Gut Instincts and Toddler Spittle

I’ve recently begun making visits to the various institutions VE partners with to see how each of the volunteers is doing in his or her work environment. I began making the visits for a number of reasons, mainly to increase my support of the volunteers and to begin to more fully understand the experience of volunteering at the different institutions. Although I know very well the experience of working with the adolescent girls at Entre Todas, I previously had no real sense for the nature of the work at our other partner institutions.

So far, the visits have been even more successful than I anticipated. Even riding the Metro to the institutions with the volunteers has proved to be a great opportunity to chat about how work and life in general is going. I see some of the volunteers more than others, so this is a great way for me to get one-on-one time with everyone. In the past, some volunteers have only come to me if they’ve been having a problem, so this gives me a chance to catch up with them about the positive aspects of their lives in Santiago, too.

Now, whether this fits into my previous description of the visits as “successful” or not, I’ve been loudly reminded of the various delightful facets of working with small children. Last week I visited Hogar Esperanza, a home where the majority of the children are babies and toddlers. Within five minutes of my visit, a two or three-year-old girl noticed that the she and I had ended up in one of the playrooms alone, so she announced that she was going to leave me alone in the room and that I was going to cry. She then proceeded to leave, slamming the door behind her. She later hawked a lougie onto the back of my head and would have delivered another to my face had I not ducked. I was forced to remind myself of the advice I always give incoming volunteers: the kids will do things that seem like a personal attack but the motive comes from an entirely different place.

On my visit to Hogar Pléyades, where the children are between the ages of two and ten, I experienced a similar discovery of the ever-fluctuating attitudes of young children. Their behavior is simply an extremely honest reflection of their emotions at each and every moment. Painfully obvious, yes, but interesting to me as I’ve been chatting with a friend recently about our instincts as adults to feel guilty or unreasonable for reacting in a “childish” way to something sad or frustrating. Children haven’t yet learned the manner in which adults feel they should react to any given situation and therefore react to the events in their lives more authentically.

The honesty goes beyond emotions, as well. I spent twenty minutes with one of the six-year-old girls at Pléyades on the patio, helping her hobble around on her rollerblades. I was having a great time until she randomly stopped, put a wrinkly nosed smile on her face and said, “Tía, you don’t have any boobs, you’re a MAN!” She then laughed maniacally for a moment before she reached her hands back out and said impatiently, “Let’s go.”

Clearly I don’t think adults should go around saying things like that to each other, but I’ve definitely left these recent visits with thoughts about honesty and authenticity. With my departure from Chile in the ever-approaching future, I’ve been thinking a lot about what sorts of decisions I should make in the coming months. I’m feeling more content than ever right now, in huge part thanks to a beautiful new living situation. I feel more balanced and able to listen to my instincts now, even if the decisions they lead me to make take some courage. I’ve found that this only makes the results more rewarding. (Feel free to groan or roll your eyes here).

As for that ever-approaching future I mentioned, it looks like I’m going to be staying with VE through early December or so. Although any VE-er will tell you that I’m actually never leaving, I want to make sure I never arrive at a time in which I’m not feeling excited about the work. I want the person in my position to be energetic and fresh, so I'll just need to keep listening to my instincts about whether or not that person is me. For now, I'm still very, very happy to be where I am.

Caring about the World Cup

I'm a bit baffled that I've just sat down to write a post about sports.

All bafflement aside, I must proceed and admit that I'm really into the World Cup this year. Now, "into" should be taken fairly loosely considering the number of Chileans who actually purchased flat screen TVs for the occasion and the fact that I didn't know until three weeks ago that soccer had rules beyond "Try to get the ball into your opponent's net."

Chile hadn't qualified for the World Cup since 1998, so when they beat Colombia to qualify, the celebrations in Plaza Italia looked like this:

I think I can safely say that every single person in Chile who's old enough to form opinions and young enough to remember their own name cares deeply about soccer, or here, fútbol. One of my first memories from Chile is looking out the kitchen window of my first apartment to Parque Bustamante, where a dad was holding his unsteady toddler's hands to help him walk, a miniature soccer ball bumping along in front of the boy's feet. I can't think of anything quite so universal in the United States, and I've certainly never seen fans in the US act like the fans in Chile.

As the World Cup began, there was an excitement in the air as if Christmas were around the corner. On the days when Chile played, schools opened late to allow everyone to watch the games. People selling fruit on the streets suddenly had TVs tuned to the game at their stands. In bars and restaurants, it was wise to order everything you wanted before the games started, as the waiters and cooks would file into the dining areas to watch, becoming increasingly more difficult to waive down as the intensity of play increased. In the VE office, we'd huddle around the TV in the living room, laptops on our laps just for show.

