Holidays
This year we had several of our friends over to celebrate Thanksgiving. Everyone had an excellent time and we all managed to overeat and take naps just like we would have back home. I was in charge of the cooking, and managed to do all the food on top of the stove (we do not have an oven). We found a couple turkeys in the village next to us and my partner picked those up on the bus in a big burlap sack and carried them to a friend of ours to be killed and plucked. They were 7 pounds and 5 pounds, the largest that were available. We paid $2.00/lb., compared to the 29 cents/lb. that some people in the states paid this year. The turkeys even received names: Bobble and Nobble. Our menu included turkey, gravy, stuffing, roasted garlic mashed potatoes, baked beans, bora, pumpkin pie, and apple pie. For the apple pie, we purchased “ice apples”. They are called this because they are imported from the states, and it gets cold there. Apples here are extremely expensive, $1.00/apple. There are no cans of pumpkin here, so that was made straight from the pumpkin.
Now we can focus on Christmas. We happened to find an artificial tree at one of the stores out on the road. It’s definitely a Charlie Brown tree, but it serves its purpose. A friend of ours will be having a Christmas get-together at her place, and she will be cooking a lot of Vietnamese food, so we’re really looking forward to that. Another friend is hosting a Christmas cocktail party complete with eggnog. Sometimes it is easy to forget that we’re in another country!
Work
My work is moving along nicely. The grant that was written for the library projects has been approved, and we will be getting the money soon. We will be creating three school libraries, one at the secondary school, and two at primary schools. Each library will have six new bookshelves, one table for the librarian, two small tables for children, and three hammocks. In addition, we will be painting each of the libraries and color coding the bookshelves so that students know where to place the books on the shelves. Most of the money will be spent on purchasing new books for the libraries. We already have about 2,000 books, thanks to many generous individuals in the states who have donated books or money to help ship the books here. With those donations, we set up pilot libraries at two of the primary schools. For most of the children, this was their first time seeing a storybook, and they have been learning the proper way to turn pages and how to care for a book. The pilot libraries have been a huge success and we are really excited about expanding the libraries. They will be run by volunteers in the communities who will also be trained as peer educators. We are trying to encourage students to borrow books, even if they cannot read. Many of them look at the pictures only. We want to be able to create a culture that loves and cherishes books.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Saturday, July 26, 2008
One Year In
Well. We’re back to work now; not that we ever really stop working, but we just had three weeks of visiting with other volunteers and new trainees, followed by a week in the capital city for our midservice conference. It was great, and we enjoyed the month of hanging out with Americans… but we love the fact that we’re now back in our semi-secluded village. We started visiting around to local families again this week, attended Mandir (Hindu church) on Sunday, and are getting back into the thick of it. In the coming four weeks we’ll be running our summer holiday lesson, an expansion on last year’s “dip your toes in the water” session: 4 days a week, with reading and computer lessons, as well as sports and arts & crafts. We also managed to partner with a homegrown camp for the first week of it, so we’ll be fortunate enough to work with enterprising local professionals and see how we can help one another.
We’ve now been at our site for 1 year (not to mention the 2 months of pre-service training). 1 down, 1 remaining. We aren’t doing any sort of countdown to end-of-service, (that’s just not our style, although there are a few doing day-by-day counts) though as always we’re looking forward to the next several milemarkers. In this case, there’s a big regional festival in August, and we may make the trip out to see the sights.
Her family is visiting in November, so we’re planning the big excursions for that (there’s a certain large waterfall in the country we’ll probably fly in to see) and also planning our wish list for things they be so kind as to bring – for example, wine, pepperoni, and maybe some kind of cheese. There’s only one kind of cheese for sale in the country, so at this point the bloom is definitely off the rose with it.
Being here for a year… well let’s be honest: Being here 6 months can, well, alter your perspective on some things. Some things that used to (and probably still should) affect you, like hurtling down a terrible road in an old junker at 140kmph, don’t have the same impact they used to. Other things, things that are no big deal in the States, become huge. For example, we were recently watching a movie on our laptop (no, we don’t have blackouts ALL the time, as some have implied!) which took place during the holiday season. Don’t get me wrong: We had Christmas here. And it was festive; it just wasn’t festive in the traditional American style. Watching this movie, with the snow, the constant Christmas colors (and done far more beautifully and tastefully than Christmas ever really is in the States, since it was a movie), and everything else… well, it was overwhelming. We definitely became a bit emotional watching all of it. So, no more Christmas flicks for a while.
That’s not the only thing that’s been overwhelming for us, although it was the most emotional. The others, funnily enough, involve food. Of course, I (he) was more strongly affected by this. Back in December, a Volunteer’s family visited and took several of us to a lunch buffet at the posh hotel in the capital city (which, I believe, is about to get blown out of the water by the new Marriott going up). I took three steps into the buffet line and started crying. No joke. All that food, most of it American-style, was just too much.
More recently, we went to the 4th of July celebration at the Ambassador’s house, where food and drink were provided. The two of us were almost jumping up and down in line, pointing at all the food and drooling, when we realized that it was actually about on par with something any family a thousand miles north was eating right at that minute. There weren’t really any frills or bells & whistles – just straight-up 4th food, hot dogs and hamburgers and baked beans. Sad, you think? Well, just the other day we were watching Ratatouille, a movie about a chef pursuing his dream. Needless to say, all those shots in the kitchen, fresh and prepared foods, delicacies and staples, everything, we were drooling. It was a hard movie to watch.
Oh yeah. Did I mention that it’s a cartoon? And that the chef is a rat? Not like that changes the gastronomical delights we saw. The… cartoon… gastronomical delights. Which were delightful.
If this is what it’s like after one year…
We’ve now been at our site for 1 year (not to mention the 2 months of pre-service training). 1 down, 1 remaining. We aren’t doing any sort of countdown to end-of-service, (that’s just not our style, although there are a few doing day-by-day counts) though as always we’re looking forward to the next several milemarkers. In this case, there’s a big regional festival in August, and we may make the trip out to see the sights.
Her family is visiting in November, so we’re planning the big excursions for that (there’s a certain large waterfall in the country we’ll probably fly in to see) and also planning our wish list for things they be so kind as to bring – for example, wine, pepperoni, and maybe some kind of cheese. There’s only one kind of cheese for sale in the country, so at this point the bloom is definitely off the rose with it.
