badness outta STYLE

intense discussion
The whole group
Lenroy...a sweet kid
kids at the top

There's a rope swing...limitless entertainment for them
STYLE kids on our hike
Cayon High Sports Day..quite possibly the biggest event of the school year
Violet Petty Sports Day
A pumpkin growing in my front yard from when i threw out food scraps...amazing soil here!
My fifth graders made these Lost Dog signs and posted them all around the neighborhood...my heart literally melted

Hi everyone!
I'm providing another more detailed blog than the last one. i tend to ramble off on emotional, introspective topics rather than updating you all on my life here.

At this time last year I was noticing that work-related life was picking up some speed and actually becoming something real and noticeable. And just like last year, after the lull of the holidays and Carnival, things have now revitalized and resuscitated from their November-February dormancy. This is quite a change for me because now I have replaced sitting at home and being destitute and wishing I had something to do with stressing over the frustrating unpredictability of projects. The grass is always greener...

Earth Minute is the project I'm most excited about and focused on right now. I guess I haven't mentioned it yet because I was unsure whether or not it would happen, and I'm getting quite tired of reporting on projects that eventually end in failure. While there is no guarantee that that is not the shared fate of this project, I'm still trying to think positively, so i guess I will disclose some of the early details.

Earth Minute is a project I am working on with the Ministry of Sustainable Development. The last project that fell through with this Department was the recycling feasibility study, yet I still retained contact with Jay Farier from that project attempt, so we are now working together yet again. I proposed the idea of Earth Minute to him and he was immediately on board, and has added the Public Relations Officer from the Department to work with us. The idea is to have thirty one-minute infomercials once a week that will give advice on different ways to live a more environmentally conscientious lifestyle. The tips will encourage people to make small lifestyle changes, like don't run the water while brushing your teeth, how to reuse materials, try using re-usable water bottles, etc. will be the We are going to have local faces, both famous and ordinary, to deliver each segment and air them before the local news one day a week. I think it would be great to use local people because they will then indirectly become invested in the fight for environmental protection and preservation just by their participation. I already wrote up the list of tips and tried to pair pertinent people with each one, for example, one of the suggestions is to eat local, so we will have someone who sells fruits and vegetables at the market deliver that segment. This will provide greater incentive for them to work with us because it will give them a chance to promote their business or industry.

We have proposals written out and have approached various media houses as well as independent, private producers to figure out a price range. Considering we have zero dollars right now we are going to have to find some source of money for this project since nobody is willing to film and edit for free. This means either shmoozing with various government persons or writing a grant. We are really short on time since I'm leaving in October, and the goal is to have the first segment ready to air on Earth Day, so a grant does not really seem feasible right now. This does make me secretly relieved since I despise grant-writing, especially writing them within the pressure cooker of time restrictions. So onto making better acquaintances with those government people with the big dollars.

STYLE, the boys and girls group I tried starting at the high school almost a year ago, is just now becoming active and engaged. Last Friday I paid a guide to take us on a hike up the crater as a way to kick start these kids' enthusiasm for our group. It was much more effective than approaching them and asking them if they wanted to be a part of a community-service project. The way this whole hiking event transpired makes me wish I could comfort the Alisa from 6 months ago who was pulling her hair out because nobody was showing up or showing any interest at all in STYLE. Now that there a is real, tangible event that these kids had a chance to participate in, and even better, skip school for, everyone wants to be a part of STYLE. I have kids coming up to me saying "why wasn't i picked to go on the hike? It's not fair that you only took those kids." It makes me want to both laugh and cry that they have the audacity to say that to me after I've spent the entirety of the past 8 months going to Cayon High School and literally begging kids to join my group. Eventually we just had the guidance counselor hand-pick kids that she thinks are experiencing behavior issues and need some added guidance, which I think works out better anyways. This select group is now extremely excited and has taken ownership over STYLE and personalized it. They identify themselves as members of STYLE and already have a lot of great ideas running through their minds. The only issue is that my grant money for this project must be spent by July and I have barely even touched it, and school basically shuts down at the end of May for testing, so I have two months to spend a grant I had written for a years' worth of projects. Shopping spree? Maybe.

Thinking about STYLE and the amount of time, patience, and effort I have put in order to not quit completely and abandon the project only reminds me of how naive I was last year. I put so much energy into romanticizing what the group would be like, the projects we would do, and how wonderful and joyous we would all be. I meticulously mapped out each project and idea in the grant and somehow convinced a board of people from USAID that my project was ready and worthy for a grant. They approved it; they believed me as much as i believed myself. Then I had a launch and invited students and parents before I had even been to the high school or met the principal and told them all about this wonderful, groundbreaking idea I had thought up from behind the glow of my computer screen. I was such a sappy, ignorant, idealist, post-college sociology major nutcase to think that after a launch I would be able to miraculously convince high school kids to join me, whom they have never met before, in a community service-based after school program. In a way I deserved the 11 months of frustration, helplessness, and stress. Shame on me for being arrogant enough to think that I had the ability to just walk into a high school and tell people what's a good idea, what's best for them, or how an after-school program should be. Now that STYLE has seen some success in a much more natural fashion, with guidance counselors and teacher from the actual school being committed and invested, I can truly understand what it means to start a project like this and have it actually take off. Before I was giving myself gratification before I had even faced the turmoil. Now that I've pulled my head out of the clouds and dealt with the grimy part, I have been able to internalize the valuable lessons that inevitably sprout up from the rubble. Because that's all I can really hope to walk away from this experience with; some lessons on how to not be a pompous foreigner trying to do "community development" in a place that is not my home or community.

