11 February 2007

Mas and I are entering into our third week of classes, and after about two and a half months here in Malpaisillo we are finally beginning to get a routine down. We each have three schools which we travel to by bike. Most of them are really small, poor and rural, which makes for an interesting experience. For one of my schools that is about 4k away, I ride through a dry ditch and go along a path that passes through two peanut farms. The school is just in a small patch of trees surrounded by farmland. I love it! That school is so poor that many kids don’t even come with shoes on, and a few even have fleas bouncing around in their hair. I plan on beginning the process of starting tree nurseries in two of my schools this week. The third school (mentioned above) has no water, so no nursery. The kids bring water bottles, but by about 11:00 their water is gone and they get really tired and thirsty.

There is a pozo, (well) at my other country school. It’s actually the community well, but it is right next to the school, so when we need water, we give them a big bucket and they fetch us water. The process is really cool. There is a horse that a small kid is usually riding. The horse is attached to the rope that holds the bucket at the bottom of the well. The kid gets the horse to walk about 50 to 60 yards, and up comes the bucket full of water. They have to do this for EVERY bucket full! Everyone in the community!!! Needless to say, just getting enough daily water is a lot of work in itself.

Speaking of water, now that we are fully in the dry season, it is becoming quite scarce even in our community of 8,000 people. The town’s water pump is about 2 miles out of town, so the water travels pretty far through underground tubes to get here. The problem now is that there is not enough water pressure for all the water to get to all parts of the town. About half of the town is slightly uphill from the pump, so they hardly ever have water. I’ve been told that the upper third of town only gets water from about 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. This is just likely to get worse for them as the dry season continues. Meanwhile, down on our side, water is very reliable. We’re just lucky we chose to live where we do! Our Peace Corps site mate, Jon, on the other hand is one of the unlucky ones. He’s presently looking for a new house!

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately working with a group of six community members who are trying to start up a non profit here in town to help kids at risk. We have a number of children who have been identified as high risk, meaning they are involved in prostitution, drugs, violence at home, etc… Most of them don’t go to school, but sell little trinkets in the streets instead. In the worst cases, their parents force them into selling and if they don’t make a certain amount of money every day, they are beaten. Some of these kids fall into prostitution in order to bring enough money home at night. There are about 25 of these kids we have identified, so the plan is to have a “cultural center” three days a week with various educational and recreation activities available for them. We are in the planning stages of the project now, and currently looking for funding, which is looking like it will take a long time! I’m learning a lot with this, and I find it quite exciting trying to build this idea up into a functioning and beneficial activity.

We’ve also been spending quality time cooking, reading, doing yoga and walking the dog. We’ve made homemade yogurt, mayonnaise and peanut butter, and we just bought some soya beans to make our own tofu! We’ve got a heck of a compost pile going, and Mas has about 15 baby papaya trees and two avocado trees. We also planted 4 coconut trees recently. As soon as the compost is ready we’ll plant our tomato, cucumber, pepper and lettuce seeds. We love having a dog, he makes us laugh and we fight over who he loves most. (Me). We have been showered with awesome care packages lately, wow! Thanks everyone! It feels great to know you are all thinking of us.

For all of you cold people in Colorado just know that while we can’t ski, we’ll be spending next weekend at the beach for Mas’s birthday. He’s so used to having winter birthdays he says it feels weird to be planning a beach trip in February. Pretty nice though. Adios, pues!