Useful Vacations: 200 Soles, 300+ Students

Just back from Jeshú my barber—as I wrote Katherine, I'm now ready for my transfer from the Peace to Marine Corps.

I realized y'all haven't had an update in some time, and I know that makes Jean mad, so here goes nothing.

What have I been up to in Ancash in 2011? Useful Vacations. As Youth Development Volunteers, one of our jobs is to organize “Vacaciones Útiles.” For many people in very small communities this involves teaching English or Computers to 20-40 students by themselves. In Jangas, it's a little bigger, but its budget is about the same as these other, smaller Vacaciones Utiles: 0.

To start planning Vacaciones, in early January, we met with the new Alcalde (mayor) and his Regidores (city councilmen?) to plan out these here Vacaciones. In the past the town has usually focused their Vacaiones on sports and maybe a little theatre. After doing surveys, I found the kids really wanted to study—math, computers, and even English.

After pitching our academic plan for the Vacaciones to the Alcalde, everyone loved it. The only problem was the old Alcalde left town (he didn't actually live in Jangas) leaving the budget with 200 Soles (3 Soles/$1).

But remember, like I've always said, when life gives you 200 Soles, make Vacaciones Utiles. My host-cousing Cabo and I sat down to start planning things. Basing our estimates on pure guesses, and previous participation, we figured two sections of primary and two sections of secondary would be sufficient, and we'd probably need 3-4 classrooms at the colegio. This was dubbed fortunate cause the principal only wanted to give us 2 classrooms and the computer classroom.

So we opened “Matricula,” advertising with the local media—radio, t.v, posters, word of mouth, intimidation of my favorite students jk, etc. We opened registration up on Monday and had maybe 20 or so registrees—Not bad. Then Tuesday came, another 30 or 40 more, and then I started to do math and got worried. By the end, including our pre-school (meets Tues and Thurs) we had well over 300 students signed up for our Vacaciones Utiles.

Instead of two sections of primary, we opened up six sections, and instead of 2 classes and the computer lab, we now have 8 classes and the computer lab (woops). Now we just had to find teachers—as Cabo is the most laid back human being on the planet, he told me not to worry, and I did my best not to.

In the end, as somehow he always does, Cabo found the teachers. Our teachers range from myself to two German volunteers, to 1 ex-alcalde, to several professional teachers, and workers from the Municipality. Outside the workers from the Municipality, everyone is a volunteer. It is truly an impressive effort from the community.

In the first few weeks, scheduling and teachers having scheduling conflicts lead to some confusion—when you go in in the morning you literally could end up teaching English to 16 year olds or health practices to 7 year olds, no importa. But learning by doing is always the best way to learn, so we didn't fret too much.

Classes for the students range from: Mathematical Reasonal, Verbal Reasoning, English, Computer skills, Art, Physical Education, and on Fridays we have Health lectures from the Puesto de Salud.

We're halfway through Vacaciones and I'm really proud of the work we're doing. In fact, our main problem so far has been the fact that Februrary is Carnival month, and thus most of the kids bring water balloons to school with them—an unanticipated occurence. We're going to plan a more organized water balloon day, where Prof. John plans to take his revenge out on those that have not listened about our water balloon policy during Vacaiones.

Excitingly enough, Vacaciones isn't the only project that is getting going. Recently we started Movie Night on Friday Nights so teenagers have something to do, we're getting a teenage volunteer group going, and we're hoping to start Youth Health Promoters in March or April.

Anyway, I know this blog entry lacked in the humor department—don't worry, I plan to start trying some of the Quechua I learned in my recent classes—and this is bound to land me in some funny situations.

Furthermore, I figured it's getting into tax season, so you mine as well know what a sliver of your tax dollars are currently doing in Jangas, Perú. (We're also celebrating Peace Corps' 50th Anniversary at the Ambassador's house in Lima in March—so thanks for that too :).

Much Love de Ancash,

John William

PS: The author would like to remind readers that calling him at 948-767-830 is very possible and cheap through Google Talk.

Picture Credit: The 99% Completed World Map.