Veek Vone in la Villa

So the first word that comes to mind when I think of life in la Villa is HOT. Caliente, pica, calor, there’s no way around it. I’ve just had to accept that almost all my the clothing that I brought is going to get destroyed, because daily, I sweat through everything I wear. I never really understood the concept of undershirts before coming to la Villa. Why wear two shirts? Won’t that make you twice as hot? But now I get it. And I still continued to be amazed at how much my shins sweat, or at least how much sweat collects down there. Depending on if I can catch, scratch that, find a mototaxi or not, I have to walk a couple kilometers back to the highway from three of my schools. From knees up you can’t really tell how much I’m sweating (thank you undershirt), but you look at my shins and its almost comical, like I just jumped into a puddle about knee deep. So are the problems of my life right now.

But the big news is that I’ve visited all of my schools, met the teachers, and observed all of my counterparts. Did I mention there are seven schools, with seven different counterparts? And only one is located in the city center, so I’m doing a lot of traveling each week. Traveling has its ups and downs. In one hand it keeps me busy, and I almost always end up having some unusual interaction on the bus. The down side is that bus’s, my primary mode of transportation, aren’t the most efficient, and rarely run on schedule. Oh they’ll come, but who knows if it will be on time. The bus system here is pretty wild, but I’ll save that for a later post, I digress. Now for whatever reason, I had very low expectations of my counterparts, and I kind of blame that as a result of my training. It is made seem that the teachers here can’t even tie their own shoe laces, let alone teach a class that is completely foreign to them (is that a pun? If so drink). So I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the quality of teachers was overall very high. Some are seasoned pros of the class, with two years of experience under their belt, due to the prior all-star volunteers in Villa El Carmen, Nicole and Casey. Three are completely new to the class, but are solid teachers. They may not understand the concepts the first time around (that’s why I’m here) but they’re enthusiastic about learning the themes and teaching it to the class. So all in all I consider myself pretty lucky. I’ve heard (and seen) stories of uncooperative counterparts, aggressive principals, and uninterested delgados from the ministry of education.

So let me try and explain my role in all this. Peace Corps small business volunteers have been teaching this class for ten years now, initially with the consent of Ministry of Education. But within the last two years, MinEd, seeing the benefits of the course and tangible progress, made the course mandatory for every student in cuarto and quinto ano of every segundaria, the American equivalent of every junior and senior of high school. Every year has a block in their schedule referred to as O.T.V (Orientacion Technical y Vocacional) that is supposed to teach a life lesson, and now that is filled with the Emprendedurismo course, as opposed to say welding. (And I’m not joking about the welding class. One of my volunteer friends has to rotate each week between teaching enprendedurismo and welding, because the principal doesn’t like the course for whatever reason.) So since the class is so new, many teachers are not remotely qualifed to teach it, or don’t have the resources to properly teach it. MinEd is severely underfunded and doesn’t have the money to print an Anthology of the course for every teacher in every school. That’s where I step in. My primary goal, among others, is to train my seven counterpart how to effectively teach the endprendedurismo course over the next two years. Teach them so well, that if a new teacher were to replace them, they would be able to go a step further, and train that new teacher. The idea is sustainability. I could just go in and teach the class myself, but what good would that be once I left in two years. Each school would be back to where they started. The course is pretty brilliantly planned, and I’m surprised something like this isn’t offered in the states. I think it would be wildly popular. In a nut shell, in the beginning of the year, the class breaks into work groups of 3-8 people, and develop an idea for a product or service. Over the course of the year, the students learn different aspects of starting a new business, and for homework or class work, apply their new knowledge to their own product. They learn about Market Studies, SWOT analysis, Costs and Prices, and all that fancy business stuff that liberal arts majors look down upon and don’t understand. Stuff that only us business majors “up on the hill” would understand. That work is then saved and put together, to eventually form an elementary business plan to go along with what is hopefully a finished and manufactured product or service. So technically, after graduating high school, these kids would have the means to continue their business. What’s even more rad, is that at the end of the year is competition, that starts at the local level, continues to the regional level, and the best groups compete at a national level. So there’s tons of incentive for these students to be enthusiastic about the course.

And on a smaller side note, the second place winner of last year’s competition, the “Fab” Fabio, is from Villa El Carmen, and recently with the help of the previous volunteers, just received a large grant from USAID to continue his business. So I’m at ground zero of the creation of a small business, which is just where I wanted to be.

On a social note, Villa El Carmen is super tranquilo, but I’ve doing my best to keep busy. I started exercising again, which is a good thing. Didn’t do that for awhile, and let myself go for a bit. Just by running around town, I’ve gotten offers by previously strangers to join sports leagues, and at the least opportunities to talk with new people, and practice my espanol. I’m experimenting with teaching English tomorrow with a new friend of mine, we’ll see how that goes. I’m simultaneously nervous and excited for that one. And this past weekend I got the opportunity to visit Mercado Oriental, the largest market in Central America. Pretty out of control, I don’t know if I could’ve handled it without my new host mom (who tried to convince to buy designer jeans. Only the best for her new son) Who knows what the future holds, hopefully surfing, but I’m taking it a day at a time.

And a special congrats to Lucy and Zach, couldn’t be happier for you two!

“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive, and not after he is dead”

-          Meyer Wolfshiem