Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride: November 2011

So, my apologies to all the wonderful people who have remained interested in this humble blog. I realize it has been over a month since I’ve updated or posted anything, and for that I’m sorry. As always, I greatly appreciate any interest whatsoever in what I’m attempting to do down here in fair old Peru.

A lot’s happened since my last lengthy post, so I imagine this one will be a doozy as well. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I’d like to blatantly steal the topic of this blog from another volunteer, my friend Amanda, whose brilliant blog post regarding repeatedly having to explain to people what the hell it is we’re doing here served as my inspiration for this post.

I’m sure many of you may have wondered (since I’ve poorly attempted to explain it to several of you), what is it that a youth development Peace Corps volunteer does, per se? I have often found myself wondering the same thing while also contemplating how to explain to other people in my site in Castellano. Typically, it comes out extremely unclear and I by the time I give up attempting to explain it, I feel just as confused as the unfortunate person who decided to ask me. Training supposedly prepared us for the inevitability of this extremely common pregunta, however, just as when people asked me why I wanted to be a social worker, I typically felt ill-prepared to explain why I have a deep-seated need to help people on a very real and personal level.

To begin with, we have three goals we’re working toward with the youth (defined as ages 10-25) in our sites. The first is promoting healthy lifestyles through educating about safe sex and STDs as well as improving self-esteem and basic stuff like hygiene. This can also involve working with the parents to promote better communication between them and their children and telling them not to beat the crap out of their kids and stuff. The second goal is planning for their futures, whether it be helping promote attending a university or exploring job opportunities. The third goal is promoting youth leadership as well as positive participation in their communities.

So, as you can see, it appears pretty straight-forward once you read all of that. And at times, that shpeel helps me answer the question (although, you can imagine how all that can get jumbled up in a Spanish explanation). But more often than not, the follow-up question is “Yeah, but like, what are you doing?”

And that’s usually where I sort of freeze and feel like I haven’t got much to give in response to that answer. But then, once I think about everything that’s happened here over the last (almost) three months, I’m able to justify what at times feels like an extremely slow start to what has otherwise already been a life-changing experience for myself and hopefully has and will be for the youth in my site.

In an effort to provide actual concrete examples of what I’ve been up to (and to help me formulate an appropriate response to this question in the future), here’s what I’ve been up to since I arrived in site on August 22, 2011:

-Playing futbol. I’ve “joined” my host nephew Cesir’s futbol team for their weekly practices. This has proven to be a godsend because it rapdily exposed me to a large group of youth early on who somehow all remember my name (first and last) as well as providing me with weekly practice speaking Castellano with youth in my town (and learning slang). The guys from my team have proven extremely important in exposing me to cultural events and other aspects of my town as well as helping me out in the classroom when I went to their school to teach. Also, one of the coaches is a constant source of inspiration for working with youth in the community. Just yesterday he said something about the guys on his soccer team when they were acting childish that helped put things in perspective. He said this in Castellano, of course: “Right now they’re in between being children and being men. This is why they act the way they do sometimes. They’re trying to find themselves. Sometimes they don’t mature and they stay children, but other times they grow and become men.”

-Teaching about STDs in the primarias and secundarias. The way the schools here are set up, primarias are like elementary schools (basically) and secundarias are like middle school and high school. All the schools here are called colegios instead of escuelas, which you can imagine was fairly confusing for an English-speaker learning Spanish. My amazing socio, Milagros, helped me schedule charlas in one of the local colegios to address an increase in STDs she had noticed through her work as an obstetrician in the local health post and by my second week in site I was assisting her with educating kids about the dangers of unprotected sex. I’ve given that charla several times and eventually linked up with the local psychologist from my town’s DEMUNA (essentially the municipality’s equivalent of DFCS) to give STD charlas in the local high school. We’ve done four of those and have four more this week.

-Working with the local Youth Commission. As part of Youth Week, I participated in an event for special needs youth, gave a two-hour (semi-successful) charla on how to handle pressure to have sex when you’re not ready and attended a youth baile, which if you haven’t read the earlier post about that, I have to recommend it. Look for the one about AWKWARD! Also, I can’t say enough about the support I’ve received from this group of people. The Youth Commission has officially disbanded (I didn’t realize it was only for Youth Week), however, all of the people from the commission continue working in the community with youth in practically the same frequency and intensity as during Youth Week. Having awesome socios in the municipality has proven extremely useful as they have gone above and beyond in supporting my work here. They allow me to use their printers and copiers whenever I need, they help purchase materials for my charlas, they provide me with transportation to go visit the anexos (the outlying, poverty-stricken communities surrounding Pueblo Nuevo that I’m hoping to begin working in soon) as well as include me in social functions that help make me feel like a human being in the community as opposed to just that gringo walking around doing who-knows-what. I feel extremely lucky to have this level of support because it is quite the rarity from what I understand from other volunteers.

