Projects Galore

So looks like I’m averaging about an entry every 2 months. They said that people staying on an outer island would probably only have access to internet once every couple months...you would think, therefore, that I was living on an outer island. But I’m not...just very busy – which is a good thing. I thought, therefore, that 2 entries in 1 day was only fair...

Since last I wrote, my projects are going very nicely. Wally is still alive and growing very quickly. He is very loud and very strong with big paws...I think he’ll probably be a big dog, if he lives to adulthood, that is. He already had one near-death experience earlier this week. I swore I saw him go completely underneath the tires of a car, but somehow he just limped away with a sore back leg and a small cut. It was traumatizing nonetheless –probably more so for me than for him, he was running around 2 hours later. So it’s back to being tied to his rope, which my host father likes to call prison. I talk about him in class with my students, so now they always ask about him, and want me to bring him to school. I think mostly everyone just gets a huge kick out of the white girl (or mataan ahset) with the dog she treats like a person. oh well...goal 3 of Peace Corps Mission: Bring American culture to host country community. Check.

Paddling is going great. I know so many more people in my town now that I’ve been paddling for a couple months. We’re getting closer to the final races at the end of this month. We practice twice a day (once at 5:30 am, again at 5:00 pm), I usually only go in the afternoon. I’m definitely not a morning person and it’s really hard for me to socialize and be peppy that early in the day – I’d rather not expose the whole town to my grumpy morning self.

My garden is...not doing so great. It’s finished and we planted some cabbage, but they aren’t thriving like I imagined they would when I first thought of starting a garden. Out of the 20 or so we planted we’re down to about 7. I joked around with my host parents when we first started the garden that I hoped I hadn’t inherited my mother’s black thumb of death...I’m trying to nurse the poor little guys back to health, but I may very well be doing more harm than good.

We are about to finish the third quarter at school. My students are now completely comfortable with me in the classroom...their behavior has been more difficult to manage lately because of it. I’m tossing around the idea of trying to start an after school program of sorts for next school year. I haven’t done anything more than just talk with some other teachers about the idea, but they seem to think it would be good. It would be a way to incorporate some art, sports and maybe even music into the curriculum. Like any development project, it should strive to be sustainable – meaning it would still be here after the person who initiated it (me) leaves. I read somewhere that development workers should strive to put themselves out of business. Great quote; it should be a prerequisite mission statement for all development organizations around the world.