#peacecorpsblogs

Hi followers! I apologize for not writing for such a long time, but I wanted to think of something creative to blog about and I finally came up with a great topic: what Peace Corps Volunteers talk about on the phone.

Thankfully, Peace Corps Senegal has a free-calling plan for all volunteers. That means I can call any other PCV from anywhere in the country at any moment for an unlimited amount of time FOR FREE! The free calling system is useful for several different types of conversations. Based on my experience and what I have gathered from other people, here are some of the types of conversations that go down:

(Disclaimer: lots of these examples are over-dramatic perceptions of reality and from my point of view.)

Juicy Gossip: OK. Although most people don’t openly admit to gossiping, the Peace Corps community is very small and word spreads faster than butter on toast. However, gossip does not only pertain to volunteers, it can pertain to community news. Some hot topics include:

·         Polygamy Drama – Somebody is getting a 2nd wife and wife #1 isn’t happy.

·         Sandwich Lady Grief– The woman you buy breakfast sandwiches from hasn’t been around for the past few days… where the heck is she?!

·         Mysterious Visitors – A fancy vehicle from Dakar is parked outside your compound. “Excuse me, who are you?”

·         Parties & Ceremonies – That moment when you are invited to a baptism and the mother spent 100.000 FCFA on her dress alone! WHAT!

Health Status: Most volunteers’ living conditions are vastly different than what we are used to in the US. Sometimes it takes a toll on your physical and mental health. PCVs love to call each other and play “doctor” until it actually becomes something serious enough to alert our Medical Officers about. Here are some examples of what some PCVs might say to each other on the phone.

·         “I have weird bumps on my body… what do you think it is?”

·         “My head hurts. Is it finally malaria coming to get me?”

·         “I have a strange mole. Hopefully it sends me to med-bay in Dakar for a few days!”

·         “I think I have worms. I’ll wait until I can shed some of the rice belly I’ve gained then de-worm”

·         Poop… Peace Corps volunteers talk way too much about their regularity (or lack thereof). That’s just too much to include in this blog.

Food: Some volunteers have it worse than others, but the general consensus among PCVs is that we all love food. Whether it’s local food, American food, or packaged food we love to talk about it.

·         Junk Food Comfort – When in the regional capital, PCVs love to share guiltless experiences such as eating a whole sleeve of Pringles and washing it down with a crisp Royal Dutch.

·         Dakar Envy – When a volunteer spends time in Dakar and calls their PCV friends to give them a synopsis of everything tasty that they ate.

·         Care Package Binging – Calling your friends after you speed-ate the contents of a care package you recently received. *Rationing American snacks is impossible and should not be done.*

·         Family Eats – Special meals at home are sometimes rare. If your host family cooks a delicious Senegalese meal with ALL of the appropriate trimmings, you can’t wait to tell your PCV friends!

·         Vacation Fantasies – After a fellow PCV has gone on vacation, it is not uncommon for friends to call and ask for a detailed summary of all the good things they had to eat in America or Europe.

Peace Corps Stress & Anxiety: Stress and anxiety are part of the packaged deal. The best way to cope with it is by reaching out to a fellow PCV, ranting and rambling about it, getting over it, and moving on. What type of stresses or anxieties you ask?

·         Life after Peace Corps – What in the heck are we going to do when we’re done?!?! We’re all going to be unemployed, poor, and uninsured! Yikes!!!

·         When will I see you (fellow PCV) again? – Peace Corps friends (aka Government Assigned Besties) are sometimes within close distances from each other, or are several hundred km away. Whether you just saw your PC BFF yesterday or 4 months ago, you agonize to be reunited with your in-country soul-sister.

·         Work – Getting projects accomplished, organizing meetings, gathering resources, asking for advice, writing grants, public speaking, formations, local language, feeling generally competent and able to do anything. HALP!

·         Traveling – Public transportation and transportation stations (garages) in Senegal are pretty damn stressful. After a long ride in a rusty “7-Place” PCVs need a friend to talk to that understands.

all loaded up in the micro, ready to hit the road

The ladies learning the ways of the Cosmic Cocina 

Carmen, queen of the stove 

looking good to me (the women were getting worried at this point)

working on the final plate prep 

The first and last time these ladies will ever eat Falafel again, At least we tried. 

