two things:

1st - Luigi died.  Because I did SO well with the baby parrot, now there are people offering me a puppy.
2nd - It's hard to shame an Alcock unless you are one.

Just...things on my mind.

Just because it´s been a weird week doesn't mean it wasn't a good one.

My sister in the United States is buying me tee-shirts from H&M tonight.  I hope I don't cry for joy in the post office when they arrive because that would probably be embarrassing.  But when you weigh personal embarrassment against your favorite tee-shirts and the love of a sister...well.  Things might get emotional no matter how much I try to keep a lid on it.  Especially if she includes peanut butter in the package.

This week, I reached a really good place mentally.  I realized that I can't imagine not being in my town for two years.  So much of my time has been dedicated to telling myself that it will be okay, that one day I'll feel comfortable and like I belong and like I don't want to leave.  I don't want to say that I've completely achieved that – in my mind, there's usually always something I can do better, some other way that I should be attaching myself to this place (“Will I ever know silence without mental violence?...” The Avett Brothers).  And there are some things that still challenge me – no matter where a person goes in this world, things will happen that push buttons and envelopes and boundaries.  But I feel at home.  I'm comfortable in the knowledge that I'm making friends, that my host mom thinks of me as one of her children.  I'm confident that there'll be work to do when I hear the people in my town talk about the projects they want to do.  I'm adding certain qualities to myself and expanding on others, putting some things on hold and cutting some bullshit out completely.

My dad says that you have to grow where you're planted.  I feel green, young in this scheme of things.  But every day my roots push deeper.  It's impossible to unsuccessfully plant things in Costa Rica, haha.  Everything grows here.

And on that note, 56 little trees arrived at my doorstep yesterday, a gift of MINAE (the national something-or-other agency for environmental something-or-other...I'm pretty sure they're the head honchos for everything nature-related in the country.  Which is a lot of stuff.).  My local development organization said, “Maybe you can reforest or something.”  And I asked for more details and they said, “Nope, whatever you want to do is good.”  Cool.  Where exactly do you put that many trees considering that you want them to one day be tree-sized?  You can't just plant them next to each other.  And someone's gotta be responsible for taking care of them once they're spread out all over creation.  But anyway, it's green, so it's good I suppose.

So today I went to the school and talked to the kids about how to create organic compost in a soda bottle...Holla at m'boy Aaron, the resident abono orgánico expert!  It's a regular, empty two liter bottle and I poked holes in the cap so that air can get in and aid the decomposition.  Every day for 21 days, any non-citric food item can copped into tiny pieces and put inside.  The first day you add a dollop of honey or a spoonful of sugar (I hope that sugar thing's right, because that's what I told them).  After 21 days there's a rank, dark liquid in the bottle that is perfect for...you guessed it, fertilizing 56 little trees!

The kids are going to do this during their 24 day vacation which starts tomorrow, I'm taking care of the trees in my backyard and at some point I'll call them and we'll prepare a small orchard at the school.  The trees are still small so we have to till a make-shift nursery until they're big enough to stick somewhere else in the community.  Woohoo, reforestation.

Potty Dance

I think I was onto something as a kid.  Mom tells me that I couldn't walk into a building without wanting to visit the bathroom.  This wasn't some sort of physical response to being in new place, it had nothing to do with the act of using the facilities.  I remember why I did it without my Mom having to tell me what her (correct) guess was.  It was to explore.  It's all fine and good to sit a table for 45 minutes and eat, but what's going on towards the back of this place?  A walk to the toilets is an excellent excuse for a tour and the actual room with the stalls and sinks can be very telling, too.  Like, okay, now I know what y'all are really about.  Restaurant restrooms were quite distinct from department store restrooms, which were totally different than gas station bathrooms.  Any bathroom that required a store clerk to hand over a key was particularly intriguing (what have you got in there?!), and mall bathrooms freaked me out because they were always down that long corridor (are we going to get lost?!).

