Week 4: Monday, September 18 – Sunday, September 24, 2023

Good evening, my wonderful family and friends!

Apologies to anyone who thought they might not hear from me this week. The time got away from me this weekend and I didn’t get the chance to recap. But better late than never, right?

To change things up a little bit, I’m not going to give you the full rundown of what happened last week — that was really more of the same as the week before, and I don’t want to bore you with the nitty gritty details. Instead, I’m going to tell you about my first field-based training day, which took place this past Thursday, September 21.

Field-based training is what it sounds like: an opportunity to get into the field and work with a community to practice for our future sites (more on that later). And that’s exactly what I and the 18 other climate change Peace Corps trainees did Thursday of last week. We traveled to a community called Charape de La Joya about an hour drive away from the city of Querétaro to meet with the local community members and start putting our training into practice.

Our goals during this field-based training were to develop relationships with the community members and begin collecting data about the community to eventually be able to brainstorm and conceptualize projects that might be helpful for the community as they are working to adapt to the effects of climate change. The Charape community has had several Peace Corps volunteer trainee cohorts visit their pueblo in the past seven years or so, and so they were very familiar with the work we were doing and more than willing to help us achieve our goals.

We started the day off by going on a walk with the community — one of the first steps we are expected to take when we move to our permanent sites. The goal of the community walk was to survey the land and gain a better understanding from community leaders as to what environmental challenges they are facing. As we walked with the community, we were asked to think about the different topographical features of the land as well as take note of the biodiversity in the area.

Charape de La Joya is situated in the valley of an extinct volcano, and as such is surrounded by hills on all sides. The land is semi-arid and is mostly covered by grasses and shrubs as well as some flowering plants that I took notice of. The community has parcels of land where they grow their Milpa — corn, beans, and squash — which is considered the holy trinity of their crops. One of the main challenges the community faces, however, is a severe lack of water. Specifically, a lack of consistent rainfall due to the change of climate. The community has manantiales (fresh- water springs) on their land, but they largely rely on annual rainfall for their water supply, and the rain simply has not been coming over the past few years.

This has created a multitude of complications for the community, as they are unable to grow their subsistence crops, and as such, they have fewer jobs for their community members. As a result, most of their men aged 20 to 50 have left the community in search of jobs to support their families. Many head to the larger cities in Mexico, but even more of them move to the United States in search of work. One of the community leaders, Don Miguel, told me that three of his sons live and work in the U.S. and send money back to their families and the community. This means that most of the individuals who live in the community are women and children and older individuals who no longer work, but who may have, at one time or another, lived and worked in the U.S. like their children do now. But, despite these challenges, the community of Charape de La Joya consists of wonderfully resilient and generous individuals who fight every day to keep their community alive.

After the community walk and a wonderful meal in the homes of various community members, our group of volunteers hosted an event for the community where we facilitated various activities and worked towards furthering our second goal of discovering information about the community.

In six teams, we took turns facilitating activities, asking the community participants to first create a map of their land, inclusive of their most important landmarks. Next, asking them to draw social identity maps to help us better understand the social makeup of the community. And lastly, producing a climate change timeline to determine when and how their climate has changed over the years. Each of these activities revealed fascinating findings — the physical map and social identity map revealed what the community prioritizes both physically and socially, and the climate change timeline made evident that the community has been experiencing the effects of a changing climate for at least the past two decades, if not more.

While the different groups of volunteers facilitated activities, those of us not facilitating took turns observing our fellow volunteers and entertaining the children in the community with various activities. It was wonderful to see how happy the children in the community were, and how well they took to our group.

Once the activities were complete, we said our goodbyes and headed back to Querétaro. I truly enjoyed working with the Charape community. While they certainly face challenges, they are resilient, and they are adamant about implementing solutions for adaptation so they can go on living as they have. Luckily, we will have the chance to go back to Charape at least two more times during our training, to continue to get to know the community and evaluate ways we can help them further their resiliency.

Keep your eyes open for next week’s newsletter (which I will try my best to get to you on time). I’ll be covering the details of my first visit to my site in Neblinas, which I’m super excited about! I leave this Wednesday morning and return Saturday. So, hopefully there will be lots to share about the place I will be spending my next two years in.

I hope you are all doing so, so well.

Much love, 

Ilana