I've learned a lot in the past few weeks about the surprisingly complicated game of fútbol. I certainly couldn't explain the off-sides rule to anyone, but at least I now understand what's happening when the referee flashes those little yellow and red cards. On the down side, I don't think I'm anyone's favorite person to watch fútbol with. Although I've gotten better at recognizing good plays and bad plays, I'm normally more interested in making commentary that involves the players' facial hair. There are also a few traditions I can't seem to move past. For example, at the end of every game, the players exchange jerseys, sometimes putting them on right then! Jerseys that have been aggressively sweat into for the past ninety minutes by someone else, and the players just pull them right on. Sick.

Watching the Chile World Cup games here in Santiago was certainly a treat. Whenever Chile scored a goal, we'd open the office windows and listen to the immediate explosion of screams and honking horns. When they won their first two games, the celebrations that followed were on par with the best I ever watched from my old apartment on the 15th floor. As usual, the police started with water cannons, then brought out the tear gas. After one of the games, we watched from the office as the police cavalry chased some fans down the side street outside our windows. Even after Chile lost to Spain but moved on the the next round, the mass of people in Plaza Italia was as giant as ever. Even Telefónica showed its Chilean pride with a huge flag on its building in Plaza Italia:

On the one hand, it's great to see so many people fired up about one thing, celebrating together in such a no holds barred way. On the other hand, I wonder how they don't get sick of the same routine every time. Perhaps that's the difference between me and a true fútbol fan. Although I might tire of jumping around with thousands of other people a few times a month, knowing I'd be blasted with water and tear gas and potentially chased by horses, the Chilean fans can't seem to stop themselves from celebrating, no matter the consequences. I guess that's passion for you.

Now that Chile's out of the running, I'm less inclined to check FIFA's website, but it's certainly been an interesting foray into the world of international soccer. At the very least, it's been a reminder to keep an open mind about what I might or might not find interesting. And at the very most, it's been great fun to experience the festivities with my VE colleagues. As for office productivity? Better luck next month.

Bolivia!

Sometimes working a full-time, almost un-paid job in South America can be frustrating in that some of the most amazing travel opportunities in the world are right in my back yard, but I'm too much of a broke volunteer to get to experience them. Sometimes I decide to borrow money and go experience them anyway!

At the end of May, seven of us from VE traveled up north to San Pedro, Chile, a town alongside the Atacama Desert, then continued on to take a Jeep tour that would finish in the world's largest (4,086 square miles) salt flat in Uyuni, Bolivia. I flew up to San Pedro with my friends Annie and Ashton, where we met up with the other four of the group who had opted for the cheaper 24-hour bus. Although the Jeep tour was our "final destination," we took our first day in San Pedro to explore the famous Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) in the Atacama Desert. Here are Annie and Ashton and I at the first stop of the tour in the tour of the Desert:


The tour took us to various famous locations in the desert and concluded with watching the sunset over the Moon Valley. At this point we met up with the other half of our group, then watched as the sunset reflected an incredible set of colors on the mountains surrounding the valley.


The next day we were off on the tour, which brought us immediately to the Bolivian border and 4800 meters (15,748 feet!), so it was coooold. Here's the Bolivian Migration building in the middle of the desert:

After some questionable interchanges in the migration building, we piled into our Jeeps and were off! Because we were a group of seven, and only six could fit into a Jeep, we had to separate into two vehicles, but met a cool couple from Scotland and one from Germany as a result. The first day we drove until about 2:00 in the afternoon when we arrived at the first refugio, which was an unheated, very simple building with beds and a large room with tables for eating meals. This location was at 4370 meters (or 14,337 feet), so the drivers told us to rest up to avoid getting headaches, etc, from the altitude. On the drive to the refugio, we stopped at incredible place after incredible place. There were a few lakes with distinctively colored water, geysers, and this hotsprings:


At the refugio, we ignored the advice of the drivers and went exploring. Although most of us felt fine aside from minor headaches, we found walking up even the smallest of hills extremely difficult. The place was too incredible not to explore, though--it was one of those places with huge sky and landscape like nothing I've ever seen before. When the sun set, I realized I hadn't ever seen a 360 degree sunset. It wasn't too bad.


That night, though, was one of the only nights in my life I've ever had trouble sleeping because of the cold. In long johns, sweats, my L.L. Bean down sleeping bag, and the bedding on the bed, I was still freezing. With my face outside my sleeping bag I seriously feared for frostbite. With my face inside my sleeping bag, at an altitude with so little oxygen, I just couldn't breath. I was glad for the early morning wake-up call just for the excuse to get into the heated Jeep.

