alternative career options

(...I have a month and a half of written & unposted blog posts to catch up on. Best get cracking!)

Peace Corps, they say, teaches you to be flexible. Always. Be flexible when things come up last minute and you have to catch the bus RIGHT NOW to the city to meet with someone Very Important. Be flexible when that Very Important Person has other Important things to do all day and so you’re left kicking your heels waiting instead of doing all the things you had planned. Be flexible when you organize meetings and no one shows up. Be flexible when fifteen more people than planned show up and you don’t have food for them all. Be flexible especially when you’re traveling, for when the buses don’t come or leave early or sit and wait for three hours because the driver refuses to leave until all the seats are full. Be flexible when there are approximately 2893492326 people on the bus you’re trying to get on, and 953 more people try to board in front of you... and all of them are in your way when you're trying to get off Be flexible when you’re standing on that same bus clutching onto whatever you can reach to stay upright in your six square inches of space while the cobrador squeezes by you collecting fares and the bus tears around corners as it climbs into the mountains.

Be flexible enough to stop and breathe when the rain is coming as the sun sets and brings a double rainbow with it. Be flexible enough to actually enjoy the company of nine little kids all wanting to hang out with you and look at all your things. Be flexible enough to know when you can’t be flexible at all.

Also, I am learning, be flexible in terms of your future career! Who says what you have planned is actually your true vocation? In the interests of exploring all possible options, I have been testing out possibilities in my free time. I would make a terrible washerwoman (I always get sand in all my pockets when I wash things in the river), but I’ve found a few other choices to consider:

I would make a passable manicurist...



...a middling sort of chef...



...a pretty decent poster-drawer (with some help)...



...and a hilarious dancer...



...But for the moment, at least, I guess cosmetology school and So You Think You Can Dance stardom can wait until after I’m finished being a volunteer.

thanksgiving

A happy belated Thanksgiving to all!

There is no possible way to not enjoy a holiday and be full of thanks when your view is this:

i admit it

I am a terrible blogger. It is true. LE SADFACE.

In return I bring you pictures of the yard sale and medical brigade we had last weekend to raise money for building our community-based health center!













It was a bit of a madhouse (complete with cows and dogs and all manner of creatures wandering about), but we made some good money -- enough to buy 2 beds for the house! Awesome!

matthew and some foodstuffs

Here I am stuck in the city while we are under CONSOLIDATION MODE for DREAD HURRICANE MATTHEW which is not so much a DREAD HURRICANE as spitting rain on us. That's life I suppose. Some days you get hurricanes.

Some days you get gifted food you've never heard of and have to cook!



(Yucca, jocote, culantro, and limones. I made boiled yucca (which as far as I can tell is about the only thing acceptable to do with yucca here) and pico de gallo. SO DELICIOUS.)

Some days you make pancakes! Or "panqueques", if you prefer. Which are also delicious wherever and however you make them.

bizzareness is bizzare

The surprises never end, and they’re never the surprises you expect. Just when you think you have hit the limit for confusion for the week or maybe the month, things like this happen:

HEALTH CENTER COMPUTER: *angry screen of blinking cursor DEATH*

HEALTH CENTER STAFF: Don’t do it, computer! Come back! Don’t go toward the light! We need you so we can fill out all of these forms about everything we do here!

COMPUTER: *refuses to even turn on*

FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER: Now what? We have to print more copies of this letter of commitment, and the only thing left is the ancient typewriter that attacks me every time I so much as look at it.

COUNTERPART: The alcaldía is the only place with a copier within 20km; you’ll have to go there.


(This is true. Also copies in town cost money, and the alcaldía (town office) is free. I was sold on the idea. I did not realize quite what a big deal copies are here, though.)


SECRETARY: *standing beneath a big sign that declares FOTOCOPIAS* Hello?

FNPCV: Our computer at the center died and we need copies of this letter. Can we copy it here?

SECRETARY: *looking extremely doubtful* Well...

FNPCV: Just ten or so? Please?

SECRETARY: You’ll have to talk to the alcalde.

FNPCV: The... mayor? Are you sure? All I want is...

SECRETARY: He’s that way. He’s in a meeting.

FNPCV: I... *secretary leaves* ...okay then?

ALCALDE: *is in a very important-looking meeting*

ASSISTANTS: *are looking bored in very important ways*

FNPCV: (to assistants) Look, all I want to do is copy this letter...

