My Work
A couple weeks ago I was talking to my mom on the phone explaining what I had done that week, apparently she was not to impressed considering I was visiting a volunteer friend for the second time that week… “She said it doesn’t sound like your working much” she ofcourse meant no harm by it, she was just stating her observations. I spoke to my volunteer friend about it afterwards and she said “living here is work” This could not be more true! That particular week I had been at her house twice because I had missed my bus to site and could not get home, and returned a second time with a bacterial infection and a desire to use her flushing toilet. None of this was work- just life- the unpredictability of it, keeps you on your toes and makes you be fast adapter.
My work hours here are nothing compared to the states, I don’t count the hours of work I am doing, and determine my productivity, instead I try to do one productive thing within my community everyday. This can range from going to speak to the women who own the mill about how they can improve their business, or why they are not getting along, and trying to understand more the dynamics of the group, a productive day can also be getting to know someone in the community I did not know, and setting up a future meeting with them. One day I went to a community meeting, where they are doing a needs analysis of the community and talking about the yearly production of food here, their strengths and weaknesses as a group, ect., this is like hitting a gold mine for me, because everything they are discussing are things I need to know to develop do “my work” and to try and bring projects to my communities that are going to be sustainable and useful in the long term. Other days however, I will spend the whole day cleaning my house, doing my laundry, carrying my mattress outside to “sun it” in an attempt to kill whatever little critters are living in there and eating at me in the night, then I will make lunch, and go visit a family for a couple hours, teach one of their kids some English, and go to bed. Which day is more work? Honestly they are both so difficult in other ways. But what I love about “my work” is that it changes every day. One Monday a month I go plan with my local agricultural government agency counterpart, to try and discuss what projects we can work on together. This is a requirement of the Peace Corps for in site planning, and I am lucky that my counterpart always gives me good ideas and feed back, however traveling there takes all day, even though in a car it would only take 40 minutes, I have to switch buses and wait for an unknown period of time for the buses and the meetings which are not punctual. The silver lining? My friend Vanessa lives in this town, and is one of the closest volunteers to me. She gives me great advice about balancing all the aspects of being a Peace Corps volunteer and maintaining your sanity and never fails to rejuvenate me.
I had been worrying about my amount of work before my mom mentioned it, and again after she did, and now more than ever because my supervisor will come next Tuesday to see my progress and I am supposed to present my community groups projects and my assessment of them and how we can move forward. This is more than a little nerve racking! I am really hoping that it all goes well- because there are some days when I feel like I don’t have time to do anymore- and other days when I feel like I am not doing enough. So what are my project?- Here is a rough outline of what I am starting to focus in on-
I have a kids group with the local elementary school here, and so far we have drawn up a community map, listen the projects we would like to do and started thinking a little bit about geography and doing a world map together. The biggest hit was when we decorated eggs and elected group leaders.
I am working with the women in the mill who have worked with Peace Corps for 5 years. They are having trust issues within the group and the mill is not earning very much money. With them I am working on creating a structure that they can work under when there are no longer volunteers here. This group is one of Peace Corps prodigies that they always boast about in presentations, it was started by a married couple who got women together to do a community bank, it is incredible how long it has lasted and I just hope I can strengthen it and give it the time it deserves while continuing to work on other projects as well.
There are several community banks in the area, I am most closely working with two of the banks, but am hoping to work with two others who right now are being supported by an NGO. Community banks are formed by community members, who pay a quota every month and are therefore able to draw from a bigger savings pool to borrow money and pay it back with a reasonable interest rate. These are incredibly useful to agricultural communities who often do not have access to banks, and do not always have a steady source of income. There are a total of 15 community banks in the area I work and although I would like to help them all it is very difficult to be in 15 meetings at the same time. Additionally many of them have NGO support, therefore I am trying to support the ones that do not. The two I am most closely working with are completely different. One has 45 members (that is a lot!) and has been running for 4 years they are really used to running it as savings and lendings bank but are not making income by doing money earning things with what they are saving. They also are having a problem right now with a loan that was supposedly paid back but does not show up in the cash box or the accounting records- this is my biggest challenge for the moment. The other bank is 7 people and they live in an area of town without electricity which greatly limits their ability to raise money with their savings- they would like to invest in a mill but are not able to because there is no electricity- now we are discussing raising either pigs or chickens and selling them for a higher price. This is a newer initiative, they have been running for 2 years, but the cool thing is they have been totally independent without any outside NGO involvement. I am really excited to see where this group will go and if we can make it as successful as the women’s mill group.
I am also working on examining the biodigestors in the community. Biodigestors use pig or cow manure to trap gas and power stoves. This has huge environmental and health benefits as it decreased manure leakage into water systems, decreases the use of firewood and eliminated smoke from the cooking process. It sounds great Right!? The only problem is that there are already existing biodigesters within the community and all three of them that I have seen are no longer working…I have been told that some of them never worked and that other worked incredibly well but were then punctured or damaged in some way and were never repaired. My challenge is to get the existing ones up and running and try to pick people who will maintain them for longer.
Along the lines of biodigestors I hope to work on improved stoves, that also decrease smoke inhalation and don’t require as much firewood. This however might be well in the future since I do not have an established group nor do I know how to make one yet.
I am also giving private English classes to about 6 youth in the community. I probably give a 1-2 hour lesson every week, depending on whose family I am visiting and if they have completed their assigned homework from the week before ( I do not help students who do not do their homework)
I am also hoping to do a set of canning and food preservation workshops with a number of different families who already have small home gardens and are interested, however this idea has really only been discussed and not organized since most people are harvesting right now, and it would be hard to make it happen right away.
Possible resources I could use from the states: Probably the biggest thing would be art supplies, they are really hard to find here, I am talking big canisters of paint, crayola crayons, paint brushes, world maps, coloring books, glitter, decorations, markers. Anything really, but think about quantity because there are a lot of kids in my craft groups! The other thing would be yarn for knitting or old fabric for a quilting group. Also if you find any Spanish English dictionaries, the ones here are not great and really expensive, I have kids sharing right now but it would be great to have a bigger supply. If you are interested in sending the kids supplies send me an email and let me know what you are thinking of sending so that I can coordinate. Also my dad is visiting at the end of November so if we can get it together fast enough, maybe he could bring it, which would greatly save on shipping costs. No pressure though, I will be here for two years and I am sure that I will come up with many more things to ask for! J
Lots of love to all!
Alicia
No comments:
Post a Comment