Vindicated?

For most of my 19 months in site (19 months!) I have frequently complained about laziness, disorganization and a generally terrible work ethic in my village, even among the teachers and principal at the school, where I am assigned to do the majority of my work.

A couple of months ago, the time came to decide whether my site should get a replacement volunteer, someone to take over my work after I leave. I was undecided, because my experience overall has been a positive one, but I did not think a site that was so unwilling to collaborate deserved a new volunteer when there are plenty of sites where that volunteer could be more sucessful.

In the end, I solicited for a replacement, thinking that the problems in my site exist all over the country and I probably was just being overly sensitive, overly critical.

So yesterday my boss came to visit me and my school director, who is my official counterpart, and my director forgot about the meeting and went to another town. This did not surprise me but it infuriated my boss, who I don't think ever understood the extent of my problems in site when I explained it to him the first few times. Now my site might not get a new volunteer after all because it's finally become clear to him how hard it is to accomplish anything in that environment, which he said was in fact worse than many of the other places he had visited.

I have the same mixed feelings about this that I described before -- I love my site and think anyone could live happily there. They would just have to resign themselves to not getting much done and dealing with the community's expectations that the volunteer is supposed to give handouts and do projects without any help or investment from them. The lifestyle is fun and the people are friendly and nice; the work part sucks.

My boss and I also discussed an aspect of Salvadoran culture we see quite often: Salvadorans don't often honor meetings and commitments, and they make no apologies for it. My director never once told us he was sorry for missing the meeting; he just explained that he was called to another meeting and had forgotten about ours. When I set up the meeting with him in the first place, I had to explain to him that he was making a firm commitment to that date and time, and even then he kept saying, "If I can, if nothing else comes up." He tells me all the time that he is committed to working with the Peace Corps and will do everything possible to get a replacement volunteer. But if those things include attending a short but mandatory and important meeting, forget about it.

The same thing happened after the stove project meetings. People showed up at my house and explained why they couldn't go to the meeting, explanations that were usually ridiculous, like having to run an errand that they could have done at another time. Sometimes they said they just forgot, but they didn't see that as something to feel bad about or apologize for. And then they wanted all the information and materials that I had given out at the meeting, and I had to go over everything over and over again for the irresponsible people who showed up at my house in droves.

When my boss brought this up to the teachers (he had to; I as the gringa didn't want to be the one to criticize their culture, but he's Salvadoran so he can get away with it) they just shrugged and said, Asì somos (that's the way we are.) I don't believe in blaming poor people for their own poverty, but when people aren't willing to invest even a little bit of their time, I don't feel the need to go to great lengths trying to help them.

So there might not be another volunteer in San Josè Carrizal. And the more I think about it, the more I'm okay with that.

Paz y amor.