The second day of the tour brought more and more incredible sites. It became comical, almost, each time Ruben, our driver, would stop and say "Foto, foto," with slightly less enthusiasm each time. We started off at Laguna Colorado (Colored Lake) where we saw lots of flamingos!

There were more incredible lakes, an oddly beautiful stone tree, a volcano, and non-stop photogenic scenery. For the second night of lodging, as we neared the salt flat, we stayed in a hostel made almost completely of salt. The picture below is of the dining area--all the tables and stools are made of salt, along with the walls. It was salty (I licked it).

The next morning we drove to the salt flat. On our way in, while trying to wrap our heads around what we were looking at, we drove past a man on a bicycle with a baby on the back. The surreality was thick. Here's a photo I snapped of the other Jeep while we were driving quite closely to each other on the salt flat:

The classic tourist activity on the salt flats is to take goofy pictures because something about the seemingly endless salt makes playing with perspective extremely easy. We took lots of pictures such as this one:

The tour also stopped by the first ever salt hotel, outside of which were these piles of salt:

The Jeep tour ended at Uyuni's one other attraction: a train cemetery. After three days of unbelievable natural sites, ending at the resting place of a bunch of antique trains seemed strange, but interesting nonetheless. The trains were used mostly by the mining industry, apparently, but when the industry collapsed in the 1940's, the trains became obsoletes. For us, exhausted at the end of three long days of riding in Jeeps, the trains were simply a cool place to climb around for a minute before we moved on.

After the tour ended, our group went separate ways. Annie, Ashton, Madinah, and I continued on into Bolivia for a few days. After discovering that juice-in-a-bag was the best thing Uyuni had to offer beyond the salt flat and the train cemetery, we decided to take the next bus to Sucre, a beautiful introduction to Bolivian cities. Sucre has, in my opinion, an excellent balance of beauty and grit. The main square, pictured below, is charming, filled with manicured gardens and surrounded by gorgeous buildings.

There seemed to be a fair amount of tourism, but there were also plenty of opportunities to see the vast differences between Bolivia and Chile. Living in Santiago, I sometimes forget what South America is really like. With it's big business and Wi-fi everywhere you go, Santiago is very much a modern, developed city. Sucre, although a beautiful city with everything you could need, was a reminder of a different way of life. A large percentage of the Bolivian women we saw, for example, wore traditional dress. Street stalls such as the one pictured below were much more common than grocery stores and seemed to be the way most people purchased all of their goods. It was difficult to find a soda or bottle of water that was refrigerated, but very easy to purchase fresh, unpackaged foods on the street. We were there on Bolivian mother's day and on the night before, it seemed that one in every twenty people was carrying an uncovered cake amidst the crowded streets.

On our last full day in Sucre, we took a half-day hike along a portion of the Inca Trail. The four of us had a private tour with a Bolivian guide who, along with being fascinated by his first all-female tour group, told us lots of interesting information about Bolivian culture and history. Bolivia's current president, Evo Morales, has declared himself to be the first indigenous president, for example. He's also apparently known for the striped sweater he always wears, which has become a popular style in Bolivia since he took office.

The trail itself, which dates back to pre-Columbian times, was incredibly beautiful. The colors of the landscape were unlike colors I've seen elsewhere--the greens were almost muted, the dirt and clay orange-y and purple in places. Along some parts of the trail we walked on new paths but in some places we walked on the original stones that has been placed there thousands of years before. Here's a photo that shows a new dirt road which we later drove up to get a view of the valley, which includes a massive crater in which you can see original dinosaur prints. Nutty!

For the last two days of my trip, I travelled alone. Madinah headed further north to La Paz, while Ashton and Annie headed to another Bolivian city, Potosí, where they took a tour of a grim operating silver mine. Because of limited time, I needed to head back down to San Pedro to catch my flight back to Santiago. Transportation in Bolivia is much less efficient that in Chile, we learned, so I wanted to leave myself plenty of time. Although I was initially a bit overwhelmed at the prospect of traveling by myself, even just for two days, I found it quite relaxing and got a lot of reading and writing done, which was lovely.

Bolivia was a fascinating place and definitely one that I'd like to revisit. Perhaps I'll WWOOF there, who knows! Regardless, the trip was well worth going a bit further into debt for.

Smog Season/Fresh Starts

Winter has most definitely arrived in Santiago. As I write this I’m perfecting the art of typing with my sweet new alpaca fingerless gloves with mitten flaps from Bolivia! Fun, perhaps, but necessary more than anything else. I’m also writing this on a Saturday night, which normally wouldn’t happen, but I’m sitting home with what was a flu but morphed into a sinus infection with a bonus side of pink eye! Thanks, Santiago, your smog has done me well, yet again.