Being here for a year… well let’s be honest: Being here 6 months can, well, alter your perspective on some things. Some things that used to (and probably still should) affect you, like hurtling down a terrible road in an old junker at 140kmph, don’t have the same impact they used to. Other things, things that are no big deal in the States, become huge. For example, we were recently watching a movie on our laptop (no, we don’t have blackouts ALL the time, as some have implied!) which took place during the holiday season. Don’t get me wrong: We had Christmas here. And it was festive; it just wasn’t festive in the traditional American style. Watching this movie, with the snow, the constant Christmas colors (and done far more beautifully and tastefully than Christmas ever really is in the States, since it was a movie), and everything else… well, it was overwhelming. We definitely became a bit emotional watching all of it. So, no more Christmas flicks for a while.
That’s not the only thing that’s been overwhelming for us, although it was the most emotional. The others, funnily enough, involve food. Of course, I (he) was more strongly affected by this. Back in December, a Volunteer’s family visited and took several of us to a lunch buffet at the posh hotel in the capital city (which, I believe, is about to get blown out of the water by the new Marriott going up). I took three steps into the buffet line and started crying. No joke. All that food, most of it American-style, was just too much.
More recently, we went to the 4th of July celebration at the Ambassador’s house, where food and drink were provided. The two of us were almost jumping up and down in line, pointing at all the food and drooling, when we realized that it was actually about on par with something any family a thousand miles north was eating right at that minute. There weren’t really any frills or bells & whistles – just straight-up 4th food, hot dogs and hamburgers and baked beans. Sad, you think? Well, just the other day we were watching Ratatouille, a movie about a chef pursuing his dream. Needless to say, all those shots in the kitchen, fresh and prepared foods, delicacies and staples, everything, we were drooling. It was a hard movie to watch.
Oh yeah. Did I mention that it’s a cartoon? And that the chef is a rat? Not like that changes the gastronomical delights we saw. The… cartoon… gastronomical delights. Which were delightful.
If this is what it’s like after one year…
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Descriptions of our country
...from other people writing of other places:
Yes, I wear my slip and skirt, but I can’t seem to ever keep them in good repair or to get them as clean as my colleagues do. These other women also tend to wear secondhand American prom dresses… my sallow complexion can’t really carry it off, and I usually feel frumpy in my cotton tee shirts and long skirts.
--Dear Exile, Hilary Liftin and Kate Montgomery (in Africa)
I noticed, as I had around Cange, that many people we passed wore clothes from America, brand-name running shoes that had seen much better days and baseball caps and T-shirts bearing the logos of professional sports teams and country clubs.
--Mountains beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder (in Haiti)
Many bring him presents. Milk in a green bottle with a corncob stopper. “Thank you, thank you!” Farmer says. He smiles and, staring at the bottle on his desk, says in English, “Unpasteurized cow’s milk in a dirty bottle… It’s so awful you might as well be cheerful.”
--Mountains beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder
Only then could you really understand an event like the mango lady’s death… Accidents happen. Sure. But not every bad thing that happens is an accident. There was nothing accidental about the wretchedness of the road down Morne Kabrit or the overloaded truck, or the desperation of a peasant woman who had to get to market and make a sale because otherwise her family would go hungry. These circumstances all had causes, and the nearest ones were the continuing misrule…[of those] who used the money to keep himself and the elite in luxury and power and spent almost nothing on things like roads and transportation.
--Mountains beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder
Up ahead we could see the check-in point for the charter flight to Havana. You could tell from the piles of luggage, the boxes containing radios and kitchen appliances, the sacks full of things like disposable diapers… One can guess a lot about the economic condition of a country by inspecting the baggage people carry there from the United States, the shopping mall for the poor countries of the world. This sort of scene, I think, was so commonplace… For eighteen years he’d been performing for Haitians what are called commission, Creole for “I got some stuff for you to carry on the plane.”
--Mountains beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder
I noticed that most of the class, rather than respond to the questions, had simply repeated my classroom lectures… I thought they had cheated; it was inconceivable to me that they could have re-created my lectures so precisely without notes. My colleagues, however, informed me that this was regular practice… At the next class after that exam, I was furious… they did not know any better, this was what most professors expected… From the first day they had set foot in elementary school, they had been told to memorize. They had been told that their own opinions counted for nothing.
--Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi (in Iran)
I ask, Who can dance Persian-style? …Sanaz begins shyly, taking graceful little steps, moving her waist with a lusty grace. As we laugh and joke more, she becomes bolder; she starts to move her head from side to side, and every part of her body asserts itself, vying for attention with the other parts. Her body quivers as she takes her small steps and dances with her fingers and her hands… There are different forms of seduction, and the kind I have witnessed in Persian dancers is so unique, such a mixture of subtlety and brazenness, I cannot find a Western eqvivalent to compare it to.
--Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi
--And almost anything from What is the What, by Dave Eggers with Valentino Achak Deng – minus the violence and drama that comes from Sudan, you get a good idea about life in a developing country, and the view many people have of the States. Here’s one bit:
I was woken by excited talk outside the shelter
– You haven’t seen him?
No. You’re saying he’s a white man? His hair is white?
No, his skin, every part of him. He’s white like chalk.
…The first theory held that he had been sent by the Sudanese government to kill all of us… That theory was quickly debunked when we discovered that the elders did not fear him… He spent most of his time with a few of the elders, building a storage shed for food, which seemed like work too pedestrian for a god or even a minor deity. Thereafter, some of the older boys offered more nuanced views.
– You’ve never seen a white man? he laughed… The white people come to Sudan for many reasons, including their desire to teach us about the Kingdom of God… They also come for the oil, and this has been a source of much trouble for people like us; that is a story for another time. For now we’ll talk about one reason they come, which is to help people when they’re being attacked, oppressed. Sometimes the white men who come to inspect things here represent the armies of the white men, which are the most powerful armies on earth.
I decided to wait for a few days… He was here to help the elders build food-storage containers. If he liked the people he met, it was said, he would bring food to fill the containers. This information was accepted by most of the boys, though many of us still eyed the man warily, expecting anything from him: death, salvation, fire.
Two words describe our reaction on reading these various passages: Dead on.
Yes, I wear my slip and skirt, but I can’t seem to ever keep them in good repair or to get them as clean as my colleagues do. These other women also tend to wear secondhand American prom dresses… my sallow complexion can’t really carry it off, and I usually feel frumpy in my cotton tee shirts and long skirts.
--Dear Exile, Hilary Liftin and Kate Montgomery (in Africa)
I noticed, as I had around Cange, that many people we passed wore clothes from America, brand-name running shoes that had seen much better days and baseball caps and T-shirts bearing the logos of professional sports teams and country clubs.
--Mountains beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder (in Haiti)
Many bring him presents. Milk in a green bottle with a corncob stopper. “Thank you, thank you!” Farmer says. He smiles and, staring at the bottle on his desk, says in English, “Unpasteurized cow’s milk in a dirty bottle… It’s so awful you might as well be cheerful.”