As an adult, I can still appreciate a good bathroom although for more practical reasons than those of my childhood.  Restaurants are my favorite because they keep the fun going, matching the theme of the eatery – perhaps so you can forget that a hundred strangers have peed ten feet away from your table since you sat down to eat.  My standards for airports and outlet malls are pretty high – they have charts on the wall that tell you who has been into clean in the last hour.  I try to set the bar low for gas stations, except for Wawa and Sheetz.  They don't have to be locked up and they're really decent...what is the formula for that and how can we apply it to EVERY GAS STATION IN AMERICA?  The gas station bathroom in Muddy Gap, Wyoming was stellar.  A true oasis in the desert.

My past travels to far-flung porcelain thrones are just the backdrop for my experiences here.  Restrooms are surprisingly clean and well-stocked compared to restrooms in Ecuador and Bolivia.  This is a generalization, but I can back it up with specific examples if you ever want to hear about it.  Suffice it to say, there hasn't been a restroom I've refused to use in Costa Rica.  In fact, some of the places in San José rival or supersede the facilities in, like, Vegas.  Yeah, they're that good.

Now, that is the capital.  And I don't live there anymore.  For sure since I've started living in a rural location, the game has changed a bit.  But for the most part, it's been tolerable.  I have to come up with a new framework though.  It's an internet cafe instead of a CVS or bus stations instead of Wawas.  I feel that to a certain extent I've returned to exploring bathrooms as a way of getting a grip on a place.  At the very least, it's always good to know where's the nearest location to get some business done.  Today, for instance, I went to go meet a local elected official in his office in Nicoya.  Some people in my town are convinced that this office is holding out on major project funds for our town out of spite for a resident.  While we waited for the official to arrive (the public is attended from 7:30 to 11:00 am on Tuesdays and Fridays in theory) I took a little investigatory excursion, a reconnaissance mission, if you will.  From my findings I could interpret many things.  No seats, no paper, no soap, a frame on the wall where there was once a mirror.

We're not going to get funds from this particular office.  The five year-old Lily Kathleen inside of me was like, “Nuh-uh, this is not good,” when I saw this bathroom.  Whether it's really out of spite is a question I'm not really concerned about.  The toilet didn't flush, so...this might be a bad place to look for help.

Go team, go

Just a quick blog...things are kind of picking up work-wise which feels excellent.  I'm putting up a poster on the town hall to announce that English classes will be starting in July.  Hopefully I'll be able to start an English club in the elementary school at the same time.  There's an empty building that's pretty run-down and I want to clean it to use as a classroom with the people who sign up for my course.  I can use the same building to meet with the local youth to perhaps form a youth group – this idea is still nebulous.  Ideally I'd like to get a group of young people together and see what they think needs to be done in the community.  And then do it.  My ideas are along the lines of picking up trash periodically, planting trees, starting a community garden, etc.  But I trust that the young people, or jóvenes are going to be so much more creative than me and I'm really excited to see what can be accomplished.

Those are secondary projects, of course.  My main focus right now is a diagnostic of my town.  This is a tool that I can use to arrive at a better understanding of the potential for projects for my town.  If I do it right, it'll also be useful for the people in my town who are interested in knowing the same thing.  What opportunities are there for projects?  What projects are the most necessary in this moment?  What are some obstacles to development that my town faces?  At least these questions, and hopefully many more, can be answered by the diagnostic.

Working on the diagnostic has brought me into contact with a slew of committees in my town.  After attending meetings and speaking with the people on these committees, one idea keeps popping into my head.  It's not a project, per se, just a feeling that needs to grow.  I think there's two ways to look at obstacles: 1) a piece of the road that's missing, like in Oregon Trail...it's impassible.  Or, 2) a hurdle that one can assess at a distance and plan to gain enough momentum and overcome.  I think until the first few projects come to fruition (after the diagnostic is complete in August...I'm not supposed to work on any projects until that's wrapped up) I'm going to be playing the role of cheerleader in a BIG way, trying my damnedest to get people to approach obstacles to success in the 2^nd way.  After people have seen what they can accomplish, I'm hoping that I can ease off the cheerleader a little bit in order to serve in other capacities.  But energy and enthusiasm are my two buzzwords for the moment, and I really hope the feeling's contagious.

