It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.
When the sun comes up, you better start running.”
- African proverb
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So I finally went back to the U.S. after about a year and 3 months of Costa Rica. It was everything I’d hoped it would be – two weeks of seeing friends, eating great American food, drinking beer, wine, and other fine spirits in vast quantities, playing in the sun, and oh yeah, seeing family. (just kidding, Mom)
I had planned on posting this blog about a week after my July 7th return from Costa Rica, but work got in the way and I’ve been extremely busy for the last month or so. And for that work I am grateful, because it knocked me out of my post-US funk I was in for a few days following the trip.
It doesn’t seem to make sense to describe my trip in detail, so I’ll just catch you up on the broad strokes.
I flew into D.C. on June 22nd and hopped into the car with my ex-roommate, Michael, who was waiting for me outside the airport at Reagan International. (note: this is not the broad strokes part, which will really begin following the next two paragraphs) It all felt pretty surreal frankly…I was finally back in the U.S.! The surreal feeling lingered on as we headed back over to my friend’s apartment, or that is, my exact same old apartment from my DC days. We walked in and it quickly became apparent very little had changed in the decor, save maybe someone else’s things occupying the space in my old room. Other than that, it was the same apartment I had left on an overcast day more than a year ago, hauling a big roller suitcase and overflowing backpack heading off to staging to begin my Costa Rica Peace Corps adventure.
After dropping my stuff off, we headed over to a favorite local neighborhood hangout, Whitlow’s on Wilson, for dinner and a few...well...many beers. This would pretty much set the routine for the rest of my 4 day stay in DC. Michael would head into work in the morning, I would wake up later and run some errands in the day, and then Michael would come back and we would go back out to hit the town. Monday – Whitlow’s on Wilson, Tuesday – 51st State Bar, Wednesday – Ray’s the Steaks and Whitlow’s on Wilson (yet again), Thursday – Cookout at the apartment followed by barhopping in Dupont and Capitol Hill.
Wednesday I was able to meet up with some co-workers from my job at Veterans Affairs for dinner at Ray’s the Steaks in Arlington. This was a meal I had been dreaming of for several months – a nice, thick New York Strip from Ray’s the Steaks! It didn’t disappoint.
Based on the size of our group, I’d say a number of other people from the office were anticipating this evening as well. We had a great group of about 12 folks come out, all very good friends. It was fantastic to catch up with them. Ray’s makes a pretty stellar steak…but I’ll just assume they came out to see me!
Thursday, my last full day in DC, I was able to make it into the Veterans Affairs to catch up with some more folks I hadn’t seen the night before. That night Michael organized a cookout in the apartment courtyard and a number of other good friends came out to catch up and have a few beers. For everyone that came out – Annie, Dan, Chad, Nhi, Austen, Charles, Phi and others – it was great seeing you! Thanks for all your support during my time in Peace Corps!
Late night Thursday , a good buddy, Kevin, decided that maybe it wasn’t so important he report to work the next day and so he dedicated the rest of the night to barhopping with me around DC. We didn’t stay out late enough to see the sun come up…but just about. It was a great ending to a fun week.
On Friday morning I groggily boarded another plane at Reagan to head down to Atlanta for the second leg of my trip. It was time to hit the lake.
The next 8 or 9 days were spent in the lower foothills of the Blue Ride mountains at my parents’ house on Lake Keowee in South Carolina. Their home on the lake, which is as beautiful and peaceful as it sounds, is my personal Mecca. When I am there, all is right in the world.
Under normal circumstances, I would make a pilgrimage there every six months or so, but Peace Corps had kept me away for about a year and a half.
We took full advantage of the time. A group of good friends came up the first weekend. We enjoyed the water, great weather, the large porch, and cooking on the grill. Everyone got caught
up in the slow pace of the lake, and most friends ended up staying an extra night.
During the week following my friends’ visit, I played a lot of golf with my dad. The was another Henderson family tradition that had not been able to take place for awhile due to my stay in Costa Rica. I continued playing golf and by the end of stay we had played six rounds of golf in one week!
Photo: The lake weekend with friends. Nuff said.
The following weekend was sort of a family reunion. My aunt and uncle, grandparents, and cousins all showed up to have a big lake weekend! It was a lot of fun, and even though we hadn’t all spent time together for a long time, we got right back into the swing of things. We spent a few days on the lake enjoying the lake house. Also, we saw two great fireworks shows on the lake on July 4th.
After a quick night in Atlanta on July 6th visiting some friends, my U.S. vacation was over and it was time to head back to Costa Rica on July 7th.
