**still no luck putting up photos but I'm taking lots so stay tuned!**
During the election they put us up in a NICE hotel – like, nice by international standards, not just nice for Bolivia. Of course, the hot showers were cold and the sauna was closed and the food at first was almost sans vegetables until we complained, but hey. The beds were comfortable; the pool was fabulous and I got to play beach volleyball and learn to salsa dance.
Most importantly, I met some of the most amazing people. I can put it very simply: everybody dances, in that cheesy “I hope you dance” sort of way. We are diverse and talented, funny and fun, driven and successful. We are in love with our lives. The collective knowledge, pride and creativity of this group makes me feel so blessed to be a part of it, and intensely patriotic. This is America in Bolivia, and it is awesome.
All 120 or so of us were consolidated for about a week; we were especially grateful to be there after hearing about what happened in Georgia (invaded by Russia; luckily all of the volunteers were located and evacuated soon afterward). It was a reminder to us that as tranquil as it seems, we do live in a developing country that can and will be unpredictable at times.
For example, we had to stumble through tear gas to get to dinner in Santa Cruz the other day. Our eyes burned; our throats ached and we struggled to breathe. We walked down Calle Arenales with our heads bowed down like a herd of horses in the wind. We were far enough from the actual event; it started several blocks away where a group of disabled people was on a hunger strike. From what I understand, the president had promised them a government compensation of about 3,000bs per year (about $450, not even a livable amount). No one got paid.
The police came with tear gas; the people began to attack with crutches and throw things from wheelchairs. The sad part is that the police themselves are underpaid and probably completely agree with their supposed opponents. I only hope nobody saw anything about this on the news internationally; I can’t even imagine what the world would think. I want to tell you it’s not like that, but I’ll have to settle for, there are great things about Bolivia so don’t close your eyes just yet. It is young and impetuous and eventually, that energy will be channeled in the right direction. At least, I hope so.
* * * *
I was away from my site just more than two weeks. Our project design workshop took place in the city after consolidation and one of my professor-friends from Gutiérrez came to be my work counterpart. I wasn’t sure if bringing a professor was the right choice, as teachers (especially women) don’t have a lot of power here. My fears proved unfounded. Rosa not only held her ground among the representatives from local governments and school officials, but she impressed both our workshop facilitators and me more than once. I was so proud of her!
During one of our last lunches together, I was sitting with Rosa, Carla and Christa (our awesome facilitators, and they were technical trainers from before so I knew them), and several other orphaned work counterparts whose volunteers had lunched elsewhere … so basically a table full of Bolivians and me, though I hadn’t thought about it that way at the time. We were joking (in Spanish) about my lack of a love life and other ridiculous things when Carla, who has worked with probably more than a thousand volunteers, grabbed my arm, looked me in the eye and said, “You know what? I love gringas like you.”
“Umm … thanks?”
“Really,” she said, shaking her head. “No todos son asi.” Literally: not everyone is so.
Later, my host family called. First Don Yonny put Leona on the phone (his idea; he says her tail was wagging like crazy). Then I chatted with my little brother, Sair. My other brother, Jhonnicito (the annoying one) stole the phone and the first thing he said was, “te extraño.” I miss you. Not wanting to waste all of their phone credit, which is expensive here, and very much wanting to finish my lunch, I asked Don Yonny to say hello to Doña Vicky for me. No such luck; in half a second she was on the phone and asking all about my trip. My reluctance to return to site abated more than slightly.
Once my friend Gina told me that after being here a year, her biggest accomplishment was that her town liked her. While politically this country might never like “us,” I feel like the people in my town (plus my very extended host family, Peace Corps staff, taxi drivers, the owners of the hotel in Santa Cruz and the waiters at my favorite restaurant) already most certainly like me -- not a bad goal at all.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Friday, August 1, 2008
here we are
It’s been a long and boring week, which once again prompted my mother to ask, “what exactly is it that you’re doing there? I mean, what is your job?” Right … that.
Personally I’d rather tell you about the great books I read this week (Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms and Ishmael Beah’s Long Way Gone, to name a few. Yes, I have a morbid fascination with books about war. I do not, however, like movies about war. They give me nightmares. Go figure.).