-Going to bed really early and waking up late. You’d be amazed at how tiring living in a different culture and speaking in another language can be on a nearly daily basis. I used to feel bad about heading to my room around nine every night to start preparing for bed around 10 and then waking up around 8-9AM the next morning. I got over that.

-Reading a lot. A lot. I’ve finished about seven novels since first arriving in site. Just to give you an idea of my previous reading tendencies, that’s probably more books than I’ve finished in the last three years combined.

-Working with motivated youth. One in particular, Jesus and I have started working on a fairly big project to address the substantial issue of people throwing garbage on the ground due to overall laziness as well as there being only about two trash cans in the entire town. We’re still in the development stages and have met with one of my socios in the municipality to begin fleshing out a concrete plan of petitioning the municipality for money while simultaneously planning charlas to give in the colegios educating about the importance of waste management.

-I’ve begun having twice-weekly English-speaking practice with the doctor from my health post who has been studying English for a while and speaks better English than anyone I’ve encountered in my town.

-Watching lots of episodes of series that I never got to see in the States. So far I’ve finished Carnivale (definitely recommend it) and the last season of Mad Men (couldn’t recommend it more). As you can see, I’ve got some free time on my hands.

-Working on my diagnostic report. The dreaded diagnostic. The word “diagnostic” is enough to strike fear into the hearts of all Peace Corps volunteers arriving at their third month in site. This loathsome torture device was devised by the Peace Corps as a means of helping the newly arrived PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer) begin formulating a work plan for the next two years in site. It’s a massive report we all have to write in Spanish about our host communities explaining the strengths and weaknesses and providing a cohesive work plan for addressing the issues we have discovered through our investigations during the first three months in site. In all honesty, the farther into it I get, the more I see the merit of performing this early on. That doesn’t mean I have to like it or enjoy it. After all is said and done, we have to give a presentation to our communities about our findings and our plan of action asking for feedback. I have found that with all of my free time, I can actually convince myself to sit down and chug out a few paragraphs each day with the end result hopefully being a cohesive report that will help me focus in on what I can accomplish here as opposed to feeling overwhelmed by all the potential that’s here. For the first time in my life, I’m finally doing something ahead of time. It only took me 30 years.

-Designing questionnaires and collating data. In order to perform said diagnostic, it was necessary to create a questionnaire that I could administer in the local colegio to a bunch of students to get some idea about the life of the youth in my town. With a great deal of assistance from former volunteers’ questionnaires and my doctor friend from the health post, I made a questionnaire with around 40 questions and administered them to five separate classes of high school students during their hour-and-a-half free period. On my own. Needless to say, 40 questions does not a full class make, so I had to kind of wing it the rest of the time depending on what the students told me they were interested in. The first class, I brought my iPod and did a brief educational session about the importance of Atlanta hip hop and played them selections from Aquemini while they filled out their questionnaires. It was possibly one my proudest moments as a volunteer watching a classroom of Peruvian teenagers bopping their heads to “SpottieOttieDopaliscious.” In another, I spent the last half of the class educating them about English pronunciation and found myself getting extremely into it. I didn’t realize until 20 minutes after the fact that the class had ended and even then the students asked me to stay and keep teaching. After this grueling but extremely fulfilling week in the colegios, I was left with over 150 questionnaires full of data I now had to collate. I’ve now spent the last week entering data into tables in an effort to provide some form of visual explanation of how I came to my conclusions. I’m up to about 50 questionnaires entered with another 100+ to go…

I think that’s most of it. Sorry if that’s a bit boring or overwhelming, but it does me some good to go ahead and get all of that down somewhere to see that I have been accomplishing things since getting to site. Also, we’ve been told that our first three months is more about getting to know your community and working on your community diagnostic as opposed to actually trying to get too much done. Still, it’s hard to be somewhere full of desire to make a difference and have to struggle just to feel comfortable. Regardless, I wouldn’t change it for the world.

In order to give credit where credit's due, here's a link to Amanda's much more concise and witty blog post: http://amandagoespc.blogspot.com/2011/11/minor-details.html

Now for some pics!