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Pretty Girls: Xeni Jardin and Site Visit Wednesday, Feb 7 2007
Journal and Pretty Girls 10:25 pm
Xeni Jardin is an editor over at BoingBoing, a reporter for NPR, and just generally a really cool person from that I can tell. Lately she’s been reporting from Guatemala about how folks down there are using are using digital technology to identify the bodies of the thousands killed there during a nearly 40 year long civil war, during part of which the US backed counter-insurgency forces that participated in mass killings. Gorgeous, smart, and apparently fairly progressive, Xeni Jardin is A Tiger in Zavet’s most recent “Pretty Girl.”
In other news, I had a site visit today. That means that one of my two bosses in the Youth Development office came to see my, my apartment, and my work. Ivan, the second in command over at YD, and I sat down with the director of my institution. My, oh my, what a conversation. Both Ivan and my director kept their cool, but I could tell there was tension. Basically Ivan, like a sensible person, was revolted by the whole condition of my institution, which has pretty much abandoned all hope for the future of the children that live there. There’s essentially no attempt at rehabilitate the kids that are sent there, and even less preparation for their future. My director praised things like the fact that we have champion table-tennis players at the school (on a district level). When Ivan mentioned that it was unlikely that any of them were going to grow up to be table tennis champions, they said that they were teaching them how to make martinitzas (little cloth ornaments and wrist bands sold in Bulgaria during the winter as part of the anticipation of spring), as though a window into a once a year market was a secure financial future for the kids. The people that work there are good people who want the best for the kids, but they just don’t see how things could be better there. I feel a lot of times like I’m failing at my job as a volunteer when I can’t make them see, but then a conversation like the one Ivan had today seems to indicate that such a task is beyond me. I don’t know how to even attempt such grand changes.
Small things I can do. For instance, behavior modification. I witness things like older kids coming into the a room where a DVD is playing on a laptop that the school has and shoving smaller kids off a chair near the front. I feel that I can’t interfere because that’s an existing power structure, and if I interfere I’ll only alienate everyone and make things worse by upseting existing boundaries. However, I’m planning on making a cinema room sometime after my current project for the fitness room is finished. We have a laptop and a projector. We just need to set up a screen and some chairs. In this room I could create a new environment with new rules. I’d let them know that if they want to watch the film with me that they have to respect those rules, one of which is you can’t kick someone out of their chair just because you want it. Baby steps, I know, but if you try to go too far too quickly, you’ll lose them. Thses are the same sort of steps I take when playing ball outside. They don’t want to throw to every kid who’s in the circle, but if they don’t, I simply say that they can’t play at all then, and start throwing to the kids who they excluded only. Once they come round, they can play again, but they have to do so by my rules. That way I’m not taking anything away. I’m only giving upon conditions. Setting up a reward structure that way is the only way I know how to make it positive reinforcement work towards getting these kids to be civil. Lord knows they already get enough negative reinforcement from everyone else. But does any of this change the fact that these kids have no skills to get them through life on the correct side of the law?
Progress seemed to have been made, however. Despite the shortcomings of the institution as a whole, Ivan recognized my own progress there and praised the amount of work that I have been able to get down, especially under the circumstances. That didn’t stop him, however, from prompting me to try harder to achieve some of the more core goals of Peace Corps. That is, cooperative work on projects, experience exchange between myself and Bulgarians (rather than running my projects myself), and integrating the kids into the broader community. He conceded, however, that in the case of my institution that that would be extremely difficult. My director seems to have recognized some of the institutions shortcomings, thought she may not have admitted them. Maybe we are laying the groundwork for self-change? We talked about getting another volunteer to replace me, so maybe over a longer time period, with more visits, and with more interaction with an American, they will see the light. I hope to get some more feedback from him soon, as we really didn’t have much time to debrief.
Anyway, that’s a good chunck of news for all my loyal readers.