The soon-to-be-famous-Luigi

So, here's the deal: I met someone with a pet squirrel and I began to want a pet squirrel, mind, body and soul.  Taking advantage of the army of cousins ages four to thirteen that are always available to do my bidding, I gave them the mission of catching me a squirrel.  Well!  A week later I was holding a squirrel wrapped up in a bed sheet, the same sheet that had been used as a trampoline when they shook the squirrel out of the tree.  I was the happiest squirrel owner on the planet, I knew the novelty of this could never wear off.  I thought I had my Volunteer reputation made – from now on when Trainees came to Costa Rica, the training facilitators couldn't help but jokingly mention, “One Volunteer even had a pet squirrel!  So you see, some things happen only in Peace Corps Costa Rica.”

Then my squirrel got repossessed.  How many more times will I say the following in my lifetime?: The squirrel actually belonged to someone else and I had to give it back.  A neighbor came by and said, “Hey, heard you caught my squirrel that got loose.”  And I said, “No, my cousins caught a squirrel for me because I wanted one as a pet.”  And dude said, “Why do you think it was so easy to catch, dummy, it was domesticated.”  So without any fast evidence of this squirrel's wild origin, I had to give him back.

And I was so.  Mad.

But whatever, plenty of fish in the sea or squirrels in banana trees, as it were.  I didn't think it would be too long before another squirrel would be caught, my little cousins are pretty with it when it comes to trapping wildlife.  What I didn't expect was that someone would make me an offer of another pet that I literally could not refuse.

Let me preface the rest of this story by saying that I am desperate to integrate into my community.  I'm falling over myself to please people and I'm trying to work my way into the heart of anybody that shows even the slightest interest in my life or work.  With that knowledge, when my sister said that someone had an extra baby parrot available, my first response was, “No thank you.”  Then she said, “Ah, well, she wanted to give it to you as a gift because she knew you were heartbroken about the squirrel.”

Eff!  That's a different story, right?  It doesn't matter that I think pet birds are disgusting.  That I hate the idea of the mites and other gross stuff they carry around in their feathers.  That the noise they make is like nails on a chalkboard.  It's not just that someone has an extra bird I can ask to have (or avoid asking to have).  This is a bird set aside for me, someone who's going out of their way to make me feel special with this gift.

Eff!

So I went and got the bird.  I said thank you, this is so awesome, I'm really excited to have a pet.  For me the most exciting part was that I had a long conversation with someone outside my family.  And if I have to take a featherless baby dinosaur-looking parrot in the process...so be it.

I named it Luigi upon the suggestion of an aunt.  I honestly did not care about what name to give it.  It might even be a female.  The important thing is that it eats only if I make corn-flour pellets and shove them down its throat.  It only drinks if I hold its beak open and pour water in its mouth.  Has no problem shitting all by itself.  But dangit...wouldn't you know if in the past week, feeding and watering and repeating phrases over and over again like, “dirty bit” and “don't be retarded” hoping they stick...I've started to like him.  There's something endearingly pathetic about his vein-y featherless noggin.  Who else is going to love him if I don't?  Answer:  Nobody, he's ugly as sin and annoying as hell.  But maybe one day I'll wake up and he'll have transformed into one of God's beautiful creations instead and the time I'm putting into Luigi now will have paid off.

Also, I'll die before my community knows me as the Volunteer who killed her pet parrot with negligence.  Pride and guilt are such useful motivators, right?

Teaching English as a People Pleaser (TEPP)

Teaching English as a People Pleaser (TEPP) is not as widely known a field as Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) or Teaching English as a Second Language (ESL).  TEFL is a field that focuses mainly on preparing non-English speakers to effectively communicate with English speakers in contexts of business, tourism, etc.  ESL, by contrast, is for non-English speakers living within an English speaking culture and encompasses all sectors of a learner's life.  But by far the most important of these and the focus of today's blog is TEPP.

