I'm currently sitting on my porch, drinking tea while listening to the rustling of the leaves of a banana tree which are slightly lit by the light of my solar lamp. It's breezy and actually slightly chilly- the cooler months are coming. I can see some stars twinkling and the easy to spot Southern Cross constellation. I feel bizarre typing on my smartphone while observing all of this. I've had some people ask me what I've been up to here, so I'll attempt to make a post about that.I've been at site now for about five and a half weeks.
After the initial setting up my house, I wasn't exactly sure what to do. Peace Corps stressed during training that integrating into the community should be our number 1 priority at the beginning- easier said than done. It's not like it was when I was in Korea and had a set job with a set schedule and I was living in a big city with a lot of other English speaking non- Koreans. Now I'm living in a small village where everyone knows what I'm doing all the time, I'm constantly speaking Bislama even though most people usually talk in the local language that I don't know, and I have a pretty open ended job description. Other education volunteers over the past few years have done a wide range of projects and activities and teaching, both inside and outside of the classroom. Some of what I've heard about sounds interesting and things that I'd think about doing, while others don't. I have ideas of things I'd like to do but it's hard to distinguish what's actually needed and wanted by the school and local community, so most of what I've been thinking about has just stayed in my head or I've talked about it with other volunteers for now. I've been reminded over and over not to jump into things here, that it's important to gain the trust of the community first. So with that winding introduction, here's an overview of what I've been up to the past 5.5 weeks.
- I spent the first week observing at the school. It was actually pretty boring, but it was good to see the routines of the school, how the teachers taught, and how the students responded to me being there. Which was mostly silent giggles with bowed heads- most kids at the beginning were too shy/scared/I don't know what to talk to me. That got better over the few weeks, since I would just hang out at or around the school everyday.
- I did reading assessments with classes 4-6, the main classes I will be working with at the beginning (I think). This was good to get some 1 on 1 talking time with the students and to see if they could read, and if they could if they understood what they had read.
- I've been going to church every Sunday. Church is very important and prevalent in daily life in this community. It's good that I show my face there and chat with people. I've met a lot of the community this way. Often there is a village potluck lunch afterwards which is my favorite part of Sunday here.
- I spent last week working on the library with some teachers, high school students, and a fellow volunteer who stayed with me for the week. We cleaned the room, rearranged the shelves, and labeled and organized all of the books. The manual labor got done last week, and now the more soft things remain- making a system to keep it used by students and organized.
- I got a cat, loved her, and now I think she ran away from me. I'm hoping for her return as my searching for her has turned up nothing.
- I spent a long weekend visiting another volunteer's site. It was interesting to compare mine with hers, and while there were some things I loved about her site it made me appreciate mine.
- I spend many afternoons just wandering around and saying hello to people that I pass.
- I've had a lot of free time, so I've been reading a lot. It's amazing to think of how much time before I would waste just mindlessly browsing the internet, and now I have all that open time for reading. On that note, though, I really miss googling my questions and reading the news. If anyone is reading this, please fill me in on what's going on in the world. Also, projects to reuse tin cans, how to raise chickens for eggs while letting them roam free, if mayonaise reallllllly has to be refrigerated, the difference betwern sweet potatoes and yams, if capsicum and kumala are English words, how to compost, if solar power is a major source of energy in any countries, how to cook chicken wings, and anything else interesting.
