I Have Arrived!

I have arrived! I came in the back of a pick-up and when I stepped down a heard about 60 kids yelling “Nacho”! The school had made welcome signs and was waiting to meet me. I nervously said a few words in broken Spanish and then started to move into my house across the street. I am living with a family in a basic but nice house. I have my own small room, next to their small store that sells a few basic things and candy. The family is a guy and his wife who are about 45 and their 6 or so kids, ages 9-22. They are really nice, but I still don’t understand a lot of what they say. The water runs every other day for a couple house to fill their water basin. They have a flush toilet (gotta love it) and showers are done in the small room with a drain which also contains the toilet. I dip a bowl in a basin and pour freezing water over myself to bathe. Their cook over an open fire in their kitchen and we eat a lot of beans rice and tortillas.
The community is small, maybe one eighty houses scattered throughout the mountains. We are about 3 miles up a mountain from the nearest town. The most common crop is coffee, which the people export. There are also a number of vacation homes that people from the capital own and occasionally visit, which creates a sharp economic divide with the locals. There are several volcanic craters, some about 300 feet deep and half a mile across, some with lakes in them. There was a series of small earthquakes last night, I was baffled and a little scared since my room is probably not very earthquake proof. Luckily, they weren’t very strong.
The climate here is really nice; it reminds me of northern California. There are forests to shade the coffee plants and fog/rain rolls in periodically throughout the day. It is one of the few places in the country that is at high enough altitude to never get very hot. The people get their water by taking water from one of the crater lakes and chlorinating it.
The volunteer that I am replacing is here until Oct 11 so he has been introducing me to people and places in the community. He teaches science and environmental studies at the school, mostly by doing small hands-on experiments. He has also been doing a revolving loan program, started a small recycling program, and coaches a youth soccer team. I will probably be taking over these projects, but now I am still getting settled in. Today I am heading into town to print out a brochure about myself, the Peace Corps, and my role here. I am then going to visit all the houses I can and pass out my brochure to try to get to know everyone and invite them to a community meeting I am holding next month to present my ideas and talk about the communities ideas.

9/25
So I’m one week in, and things are going well. Its rains here everyday, sometimes multiple times. I have been visiting houses and passing out my brochure and asking people about their family and what they think the problems in the community are. The answer to the questions about problems have ranged from “everything is a problem” “to there are no problems”. Other people mention lack of jobs, lack of trash pickup, and poverty in general. I’m hoping to work on the second one, the other two are some pretty big problems to try to solve. People are very welcoming, I am treated with interest and respect since I am a new and important person here. I just walk up to people’s houses and start asking a bunch of questions, and people are usually interested and open with their lives.
I’ve been observing the volunteer I am replacing teach classes and do science demonstrations for the kids. Its going to be tough to keep class moving with my level of Spanish, but I’ve got lots of time to practice. I’ve been trying to shake my American sense of having to be accomplishing things all the time. My main job now is mostly just to live here to gain trust and familiarity with the community.
I usually either read or study Spanish in my free time. I also try to just hang around people and find an excuse to talk to people both to practice and to build relationships. I’ve also been playing soccer with some of the kids in the street. Soccer is the universal language.
The other day, I went to work at the coffee farm with two guys my age who I live with. I thought we were going to work but ended up just hiking around the mountains for 4-5 hours, which was fun but exhausting. We went by an enormous volcanic crater, about 300 feet deep and half mile across, with very steep walls. However, there was a cornfield at the bottom, apparently there is a steep tiny trail down the side and someone goes down there and farms it. Most of the land here is coffee farm, which is shade grown so they have planted forests to shade the crop, so some mountainsides have checkerboard patterns from these planted trees. Other parts sre to steep to farm and are native growth jungle. Which is dominated by hanging vines that give the hillsides a rainforest appearance.