At the beginning of this week, J went to interview for a new job and apparently did very well because when he messaged me later that evening he was finishing up training, scheduled to start the next day! I'm excited for him because he has not had a steady job since November, while he does take on projects at his dad's metalworking business and is highly requested, J's pay (especially when his dad is supporting nine other people) doesn't come out to much. He did have a job as a maths teacher for high school but because he's not officially certified (thus no union membership) they were able to abuse his time/work. Skip to now, he has a new job, again as a maths teacher but this time he works in an office (sent me a picture of his desk/workspace) and teaches the classes online for a private Christian school. He seems happy, especially since the pay is double what he received from his previous teaching job.

I'll be honest, some of my feelings are a twinge of annoyance because we scheduled about a week together at the beginning of June as my summer fellowship in Guate and his second semester start at roughly the same day. It looks like now that won't be possible because the job has him working from 7am to 6pm. I can't really say anything at the moment because I was annoyed with him not having a steady job and asking to borrow money.

But back to the actual hours...he says that the hours will go down to 7am to 3pm once his classes start, which is good. But at the moment, he must work 7am to 6pm. He didn't answer me if he has a lunch break during that time and I realize, again, country corruption and lack of union representation as an non-certified teacher, if he doesn't have a break it doesn't necessarily mean the job is a scam. He considers because it's a Christian church running the school, it's not a scam. I disagree. Time and time again religious organizations exhibit their practices (i.e. money embezzlement) do not align with their morals. Thus, I'm a bit worried because at the start they "didn't have the money" for his position but now they secured it. However, he won't get paid until the end of May, which is typical of jobs in Guatemala, to be paid once a month, but the fact that he was even made aware that funds for his position were unknown worries me.

I think I'm also worried because having previously job searched in Guatemala, I've seen the wide-range of scams they seem to have. Just the situation that he is working 11 hours a day with possibly no break and his salary is secured - how can he be okay with that?! I know he was drawn to the position because of the dollar amount. It's Q2000 or ~$250 which is really good for a non-certified teacher in Guatemala. I'm still hung-up on the combination of long hours and questionable payment. They told him his hours would only be 7am to 3pm during his semesters. How does this impact his salary? Will they actually lower the hours or try to coerce him into maintaining work from 7am to 3pm?

His old teaching job tried to do that to him, keep him at the same pay and force him to stay until 6pm so it affected his own schoolwork. I told him if it came to that again he needs to quit. I don't want to support him because I can't really afford to, trying to strategically save for our future while making ends meet on my puny graduate teaching assistant stipend. But I'd rather figure out how to support him so that nothing interferes with his engineering degree.

I do not trust people easily and this job does not have my trust, at all. I'm hoping it works out but I feel like it's just a bad position.