As many of you know, my dog Shaggy ran away last month. It was really hard getting over the fact that I might not ever see him again. There are so many dangers to dogs here-cars, other dogs, people poisoning dogs, etc.-yet at the same time I'm almost certain someone picked him up because people love small dogs here and he's too smart to fall for any evil antics. I just hope he's off somewhere getting fed and receiving daily belly rubs.

Hope everyone is happy and healthy!! Miss and love you all

Alisa

ty

Life Thoughts

Nalzie, one of my favorite people here
The back view...our shirts say "only the strong survive." because it's true.
Kind of relieved they left my booth..
stampede of kids on a mission
a better view of my booth
our "silly" shot. HOW CRAZY.
The EC 78 group <3 onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7NFYE6wjnxo92H0jE0ro0d82U23M77ckdULaG4Qun0e0xunDZ13o7Xv5mAVE3j7QTWKZviW1bEQ5tPpzCP-Kwj5NriIazukSxTndZQbJsWNcXGM7s5JWHeMKkj_Nc74Gas3_MO6NaP2o/s1600-h/IMG_0700.jpg"> My mommy taught me how to utilize resources..Hence going to stores and asking for old cardboard boxes
me and my Kelsey

Today was the 49^th anniversary of the Peace Corps. We celebrated by putting on a “Peace Corps Day” that has been in conception since November. We pulled it off quite successfully if I do say so myself. We had a committee of volunteers that prepared an expose on what exactly Peace Corps is and what we are doing or trying to do in St. Kitts. Peace Corps' success is dependent on a proper understanding by locals of why volunteers are here and what it means to be a PCV, otherwise our efforts, time, and talents could be potentially wasted for two years. We held Peace Corps day in Independence Square which is the heart of downtown Basseterre. The committee members in charge of media did a terrific job of spreading the news about PC Day and ensuring that enough people came out to see us. We had schools bus students into town which created a half hour of absolute chaos as each booth was bombarded with excited children who probably barely internalized what we were feeding to them. After the overwhelming influx of students and early morning crowds things slowed down and we were able to relax at our booths and enjoy the afternoon. Each booth was set up to demonstrate the three goals of Peace Corps which are:

1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

My goal was #1, so I worked with another volunteer on teaching people about the kids of projects and work sites volunteers are involved with in St. Kitts. I bet you can only imagine how boring and uninteresting this was for young school children. The only game we could think of that was permissible with our generous budget of nothing was a trivia game. Some examples of our trivia questions: “How long is the training period for volunteers?” or “What is sustainability?” And if that doesn’t seem riveting enough for young kids, we were handing out Peace Corps bookmarks as their prizes. But the kids, in true Kittitians fashion, were excited regardless, and were able to exert some of their morning energy on the all-American sport of baseball. They even got to make postcards to send to pen pals from the U.S at our crafts table. All in all, it was a successful event and I’m extremely proud of my fellow PCVs.

Lately I have been finding myself having mental snapshot moments. I will catch myself caught up in a quick minute or two of the most beautiful, iridescent, fusion of everything wonderful in life, and I can’t help but take a mental picture of it and store it away in the treasure chest of my memory. Today this feeling came from looking around at my fellow volunteers that I have grown to love and appreciate so much in the past year and half and just wanting so badly to pocket away the warmth of the moment and hold onto it for as long as I can. I try and step outside of my surroundings and capture the smiles, laughter, and human connections as an outsider, as if I’m watching someone else’s home movies. It makes me think I can somehow embalm the emotions and the happiness and hold onto them forever. This sense of desperation I have for grasping the joy of life I think comes from a 19 month long journey of overcoming discomfort and frustration. It is much more often now that I feel completely and utterly at peace with my life here, and that was a hard-fought, sweat-inducing, uphill battle. I am just now understanding the sweetness that comes with the fruits of my labor. The tragic part of this is that the fullest understanding of how lovely life is here will reach its culmination when I am on a plane going home, and I will be feeling the empty spaces left from nascent intangibles that I didn’t even realize were such an integral part of my existence.

The nights when I am walking home from the basketball court, eager to rummage through my refrigerator and creatively concoct a meal together, I sometimes turn around and look at the scarcely-lit road behind me and sketch it into my memory. Just when I have acquired a deep and rooted love for my life here I have come to the realization that it is slipping away quicker than I can even comprehend, until it’s gone and irreplacable. The momentum of time is an unsympathetic force, and right now I sometimes feel it tapping at my conscience, reminding me to cherish each and every moment, because nothing lasts forever.