Monday, November 22, 2010
I can hardly believe this worked. This is a little house tour for everyone to see where I am at. The street in the begining is the center of town, and that is the school in the background. Then we go into my room, then the store, then the kitchen, then the game room, complete with pinball machines, well sort of. Sorry for the writing in the middle, thats what you get for not paying for software. Now who wants to come visit?
Nov 20
Alright, I’m still here and still alive. I just got done with our second round of training, which lasted two weeks. The first two weeks took place in the town where my first two months of training happened. We learned more technical details about projects for us to do, such as organizing community politics, teaching English and about the environment, starting women’s groups and environmental groups, and doing world map murals. The second week was spent at the national agricultural university where we stayed in the dorms and learned about various agricultural techniques like grafting, composting, worms, soil nutrient balance, and crop rotation. All of this was difficult to learn and pay attention since it was in Spanish, but I still learned a lot. Most of it was not applicable to my site since they only grow coffee here, but it can be used for small scale gardens, of which only a few exist here.
Next week I have been invited to have Thanksgiving dinner with a family that works for the U.S. embassy. It is a tradition for these families to have volunteers over to celebrate. After that, in the middle of December, we have been invited to play against JIKA in the national stadium. JIKA is the Japanese equivalent of the Peace Corps. They also stay for two years as volunteers, but there are only 30 of them and word has it they get much more money for projects. Events like this are really nice get always and it really helps to have things to look forward to.
School ended here for the long break, and it starts back up in late January. Then I will be trying to form an environmental club and start teaching more. Until then, the coffee harvest just started, so everyone is helping with that, including lots of labor from out of town. I’ve heard that this is a dangerous time, since people actually make a lit bit of money the number of robberies increases, so I’ll have to be extra careful. I am told that for harvesting 25 pounds people are paid between $.80-$1.25 and in the best conditions a person can harvest 200 pounds in a day, but usually less. This is some really hard work with really low pay, but is better than no work at all.
11/21-
The men’s soccer team that I have been playing soccer with won our first game today, after about 5 weeks of ties. I let by an easy goal again, partly because the ball is always taking crazy bounces on our crappy field. It wasn’t nearly as embarrassing as last time, and I made up for it with some crucial saves later. Our offence came through with four points in the second half, for a 4-1 crushing.
Here are my project ideas as of now:
1. Stove project- I want to sell cooking stoves in the community that produce less smoke and use less wood. Some have already been sold, but I think there is opportunity to sell more. They cost $42 but people can only afford around $20, so I’m looking for some money to subsidize. I may be hitting up friends and family for donation if I can’t pull it off myself, so keep your checkbook handy.
2. Getting a trash pickup service- Apparently there was one for a time, but no one would bring their trash to the street. Now people just throw their trash in local rivers and ditches. It may be as easy as talking to the mayor and doing an education campaign to get the trash to the street, but it could also prove very frustrating.
3. World Map Mural- This is a popular PCV project that usually is done in the school. It helps kids learn about Geography (many can’t even find El Salvador on a map) and makes the school look nicer. It should be easy and fun, but I have to wait until school is back in session.
4. Environmental club- this would involve recruiting kids in 4-6 grade to do cleaning campaigns, make a garden, compost, watch movies, go on trips to parks and natural areas, and receive lectures on environmental topics. The hardest part will be drumming up sufficient interest and motivation.
5. Women’s Group- I think there is potential for a group of women to organize and do various fun and money making activities. This would build community cooperation as well as empower women and teach business skills, and would be a good setting to discuss women’s issues and the problems with the male dominated culture here. I am admittedly intimidated to start this one, usually female volunteers do it and I don’t know how well they would respond to me starting it (or their husbands for that matter)
6. Giving Environmental lectures in the school-fairly easy and straight forward, I have received a book of lectures and a calendar of when to do them. I will probably do one or two a week. Time to tap my inner professor.
7. Coaching the youth soccer team- the team was already formed when I got here, I just ref while they scrimmage. Hopefully I can find some funding to take them on some trips to play other teams. I have some trouble keeping the little bastards in line sometimes, but overall its fun and easy.