--Mountains beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder
Only then could you really understand an event like the mango lady’s death… Accidents happen. Sure. But not every bad thing that happens is an accident. There was nothing accidental about the wretchedness of the road down Morne Kabrit or the overloaded truck, or the desperation of a peasant woman who had to get to market and make a sale because otherwise her family would go hungry. These circumstances all had causes, and the nearest ones were the continuing misrule…[of those] who used the money to keep himself and the elite in luxury and power and spent almost nothing on things like roads and transportation.
--Mountains beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder
Up ahead we could see the check-in point for the charter flight to Havana. You could tell from the piles of luggage, the boxes containing radios and kitchen appliances, the sacks full of things like disposable diapers… One can guess a lot about the economic condition of a country by inspecting the baggage people carry there from the United States, the shopping mall for the poor countries of the world. This sort of scene, I think, was so commonplace… For eighteen years he’d been performing for Haitians what are called commission, Creole for “I got some stuff for you to carry on the plane.”
--Mountains beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder
I noticed that most of the class, rather than respond to the questions, had simply repeated my classroom lectures… I thought they had cheated; it was inconceivable to me that they could have re-created my lectures so precisely without notes. My colleagues, however, informed me that this was regular practice… At the next class after that exam, I was furious… they did not know any better, this was what most professors expected… From the first day they had set foot in elementary school, they had been told to memorize. They had been told that their own opinions counted for nothing.
--Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi (in Iran)
I ask, Who can dance Persian-style? …Sanaz begins shyly, taking graceful little steps, moving her waist with a lusty grace. As we laugh and joke more, she becomes bolder; she starts to move her head from side to side, and every part of her body asserts itself, vying for attention with the other parts. Her body quivers as she takes her small steps and dances with her fingers and her hands… There are different forms of seduction, and the kind I have witnessed in Persian dancers is so unique, such a mixture of subtlety and brazenness, I cannot find a Western eqvivalent to compare it to.
--Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi
--And almost anything from What is the What, by Dave Eggers with Valentino Achak Deng – minus the violence and drama that comes from Sudan, you get a good idea about life in a developing country, and the view many people have of the States. Here’s one bit:
I was woken by excited talk outside the shelter
– You haven’t seen him?
No. You’re saying he’s a white man? His hair is white?
No, his skin, every part of him. He’s white like chalk.
…The first theory held that he had been sent by the Sudanese government to kill all of us… That theory was quickly debunked when we discovered that the elders did not fear him… He spent most of his time with a few of the elders, building a storage shed for food, which seemed like work too pedestrian for a god or even a minor deity. Thereafter, some of the older boys offered more nuanced views.
– You’ve never seen a white man? he laughed… The white people come to Sudan for many reasons, including their desire to teach us about the Kingdom of God… They also come for the oil, and this has been a source of much trouble for people like us; that is a story for another time. For now we’ll talk about one reason they come, which is to help people when they’re being attacked, oppressed. Sometimes the white men who come to inspect things here represent the armies of the white men, which are the most powerful armies on earth.
I decided to wait for a few days… He was here to help the elders build food-storage containers. If he liked the people he met, it was said, he would bring food to fill the containers. This information was accepted by most of the boys, though many of us still eyed the man warily, expecting anything from him: death, salvation, fire.
Two words describe our reaction on reading these various passages: Dead on.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Progress (from Him)
Well. We’ve been on-site nine months now (not counting the first two months of training). Working in the schools has been great for us: It kept us busy, helped us meet a lot of the families in the area, gave us a way to reach out to kids, and helped us assess what the needs of the community are.
Now, however, while the schools are still nice and we do a great deal of work there, we are increasingly busy with other projects. I’ve already reduced my teaching days to three per week – easy for me, since the school just switched to a computer program for scheduling classes… and I was the only one ready to tackle that… so I guess another project is helping some teachers figure out the computer scheduling program. I still teach all the classes that I previously took four days to tackle; I just don’t take break periods now. She’s going to reduce her teaching days from four to three next school year, as well.
So what have we been up to lately? As for me:
Working with two donor organizations and two private (wealthy) donors to complete the computer lab at the secondary school, including bringing the internet and getting a generator to deal with the once (or twice, or thrice) -per-week blackouts that occur;
Bringing internet to the local NGO;
Working with one of the same private donors on sports equipment, including a fully-concreted basketball court;
Providing consultation services to an NGO in the capital city, giving lectures at one conference and planning for another;
Giving targeted IT classes during the holidays, providing support to new computer owners and teachers;
Looking at providing consultation for a hospital in the regional capital, as well as one of the main court-remanded youth homes in the country, supporting mental health services (I understand that there are one, possibly two Ph.D.s in Counseling/Clinical psych in the country, and I may be the only M.A.);
And of course, teaching IT twice a week and Guidance & Counseling once a week to grades 7, 8, and 9 at the local secondary school.
As for her:
Working with small groups in remedial reading at three of the four local primary schools;
Connecting local youth to youth in the States through pen-pal letters;
Running regular staff-development sessions at the same schools;
Providing computer instruction at the one primary school that has computers (it has 5, to be exact);
Running holiday lessons in literacy and computers for primary schoolers, and literacy for secondary schoolers;
Running a pilot library at one primary school, with plans to expand to the other two (more on this later);
And we are working together on some things as well:
Pushing farmers in the area to grow crops that do well on the international market as opposed to the depressed local market (this is in tandem with a large, government-funded organization based out of the capital city – connecting local growers to international markets is a big bite for two volunteers to chew);
Planning a month-long set of summer lessons that will grow on the small project we ran last year, complete with funding, crafts, sports, pairing with local businesses, etc.;
And, something we’re pretty passionate about right now: taking the local hospital playground, currently old and, well, defunct; making it operational, drastically expanding it, and including benches and shade for parents. We’re calling it a “family-friendly area”, basically almost a park. We’ve already garnered support from a number of donors – local business, national corporation, wealthy donor, and we’re chasing grant money as well. Sandbox, swingsets, slide, etc. I can’t even imagine how this sounds from your side of the screen right now, but remember: The main public spaces are rum shops, which are not exactly family-friendly, and churches, which only fill up once a week (at most). The playground was a big deal 15 years ago, but now only the merry-go-round still works (barely).
But that’s all still in the works for us. My big project, revolving around computers and internet access in the community, is just now starting to chase money. Our third big project, however, the one She is heading, is well underway. I’m talking now about the library project. First, you have to understand that a great number of communities in the world have nicely-constructed buildings, many of them even with books, put together by volunteers like us and intended as school or community libraries. Most of these buildings remain unused; many have fallen into disrepair. Between this and the current ease and relative low cost of dropping a satellite dish into a community for internet access, libraries are very much out of vogue in development work.
