Exito!

 Sometimes things go better than you hoped they would.

Feb 2nd was Dia de los Humedales (Wetlands Day) and the muni and I put together a big celebration with all the vacaciones utiles kids.  It was supposed to start at 10, and I was a little nervous at 10:20 when the plaza had a lack of children and heavy rainclouds were peeking over the hills.  But soon enough, the teachers brought the students over from the school.  There were almost 200 of them!  I can’t pretend this was a voluntary activity, but I’m happy about the numbers nonetheless.

We started with a drawing contest about wetlands.  At first some of the older kids were complaining, and nobody brought a piece of paper despite being reminded by all sorts of adults, but they got invested in the activity once they started.  I was walking around the group and everybody wanted to show me their picture and ask me if it was good.  We gave them 45 minutes and a bunch wanted to keep going.

After the contest, I gave a little charla on the importance of wetlands and Lago Chinchaycocha.  Look how many little guys!

Those are all the kids I interact with every week and seeing them all together was incredible.  I got to use a microphone rather than yell over them all.  Powerpoint is a novelty here and they were really into the pictures.  They even answered the questions I asked them and remembered some of the things I said about ecosystems. 

Somebody said that they should all take their chairs downstairs.  Thankfully nobody died.

The secundaria students put on a great little bit of teatro about taking care of trees.  Not exactly about wetlands, but close enough to get environment points.

A few kids from every grade won school supplies and everybody went home with a pine tree. 

The muni was incredible.  They left me hanging until the last moment, but then really stepped up.  Lots of people came to help with chairs, supervision, and AV things.  At first they said they couldn’t give me anything.  Then there were 5 prizes.  Then 18 and everyone got a tree.  The mayor even came down to give a speech and hand out prizes. 

I think that Mayor Callupe was a big part in making this a bigger deal than it would have originally been.  He’s normally either inscrutable or grumpy looking, but he seems to be interested in what I want to do.  He said he wanted this celebration to have a presence, and everybody worked to make it so. 

Immediately after all of that, I went on the radio to talk about Wetlands Day and we wound around other environmental topics as well. 

I can’t hope that every event I plan will go this well, but today makes me very optimistic about the future.  It seems like the muni has my back. 

I’ve been working on the health post connection as well.  They want to continue with the healthy cooking classes and are also interested in micro-rellenos (family-sized landfills) and cocinas mejoradas (stoves that use less fuel and prevent respiratory disease).  They’ve delivered on their promises so far and I have high hopes. 

I don’t think the majority of Peace Corps experiences are like this.  I’ve talked to people whose communities don’t seem to want to speak with them or who have had disappearing socios.  Everyone here at the least finds me interesting and many seem excited about what I want to do.  I feel very grateful every day for that.  Though I’m still keeping contingency plans in the back of my mind in case things change. 

Hooray for a successful day!