And naturally I could talk a blue streak about my faithful and happy hound, who no longer pees on the floor and sometimes eats large bones whole even when I tell her to slow down and chew. I contracted a doghouse from a man here in town, the husband of one of the professors. He was so excited about it, he had his little boy rush over her to get me at 8 pm. That it was painted came as a surprise, but better yet he had put her little name in lopsided red letters over the door.
I will also tell you that “work” has been slow for the past two weeks because the school had winter vacation so the kids and the families and most of the professors skipped town for a bit. Things were dusty and quiet. I didn’t technically have to do anything but “integrate” for three months, though I have done more than a few things. I handed in my participatory diagnostic report more than a month early and my boss was thrilled and impressed (it wasn’t that hard).
Furthermore, now that Peace Corps postponed a project planning meeting that was supposed to occur from July 22-August 5 and implemented a consolidation from August 5-15, I not only didn’t plan anything for these two weeks because I thought I’d be away, but also am reluctant to start anything new when I won’t be here to see it through. * sigh *
My job as an environmental education volunteer does not include giving vaccinations or handing out food packets, though there are days I wish I could do both of those things. I am also not the English teacher. My whole town assumed it at first and still pressures me to pick up some classes. I do, however, have two weekly sessions with the local English teacher and with her I am writing an English curriculum for all four of the current classes. I write out lectures and examples, worksheets, activities and games for each new topic. (Neither she nor the students have an ESL book.)
First I teach them to her (she really doesn’t speak English – she’s the psychology and philosophy professor. She somehow got roped into this job on the credential that her mom – not from here -- is an English teacher). Then she uses our lectures in her classes. I like teaching English and I do it once and a while when she wants help or is traveling on a day she has class, but in this way the English education is more sustainable. She will be a better speaker and a better teacher when I leave. She’s already a wonderful person and I look forward to meeting with her every week.
I’ve done three projects with the Life Sciences professor in the school. First we had a cleanup campaign, which was a lot of fun but marginally successful because now it is gross all over again. We need more than to skip classes and pick up trash and wash floors. The place needs new chalkboards, new windows and paint for the walls. Outside is all dirt, no place for the kids to play; they use it as a garbage dump for their candy wrappers. Furthermore, no one goes near the bathrooms at the school because there is no water to flush or clean or wash hands (it flows three hours a day but the school doesn’t have a tank like my family does). When it is hot they suffer from the smell in nearby classrooms.
As an aside, recently the director had four showers built outside to use during the “Olympics” in which professors from all over the area form teams and play for two days. This is on par with using precious water to wet the streets in Ipitá for a car race. Thinking too long about the mixed up priorities here is enough to make one’s head explode.
I planted seven trees in the school with a sixth grade class. The boys cut sticks with machetes and sharpened them into points to make a fence around each one while the girls came with soda bottles full of water. There are four shade trees, a fruit tree and two ornamentals right in front, a step in the right direction with miles to go. I am currently researching a better method to kill some awful ants that see fit to eat the leaves and trying not to strangle everyone who wants me to pour chemicals all over the place. “Si podria matar una hormiga,” I tell them, “se pueda matar un niño.” If it can kill an ant, it can kill a child. They look at me like I’m crazy. It’s okay; I’m used to it.
We made garbage cans for the next cleanup campaign out of old oil barrels. First my host dad cut them in half, then a group of professors and I sanded and painted them with paint I had gotten from the local government. I have a small budget to share with Emily to do little projects. I usually go to meetings on Monday mornings to listen-in and let them know what I’m up to.
Trash lines the streets in Gutierréz; the common practice is to dump it in the ravine where no water flows except in the “rainy season” which barely lasts a month. No trash collection exists other than one man who cleans up the plaza with a wheelbarrow and dumps it down the hill. It is hard to teach kids not to throw junk on the ground when no specific place for trash exists, when they’ve been doing it that way forever and so have their parents. They know that if they were to put it in their pockets and wait for a trashcan it would just go into the river later anyway. The alcaldia has a well-written and fully approved plan to dig a garbage dump outside of town but according to my sources there’s just no money to do it. Furthermore the plan costs $25,00, which I find hard to believe when they already have much of the equipment, and the dump is projected to last only five years. I have become painfully aware of my own trash production; it really is starting to affect my purchasing decisions (as is my negligible salary).
