A Trip to Pacamán

The van pulled to a stop in front of the closed municipal gate. A large group of men stood about idly, looking like they had no intentions of opening it. This did not bode well for my plan for the day, to travel to the remote community of Pacamán, deep in the mountains some 25 kilometers south of Ixtahuacán, to conduct a needs assessment. I had left my house only three minutes prior. But Juan, the driver, chatted the men up briefly and they allowed us to pass through. The microbus whizzed along the gravel road through the highlands of Alaska, and I enjoyed the vistas of cornfields, villages, and mountain panoramas, all drenched in fresh morning sunlight. Half an hour later in Chikisis I changed over to a pickup, and hanging off the back I braced myself for the slow grinding descent to Tzamjuyub. Winding down the valley, I looked out over the adobe villages enshrouded with a veil of smoke from the morning fires. In Tzamjuyub I waited until a trio of campesinos arrived to walk me to Pacamán.

We hiked down to the river bed and greeting the women who were washing their clothes. Neither of the three men spoke much Spanish, but with the help of my nascent K’iche we managed to carry a conversation. Arriving in their village an hour later, I was ushered into a hut and given a Pepsi. They thanked me for my efforts, and told me that they needed new houses. I told them that I saw that their houses were not nice, but they I had thought we were going to have a meeting with the whole village to discuss all the needs they face, then decide on a course of action. It’s fine, they told me, we’ll go to the school and the people will come. But they will agree with us that we want new houses.

The next two hours made mockery of the community needs assessment techniques that the Peace Corps taught me earlier this year. Vainly I struggled to get the people to discuss their problems and identify ways to improve their lives. I tried to get them to draw pictures, to make lists, to talk amongst themselves and present back to the group. No dice. Finally about halfway through a woman piped up that it would be nice to have some free fertilizer as well. But really houses are the important part.

Over the course of the day I tried to explain, in different ways, the problems with trying to do a housing project: the lack of funding for such ventures, the high budgets, the logic of development agencies. All fell on deaf ears, a combination of not understanding Spanish and not wanting to listen. In the afternoon I went to a private house with community leaders to continue dialoging, and they gave me a lunch of tamalitos and fried chicken. We continued to wrangle for a couple more hours, the men asking me to write an application for them right then and there, and I endeavoring to explain the steps of the project process and why that wasn’t even a possibility.
Finally I told them I had to leave and that I would investigate potential funding sources and return in the New Year. I set off on the dusty road back up the valley towards Tzamjuyub. But along the way nearly every village I passed had a group of people sitting out in front of it, waiting for me to ask when I was coming to their town to see how miserable their houses were. I distributed my cellphone number, promising to visit other communities a different day and pleading in my broken K’iche that they find a Spanish speaker to call me and make the arrangements. In Tzamjuyub I was welcomed by the leader of the local development committee, given small breads and a pineapple soda. I again expressed my willingness to visit the town and hear their desires, but insisted I had to get out to the road to wait for a pickup back to the highlands at the top of the valley. “Pickup? At this hour? Too late,” I was informed.
I set out at rapid pace, motoring to the top of the mountain as if someone’s very life depended on it. I knew that if I could hike the four miles to Chikisis in less than an hour, I had a chance at catching the last microbus back to the highway. Otherwise, it would be a further 2 ½ hours to Ixtahuacán.

63 minutes later and sweat pouring from my person, I arrived just in time to flag down a friend’s pickup. I collapsed in the bed and pondered the day’s events, considering that I had committed myself to visit an additional five communities in the distant valley.