Ants in My Pants

All week I have been feeling like I was hitting the ground running like I could really get things going if I just did everything right…people had been asking me when I was going to start giving English classes and how all their kids want them, and I thought… hey, I speak English how hard can that be!? So I planned a class and told everyone what time and where, it was very informal and I had planned a fun class with games we had played in my Spanish classes. So yesterday rolls around and I start asking people if they are coming…everyone tells me they can’t they are busy, or they don’t want to go because they don’t like someone else in the class or they just realized they had to do something…I don’t know why I got so frustrated considering that we have been told that this happens a lot and that is why you have to talk about people’s work schedules, and hold meeting to coordinate and organize people before you start trying to implement projects… even if it is just and English class. I felt like I had already failed without even having been here long enough but it was a really great lesson in taking your time, and like my grandparents always say “measure twice, cut once”. I am pretty busy here considering I just arrived, going to visit the four communities that I will work in “Ojala” (God willing) or attending meetings of cooperatives or other organizations who are working here. That is the other really pressured feeling is there is a really big presence in these communities or other NGO’s who are doing lots of projects similar to what I would hope to do. Which is great because I have organized groups and more resources than a lot of other agriculture volunteers, but it means the people expect projects and they expect them promptly and are always asking me what projects I bring and where I am going to start, and at first I was vague but this week I finally started explaining some of the projects we could do together in the communities, I got particularly excited about a bio digestor project. Bio Digestors use the methane of cow dung to power gas stoves and their waste is great organic compost! Pretty cool…and they thought so to and were ready to jump right now board. So even though I know I have to get to know people, the area, the language, and most importantly organize based on what they want it is really really hard not to feel like I did when I was a kid, and new that I had to grow up to be a grown up, but really just wanted to skip all of the hard/awkward bits and just get there already! Basically, as usual I have ants in my pants…and today I literally had ants in my pants…

Wants we finally encountered the little bugger who had been crawling around in my pants all day (and I thought I was going to go crazy because I kept feeling something but then I could never shake it out of my pant leg) my host mother here, said oh it I ”un hormiga brava” which literally translates into a brave ant. But they use the word “bravo” to describe aggressive dogs and insects that bite! Anyway we laughed because she was with me all day and I kept telling her “something is in my pants” and we would stop and shake out my pants and roll them up (once doing this in the middle of the street) but we could never find it, I felt like an overly paranoid foreigner) Turns, out not so much! J

Having insects on your clothes is not knew information for me, I always check closely when I take my clothes down. I live much more closely with the birds and the bees here…well and the cockroaches, flies, mosquitos, and the brave ants.

For the most part it is really not disruptive the cockroaches crawl out as fast as they crawl in and since they don’t bite they bother me even less than the tiny ants! It can even be nice sometimes…This morning I woke up to all these little birds singing along my roof edges (see the houses are open here, so the roof is lifted off of the walls) and the little birds can just fly across my room (and hopefully eat the other bugs!), it was a really nice way to wake up and only slightly irritating when I realized they had pooped on my drying laundry that I had spent two hours scrubbing on a rock the day before… but this is the price you pay for organic pest control!