Peace Corps Week Fun

The Peace Corps first began on March 1^st, 1961. Each year at the beginning of March the Peace Corps celebrates its anniversary by having Peace Corps week. During this week volunteers usually find extra projects or ways to get out and perform services within the community. On Saturday, in honor of the occasion, a group of about 15 volunteers went out to a village on the south-west side of the island to hold a children’s arts and crafts day for the village that one of our volunteers lives in. We showed up with craft supplies to make masks and puppets and collages and stencil colorings and fingerpaint and playdough and clay and facepaints and all kinds of stuff. We got there about an hour before the event was supposed to start in order to set up and by about fifteen minutes after we had arrived a huge slew of small children were already eagerly awaiting our permission to enter and join in the festivities. The 200 or so children that showed up spent the morning going around to the different stations and engaging in all sorts of projects. I spent the morning painting the faces of a never-ending slew of children waiting patiently for their chance to be covered in paint and glitter. Then everyone sat down and had egg salad sandwiches together and all of the older children were taken off to play a game of flag football led by a couple of the volunteers- we have a set of football supplies that was generously donated to the Peace Corps by the Chicago Bears and it was great fun getting a chance to bring it out into the community and use it. While the older kids were playing football we organized games with the younger children and sang songs and just had a great time making lots of new friends. The day was really great and it was so much fun getting out in the community and spending time with a new group of faces that were so thrilled to have us there and engaged with them. Plus my face-painting abilities and ingenuity drastically increased as a result of all of the practice I got.

Upolu Career Day

One of the organizations that I have become involved in outside of my school is an NGO called Avanoa Tutusa, which is aimed at creating programs and opportunities to benefit women and children in the Samoan community. One of the annual projects sponsored and held by Avanoa Tutusa is a career day put on for all of the secondary school students in the country. Exhibitors are solicited from many of the businesses and governmental ministries in the country to set up booths and provide information about possible career opportunities to the students as they come around to explore. On Friday the Upolu Career Day went off with smashing success. Some of the volunteers showed up at 6 in the morning to set things up and get breakfast out. We made about ten gallons of tea in the largest pot known to man and helped set up exhibitions. Hundreds of students from schools all over the island started showing up at about 8 in the morning. There was a faife’au (preacher) there to lead a morning prayer and a motivational speaker to talk with all of the students about being committed towards exploring their options for the future. And then the students all got up and wandered around to peruse each booth and talk with the representatives that had come to present information. There were well over 500 students from 15-20 schools in attendance and it was really wonderful watching the event unfold as all of the students really became interested in exploring and finding out more about each organization. One company that works with automobiles actually brought a car frame into the building to show the students. (Even if the car itself was mostly for flash it was well worth it, being extremely entertaining to watch them struggle to get it through the doorway!) The Animal Protection Society brought in a puppy for the students to play with and talk about that I had to restrain myself from dognapping. The police department came with a full-on hour long presentation on being a policeman in Samoa. The event ran all day and was a huge success. It was really great to be a part of everything and to see what a wonderful and novel experience it was for all of the students. By the end of the day the volunteers that ran everything could barely stand but it was great knowing that all of our hard work really paid off. There will be a second Career Day in Savaii for all of the secondary students out there in a week and a half and I hope that it goes as successfully as this one did. And that next time the food gets there on time :)

