Before I left last week, I went to Agua Caliente to present the Reglamento de Manejo de Desechos Sólidos (Solid Waste Management Regulations) for the sanitary landfill and trash collection to the community and to train the leaders about the program. It went really well! The project is moving along.
(The center of the village. No wonder I love this community! There's even a bit of a night life -- jovenes playing in the pools, people eating street food, etc.)
My friend Sarah (a Healthy Schools PCV) went with me to help give the training. I've never really planned and executed my own one before, so it was nice to have the assistance. And she fell in love with the community, which made me fall even more in love with it. It's a very rural village of 1000 people, but only about 500 in the center. The people are very involved, and very warm and friendly, but that could be due to the hot-spring-fed pools that they have in the center of town! I should just go live there... they're free for community-use.
(Sarah helping me teach the 4Rs)
Anyway, the community meeting was successful. We paired my presentation with the election of the community mayor for 2010, thus many people showed up. However, they were all men. Apparently, women are not allowed to vote, or at least that's what we were told. I think that it's actually due to the machismo in the community: the women are just expected to stay in the home. It's really sad, but through my project, I'm trying to increase the female participation.
(Discussion of the Reglamento. Don Meme was very animated in favor of it.)
We read and discussed the 6 page Reglamento, then it was approved. Simple. On Monday, eight leaders (1 woman, 7 men -- better than the election) joined us to learn about the project and how to teach "Reduce-Reuse-Recycle," composting, and the ins-and-outs of the Reglamento to the community members. I was hoping for more, but those that were there all participated, so maybe it was better. Quality over quantity. These leaders will start working with their neighbors on the themes and I'll be going back on December 2nd to train others and hopefully to dig out the trench for the landfill.
The mayoral election was intriguing. The candidates were nominated by the community that afternoon based on who hadn't served yet. It's a requirement that everyone serves as mayor twice in his lifetime. Those that were nominated, protested against it, while everyone else gave speeches in favor of them, thus diverting the attention from themselves. Eventually they settled on two men (they take turns -- one month on, one off). Everyone was content, except for those men! I commented that Obama won the presidency in the exact same way, which made them all laugh. Humor is so easy here.
At the moment, this is my favorite project because everyone is so involved and excited about it. The trail, for example, is lacking involvement from the group. I felt guilty going on vacation this past week because we were supposed to have contracted laborers to finish the trail. Found out upon my return today that nothing happened! I'm glad I didn't skip México for the trail!
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