is she a sphinx or merely stupid? February 26, 2009

So I started out this week thinking it would be a lot less busy than the last, but this was not the case. Which is great. Because not only do I feel more productive and hence successful, but also it leaves me less time to do what we call “anxiety eating”, which leads to a slight weight loss. All around – awesome.
Last saturday, I went to San Fransisco with the dental intern to give a charla on dental health and hand out the toothbrushes and toothpaste and floss that MamaCepela so graciously sent over. We ended up giving one toothbrush per child and one tube of toothpaste and floss per family. The dental intern did most of the talking, which is really for the best, since she is the professional, and everyone thanked us profusely as we left. It was amazing to see the difference in living standards between the part of Santo Domingo where I live and a caserio only a 40 minute walk away. To keep a record of who received dental supplies, we went around the room asking for names and ages and numbers of children and it was incredible. There were 19 year old girls with two kids who looked like they were well into their late 30s. There was not a single person present with a full set of teeth, and even some of the children were hard to look at, with their front teeth brown and half there, rotting out. Just another reminder that poverty is relative.
Sunday I went to San Miguel for a continuation of my micro landfill presentation. We were able to bring the projector this time, so I got to show off my nifty powerpoint presentation. By the end of the meeting, I had 17 families signed up who were interested in building micro-landfills. So we made an “environmental committee”. There is a president and two secretaries and they are in charge of all future environmental projects in San Miguel. Every family that ends up building a micro-landfill will get free seeds to reforest their land. We will start construction in April, when the rainy season passes, so they don’t fill up with water while in the process of construction. Now I have to put together informational packets on how to compost, the technical aspect of building a micro-landfill, worm horticulture, reforestation, and trash separation for the families that have shown interest. Frankly, this is a lot more progress than I thought we would have achieved at this meeting, and I’m pretty excited about it.
At some point that night, my power went out. Just mine. Nobody else’s. Since my host family is still on vacation, I had to ask the neighbors for help before it got too dark out. This somehow ended with a drinking circle outside my house and 7 neighbors pooling their efforts so that the “gringita doesn’t get left in the dark, alone… someone might steal her”. Cute. I love living in a town where half a dozen families will stop what they are doing to help you. Well, unfortunately, nobody could figure out how to fix it, so we wired my house up with the neighbors, and voila! I’m using the neighbor’s electricity! I keep trying to pay them, but they’re so adamant in their refusal.. I’m going to have to buy them something. I would have gotten a technician to fix it the next day, but I’m pretty sure my host dad knows how to fix it and I don’t want to pay a technician to do what he can for free.
Monday was the second set of presentations about trash separation. Maybe half the people showed up this time, and we didn’t spend too much time talking about trash – however, I did learn that there is a project in the works to poison all of the street dogs. Well, as you can imagine, I flipped out. It wasn’t elegant, it wasn’t pretty. I started yelling about right to life and how inhumane it was and blah blah blah and the end result was a group of Peruvians silently staring at me like I was insane. However, I heard that there is some neighboring town where an NGO operates a shelter. I’m going to have to look into that. It might end up being my 2 year project. Cuz hell no, you can’t just go around poisoning dogs because you don’t like them. Man, I’m all riled up ten ways to sunday.
I have also been working with Nilda, the secretary of one of the high schools on the slogan competition. We went around yesterday to find “strategic locations” to put the winning slogans up. We found 26 spots – sides of buildings, walls, etc. throughout ALL of the urban zone of Santo Domingo. I’m almost surprised we were able to find that many! We also finished writing up our project proposals and solicituds for financial support today, so now we’re just waiting on an answer from the department of education in the municipality to see if they will help us with paint and 3-ply and other materials for the actual final product. If that’s approved, we just have to propose it to the other high school and we’re in business. The due date for submissions happens to be on Earth Day, which was a complete accident, and makes me smile.
I’ve been going around with the trash men every morning, as well. Generally, this goes well. Sometimes I get an eye roll when I tell people that plastic is not, in fact, organic, but for the most part, people are really nice about it. Today was a different story however. It is one of the rules of the trash program: we do not collect materials used for construction. It’s too heavy for the men to carry and it’s the responsibility of the owner. Everything was going fine, until we got to one of the highschools. We hold institutions to higher standards because they are supposed to set an example for the rest of the town – so the health post, the schools, and the municipality should all be perfect in their separation. Well, the school didn’t have ANYTHING separated. We called out everyone who works there during summer hours and showed them what was what. We found some pieces of a wall in the bin and told them that we don’t collect that. Suddenly, one of the teachers starts arguing with me, telling us that if we don’t take it, some kid will throw it into the street and that’s not constructive. I didn’t like his tone, so I told him it wasn’t really our problem. We collect the rest of the trash and start walking away. Then, this man, this grown ass adult, who ran for mayor three times, who is an educated teacher at a local institution, picks up the pieces and throws them into the middle of the street. Awesome. Great example you’re setting, buddy. I’m glad you’re responsible for molding the minds of the children of this town. Sometimes I just feel like I’m babysitting.
So that’s basically it. I’m going into Piura tomorrow. Lately it’s been weird watching life back home move on without me. People getting married, engaged, having kids, moving, people not keeping in touch, etc. It’s just weird. It’s this completely narcissistic feeling, but sometimes it feels almost as if I’m getting left behind. I guess when the alternative is being there and having a stupid 9-5 job that I would hate, it’s really not so bad, but it is really weird.
On an unrelated note: the fleas and bedbugs and mosquitos are gone…. well, not exactly gone, just not biting me anymore. I haven’t been itchy in 2 weeks now. But I do still feel things crawling up my pants all the time. Also, the rats ate all of my guaba seeds, so I guess I’m not going to reforest any of that in the near future. At least I still have my lovely pomarosas.
Yours truly, with besitos (that’s little kisses),
Sasha