But. Many of those libraries were put up by volunteers who decided for their communities that libraries were needed (just as many volunteers decide for their communities, now, that internet is required). A grant was written, building constructed, and people went along because, well, the volunteer was often white and Western, spoke eloquently, and spent grant money locally. It’s a winning combination.
To be honest, the big project I worry about most is my IT infrastructure improvement. A huge part of it is making it income-producing; otherwise, everything will slowly break and in two years we’ll have a beautiful computer graveyard. In 20 years, I see IT development being looked at the same way libraries are now: Well-intended, but not well-thought-through projects. If it doesn’t make money (and a decent amount, at that), how will computers be repaired and replaced? How will the monthly net bill be paid? Where will you get the staff to run it, people with the expertise necessary to keep a network running?
The library, meanwhile, is going really well, mostly because She laid excellent groundwork. Before writing a single grant or talking to anyone in the community, she simply gathered a few hundred books and started lending them out. This quickly became a major venture, involving student volunteers and a computer database. And it paid off. On a given day, she might check out somewhere approaching 200 books. Parents approach us and talk about their kids making everyone in the house read to them, so we know that at least some of the books are being used. And using student volunteers ensures that more people get practice in actually running a library.
So now we’re able to begin expanding, due almost entirely to the support of our families and hometowns. We have received a number of books that is, to say the least, astonishing. We have to go in to the regional capital to pick up packages, and we usually get offered rides home by people we know – who have no idea what they’re getting themselves into when they offer. On the last trip, we got 11 boxes, each weighing 40+ pounds. We have over 1000 books now, all without writing a single grant. Soon, she’ll be running a carnival as a local fundraiser (and awareness-raiser), including a raffle. So in the end, what will change people more? Five computers in her primary school, or 1500+ books, checked out 200 at a time?
But to you, reading this: Don’t underestimate the effect one person can have. In the States, beautifully-constructed franchises and public works spring up as if by magic, and I think we end up really disconnected from the nuts and bolts of development. Our hometowns aren’t even finished with the library donation yet: At least one more donation may happen after a project in my home area this summer. But all this has come from just two town areas. It’s easier to get involved than you might think – and movement tends to snowball, building mass and momentum as people you talk with begin to get excited themselves.
I don’t just think that we’re disconnected from development, period; people actually do want to be connected to something like this, something with tangible results, something that changes the lives of people. Most people just need someone to provide that connection.
Well. We’ve been on-site nine months now (not counting the first two months of training). Working in the schools has been great for us: It kept us busy, helped us meet a lot of the families in the area, gave us a way to reach out to kids, and helped us assess what the needs of the community are.
Now, however, while the schools are still nice and we do a great deal of work there, we are increasingly busy with other projects. I’ve already reduced my teaching days to three per week – easy for me, since the school just switched to a computer program for scheduling classes… and I was the only one ready to tackle that… so I guess another project is helping some teachers figure out the computer scheduling program. I still teach all the classes that I previously took four days to tackle; I just don’t take break periods now. She’s going to reduce her teaching days from four to three next school year, as well.
So what have we been up to lately? As for me:
Working with two donor organizations and two private (wealthy) donors to complete the computer lab at the secondary school, including bringing the internet and getting a generator to deal with the once (or twice, or thrice) -per-week blackouts that occur;
Bringing internet to the local NGO;
Working with one of the same private donors on sports equipment, including a fully-concreted basketball court;
Providing consultation services to an NGO in the capital city, giving lectures at one conference and planning for another;
Giving targeted IT classes during the holidays, providing support to new computer owners and teachers;
Looking at providing consultation for a hospital in the regional capital, as well as one of the main court-remanded youth homes in the country, supporting mental health services (I understand that there are one, possibly two Ph.D.s in Counseling/Clinical psych in the country, and I may be the only M.A.);
And of course, teaching IT twice a week and Guidance & Counseling once a week to grades 7, 8, and 9 at the local secondary school.
As for her:
Working with small groups in remedial reading at three of the four local primary schools;
Connecting local youth to youth in the States through pen-pal letters;
Running regular staff-development sessions at the same schools;
Providing computer instruction at the one primary school that has computers (it has 5, to be exact);
Running holiday lessons in literacy and computers for primary schoolers, and literacy for secondary schoolers;
Running a pilot library at one primary school, with plans to expand to the other two (more on this later);
And we are working together on some things as well:
Pushing farmers in the area to grow crops that do well on the international market as opposed to the depressed local market (this is in tandem with a large, government-funded organization based out of the capital city – connecting local growers to international markets is a big bite for two volunteers to chew);
Planning a month-long set of summer lessons that will grow on the small project we ran last year, complete with funding, crafts, sports, pairing with local businesses, etc.;
And, something we’re pretty passionate about right now: taking the local hospital playground, currently old and, well, defunct; making it operational, drastically expanding it, and including benches and shade for parents. We’re calling it a “family-friendly area”, basically almost a park. We’ve already garnered support from a number of donors – local business, national corporation, wealthy donor, and we’re chasing grant money as well. Sandbox, swingsets, slide, etc. I can’t even imagine how this sounds from your side of the screen right now, but remember: The main public spaces are rum shops, which are not exactly family-friendly, and churches, which only fill up once a week (at most). The playground was a big deal 15 years ago, but now only the merry-go-round still works (barely).
But that’s all still in the works for us. My big project, revolving around computers and internet access in the community, is just now starting to chase money. Our third big project, however, the one She is heading, is well underway. I’m talking now about the library project. First, you have to understand that a great number of communities in the world have nicely-constructed buildings, many of them even with books, put together by volunteers like us and intended as school or community libraries. Most of these buildings remain unused; many have fallen into disrepair. Between this and the current ease and relative low cost of dropping a satellite dish into a community for internet access, libraries are very much out of vogue in development work.
But. Many of those libraries were put up by volunteers who decided for their communities that libraries were needed (just as many volunteers decide for their communities, now, that internet is required). A grant was written, building constructed, and people went along because, well, the volunteer was often white and Western, spoke eloquently, and spent grant money locally. It’s a winning combination.
To be honest, the big project I worry about most is my IT infrastructure improvement. A huge part of it is making it income-producing; otherwise, everything will slowly break and in two years we’ll have a beautiful computer graveyard. In 20 years, I see IT development being looked at the same way libraries are now: Well-intended, but not well-thought-through projects. If it doesn’t make money (and a decent amount, at that), how will computers be repaired and replaced? How will the monthly net bill be paid? Where will you get the staff to run it, people with the expertise necessary to keep a network running?
