I’ve been thinking about this post for ages. The longer it takes me to actually sit down and write it, the more incidents of merit I witness. I just want to talk about Jim/Fletch/Jaime for a bit, a little behind his back. He will of course read it when it’s published, so it’s not entirely back talking, and it’s not bad. 🙂 Thing is, I was born into a family of critics. We really can’t help that we know what’s best for everybody, nor can we help letting them know. No one is more susceptible to our “wisdom” than the people we love most. That means we can sound, um, pretty critical sometimes, but I wanted to make a departure from that and heap a little praise on a guy who deserves it. So if you don’t like gushing in any form, stop reading now.

Fletch doesn’t talk on the phone much, but I think every time he’s called a friend or family member he’s mentioned over and over this theory of his: he says he thinks only about 2% of Americans are meant to/have ready personalities to serve in the Peace Corp, and he says he just barely made that cut, if he’s included in that 2% at all. Maybe he’s right about the 2%. This is not always the easiest job in the world. You feel at once like you spend a ton of time doing a lot of nothing, but also like you’re ALWAYS on duty working. You have to learn a new language, or two sometimes. You have to live in a pretty adverse environment, in our case going without almost all amenities the average American sees as basic necessities–running and potable water in the house, flushing toilets, heat. We have fun with it a lot of the time, but I can see how many people would not be into this. And I have him to thank because I never would have been sent to such a cool far-out place as a single-female volunteer. I could cry “SEXISM!” to that, but the US government would shout back “SECURITY!” and they win. So Fletch-o effectively got me a kick-ass placement here in our little village. The thing that bothers me about his theory, and the reason for writing this post, is that I don’t think he’s being fair to himself. He’s been amazing.

I did lay down an ultimatum, that either I would go do Peace Corp and we’d talk about getting married later, or I could marry him when he wanted if he agreed that he’d come with me. In that sense, I think he sometimes feels like this wasn’t his idea. In fact, in his moments of supreme frustration, he closes his eyes and says, “My job here is to be Ruby’s cheerleader.” But really, who would have agreed to marry me AND come to Peace Corp if they didn’t, in some way, want this kind of adventure? We who know him well know that Jim is a guy with itchy feet and a taste for the new, exciting, and challenging. He didn’t come here solely on account of me; he was curious as well. I just remember him saying, “I don’t mind going to Peace Corp as long as I’m doing something relevant to my skills. I don’t want to teach people in Africa how to use condoms.” So when we learned during training that sex education, with a focus on the AIDS problem in Guatemala–including but not limited to teaching proper use of condoms– is a big part of our work here I thought, “How ironic. We won’t be doing it in Africa, but we will here Guatemala.” When we got to our site, his pre-Peace Corp words came back to me; “I can do anything as long as I have a hot shower at the end of the day.” Denied again. The one shower in all of our village is just short of spitting ice chunks. Sometimes it seems that everything about Guatemala works in direct opposition to Jim Fanjoy. He loves to work quickly and efficiently. Guatemala is SO slow and incredibly inefficient. He is the cleanest, most organized person I’ve ever met–I don’t think his filing system even has a miscellaneous folder (whereas mine might have as many as 3). Here he lives in a clubhouse that is impossible to keep clean; he gets a real shower less than 5 times a month; and I think Guatemala’s entire filing system is labeled MISCELLANEOUS. And you know what? He’s just rolled with it all after an initial moment of frustration. I think the only way this experience could be more challenging for him is if we also lived in tierra caliente–the hot lands.

