Holy Smokes! It's Been a Whole Year.

This creatively titled post is dedicated to my wonderful mother, who dislikes un-creatively titled posts.

I just re-read my last entry to get my head settled on how I should write this one and I was impressed by two things. 1) It's been a heck of a long time since I wrote a blog entry. Apologies. 2) My chances of writing an organized list of things that I've been up to are far less than my chances of starting to write an organized list and then being struck by my all powerful stream-of-consciousness and spewing thoughts onto this e-page. Here goes, wish me luck!

Some highlighted projects that have been in process:

1) The school choir has transformed into basic music classes. It turned out that they needed a stronger base in their understanding of music before we could make it, or at least before I could instruct it. While trying to teach choir, I was coming up against questions like "which note is higher or why is one note longer than another". More representative of the class was the question "what's a note?". I was also struggling with the fact that no three students had similar vocal ranges. So, we shifted our attention to learning about music. I have about 5 kids in my music classes who come to school on their free time to learn about simple rhythms and melodies. Within a month they were sight reading simple rhythms. Progress is slow, but I'm super proud. In order to put their new found musical knowledge in practice, my parents sent me some recorders, re-transforming my music class into a flute class. Pretty cool. Turns out that these little plastic pipes are the perfect tool to learn music with. I hope to bring the group back to singing one day, but for I'm content with the progress we're making.

2) Business Classes/ Shampoo Tycoons of El Salvador. I gave a 15 week course on the basics of business with the idea in mind that we could start a business at the end. The eight high school girls in the class apparently preferred the idea of starting an empire. In 3 weeks they sold 150 bottles of home-made shampoo. We use Aloe Vera plants and some pharmacy basics to whip-up a killer shampoo, then the girls take to the streets and push the stuff. They make me proud. I still have sessions planned for them on basic book-keeping, and presentation skills. In the next month we'll take a trip to the river to celebrate our achievements and our future take-over of the Salvadoran shampoo market. :-) I started a second shampoo group comprised of moms and dads in a near-by community. Neither group has grown enough to worry about competition. Who knows what will happen if they do.

3) Efficient Stoves. The majority of cooking that is done here is done over an open fire style stove. People start a fire (usually by burning plastic bags because it burns faster) and set a pot or pan over the fire. Efficient stoves are stoves that are designed to direct all of the heat from the burning wood towards the pot or pan. Simple. Efficient stoves use 60% less firewood and the improved combustion cuts down on smoke by %90! Respiratory disease is the second leading cause of disease here, largely because people spend all day inside of a house burning wood as inefficiently as possible. The reduction in consumption of firewood makes a serious impact on deforestation as well. I wrote a grant, went to a training seminar on, and am now promoting the use of these stoves in my site. I'll use the grant money to subsidize the cost of the stoves to each family, leaving them to pay about $24 per stove We should get about 35 of these stoves in August, which represents more than 1/3 of the households in my town switching to efficient methods. Check out the website of the people who make our stoves: www.stoveteam.org

On the downside, some projects have seemingly gone down the tubes. The re-forestation project has stalled do to a lack of people willing to plant trees on their land, and the soil conservation project was put on the back burner after a water engineer told us that "while our bad habits our affecting someone's water supply, they are not affecting ours". It was disappointing, but that news really chipped away at our momentum.

On a more catastrophic level, we discovered about $9,000 missing from the community fund a few months back. Gossip went rampant and the community was forced to face the issue of transparency in community dealings. We held multiple meeting to discuss the issue and all of them were relative failures. There were too many community members related to the people indicated in the scandal for us to move forward. The event caused a severe lack of trust to form between community leaders, but in the end they decided to sweep it under the rug and hope it doesn't happen again. The day that they decided to not investigate further was my lowest Peace Corps day yet. I don't feel like I failed them, but I feel like their collective decision was irresponsible and representative of a community who puts family ties above fairness. Bummer.

Here's a fun story:

On Wednesday I went on a most-awesome hike. One of my nearby neighbors has been wanting to show me a part of the valley that I had not visited before. Our secondary objective was to find a semi-rare fruit that's gaining legendary notoriety for it's health benefits. Ojushte. What I didn't know when I started the hike is that my guide had not visited our destination in more than 25 years. The paths that used to exist no longer do (or he forgot where they were). Worry not, we had machetes. We hiked about 1.5 hours from home into a super steep valley filled by a strange mix of cornfields and jungle. Despite the richness of the soil in the valley, very few families plant corn there because carrying the corn out is so gosh darn hard. Apparently, a strong mule, pushed from behind by a strong man, can make it up the hill. Any lesser combination is doomed.

When we had hacked our way to the famed ojushte trees, I found that these trees were had already emptied their cargo onto the forest floor and begun to decompose. I also found that the forest floor was 45 degree slope on which slip-and-slides have nothing. We made our way down the hill by grabbing near by trees, then throwing ourselves to other trees slightly farther down. To my delight, the fruit being rotten didn't slow us down in harvesting it. Only the shell had rotten, leaving the soft nutty center to be washed and dried. We spent about 2 hours picking up ojushte, not thinking about the cliff that we would climb on our return trip.

As is fitting in a jungle paradise such as this one, there were a pair of beautiful waterfalls nearby that we swam in as we argued about who harvested more seed. As you might guess, I harvested way less, but claimed to have harvested way more.

My 61 year-old guide put me to shame on our way out of the valley. He not only carried more seed than I did, he did it without repeatedly falling into pits of rotten ojushte shell. I brought some interesting smells back to the house with me.

Here are some things I'm looking forward too:

The new volunteers are getting here in about 2 weeks! One of my neighboring communities is being considered for a volunteer, and I have high hopes of getting a neighbor.

Ben and Tim, two of my college roommates, are coming down to visit in September. We're planning to go to Utila, which is a small island off the cost of Honduras to get our scuba-diving licenses. It's some of the best coral in the Caribbean, and its the cheapest program in the world! Too good to pass up.

Still a long ways off, but my parents are coming down in December for two weeks. We'll hit some cool sights before spending a few days in my site hanging out with neighbors. Super excited.

Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear from you! Go ahead and leave a comment, or better, you can email me.

Take Care,
Jesse