8. Economic development- my site has a good number of tourists coming every weekend to hang out by the lagoon. Now we sell them some food and drinks, but I think we could expand to souvenirs, jewelry, more snacks, and maybe even rent canoes or kayaks. This is kind of a massive project that I’m not sure will work, so I probably won’t start for some time until I get a better sense of things.
These are my main ideas. Sometimes I get overwhelmed and go catatonic thinking of all the things I need to do. The main problem now is that I don’t really understand the community enough to start, and I still only understand about 50% of what people say. Only time will tell what actually ends up happening. Let me know your questions or comments, I welcome advise and suggestions.
Alright, I’m still here and still alive. I just got done with our second round of training, which lasted two weeks. The first two weeks took place in the town where my first two months of training happened. We learned more technical details about projects for us to do, such as organizing community politics, teaching English and about the environment, starting women’s groups and environmental groups, and doing world map murals. The second week was spent at the national agricultural university where we stayed in the dorms and learned about various agricultural techniques like grafting, composting, worms, soil nutrient balance, and crop rotation. All of this was difficult to learn and pay attention since it was in Spanish, but I still learned a lot. Most of it was not applicable to my site since they only grow coffee here, but it can be used for small scale gardens, of which only a few exist here.
Next week I have been invited to have Thanksgiving dinner with a family that works for the U.S. embassy. It is a tradition for these families to have volunteers over to celebrate. After that, in the middle of December, we have been invited to play against JIKA in the national stadium. JIKA is the Japanese equivalent of the Peace Corps. They also stay for two years as volunteers, but there are only 30 of them and word has it they get much more money for projects. Events like this are really nice get always and it really helps to have things to look forward to.
School ended here for the long break, and it starts back up in late January. Then I will be trying to form an environmental club and start teaching more. Until then, the coffee harvest just started, so everyone is helping with that, including lots of labor from out of town. I’ve heard that this is a dangerous time, since people actually make a lit bit of money the number of robberies increases, so I’ll have to be extra careful. I am told that for harvesting 25 pounds people are paid between $.80-$1.25 and in the best conditions a person can harvest 200 pounds in a day, but usually less. This is some really hard work with really low pay, but is better than no work at all.
11/21-
The men’s soccer team that I have been playing soccer with won our first game today, after about 5 weeks of ties. I let by an easy goal again, partly because the ball is always taking crazy bounces on our crappy field. It wasn’t nearly as embarrassing as last time, and I made up for it with some crucial saves later. Our offence came through with four points in the second half, for a 4-1 crushing.
Here are my project ideas as of now:
1. Stove project- I want to sell cooking stoves in the community that produce less smoke and use less wood. Some have already been sold, but I think there is opportunity to sell more. They cost $42 but people can only afford around $20, so I’m looking for some money to subsidize. I may be hitting up friends and family for donation if I can’t pull it off myself, so keep your checkbook handy.
2. Getting a trash pickup service- Apparently there was one for a time, but no one would bring their trash to the street. Now people just throw their trash in local rivers and ditches. It may be as easy as talking to the mayor and doing an education campaign to get the trash to the street, but it could also prove very frustrating.
3. World Map Mural- This is a popular PCV project that usually is done in the school. It helps kids learn about Geography (many can’t even find El Salvador on a map) and makes the school look nicer. It should be easy and fun, but I have to wait until school is back in session.
4. Environmental club- this would involve recruiting kids in 4-6 grade to do cleaning campaigns, make a garden, compost, watch movies, go on trips to parks and natural areas, and receive lectures on environmental topics. The hardest part will be drumming up sufficient interest and motivation.
5. Women’s Group- I think there is potential for a group of women to organize and do various fun and money making activities. This would build community cooperation as well as empower women and teach business skills, and would be a good setting to discuss women’s issues and the problems with the male dominated culture here. I am admittedly intimidated to start this one, usually female volunteers do it and I don’t know how well they would respond to me starting it (or their husbands for that matter)
6. Giving Environmental lectures in the school-fairly easy and straight forward, I have received a book of lectures and a calendar of when to do them. I will probably do one or two a week. Time to tap my inner professor.
7. Coaching the youth soccer team- the team was already formed when I got here, I just ref while they scrimmage. Hopefully I can find some funding to take them on some trips to play other teams. I have some trouble keeping the little bastards in line sometimes, but overall its fun and easy.
