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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