Defeat...

Heading back to site on Sunday, I was in an oddly positive mood. I had had a great weekend in the capital, and was ready to get back to site and finish off my trash project at the school with a few more charlas and a community wide clean-up mid week. But of course, all my efforts/excitement came crashing down when I was informed that last Friday, while I was gone, my nurse took the kids around the community and had them pick up trash while a band played in the parade….NO SIRVE. Now, I wanted to have the damn thing last Thursday, and I rescheduled to suite HER request for Wednesday. And she KNEW I was going to be gone Friday (HEP A vaccine/weekend fun in San Sal). We had talked about it several times, and we decided that this Wednesday was going to work best for everyone involved. But on a whim, she went over to the school last Friday and did my project, WITHOUT ME.

Now, I realize that a community clean up activity isn’t that serious. Not a huge project. It was just something I wanted to do with the kids to give me something to do and get involved at the school a little more. But I had solicited the mayor for the trash truck for Wednesday, and all systems were a go on that (although, that ended up not coming through either…no words) and I was going to make announcements in the community to get everyone involved and put the kids into teams to tackle different parts of the community. But noooooo. Estella had to go over to the school while I was gone, hijack my project, and do it half assed. The kids picked up 1 big trash bag full of trash collectively and the rest of the community wasn’t involved at all.

Now, I was pretty depressed about finding this out, and when I talked to my school director she was very apologetic, and she didn’t understand why Estella did the limpieza because she knew I was out of the community that day, AND three of the teachers were out that day also, which means three classes of students didn’t get to participate in the limpieza that they were all excited about. So. We discussed it and decided we would have another limpieza for the original date, and that I should go ahead and confirm with Mr. Mayor about the time the truck was coming so that I could make the community wide announcement to get everyone else involved. I was optimistic for about five freaking minutes after I spoke with her, until I realized that the mayor was not going to respond to any of my messages or calls, thus making me realize no trash truck was going to come to our community on the pre-arranged date. So, my clean up project came crashing down before my eyes.

Fail. FAILFAILFAIL. Everything that could have possibly gone wrong did, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. This was my big project for August; trash education and a clean up in the community. I guess I can feel okay about the fact that every kid at our school now understands the difference between organic and inorganic trash, but I just can’t help but feel completely defeated.

So needless to say, I’m back to the “what am I doing here?”/bitter phase that is the PCV cycle of emotions. If I can’t even get cooperation to pull off a stupid limpieza, how am I ever going to get anyone organized enough to pull off a woman’s group to educate women on child health and nutrition, or organize fundraisers to raise money for the school’s computer program?

I came here to work with Salvadorans. Peace Corps is all about capacity building, and I was excited about that. But my recent experiences in my few short (read: painfully long) months as a volunteer has shown me that, at least thus far, Salvadorans don’t want to work with me. And this is a depressing realization to come to when I’ve still got a year and a half ahead of me….

Also, it’s been raining in my community since Monday. It’s now Thursday. I have not seen the sun in four whole days! I have an enormous pile of dirty clothes that I fear will never be washed, and the veggie truck hasn’t been out here because the roads are washed out (the buses aren’t running either…) so I’ve been eating beans in a bag and instant soup all week. Rumor is there’s a bus out tomorrow, so if you’re reading this blog it means I was able to get to San Miguel and use the internet to post/eat a freaking hamburger!!

Anyway, I’m off to watch Dear John (for the third time) in bed (it’s currently 7:21pm). I miss you all desperately! I want to come hoooommmeeeeeeeeee!

Xoxo

“yorda”