8. Economic development- my site has a good number of tourists coming every weekend to hang out by the lagoon. Now we sell them some food and drinks, but I think we could expand to souvenirs, jewelry, more snacks, and maybe even rent canoes or kayaks. This is kind of a massive project that I’m not sure will work, so I probably won’t start for some time until I get a better sense of things.
These are my main ideas. Sometimes I get overwhelmed and go catatonic thinking of all the things I need to do. The main problem now is that I don’t really understand the community enough to start, and I still only understand about 50% of what people say. Only time will tell what actually ends up happening. Let me know your questions or comments, I welcome advise and suggestions.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
10/25/10
My town meeting happened on Friday, I had invited everyone in the community to come to the school and hear me talk about my job and to introduce myself. The director of the Environmental Education Peace Corps program came to support me and to say a few words the people would actually understand. About 80-100 people showed up, which packed the classroom we were in and lots of people had to try to listen from outside. I had written a speech and made posters saying my ideas for possible projects. I was pretty nervous, but everything went pretty well. Two women in the front row sat down and promptly started breastfeeding their babies which was a little distracting. At the end of everyone’s speeches the meeting transformed into a general town meeting. I was not aware this would happen, I was told to sit down and listened to someone call out the names and ages of all the infants in town. People would respond with “Si” so maybe it was checking if they were still alive.
I’ve been playing soccer almost constantly here, which I really like since it is an easy way to make friends without talking and is pretty fun. I play in the street in front of my house with neighborhood kids, ages 6-20, with goals being two rocks on either end of the street. This is some rough and tumble playing, as small space, pavement, rocks, sand, gutters, and barb wire fences make it feel like winning is more about survival than goals. We also play in a campground by the lagoon, which requires navigating trees, rocks, bushes, picnic tables, roots and fences, while trying to maintain control of the ball. A few of the kids have some funny nicknames, one kids is called “lodo” which means mud and my favorite “pachuga” which means chicken breast. I started calling one guy “godzilla” since he is tall and wide and plays like a freight train. Everyone thinks this name is hilarious and is definitely better than his old name of “gordo” which means fat. Everyone here calls me Nacho or Nachito or sometimes my personal favorite “Don Nacho” Every time I hear that one I have to stop and ponder the chain of events that lead to my name being Don Nacho and I just have to appreciate the absurdity of life.
I also play with the men’s team in very organized matches at a nearby soccer field that is in pretty good shape. These games are more serious and include registered players, a ref, uniforms, and a tournament schedule. The last two weeks I had played for one half and managed to neither make a any good plays nor make a fool of myself, which was my primary goal. This week they put me as goalkeeper, a scary position since everyone puts their faith in you. I was honored that they trust me that much, and decided not to mention that I hadn’t played on a soccer team since I was ten. All was going well in the goal until, in a moment of terrible judgment I let a high kick that I thought was out over the goal pass, which somehow curved precisely into the goal. I turned around to look and wanted to die. This put the other team in the lead, my team hadn’t lost all season, there wasn’t much time left, and I had just experienced a goalie’s worst nightmare, letting an easy one through. Amidst plenty of catcalls from the sidelines I tried not to think about what an ass of myself I had just made. All eyes were on my in these games anyway since I’m the only white/tall/foreign/non-spanish speaking guy out there. As the game continued all I could think about was my teams shattered trust, my loss of street cred, and the next flight back to the states (just kidding, kind of). These games don’t see high scores, but I was praying for us to score a goal or even for them to score another, since then the loss wouldn’t be caused by my mistake alone. With about a minute left my guys managed to put one in, and I’ve never been happier for a goal in my life. So we ended up tying instead of losing, which saved me from what may have been early retirement from El Salvador soccer league. We see what happens next week.
Finally, once a week I coach the youth soccer team, which just involves being the ref while they scrimmage. The kids range from ages 7 to 15, so I admire the tenacity of the little ones. Being a referee turned out to be harder than imagined, since no matter what call you make half of the players will be mad. I’m starting to get the hang of it, and hopefully next year I can organize for us to travel to away games.