Teaching English as a People Pleaser is a Rural Community Development Volunteer's way into the hearts and minds of community members.  An RCD Volunteer can arrive in a pueblo to work in strengthening community organizations, environmental education, and improving the resources available for education within the community.  But the first thing that people want nowadays is to learn the new universal language (basic public services like trash collection relegated to the back burner).  And anybody from the US can also teach English, right?  I mean, it's our native tongue so it naturally follows that every US citizen who goes abroad has been trained to effectively teach English.

Not so, I say!  I have never received any sort of training to teach English, nor have I sought it out.  Teaching, classroom management, lesson plans, recording grades, charting students' progress, quizzes and tests, etc.  Not something I ever wanted to do.  In fact, the English language itself has never been my strong suit.  I cannot tell you how to diagram a sentence or what the parts of speech are.  I mix tenses like Saladworks mixes greens.  Anyway, if I did have an interest in teaching English, I could have used that money my parents gave me to get my bachelor's in Politics to instead become a fine, certified educator.

Ok, so now you're saying, “Wait, I've heard you say you want to teach in a college or university in your future.”  Very far future, in fact.  My life plan was to turn my Peace Corps street cred into a catapult for grad school which would then lead to a pretty sweet service-oriented career of some sort.  Mid-career, after I've gotten married and had babies (who are now 11 and 15 years-old), is a great time to get my doctorate.  I work my way to the top of whatever circle it is that I'm writing in, becoming renown for my original and logical approach (it really is watertight, I assure you) to all subjects.  Towards the end of my career I decide it's a good time to gift my knowledge to agile young minds that will transform the information into their own generation-changing ideas.

Twilight of my career, when things are calming down and I can apply all the lessons that a lifetime of learning can offer...that's my teaching situation.  Thus, I find myself on the brink of throwing myself into this English teaching experiment feeling woefully under-prepared and inexperienced.  Now, is English an excellent educational resource for my community?  Yes.  So technically, by teaching English I am fulfilling one of my goals as an RCD Volunteer.  But is this going to be my least favorite part of my service?  Probably.

Wouldn't you know I can hear my mom's voice in my head right at this moment?  Imagining what she would say as we sit at the kitchen table after lunch...

...and this is what I came up with: I have that perfect life plan, but you know what?  My plan for today didn't even work out.  Me and my plans, hah.  Time to put “me” aside and be a Volunteer, I guess.

The only attraction that this has for me is that the people want it.  Since I've gotten to my community I've had to say, “Well, I'm supposed to do this diagnostic the first three months, not start any projects...” or “No, I can't be a part of your committee because I'm a foreigner...” or “Hmm, the thing is I can't apply for grant funds until I've been in site for six months...”  There's so much of saying “no” that when they asked if I could teach English...I got just a little excited because I could finally say “yes”.  We've been given a boatload of teaching material even if it wasn't part of our training.  The point of that was so volunteers can offer English classes as a secondary project to their central assignment – in my case, developing rural communities.  The information is more than a little haphazard, but at least it's a start.  And as much as I don't want to teach English...well, that's how much my neighbors want to learn it.  So.  To work.

“Time, there's always time on my mind.” - Damien Rice

June 13^th...dang, it's been a month.  Or it'll have been a month before I post this entry.  It feels like so much shorter and longer at the same time.  Time – weeks, minutes, hours...they've all got their own special Costa Rican stride.  I've spent a few hours reassuring myself that when that hour is over, I'll just be that much closer to going to sleep.  Other times I wake up on Monday and before I get to brush my teeth it's Saturday.

