Although Tillamook is a long way from Guatemala, Fanjoy says her experiences in that remote area were valuable to her work here.
“From the age of 16, I wanted to break away and do something different from everyone else,” she recalled. So, while attending college in Illinois, she studied for a year in Barcelona, Spain, learning Spanish. Then, after she graduated in 2006, she and her new husband Jim Fanjoy signed up for the Peace Corps.
“It is a long process and it took us two years to get an assignment,” she explained. While she waited, she worked on a fellowship, studied teaching techniques in Spanish and taught adult education. Then, in 2008, she and her husband were assigned to the remote Huehuetenango region of Guatemala, where they served for two years.
Upon returning, Jim Fanjoy got together with a long-time friend from Oregon and the couple moved to Tillamook County in 2010, where Jim, an architect, is getting established in his profession. The two of them also are working a piece of land, where they hope to grow organic fruit and produce.
“We have often been asked why we came to Tillamook, when we could have gone anywhere,” Emily remarked. “But it is truly beautiful here and the lifestyle is wonderful.“
She said her work in Guatemala also prepared her for the interpersonal issues she would face as a bilingual advocate for Women’s Resource Center.
“People are the same everywhere,” she explained. “There are still issues of power and control in relationships. People deal with conflict and anger and poverty everywhere.”
Emily said her posting in Guatemala was life-changing.
“Our village was 12 hours from the capital city, in a mountainous region inhabited 100 percent by indigenous people,” she explained. “The language they spoke was not Spanish. It was Q’anjob’al, one of 22 indigenous languages in a country the size of the state of Tennessee.”
The people she worked with there had very little exposure to the advances of modern life or education. Women knew nothing of the mysteries of their own reproductive systems. Men had never been introduced to the concept of saving money or planning for the future. People lived day to day as their ancestors had done for centuries.
“We had no plumbing, no heat, no running water. Every day we hauled water and boiled it. We had an outdoor latrine. It was pretty intense,” she recalled.
She said there were some 200 families spread out through the mountain area around their village. The Fanjoys worked with about 80 of them.
“We taught them about boiling their water, about what a germ is and how it can make you sick. We taught them about nutrition and food choices. About how it was important to give their children fruit instead of buying them candy. There is no sanitation there, so we helped with community cleanup. We worked with the women teaching them about reproduction, family planning and child rearing. And we helped them access medical services. Many of them had a deep distrust of the medical community because of the language barrier.”
Emily said it is difficult to assess what long-term impact they may have had in their work overall, but she knows she helped some people as individuals. She recalled the case of one older man in the village who suffered from cataracts. As a result, he was blind and a non-functioning member of the community. So the Fanjoys helped him get simple cataract surgery.
“It changed his whole family for the better,” she said. “Suddenly, he could be productive again. He could help his sons do the planting.”
She said the real benefit to the community may have been more subtle.
“I think just being there was the biggest accomplishment,” she explained. “We showed them that foreigners do follow through on things. We learned their language and gained their trust. We helped at church festivals and graduation ceremonies. We were part of their community.
“We always say that we want to do things like this to help others, but in the end, we really are helping ourselves. Experiences like this change you forever.”
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