PST Community Projects

In addition to language and educational technical training, Peace Corps asks us to put on a couple of projects within our PST (pre-service training) to a. practice some useful skills we will need when in our permanent communities (I have to put on my own camp all by myself in Gavazi), and to b. give back to the community that has helped us integrate thus far.

The first of our projects was a summer camp for the school children. The camp was for three hours for three days. Each day we tried to mix up activities while getting kids to learn some English (the focus of our camp). Day one we played a variety of games including capture the flag, day two we did a scavenger hunt (which my team won!), and day three we went on a hike half way up the mountain to play some more games in a field up there.

 Day one of camp. Ultimate frisbee... sort of. 

 Day 2: I loved this kid, named him Dennis the Menace 

 On the hike up. Ignore my awkward water bottle. 

 About to play a red light green light sort of game on top of the mountain

One of the greatest challenges of the camp was to get kids of all ages to participate and remain engaged. Most of the younger kids did so, but the older kids were periodically struck with the “I’m too cool for this” mentality. One of the things I’m reminded of constantly here is what it is like to be an adolescent (at various ages) and more specifically a teenage girl, thanks to my past and current host sisters.

One of the funniest things about camp was our camp song, the “Tootie-Ta”. I know this means nothing to most of you, but it is a hilarious and thoroughly embarrassing camp song that Melissa contributed. It takes you step-by-step through silly movements and each verse builds on the past movements. The last verse ends with your thumbs up, elbows back, knees together, butt up in the air, eyes closed, and tongue sticking out… all while singing the song and turning around in a circle. Maybe I can find a video, but otherwise the hilarity is lost.

Our second community project was independent group work. Each cluster was supposed to observe their community, assess needs, and formulate some sort of community project to help fulfill that need. One cluster did a summer camp training session for teachers and youth leaders in their village, another group painted their school’s chalkboards, and our group chose to put on a health fair.

At our fair we had five stations: nutrition (mine), personal hygiene (Caitlin), substance abuse (Von), water sanitation (Ian), and exercise (Eric). The participants, who ended up being a lot of the kids from our summer camp, were given ‘health passports’ which would get a star sticker next to each station they attended. After they attended all sessions they would get a stamp of completion. Following the event, we had a trash pick-up led by Melissa to help beautify the schoolyard. 

 My healthy eating station with Melissa's host mom, Nana, and snacks!

 Ian's water cleanliness station 

 Caitlin's personal hygiene station 

Trash pick-up results 

Overall, the even went pretty smoothly. The only exception was that Eric got terribly sick the night before and day of the project, but we all just sort of jumped in and had the kids do various exercises.

Hard core exercise station 

I’m not sure about how lasting the lessons will be, but I do know that the day after the health fair, our LCF’s (Lela’s) little host sister insisted that each of us wash our hands before we sit down to eat… which we always do anyways, but still.

One last thing we decided to do on our own as a cluster was have a women only supra. Usually the women make all the food, serve everyone, clean up, and don’t really get to enjoy the supra. We invited all the women from all of our families to join us as the boys of the cluster made us dinner. The girls helped with a lot of the prep work, I made a banana cake, Melissa put together some sangria, and Eric and Von made us delicious gnocchi! It’s always entertaining when Georgians try new foods. You can see the progression of acceptance on their faces. At first you could tell that they were all taking very small portions just to be kind, you could tell they didn’t expect much. But slowly people started going back for seconds and larger portions. The same process happened with the sangria. When told it was fruit and wine they sort of made funny faces, but sure enough they loved it! This was how most new foods are accepted here though. Once I put jam in my sour cream… because it’s pretty much just like jam in yogurt (and I for one didn’t want to eat a pile of plain sour cream). The reaction was surprise and disgust. I finally convinced my family to try it, and of course they loved it.

 Melissa with Ani, Makvala, Mzea

Some of the ladies, happy and full. 

We tried to really reverse the gender roles during the dinner, but the Georgian women couldn’t stand for the boys to be in the kitchen while we ate and drank, so they got to enjoy the meal with us. Also clean up was a bit of a failure too. We tried to have Ian do the dishes (because he was absent for food prep) that lasted about 3 minutes before my host mom stepped in and finished all the dishes. She at least let us help dry and put away stuff though. 

Even though in our eyes it seemed like the women still did a fair amount of work (between clean up and bringing cakes and side dishes), in their eyes the boys did everything and I think they were all tickled.