My rationale is to stop focusing on the things I can’t change and work on the things I can. Thus, I started a compost pile in the backyard to use as an example. When it’s ready, I want to call a meeting of our semi-official local garden club and encourage the women to start compost piles in their yards. Recently I proposed a battery-collection campaign. Batteries are nasty things when they start to decompose, full of heavy metals and toxicity. The campaign would be modeled after the work of another volunteer and include the surrounding communities. I’ve already solicited the cooperation from all of the teachers and also signed them up for a three-day general environmental workshop with a German nonprofit that I heard about through the grapevine. I’ll be organizing the whole thing.
One last note and I’ll desist boring you with the details. I’m starting a news mural in the school. The walls are completely bare so I asked one day if I could have one. The director has been supportive of all my project ideas, in fact, he almost always says, “I’ll put down 20 bs!” Meaning he will give me about two dollars to get started. I love it.
Anyway, I brought back a stack of Time (thanks Audrey!) and Newsweek (PC recently cancelled our subscriptions and I’m furious) magazines from Santa Cruz and my neighbors were so fascinated by the pictures. They kept asking me to explain them and had no concept of where in the world those places were. In response to a photo of food riots in Kenya, my host mom looked at me and said, “We are not poor like that.”
I hope to encourage the same curiosity among the students. I wrote a short caption in Spanish for each photo I plan to put up along with a large world map where they can find the countries they’re reading about. In this way I am linking my town to not just United States but to the whole world. And, of course, linking the whole world with my town … via email. When I’m walking down the street and greeting, you know, everyone, I always ask ¿qué tal? or ¿cómo está? o ¿qué pasa? By far the most common and my favorite response is pretty noncommittal. Aquí estamos. Here we are.
Personally I’d rather tell you about the great books I read this week (Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms and Ishmael Beah’s Long Way Gone, to name a few. Yes, I have a morbid fascination with books about war. I do not, however, like movies about war. They give me nightmares. Go figure.).
And naturally I could talk a blue streak about my faithful and happy hound, who no longer pees on the floor and sometimes eats large bones whole even when I tell her to slow down and chew. I contracted a doghouse from a man here in town, the husband of one of the professors. He was so excited about it, he had his little boy rush over her to get me at 8 pm. That it was painted came as a surprise, but better yet he had put her little name in lopsided red letters over the door.
I will also tell you that “work” has been slow for the past two weeks because the school had winter vacation so the kids and the families and most of the professors skipped town for a bit. Things were dusty and quiet. I didn’t technically have to do anything but “integrate” for three months, though I have done more than a few things. I handed in my participatory diagnostic report more than a month early and my boss was thrilled and impressed (it wasn’t that hard).
Furthermore, now that Peace Corps postponed a project planning meeting that was supposed to occur from July 22-August 5 and implemented a consolidation from August 5-15, I not only didn’t plan anything for these two weeks because I thought I’d be away, but also am reluctant to start anything new when I won’t be here to see it through. * sigh *
My job as an environmental education volunteer does not include giving vaccinations or handing out food packets, though there are days I wish I could do both of those things. I am also not the English teacher. My whole town assumed it at first and still pressures me to pick up some classes. I do, however, have two weekly sessions with the local English teacher and with her I am writing an English curriculum for all four of the current classes. I write out lectures and examples, worksheets, activities and games for each new topic. (Neither she nor the students have an ESL book.)
First I teach them to her (she really doesn’t speak English – she’s the psychology and philosophy professor. She somehow got roped into this job on the credential that her mom – not from here -- is an English teacher). Then she uses our lectures in her classes. I like teaching English and I do it once and a while when she wants help or is traveling on a day she has class, but in this way the English education is more sustainable. She will be a better speaker and a better teacher when I leave. She’s already a wonderful person and I look forward to meeting with her every week.
