Around a year ago, I made a list of all the potential projects I could or would do in my village. There were 8 or 9 things, counting that if I shoot for the moon and fail I'd still land on the stars. I have 5 and a half of the things on this list crossed off right now and the ambitious Asian in me wishes for recognition and a solid pat in the back.
Even as I am bragging about the things I have done, I know that I have not changed any lives. Compare to much much much better Peace Corps volunteers, my projects are small fries. People might remember me because I am the first foreigner they see, or that person who keeps talking to everyone about how they shouldn't poop in the bush or sleep outside without nets, but there is nothing that I have done for them that couldn't have been done by anyone else. Talking about my Peace Corps service like this is not a way of fishing for compliments – it's a reminder to myself to keep my ego from inflating from all the praises I received for the small things that I do.
Anyhow, last week, my Alternative Break Goli Youth Workshop finally came together. I got a small grand of 385 cedis (about 195 dollars) to fund a 3 days workshop during the school break for the JHS students in my community. I named it Alternative Break in honor of my main college involvement. After the grand was funded and per some students' request, a 4th day was added for ICT teaching – mainly to give my kids the opportunity to actually use a real computer. We have no electricity in the community and they learn how to use the computer almost entirely through a text book. The other 3 days, we cover Life Skills, Health and Food Security.
About only 13 students ended up making the workshop out of my original 20. Some took the opportunity of break to travel and find works and couldn't attend. But I guess that was a silver lining because the extra money for materials went into making the 4th day happen. The smaller group also allowed for me to have better control of the environment so in the end, I guess I still win.
But I couldn't really run 4 days of workshop without any help, so beside my local counterparts, some volunteers in my region also came and helped out. That was one of the most amazing thing. My village has never seen more foreigners before and all of a sudden, a bunch of white people are just roaming around – shock to the system I'm sure. I would like to think that my friends had a great time helping facilitation and sleeping on my floor. And I was also amazing to have some many people in my big empty house at the end of the night. Made me imagine what it could have been like if I had housemates.
The fund for my grant came from PEPFAR, which is money for HIV/AIDS awareness, so tried to focus a little bit more on HIV education than the other subject. I planned to have an HIV awareness mural and a play performance for my community on the 4th day, but we ran out of time. But my students went above and beyond and decided to commit to an extra 5th day to do the mural and the play – without me having to feed them! So on the extra last day, we met up again, and even though only 6 or 7 students showed up, (mostly girls, yay!) we managed to put together an amazing HIV awareness mural.
Initially, I wanted to have the students come up with their own idea about a mural, but that proved unsuccessful, so we decide to have another copy of the one I did when I was still a trainee (a smiling yellow condom holding hand with a smiling AIDS ribbon, it is a goofy as it sounds). I think some of you might recognize it. The great thing about this is when we did the first mural, we would joke about how that would be my main project, painting a smiling condom in all 10 regions in Ghana. So, two down, eight to go.
Not only able to paint an awesome mural, my students also put together a great play for the whole community. I had to ask them to scale back several time and focus on just HIV because they had wanted to act out everything they have learned (malaria, nutrition, hygiene, open defecation...), and we simply just didn't have time. Five condom demonstrations and one flip chart of nasty STI infection symptoms later, the community was buzzing about what they have heard or seen. My students, the newly crowned peer educators, could not wait to do it again and it felt wonderful to see such motivation.
So that was one of the busiest week of my Peace Corps service, and a great learning experience in term of being responsible and in charge of some sort of an operation, as small scale as it was. By the end, I was completely pooped but it felt great. This workshop ended on such an unexpected high note for me that I feel so much more confident in beginning more projects that I have been thinking about. Most of the time, the fear of failure holds me back, and maybe this is a late realization 18 months in, but in Peace Corps, I do what I want, and it's great.