So you would think a trip back home after more than a year in another country would leave someone with a few impressions, right? Although nothing drastic came to me during my vacation, here are a few ideas I took away from the trip:
- I’m so fortunate to be a Peace Corps volunteer!!! Granted not everyone’s PC experience works out well, but I have had an incredible time. The trip home left me really motivated about being a volunteer. It has been such a great experience. I have learned many new skills – the Spanish language, teaching, facilitating, micro-finance, how to work with kids, working in groups, and playing the guitar. Also, I have made so many great friends – both among fellow volunteers and in my town.
- It’s great to have a job. While I don’t see myself extending my service at this point, I’m very pleased to be working at something I love and is very satisfying. Also, when I was hanging out with my buddies at the lake house, we realized that a lot of my good friends (all very capable) are out of work, or in-between jobs, or only working part-time. I feel very lucky to be working for Peace Corps right now.
- Savor Every Moment. In the big scheme of things, a two year commitment to Peace Corps isn’t that long. I’ve only got about 9 months of service left, and I plan on taking advantage of it to the maximum – be it with work projects, social life in my town, or adventures with my many great fellow volunteer friends. The entire experience has been a great journey that I will probably look back and reflect on later in life with nostalgia. I’m gonna live every minute of it.
- Where’s the next challenge!? Let me at it. Although I’ve still got a lot of time left, it will probably fly by, and it doesn’t hurt to think about the future. PC has been an extremely challenging experience – getting accustomed to small town Costa Rican life while trying to learn a new job, language, and culture. It has also been extremely rewarding and has brought out the best in me. PC has reminded me that I must continue to challenge myself in my life after Peace Corps, whatever that may be. The only limits we have in life are of our own making.
So in keeping with the third point on that list above, I recently sat down and came up with a slate of projects for the remainder of my time working in San Cristóbal Norte. Here is the line-up:
Ø Support of Emerging Rural Tourism Group – We recently received our first group of international student volunteers here in San Cristóbal Norte. They came to us through a fellow PCV connection in a neighboring town. The experience went extremely well for us, and we are expecting to receive a second group in late August. The first group stayed for two weeks and completed a project roofing the local nutrition center. They stay with families, and in addition to the valuable labor they provide, also give a modest financial donation for the project.
To bring this group to the community (literally called International Student Volunteers - http://www.isv.org/) we set up an ad hoc committee of several of my acquaintances in the town. The committee has really come together as a team, and if all goes well with these first two ISV groups, they may opt to form a permanent rural tourism group in the town. If this happens (as I think it will), then I would really look forward to helping them through their early planning stages. (Potential project dates: August 2009 – End of Service)
The volunteers. They were a fun group and worked very hard. Let´s be clear, in no way have I obtained permission to post their images on the world wide web.
Ø Establishment of a Community Library in the School – This will be a project you will be able to get involved in! Peace Corps offers something called the Peace Corps Partnership Program which allows volunteers, only once in their two years of service, to formulate a project and solicit funding from donors online via their website.
I would like to use my PCPP project to establish a small starter library in the local school, which doesn’t have a library at the moment. While Costa Ricans in the campo are not know to be big readers, the kids in my host family have all shown a lot of interest in the books I read and even mimicked my behavior. When I began reading the Harry Potter series in Spanish, two of my host nephews asked to borrow the books after me. They are now reading book six while I’m slowly plodding through the fifth book of the series.
Also, a fellow Peace Corps friends, Josh, has also established a small library in his local school and the kids have been actively checking out books and shown great enthusiasm for reading.
I am convinced a library would be a fantastic resource here in the community for the kids education! So to my co-worker, Mark, from Veterans Affairs, to whom I’d promised to post on this blog a wish list of books for him to send me – you will just have to wait, buddy! I may be putting out a big wish list of kids books soon (albeit books in Spanish).
Also, I’d like to thank my roommate, Michael, for giving me a great book, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. Written by an ex-Microsoft executive, the author tells the story of leaving his job to begin the Room to Read Foundation (http://www.roomtoread.org/), an organization that has built thousands of libraries and schools in the developing world.
This is a project that really excites me! I’m also really happy to be giving you all a chance to get involved since you’ve given me so much support over the last 18 months. I will keep you posted via this blog and email on the development of the project. (Project Dates: September 2009 – March 2010)
Ø 2nd Project Management Workshop and Best Practices Guide – As I wrote in the previous blog, in May a member of my counterpart and I gave a two day workshop in basic project management skills to about 12 participants here in town. The workshop was an extension of a workshop given by Peace Corps that Olman and I had participated in several months before in San José
The workshop was an overwhelming success! We organized the workshop in a very professional manner and were given rave reviews by the participants. They absolutely loved it.
