Intern update: Reflections on my time at IMAP

BTS Intern, Georgia working at the IMAP offices in San Lucas Tolíman.

Intern update: Reflections on my time at IMAP ~ reverse culture shock and how you can get to know a person through translating their words (not in that order)

When I began what affectionately became known as “grant work,” it was bittersweet. Inevitably, it took time away from being outside and working on the land—this, to me, was bitter. I am not a computer person; I don’t function well working long hours in front of a screen. The sweetness came later, when I began a project translating a grant application, which entailed working directly under the director of IMAP, Inés.

Inés is a calm and humble powerhouse of a woman. She is a boy mom, a daily 5 a.m. gym-goer, and the owner of a fabulous earring collection. I took her words and translated them to English, proofread, and formatted the application. In retrospect, this translation work gave me the best insight into the mission of IMAP. For the first time, all my daily activities became contextualized by timelines, budgets, and mission statements. Often while working, sitting on the opposite side of Inés’ desk, I would find myself in awe of the power of her words. She writes with clarity, conviction, and more than a decade of experience—all of her ideas floating above the subtext that the work is healing the damage done to the land, people, and structure by the colonial project for the last 500 years.

I always wanted Inés to like me—leaving a conversation mid-sentence with other volunteers if I heard her shout my name, serving her coffee first, or inserting myself into her conversations at lunch if I caught a whiff of chisme. But when I started translating, I learned how powerful it is to admire a person from inside her own words. I also realized how easy it is to communicate with conviction when the cause is good—how fighting to educate children about their culture and land, empowering women through building medicinal gardens and teaching them to make organic products to sell, and installing water-cleaning infrastructure to municipally underserved families is work that easily allows a person to stand in their integrity while advocating for the funding to make it happen. It’s a privilege to support this work in any way I can.

Now I am back home in the thick of a New York City heatwave, back to my parents’ house for the foreseeable future. I did not experience much culture shock when I went to Guatemala, but the experience of returning is a completely different story. There is the physical difference—dense city, bad air quality, concrete everywhere, no stars—but then there is the social difference, which is the real culprit of the vertigo. I saw a woman on a train and the jewelry just on her right hand could fund IMAP for at least a few years. The money here is unbelievable, but what compels the shock more than seeing conspicuous wealth is realizing how it implies what is important to people here. New Yorkers live so far from the reality of the land. We experience the effects of climate change so extremely (it’s an unseasonal 37-degrees Celsius, with “air quality warnings” as I write this) and feel the responsibility to the climate belongs to anyone else. I know this is true for the wealthy in all parts of the world, but New York allows the unique opportunity to witness it closely, as we are 8 million people packed into 5 boroughs.

My short, short time in San Lucas Tolimán at IMAP, learning from the lake and volcanoes and plants, changed my priorities. These changes are expressed in small ways such as cooking at home more than ever before, or how I won’t buy a coffee to go, and finding myself talking to the city trees as I commute. I know now, more than before, that I need to be involved in work that allows me to stand in my integrity. I am continuing to volunteer with Inés to support her with translation work whenever possible. I don’t know what is coming next for me, but hopefully it involves medicinal gardens, clean water, and lots of education.

Pictured on the traditional weaving of San Lucas is a candle from a Mayan ceremony; a flattened and sun dried frog; pine collected from the top of a mountain; lavender harvested from IMAP; a shell and fish bones from Lake Atitlán; and a small amount of coffee grown, toasted, and ground in San Lucas Tolíman.