One of the biggest fears we have as Peace Corps volunteers is that we really don't make a difference. In those first few months when your only job is to not pack up your stuff and run, you go crazy thinking about wasted time, how you're never going to make a difference if you spend it sitting around your house, sitting in the health post, or just wandering around your town feeling homesick and missing toilets and american food. Then you start to get a little bit done and you feel a little more confident teaching your English class during Vacaciones Utiles. But then their vacation ends and school starts, and you realize all you did the last two or three months was teach some 7 year olds how to say "My name is ________" and "Teacher". You look at the list of Peace Corps goals for your program with it's big list of objectives and have no idea where to start. Every attempt made is snuffed by the community's lack of enthusiasm, a complete lack of support, or just sheer wheel spinning with the ever intimidating "I don't know where to start and I don't speak Spanish!" You look at
solicitud and
oficio models that Peace Corps gave us to use as a reference but you aren't exactly sure which you use for which, or how exactly it should look in this particular case. You write up monthly informes that look heartbreakingly blank and don't seem to really show all the hopes and plans that you have and all the unsuccessful attempts that you've made. Time ticks by and a fluttery panic sets in, "I'm not doing enough", "Why doesn't anything work?", "Why won't anyone help me?", "Why are all the people on the coast getting stuff done? How do they do it?" A bitterness sets in that just by location, being set in the mountains where things happen slowly and the majority of professionals have grown up with or become accustomed to this glacial pace, you look like a less successful and productive volunteer than your peers working on the coast. That if you had been placed in a dry, arid, sweaty place, you'd have ten more accomplishments to put on that report. Just doesn't seem fair does it?
Eventually you find a way to muscle your way around and get things done, whether that means calling and reminding people of things 3 times a day, going to their place of work and reminding them 3 times a day, just doing things alone knowing you can't count on anyone, or finally finding that one person that actually seems interested in working with you and making a difference. So you work the way you can and try not to completely burn yourself out, realizing that "thank you" isn't really part of this job description, and recognition is usually ripped away from you by the health post and claimed on their monthly reports to their superiors. At first it makes you crazy, the empty promises of support, the false assurances that yes, they are going to come and help you out, and then watching them take credit for whatever work they left you on your own to do. Eventually you get tired of being upset about it and you just accept that it's the way it is, and that at least someone is getting the work done. And you just keep at it, keep grinding away.
Then a day comes when you finally get a piece of recognition in an unexpected way. Sometimes it's a passing comment, "You know, it's really great that you come to the RONDA meetings. The last volunteer never did that." or a mom who mentions at the end of a session, "That was a really great charla." These little comments happened every so often last year but more frequently I got the ones that stung, and continued to sting for weeks. I handed the president of my RONDA a report of my activities from the last few months. His response? "What am I going to read in here? You've haven't done anything." Or walking into the health post with a researcher from Lima to process stool samples for free parasite analysis for the community. I'd been planning it for months together with the health post, even let them pick the dates, but when I showed up with the researcher, the head of the health post starts scolding me, telling me I never told her about it, that I'm terrible at communicating, she didn't know it was happening, and could the researcher go back to Lima and come back in a few weeks? Or those day when I get screamed at because I refuse to spend my own money to print out pictures of my work that the health post wants to take credit for in their reports. I still told them that I would give them all the pictures but that they could print them. Apparently that meant I was terrible at collaborating with the health post, that I wasn't doing my job as a Peace Corps volunteer...
Thus was most of year one. What did I learn? To find satisfaction in a job well done and not wait around for recognition. To be confident in the fact that I was always doing my best and to stand up for myself when people wanted to try and knock my feet out from under me. And most of all, I've really learned to put pride to the side because in a place where just being me is a threat to the professionals I work with, there isn't space to be proud.
At the end of 2012, I watched my 12 health promoters graduate from the Pasos Adelante program, the class I taught them starting in May. I saw changes in many of them, a better focus, a new and beautiful sincerity, a blossoming confidence, a novel sense of responsibility and ownership of what it means to be a leader. I was so proud of them and that day, watching them get their certificates, a couple of them standing and crying while they expressed their gratitude and love for the experience we had all shared together. That was all the recognition I needed. Apparently three of my twelve kids are sexually active and all three are using protection. Given that most of them thought that showering after sex or the pull-out method were effective forms of birth control, I'm allowing myself to feel partly responsible for that. A few months later, watching that same group get excited about teaching their peers and coming with me to the new sophomore class to tell them how great Pasos Adelante is, how they learned things that changed their lives, was another reward.
When I got back from the holidays in the States, I came back to find out that the work I had done in the last year achieved two important things. One, the project I did with the local elementary school won them the title of "Healthy School", and that my health post got first place for health promotion in the entire district of Chota in its class. I may not have been recognized for my work on a daily basis, and Violeta may have gotten the credit for the health promotion award, but I know that I am largely responsible and that made it all worth it.
In February, I was asked by the local health administrators (RED) to go to Cajamarca city to talk with all the representatives of the REDs in the entire department about the conference we put on the year before for Pasos Adelante students. We gave a presentation, were congratulated by a few people in the audience, and we left. Yesterday, I was thanked by one of the RED workers in Chota, saying that our presentation got the word out about Pasos Adelante to the whole department and that there was now an interest throughout the entire department to do Pasos Adelante. That's something I really want to happen. Sexual education is not a priority here, but things are slowly changing and I feel like I'm a part of it. I was so excited to hear that our presentation had been a key part of getting the word out and getting people excited to work with Pasos Adelante.
As of yesterday, I have given two separate training sessions to health post workers on how to form, teach, and train a group of kids in their local high schools in Pasos Adelante to form health promoters. The local health administrators see me as an expert in this at this point. I was sort of amused yesterday at the end of my presentation when all the health post workers were then asking that I go out to all their health posts and form their Pasos groups for them. I'm not allowed to do all that traveling and I don't have time for it. They all were feeling really timid about it, thinking that the Director of the high school would turn them down or that they didn't know the teachers very well. I finally piped up with, "I started this group in May last year when I couldn't really speak Spanish, had never been to the town before, and knew one health post worker. You guys are way more prepared than I was. Just do it!" Some were then asking if I could come and just do the first session. Apparently working with moms is way different than working with adolescents and that's freaking them out. We ended up setting a date when we'll all get together and I, along with some other volunteers, will help them prepare their materials for their first two classes. Then we're taking of the training wheels and letting them figure it out on their own. It was pretty cool to be where I was this time a year ago, and be where I am now. I was still in my "try not to run" stage in April last year and now I'm training health post workers to do what I did. Feels good.
I also have a healthy homes project going on. I applied to the municipality for S/.15,000, which is approximately $6,000 to provide my families with seeds for a vegetable garden and build or fix their improved cookstoves and latrines. The municipality said they would give me the money but wanted to review my budget first. I'm just waiting now.
I guess just seeing my own progress, knowing where I was and where I am now, and seeing the slow formation of my footprint, some small indicator that I was here and there is a little change for the better because of that, is enough for me.
On Wednesday morning, I woke up super early, got dressed, and headed to Cabracancha, the town where I teach sex ed. Last year I trained a group of 12 kids to be youth health promoters, primarily in sexual education. I've spent the last few months training health post workers all over the Chota district to form the same kind of group. About a week ago we had Physical Activity Day, but the activities the DISA had scheduled for that day they rescheduled for this past Wednesday and invited me to come with my youth promoters. I arranged it with the Director of the colegio, and of course the kids had no problem missing a day of school. 