I really enjoyed this project, and had always intended to offer the workshop a second time in the community, but this time I would like to raise the bar a bit for sustainability’s sake. This second edition of the workshop will be giving entirely by three members of the bank’s managing board that have already been trained in the skills. I will be working on the workshop in a support capacity, but will not be doing any of the teaching. Also, I plan to formulate a best practices guide in Spanish to share with the bank and other Peace Corps volunteers.
If we can pull this off, and I believe that we will, then this workshop may make a big difference for the bank and other PCVs long into the future. I recently shared my ideas for the project with the bank’s managing board, including those that would be teaching, and they expressed enthusiasm for the idea. (Project Dates: September 2009 – November 2009)
Ø English Classes – For the last 9 months I have been teaching English to two different classes here in the town. The English course is given through Centro Cultural books and curriculum, a very respected English teaching non-profit organization here in the country. We began in October 2008 with 45 students divided into two classes. I now have 24 students, or roughly half the original number.
Teaching English has been a great learning experiencing for me, and although I’ve found it very challenging, it has also been very satisfying. The remaining students are highly motivated to continue learning. I plan to continue offering English classes through this program until the end of my service.
Through this program as offered by Peace Corps volunteers, the students pay only $20 or so for about 9 months of class, whereas in the city they half to pay roughly twenty times that amount. Our work allows rural Costa Rican students to study English under a highly recognized program at a price they could otherwise not afford.
Many of my English students I would also consider great friends. For my birthday, they surprised me with a birthday cake, sang happy birthday to me, and gave me several gifts. A few of the students had remembered my birthday from an activity we did learning dates nearly 6 months ago! I was thrilled they thought of me and felt really honored they would remember my birthday. (Potential Project Date: Present to End of Service)
Ø Micro-Entrepreneur Support – I am currently supporting three farmers here in town with their emerging businesses in a one-on-one capacity. We have made great strides in applying basic business planning skills, including SWOT analysis project management techniques, marketing, and accounting. I also consider these farmers and their families good friends, and I plan to continue to provide this support until the end of my service.
Ø Organic Garden in the School – a project was recently dropped in my lap from FINCA, a Costa Rican non-profit organization that supports micro-finance banks such as my counterpart. They are looking to set-up a system for funding communal projects in towns where micro-finance banks exists using the PCPP model. The want to use my counterpart, and our town, as a pilot project to set up an organic garden in the school using a technology called the EarthBox.
My birthday cake. It tasted glorious.
The idea is the students will take responsibility for the garden, all while doing activities online that connect them with other classrooms participating in the same project. This project still needs further development within the community, but it should be a great opportunity for the school. I will keep you posted on the progress.
Other Potential Projects on the Waiting List – Coordination of a Leadership Forum among Community Leaders, Junior Achievement classes in the School, a Best Practices Fair Among Farmers in the Town, Painting of a World Map Mural, and Development of a New Volunteer Program with the High School in the Neighboring Town.
So as you can see, there’s plenty to keep me busy in the coming months. All this talk of projects has made me realize I probably need to give an update on the town computer lab project that has been so important to us.
The school began with a projection that it would need to raise roughly $15,000 to prepare the local computer room for the computers it would receive from the foundation here in country. The Board of Education recently held a beauty contest, or reinado, as a fundraiser. With the reinado, a candidate is chosen from each grade, and they have to go to work fundraising for about six weeks. The candidate that raises the most money is the queen! (Sidenote: the candidates are usually drawn from each of the major families in town, ensuring a very strong rivalry)
The reinado was a huge success, raising roughly $7,500 through the event. To add onto that, I was able to kick in another $3,500 from a grant I applied for through the Costa Rica – United States Foundation (CRUSA). So we have almost three-fourths of the funding raised, and the improvements to the lab are on schedule. Everything appears to be in order. The only thing that may go off schedule are the computers, which seem to be running late due to the extensive contracting process.
As usual, I hope this gives you a glimpse into my life and this crazy experience called Peace Corps. I will continue to try to update the blog more regularly, but no promises, considering all my prior efforts seem to have failed up to this point.
The quote at the beginning of this blog relates in no way to the content…I just thought it was cool. Hope it blew your mind.
This blog goes out to my DC roommate and great friend, Michael, for staying out late on the town with me all week (barring Thursday, which you totally punked out on), all while having to drag himself out of bed each morning at 6AM for a full day of work. Towards the end of the week he was counting down the days to my departure so he could finally get some rest. You’re a soldier, Bernie! Thanks for showing me a great time in DC.
Michael working with about 12 ours of sleep over a 4 day period. Just putting ketchup on that burger took him 17 minutes. That´s one TASTY burger!
