When arriving in Guanajuato, Mexico I had free reign to find the best internship possible. For months I searched getting strange looks from those who I asked where I could find opportunities and sometimes even the blunt reply, "but we don't have poor people here." Eventually however I did find that a) yes poor people existed and b) there were organizations to help them. I found homes for the aged homeless, orphanages, and food banks. I ticked them off respectively as boring, cliche, or something I could do at home. I wanted exotic! Then one day, BINGO! I found an organization that educated communities on topics of sexual health, fought for women's rights to their bodies and against the accepted violence towards women prevalent in Mexican society today. Yay! I was super excited... and BONUS I was a women, hence could really understand and empathize with women and obviously be a great addition to the organization. Oh! and even better they were grassroots and promoted that they worked from a local perspective with these issues rather than ones brought in from the West. So great I was going to get an all around grassroots, enlightening experience on a topic I could innately help out with. How perfect!
I arrived by bus after a long treck uphill and found a white house on the edge of what looked like a pretty risky hill side. I nervously rang the doorbell while mentally practicing what I would momentarily be saying in Spanish. To my surprise I was greeted by an American girl. She walked me around the house and explained to me that if I so chose I could help by reading through a room full of journals, pamphlets, and books. I would then organize them into a resource library.
This sounded like a good project to me. Maybe not one I was very fit to do given my Spanish comprehesion, but the idea was solid. She then informed me that I would most likely never see any of the programs or be involved in any visible or active way. She had been living in the house as part of an internship for over 6 months and had yet to be invited to do anything other than push paper around the house/office.
Needless to say my expectations were proven to be highly fantasized, my feelings of usefulness 'inherent' in being a women were shown to not actually be all that in demand (or realistic) and I did not end up pursuing a placement as another hidden gringa behind the scenes.
Fortunately (insert sarcasm) I found a placement at a women’s cooperative spending hours in a little room putting labels on jars of jam. Even though I was working primarily with only locals and was doing a necessary job in their production process I felt just as bored and “behind the scenes” as I imagined I would have been at the women’s rights organization. Focusing on what fit my fantasy internship and what I thought I would be most useful in doing (i.e. what I would like to do the most in terms of my own self satisfaction) left me feeling unfulfilled no matter what the worth of my work meant to those I helped.