pictures of the past few weeks

At the end of October, right after my birthday I had my language taller- which is where we all get together again and have a week of language classes to help our Spanish continue to improve. We had classes near my first host family, so I went there and visited with them! It was soooo wonderful to see them again. I may go back in January for little Gladicita's Brithday. Above is Nelson and I, and below is Mari and I, they are brother and sister.

Last week I had my third Kids group meeting where we discussed opening a community bank together, to fund some of the craft projects they would like to do. Here are some pictures of that day, this meeting actually went really well, and I felt really happy afterwards (which is not always the case!). The older girl in the orange T-Shirt is my friend Georgina, I am always at her house, every Sunday we make chicken soup together and her parents take really good care of me.

This week I had a meeting with the two women's groups who don't get along, it was supposed to be all day and I knew I had to provide food to keep them from getting even grumpier! I asked Georgina and her mom to help me with the food and they ended up making the food for me, when they realized I was paying for out of pocket, they wouldn't even let me pay them for their work! They are wonderful!

I was a really tough meeting and I ended up walking home in the rain crying, feeling so alone and very unsuccesful, I had to stop by their house to drop off thier dishes (So when I got their house I kept trying to hold back the tears), but the second they hugged me, it all just came out. When I apologized they told me not to worry, they loved me like a daughter and a sister and that I should cry if I need to cry. They cheered me up and we ended up eating rice with milk! It is sooo good, kind of tastes like tapoica pudding!

Anyway, Georgina is the one I am trying to get a scholarship for, she is 23 years old, really bright, but they can't afford to send her to school and she has no source of income. She agreed to help me with the kids group, which has been an incredible help! In the first pictures she is telling them to settle down and make a line ( for some reason they listen to her a lot better than me! :) )

Here is the demonstration we did. The tin can is their bank and the amount they will have if they all save together, the other red thing is a mini house, that is the amount of money they will have if they just save by themselves. It is 5 cordobas every month (there are 23 cordobas in 1 dollar). I also explained the importance of saving your money and we did math sums of how much we would have if there were 20 kids saving 5 corodobas every month for 2 months or 6 months or 1 year. Then we talked about reinvesting our money in activities that earn such as raffles or selling food. They go into it even if they are very rowdy!

Here are some pictures of the kids as a group, the ones with name tags on their shirts (if you can see that) are the group leaders! I assigned 6 kids in the group to help me with the meeting. They all had task names like "the Sticker" (this kid helped me stick up flip charts) , we had the "mail person" who had to go around collecting all the pieces of paper, we also had a "silence maker" (very important!)

This last picture below is a picture of a cabbage field. I just thought it was neat. Cabbage has a high price here because it has to be watered, unlike corn and beans- the main staple here.

My Peace Corps Experience so far: Theory vs Practice

November 2, 2011

Yesterday I had a rather difficult day, that made me realize all of my theories about my Peace Corps service, were beautiful but very different from the practice.

The day started with a meeting with the women who own and work in the Mill. This mill is a Peace Corps Legacy, it was started by the first volunteers in my site, strengthened by the second volunteer and now the idea is that I will add the finishing touches…it is a beautiful concept…in theory.

In theory, you may think (like I did, as did my bosses) that this group has to be really strong if it has lasted this long, working together, paying it’s bills and making a profit) and you would be right, they are a strong group in their abilities, they know how to run the mill and do a great job of it. The thing is underneath all of that, they don’t trust each other and they don’t communicate well. They were so eager to work with me because they want me to come in and resolve their conflicts, like I am the teacher of a classroom or the babysitter. The hardest thing about that, is that I thought that is what I was going to do as well, I love telling people what to do! (when I think I know what is best for them), the thing is I don’t have the answers. I wish I could do it for them, I want to feel useful and feel like I am doing a good job contributing to this Peace Corps legacy. The truth is, I have no idea what is right for them, and if I enforce a rule that everyone is unhappy with that will just mean the second I leave everything will fall apart- that is not sustainable and not my goal.

Anyway, I hope that explains the background to how I was feeling yesterday, walking home from the meeting where half of the women hadn’t even shown up (for the third time) and where I had announced to the women who were present that I could not solve their conflicts for them and I was not going to enforce any rules for them, so that if they wanted me to do my job (improve the business of the mill) then they needed to show me they were willing to work together first, by composing their own set of rules. I said after they had done that they could call me. It was a really hard thing to say, I felt very unhelpful. When I used to dream about my service I thought I was going to be helping people- it turns out that the best way to help people sometimes is to help them figure it out themselves, which does not give you the warm fuzzies inside.

