Update

So nothing terribly new these days, except that today I had my first language evaluation from Peace Corps. I scored “intermediate high” on the test, which basically means I’m already proficient enough in Kriole to swear in at the end of training. This is good news in that I’m doing great with the language so far, and don’t need to worry at all about the final test before swear in, but bad news in that it means that Peace Corps thinks that piss-poor ability in Kriole is all anyone needs to get by once we’re alone at site. Not to mention the fact that they speak a completely different dialect on the Norhtern islands (where I hope I’ll end up) so all of this is really for nothing anyway. There are inherint problems with a program like Peace Corps, and figuring out a way to individualize training and language instruction is apparently one of the big ones.

In other news, by now my ENTIRE town knows my name. I’m hearing “Kelly!!!” from all directions when I walk the street these days, and it is a TON of fun. All the women here have like 6 or 8 kids each, at least, so there are TONS of children in the town and its like Christmas for them if I just stop for even a minute to talk or play or hug them…I honestly do not understand it. I haven’t done ANYTHING for any of these people, and in fact, they’ve been the ones taking care of me this past month. But they’re still SO happy to have me here. Hard to figure.

All the volunteers are stressing and talking incessantly about site announcement since we returned from our various “demystification” island trips. (Remember I went to Santo Antao, and other volunteers went to other islands.) They’ve given us a form with all the possible sites and we’re allowed to rank them in order of preference, but some are obviously better than others, so people are wigging out and trying to figure out how PC will decide who goes where. Greg had told me before that they already have it all figured out and that the form is just for show, so I’m trying not to get too worked up about it. But still…I REALLY want that one particular village. 

So we all have to complete some sort of community project prior to swearing in as volunteers, so I organized my first community “event” this week. Just a meeting to talk about an event actually, but it’s a LOT harder than you’d think to get everyone in town to agree to meet at a particular place and time. Not to mention NOTHING starts on time here, so you have to keep in mind that if you tell people 7pm, they might begin showing up around 9pm, which is pretty late since everyone goes to bed when it gets dark, so they might not show up at all. At this meeting that I’ve put together, my town will, hopefully, show up and hear my proposal (in my broken Kriole) for a school beautification project. There are only 30 chairs in the school (that houses over 120) and about 60 semi-broken ones, so I want to try to get those repaired, and I also want to have the building washed and painted, maybe with some safe-sex or good hygiene symbols/cartoons painted on one of the walls. My “getting ahead of myself” goal is to have a new community garden planted there too. I think that might be a bit much for my remaining 4 weeks in this town, but it’s going into my proposal nonetheless. There are about 1500 people in my village and I’m going to be overjoyed if I get 40 at my meeting. I think someone from Peace Corps will be in attendance somewhere in the back to see how I do, so I’m going to be a little nervous about that as well.

So that’s it for now. Thanks to everyone who’s been writing me. I CRAVE letters and e-mail from home (and in English) so please drop me a line and tell me anything you can about what’s going on at home. The last news I had was that Texas was flooded and that Ladybird died and traffic was at a standstill. Other than that I’m completely clueless. Are we still at war? Is football on yet and if so, how do the Horns look?