Peace Corps Professional

Gentle Readers,

You didn't think I would forget, did you?  An elephant, never forgets.  Of course, that has nothing to do with me since I am not an elephant, but it's still a good saying.  I guess.  Maybe elephants disagree?

Anyway, hi!  It has been a raucous couple of weeks, let me tell you!  Seriously, there has been some serious Peace Corpsing going on down here with yours truly.  I'm mostly going to talk about Camp BILT, but before that let me just talk about my Lampesi project, briefly.

Lampesi - the stairs down to the river where people go to wash, land boats, etc.  It's culturally and logistically a central, important chunk of infrastructure in the village.

I've been trying to get money to build one forever.  Interesting developments - may have found a company to give us the cement.  MORE interesting developments - may have found an organization that wants to help us build a floating one!  It's with a Suriname Lions Club - does anybody know any local Lions Clubs?  Did anybody realize how many international-ish service-ish vaguely-rich-people clubs there are out there?  It's actually pretty cool - and they are dragging their feet a bit, but it could be super cool.

The problem with cement lampesi's are that they are expensive, not exactly green friendly (though they do help prevent erosion), and generally require at least some outside assistance and some major inside organization and commitment.  Wood lampesi's are quick, local, and easy.  Of course, they only last a couple of years.  So it's kinda two different theories of sustainable.

The reason that wood ones don't last, I'm told, is because the water level keeps changing.  If they were always above or always below the waterline - and made with the proper woods instead of whatever is lynig around - they should last a mad long time.  If Lions Club decides to help us at all, it will be to make a floating one.  There are some cultural barriers there - wood lampesi's are viewed as low class and there are NO floating lampesi's on the river.  But it's also an awesome opportunity - we could have the first floating dock on the river!

If either the Lions or the village decide they don't want to go that route, I will most likely right a Peace Corps Partnership Project (PCPP) - that means I ask the internet (and thus you, sorry) for money.  It's essentially an opensource grant request.  That is less than ideal for several reasons - I have to ask my friends for money and it does nothing to improve the village's access to local, sustainable project-oriented resources.  On the other hand, if I can't find another possible local funder - at least the village would end up with a lampesi.  That is a durable piece of infrastructure and the community organization required to build it would make for a strong model to sustain into the future - making future projects more likely. 

So yeah, we will see what happens!

Now...on to Camp BILT!  Boys Improving Lives Together (guess who came up with that.  yup.)  Man that camp went well.  It was a giant success, really just giant.  I couldn't be more happy with it, to be honest.  There were a lot of un-anticipatable challenges but the team just rolled with them and kept making it happen - and with a smile, which is all the difference when you are doing it in front of an audience of impressionable 12-19 year old boys.  I'm going to write a bit more about it from a personal view, here, but then I'll include a write up we were asked to do about it for a seminar involving other Peace Corps posts that do similar activities.

BILT was exactly what I hoped it would be and it was exactly what I like doing.  I got organized, carried the money, and ran around putting out fires and keeping a complex group of 30 boys and almost 30 adults moving towards the same goal.  It was that really good, gritty leadership, management, and motivation stuff that I just plain like - all set in the context of really making a difference in people's lives.  Basically, it's what I want to figure out a way to get paid to do.  Maybe not running youth camps specifically, but that basic concept. 

I'm in no way taking entire credit for it - we were a three person committee and it really did take all of us - but the camp was almost a text book case study in effective management.  Stuff keep trying to go wrong, but because we had a well defined planned, a clear overall vision, and sufficient buffer for a resources (the most important being volunteer motivation, which meant planning ways to boost it as needed) - we were able to swallow them all without stumbling.  So I'm really happy with it, and everyone I've talked to was as well.  A few of the more experience Volunteers who have previously planned and ran camps - and who were instrumental in helping us plan and run ours - were among the most complimentary.  And those are the ones that meant the most, since they really know what they are talking about.

So, all in all, not a bad couple of months work.  I'd probably even be willing to do it again...after a bit of a break.  That document I mentioned is the follow up post.