Ship 'em out

Saturday, January 14 was the last full day we would spend in the houses we were staying in for training. The night before, we got together for a potluck-type get together. I believe I made the best thing there: a bean dip with tomatoes, onion, garlic, and plenty of cilantro. I originally planned to make guacamole, but of course the grocery store, out of the 50 or so avocados it had in stock, had no ripe ones. So I had to think on my feet and come up with something else given that grocery stores here have horrible variety of, well, anything, and that this was last minute, of course. So I whipped together this bean dip and it turned out great. Pretty much everyone left on that Sunday, including myself. But unlike many people who had to take a bus three hours or more to get to their sites, I took a taxi for about ten minutes to get to mine.

The neighborhood where I currently live in is considered one of the most neighborhoods that Peace Corps volunteers live in. It is actually included in a list of barrios around Barranquilla that we should avoid. So, that really put me at ease. In my packet of information about the barrio, it had a long list of security rules for living there. Here are some highlights:

• "At least the first month the PCV should be accompanied by a local counterpart, from home to workplace and on the way back." I live only about seven blocks away from my school and none of my school counterparts live in this barrio.
• "Transportation to and from the site can only be done by taxi." Taxis can range from 5000 to 10000 pesos. Buses are 1500 pesos. I was originally told I would be given extra money to make up for this, but then I was told I would only be compensated for travel to secondary projects. Great.
• "Never return to your community after 10 pm, if it is not possible, PCV should stay the night in some place previously arranged in Barranquilla."
• "PCV must steer clear of estaderos (bars) and avoid weekend festivals" in addition to "PCV must steer clear from pool halls and other shops where alcohol is [being] consumed." My next door neighbor is a pool hall and the street that I live on is littered with bars and tiendas where alcohol is sold and consumed.

 One interesting detail about my living situation that may or may not burrow itself into my subconscious and infiltrate my thoughts until I lose all touch with reality altogether. I am talking about the dos mil store across the street from my house. The exchange rate here is usually 2000 pesos (dos mil) to one American dollar, so it's basically a dollar store.  What's so harmless about some dollar store you ask? Well, it has these speakers out front that play a running loop of some man frantically saying "todo dos mil, todo dos mil," and lists off various things in the store "vasos dos mil, medias dos mil, burros dos mil, etc." And these speakers play all day, from 9am to 9pm, every day. My family plays loud music out of their own speakers to combat this. It is never quiet in my house.

Where do I begin about the school I work at? Well, I found out the first day or so that it's basically a Catholic school, run by a nun, that was founded by a priest. Holy cow. I picked up on this when, on the first day, we spent half of the administrative meeting singing religious songs, including one to the tune of The" Sound of Silence," and engaging in long, meditative prayer sessions. I just kind of twiddle my thumbs or hatch schemes to destroy the dos mil store's speakers during these. I was somewhat fearing the moment when teachers would ask me about my religion, since I'm an atheist. That moment came up the first week. I was in a group of teachers and one asked me if I was Catholic. I said no. They looked mildly surprised, then asked cautiously if I was Protestant. I said no. This brought substantial surprise and then they asked if I was Jewish. I said no. Then there was kind of an awkward silence. To break the silence, I put two fingers above my head and said "I'm the devil," and started laughing at my joke. No one else laughed. Thank Satan that the nun came in right after to gather everyone together again.

I don't even know why they had me come to those administrative meetings for the week and a half before school started. I couldn't understand most of the things the people said, and even if I could, it's not I had any say in anything at all. Although, I was semi-amused by the way teachers "discussed" topics. Someone would say something and then everyone in the room would start screaming and arguing at the top of their voice. Sometimes I would just make random guttural noises to blend in. It's like British parliament or a group of chimpanzees throwing feces at each other. Uh oh, did I just do political commentary? Probably not. I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Cartagena New Year's? Don't mind if I do.

With New Year's Eve approaching and remembering that Christmas Eve was painfully boring despite the fact we were told that there normally are a lot of fun parties, many of us wanted to take a trip. A few fellow volunteers and I decided to go to Cartagena for New Year's Eve, which is about a two hour bus ride from Barranquilla and is known for being more touristy. Staying true to my procrastinator roots, we only started looking for a hostel two days before we were going to leave. I searched for about an hour with no luck until I stumbled across the Makako Chill Out Hostel, which had just enough beds for us and only cost 20,000 Colombian pesos (about $10 US) per night. We lucked out big time.

We were inside the historic walled part of the city. Cartagena used to be a Spanish stronghold, so there is a large portion that is surrounded by a giant wall that even has cannons on top. This area is the most popular spot for tourists to visit. The buildings were beautiful and surprisingly well-maintained. The streets were very narrow, just wide enough for one car to pass, which made me think that driving around in this area is maddening at the very least.