Right now I'm looking forward to my niece's birthday party this Sunday – she turned one year old today and we've been working hard to plan the perfect, Hello Kitty themed party.  I used to think that birthday parties for babies were dumb, but this baby really will enjoy every minute of it even if she doesn't understand why it's happening.  There has never been a baby so predisposed to feel unbounded joy.  With her soft skin, chubby (and I do mean impossibly round) belly and two tiny teeth inside that big grin...well.  She's just the kind of baby for whom you want to throw a party.  A baby you'd do anything for, actually, and exhibit A are my blistered hands.  The slope of our lawn was not adequate for the guests' tables and thus I have spent this past week breaking up all that earth (all day long) with my host sister.  It's not a mountain, but there is a hell of a lot of dirt and we are moving it for this linda bebé.

All the family here deserves respect for the effort of raising this baby.  I thought that It takes a village to raise a child had kind of been worn out.  I know my neighbors and people at church and stuff had a hand in teaching me things as a kid, taking care of me, etc.  But it hardly had a village-type feel.  Far and away I spent more time being raised by my parents than anyone else and that was pretty much what I saw as far as my friends' childhood, too.  Not so in my Costa Rican family, and the baby is a good example of how this old saying still has a lot of meaning here.

Baby's mom works in Santa Cruz and leaves on the bus that passes at 5:45AM.  My host mom, Baby's grandma, feeds the baby and keeps her busy while she cooks breakfast, feeds animals and washes clothes.  This is all before I wake up.  When I'm eating breakfast I try to keep Baby happy and busy so grandma gets a break.  Then all day Baby is passed from aunt to cousin to grandma to neighbor to aunt again.  I swear she has a line of people waiting to hold her, and it's no surprise – I've told you how sweet she is.  She's washed in one house, dressed in another, her hair is combed and clipped by a group of little girls next door.  A visitor to my uncle's house takes her hands and helps her to walk.  I'll make sure to keep an eye on her as she pulls on a chair to stand herself up.  And it goes on.  Baby eventually comes back to grandma for good around 5:00PM and we spend some time all hanging out on the floor, watching novelas (gotta watch my soaps!) and playing with toys.  Baby's mom gets home at 7:00PM and, imagine this, immediately Baby does not care about anybody she has seen all day.  My host sister only gets to spend about two hours with her child each night before it's time to put her to bed.  Rinse.  Repeat.

The village spends the most time with Baby, and I can tell mom wishes it were different.  Time, again, can be short or long or both.  I know my host sister loves every second of that two hours that she spends with her daughter, that in every smile on Baby's face there is an eternity of love that she feels.  But too soon it's time to turn out the lights and close her eyes and wake up to leave again.  Like a lot of things that I've observed lately, I understand why it has to happen that way, but it still makes me sad.

Baby's going to be just about three years old when I leave Costa Rica.  I think of it from the perspective of how much she will develop, how much she'll grow and a lot happens in two years!  Makes it seem like a great expanse of time.  From the point of view from her mom, though, Baby will be grown before my next breath.

Old Man's Swimming Hole

Or, at least I think that's how it would translate, hah.  Pozo del Viejo is a series of waterfalls and streams that are really close to or really far away from my community, depending on who you ask.  The classic example was my host mom's response when I asked her if one could walk to the Pozo del Viejo.  “Well, it's way up there and very deep in the forest.  Yes, you could probably walk.”  Vague gesticulations towards some distant mountains.  It reminded me of while we were still trainees and one of my friends related a story from his visit to a Volunteer.  They were headed someplace that was no mean distance away, and my friend asked, Is this someplace we can walk to?

“You can walk anywhere if you have enough time.”

Ooof, I could go into some deep thinking about that seemingly casual phrase.  But right now, I'll keep on topic with Pozo del Viejo.  Yeah, well...it did need a lot of time to get there.  Thankfully, I have a tolerant cousin with a tolerant boyfriend.  They were game to take a gringa up to the Pozo and to stop intermittently along the way while I caught up.  I'm not so much into...erm...walking for fun.  I usually start hikes with the best of intentions and finish only because I doubt they'd send a rescue chopper for anything less than a true medical emergency.  So it was a challenge, but totally worth it in the end.