SOMOS LAS CHICAS- The amazing CAMP GLOW crew 

One of the highest highs I have experienced as a Peace Corps Volunteer was hands down my participation in Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) in Alegria, Usulután, January 2015. While it is no secret that one of the pillars of my service has been gender equality and women’s empowerment, I often find myself discouraged, wondering what, if any impact I am having during my service. In the machismo culture that dictates roles, responsibilities and opportunities it is hard to feel like you are making any sort of impact. The little victories, women voicing their opinions, parents giving their daughters permission to participate in an activity are often overshadowed by the lack of respect for female community members or girls being told they can’t do the things boys can.

Enter the up lifting powers of camp aka camp songs, arts & crafts, dance parties and three days free of counterparts, and suddenly the doubts and frustrations fade away thanks to a group of super star campers and the spirit of camp! The 13 girls that came from a mix of volunteer communities in San Miguel and Morazán helped to revive all of our cynical spirits with their willingness to discuss taboo topics with honesty and enthusiasm, their active participation and the change we were able to witness in all the campers after only 3 days! 

Now, I am not going to say that we created an army of little feminists that went back to their communities and started a revolution, but, instead focused on creating a safe space where the girls had the opportunity to talk about their goals, their relationships and work to define their goals for the future. This was the first time in many of their lives that they were able to act their age, to dance, sing and make friends without the pressure of expectations, housework or fear of gossip. It was a special experience for the girls and the volunteers, one of those rare time when a group clicks so naturally and everything goes better than planned! 

Ashia and I leading a self-esteem talk 

Showing off their CAMP GLOW flags 

Little Glaydis took some creative liberties 

Camp wasn't all about charlas, we put together a day of Olympics 

Team SICA (Sexy, Inteligente, Creativa, Activa) with their very serious captains

Team SICA with their tower- the tower that helped them win Camp Olympics 

What is better than some photo booth props?

It wasn't just PCVs that loved the props..

The girls working on their Trusted Triangle's which helped to identify safe and trusted adults in their life with whom they can talk with, sin pena

Team 2 showing off their final prouct

All ready to hit the hills for our hike to the lake 

Part of the hike team 

Quick pano of our final destination 

My super star campers Iliana and Jasmine

Iliana, who is one of the tallest girls in my community wanted a picture with the tallest volunteers, she loved how tiny she looked. 

The entire Camp crew 

posing with the mermaid statue 

Showing off our Sulfur tribal paint

The last night we all sat around the "camp fire" for the I cant activity. At the beginning of camp the girls answered three questions: Because I'm a girl i can't ___________; if I were a boy I could________; Because I am a girl I have to _____________. We went around the circle and each girl read her statements out loud, and if they were no longer true they ripped them up and threw them in the "fire". 

Final morning photo shoot. Maria and I with our girls, who became camp BFF's 

Showing off our flags and camp spirit 

April officially marks 6 months in site, that's half a year, 180 days of official campo life. But hey, whose counting? Time has flown by. Some days I still feel like that scared girl who showed up, barely speaking at an intermediate mid level, clueless and completely out of place. Other days I feel like a superstar. I’ve got projects, I have successfully completed a grant application and speaking Spanish in front of large groups no longer makes my head spin. In these six months I have created a new life for myself, with some semblance of normalcy. This “normalcy” includes routines, friends and a sense of belonging. I have developed a connection to the people, the mountains, and the special quirks about this little community. While I wouldn't go as far as saying little San Nicolas feels like home, I can no longer refer to it simply as “my site”.  Personally and professionally, my time in El Salvador has thrown me through some extremely unexpected loops (aka the broken foot) but everything seems to have fallen into place. So, where am I now, you wonder? I am planning, teaching, leading, organizing and cooking. 

