Finding out What Some of the Job is About

As I mentioned, on Thursday, Aug 20, we got our 80 pollitos. As of today, 8 have died, probably all due to the cold in some way (one night the light burnt out.)

On Sunday the 23rd began my site visit. This entailed going out with another trainee to visit a current volunteer to learn about what being a volunteer meant, in one way or another. I ended up visiting a volunteer all the way in the departamento of San Marcos, which is about 7 hours away and is next to Mexico. The 7 hours in the camioneta was not what I would call ideal since part of the time I did not even have a seat, and the rest of the time I did have a seat I still did not have the capability of fitting in the seats of the former US school buses.
On a very good note though, seeing the work of the volunteer there made me excited for what I could do and made me more confident in what I could do. First of all, I simply enjoyed the work I saw and the fact that there was a wide variety of it. In 2 days, we worked with a campesino (more or less a rural farmer) with planting some new seeds and giving some vaccinations to his ponedores (egg-laying hens), gave a lesson to some school kids over how rabbits and their school garden, and checked in with 3 different communities in which 1 community had medicinal gardens being used to create cough expectorant, 1 community had a fish farm, and the last one was where vegetables other than corn were trying to be introduced. I came here wondering and doubting how technical the skills I would need to have in order to help the people down here. I mean an honest question could be why can’t the people down here grow their own vegetable gardens? Why do they need help? Seeing the things that were being presented, though really helped me understand that and some of the situation down here. Take for instance planting a vegetable garden. This is something I have done since I was young and grew up knowing how to start a vegetable plant from seed whether in the ground or in a greenhouse. For one community I was in where vegetable gardens were being done besides not having the means to access the seed (sometimes these people never leave the community and their community has no seed--- some of these communities can be far from a city (over an hour or more by car and even a but is not always available) or maybe their even off the road quite a bit not accessible by car) these people just had never planted anything other than corn and did not know how to plant other seeds or prepare the soil and so on. It was surprising and sad to find out that even knowledge could be so limited to others.
Over this past weekend, I did a little visiting to some neighboring towns and finally bought my winter hat I had been needing during the cold nights. I know I’ll appreciate it as my hooded sweatshirt needed a washing. I also accidentally went to a Confirmation mass and thus got to get Communion from the Bishop. I did not get to meet him afterward, but it was interesting to see the mass here. On Sunday after mass, Abi and I finally met up with some people from our town who were also preparing for their Confirmations. We prayed the rosary together, which was a bit different that I was used to. Hopefully I’ll be able to join them again before I leave for my site. Though I definitely cannot understand a lot of things, I think it will still help to fill a little of the hole that St. John’s at MSU filled.

To give an update on where I am in the language, I am not going to lie; it has been hard and at times frustrating. There are times when I just cannot communicate completely how I feeling or what I am thinking and it seems so easy for my voice to be lost to native speakers since I definitely do not have a command of the language and there is so much I do not know. As a matter of fact, just being in this strange setting is challenging, especially on the mind. I mean so many little things that I knew or took for granted just do not hold true here. I know though that I’ll keep working through things, especially with Spanish. I am just thankful there have not been really any problems that have added to this mental drain.

Finally, I’ll be going on a field-based training for 8 days starting tomorrow. Besides learning new skills, I look forward to seeing some different parts of the country.

Oh, to answer some of the questions I have been getting, the food is just fine down here. They definitely use onions in a majority of their foods, but for the most part they are cooked so it does not really bother me. The top foods I have eaten here are bread, tortillas, frijoles in any form (liquefied, in a paste, whole, in a soup, with a fox, in a box, etc) pollo (chicken), and eggs. I think my egg consumption has increased by about 500% each week since huge chucks of vegetables such as green beans or broccoli are baked in with eggs in kind of like an omelet, since even things like tortillas can be cooked like French toast, and since just eating scrambled eggs is common. My frijol consumption probably increased by 10000% since I rarely have ever eaten beans. I actually like them though and there does not appear too much a difference in the gas outtake.
A typical meal might look like frijoles liquefied and heated like a soup, a piece of chicken, rice, a vegetable that does not exist in the US, and some apple tea which the host mom makes. The meals are not that spicy, unlike Mexican food. I did have some tamales with some hot peppers… it brought some good flavor to it but I sure did not eat the hot pepper. I know I am missing the good cooking I am grown up with at home. You never realize how good your mom or grandma or aunt or uncle or whomever can cook until your with another family for some time.