Things get clearer

One of the beauties of the Peace Corps experience is that it is truly self-directed. Volunteers decide how to approach work in their community, what priorities will be (of course taking into account their community analyses), and what timelines they should set. It is an incredible freedom, but also an enormous challenge. During my hammock time, when I sort through every thought about development there is, debate if sustainability is realistic and to what extent, and how I, a 22-year-old gringa, can best make the most out of my service while guiding my community in the right direction, things get hazy.

And everytime I come up with an answer, a few minutes, hours, or days later, I think "But what about..." and sometimes, I feel like I'm not moving in any one direction at all. I started feeling this way at the end of January and through the beginning of February, as I reached the three-month mark, and that AHA! moment of clarity, vision, or understanding I'd been waiting for hadn't arrived yet.

The thing is this. It's not ever going to. Every community in the world is an uneven mix of resources, needs, motivated workers, and uninterested residents. My counterpart and a handful of others are ready to work, and more or less understanding of the Peace Corps process and how I can help them. There are others who want to work with me but are less than proactive. The third group is not really at all interested in what I am doing, though they are the group who could perhaps benefit most from EH work.

The conclusion I have come to is that to wait for everyone to be on board is a waste of everyone's time. Just like I will never understand everylittlething about my community, I will never have every single person--or maybe even 50 percent--by my side working hombro a hombro, shoulder to shoulder. Given the dynamics I've seen play out so far, it's best just to get going with the people who are ready, motivated and organized. I risk losing them if I hang around trying to get others involved, and more importantly, I believe it is more useful and sustainable to teach small groups and work on small projects, so that those who are really interested will learn, and those who aren't yet, may become so later as they see it develop. And anyhow, my community is too large to try and manage too many people at once. I am still early in my service. There will be time for more later, should opportunities develop.

So at my last community meeting I gave a charla about traditional vs. composting latrines to the people who came to the meeting and established a latrine committee. Yesterday I visited ANAM, an environmental protection agency that works with PC to promote composting latrines, and had a great meeting with one of the coordinators there. In April, we have tentatively scheduled a day to do a community diagnostic with the committee. This will serve as a base document for a latrine project and others in the future. It will also be a document my community can refer to in the future, and and the session should offer a basic training with regard to analysis tools, and educate about the process of agency work. With a relationship established with ANAM, and the presence of a few specially-invited guests, they will start to see progress and hopefully continue to actively participate in the education, promotion and development of a project.

I am going to keep working with my aqueduct committee, which is plagued by personal issues and a lack of responsiblity. I am planning a training for April before their elections to clarify what constitutes a committee and the responsibilties of each role. I also hope to schedule work days to survey the system with a water level (a low-tech but outrageously accurate tool), so I can do more troubleshooting with the system.

School has started up again, and once the kids trickle back for good (they are in no big hurry. It's sort of a get there when you get there situation), I'll be making the rounds trying to establish a Panama Verde environmental group to promote conservation and maybe sneaking in a few life-skills charlas along the way.

So this is my plan. It's already underway and I am starting to feel like things are lining up. All I need now is a lot of patience, a big smile, determination, and some eager counterparts by my side.