Moving in and Dealing with Learned Behaviors

Moving in

So the goal for November was to move in to my own place to have a little more privacy and control over my diet and schedule. November seemed like the perfect time because I only had IST (Peace Corps in-service training) at the end of the month. Then I got sick, then I got nominated to the gender and development (GUIA) committee, and I also signed up to spend Thanksgiving with an Embassy family. All of these are great events (except for getting sick), but they have turned the moving schedule into week-long spurts. Good thing I have had so much experience moving! Hopefully, after getting back to site today, the plan is to blitz-pack everything and move into my house tomorrow before heading back to Managua Monday for the GUIA conference. I just feel like if I keep putting it off it’ll never happen. I think a small part of me is reluctant to move despite all the obvious health and sanity benefits because there is a comfort level in not having to worry about food and security with a host-family. This will also be new territory for me. I have lived on my own in college, but that doesn’t count and I have lived with people who were not in the house too often so I got a significant amount of independence, but this will be the first time I’m cooking for just one person. Everyone in my site knows that I like dogs, so I have a feeling company won’t be a problem, but there are so many little things that you just don’t think about until they happen and my Type-A is trying to think of all of them at one time (usually when I’m trying to sleep). If anyone has suggestions (recipes, strategies) from their own experience during this stage of life, more than welcome. Anxiously looking forward to it, but also expecting a lot of pasta. J

Behavior Modification

I have discovered that I rely too much on the same behavior modification strategies that normally work on American students and children. In my site, there isn’t really the typical reward for good behavior and punishment for bad behavior. This is in part because after a certain age, the kids are working members of the family and have an enormous amount of independence. The reason I am writing about this in particular is that my youth have taken to not showing up consistently to practices and have taken to only being interested in the friendship bracelets that I sell off of my water bottle. They are so fixated on the instant satisfaction of buying something I have shown them how to make or just playing with the ball rather than doing drills or talking about exercise that I oftentimes wonder if I am just not on the same playing field as them. If they goof off in practice or fight, I make them run, but no matter how many times they run, they always complain and then keep doing it; they don’t associate the behavior with the consequence. This has caused a lot of frustration on my part, but it has also caused me to look for other options. I now understand why volunteers talk about losing interest with their own projects because the participants are inconsistent or don’t seem interested in the objectives, just with the activities, etc. I think there is also some frustration knowing that part of this dependent behavior is learned from years of working with gringos in developing agencies who take pity on the cute little Nicaraguans and give them things. My youth keep asking me when they are going to get uniforms and when I am I going to give them bracelets or other things as gifts. The concept of earning something rather than having it given to you or buying it for the instant satisfaction is less appealing and, I am beginning to think, even foreign. You also run the risk of becoming the gringo who just gives away free stuff with no link to a purpose, you are the gringo who has everything (or at least more than the people), you fill the stereotype.The constant struggle as a volunteer is to make activities interesting enough without just freebies that the people genuinely want to participate. But, if you think about it, how many activities or events have we participated in in the States because we knew there would be free stuff?