Here’s what’s happening lately.

Today I had a hilarious day at swimming. There were seven kids today. The zooey-ness of that was actually compounded by a new helper of mine. Nick is training with the team while he’s home from University for the summer. He’s helping out by working with the kids in the water while I yell from the side. That was a major and exciting distraction especially for the little boys. Right now I have Alexi and Cameron, who have been with me for awhile, Michel and Azan who are newer and three new girls this week, Yanni, Nikisha and Sydney. Akim is still around but many times I have him do different things because he’s a little more advanced. Today Nick worked with Alexi and Cameron, who are among the youngest, but already know how to kick pretty well. I worked on more freestyle kicking with the beginners.

On Tuesday, Azan, who is the youngest and just four, had a major meltdown. The whole time he was messing around in the water. He normally has some attention deficit issues, but he was just all over the place. Finally in the end, his dad came and dragged him out of the water. I told Azan he had to do one good dive for me or else he would get no sticker (the major motivating force). This was a crisis. Azan cried for about 15 minutes then, complete with snot running down his face and arm.

Today when Azan came he leaned on me and hugged my leg. I helped him change into his swimming things while he stood on the bleachers, about at eye level with me. He leaned on me more and when I went to give him a hug, he kissed me. Later he gave me a cookie. I guess all is forgotten from Tuesday.

Unfortunately I’m not at the girls’ school anymore. A girl from the new Peace Corps group was placed there, and I didn’t feel it would be appropriate for me to be working there at the same time. The school is only about 20 girls. I figure if the new Peace Corps girl gets her projects all lined up, I can come back in and see what else needs doing.

But luckily, things have picked up at the Skills Center. I had a meeting several weeks ago with my supervisor at NSDC and two of my bosses from PC. I had been more and more frustrated because I really didn’t feel like I was doing anything. Even the papermaking project seemed to have kind of stopped or at least left me behind. So things have been arranged a little bit and are going really well now. The whole project was reorganized a bit to de-emphasize the business-opening and entrepreneurship aspect for now, at least. So now I’m working more with Mr. Inglis, who is the training coordinator. After some evaluation at the papermaking center, Mr. Inglis said that he didn’t think opening a business there is realistic now. It’s a little discouraging, but good. I’m glad he’s realistic about it, so now we’re tackling the problems to get to where we can open the business. Right now we’re setting up an adult reading program. A number of the women who have already done the papermaking have no or only beginning reading skills. Without this, it’s more difficult to teach even the basic business skills. So opening the actual business has been pushed back. Also with the reading program, we’re hoping to get the experienced readers to help the beginner ones, which will get them working together which should help business things down the line. Right now I’m trying to track down some resources on adult education and literacy. Mostly the Peace Corps has materials on teaching English as a Second Language. The trainees in the class speak quite a bit of Kwéyòl, but they already speak English. And Kwéyòl still isn’t very formalized as a written language. So I need to check with the ministry to see what they have. The challenge is finding things appropriate for adults. It would be insulting to give them "Dick and Jane" or something.