Now that I’ve been around for a year, I guess that makes
me an expert.
Or at least that is how I have been made to feel through
the last couple months. First Tech Week
gave me the opportunity to teach aspiring Volunteers about work and life in my
community. Then – after serving as
translator and guide for Mom and Dad – a senior design class group from
Michigan Technological University visited for a week to do some field data
collection here. Then – before they had
even left – I ran back to Panamá City to co-facilitate the final week of
Pre-Service Training. And then this last
weekend we held the Project Management and Leadership Conference (PML – the
same one Ángel attended with me back in May) here in Quebrada Pastor.
Training the new Environmental Health group – during Tech
Week, but especially in the training community – gave me an overwhelming sense
of nostalgia. Not that long ago, I was
the one with a million questions, full of anxiety and nervous excitement and
big ambitions and hidden fears, about to embark on my roller coaster through
Quebrada Pastor. That roller coaster
sure hasn’t stopped, but it is a much less jerky ride, as I’ve learned to hold
on a little more firmly and anticipate some of the bumps and turns. And a year’s worth of perspective on this
place gives me a great deal more confidence managing my work and life here,
accepting the unexpectedness of life that is the norm here.
The visit from the Michigan Tech students took me one
step even farther back in my reminiscence; relating to the Peace Corps Trainees
required remembering my state of mind of only a year ago, but for the seniors I
had to go back to when I was in college, traveling for the first time with
Engineers Without Borders, curious and motivated and full of book-smarts, but
without a detailed picture of development work.
The 4 students (with a student mentor) that visited
Quebrada Pastor are taking an international senior design class in which they
partner with a Peace Corps community, visit for a week to gather data, do field
surveys, and experience campo life, and then spend the semester using the data
to design their final senior design project, which they then offer to the Peace
Corps Volunteers, who can use it, if desired, to implement in some form. I had heard of this program back in March
from another Volunteer in my group, and invited the professor to send a group
of students to me – thinking, back then, that I didn’t have anything planned
for August (soon discovered to be false).
Despite the intensity of plans on both sides of their visit, I was
thrilled to be a part of the program.
To me, this is a very cool program. These students are excited to learn about the
world, are excited to help people, and are excited to use their engineering
educations to do something useful. I was
(and, a couple degrees later, still am) just like those students. To get to travel for a week, do some useful
work, and get a taste of development while being welcomed into a community to
learn about the life and the people there is both a practical and an
eye-opening opportunity – perfect for engineering students.
The difficulty is the “doing useful work” part of
that. Without the context of the place,
and a thorough needs assessment and understanding of the community, trying to
find that “useful work” in a vacuum is very difficult – to the point that the
resulting work may not be useful, or worse, damaging. (I did make a point to share my story from Sustainable Development = Empowerment with the students to illustrate my perspective on
development work; they appreciated the lesson in it.) The cool thing about this program is that,
partnering with Peace Corps, all of that assessment and establishing context
and forming relationships has already been done by the Volunteer, who can then
easily point to and coordinate a project that will benefit the community in
which the students can be treated as a useful resource. This way, the people in the community are
still in control of the project, the students can offer their technical
expertise, and the Volunteer can serve as the bridge that understands both the
perspective of the community and of the students, thereby helping them
understand each other even when language and cultural barriers arise.
In our case, the “useful work” was the measurement and
evaluation of the school aqueduct. Willy
and I had started doing this, but finding the time to make it happen was a slow
process, and I would not be able to analyze the flow and pressure problems
without first collecting a full set of data.
The students managed to survey the whole system, measure flow, take
water quality samples, and assess demand in the houses and school in just five
days. They will spend the semester
analyzing their data, producing a design, and giving us recommendations for the
improvement of the system, which I hope to implement next year.
I appreciated this opportunity to be responsible for
training the next generation of engineers – whether or not they go into development
work, they have a better idea of the kinds of challenges people face in another
part of the world. And I hope that my
commentary on sustainable development – as well as seeing it firsthand – sticks
with them if they continue with other kinds of short-term work abroad. It’s tough to do good development walking
into an unknown context, so a bridge is important.
I suppose the final phase of my service will be weaning
my community off that bridge, since there will no longer be Peace Corps Volunteers
here, at least for a while. I need to
leave them feeling sufficiently empowered and capable to find help and
resources and achieve things themselves.
They were already well on their way before I arrived – Lucas had managed
to secure several different projects here, and Willy’s rapidly expanding
network of contacts and clients for his chocolate business continues to improve
his opportunities. It was Ángel’s idea
to bring the PML coordinators to Quebrada Pastor to give more people in the
community an opportunity to learn leadership skills, and he and Lucas were
responsible for planning the whole thing.
It was quite the success – 15 people attended, and over half of them
were under 25. Looks like Quebrada
Pastor is also ready to train its own next generation.
Pictures:
Measuring flow with Michigan Tech students
Awarding certificates at the completion of PML-In-Site Conference
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