How not to make a pizza

My Peace Corps soul sista/best friend/partner in crime Emily made the trip to my site for a much needed weekend togetherness (and wine). Our false confidence led us to believe that when you combine the very subpar cooking skills of two girls, one superstar chef emerges. We learned the hard way that this is not the case. How you make a pizza so awful that the children in the house end up secretly asking their mom to make tortillas and beans, I do not know. Our concoction turned into an 8-pound mess of uncooked dough, with cheese and veggies. Pizza 1 gave us some hope, everyone in the family took their piece and complimented us with the hope that pizza 2 would turn actually be editable. If this were based on presentation alone, our second pizza, uncooked, would have won a blue ribbon. But after 15 minutes in the oven, we realized we had another failure on our hands. A failure we were going to have to eat. My host mom salvaged the cheese, tomatoes and green peppers, and the dog filled its stomach with 8lbs of uncooked dough. Were we able to lessen the blow to our egos, and my host family’s stomachs, with dancing and a lot of jokes. I was so proud of my little host siblings; they shed their pena right away and were their normal, crazy selves in front of Emily.

English, English, English

No matter what our formal job descriptions may be, there is no escaping the demand for English classes. From day 1 people were asking when English was going to start. It was assumed that the gringa was going to teach English. After weeding through the masses, my classes started out with over 30 students, I now have a dedicated group of 14 who show up, study and have made an activity I once dreaded something I look forward to each week. My class is made up of 11 girls (aged 15-24), 2 boys and 1 crazy older community member. The first classes were rocky; I learned that I am not meant to be a teacher and how vital detailed lesson plans are to a class. But now we have all found our groove, and slowly they are learning English, and I am figuring how to teach a class. But, what makes this part of my week so enjoyable is the Friday culture club aka día de BASEBALL. That’s right, I discovered the impossible, a group of people, in El Salvador, who do not like to play soccer. My girls all played on the high schools softball team and would much rather spend a Friday afternoon leaning on the baseball field than kicking around a soccer ball. The games started as a reward for high exam scores and now have taken on a life of their own. Our complete lack of equipment is the only downside; I had forgotten how much a fastball could sting. 

Women’s Group: We Makin Money!

A few weeks back I posted the highlights of my first women’s group meeting, a celebration for International Women’s Day, and I can happily report that our little group is making moves, and money. The directiva (elected officers) have been working together every week to figure out how to bring money into the group. They solicited money from the ADESCO and used their start up cash to start turning profits.  We took advantage of the things they already knew how to do, cook, and have started selling whenever the opportunity arises. General assembly, my ladies sold $27 worth of yucca and juice. Sunday pupusas vending brought in a cool $37 and tomorrow we are planning to sell snacks at the elementary schools soccer tournament, hopefully we can collect another $20. The real struggle that I am facing with this group is that they are moving full speed ahead, when we really need to be taking baby steps. The whole directiva is new to this type of work, there has never been a women’s group in the community, so I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. I am either the dictator of internal group management, forcing policy and procedures down their throats, or I am the supportive volunteer, who tries to slip in some friendly advice here or there. Finding that middle ground is something I am still working on. The problem is the people in my site like to see instant, tangible results. If they cant touch it, it doesn’t matter and since they cant instantly see the rewards from the organizational activities and trainings, it is hard to keep their attention for longer than 5 minutes. This is one of those times when I have to count the small victories as a win, and not let all the anxieties about what we aren’t doing loom over the group.  

And the ADESCO

My biggest battle in site has been working with the ADESCO, the local community group. Scheduling a meeting, a nightmare. Getting the group to listen to new ideas, impossible. Machismo members insulting my Spanish or talking about me because they don't think I understand, obviously. Mind you, this is the group that collectively worked to bring a volunteer to the community, so there unwillingness to work is something that I just cant understand. You would think living in the president’s house would give me some leverage, but in reality it has done nothing to help my cause. I have come to understand that the group is deeply divided, lacking transparency and the desire to work. Most of the members have been in their position for years and abide by the motto if it isn’t broke, don't fix it. Any new ideas get shot down, and while they may talk the talk in front of the community, behind the scenes they aren’t walking the walk, and the people here are not blind to this.  I finally made some headway with the new secretary/treasure and we have re-organized the bill collecting system for the water pump and created a detailed list of every house that has water and when they pay their bills. It may sound simple, but it has helped us to realize that a good amount of the people in the community are simply not paying, and that they are not being punished. I suggested a 3 strikes and you’re out policy, but I think that came across too harsh. Now we have to start the fundraising efforts to build a new water tank, which costs approximately $16,000, so time to get started on the raffles! 