The first day we were there, we visited the beach near our hostel. Many of the beaches in that area were actually turned into bays of sorts because there were jetties made of rocks, however, this made the water very shallow and you couldn't go past water up to your waist without getting too close to the rocks and having a lifeguard whistle. That part I didn't understand. There were multiple lifeguards patrolling a mellow body of water and constantly whistling at people to move or come in, while where I come from, there are infrequent lifeguards in an area with surfable waves. 

The next morning we decided to skip going out for breakfast and I cooked everyone some scrambled eggs and bacon using what limited resources the hostel kitchen had to offer. Everything was going smoothly until I barely nudged the skillet with the bacon, which by the way had way too heavy a handle to balance well, and it started to fall. I catch the pan by the handle, but before I can pat myself on the back for having the grace of a swan with the hands of Jerry Rice, the bacon grease in the skillet sloshes over the edge and spills on the floor. I try first to wipe it up with napkins. Not even close. It just smears it more. So I find a mop and essentially just smear it around more with soapy water. Realistically, this is isn't clean, but in Colombia it is. Moral of the story, food was delicious and the bacon brought a tear to my eye, reminding me of 'merica.

New Year's Eve night started off with a shindig in the hostel that included a dinner of pizza, chicken, and a whole lotta coconut rice. A bit before midnight, we went in search of other festivities. We came upon some major fireworks that seemed incredibly close to where all the spectators were standing. In fact, it probably would have been illegal in the U.S. to have people be that close to the fireworks, but that just made them that much more awesome.

After that we started scouring the area for festivities. We came upon many parties in the streets with live bands playing traditional Colombian music. Overall, it was a long, fun night and I'm glad I was able to get out of Barranquilla for a while.

Finally some time off

For the past two weeks, we have had a break from training to celebrate Christmas and New Year's. There was an optional program offered to us during this break for us to occupy our time. It was presented to us as if we were going to help out in a program that helps people who want to work at American call centers to hone their English. It was supposed to be held in a school called Pies Descalzos, which was built by Shakira's charity foundation, who, if I'm not mistaken, is from Barranquilla. We arrived there on the first day. We were waiting outside the locked school for an hour until we were told that the principal was sick and not going to come to let us in and we were going to have to find a new location. Luckily a Colombian teacher counterpart was able to find a very small school about a few hundred feet away that we could use.

After sitting through the first day's orientation, we found out that this program was aimed more as a general English course for people of all levels and may not necessarily have a goal, or to put it in a more cruelly honest way, a shot of working in a call center. Initially, we were told that everyone in this program has taken a diagnostic English exam and we would be able to use it to place them in groups by skill level. However, those results were in Pies Descalzos, so we would not be able to access them. By this point, this kind of news just seemed par for the course. So we told everyone to fill out a brief questionnaire that asked their name, why they want to learn English, and what they already knew. After reading over all the papers, we figured that anyone who even attempted to answer in English, which were only about 6 or 7 people out of 40ish, should go into the advanced group. The rest were put into groups by a selection process that might of well have been blindly throwing darts at them. My favorite response to "Why do want to learn English?" was "yes." Mind you, we wrote the questions in English and Spanish.

The classes overall went pretty smoothly. Luckily I had a fellow volunteer to teach with, so the classes were a bit less stressful for me. I had the advanced class and I was actually impressed by the English level of one student. Most of the rest were about what I expected, except for one. It was obvious that he had little to no English experience. After a while of clearly struggling and obviously understanding very little at best, I tried to convince him to move down to an easier class. He told me he was OK here, which made me wonder if he even understood me speaking Spanish to him. One funny story with him: we were doing a lesson about the market, so we taught everyone phrases and vocabulary related with market interactions and haggling. The day before, we had told everyone to bring in three things that they would practice "selling" and bargaining. I decided to help out the struggling student the whole time. In his first interaction, he was selling his cell phone. Another student asked him how much. He thought for a bit and I told him to tell her how much it cost, and he said "One Peso," which would be worth about 1/20 of one U.S. cent. She said she'll buy it and he turned to me with a big smile, very proud of completing the "transaction." He clearly was not getting the point of the exercise.

One day during the break, several of us went watch the local baseball team, the Barranquilla Caimanes (Alligators), play a game. Tickets cost 5,000 Colombian pesos, about $2.50 US, and we were able to sit anywhere in the stadium. Food and beers in the stadium were only slightly more expensive than usual. But we could walk out anytime, buy some street food, and bring it back inside. The gate security was so lax, at one point I noticed stray dogs walking in and out of the front gate. I'm waiting for the day when the game is delayed due to a pack of stray dogs occupying the outfield. Since you don't ever see several gringos at any of the baseball games, we attracted the attention of a local news reporter. She interviewed two of us, myself not included. From what I heard, the interviews never made the news, but a shot of us doing the wave did, which is just fine with me.