All About Campamentos

So what have we been so busy doing that we haven’t posted a blog for ages? Look below, now suddenly there are two new ones! Well, the last month plus a bit has it has been all about “campamentos”. Even those without any Spanish can probably guess that I mean camps, as in kids, councilors, talks, hikes, dances, ect… A small NGO, Global Mission Development, offered funding for several camps on a variety of topics. A group of us volunteers up here in the La Palma area decided to apply for the funds to give a camp called, Thinking Outside the Box. The short of it is we were funded, and had to actually put the camp together.

As we were preparing that camp, another group of our friends across the way in Morazán decided they wanted some help with their camp and asked me to give a charla on compost and worms. I accepted, glad for the chance to get to head over and see another part of the country.

As the logistics became more finalized we realized that for our camp we would need more teachers than just the four of us, so we started asking for other help as well. We wanted a higher teacher to student ratio, so Katie and I lowered our number of students we would bring to just eight, the other two volunteers bringing kids would still bring five each, for a total of 18 kids invited.

The camp was held over at Lago de Coatepeque near Santa Ana. It is a beautiful caldera lake, like Crater Lake up in Oregon. One of the cool things about having it at a location farther away is that none of the kids, and almost none of their parents had ever been there. Just that alone was very exciting for all of them. It is nice to be able to help them know a little bit more about their own country.

One thing that didn’t hit me until we were leaving (very early in the morning, 5:20am) was how much trust the community members had in us now…letting us take off with seven of their kids, transporting them across the country and watching over them for three whole days. These were adolescents…I don’t know if that made it easier…or riskier! Still all of the parent we had to have long talks with, assuring them that we would take good care of their kids. We also had to agree that they couldn’t go swimming. In the end, they all had our phone numbers, and it is a measure of their concern that every one of them called me that very first evening to confirm that everything was ok, and that their kid was behaving. Cool stuff.

The camp was all about how to think differently. It had three focus areas, creativity, analysis, and logic. The charlas we gave were tough, both for us and the kids. We were introducing topics that they had never thought about, and that were pretty foreign to them, for us, it was having to use vocabulary that we never use to explain all of these new concepts. We were both taxed! It was very satisfying as the kids started to come around, and really get into all of the activities. Katie and I also had the extra enjoyment, watching our kids who are very shy and reserved, mix with the other kids and slowly come out and participate more and more actively! Some of them did some really amazing things given where they started from.
So far, I think that this activity has been one of the most fulfilling thing we have done as volunteers down here. Lots of work, exhausted at the end. But on the way home, every one of the kids asked when we were going to have another one…and that felt good! Katie and I even discussed how it would be fun thing to once a year, to come back down to our community and work with whomever the current volunteer is to just run a camp! Cheers!

All of November

Well, I’m well overdue for a good blog update. Why has it taken so long? It’s the usual answer for this stuff, we have been busy. We had wedding, our local school’s graduation, followed by the insituto (high school) graduation, then Thanksgiving, followed by a big wedding up here, along with a surprise visit from our family from San Vicente, then our mid-year medical exam, the graduation of the newest set of volunteers… and finally an environmental camp across the country in Perquin.

November was a busy month! Probably the busiest since we have been here. Since I really can’t go into tons of detail about all of the things, this is going to be more of a photo update type of blog. Because of the way Blogger can be kind of a pain about inserting captions under photos… just arranging the photos in general is kind of a pain. Instead I will just talk about a little bit of everything I have photos of, and the photos will appear below all of this words, in the rough order that I talk about them in.

First stuff was a wedding at the Evangelical Church here. We got an official invitation, so we pretty much had to go. Plus, my video camera was being used to tape the thing…though for this one I didn’t have to run it. It seemed like this wedding was pretty fancy, lots of dresses and outfits specifically made for the wedding, ect… It was a guy from way across the river (in Honduras) marrying a local girl here. Both families were well enough off that it was an expensive affair. They even fed everyone carne (not chicken, the cheaper meat) for the lunch afterwards! I talked to the groom for a while before the wedding, her probably wondered why this gringo was at his wedding! Anyway, he was part of a coffee cooperative, and work with “fair trade” and “organic” label buyers.

The next thing on our agenda was our local school graduation. Katie was the official photographer, and I had to be on the panel to hand out diplomas. It was an interesting mark in our year of service…basically the first real community event we ever participated in up here was last years graduation. Plus the knowledge now that we probably won’t be around for next years graduation… Anyway, we only had two kids who graduated from 9th grade, that’s them with Katie in the photos below. Then we had a ton of kids that were graduating from Kinder or Parvularia. So lots of young kids all dressed up trying to follow directions and being told to pay attention to a very boring cultural ritual… All graduations have long speeches…usually way too much about god for our taste.

After that graduation, we hadn’t had enough of long boring speeches, or god, so we went to the Instituto graduation over in Las Pilas. We knew quite a few of the kids that were graduating, my counterparts oldest son was one of them. Again we took photos, and even video of the big event. It is really a big event though, getting your Bachillerato (more or less high school diploma) is about like getting your college degree back home, rare enough to be worth something, and most of the parents never got them, so they are very proud.

Then came Thanksgiving! We were invited to attend a more typical American Thanksgiving at an embassy worker families house. It is a really really nice thing that the folks from the embassy do for the PC volunteers! It was great fun, and we met a really nice couple that couple that put us up for two nights, saving us lots of expenses in San Sal. She had just started her first tour as a Foreign Service Officer…she had lots of interesting things to say about the work. More interesting than I had thought. The event itself had plenty of great food, turkey, cranberry, pumpkin pie… everything that you need. Good fun.

Then it was back up to El Centro so that we could be at the biggest wedding of the year, some claimed for over a decade. It was a teacher that was one of our first friends here. Katie had really hit it off with her. Of course, she is marrying a “Salvie” (San Salvadorean in PC speak), so she will now be moving away, down to San Salvador which means our school lost one of it’s better teachers, and we lost a friend. Still the wedding was something to see. It had the whole promenade walking through town to the church, the whole town joining into the walk. I don’t think a single person from the town didn’t attend. I do know they served over one thousand people lunch!

That’s the last thing I have photos of, but after that we did head back to San Sal for our mid-service medical exam (we are both apparently ok!), and more importantly, the swearing in party for the newest volunteers. This is the group that we knew better than any of the in-between ones, because we participated in their training, and met them many more times.

Ok, so that wraps up November…and hey…if this gets posted today..well, it’s not January yet. I promise to try to be a bit more frequent. One reason I haven’t been as into writing blogs is that I have been practicing writing fiction…and that takes up my morning writing time… anyway, I believe this will be followed on the same day by a post of December, the month of camps! Cheers!