Facilitating! finally…

It started out as an average day, I arrive at the health center and wait a half an hour for Marleny to acknowledge that I’m actually existing in the same space as her (while reading my book, because she does this everyday). When I ask to leave, she interrupts me to say yes, I need to deliver a letter to the elementary school. Ok, so I scan it as I walk up the hill and, what do you know, it announces a training for the next day about school gardens. Hmm… last time I asked about that I was granted with a, “Humph, not this week!” and no further conversation on the matter. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me (or the elementary school next door, for that matter) an entire training had been organized including specialists from the hospital and collaborating NGOs in Huari and professors from elementary schools from all over the districts of Chavin and San Marcos. Just another one of the surprises in Peace Corps I suppose: I thought I would have be fighting to organize projects to better the community but I had no idea that malicious do-gooders would be setting stuff up behind my back. Sigh.
Anyway, fast-forward. Next day. I show up on time, you know, just to make sure no on else was (they weren’t) and help to set up the room. Now, here’s where the idealistic, optimistic volunteer comes back… :) The entire day was really inspirational. I had heard of this NGO before but hadn’t seen a presence at all in San Marcos (turns out they don’t work in San Marcos, good reason, no?) but now they are going to be working with the majority of the schools in San Marcos and Chavin and I be assisting them in the monitoring processes and training phases.
Right before the theoretical part of the training began, I ran into a friend who is an agricultural engineer at IDMA, an NGO working in San Marcos and the surrounding communities. He didn’t know about it either (well, at least we’re all in the same boat) and so I invited him to come as soon as he was free.
There were about thirty teachers / administrators there all learning about the theory and strategies of how to make a successful garden and ways of making it a sustainable project, as well as the possible nutritional and monetary benefits of such an endeavor. Now, add a completed and successful project and you have a Peace Corps volunteer’s dreams. We’ll see.
Right, optimistic and idealistic. Ok, so when it came time to practice, it was discovered that all the gardening tools of the entire Health Center consisted of two shovels. So, here’s where the much anticipated (probably already forgotten) title of this blog entry comes in. Facilitation. So, we have no tools but happen to have the friendly neighborhood contact with their own “fundo” (which, I’m not really sure what that translates to but it’s a big farm or ranch or something that loans supplies and expertise out to the community as well as demonstrates model ways to grow crops and raise animals) AKA-lots of tools.
So, I got to facilitate the only immediately feasible and definitely best way to practice starting a garden, we just brought them all to the fundo! Yay! Facilitating…
The next crazy foreigner moment occurs at the fundo when everyone is watching five teachers rake dirt, this is when the instructor, mouth full of bread, turns to me and says…well, something, I didn’t quite understand. When I tell him this he decides I don’t speak Spanish but only the “eengleesh” to which I correct him, “No, it’s hard to understand you with a mouth full of bread in the way.” And I wasn’t quite ready to believe that Mr. Instructor-Man might have just asked me to share with the class what we learned that day. I’m not even in the class.
So, end of story, that’s exactly what I had to do. Which was not awkward at all, though at the end, he did feel quite bad that he thought I didn’t speak Spanish. I even went over proper rotation of crops and mixing bean and corn crops because corn takes nitrogen from the soil while beans put it back. Ha.
Ok, congratulations to you if you have successfully read this long and drawn out tale…