, people realize that they can't sustain themselves and they need to figure out Plan B, so it's a real challenging situation.

[Assistant] Are there Peace Corps volunteers still in Guatemala?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Palm, plantation palm oil companies have come in and bought up a lot of this land, again from communities, some of whom had title, some who didn't.

[Assistant] Right.

[User] And then created these big palm plantations. And the people, you know, sell the land because they see this big windfall of cash, but they don't think about what they're going to do next. And they might be promised, you know, a seasonal labor job on the palm plantation, but you're making minimum wage and it's only certain number of hours a week for certain months of the year. And it's not enough to support a family. And so quickly, people realize that they can't sustain themselves and they need to figure out Plan B, so it's a real challenging situation.

[Assistant] Are there Peace Corps volunteers still in Guatemala?

[User] Yeah, I believe so. I mean, I'm certain there are still in Guatemala. I don't know for sure about Chisec. But I guess I would be surprised if there weren't.

[Assistant] And do you ever, in other RPCV gatherings of Guatemala volunteers, you ever participated?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And then created these big palm plantations. And the people, you know, sell the land because they see this big windfall of cash, but they don't think about what they're going to do next. And they might be promised, you know, a seasonal labor job on the palm plantation, but you're making minimum wage and it's only certain number of hours a week for certain months of the year. And it's not enough to support a family. And so quickly, people realize that they can't sustain themselves and they need to figure out Plan B, so it's a real challenging situation.

[Assistant] Are there Peace Corps volunteers still in Guatemala?

[User] Yeah, I believe so. I mean, I'm certain there are still in Guatemala. I don't know for sure about Chisec. But I guess I would be surprised if there weren't.

[Assistant] And do you ever, in other RPCV gatherings of Guatemala volunteers, you ever participated?

[User] Yeah, there are occasionally. I mean, I think I'm in. I think if I was on Facebook more, I would probably be more aware of. There was for a while. I remember when I first came back, before I went to law school, there was a number of folks from my cohort who came back to D.C. looking for jobs and trying to figure out what was next. And then once I went to law school and kind of got disconnected from that community, there were a few people who I would occasionally still be in touch with. Shonda, for example, lives in Hagerstown. So she's not immediately in the area, but not too far away. But I have not I don't regularly connect with RPCVs from Guatemala.

[Assistant] All right. Well, this has been, I think, a fascinating interview. And do you have any things that we, that you'd like to add?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Because you don't want the waste to be concentrated and then seeping into these underground aquifers which are all interconnected in different ways.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] So, you know, realized this kind of back of the envelope feasibility study that that wasn't going to be something that the municipality is going to be affording anytime soon. Um. So but one thing we did do that kind of stemmed out of that was I got in touch with the University of San Carlos, which is a university system in Guatemala and some people there who were interested in studying karst from the geology department. And we ended up putting together a symposium in Coban on water and waste management in karst ecosystems. And we brought, there were people who came from Costa Rica and from Guatemala City. And yeah, it was just a really random thing that I ended up basically putting together.

[Assistant] Uh huh.

[User] Together with this one professor. And it was like a really cool meeting. And, you know, I think it really, I hope that it sort of helped kind of highlight the need to really think this through from a geology perspective, kind of ecosystem perspective. So yeah, so that was kind of another little random thing.

[Assistant] Do you know whether what exists now in terms of?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] So, you know, realized this kind of back of the envelope feasibility study that that wasn't going to be something that the municipality is going to be affording anytime soon. Um. So but one thing we did do that kind of stemmed out of that was I got in touch with the University of San Carlos, which is a university system in Guatemala and some people there who were interested in studying karst from the geology department. And we ended up putting together a symposium in Coban on water and waste management in karst ecosystems. And we brought, there were people who came from Costa Rica and from Guatemala City. And yeah, it was just a really random thing that I ended up basically putting together.

[Assistant] Uh huh.

[User] Together with this one professor. And it was like a really cool meeting. And, you know, I think it really, I hope that it sort of helped kind of highlight the need to really think this through from a geology perspective, kind of ecosystem perspective. So yeah, so that was kind of another little random thing.

[Assistant] Do you know whether what exists now in terms of?

[User] In terms of waste management?

[Assistant] In karst areas?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Together with this one professor. And it was like a really cool meeting. And, you know, I think it really, I hope that it sort of helped kind of highlight the need to really think this through from a geology perspective, kind of ecosystem perspective. So yeah, so that was kind of another little random thing.

[Assistant] Do you know whether what exists now in terms of?

[User] In terms of waste management?

[Assistant] In karst areas?

[User] You know, I don't. You know, I mean, you know, Florida is very karstic. Cuba is karstic. There are a number of areas that kind of have karst topography. So there are solutions out there that have been developed. But whether they are appropriate for, you know, this kind of municipal budget is, I think, not clear, or certainly wasn't clear when I was there. So, yeah. I don't, you know, I don't, I don't know what, if anything, has come out of the University of San Carlos Geology Department in terms of whether they've continued doing any work on this.

[Assistant] Well, it's amazing. It's amazing how things, sort of one thing leads to another. And if you're active and aggressive and find the right people. Um, no Mayan ruins in Chisec?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] In terms of waste management?

[Assistant] In karst areas?

[User] You know, I don't. You know, I mean, you know, Florida is very karstic. Cuba is karstic. There are a number of areas that kind of have karst topography. So there are solutions out there that have been developed. But whether they are appropriate for, you know, this kind of municipal budget is, I think, not clear, or certainly wasn't clear when I was there. So, yeah. I don't, you know, I don't, I don't know what, if anything, has come out of the University of San Carlos Geology Department in terms of whether they've continued doing any work on this.

[Assistant] Well, it's amazing. It's amazing how things, sort of one thing leads to another. And if you're active and aggressive and find the right people. Um, no Mayan ruins in Chisec?

[User] In the town center?

[Assistant] Yeah, or around it.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] You know, I don't. You know, I mean, you know, Florida is very karstic. Cuba is karstic. There are a number of areas that kind of have karst topography. So there are solutions out there that have been developed. But whether they are appropriate for, you know, this kind of municipal budget is, I think, not clear, or certainly wasn't clear when I was there. So, yeah. I don't, you know, I don't, I don't know what, if anything, has come out of the University of San Carlos Geology Department in terms of whether they've continued doing any work on this.

[Assistant] Well, it's amazing. It's amazing how things, sort of one thing leads to another. And if you're active and aggressive and find the right people. Um, no Mayan ruins in Chisec?

[User] In the town center?

[Assistant] Yeah, or around it.

[User] Um, there were plenty of Mayan ruins. Yeah, but it says 22 minutes which I'm not, we've definitely been talking for longer than that. Yeah. I mean, there were plenty of ruins, I don't think a ton of in Chisec itself, but just outside, I mean, they were literally everywhere. I mean, you could basically just be driving and you would see mounds. I mean, by the time I was done, I'd spent enough time with archeologists that you could kind of you'd be like, oh, that's that. That is, that was a building that had now just looks like a little hill. But that hill doesn't make sense here topological, topographically. That's a settlement.

[Assistant] Well, thank you, Jason. It's been a great interview and I appreciate your taking the time to do it.