What I Would Change...

Honestly there is not a lot I would change about my service. I was extremely lucky in the fact that I got placed with a fantastic counterpart. I'm happy with how I spent my 2 years. Here are the few things I would change if I could:
     1. I tried to work with the local sex worker group, the Girasoles (the Sunflowers), but had some trouble. The idea of my former sitemate, John, was to start up a community bank with the group. Each month the group would meet, would deposit whatever the minimum deposit had been decided by the group (usually 100 cordobas). Each month the community pot grows, allowing members to take out small loans. The idea is that the loans can be used to start up your own business. With a very low interest rate and the pressure of the money belonging to the group, members usually pay back the loan fairly quickly. At the end of the year, each member receives whatever they put into the bank and a portion of the interest collected from the loans. We set up meetings but usually no one showed up. This was at the beginning of my service when I was learning how to work with different groups of people with different lifestyles. With the Girasoles, since they were working all night long, it did not make sense to expect everyone to be there for a 9 AM meeting. I learned to schedule meetings and health fairs for the afternoon, at a place where they felt safe and arrange reunions around their busiest times. I teamed up with the Ministry of Health and with a local bar-owner and we put on a couple successful health fairs focusing on PAP exams, self breast exams and condom usage. If I could go back in time, I would have liked to dedicate a bit less time on the youth soup kitchen and a bit more time working with and helping to organize better the local Girasoles group.
    2. I lived with a really amazing host family here in site for the first 4 ish months. I decided to move out because I wanted to experience living in Nicaragua on my own; what it was like to pay bills on my own, cook for myself etc... I'm glad I did that. But I should have gone back to visit them more often. With such a passionate counterpart, I worked A LOT. Many weeks we worked 60 hours, putting on events at night and working the regular soup kitchen schedule during the day. Most nights I got back to my house exhausted, happy and very content with the work we had done, but tired, so I did not visit. We're still close and I will see them this Friday at my going away party, but I wish I had gone to hang out at their house more often.

At the moment these are the only two things I can think of that I may have changed. I can definitely look back and know that I really do not have regrets. Don't get me wrong, it has been a rollercoaster of emotions, sometimes changing 5 times in one day. But for Peace Corps, that's normal!