So far in January I have tried on two completely new hats, per se, that are not my new sombrero. I know this is a cheesy analogy but I don't care. First, I spent a week as a theater director for a group of six amazing teenagers from Cerro Gallina and Cerro Mesa. And then we began work on our aqueduct improvement, and I am now lead engineer for the construction of a water storage tank, expanded spring catchment structure, three new latrines, and a rainwater catchment tank - coordinating uneducated rural farmers and soon, ten new WASH volunteers that are coming to Cerro Gallina for a week of in-service training on February 6th. Yikes!
First, Acting Our Awareness theater camp! Anyone who knows me knows that I LIVED for camp growing up, first as a camper and then a counselor. Shout out especially to Camp Anokijig and Huron's orchestra camp at Interlochen. So I couldn't wait to facilitate at AOA camp, and it was one of the best weeks of my service so far.
Album cover?!
Youth from six communities across the Comarca gathered together for a week of new friends, art, and camraderie. We taught about healthy relationships, consent, HIV transmission and prevention, sexual orientation and gender identity, being a community health promoter, Ngäbe identity and culture, and more.
We had special courses every morning, and participants got to choose dance, scenery design, or chorus. I was one of the choir directors, and we prepared Puedes Llegar Lejos by Gloria Estefan and sang it at the final performance. The choir nailed it!
Each community group also spent the week preparing a play. My group's play focused on homosexuality. I purposely chose this topic because it's something that needs to be talked about more, and needs to be dealt with in a more mature way, both youth and adults alike. People use a whole slew of offensive terms like "cueco". I've heard adults of the church say that you must repent even for just feeling a same-sex attraction. If a guy wears fitted jeans, people whisper oooh, he must be gay, stay clear of him. It's really bad. I'm not here to change anyone's beliefs, but I am very vocal about the fact that as humans we have to respect everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender expression. Where does "criticize and ridicule your gay neighbor" fit into the Ten Commandments? How about you shall love your neighbor as yourself?
And the kids got it. They really got it, and developed a funny and and thoughtful little soap opera about a girl who falls in love with her female teacher, tries to run away, gets ridiculed by a macho bus assistant, who then gets reprehended by her supportive friends, etc. They did an incredible job and really made the play their own. And Dionicio, Juan, and Lucila are already asking when they can see their new friends again and when we can give an HIV prevention workshop in the community! Woohoo! In the new few weeks we are going to plan it.
After camp I jumped into total prep mode for our aqueduct improvement project. We have begun to prep for the construction of the tank and expansion of the toma and have selected three families that will be building latrines and one family a rainwater tank as part of In-Service Training (IST). One of our WASH coordinators, Marlana, came out to help us get started and no one showed up the first morning to work, and I felt so ashamed. I never scold people when they fail to show up to a commitment or arrive hours and hours late (I cannot count how many times this has happened) because that is the culture -- feeding your family comes first and working with the Peace Corps volunteer always comes second. And just putting food on the table is a full-time job for subsistence farmers so I get it. But doing this project will require the gente to devote a serious amount of time, and it hasn't been grasped yet. I realized that the biggest challenge for IST will be getting the gente to participate fully when there are 14 gringos in the community working. Normally workdays start leisurely around 10 or so, there is no penalty for arriving late or not showing up at all, and no one ever works after lunch. But the training week with packed 8-hour days will be totally different from anything the community has done before. In the next ten days, we have to deliver six truckloads of construction materials from San Felix, carry materials to the different worksites, get the gente ready to host volunteers in their houses, prep to pour the tank base and latrine floors, continue to prep the toma, and prep the counterparts who will be working with the volunteers to develop health charlas. This is probably the biggest task I will have my whole service and boy do I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing and I've put too much on our plate but así es. I'm off to the hardware store to schedule the deliveries!
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