#peacecoprsprobems

[catherinelampi23]

So this is what they mean by integrating

  People have stopped being nice; I must be doing something right. For the majority of my time here, everyone has been on his or her best behavior. Inviting me into their homes, holding their tongues, working in groups with people they hate, all in the name of impressing the gringa. They tried to avoid telling me the chambre, or talking bad about anyone in front of me. But, I am not totally oblivious, and for the last month I have been watching the façade of sweetness slowly fade away. It started when people started talking to me about my host dad, about the ADESCO, and my community guide. They complained that these people weren’t working for the community, and that they just wanted to be recognized, not do any work. My English students started to give me critiques and I realized that I need to start giving a damn about these classes. Then, just as my women’s group was starting to get off the ground, everything blew up. I am now seeing (and hearing about) the people here for who they really are. In the past week and a half, the gates of chambre have been blown right open.

  Let me just tell you what happened with the modest women’s group we had going on. We had been selling food once a week, making a modest commission and I thought everything was fine. At our final event, we were selling food at the Evangelical Churches movie night; internal tensions were high, because two of the members were mad at the girl that didn't show up. Calling her a liar because she said she couldn't come because her kid had a fever. I ignored it, figuring that the heat was getting to them. After the event, when we were calculating our earnings I found it a little strange that we had over exceeded our $14 budget for supplies meaning that we only made $1. I went to the beach for a weekend with the other volunteers, not thinking this situation would escalate past an awkward meeting the next week. Boy, was I wrong. While I was tanning and drinking, they were fighting in the street. I was welcomed home to a mountain of chambre and “she said, he said” stories, it was lovely. Now the group refuses to work together, we have stopped selling and the other community members are not telling me that I shouldn't have worked with these women in the first place, because everyone knows they are bad news, well everyone but me.

  So now I am in the middle of a professional low, I have my English classes and am in the middle of planning an environmental project, but, as I tell my confidant Emily every night, there are sometimes when you need to feel valued, or feel inspired by your community. Right now I have neither. Bad attitudes, and an unorganized community group (the one that solicited a PCV) make boosting moral hard. I told my host dad this morning we need to have a serious talk about my future working together, and he brushed it off. It felt good to voice my pent up feelings, and I am hoping that my feelings of frustration will fade away in June. May was already going to be a difficult month for me, and so I think that in some ways I am focusing on the problems in my site as a way to avoid thinking about how hard May 30 is going to be. I am already in a bit of vacation mode (following a cinco de mayo party and the fact that my mom will be here in less than two weeks). Asi es la vida, am I right? So here is to getting through May, continuing building site friendships and discovering new ways to build some moral in site! 

[catherinelampi23]

Where's the water at?

The sound of water running out of the faucet is something I had taken for granted, and honestly never really noticed, my whole life. Now it is music to my ears, something that brings a giant smile to my face, because when it’s there, there are no worries, when ya got water life ain’t so bad. Dirty clothes, not a problem, throw them in the wash. Post workout shower, obviously. The baby pees on the floor grab some water from the pila and mop it up. The heat got ya feeling dehydrated; a nice glass of agua will fix ya right up. I have been blissfully taking advantage of the readily available sources of water in my life for 24 years, without even blinking an eye. In El Salvador, where my water bottle has become my trusty companion, I have come to understand water is a privilege, access is not readily available to many and I have heard stories from other volunteers about the lengths they have had to go to acquire good old’ H20. In my situation, I’ve learned you really don't know what you've got til its gone- and in this case what I don't got is water. San Nicolas has been dry for over a week; my families reserve was gone after 2 days. So now the dirty clothes, sweaty bodies and baby pee are real problems. One 5L jug of water doesn't last a family of 7 a long time.  Days 1 and 2, not so bad, I don't need to wash my hair everyday, I’ve got enough clothes for now. I am a Peace Corps volunteer damn it, this is nothing. By day 6, I was smelly, debating bathing in the murky river and forced to break out my embarrassing quick dry clothes from the back of the closet.

