Stove Project: La Segunda Parte

Materials

One of the best parts of the stove project has been my ability to see how awesome my Spanish has become. I am able to not only get my point across, but I can persuade people to do what I want. For example, as I mentioned when I left off in my last post, when I was planning the stove training in my community the TWP guy only wanted to bring me the materials for one stove. (I should mention that TWP contributes a specific type of brick, the cover that sits on top of the chimney, a small grate the wood sits on when it is burning and the plancha where you cook. These materials would cost over $100 if you were to buy them on their own.) I was outraged, to say the least. What was the point of going house to house to get people to sign up if he was only building the example stove? He told me that he would not come up to build any stoves until I had the thirty people signed up. I felt like I was missing something.

The table where the stove will be built

So I called TWP up and told them that I had the interest, they could see that by looking at the names and id numbers I had scanned and emailed to them. I told them they needed to bring me the materials for more than just an example stove. We went round and round on the phone. Him telling me they usually just come up and do the example stove and if there is interest after that they would bring me more materials, and me asking him why he would not come up to my site to build the example stove until I had all of the names of the people who wanted the stove if they were not planning on giving me more materials. It was confusing and frustrating, but in the end I convinced TWP to bring me the materials for 10 stoves. Check mate, I win.

So we set a date for the training. I arranged it so my host mom, Melida, would get the first stove. Women come to her house everyday to grind their corn for tortillas so I figured the stove would get some good publicity there. The project seemed to be settling down, we had a training date set, they were bringing me materials for 1/3 of my project and I had everything needed to make the first 10 stoves. If only I knew what lay ahead.

Please note the smoke stained black walls

A big part of why I love the idea of this project is because it creates a job. TWP comes into the community and trains a local mason in how to make these stoves. It is not a permanent job, but it pays well and facilitates new skills. I found a mason in my community who was excited about the work, we will call him Paco. This was back in September, right after I got the grant money. Anyways as the weeks passed and I was waiting on TWP to get their act together, Paco found other work. I cannot blame him but it was a blow to the project. Paco dropped out right as the bean and corn harvest was picking up. Now many people have professions, like masonry, but they also have fields they plant with beans and corn. Because the project was taking off during harvest time, no one wanted the work because they were too busy.

Melida with her new stove

Luckily for me another volunteer, Alex Boy, who lives just up the road from me was also starting this project at the same time as me and had two masons working with him. He asked them if either of them wanted the extra work in my community. One agreed to build my stoves for me. Thank god. So TWP came up to my community, the masons came down from Alex's site and the first stove got made. It took a full day to make that first stove, but I could not have been happier. The next day TWP came back and built another stove in Alex's site.

The next week Alex and I were going to both be out of site at our close of service conference. I told Alex that the masons could work up in his site that week as I wanted to be present for the first stoves built in my community. This was mostly because the mason that agreed to work in my site was not from my community and I wanted the people in my community to be as comfortable as possible. So the masons built 5 stoves up in Alex's site that week and were done by Thursday. Alex said the mason wanted to come down and work in my site Friday and Saturday, but I did not have people ready until the next Monday. Through a series of miscommunications between Alex, myself and the mason, the mason thought we were not making more stoves and took a different job. What a blow. Alex still had another mason, but this second mason did not want to work in my community as he felt it was not worth his time to come down everyday.

Stay tuned for part three in which the project really takes off!

What I Learned in Peace Corps: Advice For New Volunteers

I am leaving El Salvador in 4 weeks. I have been looking back on the past two years trying to figure out what I would say to the class of volunteers that just arrived. What gems of wisdom can I give them. I know they will either ignore everything I say or it will get lost in the jumble of new information they will receive, but maybe one or two of them will remember some piece of advice 

You will be served food with bones in it. Even if the food seems as though bones have no place being there, there they will be. Get over it, bones never hurt anybody. Also at some point in time you will have food that contains at least one of the following: eyes, feet, intestines, brain, scales, lungs and/or testicles. Be gracious and learn the phrase 'Me hace daño'.

When someone dies, go to the wake. It is not important how well you knew the deceased. Your community will love you so much more when they see you supporting the family in mourning. Go for a few hours, eat a tamale. Sure it may be awkward for you, but it is a great way to integrate yourself, and no one else there will think it is weird.

Always carry toilet paper with you. Bathrooms here either do not have any, or they charge to use it. Be prepared.

On that note, it is wise to also carry around a mini- first aid kit. I started in training, and got made fun of for it. Sure my baggy containing band-aids, Advil, Sudefed, Imodium, Benedril, a nail file, re-hydration salts, toilet paper and extra underwear (because you just never know) may have seemed excessive to some, but I cannot tell you how often it came in handy. Also how often people have come to me because they needed something medical and were just unprepared.