Week One

After a false start monday when the bus driver showed up to find that the schoolbus battery was in fact dead, cancelling school for yet another day, things finally got underway on tuesday and school began- very exciting! I almost didn't realize how much I was craving having a set schedule and a place that I'm supposed to be and things I'm supposed to be doing after being a vagabond for the past two months (although I promise I did my best to enjoy the time, knowing I'd look back longingly at my extended vacation once I was fully entrenched in work). It's been a bit of a slow start, as I'm told is par for the course- we had thirteen students show up this week, but it's still a start. The school attendance is quite small to begin with but there are definitely at least a handful of students that were around last year that are still in the process of easing their way back into the school year and hopefully will show up next week. The kids at my school are great- they're so much fun and so friendly and welcoming. From day one I had kids walking around with me holding my hand and blowing me kisses. My favorite part of the day is when everyone (students and teachers) piles into the bus to go home and I stand there and they all wave to me and shout goodbye out the windows as the bus pulls away. Every day one of the girls asks me if I'm going to come on the bus with them and I explain to her that I live at the school so I don't need a ride home :) Friday was dedicated to cleaning the school which is a process here that the kids are involved with, so they all come sans uniform, don a straw hat and start hacking away at plants and weeding and scrubbing desks down. It's definitely something to get used to having built into the schedule but the kids seem to really enjoy it and get value out of the experience and it's certainly a useful and practical skill for them to have (far be it for me to deny the opportunity for hygeine), so it seems like it works pretty well. I've also introduced the practice of having one of the classes each day spend their morning cooking the lunch for the school, since cooking is an important component of a functional skills curriculum, and it's been going great- the kids seem to really enjoy being part of the process and are very proud to share with their peers the food that they themselves cooked. For a while it's mostly going to be getting settled in and getting to know the students and the teachers and feeling out what direction seems best to guide things in, but it's really great to finally be on that track and officially working.

**You may have noticed that I haven't been posting photos recently. My camera has decided that it is charging the flash all the time and therefore won't let me take pictures. So it survives in a state of limbo where it's not quite dead but not in the least functional for the purpose of actually taking photos. It still does a great job of eating batteries, but that's about it. The deterioration of this final gadget completes the systematic destruction of my entire catalog of electronic items brought to this country by humidity. It really is quite impressive what a little extra water in the air can do. Anyways, I will hopefully have a working camera at some point down the road but until then you're just going to have to do with using your imagination... my apologies

Understanding

Tomorrow marks the beginning (finally!) of the 2006 school year at Aoga Fia Malamalama. Actually, technically, last monday marked the beginning of the school year. But in case you've been completely zoned out when reading my last couple of posts, it has been raining a lot here. Before arriving in Samoa I had heard of cancelling school for snow. And even cancelling school for ice. And for mudslides and fires. But not until I witnessed the unfathomable quantity of rain that is really capable of pouring out of the sky did it ever occur to me that school would be cancelled for rain. It does make sense though, when all roads and the entire capital city where everyone has to pass through and switch busses to get to work is under a foot or so of water at the least. I digress a bit, but the point is that the start of school was delayed a week because of all the flooding. But now it's upon me and that being the case I figure perhaps it's a good time to share a bit about my school and what my purpose is in being a part of it. The school is called Aoga Fia Malamalama which translates to School of Wanting Understanding which is a way cooler name, in my opinion, than ps169m (no offense to the New York City public school system). The school is primarily an institution of education for individuals with cognitive delays but the students range from individuals with Down syndrome to Cerebral Palsy to learning disabilities. They are anywhere from 5 to 35 years old. The ideal aim, as with any program for individuals with exceptionalities, is to help develop independent skills and abilities to the highest level possible for each student. This should include basic educational skills focused on a practical application method (ex: math means being able to count money or tell time), and also vocational programs that help the students prepare to integrate as working members into the community. My role at the school is to function as a teacher trainer to help develop curricular programs in these directions and to support the staff in obtaining new techniques for approaching special needs education based on my experience in the field back in the states. The goal of Peace Corps placements is to provide sustainable development that will continue to be carried on after the volunteer returns to the states, which is the motivation behind my being there to support the current teachers rather than my taking on the role of teacher myself. I will also be working on projects related to individual students and their needs and abilities, and hopefully in conjunction with their families outside of the school environment as well. So... there's my little summary of what I will be doing more or less over the course of the next two years. Hopefully it paints at least something of a vague picture, which is pretty much all that I have of it myself at this point. But I'm very happy to have things finally kicking into gear and having the ability to get started on figuring out more concretely what I can do to help create change over the next two years.

