Tuesday, February 14, 2012

¿Cómo te explico?


Decorating the Office of Gringos Útiles
“How do I explain this to you?” Something I hear fairly frequently from people in my site when I say “No te entiendo,” essentially, “I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.” Or at least, that’s what I’m thinking, but luckily it’s not taken that way.

So, with that theme in mind, how do I explain to you the up and down hot air balloon ride on crack that Peace Corps service continues to be?

Outside the "Office" of Gringos Útiles (next to the cock-
fighting arena)
 Empieza:
After submitting my proposal for Gringos Útiles to the municipality, I was invited to the weekly meeting of the regidores (like city council members) in the municipality to discuss how to incorporate my ideas into the plans the municipality had for vacaciones útiles. After much talking, planning and a shitload of misunderstanding on both sides, I ended up with an approved project and, as a sort of consolation, I agreed that instead of having English youth groups, I would teach four English classes in the primaria (elementary school) during their scheduled vacaciones classes.

Maki and Me
(hanging out in my favorite spot in town)

Right as all of this was getting figured out, I was informed that my good friend, Maki, another Peace Corps volunteer, would be visiting me and staying in my site for a week. I found her a killer spot in my site that even I was jealous of with my good friend Judith’s family and put her to work helping me figure out what the hell I was gonna do for all of these groups I had now received funding for.
It’s also right around this point that it became abundantly clear to me that having a bunch of really good ideas and actually turning those ideas into a reality are two very different things. I realize now that I had a bit of a disconnect regarding what it takes to follow through on an idea. Before it was like “Yeah, you know, just make a youth group. Bam! Lives changed. Super easy.” And yet now, faced with the prospect of starting four youth groups and four English classes, that disconnect became alarmingly real, busting me in the face like a cartoon character stepping on a rake.
First came the English classes. I would be teaching the two highest grades in the elementary school, two classes of quinto on Tuesdays and two classes of sexto on Thursdays (fifth and sixth grades here). Luckily, I had Maki on hand for these first two classes and she helped me get the kids hyped up about learning how to say “What’s your name?” in English (although I think she was having more fun than them at times). So far of all the things I’ve done for Gringos Útiles, this has been the most rewarding and fun because it has given me something productive to do regularly and, as it turns out, I kind of enjoy teaching. It’s funny that the thing I dreaded the most and only did begrudgingly as a means of placating the muni ended up being one of the best parts of this difficult summer season.

The only promotion my movie night got on the day
of the event.

Me trying to explain my ideas for the different groups I
would be doing.



So then came the movie night. I was going to use it as a way to draw a crowd of people into a location and then tell them all about my different groups to try and build interest. After a harrowing last-minute purchase of a pirated copy of Wall-E (I’m not sure they sell any other kind of DVDs here) in Spanish by my socio Pedro and me running around town telling everyone I know that there’s gonna be a free movie with free palomitas (popcorn, literally “little doves”) because there was no promotion done of my movie-night beforehand, I showed up on time, waited the pre-requisite hour and a half for people to show up and started the movie off with a little speech about my groups. Although the turnout wasn’t that big, I still consider it an exitito (little success) because I learned a lot about how to plan a movie night, built interest for movie nights I'm planning in the future and it reinforced that stressing out about things still doesn’t change them from happening how they’re going to happen anyway. Might as well sit back and enjoy a post-apocalyptic robot love-story over a cono of palomitas with the ten or so people who showed up and stop worrying about how it could have been better. And so began Gringos Útiles.
Here’s how it’s gone down over the last three weeks:
Originally, only two kids showed up for the first basketball group. Not much to get overly excited about, but the following week, I was able to convince some teenagers who wanted to play soccer to play basketball and we had a good game of 5 on 5. Then later, some younger girls showed up and we had another really fun game of 6 on 6, with boys and girls playing on both teams. This last week, two kids showed up and we eventually had to relinquish the court to a larger group of teenagers who wanted to play soccer.

Biking in the chacras

For my first biking group, I had two kids and we had a decent ride through a part of town I hadn’t seen before. They liked it so much they wanted to have another group later in the week, so we scheduled a group for Wednesday and this time had about 6 kids show up. We took a long bike ride through the chacras, again in a part I hadn’t seen before and everyone said they had a blast and wanted to do it again the following week. Then the following Monday, no one showed up and Wednesday only one kid showed up.

