On a Roll

August 9, 2007

I’ve been in site for four whole weeks now, a record for me, and aside from running out of oatmeal and mouthwash it’s been really great. I feel like I’ve finally hit a streak of successful work, and that it’s about time! Quick updates:

Politics – are too complicated to mention and were definitively out of control for a while, but hopefully things have calmed down now and people in my town will stop trying to oust appointed officials and such

Reading project – we’ve created little reading spaces in the waiting rooms of public spaces, and we have some cross-germination in that the health center asked us to put brochures in the other areas across town. Met with teachers in one area of seven schools to explain project and each school developed their own plan of activities falling under the reading project, such as having kids do poetry readings every morning after they salute the flag or having reading contests. Tomorrow the commission will meet again to plan future activities, which could include sessions for parents about reading with their kids and some sort of trivia contest.

Maria Auxiliadora school project – as part of the townwide reading project, but also cause they’re just awesome, the teachers at my favorite school are putting together a school library. They’re in the process of writing a letter of request to be sent to various organizations in Paraguay that do donations for this kind of project.

Learning circles – haven’t happened since May, and I’m not convinced they’ll ever happen again. With my two contacts in the Supervision we agreed we’d follow up with the preschool and first grade teachers from that last learning circle about classroom calendars and see what progress has been made and if we can help support their efforts, but I think I’m the only one who’s actually made classroom visits. But with three teachers I made big calendars so students can count the dates, learn the days of the week and months, etc. And each of those teachers also asked me to do other work in their classroom, which is fun and makes me feel good that they trust me enough to ask me for help in certain areas.

HIV&AIDS- has suddenly taken off. Back in March I went with some youth to a workshop which we then replicated in July for the entire high school. I ended up working with a super guapo (hardworking) nurse from the health center (as opposed to the half dozen others who don’t seem to want to do much), and with him I did a HIV workshop for all the nurses of the area, and another one for the parents of the high schoolers (who were understandably bewildered when their kids came home from school with condoms one day). Although very few parents came for yesterday’s workshop, I consider it a success because I did hardly any talking – the health center nurse and my youth did great on their own!! The nurses decided to reinitiate the health center’s weekly radio program, each week focusing on a different topic. Also coming out of the nurse’s workshop was a desire to share HIV and other information with women in Tacuati, specifically sex workers. Since holding a workshop for prostitutes isn’t likely to succeed, we’re planning instead a Women’s Health session for next week, to focus on everything from pap smears to pregnancy issues to HIV. (ps – the word for pap smear in Spanish is papanicolao, which sounds suspiciously like santa claus to me). Even though I specifically remember NOT wanting to do AIDS work when I came here, I’ve realized that I don’t always get to pick what I do, and the community is way on board with this theme so I’m here to help them any way I can.
Youth – they drive me crazy, I think because my president is a lot like I was at her age – pushy, organized, bossy, and usually right. We have a big fundraising dance planned, and have been pretty much ignoring the library, which is something I want us to focus on at our next meeting. We also have a radio program, yet to be started because of various power outages and responsibility issues, but I’m hopeful that that’ll turn into a neat forum for issues of concern to youth, and also a great way to advertise our group and the library.
We’re still 20 kids strong, itself a success I think.

School Garden – we STILL have not met to plan lessons, as we set up to do back in May or so. I am totally frustrated that I have all these photocopies with great lessons about parts of the plant and different kinds of soil, and no one has gotten to use them yet. However, the garden I suppose is a success in that kids are bringing home lettuce and are enthused about it. I’m just hoping the teachers plant another round of veggies and that our meeting scheduled for later this month finally happens.

Computers – I’m finishing up the computer course with the high school seniors tomorrow with the “final exam”. It ended kind of lamely months ago because the co-teacher now has another commitment during our class time, and I’m not going to teach myself, so it’s all over. And I don’t know how sustainable it is, I get the feeling there won’t be a computer class scheduled next year and that the teachers aren’t comfortable enough to teach on their own anyway. Oh well. I also got guilt-tripped into teaching a computer course for a group of women who are pursuing their secretarial degrees from a school far away, and instead of having to travel every weekend to take the course they want to be able to do it here (as the school had promised them in the first place). So I said I’d do it, an hour a week, and for an hour after class they’d have to sit with me and talk guarani in exchange for the free class. So far it’s worked out okay.

Reading club – still doing it, still not too excited about it, though I want to start inviting kids from my youth group and also kids’ parents to come and play/read, which’d be pretty cool.

So it’s all great and I feel like I’ve finally hit my stride as a volunteer. However, I know it’s about to end. Next week is Dia del Niño, child’s day, and most schools will pretty much not have classes for the whole week to have soccer tournaments and hot chocolate parties and such. After that it’s exam week til the 31st, when the teachers are all busy grading tests and don’t want to do anything else. Then in September we have our fiesta patronal, town birthday event, culminating in the student parade, and as I recall last year in preparation the kids spend hours every day practicing marching in lines, so there’s not much free time then either. The month of October is like June in the US, what teacher starts anything new then, and November is exams and then poof! The school year is over. I need to think about what I’ll do during vacation months (aside from take vacations!!), and suddenly it’ll be April… When I was teaching I would never consider in August that April is just around the corner, but now it completely makes sense. To me anyway.