First Three Months at Site

First off, sorry for the low number of pictures on the blog--I know people like them, but most of the time the internet doesn't cooperate enough to let me upload! At the moment, I’m in the capital for IST--in-service training, a volunteer conference after the first three months at site. This might be a good opportunity to answer the question I've gotten from a few people--"Uh, so what do you DO, anyway?!?" The first three months at Peace Corps site are supposed to be mainly for learning about your town and improving your language, but I haven’t been totally slacking! I:

Did a community survey and wrote a general report for future volunteers and organizations interested in putting resources in the community.

Hosted a live fencing demonstration for 60 or so middle school students (Live fencing is basically just planting trees or bushes really close together instead of cutting down trees to make a fence).

Helped a start-up vanilla exporting firm translate and edit customs documents in English--and got vanilla beans in return, yum.

Started a 30-student English club with one of the teachers and have had 4 meetings so far. About 5 or 6 of the students are really into it, the others just want me to magically get them to speak English, I suppose through osmosis. It’s amazing the gaps left by the system of rote memorization--the students usually don’t understand even basic words out of the context of memorized phrases. One of the smartest students, who has been taking English for 4 years, asked me what the word “what” meant.

Attended natural resource management conference and an environmental festival.

Did a World Map project--I mentioned this awhile ago. It’s a good project, but a bit of a pain and still not done. It’s a pain because another volunteer and I had to pay for the materials out of pocket, and also because 2/3 of the scheduled work days have been rained out, so the “map” right now consists of a large ocean-blue rectangle with pencil grid lines across it, just waiting for countries to be drawn and painted. Sigh--hate leaving projects unfinished, even if it’s just a few weeks. The kids seem excited, though.

Have been slowly promoting beneficial plants--moringa trees (nutrition and firewood), tomatoes (nutrition and anti-mosquito) and citronelle (anti-mosquito and soil stabilization). Since I only just got my closest neighbors to plant some, this might take awhile!