Me and my cajón




Hangin' out with some Jóvenes
















As far as my “Express Yourself” group goes, it was kind of a vague concept that got turned into more of an impromptu jam session/guitar lessons. After borrowing a cajón (essentially a wooden box you sit on and bang the front in various locations to make different percussive sounds) from one of my friends in site, I had begun bringing it with me to my “office” to practice while I waited for people to show up. Of course, the cajón is far from a subtle instrument, so needless to say, a gringo banging on one tends to draw attention, and, to be honest, that’s kind of what I wanted. Eventually, a couple of teenagers showed up and we starting passing it around. We agreed to meet back up at my office again on Thursday with guitars and my cajón and we’d have a little jam session and I’d try to teach a little about how to play guitar. The next meeting was fun. We played music for a few hours and chatted, and made plans to continue in similar fashion every week. The following week, no one showed up.
Don’t ask me about the World Map project. The idea was to paint a giant world map on one of the walls outside of the primaria to educate people about world geography and have something cool to do during vacaciones. It's considered an "early win" by Peace Corps. No one showed up for that group. Ever. But I became aware after several people told me they were confused by the concept that I need to plan a little better and explain more clearly what I want to do. More to come on that project once I can figure out how to get kids to show up.
So, yeah, como te explico? The first week of Gringos Útiles, I was expecting a low turnout, so it didn’t really bum me out when no one showed up. I was willing to allow that week to be a buildup period while word spread from the few people who did show up. Then, when the following week ended up being better and I had more kids showing up and enjoying themselves, I was feeling pretty great and like my plan was justified. All I had to do was keep showing up and the groups would keep growing organically. Then, when almost no one showed up for any of the groups this week, I have to say, it was hard to maintain that cheery level of optimism.
But I feel like I would be negligent in my complaining duties were I not to complain about something that has very  much impacted my mental and physical state outside of Gringos Útiles: the heat. I know all of the veteran volunteers kept telling me when I first arrived in Piura “If you think this is bad, just wait until summer,” but it was hard at the time to process how it could get hotter. And then summer began and it got hotter. Still, I felt like I could handle the level of heat. I just had to cling desperately to the shade whenever I left the scalding inferno that my house becomes between the hours of 11 AM – 6 PM.

What happens after the previously dry,
desert climate has its first rain in 5 mos.

And then it rained.
Now we have this brutal cauldron mixture of a Piura sun drunk with summer power mixed with humidity levels that make Atlanta in the summer sound like a refreshing jump in the pool, and the best I can describe it is a feeling like claustrophobia where I’m fighting my flight reflex daily because there’s nowhere to run to that’s going to be any less H.O.T. I feel like there’s some applicable Dante quote I could insert here, but it’s too fucking hot to think.
And, so here I am, sitting somewhere around 100° F with what feels like at least 100% humidity due to the daily morning rainfall, clothing incessantly stuck to my chest, back and ass due to excessive sweating and I’m starting to understand what those wise, wise volunteers were referring to.
All bitching aside, I have to acknowledge that I learned some very useful information from this whole Gringos Útiles experiment. First of all, that planning only one group a week is probably not going to be enough to sustain the interest, or even more importantly, the memories, of any of the kids in my site. Secondly, that as much as I have been avoiding it, I will likely have to begin working in the high school here if I ever want to have regular interactions with the youth in my site. I prefer the more comfortable setting of a youth group, but I realize now that in order to have that kind of confidence with the youth in my site, they’re going to have to get to know me and that will only happen if I start interacting with them on a regular basis.
Gringos Útiles is by no means a failure. It put me out in the public eye, gave me more interactions with some truly awesome kids in my site and taught me some valuable lessons about how to do things in the future.
So, far be it from me to end this blog post on a negative note because, all things considered, my life’s pretty fucking incredible and these difficulties are a beautiful and integral part of the personal development I wanted out of this experience. I like this quote from Maestra, the grandmother character from Tom Robbins’ fantastic novel Fierce Invalids Home from Warm Climates: “All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously.”
With that in mind, and with much continued love to all of my readers, I leave you with this thought:


Poopie.