Tales From a Peace Corps Volunteer in Colombia

Monday, December 12, 2011

Football? No, it's called soccer. Get it right

On Thursday, us Peace Corps volunteers had the good fortune of finally getting a holiday off. Until then, we were required to go to training on both U.S. and Colombian holidays, while the staff got both of those holidays off. I think that actually is one of the lessons we are scheduled to learn about in our training called "Sometimes the world isn't fair kid, now stop crying." Regardless, I wanted to take advantage of this day off. It just so happened to be that the local futbol team, The Barranquilla Juniors, was going to be playing a playoff game here in Barranquilla on that day, so my host dad, Alberto, was able to score some tickets and I went with him and my Peace Corps pal Emily. Before leaving the house, Alberto told me that they didn't allow people to wear belts into the stadium. At first I thought "How peculiar," then I realized that this is Colombia and they take their futbol seriously and that a belt is a damn good weapon, just ask any member of the Jackson 5.

We got to the stadium about 45 minutes before kickoff, which was good because the stadium was going to be pretty crowded since it was a playoff game. They had various music playing on the PA system, which is customary in any sporting event. However, as they were playing some choice salsa cuts, the camera feed to the jumbotron was fixated on a beautiful, curvy woman dancing next to her seat. This practice too is familiar to many sporting venues, but they continued to keep the camera on her for over 15 minutes. Now, this would make sense if it was some sort of dance team or cheerleaders, but this was just some paying customer. Even though this dame was pretty damn attractive, that's a long time to point the camera at someone who doesn't work for the team. The fans didn't seem to mind, not surprisingly. They continued to cheer and whistle for her for almost the entire duration of her "routine."

Mike, another PC pal of mine, and his two brothers met up with us shortly before kickoff. There were some interesting characters at the stadium. I saw a man drinking beer out of a two liter bottle, aka the gentleman's chalice, and another man selling beer out of a dirty bucket. Man did I want some bucket beer. One thing that I will always remember about these Latin American futbol games is how loud they are. It seems everyone had an air horn, which is surprising that they are allowed in but not belts. I was lucky enough to sit right in front of a horn enthusiast. Unfortunately, I had a bit of a late night the prior night, so I had a bit of a headache. Let me tell you, in that situation, nothing feels better than sitting in direct sunlight with a guy making sweet music with his air horn right behind you. At least there were very few vuvuzelas. During half-time, there were only two fights which warranted hoards of police to break up by means of wildly swinging their clubs at anyone they see. Pretty tame. Between the fights, there was more music playing and that meant the camera was searching the crowd for attractive women. Every time it found a relatively attractive woman, all the guys in the stadium started whistling. Occasionally, the camera would find a cute child or someone that didn't happen to be a beautiful woman and the crowd would go completely silent.

This game was the second game in a two game series. The first game was held in the home stadium of the Boca Chicos, the team playing the Juniors. The game had to be called early because the head referee was struck in the face by a firework that someone in the crowd had launched and he began to bleed profusely. You know, just a day in the life. Luckily, Juniors ended up tying the game in fairly dramatic fashion, and for reasons that were explained to me but I failed to comprehend, they won the series. That was good news because if they had lost, we would have had to navigate our way through thousands of angry, rioting fans. Overall, a pretty good time.

Friday, December 2, 2011

A glimpse into the future

This past week, we finally received the formal information packet about our future sites. In addition, we met with our individual counterparts. Each volunteer has a counterpart, who is one English teacher at their school who will function as their main liaison. I know that seems unclear and doesn't really make sense. Welcome to my world. After a day and a half of meetings and lectures that weren't really necessary, each of us went with our counterparts to our respective future sites. Since I am going to be staying in Barranquilla, I didn't need to go very far.

When we arrived in the neighborhood, it more or less matched my expectations. It was a very poor area with a couple paved roads. Most of the side roads were dirt and filled with holes, trash, and debris. Simply gorgeous. That day, my school was actually closed because the teachers were having training at another nearby school. Also, kind of important, school around town were not in session because the school year ended, so this was a horrible time to visit our schools. So I went with my teacher to the other school to meet the staff. The teachers are about 90% female, which apparently is normal. One thing they kept noting was how young I was. Yeah, I know I'm young enough to be one you your kids, get over it. Also, the school is run by a nun. So, um, that will be interesting.

