The Projects Are Coming! The Projects Are Coming!

Yes, as the title implies, the projects are coming! We finished our trash diagnostic for our town and to quote the engineer after I turned in the information to her, “todos (everything) ESTA CORRECTO!” And yes, it was in capital letters. Though I felt the numbers were a bit off considering over half the town has left for the rainy season and most houses didn’t give us all their “true” trash because they were afraid of public scrutiny. Though in the end it turned out fairly believable, something around .85Kg per person per day. Now we are preparing for the Campaña de Limpeaza, where most of the Nor Yauyos Cochas Reserve is going to clean up the freakin’ trash! Each town is going to be responsible for its streets, farms, and watersheds, and it sounds like an amazing initiative; not to mention we get free hats and t-shirts. Tommorrow I’m going to present the plan and the date to the communitarios during the fiena, which is a community work day that should provide me with a pretty good venue.

In a way, I feel that the more projects I do concerning trash the more my community will think of me as some sort of “Solid Waste Control Volunteer.” This makes me a little uncomfortable simply because I desperately wanted to work mostly with agro-forestry promotion. On the other hand I also joined for the sole reason of helping, and that usually means doing the work other people have put off doing. So, alas, maybe my fate of my service will be solid waste management. But, then again if we truly think about it, what other physically sustainable projects can an Environmental Volunteer in the Peace Corps actually do? So much of what we are trying to promote is just an idea, theory, or simply to big to truly comprehended (i.e. “GLOBAL” warming.) Its such a huge hurdle to just get the school kids to recognize that they are living in a protected national reserve of Peru, let alone within a constantly evolving eco-system encompassing the entire planet! Sure we can plant a 1000 trees (which is actually one of our goals in each site), but does the community openly know the “why” behind it all? I will probably finish two of my three Environmental Volunteer Goals (plant trees, manage trash, educate about the environment,) within the first 6 months of my service, but if I can’t start reinforcing the “why” behind protecting the environment then none of my projects will truly be sustainable…

Is this the true meaning of the Peace Corp’s? Being in site long enough to possibly make a possible lasting impression that might possibly lead to a possible change in some unfavorable habits? (Please take note of all the possibilities.) With this type of reasoning does a PC volunteer ever really know if they made a difference? I think a Peace Corps volunteer needs to come to terms with the idea that even self-less service is selfish and this is just as much behavior change for us as it is for our communities.