The Eleventh Month

Sun, wind, water, love.

Dear family and friends,

It's been a while since I've written. Honestly I can't even remember the last time I wrote, or what it was about....I hope nothing I write today is a repeat offender, and apologies if it is. What can I say? The last few months have been jampacked. Mostly it's been an amphibian's life, between the city and the campo, travels, visits and visitors, birthdays. Currently I am out of site, just finished helping with the training of the new group of environmental volunteers. I was asked to be part of their training, which is pretty cool and an honor, really. All this week I've been in a small town called Pilon, another volunteer's site- there's a schedule and a plan and a dress code and a boss again. It's fine and good to be working, but to be frank I'd rather be sitting by the river with friends cracking open palm nuts with a rock and looking for crawdads to roast over a campfire under the shade of the flowering mango trees, which is exactly what I did last saturday.

This is summertime in the campo....

By 9am the wind is usually quite strong, though not as strong as the heat of the sun. The days are filled with sunshine, the air is filled with the sweet smell of warm pine needles, and river is filled with children. They've dammed a portion of the river with sticks and logs and rocks and palm leaves to make a great swimming hole. It's location next to the road and the kiosk bring it to life as the local pool- kids spend the afternoon jumping in, climbing out, sunning themselves, checking out the cuties, struttin their stuff, buying candies and juice.

In the mornings there are kidney beans to be picked and cleaned and sorted, at midday there are hammock naps, in the heat of the afternoon there are more kidney beans -this time to be beaten with sticks (this is how you deshell them). Every evening there is baseball. While the parents are beating the hell out of the beans or napping in a hammock, the kids go into the monte to find gacho- it's a soft and flexible vine. They wind it up in a ball and wrap a rubber band and an old sock, and bam! We have a softball. Our bats are sticks- mostly balsa wood because it is so much lighter but any old stick of a certain length and thickness will do the trick. A base is a shoe, or is a pile of cow poop, a big leaf, or maybe just a dirt patch scratched out among the weeds. And the game is on! The sun sets, it rises, and repeat.

Today, when I return, all will have changed, sadly. School will have resumed session, the beans will have been cleaned and stored away. The men will have begun to chop down the monte to prepare for the planting of rice, I will begin to harvest more tomatoes and cucumbers and onions and carrots from my garden (and more!), and the children will be disheartened by afternoons filled with homework rather than games and rivertime. The water might run out, things will get drier and hotter still, and the work, I anticipate, will pick back up.

Ah yes work..... Im still fighting for a stoves project- not with the community but with red tape. Paperwork and indifference on the part of the companies are my current battles, but I'm not giving up. Looks like it may be a long struggle, and I will probably have to bribe some powerful people with cookies and other baked goods before I see any movement....should the rainy season arrive before this thing gets funding, it means we will have to wait until next summer.. Just like the electricity project which has still not seen any movement since August, it will be yet another long wait.

In other news, I've been working with a youth group....my friend mirna is actually in charge of it, but she went back to finish up highschool in the city, so I'm filling in. We learn about being a good person, morals, values, the environment. We pick up trash and play games and have fundraisers. It's good for them, and it's good for me, too. I look forward to it every saturday afternoon...I do, however, worry about what will happen if Mirna does not come back. Most young women in this part of the country get out and stay out, and I would not be surprised if Mirna follows the same pattern. (I would not hold it against her either. Life in the campo is duro, and the waiting game grows tiresome). In the next few months I will be doing a lot with the school garden and my awesome friend Raul, I'll be amping up to do semester 2 of the girls' leadership and environment program, and I'll be helping 5 families set up an organic farm project. I'll also be working to teach basic business skills to the women's group so that they'll be able to move forward with their bread business- I'm starting with the president, taking her to a leadership and project management conference in April. (She used to be my host mom/sister, and her and her husband are by far some of the most progressive and hardworking people I have ever met in my whole life, so im very excited to take her on this 4 day conference)

Changing the subject...

Let's be frank about work. I don't believe that all of this work is sustainable, nor do I believe I have found the true purpose of my being here....Would it really be any different were I not here? What do I have to offer? I wish I could say that in my 9^th month I have figured all of this out, but it's not so simple. True, some of the youth will catch on to new ideas and grow into individuals touched by the thoughts and habits of an outsider, and there is certainly some sustainability in this. True, business skills will benefit the women in my community, whether or not the bread business fails or succeeds. The stoves project, though? Yes, there is a direct and enormous benefit to be gained for the entire community, but I am building stoves, not skills, which makes it my least sustainable and least fulfilling project (it was the #1 priority for the community, though, which is why I am so dedicated to pulling through).

In considering the role of the volunteer in development, I honestly believe the best “aid” I can offer is my heart first and foremost, a pat on the back to those who deserve it, a little peptalk when the going gets tough, some free labor, and my public recognition of a job or idea done well. Perhaps that's exactly what we as volunteers ought to be doing, though. It's about leadership, sure, but that does not mean that we are or should be The Leaders, and to think otherwise is a rather egotistical and sadly, promotes an already prevalent belief in racial hierarchies that I find quite disturbing. It is equally, perhaps moreso, important that I be a follower. That's the true key to sustainability. Without a follower, a there are no organic leaders, just progressive but invisible individuals. So here I am, honing in on a mission to make the invisible visible, to being not the firewood but a microscopic spark. There is a quote from the Tao te Ching that puts it perfectly. It says, “to lead the people, walk behind them.”

So there you have it. i will try to write again soon- I realize I've left a lot of blanks in the picture, but use your imagination (and the photos which i will send momentarily) to fill them in. In the meantime, I have a visitor coming to visit from peace corps ecuador, which will be fun, and I have a lot more walking to do....

Lots of love to each and everyone of you,

Until next time.