I’ll be the first to admit it; I lack a strong belief in someone upstairs watching over all of us. There may or may not be some higher being up there getting a kick out of watching us live our lives. That being said, the hypothetical higher power up there has had it in for me recently. Be it the god of bad luck, the god of technology, or whoever, someone had made up their mind to make my life a little harder recently.
It all started with Camp ALMA: A field trip of sorts that the Peace Corps volunteers put together for teenage girls in our sites. We bring together teen girls from all of our sites and teach them about leadership, women’s health, and small project management along with playing silly games and painting t-shirts. Basically a fun time to be had all expenses paid by the Peace Corps. I had one girl who told me she’d go. Her mom had signed the permission slip and we were all good to go…so I thought. Day of at 4 am her mother tells me her daughter’s not going. I was pissed. I’d spent the better half of the past 2 weeks talking the mother and daughter through this whole ordeal (the mom’s a little…we’ll say special.) making sure that there was no confusion. And to bail on me last minute and leave me girl-less at this camp—well that was just not cool!
So I show up at Camp ALMA girl-less and depressed. I was really looking forward to this camp. I made the best of it, stealing time with the boy’s girls from Bolivar (The neighboring town with male Peace Corps Volunteers), it was a camp for girls after all, so I didn’t feel bad stealing the girls from their boy volunteers. Then the unthinkable happens. Me being the klutz that I am dropped my point and shoot camera on the floor—the rock covered floor. Crack. There goes the camera. Well, okay, I’m not 100% sure it’s completely gone. It just doesn’t take pictures. I’m taking it to a guy in Chiclayo this weekend that I think can fix it…cross your fingers for me.
I get back to site, piss about the camera, and still kinda pissed about the girl not coming to the camp. Then I hear the gossip: The girl I was supposed to take has run off to Ica (a different department in Peru) with her boyfriend and is refusing to come home. Drama follows but can be all summed up with: everyone in town knows I had nothing to do with letting the girl run away from home…except for the mother. After my 5 witnesses (the 2 volunteers from up the hill, their 2 girls, and the nurse from Nanchoc) were able to support my story that the girl was not with me when she ran away, the mother finally backed down. She now knows that I had no part in her run away daughter’s flight to Ica. I can now sleep well at night knowing she won’t be attacking me with a machete. Things start looking up at this point.
We have decided at the health post to try a big project. I’ve given them enough confidence that it is possible to do. We’re going to attempt-- attempt is the key word-- a community garden in the lot behind the health post. The Idea is that all the mother with children under the age of 5 work together in shifts on a veggie garden. Those parents that work get to take home produce. Sounds simple enough, but in a town with rivalries that make Romeo and Juliet’s parents look like friends it’s a rather hard task to complete. We’re currently attempting to create working groups, not based off of where the family lives (which was my idea that was shot down), rather, based off of who gets along with who. Apparently some of the feuds in town run deep enough that there are a few people who can’t be trusted in a close proximity to each other with a pick axes. We think we have the list down, and the mothers are all bringing sticks and old sacks to fence in the area to keep the chickens out. It looks like this might actually happen.
Then today, the best news possible. The highlight of my week, possibly my month, or maybe even the year: I am in possession to the keys of the future library of Nanchoc. Yes, let me repeat that again: I HAVE THE KEYS TO THE FUTURE LIBRARY OF THE TOWN OF NANCHOC!!!!!!!! Huge break! Biiiiiiiiiiiig news here. After battling with our incompetent mayor for the past few months he has moved his stuff out of the school’s new building (yes, he had stolen the newly constructed school building from the school…) and I have the key to one of the BIGGER rooms to turn into the library. I literally jumped for joy. Rosa, my main go to woman for this project and the unofficial leader-lady of the parent’s association, deserves the biggest round of applause ever. She did almost all of the work in hounding the mayor to get these keys and deserves all of the credit. Without her hard work this first phase of the library would have never happened. I cannot thank this woman enough. Although I’m going to try to thank her in my own special way, I’m going to bake her a cake. It’s the international thank you, who doesn’t like a good cake?
Things are looking up. Let’s hope they stay that way. I’m heading to Chiclayo tomorrow to celebrate my birthday a few days early with some friends, and to buy a broom and a mop and some floor soap for the new library—first thing on the to-do list is to mop up all the rainy season mud that has encased the floor. But I’m game for a good elbow workout.
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