Oh how naive am I. When I imagined joining the Peace Corps I saw a little African town struggling to accomplish certain goals like a program to reach out to AIDS victims or an orphanage. I thought this town would request a volunteer for the area and everyone would welcome me with open arms. The people in the town would be so happy and appreciative that Hannah Elyse has come to help them work on this specific problem that they have been trying to accomplish for so long.
Well the reality check is that the director of the school I am placed with told the previous volunteer that she wasn’t sure what I could work on with them and didn’t have any ideas for me. She failed to show up to the supervisor’s conference and sent the lady in charge of buying food for the school instead. When my counterpart introduced me to the hospital staff they had no idea that I was coming nor did they seem to care that I was there at all. Half of the people she talked to about me, while I stood quietly, didn’t look at me or introduce themselves. So not what I expected to say the least! Chokwe is just like any other city where locals know each other but no one has any idea who I am or what the Peace Corps is. The concept of a volunteer obviously does not translate because both of my organizations assumed that I was here to give them money or help get them money. During training we were told that some of us who are new to an org would probably need to explain our role and that many of them would think we were there to give them money. However I was not prepared for the leaders of an org who have been working with Peace Corps for over 2 years to still not understand this concept. My counterpart from the hospital who attended the supervisor’s conference was surprised to hear that I was not going to provide food and money to the community, even though the opening line at the conference was the volunteers are not here to provide money!
But to focus on the positive… some of the things I look forward to working on at the preschool are: helping make the financial and administrative work more organized, giving short classes (palestras) on supervision, lesson planning and preparation, child supervision and safety, HIV transmission, child self-esteem, learning through play, and general child development. I want to start a story time that would happen every day and stress the importance of reading to children. I want to teach the teachers new songs or encouraging them to use songs they already know. I want to decorate the class rooms with children’s art work, numbers, letters, shapes, days of the weeks and months, calendars and colors. I am also going to start a perma-garden, try to add more nutrition to the lunch menu and teach cooking techniques to save nutritious value in the food. I want to find a preschool in Maputo that functions well and take the teachers to see what their preschool could look like. I want to show them a youtube video of a preschool in the states to see what our school standards are like as well. I want to sit down with the director of the preschool and create a yearlong curriculum for the teachers to follow and have a posted schedule in the classroom for each day of the week. I want to encourage the director, through conversations over the next two years, to enforce rules and consequences on the teachers for their behavior and work ethic.
At the hospital I look forward to working with the peer educators on: establishing their own association, improving home visits and palestras, helping them look for patients who abandon treatment, income generation projects, and grant writing. I want to look into ways to help in the mental health and maternity sectors of the hospital. I want to help create a more organized structure for processing HIV positive patient’s paperwork. I also want to see if any improvements can be made to post counseling sessions for HIV positive patients. Hopefully if people feel more comfortable coming to the hospital and taking their medications, the number of abandoned treatments will decrease.
I am going to start a Redes group which is girls empowerment group for youth! I can focus on anything I want with them from playing soccer to having conversations about self-esteem and I am going to do it all! It is just a club for girls to feel good about themselves and have a positive female remodel to encourage them. I am also going to apply to be in the peer support network. It is a network for Peace Corps volunteers to support each other through good and bad times. If you are a counselor in the peer network then volunteers are provided with your number if they need someone to talk to. I think this will be a good way to see if counseling is something Im interested in and to help my peers.
I have been feeling like my jobs are unstructured and the people here are unmotivated which can be discouraging but I just wrote so many things that are possible for me to do here which makes me happy! I just got a Portuguese tutor which is great so I can feel more comfortable with the language to accomplish all of these things. I am feeling much more at home in Chokwe :) Till next time Elysea
No comments:
Post a Comment