What's Next?

Rainy season's back! And you know what that means.

Well, you probably don't. But it means summer school, sweating and zancudos.* And while last year, I was spending morning fumbling about with my community diagnostic survey and watching whole seasons of NCIS in front of my fan in the afternoons, this year I'll be kept really busy.

Summer school is starting soon. This year, I'll be teaching a class on health promotion through mass communication as part of our PEPFAR project. We'll be working with the teen promoters we trained last year in two different communities, as well as some new students who want to participate. We'll be covering how to do radio spots, posters — even making a video. And I'm really pumped. Mass comm is one of those few areas in which I feel moderately competent, and it will be fun to get a chance to incorporate it into our HIV-prevention project.

I'm mostly excited to write and shoot the video about HIV/AIDS and prevention methods. A lot of the materials we get are from Lima or other parts of Latin America. But those places aren't Tumbes, and the culture is slightly different. It will be great to have locally made resources.

Our English class is finally getting off the ground — *fingers crossed*. A really nice woman in my town has studied English up to a more advanced level, so she'll be taking on the role as facilitator/teacher, and I'll just be a support role. We'll also be charging 8 soles for the 8-week course, which will go toward materials and as a small stipend for the señora. I really don't know how this is going to work out, but I'm optimistic. I'm hoping the setup will make it more sustainable.

The first weekend in February, PCVs in Piura and Tumbes will be doing a girls retreat for teens. Each participating volunteer will bring 1-3 girl teens to a leadership camp, equipped with strong, female speakers and life skills activities. I'll be serving as a camp counselor, leading one of the groups. I've never participated in this type of camp before (there's a boys camp mid-year), so I'm a little nervous to see how it turns out. But it sounds like it will be really fun for the girls.

In between these activities/classes, we'll be continuing with our Health Homes projects with our team of health promoters. I'm hoping this year I'll have more time to go out into the campo and do house visits with the families. I spent most of last year in the district's capital, but I'd really like to venture out to the small villages only accessible by walking. Our tech trainer in Lima during training told me once that if your shoes aren't dirty, you aren't working hard enough. So I'm planning on getting mine a little muddy.

Anyway, so that's what I have planned. I'm sure things will change, come up, or fade away. Nothing really works out the way that you plan it, and in Peace Corps it's more the rule than the exception. But we'll roll with it and see where we end up. I mean, I signed up for an adventure, right? And the best things are never planned.


*zancudos means mosquitoes