Well I have a lot to tell. I have my projects lined up.\ for the next year and a half. That is right I have finished a quarter of my service, and with Perú 11 coming this month I will no longer be the “freshman” of volunteers. I am going to do four main projects. Fist I am going to have an Eco-tourism club with the youth in the area. I will have professionals come in and talk about ecology and tourism in the areas this is accompanied by a series of excursions to different areas in our zone. The idea is that by the end the youth will be ready to receive capacitating to become a guide at Chaparri. I have been giving the guides to people who can not speak Spanish. That has been a lot of fun. I have taken people from Australia, England and Tennessee. The second project is a household organic garden campaign. I hopefully will establish fifteen fully functional gardens. I plan to focus on the youth and mothers of my community. I want to do this so it directly translates to a healthier diet and a reduction in economic expenditures. The third is a solid waste management campaign. I have coordinated all of the loose ends and we start next week. It will include house visits, bulletins, community selected pick up locations, recycling campaign, and scheduled pick ups. Let see how this works. I do not trust that people will stop burning their trash but I have great support and have to give it a shot. The last is the money project. I have been designated as the engineer for a 1000 hectare reforestation project. I will be spending my efforts educating families about resource management and alternative uses of the dry forest.
Now for the stories. I have a lot but you will be previed to the gems. First is about my new Aussie friends. I went to the beach one weekend and met some travelers who were trekking through the north on their way to the jungle. I invited them to stay at my house when they came up to Chaparri. They were not ready for that kind of poverty, but they took it well. In appreciation for my hospitality they brought a great bottle of Chilean wine which we drank underneath the stars. It was a perfect way to finish a day of hiking. The next morning one of the guys found a scorpion in his bag. I am not sure if it was that or the fact that I was impartial to it that really scared him. After that we took a walk to the reservoir to look for some raptors. There we ran into a family that I am friends with and they took us up a dry river bed to see a heard of llamas. We had four kids under the age of 11 with us. While we were waiting for the llamas to descend a near by hill I taught the children how to skip rocks. On our way back they told me how incredible what I was doing is. I told them that poverty has its perks, for example how happy those kids were learning to skip rocks. Stuff like that is so simple but so rewarding.
The second story is about dancing. I do not like to dance but that excuse does not fly here. People love to dance every hour of the day in all social settings. I can not get out of it if I tried. Especially because every women and their mother need to get a song in with the resident gringo. This is a picture of a birthday party. Me and my two left feet were treated to a great meal of goat, cake and humble pie. I was asked to dance by everybody. Sure no problem right. I mean everyone else is dancing and it would be rude of me not to. The catch is that when I got up to boogie down everyone sat down to watch and give me pointers. Their were a lot of suggestions.
Mother’s day is huge here. I mean gigantic. I had no idea. It is like a second Christmas. The thing is they still do all of the cooking that day while the men get smashed. It was a week long festival with different events. Heather, my site mate was recently back from the US and wanted to do something for the municipalities’ party. I was not going it to have anything to do with it. Some how with their persistence and her lack of ability to say no. I was roped into singing (acapela) and doing a sketch. We wrote the sketch and preformed both in front of five hundred people. It went over really well and we are now living immortals in town.
Life is good. My weight has stabilized. I see a new girl, and work is coming together. Hope all is well. Please keep me in touch. I am much quicker to respond to email than I am to put up blogs.