Work Update

Well I finally have a better idea of what my work is all about, although I still don't have a proper timetable of when I need to be at work and on what days, which is pretty frustrating as I need time to do my work for VE as well. Looks like I'll be spending half my time with the proteccion team who organise and implement the after school activites for the kids, and half with the prevencion team who work directly with their families and those who are most at risk. Both teams' objectives revolve around the UN's Declaration of Children's Rights. I wasn't even aware that such a formal document existed, but here children's specific rights are well known : there are posters illustrating them at metro stations, they are talked about on the news when abuse cases come up, and the children themselves are made explicitly aware of what they are; this is one of the aims of both teams. Proteccion then work to enable the children to implement these rights in their daily lives through the after school activities based around certain topics : education, recreation, family, sexual awareness etc, while prevencion aim to enable families to respect the rights of the children within them, as well as dealing with issues such as domestic violence which do not exclusively affect children. All this is done as much as possible with the involvement of the local community and government groups. When a child and their family have sufficiently improved, the child is presented with a certificate and moves on from the programme at the Centre, allowing other children on the waiting list to benefit from what it offers.

So far I know that I will be working with three groups on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evenings, initially with one of the existing group leaders, but later as an independent member of the team. Apparently no volunteer has ever had this opportunity before, and it's nice to know that the director has so much faith in me : I just hope I can deliver! The main problem here is that the woman I'm initially going to be working with, R, really isn't my biggest fan and is less than forthcoming to say the least when I ask what I can do to help or whether we can organize some activities together. She also works at a ridiculously slow and unproductive pace, full of cigarette breaks and phone calls, which I find frustrating as I've always worked very hard and to the fullest of my abilities in any job I've had : I don't see how people can do anything less, but apparently it doesn't bother her.

So I'm just going to plan some of my own activites and bring them up at the team meeting in the hope that our team leader will give me the go ahead. I know this isn't really the best way to get into the R's good books, but if she's not going to let me help I don't really have any choice. The kids are actually starting next week, not the week after - v. relieved about that! - and the first sessions are just welcome / getting to know you evenings. We're supposed to be organising games, though R has shown no sign of doing this, so I'm translating all the games we played at Brownies into spanish and hopefully I'll be able to do some with the kids. The groups are 6-9, 9-13 and 8-11 years old : I'm happy I don't have teenagers because they're much harder to please - everything has to be cool, and my spanish for a start is anything but.

Speaking of which, everyone in the team speaks incredibly fast, with terrible pronunciation and masses of chilean slang, so I can't understand a thing at lunch break, and it's much harder even to hold one on one conversations than it is with my housemates or Maria. I do keep asking them to slow down, but they tend to forget, which is understandable. I do understand the majority when they are talking more formally, in a meeting, say, so in terms of knowing what I'm doing it's not too much of a problem; it's just hard to get across who I am and be friendly.

So I have my hours for proteccion, but prevencion don't have their planning meeting until next Wednesday so I don't really know when I'll be working with them. They all seem happy for me to be with them, though, and I will be shadowing them on family visits and helping with workshops (from what I can make out anyway!) until I understand more about what they do, then they want me to be more active and suggest ideas and activities, which is great. I'll also have a few designated hours for english lessons and the library - I ran my idea for a neighbourhood book drive past the VE education committee head and she really liked it, so hopefully that'll be going ahead (and I get newbie brownie points which is always good hehe).

All in all I think I am really pretty lucky to be here from a work experience point of view : I have a much more varied job than the others, but it's also a lot harder and requires patience and the ability to really put myself forward, with reference to both the time and effort it will take to get in with the teams and properly understand the work before I can actually do anything concrete. At the moment I feel like the useless work experience kid, to be honest, but I know things will improve. It's just hard because it's so far removed from what I've been expecting for the past year and a half. I'm still rather peeved I'm not working as a volunteer in a children's home or school, that I won't be spending hours a day with kids, but I just need to switch my brain over into work experience mode and be positive. I've got plenty of time in my life to work in a children's home I guess.

To end on a couple of positives : I accompanied the director, S, to a meeting of campamento residents on Monday (the campamento is an area of housing made from wood, corregated iron etc, often with stolen elctricity and water) where I met a woman, C, who is taking night classes in English. She asked S if I could help her with her work, and she said we could use the Centre for classes, so I'll be doing two English classes a week in the mornings before I start work. We had a short one on Tuesday with C and her friend and it was good fun : both are enthusistic to learn and they can help me with my Spanish too. I've never taught before, but we had a day of training with WorldTeach during orientation week and I think I should be fine, although I'm not sure that I'll be able to conduct the entire class in English as WorldTeach suggested : these are not women with much experience of education and they really need to understand how the phrases translate into their native language, especially as they are tested in class in this way, so we'll just see how it goes. Second positive, not work related, was seeing Billie on Monday : we went for a lovely meal and chatted for hours, and it was so nice to see a familiar face. I do get twinges of homesickness every now and then, especially on the metro in the morning, but I'm generally so busy that there isn't time to miss people and places too much. And third : I finished my first translation for the VE website and I'm v. happy with it - so glad I can keep up what is probably my best languages skill while I'm here.

Over the weekend I'm going to meet my surrogate family, visit Valparaiso and hopefully the girl I met on the plane on the way over, work at the Casa de Guaguas (baby house) and make the house video I keep saying I'm going to do! Blogger isn't letting me upload stuff at the moment though, but hopefully I will get some more pictures up here soon (was going to put all my stencil photos in the sidebar, but it stopped working after one, so it looks a bit lonely...).

Now I need sleep - I must admit I really haven't been getting enough, but I don't want every day to just consist of breakast, work, dinner, sleep with three hours on the Transport system to get to work and back, so I stay up late to chat with the girls and watch rubbish chilean TV (you have NO idea how bad it is; France seems positively radiant in comparison) while being affectionately mobbed by the doggies. It's nice :-)

If anyone wants to send me a care packet, as they call it in the US, I'd like:

marmite
proper extra mature Cheddar
chickpeas in a can
a clear view of the mountains
yoghurt sans gelatine
fruit juice made out of fruit
a metro system that doesn't close at 22.45
a food item not made by Nestle or CocaCola
Christopher

Sadly, I don't think you can get any of those across the border right now.

Buenas noches.