12/27/06
Wow. A month without journaling. Not just a lack of updating the blog, but no journaling whatsoever. My head might explode from the pressure. For now what I think I’ll do is limit it to a number of short-ish news briefs to catch you up on what has been going on here, random tidbits, etc. and then later I will spend some time really taking care of my thoughts and feelings. Maybe when I take vacation in January I can just sit on the beach and write…Okay, so here goes, in no particular order:
- My CEJ counterpart Paulo confessed his love for me about a month ago, just as I had dreaded since day one. I don’t care to repeat all of what he said, but suffice it to say that the words “passion” and “physical” were used more than once. As well as the phrase “even though I have a wife…” Welcome to
- Zelda is still at the Center and on different medication that makes her loopy and talkative, yet for the most part calmer and not so much suicidal. I took her and the other girls who stayed in the Center for Christmas to my house to make banana bread on Christmas Eve. It was all I could do to keep her in the house and not running all over town, but hopefully she had an alright time.
- A surprising 29-ish girls were able to spend Christmas with either their families, friends of the Center, or Ivete and other employees, so only 9 girls had to stay at the Center and spend it alone. I was worried they would be really sad knowing they couldn’t be with their families, that their families don’t exist, or that no one specifically invited them to stay on Christmas day, but it turns out they had several visitors and had a good time with each other and the mães. So much better than last year, when apparently some families that arranged to take in some of the girls for the holidays rejected them to their faces, saying they only wanted the cute littler ones. Anyway, most were able to have a home to stay in, which has made it pretty quiet around the Center lately. Much more easily manageable, if not slightly eerie.
- I just had my 23rd birthday last Friday, and it turns out another PCV has the same birthday, so we had a joint party in Praia, and she invited a ton of Cape Verdean friends—we had a blast! One of the best birthdays I’ve had in awhile. There was dancing, eating, and general merriness, not to mention gorgeous
- Christmas day I went to São Domingos with the banana bread the girls and I made and spent the day with my host family and all our neighbors. I don’t know, my first Christmas away from family and out of the country was a little weird. It just didn’t feel like Christmas. Very anticlimactic. They all celebrate it, it’s a Catholic country, and they generally make a big lunch or dinner, but it’s not quite the big deal we make it in the States. Which is both excellent and a little sad. There’s no heavy-duty consumerism, frantic shoppers, overcrowded malls, cheesy Santas everywhere, worries about buying everyone’s presents, “Grandma got run over by a reindeer”, and blinking lights that are due to give one an epileptic seizure. Yet there’s also no wonderful scent of pine trees beautifully decorated in your living room, no Frank Sinatra singing classic Christmas carols, nothing even closely resembling snow, no hot cocoa in front of a fire with your family, no waking up Christmas morning and making strawberry and whipped cream pancakes and bacon, and no Paige, Lindsey, Mom, and Dad. The last part’s the hardest.
- Christmas evening we had all the PCVs on the island who could come and had no family to visit over for dinner at our house. We decorated with a few lights, bought some cheap
- A couple weeks before Christmas all the CEJ youth volunteers went to the beach for a day of relaxing to celebrate a year of work in the community. We had a nice time, all together, talking and listening to loud Angolan music no one really understands but puts on repeat five times in a row. We were set to depart at 7:30 and actually left at 10—so the usual. Once we got there everyone lingered around on the beach, not really daring to go in. I asked why no one was getting in, though I partially assumed the answer already, and they responded “We don’t know how to swim.” It wasn’t the first time I’d heard this in
- In T-minus 7 days, Mel and I will be leaving to bask in the warm sun of our vacation in Sal and Boavista—I absolutely can’t wait. It will be brief but glorious, and then we get to come back to In-Service Training the next day where all the PCVs will be together in Tarrafal, so we’ll get to do a ton of catching up! I’m so giddily ready to see everyone, share war stories, and just enjoy each other’s presence. And be at the beach for a week!