It’s really easy for him to get down on himself, super annoyed and to declare, “I still can’t speak spanish!” Not true, but he has a hard time believing me when I tell him he’s improving all the time. Unfortunately since we arrived people have gotten used to me speaking well (I had a HUGE head start on this one, lets be honest), so that when Jaime starts to speak and can’t come up with a word or says something funny, they all look at him kindly, condescendingly and say, “Es que usted no muy puede hablar español.”–which translates to, “It’s just that you can’t really speak spanish,” like they want to end the phrase with pobrecito–you poor fool. And I’m not talking about this happening once a week. Sometimes people will say this like ten times in a day. The Guatemalans we live with have a habit of being very repetitive, just in case you didn’t get it the first time. This would be enough to send me, and probably most people, spiralling into self-doubt. The fact that he’s actually done little tests where he starts telling a story and realized that people just stop listening when he stops the story in the middle and no one notices, that’s incredibly disheartening. But our family here is just like any other group of people–they establish who we are, and once their ideas are fixed it’s pretty hard for them to accept the person any other way. Fletch, “no muy puede hablar español,” from the day he arrived in to Temux until the day we leave. True, when we first arrived Fletch could hardly speak at the town leaders meetings, and it was made worse when he was legitimately excited about something and wanted to talk fast. His words got all jumbled and he tripped all over his own tongue–so I translated everything for him after he attempted to get it out and all the men looked immensely confused. That was almost five months ago. Two weeks ago, we had a meeting with the town leaders to discuss options for a running water system in our village, and this is far from my area of expertise. Fletch has been in communication with an engineer from a local NGO, not me. He knows all the facts, not me. Fletch talked for hours on end at this meeting, as the leaders sat in rapt attention at his information; they had no trouble understanding his words. Towards the end I popped in with a few comments and ideas lest they begin to think they could stop communicating with me altogether (being that I’m female and all) and only talk to Fletch. I was so proud of him! No one seemed to notice this accomplishment on their own, so I pointed it out to them and clapped Fletch on the back. Look who “muy puede hablar”–can really speak Spanish now. Here he is working his way through health TALKS which seems to indicate he does actually speak to them, whether they realize it or not.

And it’s not just Spanish, though he’s fighting to learn that language in a village where people can hardly speak it, and if they do they usually have more grammatical errors in their speech than Fletch. Additionally he’s whole heartedly trying Q’anjob’al, and once again has been stuck in comparison with me. Our brains work so differently. He can reason out all sorts of technical questions I couldn’t begin to figure. I can memorize just about anything in a flash. Since learning a language, in my opinion, is about 85%-90% memorization and 10%-15% reasoning, the Fletchmeister does not have the upper hand here. But he’s doing it, and I think he’s doing a great job.

He seems to suffer from something pretty common amongst people in general (I think this might be the case with just about every person I know anyway, and I know it’s true of myself)–a distorted perspective of self in the world. It’s pretty much impossible for people to accurately view, how they fit into their environments, families, friend groups, because they’re always looking from the inside out. I’m not sure he realizes it, perhaps because he always hears a lot of kind criticism (Guatemalans avoid being rude at all costs), but it’s true that Jaime IS everybody’s darling. His darling status entitles him to lots of forgiveness when he makes language faux-pas, such as the time he told the mayor of our Municipality and everyone in the county-wide meeting that the people of Santa Eulalia are not smart enough for a trash system that was being proposed. The mayor, the doctor, the health technician were laughing so hard they were almost in tears. The word lista, depending on the context, can mean either smart or ready. He meant to say they weren’t ready for the system, but instead he just made everyone sound really dumb. HAHAHA. It was pretty funny. And of course, as far as our family goes, they LOVE him here, from the littlest of the kids to the chikay, grandma, everyone wants to hang out with Jaime. Here he is making a chicken coup, and building kites with the boys, and hanging out with Delmy, Reina’s dauther.

The family has taken to calling him icham Jaime since our family learned that we’re 11 years apart in age. That’s Q’anjob’al for Old Man Jaime. When they’re feeling especially funny they’ll call him isaj icham–lazy old man, and laugh hysterically; he’s lazy because he works on the computer instead of outside like they do. Jaime laughs and plays up their jokes. He does anything and everything to make them laugh. And I have to say I believe it is he who has endeared most of the village to us. Since he bought the traditional capishay and started wearing it around everyone’s smiles have gotten bigger when we show up. Now they ask, “Emily, donde esta tu corte?“–Emily where’s your corte? If Jaime is dressing like them, why am I not also? 🙂

Not only does he keep them laughing, but when things get annoying or frustrating or just downright suck, he manages to keep me laughing also. He is my cheerleader, but that is far from his only job. And in those moments I think he’s kind of a god-send. I thought for years that this part of my life would be something I’d do alone, and now I can’t imagine it as anything other than what it is now. This experience of ours has turned into one solid team effort. We are, in fact, referred to by many of our fellow PCV’s as Team Fanjoy. So if he ever tries to tell any of you he’s just here to support me in something I wanted to do, you should know that is true, but he’s doing SO MUCH more than just that. He for sure fits into whatever percentage of people are meant to PCV’s, as he proves ever day he’s here being one. You go, Jim Fanjoy.