Olga had wanted me to sit through their training session, but after twenty minutes of listening to a woman ramble on about something, I had to get out of there. I asked if my counterpart, Zaira, could show me around my actual school. She didn't want to be there either, so she was more than eager. The school was actually nicer than I had imagined. It surprisingly has wi-fi. There are actual windows and not just holes in the walls. And, to boot, there were four, count 'em four fans in each classroom. Pretty swanky, eh?

After a brief tour, Zaira took me to meet my future family. I was going to be living with the same family that the previous volunteer at that site had lived with. The mother and her 18 year old son were home. They both seemed pretty nice. They gave me a choice of which room I would want to stay in. Either one that had corrugated metal ceiling that didn't fit correctly with the wall and no window, or the larger room with a normal ceiling and a window. You can guess which one I chose. I also found out that they run a preschool out of their back patio. That can be good and bad. I love kids, and preschoolers are adorable, but it's going to get pretty loud. It'll probably be fine. Something that won't be fine is the store across the street that has speakers blaring a five second loop of an advertisement, repeating "Dos Mil! Dos Mil!" and a couple other incomprehensible words over and over again. I'll be lucky if it only drives me to drink.

Turkey day

Thanksgiving was a highly anticipated day for all of us future volunteers ( I say future because we're not technically "volunteers" until we're sworn in on December 14). Not only would we be enjoying a break from our variety-lacked diets of meat and rice to enjoy a nice meal, we would also be finding out our sites that we will be working in for the next two years. Needless to say, everyone was pretty excited on that day.

We started the day by visiting the Museo del Caribe. This museum featured exhibits about various aspects of Colombia's Caribbean culture. There was a Gabriel Garcia Marquez room, which featured a 30 minute projector show of animation that corresponded with a few of his popular works. It was interesting and more than a little but trippy. The rest of the museum featured aspects of Caribbean language, dance, and the local ecosystem. It was enlightening. It also had this when you walk in the front door
      
Takes me back to simpler times. Simpler, more racist times.





We then took a bus back to the Peace Corps office where we would eagerly await the news of our future sites. Naturally, the conference room wasn't ready when we arrived, so we waited in the Peace Corps office, which was surprisingly devoid of staff, save for the secretary. So we all took to raiding the upper staff members' American candy stashes. Before you say anything, that candy was there for everyone, but maybe not everyone at once, but oh well. After a bit of waiting, we finally made our way to the conference room. The staff member that was mainly in charge of placing us, Olga, started calling individual people to stand up. She then gave a very brief intro about their site, almost always including over-the-top compliments (I love this place, the people are soooooo nice, this site is so beautiful, etc) and then said the name of the school and which of the three big cities it is in. My name was called about 2/3 of the way through. I was ready for the standard hype of my site, but I was surprised to hear her say that this site is going to be "very challenging," and they have "many needs" with "a lot that can be improved." I was in a state of partial shock. I didn't quite know how to react. Later, everyone told me that my face was priceless when she was telling me all these negative things about my future school. I was a bit upset and depressed that my school was the only one that she had only negative things to say about. It also didn't help that when I asked other staff members for more info, all they told me was that place was really dangerous. Great. According to Olga, with this presentation of our sites, we normally would get a packet of further information about our sites. However, there were a couple of the packets that weren't finished, so they were going to wait until the next Monday to hand them out. So, for a while, I was pretty bummed out about what I heard about my future site.

All I have to say is thank goodness there was Thanksgiving dinner to look forward to. I was more than ready at that point to eat my sadness away. And I must say, I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of food available. Being in the Peace Corps, I've grown used to living with limited resources. But brother, resources were a-plenty that day. Everything thing was delicious, except for the broccoli salad. It would have been fine had someone no loaded it up with nuts. It completely ruined it, as nuts do to many foods (brownies, cakes, various salads). Man, nuts really grind my gears. Anyway, I was still happy to eat until I couldn't feel my feet. The dinner was held at staff member Fernando's house and he has one great setup. He has a floor all to himself with a great view and a ping pong table. You better believe I was all up in that table's bizness, yo.