There is also positive news to report, however! We’ve just finished the orientation program for the June class of VE volunteers, a class of ten, none of whom were welcomed to Chile by an 8.8 earthquake. Orientation went smoothly and we’re all quite enamored with this set of newbies. Anther exciting newbie at VE is Josh Pilz, who will take over for Brooke as Executive Director. We LOVE him. As sad as it is to see Brooke go, we’re all thrilled that Josh is the replacement! I first met Josh on our earthquake relief trip to Retiro and was thoroughly impressed with him as a human being. He has started his training in the VE office, even taking part in the majority of the June class’s orientation week. He’s even excited about Vanessa and Edmondstone, the tiny little VE turtles he’ll inherit as ED.

A very exciting detail that deserves its own paragraph is that one of the newbies doesn’t eat gluten. !!! I’ve already taken her to one of my favorite restaurants, fed her my from-scratch gluten-free pizza, and generally overwhelmed her with my excitement about having another of my kind around VE. She has stated repeatedly her gratitude that I laid down all the groundwork in training the VE staff on the art of gluten-free cooking, which is valid considering I ate lettuce and rice with tomato paste sauce during my orientation week.

In other new news, I’ve moved! We decided it was time to move on from cozy apartment 1505 (one cushy block from the VE office) and venture into the world of living with Chileans. I’ve found myself a perfect little quirky apartment three metro stops from the office in the very happening area of Providecia. I live with Jose and Max, two wonderful/terribly cool Chileans who are both in film. (I know). The apartment is great fun—the two boys live upstairs and downstairs are the kitchen, living room/dining room, and my room, complete with my own bathroom. The rent is cheaper than 1505, and I get to speak Spanish every day. I moved the Monday of orientation week, so was literally in the apartment only to sleep for the rest of the week, but now that life is returning to normal, I think I’m on my way to figuring out the rhythm of the casa.

And, because apparently I forget to tell people, I’m staying a bit longer than planned here in Chile! I guess I meant to leave some time this month, but for many reasons, including that there’s no one to take over my job yet, I’m staying a few extra months. My priority is to do what I can to help the transition for whoever takes my job go smoothly, and since the huge transition from one Executive Director to the next is currently happening, I want to be around and help in any way I can with that as well. The plan as of right now is to find someone for my job sometime in July, train them for the month of August, help them with the orientation for the September class, then head off to a farm to WWOOF for a few months. WWOOF-ing is something I’ve always wanted to do, and something I would love to do in Chile or Argentina or Bolivia, so this seems like the time. If all goes according to plan, I’ll be home for Christmas and a great big reality check!

All in all life is going wonderfully, as usual! There’s never a dull moment with VE and rarely a free one (it took me staying home sick to blog, apparently), so time continues to pass at an alarmingly quick rate. There have been a few tough good-byes recently with long-term volunteers moving on, but this new class of volunteers has given me very high hopes for the next three months.

Construction Trip to Pencahue, Chile

After such a fulfilling trip to Retiro to help with post-earthquake reconstruction, four of us decided to repeat the experience back in early May. We joined a group of students from the Universidad de Chile for a weekend of building in Pencahue, another tiny town about 5 hours south of Santiago. We brought our own hammers and measuring tapes on this trip and thank goodness we did, as not long after we pulled out of Santiago, the trip leader passed around a laptop with a spreadsheet into which each person was filling in their name, what tools they brought with them, and how much construction experience they had.

We thought nothing of the spreadsheet until the morning when, over clumpy powdered milk, we discovered that the group had been divided into teams of four people per mediagua (the pre-fabricated temporary housing we were there to build). There were 16 mediaguas sitting outside the school where we were sleeping and the plan was to finish them all by Sunday afternoon.

“That can’t be possible,” I said. “The guys in Retiro said 12 was the ideal number of people to build a mediagua.”

The 16 mediaguas in waiting

We were not in Retiro anymore! Still recovering from the 3:30 a.m. arrival in Pencahue and the 6:30 a.m. wake-up call, we all piled on to a bus that delivered us each to our worksites. Unlike in Retiro where the worksites were all within the “downtown” area of the town, we were each at least a mile from each other, most of us on family farms.

My team, luckily, was comprised of three Chilean students, each of whom had some significant construction experience. I was able to help a lot in the first phase—digging holes for the foundation pile-ons with iron rods! As we got into the more complicated building stages, I became an expert wall-holder and nail-hander-to-er. On Sunday evening as the sun set and the boys finished the roof, I was “in charge” of taking pictures.

