Monday, July 23, 2007

La Lucha / Updates




So my correspondence is failing as the pace of our project is picking up. The volunteers leave community on August 5, and there's not much time left for them to complete their "Community-Based Initiatives," so I'm feeling a little pressured these days because (excuse my stereotype but...) EVERYTHING takes longer in Latin America and when you're working with bureaucrats within government agencies in a country whose infrastructure sometimes appears to be non-existent... I'm just going to let that run-on sentence trail off as you maybe get the idea by now. Change is slow and infinitely frustrating, but I'm so happy and feel so blessed to be working towards it every day.

We had our midterm break, when all of the volunteers spent a long weekend in Granada. It started off on the first day with a youth encuentro, a day-long activity involving youth leaders from all of the communities that we're working in. It got off to a bit of a rocky start as due to a mini transportation crisis. Half of the volunteers and youth participants did not arrive (surprise!) until halfway through the event due to (surprise again!) a failure on the part of our partner agency. So the day involved a lot of improvisation and I felt like I was walking around with "caution! unprofessional! do not respect her" tatoo-ed on my forehead. But the day was somewhat salvaged by the cultural/educational presentations made by youth. There was a charla on HIV, a one-act play, and tons of dancing: samba, salsa, cumbia, punta, folkloric, etc etc. The youth also sold food/jewelry as fundraisers, made presentations on the projects they are doing in each community, and were generally amazing.

The rest of weekend was a time for volunteers to relax, speak in English, call home, check their email, and share ideas/successes/frustrations with each other. The best activity that I think we did was a round robin in which volunteers met in small groups to discuss the issues of community support, how to measure success, health charlas, fundraising, and several other topics.

My time in this internet cafe is running out, so I'll leave with some pictures of July 19, Day of the Revolution, when the dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle fled Nicaragua in 1979 and the Sandinistas came into power. Transportation in the entire region was halted that day and public buses instead brought people in from the communities surrounding Granada to meet in the central plaza and then begin an incredibly long caravan to Managua for a rally and a speech by (ex-)Sandinista, el presidente Daniel Ortega. The head of the FSLN party in Granada, Alejandro (befriended by our staff's political junkie Aaron) tried to convince us to jump into his pickup and join in the festivities. I was dying to, but senior staff had expressly forbidden any of us from going anywhere near Managua. The mobs, possible riots, and general drunkenness that were likely to ensue are I guess too much of a liability for Amigos. Maybe next year...

Above are pictures of buses waiting to go to Managua in the central plaza of Granada. Approaching Modern-day Revolutionary.

Sunday, July 8, 2007

Almost to the Half-Way Point...

So Midterm (a three-day break for the volunteers that takes place in Granada) is coming up this weekend. It marks the halfway point for the summer, which I feel like has snuck up on me. I can't believe that I've already been here for five weeks! I guess I have settled into a sort of bizarre routine...

I spend three days a week in the campo tucking into mounds of rice and beans three times a day, visiting with community members, and reeling off motivational-speak with my volunteers. This is both my favorite and most difficult part of the week. I love getting to know members of the communities I'm supervising-- I'm constantly surprised by how generous and friendly people are, both in opening their homes to my volunteers and their willingness to spend time and energy working with them. This past week though was a bit difficult to get through. The volunteers were expected to have completed mini-grants for the various community improvement projects they have identified that I could collect from them on route and bring back to Granada to be approved. Unfortunately, for a lot of reasons, not one of the three grants I was collecting was completed. I was torn between frustration that I was going to have to spend my weekend in Granada running around getting estimates from hardware stores, talking to contacts, etc. (which I did end up doing) and also really understanding why everything hadn't been completed. They all have great ideas for projects, and although things are and will be a bit slow to get started, I know they'll turn out well. I'm currently getting grants for a library, park benches, and a mural approved by senior staff. So it's very exciting work that I get to do and I have the incredible luxury of getting to seeing tangible projects be realized while I'm here-- but there are definitely daily frustrations. Like sometimes I think if I never have to get on another public school bus it'll be too soon. This past week on route I had to wait an hour for a bus that was stuck at the ferry. It's been a really bad (non-rainy) winter, so the water level was high enough for the floating cement block that passes as a ferry to get close enough to land to unload the bus. The only solution they have is for this one kid with a pick-axe to hack away at the dirt road so that the group of men surrounding him can fill up burlap sacks with dirt and throw them into the shallow water-- creating a sort of bridge from the ferry to land. Most of the time the buses just don't run when the water is too low. I have the advantage of being a white gringa who will almost always get picked up by passing trucks so I can hitchike when I need to, but sometimes it's too many hours spent sitting by the side of a dusty road for my taste...

Then I spend one day a week in a series of generally frustrating, chaotic, and bureaucratic meetings. People are constantly walking in and out of the tiny office that around 9 or 10 of us crowd into at MINSA, answering phones during the meeting, and managing to talk for hours without really saying anything at all. Our partner agencies occasionally pull through, but are typically more of a headache than anything else. Like the representative from the Ministry of Education who told us that MINED has no books at all to donate to the libraries that our communities want to build. She advised us to try and get donations of books from the very professors of the schools that are helping us fill out the grants because they don't have sufficient textbooks for every subject that is taught to the different grades let alone for individual students. !!! You are the Ministry of Education !!!!! Ugh.

And then the rest of the week is spent in the weird cultural oasis of Granada. The city has no infrastructure but is filled with gringo tourists. So I'm living at a house where we're often without water and electricity but currently sitting at a "Euro" internet cafe and having a piece of coffeecake... A typical week involves quite a bit of rollercoasting through mini culture shock-waves.

Which will start again tomorrow. Having a PB & J sandwiches-filled route picnic for my volunteers on Tuesday, which I know they're dying for. It's funny, I didn't used to like PB & J sandwiches before Amigos...