Rain Rain Go Away

Rain makes things wet. Constant rain makes things never get dry. Things that never get dry make really great breeding grounds for mold. All kinds of mold! I have mold that likes to grow on sheets, mold that likes to grow on clothes and shoes, mold that likes to grow on electronics, mold that likes to grow out of chairs, mold that likes to grow on walls and ceilings, mold that likes to grow on my stove, yellow mold, white mold, brown mold, black mold, green mold, orange mold, mold that grows in small little clumps, mold that grows in circular ring-worm formation, mold that likes to grow big and hairy, mold that likes to stay small and try to escape notice… and my personal favorite: mold that likes to grow on lizard poop. Since the start of school has been delayed a couple of days due to the torrential downpours of rain, I have been waging full-time war against my new biggest enemy. Armed with my spray-bottle of bleach and water and my trusty mold removing sponge I wander around my house, afraid to sit on any item of furniture because I am 100% positive that it is covered in mold, spraying things at random in the hopes of extricating some small fraction of the spores that I am slightly concerned are on the verge of eating my house alive. I’m starting to have freaky dreams about waking up to find huge 10 foot tall mold spores sprouting every which way out of my ceiling, walls and floor.

To quote Raffi:
Oh Mr. sun, sun, Mr. golden sun won’t you PLEASE shine down on me!

Caulk the Wagon and Float

It rains a lot in Samoa. A LOT lot. Apparently here the year is divided into two seasons rather than the standard four I was used to back in the states: there's cyclone season and non-cyclone season. I have a feeling it rains a lot year round. But it rains especially a lot during cyclone season, which is from December-ish to May-ish. So needless to say, it's been wet. It's really fun for me after growing up in southern California where it rained maybe five days a year to being in week-long storms that sometimes make you feel like they're strong enough to knock your house down. I honestly haven't seen the sun in over a week because it's been pretty much constant. I'm enjoying it, although it does mean that laundry basically doesn't EVER dry which poses a problem especially with my mold issues... :) Anyways on Thursday I was planning on meeting a friend in town for dinner and all afternoon it was pouring like crazy and I was thinking maybe I should just take the bus instead of riding my bike and take a cab home, and then all of a sudden right before I was going to leave the rain finally stopped. So I figured great, I can ride my bike into town now! So I hop on and go. About 100 yards into the ride I start to realize that the prevalence of potholes in the road out to my house and the general being-up-on-a-hill-ness of my school means that when it rains a lot the road floods. I notice this both visually and sensorily as my entire back is rapidly soaked from water spraying up behind my bike. So I figure what the heck, I'm already wet, might as well just go for it, and keep pedaling. Now, in Samoa the road-river intersection is slightly different than back home. Here, rather than building a road that goes over the river (some might call this a "bridge"), they just build roads that the rivers flow over. Standardly this means that there might be a few inches of water gently running over the road as you drive/ride through it. In periods of heavy rainfall, however, the quantity of water and the speed at which it travels drastically increases. There is one such river/road crossing between my residence and Apia. As I'm riding my bike I approach this spot and notice that the water is above the bottom of the body of the car that's driving through it and start to think maybe my plan is a little off kilter. But I'm a trooper, I'll just go for it and see what happens. Pedal down the hill and off we go... About one and a half rotations into the water I notice that my bike is rapidly titling out from under me and I will soon be pedaling horizontally as I'm swept down the river. So I jump off my bike and quickly pick it up above the level of the water. Being about five feet into the river I logically decide to pursue my journey and continue pressing onward. So I begin to ford the river which is well above knee height carrying my bike and trying desperately to cling to my flip-flops with my toes so that they're not swept away downstream. As I get to around the middle I realize that yes, the strength of the water and its depth only increase as I'm continuing along, and perhaps my brilliant adventurer stance is not all the brilliant. But heck, I'm halfway through so it's six of one at this point, and man it would be a bummer to have gone through all this to be stuck back out at my house hungry. Plus, I've figured out how to angle my feet upstream so that my flip-flops are being jammed into my toes which is the only way they're staying on, and turning around with that plus the whole bike dragging in the water factor is pretty much guaranteed to spell disaster. So with dozens of Samoans who (understandably) hang out by the river when it's high to see what entertainment it will provide watching me and cheering me on, I ford the river in one piece, hop back on my bike like it was all in the game plan, and cruise on into town to soak in my river-water drenched clothing through dinner. It was a darn good fishburger. And I feel just a bit more like a warrior these days. Although I gotta admit next time I might just go the long way.