I am happy to announce
that my reading speed has decreased! Yes, I am finally now busy enough to NOT
have time to read a book a day :)
My English club has
been absolutely awesome – we started with about 8 people and are now no less
than 19 dedicated and enthusiastic members! We range from ages 12 to 36 and meet
6 hours a week. We’ve created a wonderful environment of learning and laughter;
we sing, play games, read aloud… everyone helps one another, everyone actively
participates in grammar lessons, and a lot of students even come to class with
their own ideas for activities! I still lead the sessions, but I’m so happy
that we have a much more “group-effort” feel instead of the typical formal
classroom environment. And already I occasionally hear my English Club members
yell out greetings to me in English when I’m walking through town!
My Portuguese and
Citswa tutors are equally amazing. They are both professors in town and are
really friendly, knowledgeable and eager for me to learn. They are also,
despite me telling them I could only pay for 1 tutor at a time, adamant about
both being present for every session (so I basically have 2 professors tutoring
me private lessons for the price of one!) We’ve discussed my learning styles,
decided on the lesson plans, and I meet with them 3 hours a week and do
homework compositions and notecards on my free days. Anyone who knows how much
of a dork I am with learning languages could guess that I’m in heaven :)
Hrm, what else, oh the
mural I did last weekend turned out wonderful! It was for two REDES groups
(Raparigas em desenvolvimento, educacao e saude – girls in development,
education and health) and was held in a local secondary school in a town in my
province. There were about 30 young girls who participated ranging from ages 11
to 15, 7 of us Peace Corps Volunteers to supervise the event, and the day was
filled with games, songs, a guest speaker, the mural painting and activities to
make jewelry. In the beginning of the day we had a brain-storming session with
the girls on what they wanted the theme of the mural to be, I sketched some
ideas on a blackboard for their opinions, and then I was given free artistic
reign to design the mural while they worked on sewing earrings from capulana
scraps. After I’d drawn the outlines of the shapes and messages in marker, the
girls came out and painted everything in while we supervised and helped in with
some of the trickier parts. As a final touch I asked all the girls to stick
their hands into a color and put their hand print on the wall so they could
always come back and know they’d helped create it. All and all it was a great
success! I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect going in since the event was
being held by two veteran PCVs and I was merely asked to help out, but I’m
really very happy with the way it turned out!
This weekend I’m going
to another nearby town to help paint a library my friend has built for her
town. Okay, it wasn’t exactly “built” but she was able to have the project
approved by her town’s administration, they let her use an old building near
the primary school for the project, she applied for and received a grant of
money for the books (not to mention personally fundraised a hefty amount of
funds for books herself), and is now getting ready to put on the finishing
touches for her library project! I’m so excited for her and to be able to help
out, I can only hope that 1 or 2 years from now I’ll be working on a project of
equal grandeur!
Also I’m finally
starting to find some direction at work… While I still have no job description,
I’ve succeeded to complain enough to my coworkers that we’ve decided that while
I wait for a job description to materialize that we’d schedule 2 monthly
palestra events (a palestra is a mix between a meeting and a training led by 1
person) with me and our 49 CD activistas (CD = Cuidados Domiciliares =
home-based-care). So basically I’ll have free reign to discuss the importance
of using condoms, having mosquito nets, maintaining a healthy diet, food
sustainability, vertical transmission, TARVs, and all of rest of the health information
I learned during training with my organization’s activistas in hopes that they
then transfer the message to our 265 clients. I practiced by trying to explain
what exactly HIV is to our accountant, and even though he’s a university
graduate and probably understands me more than anyone else at our organization,
it was pretty rough trying to explain what an immune system is in Portuguese.
So yeah, a little nervous on how these palestras will go with our activistas,
many of which have probably not finished secondary school…. First one’s on
October 10th, I’ll let you know how it goes!
To wrap up this blog
post which is getting much too long for its own good, I’m finally making some
traction on getting cement inside my house! Assuming nothing falls through
(which is a pretty big assumption) I should be able to schedule the work in the
next coming weeks! (this is to say nothing of getting a door on the bathing
area or latrine, but my eyes on small accomplishments!
Missing my friends and
family dearly, as always
Em
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