The library, meanwhile, is going really well, mostly because She laid excellent groundwork. Before writing a single grant or talking to anyone in the community, she simply gathered a few hundred books and started lending them out. This quickly became a major venture, involving student volunteers and a computer database. And it paid off. On a given day, she might check out somewhere approaching 200 books. Parents approach us and talk about their kids making everyone in the house read to them, so we know that at least some of the books are being used. And using student volunteers ensures that more people get practice in actually running a library.
So now we’re able to begin expanding, due almost entirely to the support of our families and hometowns. We have received a number of books that is, to say the least, astonishing. We have to go in to the regional capital to pick up packages, and we usually get offered rides home by people we know – who have no idea what they’re getting themselves into when they offer. On the last trip, we got 11 boxes, each weighing 40+ pounds. We have over 1000 books now, all without writing a single grant. Soon, she’ll be running a carnival as a local fundraiser (and awareness-raiser), including a raffle. So in the end, what will change people more? Five computers in her primary school, or 1500+ books, checked out 200 at a time?
But to you, reading this: Don’t underestimate the effect one person can have. In the States, beautifully-constructed franchises and public works spring up as if by magic, and I think we end up really disconnected from the nuts and bolts of development. Our hometowns aren’t even finished with the library donation yet: At least one more donation may happen after a project in my home area this summer. But all this has come from just two town areas. It’s easier to get involved than you might think – and movement tends to snowball, building mass and momentum as people you talk with begin to get excited themselves.
I don’t just think that we’re disconnected from development, period; people actually do want to be connected to something like this, something with tangible results, something that changes the lives of people. Most people just need someone to provide that connection.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Library
After receiving numerous book donations from various individuals, we now have a temporary lending library set up at one of the primary schools in our community. We have around five hundred books. Currently, I am the main librarian. Starting at the beginning of the next school year, the rest of the teachers will be responsible for brining their students to the library to check out books. There are a handful of grade 5 & 6 students that come in during their lunch break to help sign out books for other students. We will be relying heavily on student librarians to run the library. The library has been extremely successful so far. Students are very eager to get into the library as often as possible to check out a new book. Many of the younger children take their books home and ask every member of the family to read the book to them. Some children do not have any literate family members to read to them, so they simply enjoy the pictures. One child recently acquired a new puppy and decided to name it Copper, after a dog in a book they had checked out. Currently, a group of teachers are working on writing a grant and asking community members for donations in order to fund the library project. We will be fixing up an empty classroom at each of the schools to use as a library. The goal is to build several bookshelves and a couple tables, and sew hammocks and mats for the children to sit on. Once we have received funding, we will travel to the capital city to purchase as many books as possible.
Gender Roles
Prior to arriving in this country, my partner and I did not fit into the typical gender roles. He helped out in the kitchen every night, we shared the responsibilities of cleaning the apartment, and we each did our own laundry. Now, ten months into our stay here, we realized that we fit into the stereotypical gender roles completely. I cook all the meals and wash all of the dishes. I clean the house. He does a lot of the laundry while I am busy cleaning and cooking. At many religious functions, we are introduced as Sir _______ and his wife. Oftentimes, he is called upon to say a few words on our behalf. It seems that it is the woman’s job to stay somewhat in the shadow of her husband. Some of these things have taken a while to adjust to, while others have just fallen into place without us even recognizing it (like the cooking and cleaning). It is amazing how quickly your behaviors can change when you are in a culture that has very strong traditional gender roles. Also important to mention is the large role washing machines and dishwashers have played in the liberation of the woman. It is almost impossible for a woman here to even consider going to University and pursuing a career, because 90 percent of the day is spent washing, cleaning, and cooking. There are no restaurants in our villages for days when you are just too busy to cook any food. Many families do not own refrigerators, so all food must be prepared that same day and the leftovers are tossed out. Laundry involves hand washing all clothes. This is very time consuming and labor intensive. So women, I think we all need to be extremely grateful for the invention of the dishwasher, the microwave, and the laundry machine, among others, for greatly improving the quality of our lives and allowing us to pursue other occupations if desired.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Recent shootings
Our work
Well… It’s been awhile. The only thing we’ve posted since December was something that we actually wrote at the beginning of January. You never really know what’s going to happen next, I guess, in anything – but development even moreso.
In case you didn’t read it in the NYTimes, see it on BBC, or catch it anywhere else, there were some shootings in the country. One man, a longtime gangster, seems to be at the heart of it. The first shooting took place in a village near the capital city, where some other volunteers had lived during their 2-month training prior to service. When that happened, people in our region were temporarily relocated, in response to rumors and government action; so the two of us got to travel over and then down a river, stay with some other volunteers… where, shortly after we left to return to our own site, the second shooting happened. The other volunteers were okay, if a bit shaken. For a while, anything could have happened, but things seem to have quieted down for now.
Out where we are, we have no concerns at all. We’re in a fairly remote area; some escaping criminals actually came here a couple years ago, and found out the hard way that there’s basically one way in and out of the place, making for an easy roadblock and quick capture (well, they were all killed actually, because the police here don’t like escapees and criminals, so it wasn’t so much a capture as a body removal). People laugh about it, and I don’t think that too many more criminals will think that this is a great place to go after that.
Out biggest concern, really, is that something else bad will be done by this gangster guy, somewhere else, and that this will lead to our organization pulling out of the entire country. If that had happened even back in December or January, it would have been bad but not too awful – we’re discouraged from launching too many projects too quickly, so that overzealous volunteers don’t get wrapped up in all sorts of silliness; and our social and emotional bonds weren’t as strong then, either. Now, however, we’re involved in a lot of things, and emotionally it would pretty much crush us if we were pulled out. Professionally and personally, it would be really hard to leave now.
Don’t get me wrong: We’d be on the first plane back out to whichever country the organization found for us next, because we’re pretty serious about this. Some see this work as a 2-year break from “real life” (whatever that is), or a place to rest between college and vocation. For us, this is part of our vocation.
So, what have we been up to, aside from dodging bullets, taking our first vacation (Carnival!), and celebrating the holidays? Ironically, as I write this we’re on break from school – two-and-a-half weeks for Easter-time, between the 2nd and 3rd terms of the year. But it wasn’t just Easter on Sunday; it was Phagwah, the Hindu New Year, on Saturday, and You-man-Nabi, the birth and death of the Prophet Mohammad (may peace be upon him), on that Thursday prior. So, 3 packed days. I won’t bore you with details, but if you want to know about Phagwah (a particularly fun time), Wikipedia it; or just imagine the two of us getting doused in powder of all colors, sprayed with cologne til we started to get dizzy, and sprayed with colored water.