  ...and on my down time, I am home taking selfies with Fatima and teaching her how to make animal faces, cutting pants into shorts or trying to master some new arts and crafts project. This is now my normal. 

Well since my last post- the life and time of Bridget Jones the Peace Corps volunteer, did nothing to update any of you on my life and work here, I figured it was time to talk about the highs, lows and extremely frustrating moments that come with my job and my life here in El Salvador. I have to say that the honeymoon stage doesn't totally end after 7 months in country, because, there are still those moments when I realize how lucky I am to be here and find that I am still amazed by the simple beauty of my site. I think that it takes time to really appreciate the beauty of the Peace Corps experience, and the way it changes you.

The biggest change since my last post is that I have started working!! 1 month of English classes down and I still have over 20 students coming to class and some show up to the Sunday help hours. Now, before I came to Peace Corps, I said a million times that I did not want to teach English, that I am not an English teacher. That all changed when I got to site, since it was impossible to say no to the constant requests for English classes. Plus, these classes were an easy way for me to transition from the gringa who just visits houses and hangs out to the volunteer who is here to work. But, I have to give major props to all of the language teachers I have had during my journey to learn Spanish because teaching a language to beginners is no easy feat. I have already made some mistakes, and made assumptions that my students would “just know” something- and only realized said mistakes during my lesson when there was no going back. For example, my class was working with the verb “To Be” and I gave them a word bank to practice physical descriptions with. The word bank had things like thin, tall, nice, sad, long hair, black hair, etc. I only realized my mistake when the students started saying “I am long hair” “he is black hair”. I just assumed that they would say, “her hair is black” “his hair is long”, even though I hadn’t taught them the pronouns his and her. It is safe to say that we are all learning together and now I am trying to figure out a way to correct my mistake with out looking like an idiot or totally confusing them.

With the English class off the ground, it is time for me to start working on projects that fit under the COED framework- enter March Madness, San Nicolas edition. Since March not only marks International Women’s Day (March 8th), but also Peace Corps Day (March 1st), I figured what better way to kick off a women’s group and a youth group. I am really starting from scratch in my community, which is exciting but also terrifying. It is my job to not only develop community organization, but to create groups that are sustainable- because what good would I be doing if I started a youth group that fell apart as soon as I left. Peace Corps is all about sustainability. The hardest part about being the first volunteer in a site is that the community has no real experiences to base their expectations on, so the boring planning phases, and groundwork are completely unappealing to most of the people I work with. As I have said before, I have found that people want a lot of things, and they want to participate, they just don't want to plan and organize.

My goals for these groups is that they provide the forum for idea sharing and are inclusive, that the people in my community end up taking ownership of them and that they can provide new opportunities and foster the talents that already exist in my site. Each group will elect a formal directiva (president, vice president, etc.) and have bi-monthly meetings. With the women’s group I hope to focus on income generating activities and developing self-esteem. The women in my community have so many wonderful talents (everything from sewing, to cooking, to crafting) and I want them to appreciate all the skills that they bring to the table.  With the youth group, my goal is to develop the future leaders of San Nicolas, to get these kids moving and shaking and open their minds to different possibilities. Keeping this in mind, I have to constantly remind myself that these groups are not “mine”, they are the communities, and I cannot force them to go in the direction that I think is best, I am just the kick starter.

But then there is The ADESCO (the only existing group in my site and the group that requested a volunteer), which is a literal thorn in my side. They still shows no desire to start working. We have had one meeting since November, where everyone just wanted to talk about what they didn't have and kept making the same promises I have been hearing since the beginning, but not mentioning anything about the follow through. Every meeting is like a broken record, the same complaints, the same suggestions and the same over eager volunteer trying to get the members motivated. Even after giving every member a calendar and our 10-minute discussion about the next meeting time, only two people showed up to the following meeting. Meanwhile the eight other members have not mentioned anything to me about the ADESCO, but everyday ask me for more English classes. I am trying to fight the perception that I am just an English teacher and set boundaries on what I agree to and what is not part of my job description.

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.