I’ve done three projects with the Life Sciences professor in the school. First we had a cleanup campaign, which was a lot of fun but marginally successful because now it is gross all over again. We need more than to skip classes and pick up trash and wash floors. The place needs new chalkboards, new windows and paint for the walls. Outside is all dirt, no place for the kids to play; they use it as a garbage dump for their candy wrappers. Furthermore, no one goes near the bathrooms at the school because there is no water to flush or clean or wash hands (it flows three hours a day but the school doesn’t have a tank like my family does). When it is hot they suffer from the smell in nearby classrooms.
As an aside, recently the director had four showers built outside to use during the “Olympics” in which professors from all over the area form teams and play for two days. This is on par with using precious water to wet the streets in Ipitá for a car race. Thinking too long about the mixed up priorities here is enough to make one’s head explode.
I planted seven trees in the school with a sixth grade class. The boys cut sticks with machetes and sharpened them into points to make a fence around each one while the girls came with soda bottles full of water. There are four shade trees, a fruit tree and two ornamentals right in front, a step in the right direction with miles to go. I am currently researching a better method to kill some awful ants that see fit to eat the leaves and trying not to strangle everyone who wants me to pour chemicals all over the place. “Si podria matar una hormiga,” I tell them, “se pueda matar un niño.” If it can kill an ant, it can kill a child. They look at me like I’m crazy. It’s okay; I’m used to it.
We made garbage cans for the next cleanup campaign out of old oil barrels. First my host dad cut them in half, then a group of professors and I sanded and painted them with paint I had gotten from the local government. I have a small budget to share with Emily to do little projects. I usually go to meetings on Monday mornings to listen-in and let them know what I’m up to.
Trash lines the streets in Gutierréz; the common practice is to dump it in the ravine where no water flows except in the “rainy season” which barely lasts a month. No trash collection exists other than one man who cleans up the plaza with a wheelbarrow and dumps it down the hill. It is hard to teach kids not to throw junk on the ground when no specific place for trash exists, when they’ve been doing it that way forever and so have their parents. They know that if they were to put it in their pockets and wait for a trashcan it would just go into the river later anyway. The alcaldia has a well-written and fully approved plan to dig a garbage dump outside of town but according to my sources there’s just no money to do it. Furthermore the plan costs $25,00, which I find hard to believe when they already have much of the equipment, and the dump is projected to last only five years. I have become painfully aware of my own trash production; it really is starting to affect my purchasing decisions (as is my negligible salary).
My rationale is to stop focusing on the things I can’t change and work on the things I can. Thus, I started a compost pile in the backyard to use as an example. When it’s ready, I want to call a meeting of our semi-official local garden club and encourage the women to start compost piles in their yards. Recently I proposed a battery-collection campaign. Batteries are nasty things when they start to decompose, full of heavy metals and toxicity. The campaign would be modeled after the work of another volunteer and include the surrounding communities. I’ve already solicited the cooperation from all of the teachers and also signed them up for a three-day general environmental workshop with a German nonprofit that I heard about through the grapevine. I’ll be organizing the whole thing.
One last note and I’ll desist boring you with the details. I’m starting a news mural in the school. The walls are completely bare so I asked one day if I could have one. The director has been supportive of all my project ideas, in fact, he almost always says, “I’ll put down 20 bs!” Meaning he will give me about two dollars to get started. I love it.
Anyway, I brought back a stack of Time (thanks Audrey!) and Newsweek (PC recently cancelled our subscriptions and I’m furious) magazines from Santa Cruz and my neighbors were so fascinated by the pictures. They kept asking me to explain them and had no concept of where in the world those places were. In response to a photo of food riots in Kenya, my host mom looked at me and said, “We are not poor like that.”
I hope to encourage the same curiosity among the students. I wrote a short caption in Spanish for each photo I plan to put up along with a large world map where they can find the countries they’re reading about. In this way I am linking my town to not just United States but to the whole world. And, of course, linking the whole world with my town … via email. When I’m walking down the street and greeting, you know, everyone, I always ask ¿qué tal? or ¿cómo está? o ¿qué pasa? By far the most common and my favorite response is pretty noncommittal. Aquí estamos. Here we are.
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