I started thinking about how different the theory of my service was from the practice. I mean I knew I didn’t have all that many skills, but I thought my university education, Peace Corps training, and world experience would provide a unique perspective that would allow me to enter into situations and solve problems in the community that they could not solve because they were to deep into it, or didn’t know of available resource. The practice is SO different, first of all my education and world experience don’t have much room for application in the countryside of Nicaragua. In fact they do not have much interest in the places I have lived or the other cultures I know about, most of the time they are just trying to get me to understand their culture, get on their page. It also turns out that most of the knowledge I have that is helpful, is stuff I have learned so far or that other volunteers or community members have told me. In training we learned to help facilitate discussions and problem solving. The thing is that it is really really hard! Sometimes I rather just do it for them (but the thing is I can’t). So here I thought I was going to be this super helpful superhero PCV- who had new ideas and opened new windows, and I find myself at the same obstacles they are at, and unable to change anyone’s circumstances with the flick of my magic western educated wand.

Yesterday was an eye opener, because I had to change my perspective and to move away from the theories I had held so dear. I realized all of my projects are going to have their frustrating bumps, I also realized (just like in the states) I don’t always love what I do. For example I have a kids group which in theory I thought I would love and that it would be a breeze for me; I mean I like kids, they like me I have a lot of experience with them- right? NOT Right- it turns out holding a kids group of 20-30 kids is a whole lot different then babysitting two, and that you have to be even more organized with a kids group then an adults group- in short, in practice a kids group is much more work then I thought it was going to be, and not as much fun. I think in the end it will be rewarding but I also have realized they are just bored, and they want the foreign girl to come play games entertain them and bring them goodies, which obviously I can’t do, and don’t want to. But the thing is there are also some who just want to learn, learn new things, learn about the world, where I am from what we do there, they want to learn crafts and sports and they just assume that I know how to do everything (an can explain it in Spanish)- which leaves me feeling totally useless and trying to figuring it out as I go.

Another thing is that I thought I would have so much free time to read, exercise, write blog posts do personal projects –turns out not so much. One of these personal projects I started when I got to site was saving ALL my trash, with the idea of seeing how much trash, I a conscious consumer, produce in one year. Isn’t that just a beautiful concept?? Well, now that I have been on site for over 3 months I am wondering whether I can really maintain this for a year. See the theory was, I know we westerners produce a lot of trash, and I have always been conscious of that, but I have never experienced visually what this quantity really is. I figured this was a perfect time to do this, because unlike in  the states, here in the countryside, no one collects your garbage, there is not even anywhere to take it to. People either throw it outside behind their house or burn it. The tree hugger in me does not like either of these options- but I realized I couldn’t really criticize my neighbours for doing it just because I hate looking at the garbage and smelling it burn because it is that concept of Not In My Backyard, that has lead us in the United States to send our trash away without giving it a second though, as long as it is not our problem we are happy, but the thing is all that trash goes somewhere! By me collecting my trash I am aware of how much I am creating and have an incentive to reduce my production of trash and reuse what I can.

All that being said, it turns out in practice living with all your trash is really difficult. Last month I got to the point where I had to divide it into plastics and papers, candy wrappers, and toilet paper (yes that is right toilet paper). My biodegradable compost I just throw out the window and in about a week’s time something has eaten it or it has decomposed, the toilet paper is also easy because you can just bury it and it decomposes, but the wrappers of foil and plastic are really starting to pile up. I am not sure if I will have enough space in my little house to collect it all for a year, or what I will do once that year is over and I have a year’s worth of trash. I also have a stack of used tea bags I have no idea what I am going to do with, but they are there, waiting for some little project, and making me realize how even tea is pretty garbage producing with it box, bag, string, card, and package. Once again the theory was great, the practice is a little gross but I am going to keep it up for a bit longer and see if I can’t turn it into an art project with the kids group, killing to birds with one stone! J

There are so many more examples that have fallen into this category of Theory vs Practice; that I was going to lose weight on a beans and rice diet, or for that matter that I was going to eat only beans and rice for two years, that I was going to read a whole bunch of intelligent books, , that I was going to have all these different kinds of successful community groups, that I was not going to fumigate my house or my patio garden…Well, it turns out, I don’t want to eat beans and rice every day and do not have to, and that I still like treats and eat to many of them when I am frustrated or sad (and just because they are harder to get here doesn’t mean I don’t find ways of getting them as a matter of fact it becomes a sort of mission), and I still like watching tv shows (also hard to get but another mission I pursue actively) and will choose tv shows over reading “War and Peace” when I have the option , and that I was against fumigating in the states because no insects ever bothered me and visited me in my bed, and that “community groups” are a beautiful thing in theory but a rather frustrating thing in practice.

If nothing else after two years I will hopefully have another perspective to add to my tool box and see the practicality