(Side note to any future PCV’s out there- one pair of quick dry pants will suffice, if someone tells you that you wont wear jeans they are lying!)

So there I was, dressed like I was ready to set sail, smelling like a mix of bug spray, perfume and baby wipes, when I set off to the Pueblo, where I knew I could sneak into the Pollo Campastre bathroom to freshen up. All I could see was the grand prize, the running water waiting for me at the end of the rainbow. 40 minutes and the smelliest bus ride I’ve ever experienced later, I jumped off the bus, practically skipped to the restaurant when I saw that it was a ghost town. Doors shut, lights off, no one eating buckets of chicken. Dumbfounded, I stood in front of the restaurant, staring for a good amount of time before I sulked over to the park to wait an hour for the next bus to my site. As I sat there smelly and sad, I started to think about my current state, and how 6 days without water was nothing compared to the lengths that many people around the world, in many countries where Peace Corps Volunteers serve, have to go to for water every day. I though of Frankie, in Burkina Faso, and wondered what his situation was like. I thought of my friend Asiha, whose site has such limited access to fresh water that she either has to spend hours boiling the water for every bath or journey to neighboring pueblos in search of jugs for drinking. For that hour in the pueblo I realized that I needed to suck it up, stop complaining and just go take a bath in the river.

Then, that night I overheard my host mom tell my little host sister to go to the bathroom outside because there was no more water for the toilet- and the state of emergency was back. I have no problem with a latrine, a shanty little toilet, or a secluded hole in the ground- but our house only has a toilet, so now the only option was the patch of dirt in the side yard. I instantly put my water bottle down, a little dehydration is better than popping a squat by the pila. I had to draw the line somewhere. Then it was day 7, the day that we were promised there would be water, the pump was defiantly getting fixed, we could bathe, we could drink- and then it didn't happen and the people FINALLY started to get concerned, ya know they felt how I did on day 4! I guess I am still a bit of a princess, but a secret one, the community hardly caught on to how much I hated our current situation. So, I escaped to the pueblo, if I couldn't have water I was sure as hell going to use the internet. On my trek home, one of the girls from my English class complemented my new tan; I thanked her and wondered to myself if this new tan was due to my time in the sun or just a layer of dirt.

Then the news came the water was back, the pump was fixed!! Just like that, crisis over. I jumped up and down, danced, and bear hugged my little host grandma, who was not as overjoyed by this news as I was. That was when she confessed that she had been taking baths everyday with her secret stash of water- that just goes to show, when the going gets tough, it is every woman for herself. 

[catherinelampi23]

Just a girl and her nalgene bottle- crossing the cultural divide

So a majority of the things I post on here are reflections on the differences that I find in my day-to-day life here. I have found a way to compare pretty much everything here to my life in the States, to my version of normal. But today I started to wonder what the people here think of this strange gringa who got dropped in their community for the next two years. The obvious differences aside, I feel like all the things I find strange about their life, they feel about me.  I have gotten all the looks- the “what the hell are you talking about look”, “the why are you being such a baby, it is just a spider look” and the “you really want to eat peanut butter again look”. My tales of the campo are extremely one sided, which does not fully represent my current set up. Peace Corps isn’t just about the volunteer, my living here is a huge culture shock for my community as well. I am the first American who has been to San Nicolas, and I think it is important that I recognize that others, especially my host family, have had to make major adjustments too. The “strange gringa behaviors” that have resulted in puzzled looks or questions are things that wouldn't even garner a second glance in the states. For example:

  Why do I drink so much water?

Why am I always studying, reading or writing things in a journal?

What is the deal with the sunglasses?

Skipping beans and tortillas for breakfast, and instead having a granola bar and coffee.

Why do I show up early/ on time to events?

Taking a shower after a workout.

