the dog days

In baseball, there is a stretch of time called ¨the dog days¨of august, in which all the teams start going through the motions. They start their seasons in early april and finish them at the end of september, playing nearly every day for nearly six months. At the beginning of august is when teams have gone through a large portion of the schedule but can´t quite see the finish line. Usually they´re tired of playing and want the season to be over with.

That is kind of how I feel with my peace corps experience right now. I am going through the ¨dog days¨. For me, it is just all the little things that build up over time where at some point you feel that is the way it is and is always going to be. Just a note, I don´t want to sound too pessimistic here because I still feel like I have hope in my community and don´t get me wrong, I love my community and all the people that live here, especially my host family...BUT at some point all the ¨yeah, that sounds great, I would love to try that¨lines that are thrown my way and then nothing ever happens really starts to get on my nerves. It really makes you not want to trust anybody on their word. It is not like the people are malicious and want to lie to you, maybe they are just too nice to say no to the gringo and just plain forget (which I would put these odds at about even).

The one of the tens of thousands of things I have learned in San Lorenzo or my experience in general is that if I am the one that is initiating everything, then the odds of that project continuing to exist after I leave are slim to nil. I can´t tell you how many times I have had a conversation with a farmer about the benefits of having their own garden, implementing new crops or trying out organic methods, them agreeing with what I say and being genuinely interested and willing to try it out...then we set up a meeting on their property and they´re not there or too busy too show up. Now I realize that all of these farmers work all day in their fields and are extremely poor and don´t want to take any more chances to even further deplete their income. But if everyone you knew grew corn, planted and harvested at the same time and there was one guy who grew lettuce and cabbage in addition to their corn, wouldn´t you think that the guy who grew cabbage and lettuce would have an easier time finding a market for their product? Lets not get into the fact that growing corn on the same piece of land every year for the past 50 (or more) years severely depletes the nutrients of the soil and actually hinders the amount of corn you can grow and harvest every year. Lets just say say that a 24 year old gringo with a weird ass accent isn´t going to get through to a 75 year old farmer with a 4th grade education. But hey, it sounds good on sunday afternoon when he´s drunk off moonshine and you´re explaining the benefits of organic farming.
Well, enough of my smart-ass rant because I´m not trying to be cynical. I do have a lot of success stories and I really hope that my time in the community has not or will not be a total waste of time for all those involved. I am still excited and optimistic about the shredder project as we are going to make harinas (flours) from the wheat and corn seeds in addition to the fertilizers and animal feeds. The flours can be a value added product which can be sold to families in the community and potentially other markets around San Lorenzo. We hope to have a demonstration within the next couple of weeks and maybe a few people will get excited and want to continue along with the project.

I hope so...woof, woof.