Other than that, I don’t have a lot to do right now, since in a week I will leave for two weeks for the second part of my training, which last for two weeks. There we learn more about specific projects that we can do. I’m trying to come up with a project that could be a business for the people here, since most people said that lack of jobs is the biggest problem here. Aside from opening a new Nike factory, it is tough since no one has much money to buy anything. There is a decent flow of tourists though, so maybe we could sell them more food, arts and crafts, or souvenirs such as postcards or posters or something like that.
My town meeting happened on Friday, I had invited everyone in the community to come to the school and hear me talk about my job and to introduce myself. The director of the Environmental Education Peace Corps program came to support me and to say a few words the people would actually understand. About 80-100 people showed up, which packed the classroom we were in and lots of people had to try to listen from outside. I had written a speech and made posters saying my ideas for possible projects. I was pretty nervous, but everything went pretty well. Two women in the front row sat down and promptly started breastfeeding their babies which was a little distracting. At the end of everyone’s speeches the meeting transformed into a general town meeting. I was not aware this would happen, I was told to sit down and listened to someone call out the names and ages of all the infants in town. People would respond with “Si” so maybe it was checking if they were still alive.
I’ve been playing soccer almost constantly here, which I really like since it is an easy way to make friends without talking and is pretty fun. I play in the street in front of my house with neighborhood kids, ages 6-20, with goals being two rocks on either end of the street. This is some rough and tumble playing, as small space, pavement, rocks, sand, gutters, and barb wire fences make it feel like winning is more about survival than goals. We also play in a campground by the lagoon, which requires navigating trees, rocks, bushes, picnic tables, roots and fences, while trying to maintain control of the ball. A few of the kids have some funny nicknames, one kids is called “lodo” which means mud and my favorite “pachuga” which means chicken breast. I started calling one guy “godzilla” since he is tall and wide and plays like a freight train. Everyone thinks this name is hilarious and is definitely better than his old name of “gordo” which means fat. Everyone here calls me Nacho or Nachito or sometimes my personal favorite “Don Nacho” Every time I hear that one I have to stop and ponder the chain of events that lead to my name being Don Nacho and I just have to appreciate the absurdity of life.
I also play with the men’s team in very organized matches at a nearby soccer field that is in pretty good shape. These games are more serious and include registered players, a ref, uniforms, and a tournament schedule. The last two weeks I had played for one half and managed to neither make a any good plays nor make a fool of myself, which was my primary goal. This week they put me as goalkeeper, a scary position since everyone puts their faith in you. I was honored that they trust me that much, and decided not to mention that I hadn’t played on a soccer team since I was ten. All was going well in the goal until, in a moment of terrible judgment I let a high kick that I thought was out over the goal pass, which somehow curved precisely into the goal. I turned around to look and wanted to die. This put the other team in the lead, my team hadn’t lost all season, there wasn’t much time left, and I had just experienced a goalie’s worst nightmare, letting an easy one through. Amidst plenty of catcalls from the sidelines I tried not to think about what an ass of myself I had just made. All eyes were on my in these games anyway since I’m the only white/tall/foreign/non-spanish speaking guy out there. As the game continued all I could think about was my teams shattered trust, my loss of street cred, and the next flight back to the states (just kidding, kind of). These games don’t see high scores, but I was praying for us to score a goal or even for them to score another, since then the loss wouldn’t be caused by my mistake alone. With about a minute left my guys managed to put one in, and I’ve never been happier for a goal in my life. So we ended up tying instead of losing, which saved me from what may have been early retirement from El Salvador soccer league. We see what happens next week.
Finally, once a week I coach the youth soccer team, which just involves being the ref while they scrimmage. The kids range from ages 7 to 15, so I admire the tenacity of the little ones. Being a referee turned out to be harder than imagined, since no matter what call you make half of the players will be mad. I’m starting to get the hang of it, and hopefully next year I can organize for us to travel to away games.
Other than that, I don’t have a lot to do right now, since in a week I will leave for two weeks for the second part of my training, which last for two weeks. There we learn more about specific projects that we can do. I’m trying to come up with a project that could be a business for the people here, since most people said that lack of jobs is the biggest problem here. Aside from opening a new Nike factory, it is tough since no one has much money to buy anything. There is a decent flow of tourists though, so maybe we could sell them more food, arts and crafts, or souvenirs such as postcards or posters or something like that.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