Things we learned over the most recent holidays:
Easter is not on Sunday. It’s actually on Monday, which is why it’s called Easter Monday, and the proper way to celebrate it is to go to the beach and fly kites. (All in all, certainly no more silly than hunting for candy & eggs that a benevolent giant bunny left.)
Jesus Christ was not, actually, the first person to fly a kite. He was the second. Lord Shiva was the first. But, he still loses, because no one celebrates Shiva’s anything with kite-flying.
Mohammad (may peace be upon him) died on the same day he was born. Different year, same date. Weird, huh?
If your kite goes up in the air and then immediate crashes to the ground, it’s missing something. A tail. If it has a tail, but still shakes a lot up in the air, the tail should be longer. This can be accomplished by tying your superbig handkerchief to the end of the tail.
A Muslim man is a father once his wife gives birth. A Muslim woman is a mother once she gives birth… to a son. No son, no motherhood. The man who told me this was standing right next to his wife of 25 or 30 years, who had given birth to three daughters and no sons. I’m going back to that village tomorrow, and I will check him for bruises or lacerations.
Phagwah is pretty much the best holiday. Unlike Christmas Eve, where you must drink, and Old Year’s (New Year’s Eve), where you must go to church, everything is optional on Phagwah. You can go to church, but if you do you’ll dance and chase people with powder. You can drink, but if you do you’ll dance and chase people with powder. In fact, you can even go to market (Saturday is still the regional market day, even if it’s Phagwah), but if you do… well, you know.
A 5’ tall kite can, in fact, be flown, and by just one person. A 7’ kite is only good for posing next to in pictures.
Yes, we’re doing work, despite our overburdened social schedule and endless list of holidays (three major faiths in one small country make for a lot of holidays). I’m giving computer classes for teachers and computer owners (there are a good number in the area, 20 or so) over the holidays. I’m working at building up the computer lab, shoring up some of the problems, making it stronger. I have a pledge for internet setup from a private donor, who’s also involved in making sports easily accessible to all people in the village Polder (collection of 4 villages, remember?). I’m also looking at some entrepreneurs in the area: Box kites sold for $2000 apiece (compared to $300-400 for a normal kite) this Easter, so I’m going to find out how they’re made and encourage some kids to make and sell them next year. There’s a small gym nearby that’s currently being privately used by 4 young men – I want to introduce a business model to them for running a gym, fee systems, so that they can move from being boys with weights to men running a rec facility.
She’s moving forward with a network of libraries in the primary schools – students checked out 180 books in one day from the pilot site, and parents are complaining that their kids make them read to them at night, so this is good. I know that we have some more books coming in from the states, thanks to our family, friends, and hometowns. Her Easter lesson will give all the primary kids in one village access to computers over the course of a week. She’s also looking at building up a family-friendly area near the local hospital – repairing, replacing, and adding to old playground equipment, adding in benches and shade for parents, etc. She’s also looking to revamp her approach with the schools next year, to be working more closely with teachers, modeling and working with them to improve teaching methods, disciplining, etc.
Finally, we have a summer lesson scheduled, taking place over 4 weeks, and are also working with some other volunteers across the country to run some workshops on a variety of issues.
So… that’s that. I went to my first baryat (I probably slaughtered that word), which is where basically all the men from the village of the groom show up at the wedding and drink outside. They never go in and watch the wedding; they just hang around and socialize with each other. Interesting Hindu tradition. I’m not sure whether it’s terrible or amazing. Hindu weddings in India often have a thousand people in attendance; here it’s fewer due to the lower population, but still – you don’t worry about invitation or lists, so much, and aside from 7-curry for everyone, you have no obligation (the men bring their own booze), so it’s pretty interesting all in all. By the end of April, we’ll have attended somewhere around 6 or 7 weddings, which is about how many we’ll have missed back in the States.
Alright. Enjoy spring up north – dry season finally came to the country (we skipped the last one), rice will soon be reaped, our dog will be able to dance on command, and all will be right with the world.
Our work
Well… It’s been awhile. The only thing we’ve posted since December was something that we actually wrote at the beginning of January. You never really know what’s going to happen next, I guess, in anything – but development even moreso.
In case you didn’t read it in the NYTimes, see it on BBC, or catch it anywhere else, there were some shootings in the country. One man, a longtime gangster, seems to be at the heart of it. The first shooting took place in a village near the capital city, where some other volunteers had lived during their 2-month training prior to service. When that happened, people in our region were temporarily relocated, in response to rumors and government action; so the two of us got to travel over and then down a river, stay with some other volunteers… where, shortly after we left to return to our own site, the second shooting happened. The other volunteers were okay, if a bit shaken. For a while, anything could have happened, but things seem to have quieted down for now.
Out where we are, we have no concerns at all. We’re in a fairly remote area; some escaping criminals actually came here a couple years ago, and found out the hard way that there’s basically one way in and out of the place, making for an easy roadblock and quick capture (well, they were all killed actually, because the police here don’t like escapees and criminals, so it wasn’t so much a capture as a body removal). People laugh about it, and I don’t think that too many more criminals will think that this is a great place to go after that.
Out biggest concern, really, is that something else bad will be done by this gangster guy, somewhere else, and that this will lead to our organization pulling out of the entire country. If that had happened even back in December or January, it would have been bad but not too awful – we’re discouraged from launching too many projects too quickly, so that overzealous volunteers don’t get wrapped up in all sorts of silliness; and our social and emotional bonds weren’t as strong then, either. Now, however, we’re involved in a lot of things, and emotionally it would pretty much crush us if we were pulled out. Professionally and personally, it would be really hard to leave now.
Don’t get me wrong: We’d be on the first plane back out to whichever country the organization found for us next, because we’re pretty serious about this. Some see this work as a 2-year break from “real life” (whatever that is), or a place to rest between college and vocation. For us, this is part of our vocation.
So, what have we been up to, aside from dodging bullets, taking our first vacation (Carnival!), and celebrating the holidays? Ironically, as I write this we’re on break from school – two-and-a-half weeks for Easter-time, between the 2nd and 3rd terms of the year. But it wasn’t just Easter on Sunday; it was Phagwah, the Hindu New Year, on Saturday, and You-man-Nabi, the birth and death of the Prophet Mohammad (may peace be upon him), on that Thursday prior. So, 3 packed days. I won’t bore you with details, but if you want to know about Phagwah (a particularly fun time), Wikipedia it; or just imagine the two of us getting doused in powder of all colors, sprayed with cologne til we started to get dizzy, and sprayed with colored water.
