Community Integration

Community integration is one of the foundations of Peace Corps, seeing as how two of the goals of PC is to learn about a culture and share your own.  That can´t happen without a community accepting you.  Also, you´re not going to get any work done if no one in the community trusts you.  This is especially hard for someone who is shy and doesn´t talk a lot in English, let alone Spanish.  Even though I´ve been trying to go out of my way to talk and meet more people, last night I walked into a room where my host mother, sister, and brother were all laughing, and as soon as they saw me, they stopped.  I felt so...different.  They didn´t do it to be mean, and they´ve been very kind to me.  I´m just not part of their club.

So today, during a session in Masaya with the other health trainees, I volunteered to participate in a roleplay of community integration.  I thought I should challenge myself.  There were only five ¨volunteers¨ out of the fourty-four people there, everyone else roleplayed the community.  We five were give no instructions other than to integrate, and we were given pamphlets on STD´s, condoms, and pregnancy.  When we reentered the room, everyone else was formed into four groups who were talking amongst themselves. 

I first went to a group of ¨campesinos¨ working a field, and asked if I could help.  Someone gave me a hoe and I started to ¨help¨ them out, I tried engaging them in conversation, but most were laughing amongst themselves or listening to the other volunteer as he handed out the pamphlets about condoms.  One community member told him it was offensive and refused to talk to him.  Another community member mentioned that he had a sick son.  I asked him if he had taken him to the health center.  He told me he didn´t know where it was, so I offered to show him.  Everyone was still giggling at the fact that we were just pretending, and then the bell range to switch groups.

The next group was gathered around a main person who was leading a discussion.  I introduced myself to one person on the side, and asked what they were doing.  She told me it was a bank meeting.  Then I asked if I could sit in, she said yes, but to reach the only open seat I had to cross in front of the whole circle.  Not the most graceful entrance, but it got everyone´s attention, so I introduced myself and asked if I could help or just learn about what they were doing.  Someone asked if I could give then money.  I said I could help raise some funds if they had ideas.  Then someone suggested a bake sale, but they needed supplies, so someone else took out a loan for them.  In everything I´ve been reading, this is the kind of help that is best, when you just mediate ideas from the community, but I´m not even sure if I did that.  I didn´t feel very involved at all.

The next group was awful.  Just awful.  A classroom full of twelve-year olds gossiping and not paying attention at all.  Plus the ¨teacher¨ was the man in charge of technical training, someone I should try to impress.  He mentioned that they liked candy, which should have been my cue to pull out an imaginary bag of goodies, but I was too distracted by the maddness before me.  Confidence might be an issue of mine as well.  It got worse when another volunteer showed up and tried integrating as well.  I´m not even sure I was able to tell them my name.

The last group was my best, I feel.  It was a group of pregnant ladies, just the kind of group that I will be working with when I am an official volunteer.  I started again by introducing myself to just one person, and asking if I could sit with her.  Then I introduced myself to some of the other woman once I actually sat down and they notice me.  At first they asked me a ton of questions: How many children do you have?  Are you married?  How old are you?  Each time they were horrified with my answers, ´So old to not have children!´  So I tried to ask them the questions, like if this was their first child or if they went to the health center for check-ups.  One woman said this was her first, but that she couldn´t go to the health center in her condition because it was so far away.  She told me that she relied on the advice of the other, more experienced, woman.  Went I asked another woman, she told me this was her sixth pregnancy, and that she helps the other women.  I asked if we could meet sometime later to talk, saying that I had some information I would like to share with her.  Then I handed her the pamphlet on pregnancy.  She passed it to the next woman, who passed it to the next woman, who passed it to me.  As she did she whispered, ´we´re supposed to be illiterate.´
´Then we´ll just talk later´ I said.  Then the bell rang, the exercise was over, and we all returned to our seats.

The facilitators asked if anyone had any comments, and someone from the bank group congratulated the volunteer who figured out that they met once every two weeks, and organized to meet them again next time. And then I thought that I probably should have done that.  Then someone from the pregnant ladies group called me out, saying I did the best, and another person commented on how I found the natural leader and organized to work with her, which was great.

I´m glad I got outside my bubble and volunteered.  I learned to start small, and focus on questions...also to figure out meeting times.  I feel more motivated to interact more and integrate myself more fully into this community.  It was exhausting, but it was good to practice for the reality, which does not end at the ring of a bell.

First Impressions

After delays in D.C. due to snow, I have finally arrived in Nicaragua.  Instead of going to Granada as planned, our three day orientation retreat has been in Managua, in the Best Western situated directly across from the airport.  I was actually in the first group to reach Nicaragua, since after the snow canceled our flight they had to scramble to get us on other flights, and splitting us up was easiest.  We left the hotel in Arlington at 1:30am on Thursday and arrived the same day in Managua after detouring to Panama.  The first eight of us arrive a day earlier than everyone else so we were able to go to Peace Corps headquarters, meet the Country Director, do our languange interviews, and recieve our first vaccines (typhoid and flu). 

Since then all 44 of us have been busy learned about what it means to be a Peace Corps Trainee and what will happen during our three months of training.  I just found out who my host family is, and I will be leaving tomorrow with three other trainees to the little town of Dolores, which is just outside of Jinotepe, another small town just fourty minutes outside of Managua.  We are all Health trainees, but this is the first time in Nicaragua that the Peace Corps has split the groups so that one, called Health Lifestyles, will focus on HIV/AIDS and reproductive health, while my group, Maternal and Child Health, will be working in Casa Maternas and with children from ages 0-5 years.  In previous years they have been combined, so I am excited to be in the pioneering group.  Go Nica 55.

P.S. I just hit the spell check and everything (except Nicaragua) was highlighted, apparently it´s set to Spanish, so please excuse any typos my sun-soaked brain has missed.

Packing

What constitutes a two-year supply of underwear?  I sure hope it's as many pairs as I have since, apparently, Nicaraguan underwear of comparable quality to those in the U.S. can be quite expensive, so the Peace Corps suggests bringing a two-year supply.

Anyway, I've pretty much packed.  I keep fluctuating between the horrified feeling that either I've packed too much or too little.  I'm sure there will be things that I never use, and I'm sure I will discover things that I wish I would have brought, but right now I am feeling that Goldilocks "just right" feeling.

Besides normal things like toiletries and clothing (professional pants or knee-length skirts, blouses, no spaghetti straps, and practically everything made of cotton) I am bringing a few notable items:

• Swiss Army knife
• Travel iron
• Headlamp that my brother gave me...it's supposed to be useful for late-night trips to the latrine
• Gardening gloves
• Knitting supplies, I'm just bringing sock-weight yarn, my collection of DPNs, and the two Addi Turbos my aunt gave me, I figure I can make baby hats and booties since I'll be working with mothers and children
• Watercolors, brushes, and a journal
• Two double-size flat sheets
• A few thin books...I'm still trying to decide if I can fit my Sherlock Holmes anthology into my carry-on

All the advice I have read from previous volunteers has said to pack less than you think, and I imagine I will be well below the eighty-pounds limit, so hopefully I'll be alright.  I just hope I have enough underwear...do underpants gnomes live in Nicaragua?