Our team, plus a few members of the family, working on the foundation

The land around our site was absolutely beautiful, with mountains visible in the distance 360 degrees around us. As we worked, we were surrounded by cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, cats, dogs, sheep and horses. At one point on Sunday morning, we saw the stream of run-off from the house flow red after the mother slaughtered one of the turkeys for lunch.

The best part, by far, of the weekend was getting to know the family for whom we were building the mediagua. Because all of us from the group were all so separated throughout Pencahue, we didn’t meet back up for lunch or breaks, we simply ate lunch with our families. When I told the family that I didn’t eat meat or gluten, I became an instant topic of conversation. I was presented with a beautiful bowl of lentils instead of the turkey soup everyone else was eating, and the mother cooked a batch of potatoes for me on the second day. Throughout the course of the weekend, each of the couple’s four daughters showed up, two with their children, so I got to explain my fascinating dietary requirements each time.

The welcome they extended was so warm, I didn’t notice until the end of lunch on Saturday the condition of the family’s house. It seemed to be combination house and grain barn, and I’m still not sure if they were only living there because their house collapsed in the earthquake or because they had been on the list for a mediagua and their time finally came. The house was put together with various materials, in some places just plastic sheets, and was thus incredibly drafty, so once the sun went down, they all huddled around a bowl of coals from the oven to keep warm. They were incredibly generous with us and incredibly appreciative, offering us hot coffee and tea and fresh homemade bread (an egg for me) each evening so we could take a break from the cold.

The father helping out with the foundation

The matriarch, looking adorable as usual

Handing up the zinc roof panels

In the end, our group of forty-eight people completed twelve mediaguas. A smaller group was planning on staying until Tuesday to finish the remaining four. Although I thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Retiro, I feel incredibly content to have gone on this trip, which felt infinitely more productive, and to have met that family. Hopefully they’re enjoying the new addition to their home!

With the family in the finished product!

Earthquake Relief Trip to Retiro, Chile

Five minutes out of Retiro and the Chileans at the back of the bus had already cut open a melon, filled it with wine, and drawn a Jack-o-Lantern face in red Sharpie on one side. Eight hours later, we pulled into Santiago.

Since the February 27th earthquake in Chile, we at VE Global have struggled to find tangible ways to get involved and help the people in areas that were harder hit than Santiago. As I mentioned in my last post, we helped out briefly at the Red Cross warehouse, but wanted to make a more significant commitment of time and labor. After investigating several options, we were lucky enough to snag spots on a bus with a student organization from the Universidad de Chile to Retiro, Chile, a town of 3,000 people 335 kilometers south of Santiago. Seven of us from VE joined the huge group of students, fairly unclear about how the weekend would play out but hopeful that we'd be able to make some sort of concrete difference.

From start to finish, the trip was a delightfully Chilean affair. First, we left Santiago about an hour after the stated departure time. After arriving in Retiro and standing around for 30 minutes, we got word that there would be an organizational meeting at 6:30 and that we would be free until then. Happy with the opportunity to stretch our legs, we decided to take a walk around the town and take a look at the damage.

Seeing the state of Retiro reminded me of walking through the intensely poor neighborhoods of Guatemala City where I volunteered with Safe Passage--both situations were so extreme, I had a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that I was physically there, seeing the conditions in front of me, not in a newspaper or a movie. The damage is incredible, and I can only imagine what the town looked like a month ago before any debris clearing had been done. We described it to our friends back in Santiago as looking like a war zone, holes where buildings used to be everywhere you looked.

We were welcomed to Retiro by this house, which sits directly across the street from the old school building where we stayed. While our building had only cracks, this house was absolutely destroyed:

Walls such as this one fell all around the town and those left standing have "Peligro" (Danger) spray-painted on them.

The most incredible site was this fallen water tower, which had knocked a second water tower down as it fell. We kept trying to imagine what the sound of this cracking and smashing to the ground was like.

In addition to the damages we saw, we also saw a lot of evidence of the work that's already been done to begin rebuilding the town. Two of our friends who had taken a previous trip to Retiro two weeks earlier told us that this house had been destroyed when they saw it on their last visit but had been rebuilt in the past two weeks. The wooden portion of the house to the right had previously been made of adobe and had completely fallen but was rebuilt beautifully to look like this:

We also saw quite a few "mediaguas" already completed around the town. Mediaguas are pre-fabricated temporary shelters that are currently being built all around Chile. They're 6 meters long by 3 meters wide and are meant to temporarily house a family of four for approximately one year, though they're meant to last up to ten. It was clear to us, however, while walking around Retiro, that these mediaguas would be in no way temporary for most of the families living in them. With winter fast approaching, the mediaguas are clearly better than the tents many families are living in, but picturing a family crammed in the tiny space for years and years is a hard thought to sit with.