Things we learned over the most recent holidays:
Easter is not on Sunday. It’s actually on Monday, which is why it’s called Easter Monday, and the proper way to celebrate it is to go to the beach and fly kites. (All in all, certainly no more silly than hunting for candy & eggs that a benevolent giant bunny left.)
Jesus Christ was not, actually, the first person to fly a kite. He was the second. Lord Shiva was the first. But, he still loses, because no one celebrates Shiva’s anything with kite-flying.
Mohammad (may peace be upon him) died on the same day he was born. Different year, same date. Weird, huh?
If your kite goes up in the air and then immediate crashes to the ground, it’s missing something. A tail. If it has a tail, but still shakes a lot up in the air, the tail should be longer. This can be accomplished by tying your superbig handkerchief to the end of the tail.
A Muslim man is a father once his wife gives birth. A Muslim woman is a mother once she gives birth… to a son. No son, no motherhood. The man who told me this was standing right next to his wife of 25 or 30 years, who had given birth to three daughters and no sons. I’m going back to that village tomorrow, and I will check him for bruises or lacerations.
Phagwah is pretty much the best holiday. Unlike Christmas Eve, where you must drink, and Old Year’s (New Year’s Eve), where you must go to church, everything is optional on Phagwah. You can go to church, but if you do you’ll dance and chase people with powder. You can drink, but if you do you’ll dance and chase people with powder. In fact, you can even go to market (Saturday is still the regional market day, even if it’s Phagwah), but if you do… well, you know.
A 5’ tall kite can, in fact, be flown, and by just one person. A 7’ kite is only good for posing next to in pictures.
Yes, we’re doing work, despite our overburdened social schedule and endless list of holidays (three major faiths in one small country make for a lot of holidays). I’m giving computer classes for teachers and computer owners (there are a good number in the area, 20 or so) over the holidays. I’m working at building up the computer lab, shoring up some of the problems, making it stronger. I have a pledge for internet setup from a private donor, who’s also involved in making sports easily accessible to all people in the village Polder (collection of 4 villages, remember?). I’m also looking at some entrepreneurs in the area: Box kites sold for $2000 apiece (compared to $300-400 for a normal kite) this Easter, so I’m going to find out how they’re made and encourage some kids to make and sell them next year. There’s a small gym nearby that’s currently being privately used by 4 young men – I want to introduce a business model to them for running a gym, fee systems, so that they can move from being boys with weights to men running a rec facility.
She’s moving forward with a network of libraries in the primary schools – students checked out 180 books in one day from the pilot site, and parents are complaining that their kids make them read to them at night, so this is good. I know that we have some more books coming in from the states, thanks to our family, friends, and hometowns. Her Easter lesson will give all the primary kids in one village access to computers over the course of a week. She’s also looking at building up a family-friendly area near the local hospital – repairing, replacing, and adding to old playground equipment, adding in benches and shade for parents, etc. She’s also looking to revamp her approach with the schools next year, to be working more closely with teachers, modeling and working with them to improve teaching methods, disciplining, etc.
Finally, we have a summer lesson scheduled, taking place over 4 weeks, and are also working with some other volunteers across the country to run some workshops on a variety of issues.
So… that’s that. I went to my first baryat (I probably slaughtered that word), which is where basically all the men from the village of the groom show up at the wedding and drink outside. They never go in and watch the wedding; they just hang around and socialize with each other. Interesting Hindu tradition. I’m not sure whether it’s terrible or amazing. Hindu weddings in India often have a thousand people in attendance; here it’s fewer due to the lower population, but still – you don’t worry about invitation or lists, so much, and aside from 7-curry for everyone, you have no obligation (the men bring their own booze), so it’s pretty interesting all in all. By the end of April, we’ll have attended somewhere around 6 or 7 weddings, which is about how many we’ll have missed back in the States.
Alright. Enjoy spring up north – dry season finally came to the country (we skipped the last one), rice will soon be reaped, our dog will be able to dance on command, and all will be right with the world.
Friday, February 29, 2008
How the Holidays Went...
In short, they were fantastic.
We got back from our December organizational meeting in the capital still flushed and giddy from seeing the other 20-some remaining people (we started with 33, we’re down to 25), many of whom we hadn’t seen since we completed training; we’d also gotten to see the entire group that had come a year before us (and is leaving around June of this year, about the same time that a new group is coming in), which was great.
So we’re still glowing from that; then we get back to our village, and the real happiness started. We were happy to be back, and people were happy to have us back. This is actually what helped us realize how much we do love our village, the people, the feel of it – we left for a week, and came back. It really felt like we were coming home. We were barely able to pay for a single ride the first week back – the minibus owners mostly all know us, we work with their kids, and so they were just telling us to get in. I even caught a ride into town one day with the ambulance – we live in the hospital compound, so we’re getting to know most of the people who work there.
But free rides were just the beginning. Our area is the “breadbasket” of the country, in rice, fruits, and vegetables. Almost everyone farms, and everyone keeps a garden, as well as some random fruit trees. We had so much food foisted onto us over the holidays that it was spilling out of our fridge whenever we opened the door. Families gave us food; people at the market gave us food; people who run restaurants gave us food. We got holiday food like apples, grapes, walnuts, and Black Cake (a really complex cake, quite wonderful, sour mixed with mildly sweet, made with rum); we got everyday food like rice, sugar, limes, potato, vegetables, other fruits; we got specialty food, like Chiney (Chinese) food. At one point we were begging people to let us pay; no one wouldn’t let us. We’re really well taken care of here.
Also, the Muslims in the area celebrated a holiday called Eid (fully Eid-ul-adha), wherein cows are slaughtered. Apparently, there are a lot killed, and in a small, close-knit community like this, the Muslims share out their goods with everyone. Fortunately, our area is majority Hindu, and Hindus don’t eat beef. So, we got some instead. But in a developing country, beef cuts are a bit strange. As a friend from NYC, who watched the slaughter, said – “There’s no respect given to the filet mignon, no respect given to the flank steak!” And pretty much everything is used. I helped saw up a cow’s shinbone, from knee down to foot, with a saw, after which we ate it in a soup. It was chewy.
We went out for Christmas Eve, as Ovid says, to see and to be seen. It was something else. We went up into the bigger towns, where everyone was eating and drinking and congregating in the street – there was no car traffic going anywhere, except to and between the big towns. Every thirty feet there was a big wall of speakers; each wall was playing its own music, independent of the wall thirty feet to either side. By about two in the morning, we’d made it up into a restaurant / club balcony area, where we sat and had a few beers and looked out onto the crowd. It was neat… and then it started to rain. Party over, and an hour+ trip back to the village.