Try not to judge yourself when general hygiene goes out the window. Because it will go out the window. You will preach washing your hands 1 million times a day, but after you finish eating your dinner with your fingers, you will wipe your hands on your pants. Or how you go days without bathing. It is hot, so you want/ need to take a bucket bath. But it is too hot to motivate to actually do it. It is a vicious cycle that can last days. It's ok, scoff now. Judge me please. Just come talk to me in 6mo to a year and let me know if you are still holding up.

This one is for the ladies. Guy volunteers get off easy when it comes to laundry. Guys will almost never have to do their own laundry. It is just not the custom down here. I felt for most of my service that I could not pay someone to wash my laundry for me, as I was afraid the women in my community would look down on me for it. Like 'Oh she can't even do her own laundry, she must be useless.' That is ridiculous. The first time I asked a neighbor to wash a guacual of clothes for me, I felt so free. That was one less item on my giant list of things to do. Also when I got my clothes back I was stunned to see that they were significantly cleaner than when I wash them myself. Especially my white shirts, it was like they were new again! I still do most of my own laundry, but it is nice to know that when I am feeling overwhelmed with everything I can ask for help on this one, time consuming task and it makes my life easier and you are giving a couple of bucks to a family who can probably use it. Also it is shamefully cheap to have your clothes washed down here, and the families can always use the money.

Stay hydrated! It is hot in most of El Salvador. If you do not drink excess water it is easy to not even realize how quickly you start to feel the side effects of dehydration. Perhaps you won't even feel the effects of it until it is too late... then you must drink the re-hydration salts. Trust me water tastes significantly better than the re-hydration salts.

The odds that you will poop you pants here are high. Just accept this fact now and your service will have a little less stress. I have a strong stomach and almost never get sick and it happened to me. Just stay calm and make sure you are prepared.

If you have people in your community that you do not get along with, take a deep breath. Do not let them ruin your service. There are exceptions to every rule, but you probably won't have to work with these people if you do not want to. Find the community members that understand you and are excited to help with your projects.

Papaya cures everything. When I first got to country it seemed like papaya was their solution to any medical problem I brought to PC staff. I scoffed at first, but papaya is great. It can help clear up anything from stomach trouble to an ingrown toenail. Fact.

But most of all I would just say, stick it out. Sometimes it will be hard and uncomfortable, but it is totally worth it.

Dad In The Savior

Just in case any of you readers out there were unaware, my Dad is awesome. He decided that he wanted to make a second trip down here to El Salvador. This is, in terms of parents visiting their kids in El Salvador a minor miracle. I have heard stories of families that refuse to come down or change their plans at the last moment for a more tropical/ resort like option. Parents who have revamped their wills before making the trip. Or parents who come down, but cannot tough it out in our living situations and give up after one night. These stories are endless.

Host family and Dad in the corn fields

My family were troopers when then came down for a week last year, and my Dad was a rock star when he came down this year for ten days. He told me that he wanted to live the life I live down here in rural El Salvador. In order to really get a sense of that you need to spend consecutive nights in my site. He arrived the day after Christmas and we stayed in my site for six nights in a row. Folks that is a lot of time for people from the first world, but my Dad is a champ and did not complain once. In fact he embraced the life, taking bucket baths (or not depending on what the day dictated), visiting houses with me, helping organize my wacky stove project, reading an entire book, getting his hair cut and slicked back in town, visiting the my host family's corn fields playing with Bella, improving his Spanish skills and trying new foods (like armadillo).

Bonding

The week kicked off when I surprised him the airport in San Salvador. I had told him that I would arrange for a taxi to pick him up and take him to a mall in San Sal, where I would be waiting with the car we had rented. Instead I had the car rental guy pick me up in San Sal and drop the car and I off at the airport. Surprise accomplished. We immediately took off for my community in northern Santa Ana, a department on the western side of the country. The next days were relaxed with a bit of work thrown in. I cannot express how helpful it was to have my Dad around ready to spring into action the moment I mentioned I needed to purchase and get materials delivered for my stove project. We ate with families in my community, and the food was good. No repeats of last years atol. Gracias a Dios.

Bella took to my Dad instantly, which was great since I had recently decided that I wanted to take Bella home with me at the end of my service. We figured out that the easiest course of action would probably be for Bella to go home with him, now. There is a lot of paperwork that needs to get done in order to send a pet internationally, and there are a lot of variables. You need to present her vaccination record, a clean bill of health from a vet and paperwork from the department of agriculture. (Did I mention that all of these papers are only good for 10 days?) Also you must have a kennel that is the correct size for the dog, a water bowl and something for her to lie on. The most unpredictable part of it all is the weather. If it is too hot or too cold in any of the locations that the dog will be (departure, layovers or arriving cities) on the day that the dog is supposed to fly, they can tell you then and there that you are out of luck and you must go home and try again another day.