Pozo del Viejo Part I: After walking up a river for maybe a kilometer (I can estimate in miles and in kilometers, but once I've estimated in one system, I can't convert...so...sorry!) we got to the first waterfall.  This is the actual Pozo del Viejo, and we took some pictures, sat for a while.  Then I got curious and asked what was above the waterfall, if that was where the river begins.

Pozo del Viejo Part II: Cousin's boyfriend knew that there was another waterfall before this one, so we began the ascent.  There is now no path.  It's just slick rocks and thin vines and rotting leaves.  And, surprise, ants.  Straight up and the whole time I was thinking that I knew ten names off the top of my head, ten people who would have thought that this was an exhilarating jaunt into the heart of danger.  I the other hand, I was freaking out.

Pozo del Viejo Part III: Cut to the three of us chillaxin' at the bottom of another waterfall.  The dizzying climb forgotten for the moment, enjoying the cooling spray from the cascada.  We sat and talked for another hour or so.  A lot of the time we were just quiet, observing the forest around us.  Among the close branches were some brightly colored birds and we heard howler monkeys at a short distance.  It felt supremely peaceful, and being in that place was such a gift amidst a lot of the stress I'd been feeling lately.

Instead of following the river back, we took an alternate “path”.  This led us through some pretty dense jungle – when we paused to figure out which direction to go, I was relieved that my cousin and her boyfriend seemed to think that a trail was actually discernible.  Fell more than once.  Finally we made it to the main road that we had used to originally find the river.  It was a half hour or so to walk back to civilization from there, making the whole trip about 5 hours long.  I know some people who would be like, “Oh, that's not too bad.”  But not too bad for me is like, maybe 20 minutes, you know?  So all in all, I'm pretty tired and pretty happy about it.

At this point, I'd like to give a shout out to my cousin Chris and his wife Cheryl...and the new baby, Cassandra!  I wish I could be there to call and congratulate you with my voice instead of my writing, but just know that I'm wishing nothing but the best for you and the expanded family :)

This too shall pass.

Buckle up, y'all.  Lily's in a rage and should probably not be blogging.

By this time in my life, I recognize that I'm pretty reliable for sniffing out silver linings in situations that may seem a little dark.  Like some bright silver thread, if I can pick it up I'll be able to follow it through to the end of the storm and back into sunny days.  Swinging like Tarzan from one small success or “at least I learned something” to the next.  Giving myself mad props, I've done just that a fair number of times and I'm proud of it.  Proud that despite experiencing some personal challenges and disasters, I make it through and I try at life again.  Always hanging from some silver lining.

But now it's just time to talk about a reality that does not offer any sort of consolation prize to the people who get shat on.  This is a cloud that covers my every waking moment spent out of my house.  From the way it looks to me, I'd imagine it's an approaching storm every morning for all the muchachas under 65 who are getting ready to start the daily grind.  And the more time I spend with it hanging over my head, thunder rumbling, the less hope I find in a silver lining for the women in my community.  You can probably guess where I'm going once I've singled out the ladies (“Ladies,” Demetri Martin would say).

Foul demon, thy name is Machismo.  This cultural phenomenon is unbelievably prevalent here, at least in Guanacaste.  Lily, you might say.  Remember when you lived in Bolivia?  Remember when you lived in Ecuador?  You'd be right to ask, and of course I had run-ins with the concept whilst previously abroad.  But they were incidental, something I could often laugh off and, remember, I was a student. Students aren't professionals, aren't responsible for maintaining any sort of organizational reputation (You could argue that in theory they do, but my field research shows...).  What did I care if some leering drunk guy late in the club district was calling me a goddess and making all kinds of preposterous propositions?  I usually walked in the company of gringo friends, or at least with a local compañero or two.  It gave me great liberty to be dismissive, to treat it like it didn't really apply to me and that I was above it.

