Carson native Rachel Gross braving dangers with Peace Corps in Guatemala

It's an unexpectedly warm day in San Francisco la Union, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, as 27-year-old Carson City native Rachel Gross gazes out the window.

Gross is visiting a friend's concrete block home for the birthday of their 5-year-old son.

"The sun is out and it's really warm today. At 9,000 feet, it's usually cold here," Gross said.

The view for nearly as far as she can see is brown because the villagers have just cut down rows of corn - one of their main food staples - but it will be green again as soon as they start to plant, she said. In the distance, however, she can see forests of green.

Located high in the Sierra Madre, the municipality of about 12,000 people is surrounded by mountains and volcanoes

In a telephone conversation Saturday, Gross admitted she was having difficulty speaking English after nearly two years away from home, but she is anxious to get the word out that her work as a preventative health trainer for the Peace Corps is being cut short.

In late January, Gross was frustrated to learn that her work would end March 24 rather than July 16 due to safety concerns for people serving in the program in Guatemala.

In a letter to the volunteers in Guatemala, Carlos Torres, director of the program, explained the decision to cut back operations:

"Our overall goal is the safety and security of our volunteers, which we can achieve by reducing the size of our volunteer population in Guatemala while we refocus our program by limiting future operations to the Central Western Highlands," Torres wrote.

Gross was devastated by the news.

"I - and many other of my fellow volunteers - am heart-broken by this decision," she said. "Although I'll be forced to end my service with the Peace Corps March 24, I will be staying to finish my work and see that projects are completed without the support of Peace Corps."

According to travel.state.gov, Guatemala has one of the highest violent-crime rates in Latin America, and Gross said most of it can be attributed to drug-trafficking.

"There is so much violence; there are murders every day," Gross said.

More incidents also have been reported against volunteers, she said. Where once they were victims of pickpocketing, more recently, there have been holdups and attempted rapes.

Gross remains convinced that she is safe on the western side of the country, however, and that the traffickers coming from El Salvador and Honduras into Mexico head primarily up the eastern side in their journey to the United States.

"When we do travel, it does get kind of scary on public transportation, but the Peace Corps put in shuttles for us, and I feel safe in my community. It's very tranquil here," she said.

Gross' parents, Diana and Greg Gross, of Carson, say they support their daughter's decision.

"We're so, so proud of what she's doing, and it's heart-wrenching for her with them pulling her out of there, but we're OK with her staying," said Diane Gross, who visited her daughter last April. "She has a safety net and a good support group."

The Peace Corps project, called Healthy Homes, focuses on educating families about preventative health so that they can be more responsible for their own welfare, as well as that of their community, Rachel Gross said.

"Since March of 2011, I have been working on educating two groups (of families) of health promoters in topics such as the importance of hand-washing, personal hygiene, nutrition, and in other topics that have a big impact on their communities, such as alcoholism and domestic violence," Gross said.

Working on her own, Gross says she now needs to raise funds to help better the homes of 30 families in the municipality of San Francisco la Union, which includes the communities of Tzanjuyup, Chuistancia, Pala, Paxan, Centro and Xeaj.

The last six months of her program had been set aside for the implementation of sanitary infrastructures in the homes of the families she has been teaching.

"Many living conditions in these communities are either unsafe or unhealthy," Gross said. "How can we teach about the importance of using a latrine for human waste to keep from transferring certain illnesses to other people when there is no access to a bathroom? How can we teach the dangers of smoke inhalation when these women cook over an open fire four to eight hours a day?"

Many also have no access to clean water and must walk miles to retrieve it from a communal contaminated tank, she said.

As a reward for participating in the education program, the women who were part of the training were given a choice to improve their homes between a wood-burning stove that is fully sealed and has a chimney to direct smoke out of the house, a rain-catching water tank or a latrine made of recycled bottles and trash.

Gross has broken down the cost of the projects for which she needs to raise $6,325:

• 15 stoves at $80 each, $1,200

• 10 water tanks at $448 each, $4,480

• 5 latrines at $129 each, $645

Anyone interested in helping Gross complete her work in Guatemala are encouraged to learn more by following the instructions in the box with this story.