One Month Milestone!
Ladies and gents, it is has
been one month since I left Omaha, Nebraska and set off on this crazy
adventure call Peace Corps. And SO MUCH has happened. I moved to another
country with a posse of strangers, leaving my country behind for the
first time EVER. I have mastered another language well enough to survive
and do my job fairly effectively. I have traveled alone, in another
language, across said new country. I have gotten sick, and then got
better. I have taught in front of a classroom of students. I have eaten
things with faces. (mostly fish) I have experienced so much so fast that
it is hard to keep track.
I learned how to use a machete. I learned about the different types of latrines and why some are better than others in differing situations. I know about 8 different ways to purify water well enough to drink. I understand the basic structure of water sheds, aqueducts, and many ways to teach that information to an indigenous community. I have been to and worked with an indigenous community. I saw a starfish. I ate guava. I swam in a river that has crocodiles (I never saw them) and a lake that has an anaconda. (Again, never saw it.) I met some world travelers from France who were very interested in Peace Corps and what it is/what we do and were totally awed by what we had to say and were super enthusiastic about our work. I got excited over a single letter from home and the dozen or so phone calls I spent most of my weekly allowance to make. I have gone almost an entire month without any dairy products. I have had 2 hot showers. I have had dozens of bug bites. I can almost do the Panamanian finger snap. I have survived 4 weeks of Malaria pills.
I realized that working in theatre really does prepare you to do anything in the world because I will have to teach my community how to make a budget, create a committee, organize a project, build something, teach the importance of hand washing and water management (this is the acting part), and will essentially be stage managing and technical directing these things in my site. Yea sometimes they throw out a highly technical equation to calculate the maximum capacity flow of a tube system or the hydraulic grade line, but I survived Calc once upon a time. And I've always got a big network of other volunteers (most with engineering degrees) that I can call up for any such problem. I got this.
Since my Volunteer Visit, I have been back with my host fam living the good life with Spanish and technical classes each day, hanging out with the volunteers and our families at night. We had our site interviews with the APCD on Monday, and I said that the most important thing to me about my site was that I want to be a first time volunteer, not a follow up volunteer. The second thing I asked for was at least one fairly easy form of communication, in whatever format that took, because I do my best work bouncing ideas off of others and thinking out loud. Thursday was our Language Placement Interview and I did well. Right now, we are gearing up for tech week.
Yes, tech week. You heard correctly. Even in Peace Corps, when you say the words 'tech week' everyone shudders a little bit. It may be rough in theatre, but it doesn't sound much easier down here. There might not be crazy directors, but apparently the hiking makes up for it. Our to do list for tech week includes: surveying a water line (lots of mountainside hiking), building 3 pit latrines, an 8-10 mile hike round trip over the course of 7-8 hours (also on a mountain), measuring flow rates of water lines, using air release valves and talking about bridge formation within aqueducts, installing flow reducers in a water system, and learning how to make, then constructing things with, ferrocement. And giving hour long presentations to the community over health/social topics. My group is talking about gender roles. (our thesis is: to identify, recognize, and appreciate each gender's contribution to the family and community.) All in 5 days. While staying with out own individual Ngobe (indigenous) host family, sleeping on...god knows what for a floor. Also, it is the rainy season and my training supervisor compared the storm clouds in the Comarca to Mordor. So I am excited. We've been sitting in hard metal folding chairs getting lectured for the last 4 weeks. I'm really ready to do something.
Every day is a lesson to build on tomorrow. And there's a hell of a lot of building going on next week. Can't wait to tell you all about it!
I learned how to use a machete. I learned about the different types of latrines and why some are better than others in differing situations. I know about 8 different ways to purify water well enough to drink. I understand the basic structure of water sheds, aqueducts, and many ways to teach that information to an indigenous community. I have been to and worked with an indigenous community. I saw a starfish. I ate guava. I swam in a river that has crocodiles (I never saw them) and a lake that has an anaconda. (Again, never saw it.) I met some world travelers from France who were very interested in Peace Corps and what it is/what we do and were totally awed by what we had to say and were super enthusiastic about our work. I got excited over a single letter from home and the dozen or so phone calls I spent most of my weekly allowance to make. I have gone almost an entire month without any dairy products. I have had 2 hot showers. I have had dozens of bug bites. I can almost do the Panamanian finger snap. I have survived 4 weeks of Malaria pills.
I realized that working in theatre really does prepare you to do anything in the world because I will have to teach my community how to make a budget, create a committee, organize a project, build something, teach the importance of hand washing and water management (this is the acting part), and will essentially be stage managing and technical directing these things in my site. Yea sometimes they throw out a highly technical equation to calculate the maximum capacity flow of a tube system or the hydraulic grade line, but I survived Calc once upon a time. And I've always got a big network of other volunteers (most with engineering degrees) that I can call up for any such problem. I got this.
Since my Volunteer Visit, I have been back with my host fam living the good life with Spanish and technical classes each day, hanging out with the volunteers and our families at night. We had our site interviews with the APCD on Monday, and I said that the most important thing to me about my site was that I want to be a first time volunteer, not a follow up volunteer. The second thing I asked for was at least one fairly easy form of communication, in whatever format that took, because I do my best work bouncing ideas off of others and thinking out loud. Thursday was our Language Placement Interview and I did well. Right now, we are gearing up for tech week.
Yes, tech week. You heard correctly. Even in Peace Corps, when you say the words 'tech week' everyone shudders a little bit. It may be rough in theatre, but it doesn't sound much easier down here. There might not be crazy directors, but apparently the hiking makes up for it. Our to do list for tech week includes: surveying a water line (lots of mountainside hiking), building 3 pit latrines, an 8-10 mile hike round trip over the course of 7-8 hours (also on a mountain), measuring flow rates of water lines, using air release valves and talking about bridge formation within aqueducts, installing flow reducers in a water system, and learning how to make, then constructing things with, ferrocement. And giving hour long presentations to the community over health/social topics. My group is talking about gender roles. (our thesis is: to identify, recognize, and appreciate each gender's contribution to the family and community.) All in 5 days. While staying with out own individual Ngobe (indigenous) host family, sleeping on...god knows what for a floor. Also, it is the rainy season and my training supervisor compared the storm clouds in the Comarca to Mordor. So I am excited. We've been sitting in hard metal folding chairs getting lectured for the last 4 weeks. I'm really ready to do something.
Every day is a lesson to build on tomorrow. And there's a hell of a lot of building going on next week. Can't wait to tell you all about it!
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