Current progress :) and meet Vy as Mayan Princess

Due to being in a site that is a rural town, I was apprehensive about focusing on my research only and not having the opportunities to interact with others outside this community. To my delight, I was able to get acquainted with a range of people and cultures, from Maya speaking pueblitos to mestizos in Mérida city.

In San Crisanto, I happen to live right at the center of town near the town hall, community park, and church. As many people pass by this intersection for church and other activities, and the fact that my host grandmother Doña Alicia is very active in the community, I am able to meet the majority of people in town here. Thus, one of the ways that I interact with the community is through attending local church events. In addition, I also attended local school and community meetings where I presented myself with local teachers and various officials.

Here's a picture of a dance from a community health event I went to.

Super adorable primary school girls. I played kickball with a couple of them the other day. It's wonderful to have kids come up to me and give me big hugs whenever they see me, yelling "Vyoleta" with huge smiles. They're probably just super friendly, but I'd like to think they love me because I am fun.

The overall vision is learning about process that took place in San Crisanto for obtaining a Community Health Center and exploring the next steps to obtain more health services and improve the community wellbeing. So far, I have been able conduct 15 semi-structured interviews, and expect to conduct twice as many interviews. I added a photovoice component to include voices of the youths that addresses goal #1 and I hope to compare their perspective with the elders that I interview.

I am doing well on achieving these goals, and hope to finish my interviews by the end of February so that I can start on data analysis. My next steps are to continue the interviews and to complete the photovoice project and conduct focus group with the youth participants. In March I will present preliminary findings to the communities and ask for feedback. In the meanwhile, I will send the interviews to be transcribed by Ligia at CINVESTAV.

Outside of my community, I immersed myself with the students at my host school institution, and they became friends who invited me to local festivals and showed me around the city. For Día de los Muertos, one of my colleagues invited me to his work site in small rural Maya town where people spoke Maya and the culture still depends on hunting as a way of life.

A picture of me devouring delicious Pib (a super treat from Maya food traditions, the concept is similar to that of Tamales, but it's baked like a huge thick pie rather than a rectangle Though both wrapped in banana leaves, Pib takes much longer, and is baked with hot burning coals curried into the ground (one can think of it like a man-made version of oven).

And thankfully, we also got some more elegant pictures of me. Ready?

Here goes...

Vy as a Mayan Princess...

Actually this is somewhat a true statement. In a small Mayan town of Chunkanan (hunting society), I am known as Nieve Blanca. My hair flowers/bow accidentally fell off, so someone said Princess Nieve Blanca (Snow White in Spanish) lost her hair bow, and somehow that name has caught on a bit in the few days I was there. This is somewhat ironic to me because I do not consider myself very light skin, though come to think of it with my boots and odd adjusting behaviors, I might have seemed a little princessy.

The picture is taken on Día de los Muertos, and I borrowed this outfit from one of the women because the dress I brought was too modern and seems like a traditional outfit would be more appropriate. It was a great excuse to dress up :)

The princess has to rest now, see you next time.

Smiles,

Vy