Bienvenidos a Entrenamiento

Entonces...

We´re about two weeks into this thing, and a routine is gradually starting to materialize. On Saturday our group of 31 (32 originally, but one girl decided she wasn´t getting on the plane from D.C.) moved in with our host families, with whom we will live during these 11 weeks of training.

My family, los Omonte, has given quarter to many trainees in the past, so having a gringo around is old news for them. By our standards, it´s a pretty good size family: There´s the grandmother, Doña Cristina, who speaks only Quechua; Don Orlando y Doña Maria, the parents; and the four boys, Jhonny, Orlando, Denis y Ronaldo, ranging from age 11 to 22. The house is not exactly what I was expecting: The family has two cars, a relatively large house, nice furniture, flush toilets, semi-hot showers, a computer, and, alas, a TV. I had not been there five minutes when one of my brothers invited me in the house to watch tele. I was thinking, ¨I didn´t have to travel 5000 miles for this...¨But actually, the tele helps to break the occasional lull in conversation. The TV is filled with American shows. The brothers love ¨Los Simpson,¨¨Prison Break¨and, Anna´s favorite, ¨Smallville.¨ Oh well, at least there´s no Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

All of us gringos (rich Americans) live within a couple kilometers of one another, in a neighborhood the name of which I can´t divulge for security reasons (yeah, seriously, it´s a rule). We generally live in the nicer houses, but there is poverty here, too. The neighborhood is not far from Cochabamba, and there´s plenty of cheap public transportation to and from the city. I´m getting the hang of it; our general schedule is starting to fall into place, too, now that Carnaval is over. We have four hours of language classes, five days a week, plus plenty of technical training and, perhaps the most tiresome part, abstract job strategy. Yesterday we sat through 3 hours of extremely general volunteer theory. The only comparison I can think to make is with the movie Office Space: ¨Remember to ask yourself, with every decision you make, is this good for the company?¨ Plus the Peace Corps is as enamored with acronyms as they are with pamphlets. Here´s a brief, by no means comprehensive, sample:

PCT/V = peace corps trainee/volunteer
PDA = participatory diagnostic assessment
RVD = role of the volunteer in development
FREEHOP = Family, religion, economics, education, health, organizations, politics
NFE = non-formal education
PACA = participatory analysis for community action
SWOT = strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats
ET = early termination
COS = close of service


...and those are just the ones I can remember offhand. Although it can seem like repetition of common-sense stuff, I understand PC´s reasoning behind stressing the development strategies so heavily: A volunteer´s approach really is everything. If you adopt the wrong kind of attitude -- whether too authoritative or timid, condescending or acquiescent -- your community will not trust you, and thus nothing will get done. So, it seems, the Lumbergh approach has a point. And I really like the technical classes in agriculture, which began this afternoon. They were asking questions about transplanting seedlings today and asked us whether carrots ought to be transplanted or directly seeded. I raised my hand and confidently stated that they ought to be direct-seeded, along with most other root crops, because they don´t like to be disturbed. Ivor would have been so proud.

The experience has not been without its hiccups, of course. On tuesday, the last night of Carnaval, there was a fiesta at the house, with food and plenty of alcohol. Among the guests were a cousin of Don Orlando and his wife, both of whom were extremely drunk. The guy insisted, so I had a toast or two with them (the custom is to pour a little cerveza onto the ground for pachamama, or mother earth, before drinking). The guy, who turned out to be a police captain, began grilling me about why I was there, asking how much I was paid, and demonstrating his lack of trust in Americans and in Peace Corps. From what I could make out between my poor Spanish and his drunkenness, he suspects PC is a US government conspiracy designed somehow to subvert Bolivian interests and exploit Bolivians. The conversation was frustrating, not because I was offended (I had considered the same possibility before deciding to join) but because my understanding of the language wasn´t quite good enough to understand him and make the case on behalf of PC, and also because he was trashed and kept asking the same questions and calling me Alejandro. Just as he was really starting to heat up, by flat out telling me he didn´t trust me (less than 2 minutes after sharing a toast with me and saying I was like a son to him), my brother Jhonny came out and told me there was a phone call for me. I excused myself and went inside -- the brothers had invented the phone call as an excuse to help me escape. It was a simple thing, but a hell of a nice gesture.

So things are really starting to pick up here, and I´m feeling a bit overwhelmed by all of the projects they are assigning to us during training... but again, the plan is just to relax and do my best, and hopefuly all will fall into place. I´m being heckled by the owner of the internet cafe that my time has expired, so that´s all for now. More soon.

Go Cards, go Obama.