Life as a Real Live Adult!

10-7-09

I’m finally living no my own after 8 months of living with very different host families. After a long search in which I was offered one place with AC for way over half my monthly salary and several places in which I would be in charge of a child or two while parents worked elsewhere during the week I found my current house. It is actually where the last volunteer lived for her last 5 months in site. Since she was only living here for a short time she didn’t put much effort into fixing it up. After her, a family of 5 lived here for a bit. The house is about 5 blocks from my old house. It is closer to the highway (about 150 yards away) so I strangely have traffic noises to get used to at night. It is a little house with a big open living room, teeny kitchen not quite big enough for both my stove and fridge, standard bathroom where I’ll be bucket bathing still, and two bedrooms. The paint was a child-ate-peas-puke-green and peeling grossly along with the crumbling walls. The floors are made of big bricks. I have a fair sized backyard with various fruit trees/plants: lemon, grapefruit, banana, orange. I’m thrilled about that. So I’ve spent the week painting the walls with a lime-and-water mixture that I’m sure is great for me and the environment and cleaning a bunch. There is a bed that came with the house but it was grey Thursday so I couldn’t put it out in the sun or beat it so I ended up putting my yoga mat and air mattress on the big table and sleeping there. Other than that first night though, I’ve been in my new-to-me bed. The house is coming along, but I still have no clue where to put clothes and need to figure out a way to make it so the lime doesn’t come off on whatever touches it.
I’ve been thinking the past few days of how happy I am to be in my own house. Throughout September I felt like I was looking for any excuse to get out of site for a night or an afternoon but now I am so content to stay here and do random home improvement tasks. I’ve started sewing my own curtains by hand. I’m planning on making myself a bookshelf and some storage shelves for clothes and (separately) kitchenware. I don’t think I realized that I was in a bit of a funk during September. Obviously my sister’s visit and the fabulous Buenos Aires vacation were excellent but afterwards I was dragging a bit. Anyway, I just feel like I’m finally getting settled and can actually be an adult rather than a teenager (which is how I frequently felt in the house with two teenagers and my host parents).
My work life is going pretty well right now, with a few kinks. I started sex ed with a group of high schoolers yesterday and it went extremely smoothly. There are two girls from the class who have elected to help me out with sex ed for the month. They’ll get certificates at the end, though when I told them that, they said that I should only give them the certificates if they’ve earned them. I love these two girls! They’ve agreed to help me out with sex ed not only with their own class but with other classes, shifts (I don’t know what else to call them—they’re morning, but they’ll help with afternoon and night), and even another high school in the area. I’m really thrilled about this. The class we worked with yesterday was 60 students so if we actually work with all the classes we want to, we would end up training/educating more than 300 students. I was thinking the other day that if I really only teach teenagers about sex ed, parts of the body, HIV/AIDS, STDs, birth control, and how to put a condom on I can feel good about my work.
In the elementary schools, the cardboard project is still going strong, but I’m going into the office today to see if the health office has a set of big teeth available for tooth brushing charlas. I’ve just started star charts with my three favorite children because their dental hygiene is so amazingly poor. They all have visible cavities and some rotten out teeth. With a star chart you can have them mark when they brush their teeth (the goal is obviously twice a day) and then after ten days as long as they’ve been brushing they get a prize. We used these a lot at Rosemont, where I worked with the teenage girls with behavioral and substance abuse problems, and they were frequently very effective. You can change the target behavior to really anything. Those three favorite kids came over yesterday to color and hang out. Their baby brother has been sick in the hospital for the past few weeks and their single mother is with him. The three kids (ages 6, 8, and 9) have been left with their older brother who is 16. A couple of days ago I realized that they are absolutely not eating anything other than what they get at the comedor for breakfast and lunch on weekdays. Weekends they simply aren’t eating. This is obviously a heartbreaking realization for many reasons, and made me think of all of the other things that are happening within the community that I’m totally missing. They’re coming over Sunday to cook lunch and I’m planning on sending some basic foods for dinners.
On the theme of the comedor, I’m increasingly frustrated. The women are so caddy and gossipy and indirect. It kills me. There is the usual drama but now the temporary president is saying that I should pay to eat there whenever I go. I didn’t even hear this from the women. I was told this yesterday by a nine year old girl. This is nonsense since I’m doing projects with the kids and am always suggesting activities I can do with the women. The problem is that I’m refusing to do all of the work for these possible projects. For example, I said that I would go get the free seeds that a place in Asuncion offers but that someone needed to write a letter to ask for them. This letter can be hand written. It only needs to be about 3 sentences long. I gave the women a manual on how to write letters asking for goods, but somehow it still hasn’t been done. And I will also be in charge of planting the garden and probably working it throughout its life so I thought it appropriate that the women write this letter. My written Spanish is really lacking as well. Anyway, I’m really frustrated and, frankly, at my wits end with the women. I just love the comedor kids so I refuse to abandon the project. My plan is to be super guapa (hard working) to remind them of all the shit I do there. I also only eat there once or twice a week, mostly because they serve so much organ meat which still grosses me out.
OK, sorry about that rampage, but the indirectness here is even worse than it was in Portland, Oregon. I don’t think of myself as a super direct person but I have no tolerance for passive aggressiveness. Otherwise life is good. Friday is bird day so I think I’m going to make some bird masks with the comedor kids and the Abrazo kids (kids who would otherwise be working on the street). Monday was Road Day, which I really did not understand, nor did I celebrate, unless using the roads like normal is considered celebrating…