Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Oh, so this is for real now?


Did I say in my last post that my site wasn’t going to be super rural? Well, I take it back. I still stand by the relative accessibility to Xela, but the fact that there’s nowhere to buy tortillas or bread (both staples, you can always find at least 3 stores with them in any town) anywhere in San Ramón really says something.

The good news: I have a place to sleep, my counterpart is just as crazy as I am (probably crazier), I may have accidentally joined a basketball team in a town nearby, and there is evidently a ton of work to do RIGHT away. And by a lot of work, I mean we did 22 house visits on my first day of work and 23 on my 2nd day.

Normally, I wouldn’t be starting my infrastructure projects until the 2nd year of my service, but I’ve been placed in a town that’s had a volunteer working here for the last year. Kate’s been in San Ramon as well as 2 other towns and her own municipality working in the Healthy Homes project since last July, so she’s coming into the project phase of her service. She’s decided that she wants my town to be the first to get projects, so a few months ago, the entire area covered by the Health Post was surveyed to see what services they had within the home (water, lights, cement floors, latrine, stove – instead of an open fire on the floor). Now that we’ve selected the families most in need to participate in the project, we had to hand-deliver all 50-some invitations over the last 2 days.

This doesn’t seem like too big a task, but this isn’t like taking a stroll through Cary Town. The majority of the houses are islanded in the middle of endless cornfields and guarded by the meanest dogs to ever come out of hell. Not to mention the dogs guarding the cornfields themselves and the little paths through them. All I have to say: thank GOD I found a big stick before we found the really mean ones. My counterpart Adilia has had a bit of experience with these “chuchos” (according to the scar across her right cheek bone), so I took her advice when she told me to stay calm and not release pheromones out of the pure fear and adrenaline pouring out of me. To her credit, breathing deeply and passing by them at a normal pace worked pretty well, except for the ones that follow you as soon as your back is turned and continue to be on the attack even when I act menacing with my stick. Thus why I jumped at the little boy running out of the cornfield and then again at the cat chewing on a plastic bag under the table at dinner tonight. I'm sure my love of dogs will come back any day now...

No comments:

Post a Comment