I seriously think about this stuff ALL THE TIME!

The past couple weeks have been pretty uneventful. I tried to organize a meeting about doing a ballet class with a group of dancers at the instituto but that fell through because the teacher I was coordinating with wasn’t able to organize the kids in time. Some friends are trying to organize a general dance group in the community and want my help so I’m hoping that might work out, and if not I’ll try to organize through the instituto again. But the next month will be difficult to organize anything at all: next week I’m going to another Peace Corps training, the beginning of September I have a big English conference in Managua to present at and at the same time I have three friends coming to visit and the fiestas patrias, aka Independence Day. So despite feeling ready to get started on something new right now, I’m forced to wait in order to give myself the greatest chance of success. One of the frustrations of Peace Corps service.

Development work in general is just not easy. I find that I, and many of the volunteers here, often get bogged down in bigger questions of culture, gender, and the effectiveness and sustainability of our work. I had conversations about this with both Nicas and Americans this past weekend, so it’s been on my mind again. One of my Nica friends was expressing his frustration to me about how programs, groups, even businesses don’t last long in this community because the people lose interest & motivation really quickly. I found that was true with my adult English class, which started with 10 students and ended with only three. Although I think that it’s a common problem, he felt it was particularly acute here in our community.

So I brought up the conversation I had with a volunteer and former volunteer on Saturday, which is that development and religious mission organizations in the past (and often the present) created a Culture of Receiving in many countries. By coming in with money, materials, and resources & building, donating, and giving, these organizations broke the mantra of “give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day but teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” Basically, people become accustomed to not having to take responsibility but simply wait for someone to come in and give them what they need. So when I came here with just myself and no money or resources, people were pretty puzzled about how I was going to help.

More recently development organizations are realizing this and trying to work for more sustainable change, but that often entails working against a culture that may have been created by the same organization in the past. And it’s difficult to find funding for long-term, sustainable projects that may not show results in the next five or even ten years. Donors (and the public) like to see the new hospital, the kids eating school lunch, and farmers planting and harvesting more crops. It’s the need for instant gratification and the do-it-yourself mentality so many of us westerners have. It’s a lot harder to go in and teach others how to do something that they may do imperfectly by U.S. standards, or never at all. And when you throw in the fact that the changes we wish to make (higher education standards, new agricultural methods, environmental awareness, gender equality) are based on our culture and not necessarily on the culture in which we are working and the ethical implications of that, my mind starts to spin so fast I have to sit down.

This all might sounds really abstract and weird to those of you who aren’t accustomed to pondering development in your spare time. So here’s my current, on-the-ground dilemma: I have had it hasta aqui (up to here) with machismo and a culture that directs large numbers of women down the path of dependence on men who many times don’t treat them very well. So right now I really want to start working more with my female students, through dance or a more explicit girls empowerment club, because I feel that it would be beneficial for them to learn skills such as leadership, family planning, self-esteem, etc. so that they can be successful in life – a success that is defined by my cultural standards, not necessarily those of rural Nicaragua.

So the question is, is this a change that is even desired by people here? Do women see something wrong with their way of life? Do men? And what is my right as a foreigner to come in and say, “Do it MY way! It’s better!”? Well, short answer, is that I do know a lot of women who aren’t happy with their lives, and most men don’t realize that it’s a problem. As for the rest of it, it’s a gray area. So, as far as I can decide, I hope to form a girls club that is formed around the wants and needs of the girls themselves instead of dictating it all based on what I think they need to learn. And it might fall apart, it may never even get started. I have encountered a totally new kind of stress in my work here, it’s not having too much to do (though I do have that too) but having ideas and goals and not being able to reach them. My biggest struggle has been taking an idea from my head and making it happen on the ground, but I’m still plugging away and hoping that in the coming months before I leave that it will be something I grow more and more confident with.

That was a lot. To close on a not so serious note, here’s a picture from back in June of some of my students who performed a socio-drama at an anti-domestic violence event. The group includes my most fabulous gay students (you can probably guess who they are) who were mostly dressed as women for the skit. I love these kids!