Which seems kind of stupid, now...how can I be above something aimed directly at me?  I am objectified and there's not a damn thing I can do about it in the instant I am singled out and made to be less than what I am.  The vulgarity of machismo is not something I can avoid because it's not something for which my engaged participation is necessary.  It's a thought, it's a string of words and it's out there in the world no matter what I'd like to do about it.  Hola mi amor, porqué no tomamos una cervezita y después...

In true Lily/Kathleen style, because I have no control over it...I get pissy.  Absolutely smoldering anger churns in my veins when I realize that once again, I've been reduced to blonde hair and a skirt.  When I was 16 in Bolivia, I did not care because I was getting attention I'd never had stateside.  When I was 20 in Ecuador, I thought, “Oh, this again?”  When I heard it earlier today on the street I wanted to turn around and scream, “I have a NAME.  And a mandate to serve your community selflessly for the next two years, so can I get a little respect?!”

Wanted to.  Did not.  Called a friend who circuitously got me thinking about the things that make me who I am. 

Doctor Who.  Liberty Thrift.  Nervous Nikki and the Chill Pills.  Cherry Coke Zero.  I can't jettison the random assortment of shtuff that defined me and my life just because I can't do them anymore.  I am who I am, regardless of my circumstances.  Being an independent decision maker and free-thinker with a fire under my butt to always be more than what people expected (albeit sometimes grudgingly)...that was part of who I was, too.  That's part of why Peace Corps wanted me as a Volunteer and it's why I'm planning on getting all kinds of awesome stuff accomplished with my community.  I guess some men here can try to make me the subject of local notions about what American women and women in general are like.  But honey, I've been marching to my own powerful beat since the day I said hello to this world.  Mine are character traits that I'm not willing hide under the bushel of machismo just because I've got breasts.  Let that light continue to shine, please.

I feel safe in my community – please do not misunderstand me.  Peace Corps Costa Rica has done a great job of placing me in a home with windows that close, doors that lock, etc. and I'm surrounded by friends and family.  Throughout training I've seen firsthand how important maintaining Volunteer safety is to the people in charge.  All I'm saying is that now the catcalls aren't met by a dismissive snort.  It's not fun anymore when a guy tries to put moves on me after we've danced like, two merengues because he thinks it'll happen.  I'm not flattered by and I don't respond to endless streams of texts that are clearly fishing for an invitation to come over (I gave out my phone number one time.  ONE TIME!  Terrible choices are made in the name of trying to be polite).

When I'm sweating through a shirt, make-up running, mentally exhausted from just talking to people, coughing up a storm because I'm sick and my legs look like I have smallpox from all my mosquito bites...I know I know I KNOW this is not my best look.  So I know that it's not because I'm overwhelmingly beautiful that I'm getting these comments.  And do I want to hear how preciosa I am in this moment?  No.  If someone wanted to shout out that it will all be okay, that you're doing this for a greater social good, you're a powerful and educated female who can be a good leader, that you'll one day look at the mosquito scars on your legs and fondly think...I changed people's lives.  That would be okay.  That, however, would not be machismo.

The most heart-wrenching part is not my personal confrontation with machismo.  It's a thirteen year-old girl on a bike who listens to the catcalls issuing from the bus stop and smiles as she bumps along down the road.  Passivity, acceptance, complacency.  These are a few of the foundational structures for machismo that women knowingly lay but refuse to acknowledge.  That is what gets me the most – I'll be gone in two years to a world where at least the machismo is more disguised, easier to ignore.  I go home, and the women in my site will still be in my site.

There's ten million other things that people here want me to do in the way of projects.  But all I've got on my brain today is creating some sort of glorious super-project for empowering the female population.  A project that finally puts a wooden stake through the heart of this living nightmare.  I think of young girls here gaining a sense of who they are, feeling like they are valuable and own their roles as children, sisters, daughters.  Not just living receptacles that collect pressures of what other people want them to be.  Forming powerful and supportive friendships with other females of all ages in my community.  I changed people's lives.

But then I think of that guy.  Hola, Lily, que rica, te amo.  And I don't feel capable of anything at all.