ASSISTANTS: You’ll have to talk to the alcalde. Go on! Just walk in!

*everyone stares, but no one stops talking*

FNPCV: Uh, hi? Sorry, I... just want to make some copies? Of this letter. For the health center?

VICE-ALCALDEZA: How many?

FNPCV: ...Ten?

VICE-ALCALDEZA: *decisively* You’ll have to bring your own paper.

FNPCV: I have to... right. Okay. Yes. I can do that. Bring my own paper. Sure thing.


So I made the copies eventually, with further help from the assistant mayor, who apparently needed to speak directly to the secretary in charge of photocopies and give specific directions. I just stepped back politely and let the whole surreal thing happen until I had exactly ten (they counted) copies of the letters, which I will be bringing back to their office next week, when I actually do need to see the mayor so he can sign off on anything the local government promises our project.

I wonder where they’ll send me for that?

burn, baby, burn

OR: HOW TO ALMOST (BUT NOT QUITE) BURN DOWN YOUR HEALTH CENTER
NOW IN FIVE EASY STEPS!

METHOD 1: COOKING

1. Get elected to make coffee for everyone working because no one believes you can cook.
2. Arrange coffee, pitcher, pot of water, and stove to your liking.
3. Spend five unnecessary minutes trying to figure out how to turn the gas on.
4. Light match. Watch helplessly as it flies out of your hand and goes arcing end over end through the air toward the tank of gas.
5. Stomp out match as quickly as possible when it lands on the floor and breathe sigh of relief. Prepare to endure teasing about this for the rest of your two years of service.

METHOD 2: WASP WARS

1. Become totally fed up with the wasps living in the cardboard boxes in the room you work in. Decide to Take Action; enlist stung coworkers for help.
2. Cover all holes in the boxes and carry them outside. Carefully lift top falps until you locate the nests. Get someone else to remove the styrofoam with the hives and put it into another, disposable box.
3. Burn the box with the hives; carry original boxes back inside after cleaning them.
4. Realize too late th at when your coworker says, "Let's get rid of the nest in the corner of the ceiling," what he really means is: "Let's tie some paper onto the end of a stick, light it on fire, and burn the wasps out." Watch in horrified fascination, convinced the ceiling tiles will catch fire and figuring out which things to grab when they do.
5. Sweep up all the debris after nothing but the nest goes up in flames. Spend the rest of the afternoon ducking dive-bombin, pissed-off wasps.

also my knuckle is the size of an jocote

Bruised Confidence in Self-Sufficiency: Washing Double-Size Sheets

First, decide your sheets are dirty enough to wash. Then analyze your pila. Is there enough water? If not, return to step one and reconsider. If they really can´t stand another day without washing, consider going to the river. Try to remember where the path to the river is and whether the river might be too full to be safe.

Set up everything you need on your little bitty concrete slab: soap, bucket, smaller bucket for scooping water. There's no place to put your sheets, so wrap them around your neck like an overgrown scarf.

Wash your pillowcase first. It´ll take you about three seconds. Feel accomplished.

Begin your first sheet. Soak it in the bucket and start soaping it. Lose track of where the ends of it are and accidently let them drag in the mud. Re-soap them a little more viciously. Scrub the sheet as much as is p ossible with lots of fabric on a little space.

Try to rinse the soap out of the sheet. This functions much like Zeno´s Paradox: no m atter how much water you use, you will only ever be able to get half the soap out. Get frustrated. Decide to hang the sheet up to dry anyway. Accidentally drop it in the dirt when you reach for your clothespins. Resist the urge to stomp on it.

Re-wash the sheet, muttering at it and deciding not to care about washing all the soap out this time.

Consider your second sheet. Return to step one. Decide it really is dirty enough after all and wash it ver slowly, because at this point your hands are protesting the harsh soap, you have at least one bruised knuckle, and your arms are definitely not in shape enough to really have at all this wet, heavy fabric.

Give your other laundry waiting to be done a long, betrayed sort of look. Wish fruitlessly that it would do itself. Finally do half of it, and celebrate with a fresh guayava.

NOTE: Keep an eye out for sudden thunderstorms. Do not get so caught up in enjoying the sound rain makes on the roof that you forget you ever did laundry until everything is soaking wet and unsalvagable.