So last Friday I came into work prepared for an all-day legal team meeting - a marathon affair (I hear) involving lots of coffee and a review of every single active case (and I can´t even count how many that is. 20? 30?). I was just preparing myself for my first legal team meeting when one of the Guatemalan paralegals told me the meeting was canceled and we had a big errand to run instead. It turned out that only of the paralegals (out of two, plus three Guatemalan interns, and then me) knew how to get to a certain public prosecutor´s office in a town called San Juan Sacatepéquez, so we were assigned to literally drive to it, and then drive back (really).
The drive was over an hour long, and about fifteen minutes into it we left the capital city limits and wound our way through farming territory. I rolled the window down and drank in the cool mountain air and ogled the terrace-farming techniques, high-tunnel-like structures specifically made for the hills, and the entire families (school is out here until January for most kids) working the fields with hand tools (which is our past and eventual future, people).
I was envious. Now. I know I´ve got a great opportunity to do a lot of good and get some experience in an office environment working for something I believe in and using some of my talents. But still... I couldn´t help but wish I was out there with them: breathing clean air (not the deathfog emitted from city buses and industry), working with my whole body, and getting dirty. The appeal was overwhelming. Not to say that I´ve given up on the office thing. I´m still doing my job well. I´m still in this for the long haul. But the experience was telling.
We returned to the city and to work. Not much has changed here in a general sense - but some other noteworthy events have taken place. See below.
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