It didn't take long for us to meet the precocious children of the town, who were both adorable and thrilled to meet some gringos. It's much less common for people in a town such as Retiro to hear English, especially as compared to Santiago, so they begged us to speak to them in English, laughing hysterically at the sound of it. They were also eager to have their pictures taken and showed no shortage of sass:

Upon returning to the school where we were staying for the "meeting," it became clear that a meeting was not going to happen any time soon, so we broke out a deck of cards and made friends with a few military guys who were finishing a week-long stint in Retiro building temporary houses. Although we could have gotten in a few hours of work that night, nothing seemed organized, so we played. Our two friends Meghan and Josh, whom we know through WorldTeach, had taken a bus to Retiro on Thursday evening and so had started working on Friday morning. At 10:30 p.m., they were still out working. This seemed crazy to us, the new arrivals on this trip, but Saturday would show us that logic was not exactly a factor in the weekend plans.

On Saturday morning, we headed to the property of a family who's house now looks like this:

Meghan and Josh had spent the evening digging holes for the pile-ons that made up the foundation of the "mediagua" we would build for the family and were excited to participate in the more exciting work of putting up the actual house. We started the day by nailing the floor into place, and by about 2:30 in the afternoon, the house was complete. Although it was gratifying to see the house finished, we were all a bit frustrated with our lack of skills and, due to the large number of people working at our site, the chunks of time we spent standing around feeling useless. There were moments in which it was important to have a lot of people, for putting up the walls, etc, so in some ways it was valuable for us to be there. Once we finished, we all felt confident that we would know what to do on the next mediagua and would be able to provide better assistance.

One of the best aspects of working on this house was seeing the family watch the progress. They were also extremely generous and put out fruit and snacks for us, even making incredible homemade empanadas (a traditional Chilean snack that's similar to a calzone but smaller and in some cases deep-fried).

Here are a few pictures of the process:

Here's our group, including the students from the Universidad de Concepción who were leading the project and the family that now lives in the house:

Once the house was completed, we headed back to the school where we were staying and realized that we had no plan for what to do next. It was early in the day, we were still eager to work, but there was no one to tell us where to go. So we ate a snack and played cards. We laughed about it because we had to, but it was ultimately frustrating that even on an earthquake relief trip we could feel confused about how to help. After an hour or so of hanging out, we decided to set out and see if we could find any of the other groups and see if they needed help.

After some aimless wandering, we finally got word from Meghan and Josh that the students we worked with earlier that day had found a poorly constructed mediagua that needed to be taken down and rebuilt. We all met up there and began the process of carefully taking down the walls and marveling at all the mistakes that had been made during the initial construction. Among the more amusing mistakes: the floor was not nailed down to the pile-ons in any way and, once we lifted up the floor, we found the instructions for building the mediagua on the ground underneath. By this point, of course, it was getting dark, and although logic might suggest that this type of work not be done in the dark, Chile suggests otherwise:

Once we decided to stop work for the day, we found Meghan and a couple other VE-ers who had gone to work on a different project digging holes for pile-ons for a temporary house for a little old man with a swollen knee who was currently living in a bus stop with a plastic sheet for a wall. They had found a few lights and were digging holes with heavy iron rods. There were close to 30 people at the worksite, it was past 9:00 p.m., and they were attempting to measure and dig holes that were meant to be evenly spaced. We attempted to get involved, and at one point were sent on a mission to gather a wheelbarrow full of rocks from a pile of rubble a few blocks down, but after completing that task and standing around for a while, it became clear that some of us should just leave and get some rest.

At about 10:00 that night, the meeting that was supposedly going to happen the night before finally began. For over two hours they went around and around in circles talking about issues that were occurred throughout the weekend. Of course the "issues" they were discussing weren't things such as "We shouldn't work past dark" or "We should organize our projects more efficiently to utilize the people we have," but rather, "People shouldn't party during the weekend, we're here to work," versus, "People should party because it's such hard work." I couldn't tell you much more about the meeting, though, as I was outside playing ping pong the whole time. Whoops.

On Sunday morning we headed back to the site of the poorly constructed mediagua to begin taking out the pile-ons and digging new holes. Before a few of us began work, however, we went to deliver a few boxes of donations to a family for whom the students from the Universidad de Concepción had built two mediaguas earlier in the week. The boxes held food, winter clothing and blankets, along with some chocolate Easter eggs we had brought with us. Watching the family open the boxes was one of the highlights of the weekend for me, especially watching the girls try on their new hats and look through the baby clothes and blankets for their little sister:

Here's the family along with a few of the students who built their mediaguas:

Back at our worksite, we spent our last few hours of work time finishing the new holes and putting in pile-ons. It was tiring work but we were all thrilled to feel as though we were actually doing something.

