Community Integration, Stage 1: Complete.

I'm starting to think that Peace Corps service is just one big series of "Moments of Truth."  We used the phrase "moment of truth" in Pre-Service Training during our Field-Based week, it's the way I felt in my first meeting with the artisans, and it's how I felt last Tuesday, when I presented my Community Diagnostic.

Every Peace Corps Volunteer is required to complete said Diagnostic, which is basically a way of organizing everything you have learned about your community in your first 3 months, based on surveys, interviews, and other activities with as many different groups as you can get to know.  I am super sick of describing it so I'll leave it at that.  The last two weeks I've been promoting this meeting on the radio and handing out (on foot, with a little bit of help) 70 official invitations to the artisan associations, directors of the high schools and Instituto, and other authorities and friends.  The people I expected to show up did, and the others did not; overall, I had about 40 people there, including the mayor and 2 other Peace Corps Volunteers.

The basic idea of the presentation is to give the community an opportunity to reflect on their current issues and how they can be solved.  I presented some of my ideas, most of which have been brought up by monsefuanos before (which is a good thing!).  What I mean is that there was already a lot of community support for these ideas, and they just haven't been achieved (for a number of political or whatever other kind of reasons).  My basic recommendations and things I will be working towards are:

• Formation of an Artisan Council (called a COLOFAR, could receive funding from the Municipality) to represent and organize programming for all associated and independent artisans
• Formation of a Tourism Committee, that represents the artisans, restaurants, recreation centers, and people involved in FEXTICUM (our big cultural festival every July)
• Computer classes for artisans, assisting them in internet promotion & researching new designs
• Productive activities with young people: summer camps, career and university panels, making sure all the hours of the school day are used to the fullest
• The Municipality needs to take big steps to promote tourism/culture/artisanry in Monsefú before it's too late (before all the artisans disappear and other sites gain notoriety)... I said that my dream would be to see this building below, the old Municipality building, turned into a "living culture" museum and open artisan workshop, where the artisans can work, sell, and give trainings.

The old Municipality building is the one with balconies, just to the left of the "Mercado Central Monsefú"

When I said this, the artisans bust into applause, which was a really cool moment for me (As you might have guessed, they have wanted this for a long time).  At the end of the presentation, the mayor gave a few words, and she went into more details about her plans for the museum/"living culture" workshop.  She basically said she is ready to support this project too and that a sufficient budget is already set aside, but the issue is the contract with the restaurant that rents out the bottom (You can see the open door in the picture).  She said we will work on putting together a list of signatures of everyone who supports this project, so that we might be able to convince the renter to break the contract sooner.  Anyway, overall this was very encouraging.  Rita (our mayor) stayed after to talk with one of the most educated and smart people in Monsefú, a young professor friend of mine, more about the museum, and hopefully his awesome ideas and my willingness to help will combine to make this idea a reality!

At the beginning when I was explaining Peace Corps, I used the quote from President Kennedy's Inauguration, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."  I brought it full circle at the end of the meeting, and asked everyone to write down one goal for this year, one thing they can do for the benefit of Monsefú.  They wrote these goals on papers in the shapes of flowers, because Monsefú is known as the "Eternal City of Flowers"... and everyone always jokes "and where are the flowers?" because our town is pretty desert-ish like the rest of the coast.  Well... here are the flowers!  Some of the people were more into it than others, but hey, it looks pretty.

The weeks leading up to this presentation were exhausting, but they were also some of the best yet that I've had in site.  Things felt markedly different as I was preparing for this presentation- mostly notably, people were stepping up (in small ways) to help me... I don't want to sound too negative here but basically it is often like pulling teeth to get anything out of my Municipality, as people would rather pelotearme (punt me around like a soccer ball) than actually do work.  But it seems that my time spent in the Tourism and Public Relations office has finally paid off, as they actively helped set up my presentation (computer, projector, speakers) without me asking.  

I finally felt like I had people watching out for me this week.  Especially two people, Saida and Jackie.  Saida is the Tourism person in the Municipality who has verrry slowly warmed up to me, but it finally feels like we are friends.  A while back when we were handing out invitations together she slipped her arm in mine to walk linked together (seemingly all Peruvian girl/women friends do this), and this past week we sat in her office and has a really good chat about motherhood... which I know so much about, right?  Anyway, it was great.  

And Jackie, oh Jackie.  This woman fell from heaven about a month ago.  She has an artisan craft store that was seemingly never open because she was traveling, so we only met recently, and ohhh what I have been missing.  She is almost single-handedly setting up a Christmas Dinner that all associated and independent artisans are invited to, which I think is the most amazing thing we could do to bring unity to the different groups.  She is super Christian so has a very powerful way of talking about unity, sharing, love, etc. and over the last few weeks of planning has become a great friend to me.  She invited me to go to her Protestant church last Sunday and then to eat lunch with her sister's family, which was really special.  More to come about the church stuff in a later post.  And she went out of her way to help me solve my chair-quantity-crisis the day and hours before my presentation.

Anyway, a number of conversations and events this past week made me feel like I've finally gained a significant level of trust and understanding with some people.  I didn't really realize before what I was missing, but now that I have it, it feels so much better.  I could definitely use a lot more help and support, but for now- Community Integration, Stage 1: Complete.