- After almost 3 months of service, my CEJ counterparts and I tried to finally sit down and officially define my role at the center—how I’m perceived, exactly what I’ll be doing, etc. It went a lot better in my head than in reality. I hate that feeling that people you’re trying to work with on something are more interested in what they have to say than in how you are going to fit in or your perspective on things. It basically felt like they were wanting me to just come in and be another worker-slash-volunteer that comes in and does a few activities for a couple years, then goes on her way. The trophy white foreigner they can bring around to events and meetings to say they have international help. Which in their reality maybe is true, but I was hoping that the things I end up doing there would be the type to continue beyond my service. The whole point is to do things that are relevant for them in a way that they will want to carry it on in the future, things that don’t require my presence. Instead, they got really excited about wanting me to come teach English. I told them I have no problem helping with that, but I don’t want it to be the priority of my presence there. When I leave, who will be “the English teacher”? Is that weird? Maybe I should just suck it up and do whatever it is they tell me to do or seem to need me to do, after all I’m supposed to be open and flexible, here to serve. But sometimes it just seems like their perspective is so limited, just thinking about a small group of people, rather than the huge things they can accomplish using that small group as a start. Every time I press for things or insert my opinion, I get this machismo response of “whoa, down girl” and expressions of shock that the little blonde girl might actually have an opinion or want to accomplish something. Like it just couldn’t be possible. I always feel this attitude with them that they get impatient working with a girl, whose sole purpose in being there is supposed to be flirting and looking good. But I guess that’s just something I’ll have to overcome during my time here, not let it overshadow what needs to be done. And my task really will be to see what the youth want to do, what the kids involved actually need and are willing to be involved in. Not the two guys in charge of it all. So that will be my goal.
- As for what I’ve been working on at all three of my jobs and what I’m signed up to do in the next two years, here’s a list of projects/programs/activities:
- Behavioral evaluation of the girls at the Center (that huge chart I was telling you about is underway and in the process of working out the kinks)
- I am official fundraiser for the Center, organizing any efforts to bring in funds for projects and necessities, including grant-writing, asking for donations, and general fundraising events
- I am also official coordinator of all outside excursions, field trips, and exchanges that take place with the girls of the Center—they’re hoping to do big trips once or twice a month and a little one every week
- I am working on starting a small library in each of the ICCA (previously ICM) Centers, which involves book collection, asking for donations, fundraising, etc. etc. etc. and will then start a program to promote reading in the Centers, which currently doesn’t exist—no one here reads for pleasure…or for school for that matter
- I will be starting English classes at both Centers (here and in Picos) for the high school kids who have English, and I will probably be starting English classes at the CEJ as well
- I will soon be starting work on a large-scale (hopefully) photography project that will tie in with my thesis project, where the girls at the Center and maybe even girls from the CEJ will be given cameras, training, and a particular objective related to critical consciousness, leadership, and changing your community; this will then eventually turn into a wide-scale exposition with the intent of opening people’s eyes to the needs of girls in our community, and the ability of youth to express their voice through photographs
- I hope to organize by next summer a Peace Corps project called
- I’m trying to get CEJ youth and youth from the high schools to start a tutoring and/or mentoring program for younger kids in the community who need role models and/or help with studies. It started with a focus on the kids from the ICCA Centers (of course), but will hopefully extend to the SOS (other local orphanage started by a foreign NGO that I talked about a long time ago) and other local children
- I want to start a girls’ group at the CEJ, as if I needed any more activities specifically related to girls
- I and another Volunteer are creating a life-sized game for youth that centers around life skills, critical thinking, and Cape Verdean culture that can be played with various different populations within the country and can be boxed up and easily transportable
- I might possibly be helping with an inter-island soccer tournament that is being started by another Volunteer, gathering a team for Santa Catarina and helping that to get kicked off. We’ll see how much time is available for this…
So that’s all the current larger projects, not including all the day-to-day craziness that makes up a part of my three jobs—aren’t you all jealous? I have my doubts that all of this can be done, but I’m sure going to try. And after all, the whole goal is to truly do very little, to get members of the community invested enough to do it on their own, so that they’re learning how and are more likely to continue it in the future. The problem then is motivating
12/28/06
Today is one of those days. Those days when you question everything about yourself and just generally feel blue. I sit here and think about what makes me think I’m qualified to do much of anything. It’s one of those times when everything I see and experience make me question everything I’ve learned and think I can offer, wondering if any of it is true or worthwhile. And I’ve been down this road before—you all know it, I’m sure I wrote about the same thing not too long ago. But it’s back. That nagging feeling that nothing I do is right or really helping anyone. Looking at the massive list of things I’m involved or getting involved in I wonder if any of it will go the way it looks in my head, or if it will all fall to pieces, or if it was wrong to plan any of this in the first place. It’s so frustrating trying to get people to help you with anything—most of the time they either want you to do it for them or try and pawn it off on someone else, if they even care enough to want it done in the first place. It’s not a fair assessment of
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