After cold showers and one last maté in the park, we got on the 3:00 (er, 4:30) bus back to Santiago. Despite the long ride and an extremely stiff neck, I felt energized by the weekend. Although we didn't do quite as much work as we thought we would, it felt like a good balance of work and play and by far a cooler weekend than we would have had in Santiago. I loved participating in the weekend with my VE friends, with whom I work every day but in a very different way. I was impressed by everyone's energy and sense of humor throughout the weekend and feel extremely lucky that I got to be part of the trip.

I'm hoping to get down south again soon, maybe even to Retiro. It can be tricky to find chunks of time to get away from our hectic lives here, but there's still a lot to be done in Chile and although we may not be great with hammers, we can learn and could probably spare a couple of fingers.

Thanks, Retiro, for a beautiful weekend!

Earthquake 2010

It’s been just over three weeks now since the magnitude 8.8 earthquake hit Chile. In some ways, here in Santiago it feels as though nothing happened. City life appears to be functioning normally: bars and restaurants are open and full of customers, joggers trudge along running paths and couples spend afternoons canoodling in the shady pockets of grassy parks. I spent my day yesterday reading next to a fountain and now sit in a café sipping coffee while I write this.

At VE, we’ve mostly returned to our normal daily routines, as well. Our volunteers head to their institutions every day to help the children with homework, organize sports and arts activities, etc. Outside of work we cook meals together, play games, and gossip, carrying on as we did before the earthquake.

Despite this normalcy, there’s an underlying sense of tension and exhaustion here. Perhaps it’s only in my head and I’m projecting it onto the entire city, but I get the sense that everyone feels a bit emotionally rattled (bad earthquake humor not intended). Among my friends here, I’ve seen a huge variety of reactions, ranging from no reaction whatsoever to mild emotional turmoil. Navigating the rollercoaster of emotions has been a huge challenge. Although my VE role as Director of Volunteer Relations suggests that I should be tending to the emotional needs of all the volunteers, I’ve been left feeling overwhelmed and under-qualified to handle the variety.

That the range of reactions is so vast should come as no surprise, as the earthquake was undeniably terrifying. It hit at 3:34 on Saturday morning, February 27^th, while my roommates, Chris and Annie, and I were all sleeping. I woke to the sound of the wooden painting hanging at the foot of my bed clanking against the wall. Once awake, I realized my entire room was shuddering and swaying, my door repeatedly swinging open and slamming shut. There was the unfamiliar sound of cracking plaster and the rumble of shifting furniture as my nightstand and desk slid away from the wall. The items close to the edges of the desk and nightstand danced their way to the floor and the one, highly embarrassing thought I remember having was that I felt as though I were on the sinking Titanic. I’ll never let go, Jack.

The first earthquake lasted for a staggering 90 seconds. I had fallen asleep with the lamp on my nightstand on, so I was extremely aware that about 35 seconds into the shaking, the power went out. The shaking became so severe near the end that I didn’t feel as though I could get out of my bed and walk in a straight line to my doorway. Not that the logical thought of getting to a doorway even crossed my mind. So I stayed in bed. Our apartment is on the 15^th floor and the swaying was so extreme, I was convinced the building was going to topple over. Tall buildings are built to move that way in the case of an earthquake, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to feel like a joy ride while it’s happening.

Not even five seconds after the shaking stopped, Annie came running into my room, saying, “Are you okay? Are you okay?” Chris was right behind her and I sat up, staring at them, saying, “Yeah, yeah,” trying to process what had just happened. We made our way into the living room where our floor-to-ceiling windows showed us that the entire city was out of power. We live just across the Mapocho River from Barrio Bellavista, one of the main “going out” neighborhoods with blocks upon blocks of bars and nightclubs, so we got to witness the mass exodus of the Friday night partiers making their way out of the darkened clubs. 3:30 is prime party-time in Santiago, so the streets were quickly filled with inebriated people who suddenly needed a ride home. Buses drove past the overflowing bus stops, causing a few desperate individuals to run into the street to try to make them stop.

After about an hour of watching the scene on the street and surveying the relatively minor damage in our apartment, we decided that going back to sleep was the next logical step. As I drifted off, however, I received a call from my friend Matt who informed me that we should leave the building for a couple of hours in case of a big aftershock. We took the first of many trips down the fifteen flights of stairs and found about twenty other people from our building sitting outside. While we waited, we sent text messages to everyone we could think of and confirmed that, although everyone was freaked out, we were all safe and sound.