Ataco

Dad and I also spent our first New Years in El Salvador. Last year I went home for the holidays and missed it. This year I got to experience both Christmas and New Years here. New Years is very much like Christmas down here. The day is just like any other day, but the real celebration is at night (just like in the US). There were more firecrackers than any community should legally be aloud to have. We ate dinner over at Melida and Orlando's house, baked chicken, rice and coleslaw. Yum. Also because a couple days before Orlando had figured out that my Dad had never tried Armadillo, Orlando cooked some up special. Lucky Dad. Neither of us made it to midnight (I mean common it is almost 5 hours past my bedtime!), but that was ok. I did wake up to the sound of thousands of firecrackers going off at once when the clock hit midnight, and again around two am when there was a bolo in the street yelling for my host dad to come out. (I asked him about it the next day and he told me that he did eventually go out, but only to throw a bucket of water on the guy and tell him to go home.)  

Getting ready

After spending six consecutive nights in my site, Dad and I packed up the car and headed down to Ataco in the department of Ahauchapán. We spent the day wandering in and out of all of the artsy shops and having lunch at a little French restaurant. Ataco will always be one of my favorite places in El Salvador. They have great coffee and art. That coupled with the cool climate and laid back vibe is all anyone could ask for. The next morning we headed out to travel to the town of Suchitoto in the department of Cuscatlán. On our way through San Salvador, we stopped at the necessary places to make sure we had all of the paperwork necessary for Bella's rapidly approaching departure.

The afternoon we had in Suchitoto was beautiful. The town is known for its quaint town square, cobble stone roads and artisan shops. This is the town where I held my GAD camp back in September. We stayed in this awesome hotel called Los Almendros. We spent the afternoon shopping in town, swimming in the hotel's pool, reading and catching up on the internet. We ate at the hotel's restaurant and afterwards found a small revolutionary themed bar I had heard about. Pretty cool.

The next morning we left Suchitoto and headed back to my community for one last night. Bella was thrilled to see us as we drove up. We had one last dinner with my host family that night. They were dealing with the passing of one of their close friends due to a tragic construction accident, so the mood was heavy and nostalgic. But when I offered to take a rain check on the dinner so they could spend time with family, Melida told me that we were family and they wanted us there.

At the airport!

The last day we woke up early and packed up the car with all of my Dad's belongings, souvenirs and of course Bella and we traveled to the airport. Gracias a Dios there were no problems getting Bella checked in. So I said farewell to my Dad and my pup and I headed back to site. They did not have any issues going home, except that after being trapped in her kennel for hours upon hours, Bella decided to pee in the middle of the customs baggage claim. Don't worry Dad cleaned it up.

So now Bella is a spoiled American dog. She has been groomed at Petsmart. I mean how much more spoiled can you get? Also it could not have worked out better with my parents current dog CJ, they are best friends now.

All in all my Dad's trip was a huge success. Turns out he is the exception not the rule, but I already knew that.

Stove Project: Part One

Brick delivery!

About eight months ago I decided I wanted to take on a popular project: fuel efficient, less smoke producing, permanent  stoves. They are actually pretty bad ass. I visited a fellow volunteers site and saw her project and how people in her community were clamoring for these stoves. She could not get the funds fast enough to hand out these stoves. That coupled with watching Melida and her girls breathing in black smoke produced from their current stove was enough to motivate me to start the solicitation process to bring this project to my community. If only I had known what lay ahead of me.

Cement

The first step is to solicit the NGO, Trees Water People, as they are the ones who supply the training and the more expensive materials. So I wrote up the solicitude (in Spanish), got it signed by all of the members of my communities council and submitted it to TWP. After I got confirmation from them that I would be able to get the materials for the 30 stoves that my community wanted to build, I applied for a grant with ECPA (Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas). The grant was approved through a branch of Peace Corps El Salvador that deals directly with ECPA. This is where I received the majority of the funds for the materials that TWP were not providing. I received those funds in August.

Pile of sand and barrel of molasses

The steps mentioned above were the easy part. It has been more than a struggle to find a mason that needed work, to purchase all of the materials necessary and to get Trees Water People to come out to bring me the rest of the materials and train my mason. All of that has taken six months. Oy. I have been simultaneously stressed out and very calm about how all of this was going to go down.  Here is a brief run down of how it all went and the lessons I have learned to date:

I have really great, supportive friends. They have been so helpful and understanding in my quest to find the best materials for the lowest prices. They have gone house to house with me in search of a suitable mason. They have brought materials to my house in their cars. That part has been awesome.