New Year’s Eve (called Old Year’s here), we attended church as promised. I kept dozing off in the middle of singing songs, would be nudged awake, and then pick the song back up. Then we went home in utter blackness (it was a new moon), so we were afraid that alligators had crawled up out of the trenches and were waiting to eat us in the shadows. She went by one (a small one) early one morning run, so ever since we’ve wondered about it (and she’s waited til better light to go running).
So, that’s that. Our week in the capitol was followed by three weeks’ vacation from school. Another volunteer visited us for one week of that, and we also visited with another two volunteers in our region, which was nice. Then, back to the grind. I’ve now been to every house in the village that has a computer, I believe, fixing every problem that comes up (except the ones that I can’t). Basically, it’s printing problems and whatever, all the stuff that 12-year-olds right have to solve for their grandparents (sorry to all you grandparents out there, but you know it’s true). Just like in the States, all the 12-year-olds are, in fact, picking up everything immediately. One kid fixed his own printer after watching me fix another family’s. It’s always impressive. I’ll probably run a few classes, invitation only, for people who already own computers. A lot of stuff is more meaningful, or perhaps only meaningful, if you have your own system, and luckily it’s starting to spread like a bad cold out here.
For the future: We have a trip coming up in February, out of the country – our first real, non-working vacation! – then Easter in March, then mid-service for a week in the capital in April; the last will probably be two weeks for us, as we’ll be helping another volunteer run a workshop at her site. Then school’s out in June, two months of summer, then back in for the last go-round. My goodness, it’s going quickly. What will we leave here after we’ve gone? General goodwill, perhaps, but what will be carried on by others? Will those people then leave for the States as well, like so many before them? So many come, leaving smiles, good memories, benevolent shadows… and little else.
---------------
Endnote: Sorry for the late posting on this; this was due to be up mid-January. As you may know, we've had some events occurring in-country lately, starting in late January and continuing through mid-February. We'll be writing a bit about how this has been (as much as we can, given the circumstances) from our perspective. We'll also write about our trip to Carnival in early February -- for now, suffice it to say that the vacation was much-needed, and appreciated.
We got back from our December organizational meeting in the capital still flushed and giddy from seeing the other 20-some remaining people (we started with 33, we’re down to 25), many of whom we hadn’t seen since we completed training; we’d also gotten to see the entire group that had come a year before us (and is leaving around June of this year, about the same time that a new group is coming in), which was great.
So we’re still glowing from that; then we get back to our village, and the real happiness started. We were happy to be back, and people were happy to have us back. This is actually what helped us realize how much we do love our village, the people, the feel of it – we left for a week, and came back. It really felt like we were coming home. We were barely able to pay for a single ride the first week back – the minibus owners mostly all know us, we work with their kids, and so they were just telling us to get in. I even caught a ride into town one day with the ambulance – we live in the hospital compound, so we’re getting to know most of the people who work there.
But free rides were just the beginning. Our area is the “breadbasket” of the country, in rice, fruits, and vegetables. Almost everyone farms, and everyone keeps a garden, as well as some random fruit trees. We had so much food foisted onto us over the holidays that it was spilling out of our fridge whenever we opened the door. Families gave us food; people at the market gave us food; people who run restaurants gave us food. We got holiday food like apples, grapes, walnuts, and Black Cake (a really complex cake, quite wonderful, sour mixed with mildly sweet, made with rum); we got everyday food like rice, sugar, limes, potato, vegetables, other fruits; we got specialty food, like Chiney (Chinese) food. At one point we were begging people to let us pay; no one wouldn’t let us. We’re really well taken care of here.
Also, the Muslims in the area celebrated a holiday called Eid (fully Eid-ul-adha), wherein cows are slaughtered. Apparently, there are a lot killed, and in a small, close-knit community like this, the Muslims share out their goods with everyone. Fortunately, our area is majority Hindu, and Hindus don’t eat beef. So, we got some instead. But in a developing country, beef cuts are a bit strange. As a friend from NYC, who watched the slaughter, said – “There’s no respect given to the filet mignon, no respect given to the flank steak!” And pretty much everything is used. I helped saw up a cow’s shinbone, from knee down to foot, with a saw, after which we ate it in a soup. It was chewy.
We went out for Christmas Eve, as Ovid says, to see and to be seen. It was something else. We went up into the bigger towns, where everyone was eating and drinking and congregating in the street – there was no car traffic going anywhere, except to and between the big towns. Every thirty feet there was a big wall of speakers; each wall was playing its own music, independent of the wall thirty feet to either side. By about two in the morning, we’d made it up into a restaurant / club balcony area, where we sat and had a few beers and looked out onto the crowd. It was neat… and then it started to rain. Party over, and an hour+ trip back to the village.
New Year’s Eve (called Old Year’s here), we attended church as promised. I kept dozing off in the middle of singing songs, would be nudged awake, and then pick the song back up. Then we went home in utter blackness (it was a new moon), so we were afraid that alligators had crawled up out of the trenches and were waiting to eat us in the shadows. She went by one (a small one) early one morning run, so ever since we’ve wondered about it (and she’s waited til better light to go running).
So, that’s that. Our week in the capitol was followed by three weeks’ vacation from school. Another volunteer visited us for one week of that, and we also visited with another two volunteers in our region, which was nice. Then, back to the grind. I’ve now been to every house in the village that has a computer, I believe, fixing every problem that comes up (except the ones that I can’t). Basically, it’s printing problems and whatever, all the stuff that 12-year-olds right have to solve for their grandparents (sorry to all you grandparents out there, but you know it’s true). Just like in the States, all the 12-year-olds are, in fact, picking up everything immediately. One kid fixed his own printer after watching me fix another family’s. It’s always impressive. I’ll probably run a few classes, invitation only, for people who already own computers. A lot of stuff is more meaningful, or perhaps only meaningful, if you have your own system, and luckily it’s starting to spread like a bad cold out here.
For the future: We have a trip coming up in February, out of the country – our first real, non-working vacation! – then Easter in March, then mid-service for a week in the capital in April; the last will probably be two weeks for us, as we’ll be helping another volunteer run a workshop at her site. Then school’s out in June, two months of summer, then back in for the last go-round. My goodness, it’s going quickly. What will we leave here after we’ve gone? General goodwill, perhaps, but what will be carried on by others? Will those people then leave for the States as well, like so many before them? So many come, leaving smiles, good memories, benevolent shadows… and little else.
---------------
Endnote: Sorry for the late posting on this; this was due to be up mid-January. As you may know, we've had some events occurring in-country lately, starting in late January and continuing through mid-February. We'll be writing a bit about how this has been (as much as we can, given the circumstances) from our perspective. We'll also write about our trip to Carnival in early February -- for now, suffice it to say that the vacation was much-needed, and appreciated.
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