At about 5:45, we decided to leave the grannies and their doggies and headed back up to the apartment to try to get some sleep. At 7:30 I was awoken by the first big aftershock and decided to give up on sleeping. At 8:00, our friend Meghan came over, as she had been alone in her apartment and had received a phone call from her mom who saw the first news reports in the US with pictures from Concepción, a city to the south of Santiago that was practically destroyed by the earthquake. She told Meghan about the tsunami warnings and, having no sense for the situation in Santiago, was an understandable wreck.

By the afternoon on Sunday we had electricity and cold water back, so much of the remainder of the day was spent reassuring family and friends that we were safe. Although I was extremely relieved that we were safe and had electricity and water, the city was quiet in an unsettling way. The Metro wasn’t running and we found only two convenience stores open for buying snacks and water. We heard from a Chilean friend that sometimes the water can be unsafe to drink after a big earthquake because of excess minerals. Knowing that, then being unsure of how long the water supply would last at the two open stores, was an interesting, albeit tiny, taste of the panic one must feel when he or she don’t have access to basic resources. We concluded the day on a positive note, however, as a group of us spent the evening in the VE office playing Catchphrase and Pictionary, happy to be together and laughing.

Each day after the earthquake brought us both a little closer and a little further from normalcy. Restaurants and select grocery stores re-opened, but the shelves were increasingly barren each day, raising concerns about when they’d be able to re-stock. We had gas back in our apartment by Sunday afternoon, but had friends who were still without gas over a week later. Chilean schools, meant to open the first week of March, were all delayed at least a week.

Then, of course, the aftershocks. When a huge earthquake hits, it’s normal for aftershocks to occur for weeks or even months after the main quake. We began following the earthquakes on the US Geological Survey website and by six days after the earthquake, there had been over 200 aftershocks. Just when a day would feel normal, a big aftershock would hit and we’d all be reminded that we were in the middle of something quite nutty.

On the VE side of things, our tiny March class became a blessing in disguise as we were forced to postpone, and ultimately cancel, the orientation week that was meant to begin March 1^st, the Monday after the earthquake. One of the two new volunteers had arrived a few days before the earthquake and the other spent hours on the phone with his airline, finally able to secure a flight that arrived on Friday the 5^th. We decided, after spending hours organizing and re-organizing the orientation schedule, that we would just give both of the volunteers a mini, personalized orientation.

In the midst of the craziness, we still managed to have VE Palooza, the celebration to close each three-month cycle of VE, although it was a cozy, modified version at my apartment on the Sunday after the earthquake. We also held a modified version of Café, the celebration with skits, etc, at the end of each Orientation week. In the interest of sending positive vibes to Chile, Matt and I donned our cueca garb and introduced the new volunteers to the national dance. In the interest of keeping it real, the VE women reprised their performance of Soulja Boy from Festival de Arte.

As the first couple of weeks after the earthquake passed, we found that another huge challenge was figuring out how we can help in the earthquake relief effort. Just a couple hours south of Santiago the situations are extremely dire, but finding an effective way to contribute in a meaningful way proved quite difficult. The few well-organized options were flooded with people wanting to help and we didn’t want to just hop onto something to feel good about ourselves. We ended up helping out in the Red Cross Chile warehouse here in Santiago, making care kits and helping load and unload trucks of donations. Although they seemed to have a lot of volunteers, it felt good to contribute at least a tiny bit in a concrete way.

We’re also working to raise money to repair the damage that our partner institutions faced. A couple of the institutions came through almost unscathed, while others suffered severe damages. And here I shamelessly say that if you’d like to donate to VE to help in this rebuilding effort, you can click here.

Now, if you’ve made it this far in this grossly long post, I’m going to end on a sappy note. I always feel lucky to be a part of the VE community, as I’ve gushed about many, many times in this blog. It’s during times like this, though, that I feel even more fortunate to have so many people around to freak out with and laugh with and eat cookie dough with when that seems like the only possible solution. It’s been a crazy few weeks but I’m still content to be where I am.

I’ll leave you with some pictures:

Here’s some of the damage from our apartment, just a bit of missing plaster:

The worse damage is in the hallways of our building:

At the VE office, the turtles (Vanessa and Eddie) had a wild, almost-fatal ride (Thanks to Matt for the photo):

Our friend Meghan’s apartment suffered much worse damage than ours. In her kitchen, every single dish and glass broke. Here’s a shot she took:

Around Santiago, there are a few instances of damage that make me shocked the city didn’t suffer more. Thanks to my friend Lucía for these shots:

At the Aldea María Reina, a home for adolescent girls and one of our partner institutions, the entire front wall collapsed, leaving the barbed wire hanging alone:

Matt and I dancing the cueca at Café:

The VE women doing what they do best: