No news is good News

Well the bike rides continue and they are beautiful and I take fotos and it is like my foto diary of me and zeek. By and large things are the same here. Still fighting to get my projects in place. Trying to lay down the law and start new ones. Somedays I want to just shake someone but then I just breathe do some yoga or ride my bike and come back to positivity. And dancing has come back as well as the rainy season ends the parties start again and my dance group is back in action. So I work all day and dance all night. Lots of meetings lots of official stuff lately. Plus giving kids prizes in the library for the reading competition. It is incredible how hard they worked for a backpack. I am not completely in agreement that people should constantly provide incentives for behavior change. But 20 bucks says I will fall into the same trap when I want to get projects moving. This week I am getting the paperwork and coordinations ready for a improved cooking stoves-healthy households project. I began the monthly health promotion program in the high school. I will be starting with sex education in April. Started the healthy mouth promotion program with the intern dentist. Then there is organizing the parent school where we educate the parents of the students in four schools here about life themes such as domestic violence, alcoholism, communication,etc. Planning to do three vegetable gardens in three schools here hopefully getting the seeds and organic fertilizers donated from a NGO. My community garden is mostly my garden because I have been abandoned by my helpers. Cant blame them they have to work and so I keep it up. What can I say seeing things grow gives me hope. And well if I can make it work I have big plans for it in the future. If you build it they will come? Oh but I am starting a recycling project with my youth group. Tomorrow we are going to do a clean up day of the town and then take pictures. I am going to educate in the community and in the schools. Then all the stuff we collect we are going to sell to the recycling plant (which looks more like a junk yard and is super informal but at least I know that this stuff is out of the dumps or the streets). Then the idea is slowly but surely we will gain enough money to buy sacks for the houses in the community and by the end of the year recycling bins for the major streets of the community. And perhaps I will get the municipality to buy trash bins for the community as well because we lack that. The infrastructure here is much better than in other communities but I think it gives the false illusion of progress. If the people never change, the things they build will eventually deteriorate and then everyone will be back at square one. So sustainability man that word drives me bonkers. I will admit that lately I have been feeling discouraged because well I do not know that we can make projects that are sustainable. It insinuates that we have to make the people care about certain themes. And well if it does not fit into the cultural belief system or their everyday life I think it is just about impossible no matter where you are in the world. Behavior change is a pain in the ass. I get advice from people they tell me I need to be patient, and that is true. But everyone wants things for free and without work and well that I think is the difference between the developed and developing countries. If a country is constantly depending on handouts from other sources it will never be able to manage itself. So I stay, I work, I dance, I write, I ride my bike when I am frustrated, and I keep trying. I admit that I miss you all terribly and I am incredibly bothered when I cannot be there for your successes and your sorrows. In these moments I wonder whether it is better to be of in a distant land making a difference in the lives of strangers or to be home and making a difference in the lives of your loved ones.

So besides being Alive

Sorry for the abruptness of the previous post but I was running and also I have a really hard time remembering exactly what has happened without my handy dandy planner. It basically runs my future and remembers my past for me. That way I can save those brain cells for something more productive. Held another training for 30 mothers in another sector of my site. It was a great little educational talk about diarrea and then I weighed and checked the height of 30 kids. If they were not scared of me before the little ones sure are now. It was hectic with little kids crying and screaming. It does not help that parents say I am going to vaccinize their kids if they don´t behave. I know when parents have done this because they start crying the second I show up. I also held a educative sesson with about nutrition for a group of 20 women. I am definately getting the work experience necessary for international nutrition. I know that I am more exciting then the majority of meetings held here. Had one of my friends leave unfortunately, she is a teacher and got transferred to a site up in the mountains far away. We went dancing one last time to say goodbye and celebrate the friendship. That is what is sad about my site that people are constantly leaving. I make a friend and then find out for work, education, or family reasons they are moving away for anywhere between 6 months and indefinately. Success and failure run very closely here. I pretty much succeed and fail in something everyday. Which I think has been a great lesson for me and for the people of my community. I think we are all surprised at my resilence and relentlessness. I am surprised because my fear of failure in the past left me paralyzed and now I just brush it off or work at it until it resolves itself. For example, I had a girl ask to use a shovel and she went to town in the community garden. This was a success not only because she is a girly girl that I would have never expected to do this but also because culturally women don´t do that kind of labor. The failure would be that the group of youth working with me are not really keeping up with the project so I am probably going to completely change the project to involve more of the community and instead of making a business make a share crop. In the sense of sustainability it is a failure because if I did not keep working hard to maintain the project everything would die. I´ll let you know what happens. Schools back in session which keeps everyone busy. I am designing a monthly health promotion program in the high school. I have been assisting the dentist in getting a mouth health promotion program started in all the schools here. I started this past week training on my bike. I got this idea that I wanted to travel to a nearby town to buy bananas. So I hopped on and took pictures along the way in total the trip was 17 miles and I did it in an hour and a half. The second trip I headed in the opposite direction for a 22 mile roundtrip in two hours. I am going to keep aumenting the distance in the hopes that someday I can take a trip to a far away place on my bike. Plus this is a great way to exercise, sight see, and take photos. The surprising part is that I did not get tired and the next day my legs did not even hurt. I think that with a road bike I could totally win races when I get back to the states because my current bike is a mountain bike so with a lighter bike made for road travel who knows what I could do or where I could go. I went to a birthday party and danced for four hours followed by a cake fight. Keep in mind that tommorrow is International Women´s Day so celebrate, burn your bras ladies, men put one on, and everyone hug your mom. I liked this quote I recently saw by emerson
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could some blunders and absurdities have crept in. Forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
Keep in mind it is better to screw up trying than to be frozen in fear of failure. Also look for new nonesense because expired nonesense just stinks.

Safe and Sound

I would like to communicate that I am totally safe. I have not felt any sort of after effects from the earthquake in Chile. I will write more soon when I have my schedule book to remind me of the stories I want to tell you guys. I have sort of lost track of time and past that is why I write everything down. With lovve and pleasantries