Some of you may be wondering what exactly it is I'm doing here in my community, especially since I have just arrived and haven't started any projects. Well, it's a legitimate question, and it's one I'm asking myself every day. For the first three months that I am here in the batey I am supposed to be doing a community diagnostic (basically researching the community, getting to know people and getting to know what the community needs and wants from me). This of course means that I have to be pretty self-motivated, because nobody else here really knows that much or cares much about this diagnostic. This first week here I have spent a lot of time just seeing the area and getting to know people. Here is a normal daily schedule:
630 am Wake up, go running with some of the local youth
730 am bath and eat breakfast
730-830 or 9 am Sit on my porch, write in my diary, watch the kids going to school, say hi to everyone who passes
9-12 Go visit the school, or the after school program or the church school. Sometimes at the before school program I'll be asked to stand in for a teacher if someone is absent (let me tell you, I was not prepared the first time to teach a bunch of 3rd graders!)
12-3 Sit on my porch, eat lunch, chat with neighbors, moan about the heat
3-5 or 6 Visit school or church school again, go out and sit and chat with other families in the community, maybe jump in on a game of baseball or volleyball
6-8 Sit on my porch, try to help prepare dinner, hope that the electricity comes on
Rest of the night: Sometimes I go to a church service or youth group meeting, but other times just sit outside and chat with people.
My work on the diagnostic will become more concrete soon: I am planning on interviewing a lot of youth in the community as well as visiting houses and interviewing the families. I would also like to do a couple focus groups with the neighborhood association and the public school teachers. Just recently the pastor I am working with made the kids receiving scholarships to go to high school form a youth group, and he put me in charge of it. This has taken up some time in my day, because we have met several times (once to take a trip to the river) and just last night I did an activity with them that will help me with my diagnostic. However, these meetings only take up an hour or two or my day, and the rest of my time, there is lots of sitting and chatting involved in my “work”. Sometimes it comes easily, other times I just sit in silence with my neighbors, and every once in a while we'll comment on someone walking by, or the weather, or the electricity situation.
While I'm at it, let me explain this electricity situation: when I was here visiting before, there was a schedule; the electricity would come on at about 9 am and last till about 1pm, then go out till 7pm when it would come back on and stay on the rest of the night. It was fairly reliable and pretty convenient. Now, what the people here are saying is that the government owes the power companies lots of money which it has yet to pay, and so the power companies are cutting the electricity more frequently and everybody in the country is suffering. This past week we've never really known when the electricity will come back on, so when it gets dark we all just sit outside chatting, and when the lights come back on everybody claps and cheers and gets up to tend to things inside the house. Sometimes it's nice to have the chance to just sit and chat, but other times I'm dying to get back in the house and read or clean my room or do a number of other things that are hard to do by flashlight.
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