 I am sure my host family gets a kick out of the fact that my Nalgene is attached to my hip at all times with me or that I share my bed with my computer every night. From the reactions and questions that I get on a daily basis, it is clear that even the people in my community who spent time in America didn't spend much time with the 20-something set. As the sole representation of Americans in my site (well me and the episodes of Two and a Half Men that air once a week) I have to do my best to fill in the gaps of my culture and try my best to use the differences as a way to justify my attitude and behavior (and my hatred of the fried fish soup) in a positive way. 

[catherinelampi23]

The gringa and the giant spider*

*and scorpions, flying roaches, ants

I hate the bugs. I hate them all, big or small, I hate the bugs. I hate the ants that are all over the counters, I hate the beetles that crawl on me when I sit on the couch, I hate the scorpions that sneak under my door at night, the mosquitos that gave me dengue and I really really really hate the giant spiders that greet me every morning in my room. There is no escape from them; I am not even safe in the mosquito net. I will never understand how these creatures can get in, even when I tuck in all the corners. Now you can call me petty, call me a baby, but I would like to see you watch a scorpion crawling around the top of your desk and not freak out. I would happily give up any of my Peace Corps luxuries (including my Starbucks coffee, my weekly internet access) if I could magically get rid of all the bugs in my house.

Our 6 months mark in country is slowly approaching, and life here has become routine. I am used to the food, the people and I have trained myself to sleep through the 4am rooster wake up calls. I am still acclimating to the slow pace of life, there are some nights where I am itching to be out past sunset, when I really miss the freedom a car affords you. I now fondly look back on Tallahassee, and on the days when I have extreme cabin fever I find myself missing everything from the all day Sunday margarita fests at Los, to the dive bars, and even the all nighters in the DURP lab. So what does my normal day look like? Well since I am waiting for school to start so I can begin my English classes and my ADESCO still hasn't set up a meeting, my day to day isn’t too exciting:

5:30am Woken up by the sound of tortilla making, dish washing and gossiping over the pila next to my room. Put my headphones in and fall back asleep.

7:00am Woken up by the sound of the baby screaming and music blasting from the family room next to my room. Watch the spiders crawl on the wall.

8:45am Start my day- ice cold shower, two mugs of coffee, pan and explaining why I slept in so late and why I need to sleep with a fan in my windowless room (we have the same conversation every morning) I have been spending my mornings in the house, reading, studying Spanish and preparing lesson plans for my English class.

12:00pm- 6:00pm Head out to visit houses. Since the cast kept me from walking around my site for a few weeks, I have to retrace all my original steps so people don't think I escaped to America.

After dark my community is dead. Unless you are a bolo buying beers at the tienda, you are in your house and you aren’t leaving. In my house, I usually play with the kids, watch novellas or cable TV in the grandma’s house next-door or chill in my room journaling or reading. Family time has a whole different meaning here than it does back home, even the teenagers stay in the house, with their families at night. Everyone is in bed by 9pm because they get up before the sun and I usually stay up in bed watching TV and hunting for bugs. Maybe the fact that I have watched 5 seasons of the Sopranos in a month has something to do with my recent mood swings, and urge to kill every critter I see. I think these nightly TV binges have ruined my computer battery, on a full charge it barely lasts two hours- any advice my little Mac geniuses?

So where does a little COED volunteer go from here you wonder? I am asking my self the same question. In my site there are only two functioning groups, the ADESCO and the Chile Association and both are very exclusive. It doesn't help that the ADESCO only meets when the members are free, and from what I have gathered they are not interested in creating a schedule of bi-weekly meetings. There isn’t anything going on for the youth, the women or the general population. I really have to start from the bottom up. My challenge now is to set realistic expectations for my community members- some think I am here just to teach English, while others still think I have a ton of money and can build community centers and offices. Being the first volunteer in a community is a bit of a double edge sword. So for now, I am working little by little to get the ball rolling, fighting my gringa need to produce results and dealing with the infestation of insects one day at a time. Wish me luck and send more Starbucks Via’s!