Put Dad to work on his trip down here

Some of the materials needed for the project were a bit hard to find. For example the chimneys are concrete tubes with a 4in diameter. These are not stocked in most hardware stores, you have to call ahead and have them ordered. Bricks and sand must be ordered and delivered to the house. The sand was especially hard to get a hold of. The company said they would deliver it one day and it did not actually show up until three days later. Another challenge was the getting the molasses that is mixed in and used to hold some of the materials together. There are only a couple of places that sell this molasses, I needed a giant barrel to hold it all in, and it has to be transferred in a truck that does not have a downward swinging door to the pickup bed.

Very specific sized, hard to find tubes for the chimneys

And then there were Trees, Water People. They have been less than helpful through out this whole process. They told me that in order for them to come out a train my mason on how to make these stoves and make the example stove, I needed to collect the names and identification numbers of all of the people who were going to want a stove in my community. So I took one of my host sisters and went house to house. I got all of the information I needed and I scanned it and e-mailed it all in. They said ok, but it was going to have to wait. They were busy this week, and next week they had another training and the week after was Christmas and the week after that was New Years, but call us after the new year and we will see what we can schedule. Ugh. New Years came and went, and I dropped my Dad and Bella off at the airport. On my way home, I was with another volunteer and she gets a text from the main guy at TWP. I was starting to think this guy was avoiding me. So then and there I called him.

That phone call and the others that I had with this guy over the next few days grew more and more heated. He said he wanted to do the training in a different volunteers site. I knew for a fact that this volunteer solicited for this project after me and that she had not collected any of the materials for the stoves yet. I confirmed this with her and I called TWP back. I told them that I was ready. I had a family who had everything ready to go right then. He relented and said he would come and do the training in my site. But he told me that he would only bring the materials for the one stove. That I did not understand, I mean I thought the whole point of my getting the list of community members together was so that he could bring me enough materials for many stoves. He said this trip was just to do the example stove. I thought I might cry. This project was never going to get started, let alone finished before my service came to an end.

Will this project ever finish? Only time will tell! Stay tuned for parts 2 through 1,000!

Santa Baby

Sparklers!

I have a little catching up to do on here. I keep coming up with topics to write about, but more and more events keep occurring. Then I feel overwhelmed and I do not know where to start, so I just don't. I don't write and weeks go by, and more blog worthy events happen etc. It is a vicious cycle. So I am going to start off slowly and try to catch up on all of the happenings down here in The Savior.

Christmas was a couple of weeks ago, but it was my first Christmas away from home. Last year I flew to Florida for the holidays with my family so I did not get to experience a Salvadoran Christmas or New Years. This year, it was a hard decision not to be home, but I decided to stay and celebrate with my Salvadoran family. As it turns out Christmas, which is celebrated on the December 24th, is much like any other day here. My host dad, Orlando, got up and went to work in the fields. All stores in town are open. Presents are not common. ( I am sure this is for a number of reasons including that most rural families cannot afford them.)

Dirt Fight!

I got up on the 24th and did some yard work. Later in the day I had some dirt delivered and got my garden started. (Which I have been trying to get going for about a year.) Melida, my host mom, decided this would be a great opportunity to tackle me into the giant pile of dirt in my yard. That is the story of the Christmas Dirt Fight of 2012. I may need to make this a yearly tradition...

Cojete anyone?

                                                                       The evening of the 24th is when most of the festive activities take place. Most families make a baked chicken and either eat it in a really delicious sauce or in a sandwich with coleslaw and said delicious sauce. My host family decided to switch it up a little this year and we had grilled beef, rice and pico de gallo. Pretty delicious. The other big part of a Salvadoran Christmas is firecrackers, or cojetes. I set off almost two hundred firecrackers that night. Thank goodness Orlando is such an entrepreneur and decided to sell firecrackers in the front yard all night.

Jossline is my Christmas present this year :)

                                                                          It is also tradition to stay up until midnight on the 24th. At midnight everyone lights off hundreds of fireworks all at once. Unfortunately this year I was fighting some flu like symptoms so after my firecracker rampage, I crashed and decided to call it a night. It was already 2.5 hours past my bed time at this point. 10:30 is late. So I headed to bed, but was rudely awakened at midnight with all of El Salvador lighting off firecrackers at once.

Melida getting a little too into the Christmas spirit.

 The 25th of December was just another day down here. I cleaned up my house in preparation of picking up my Dad the next day. Orlando and I went and purchased giant chickens to eat on New Years. I did have a great time catching up with my parents and my best friend, Ali. As I am wrapping up my service down here and I cannot help but wonder where I will be for Christmas next year...

I hope you all had a great holiday season!