Playa Esperanza

Playa Esperanza!

Home, not so sweet home!  Not yet, anyway.

Maybe never! Who knows?  I don’t know if I can really do this. Hell, I don’t even know what to do. Maybe that’s the point. I need to figure this out.

But, this place is so damned beautiful it can bring a tear to your eye just to look around. It is that beautiful. Imagine the most beautiful tropical paradise you can, with no high rise hotels, thatched roofed huts and colorful houses on the side of the mountain overlooking the sea and no tourists. Ok, now, it is twice that beautiful.

There is a problem though. I’m not here on vacation. I’m here to help.

For the past three months the Peace Corps has spent a lot of money and time to prepare me to do just that. They’ve said, “just do your community diagnostic. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. You will figure out what to do, Relax!”

I was told that by a string of very successful volunteers who have done incredible things here. They made presentations to us about their projects.

Well, I’m not a trainee anymore and I feel the pressure.

Here in Playa Esperanza, I can tell, the people are watching. They are curious. They think, who is this old guy and what is he going to do?

This is a poor community. The people here need jobs, latrines, running water and electricity. What can I do? And, just to add a little more pressure, that community diagnostic thing needs to be done in partnership with someone from here. We are supposed to make a joint project presentation to the Peace Corps at the end of July. I don’t even know who that person is yet. Yep, pressure!

Did I mention the crystal clear river that comes out from under the mountain and spills into the Caribbean a five minute walk from here? I think I will go have a swim and lower my stress level….

So, what I’ve been doing is walking around a lot. I walk to the computer lab in the morning and hang out with the teenagers playing on Facebook. One of my goals is to help make this lab sustainable. They run Linux on the computers. I’m not sure if that is a great idea so I’ve been Googling lots of stuff about Linux, trying to get up to speed. I’ve got lots of time.

Later, I take a walk around the pueblo and aggravate the inhabitants. Here’s how it works. I spot a victim sitting in the shade. It is really hot here. I stop and introduce myself. They always offer me a chair. We talk. I try to remember their names. This is especially difficult as I usually cannot pronounce their names. What I wouldn’t  give for a Sam, Fred or Susie. Of course, everything is in Spanish.

I took a walk on the beach late yesterday afternoon. The fishing boats had just returned. There is no dock or harbor here, just a beautiful gravel beach with huge waves. The boats, small, painted blue and white, surf in and are quickly pulled up on a very steep beach. There was a group of people under some trees. There had about 50 fish piled up; large fish, 2 to 2.5 feet long. I have no idea what kind they were but I have discovered they taste delicious.  The fishermen were paying their assistants one fish each for their day’s work and bartering the rest. Money? There is not much around.

Last night I was playing bachata in the street with my amigo, Victor. He is a talented 29 year old who really has it going on on the guitar. His guitar is crap, of course, and borrowed. But, he can follow anything and he knows how to jam. So, we are playing Stand By Me, bachata style. I’m singing. There is a crowd of kids listening and dancing. When I get to the chorus, I have help. There are these three girls, all about 10 years old, dancing and singing, “Darling, darling stand by me, won’t you stand by me.” Their dancing was perfect and so was their singing. Incredible!

So, I stay here, feeling a bit manic. Loving the place and wanting to be anywhere else in the world, all in the span of an hour.


Note: The real name of our place is not Playa Esperanza. The Peace Corps asks that volunteers not put actual locations in blogs. I'm a rule follower.