how big can you dream?

We are currently in the throws of community based-training. Buried in one of the bajillion pieces of paper that Peace Corps sent us to read before we left was a basic description of our training. They outlined two types. One is classroom based and the other is community based. The community based one is new and only being used in selective areas. What do you know that El Salvador is one of those areas? This means that for the next 6 weeks (to make a total of 8 weeks) we will be living and working within host communities. Our Spanish teacher comes to us and we have class in a fellow trainee’s host family’s home. (We aren’t volunteers until we are sworn in.) We also do community contact activities within our host community to get used to going up to people and asking for help on such and such an activity. We go in groups so it’s not as daunting, but really, when we get to our assigned sites, it’s only going to be us, so we better be ready! We also travel to the PC training center in San Vicente at least once a week for health classes and policy and procedure training as a entire group (all 33 of us, as opposed to the 5-6 people that live in a host community.)
After two months of community based language and culture training, we are sworn in, assigned our sites, travel to our sites and move in, and make community contacts for two months. We go to people’s homes, introduce ourselves, hold meetings etc. Then after those two months, we come back to San Vicente for 2 weeks of intense technical training. This not only allows us to focus more on our Spanish at the beginning, when that’s what we really need, but it also allows us to come back to technical training with specific questions and ideas from our sites that can be shared and worked out with the larger group. It sounds like a great way to do training.
One of the community contacts that we are currently working on is an activity that lasts the entire 2 months that we are in our host communities. We are supposed to engage with a local youth group, identify a problem, or problems in our community that can be alleviated or eliminated by an activity, and then we plan, execute and “celebrate” our activity. We have found a group of kids to work with and we had our first meeting. Instead of asking the kids to identify “problems” in their community, we asked the kids to come up with their ideal community. They could draw, discuss, list, write or describe whatever community they wanted. If their ideal community is one with a giant purple elephant, we wanted them to say that. (Our group of kids ranges in age from 11-14.)
I was not expecting it to be so hard to get 20 engaged and active youth to dream. We had split up in to smaller groups to try to make everyone comfortable, and divided the gringos up among each group of kids to facilitate. Most of the children described communities with larger schools, larger churches, more soccer fields, cleaner rivers and more cars. I’m not trying to suggest that these are invalid answers, because from what I can see, this community could use all of those things, but I wanted the children to have fun and think about themselves for a while.
I guess I was expecting them to say they wanted a big park or a bike trail, or a swimming pool, or a basketball hoop. Maybe I’m placing what I think they should want on them. I do think that some of the kids wanted to say things like that, but were just shy. However, I’m also convinced that the children’s responses were what they were partly because they have never been asked to dream before.
In one of our larger-group development sessions we were talking about how it’s often hard for people with fewer opportunities and experiences to think about their hopes and dreams, especially when they are never asked that question with any frequency. As children growing up in America, we are frequently asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?!” Most children will shout something fantastic or outrageous: ballerina, fireman, president, doctor, veterinarian, blue elevator or whatever it may be. Ask the children here, and they will say farmer, teacher, mom. Again, I’m not trying to say that these are “wrong” answers by any means, because this community surely does need farmers and moms and teachers, but I was expecting kids here to be kids. And I’m sure there are kids here that dream of being fabulous things when they grow up, but I didn’t expect to receive the responses we did when we asked for an “ideal” community. I am beginning to see the reality of what we were discussing in that development session. I’m curious to see how this plays out in whatever site I’m eventually placed in. I plan on doing community visioning in my site, but I’m wondering how much of a challenge that will be? I need to start thinking of ways to get people who don’t normally dream to do so.
We will continue working with this group of kids to identify some activity they want to do to make their community more like the ideal that they created. Hopefully with a little more prodding from us we can encourage them to start thinking big.

"asi es"

Training has been a whirlwind of activity so far. We are currently in our host family/training sites. I have the wonderful opportunity to be my host family´s first PC trainee - I hope I give her a good impression of us. The country is an amazing place, full of great food, fruit, people and vistas. As in any new culture, there are little quirks to get used to, but one piece of advice we were given was "asi es" and I think that that is very apt to my situation. "That´s the way it is" I don´t see this little missive as a cop-out, or an avoidance of the situation, but instead, I see it as a path to understanding. By recognizing that some things and my culture and their´s are just the way they are because they are, I think that will lessen my culture shock later on. I am looking forward to challenging myself to learn more about myself and this culture every day. So far so good!

Oh, and one week down. Not that I´m counting down, but just because it´s flown by so much.