So the past few weeks have had highs and lows, and I feel like kinda summing them up here for y'all. I'm going to try and make it sound the way I feel about it now, and not at the moment. This is a good practice for when we feel frustrated with something in life and know we will fly off the handle if we address the issue at the moment. Time allows us to gain perspective, and while drastic actions at the moment may have a big impact, they can also cause more damage than good. As a Peace Corps Volunteer one of my main responsibilities is to do no harm, and sometimes it is important to take problems on the chin and deal with them in a more planned out and precise manner.
So starting off the Electronic Repair class I've started has been a lot of fun! So much so that in the first class I went over the 1 hour class time and continued teaching until it was almost dark. I love seeing people who are motivated and want to grow and share in the learning process. Thankfully the people in that class are super motivated to learn how to think critically about the repair process and I am so proud of their passion. On the other hand, I got a good old dose of reality after coming back from Dili a couple weeks ago and finding out that the kids in my English class skipped out on the course I had planned for them. I had taken the time to find someone to replace me for that week, and so the next week I had the person I asked to do the class teach the same lesson in front of me while I watched. It is extremely important to practice and one of the best ways to practice is to teach and share the knowledge you have. Unfortunately, bad habits that are learned from a young age are some of the hardest to change. I can only hope that they can start to understand the importance of practice and will take that into their teen and adult years.
More of a personal accomplishment was the recipes I tried recently! I have made cheese with my host family, and although not all of them ate it (there is a huge fear of trying new things from what I've experienced) my host niece loves it! Along with that, I have currently started to attempt winemaking! I'm super excited and hopeful that this recipe turns out well. Not only that, but my host father and brother want to learn the process (which I'm also trying out for the first time). I'll keep you all updated on it, but after seeing the amount of CO2 this thing is spitting out, I'm very hopeful.
Aside from that, the compost project has hit a little bit of a snag. A few weeks ago I put up a signup sheet for people to choose which month they want to help turn over and water the compost. Unfortunately, after checking about a minute ago approximately 0 people have signed up. This has been disheartening because of the amount of effort and planning we went through to get this project started. This is also paired with the discovery that even after the training we hosted there is a lot of litter that is around the office. This is after the literal blood, sweat and tears I've put into these projects, and had I known that nobody really wanted this then I could have saved time digging out the pit and cleaning up all the trash on the property. The unfortunate part is that I was told the opposite, I had a lot of excitement and support for the project, just to have it stagnate because nobody wants to contribute. These are the moments where ignorance would make understanding this issue a lot easier because I could just tell myself that the people here like living in filth. For critical thinkers though, this kind of assumption feels empty because it would be easy and obviously false. So here I am wondering where I went wrong and trying to reevaluate my projects before I sink the same amount of effort into them just to have little to no participation.
I know there is a reason for this, and I suppose my next post will address that (hopefully). However, I think this is a good lesson for us all to share because even though I have rarely experienced this issue before, Expectations are always a struggle to manage when reality rears its ugly head. Things often seem a lot better or a lot worse in our minds because we are wired for extremes. Just like when our ancestors had to be wary of the tiger in the brush, or find the motivation to make discoveries we too are programmed to hype up the highs and exaggerate the lows. I am no exception to this rule, so the way I will handle this will be flawed and misconstrued in some way. The biggest difference I see in people are the ones who take their failures and learn from them so that they can tweak their future attempts and those that use their failures to reinforce their fear to attempt something again. I know which option I try to take, and I only hope that I can use my opportunities to fail in order to shine hope on those that are instead afraid of their mistakes. So with that being said, I'll talk to you soon, and until then I'll leave you with this.
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
~Henry Ford
Much Love,
~BW
