Now that all of the holidays have subsided, life has now settled down to somewhat of a regular schedule. Every day, I wake up at 8:30, dress, throw coal into the петчка and prey that nothing blows up, (this is a major accomplishment for me, given my past experience) and go to work.
I work until 12, and then go back and cook lunch. I used to have an English club that would meet during my lunch hour(s) once a week, but I had a disagreement with the teacher who was assisting me. We had vastly different philosophies about time. She thought it was ok to waste my time and then say "I forgot". She did this more than twice, so I ended her English club. I don't feel bad about it. After all, PC stands for "Peace Corps", not "Passively Compliant".
Anyway, I return to work at 2:30, and work until 5. After that, I hang out with my host family until I go to bed. If you rinse and repeat the process, it becomes a good representation of my life right now.
But for who, where and what do I do at work? The organization that I work for is called the Yeskeldy Community Learning Center (CLC). They assist the town of Karabulak and the 4 surrounding villages by providing computer and sewing classes and seminars on a variety of topics from business plans to tax preparation and other assorted life skills. Or, to be more correct, they used to provide all of those things, but cannot because of space limitations.
This may be the unluckiest not for profit/NGO I've ever heard of. Since it's creation in 2004, they have been relocated 4-5 times due to reasons that were not their doing: skyrocketing rent, corruption, and unsafe building limitations. A fire may have been involved at some point, but I am not sure because my Russian is still very bad and my director gets upset when she talks about it and switches to high speed Russian, which I don't understand. She has a will of steel; setbacks like those would have derailed many others, but she keeps on chuggin' along.
Currently, the CLC has only 1 room to hold computer classes. It's too small to do any of the other classes; it is the size of a midsized American kitchen. To make it even more complicated, the room is located in the Karabulak Akim's building (the Akim is equilivant to "government leader", in this case, the Mayor). It's very hard to be "non governmental" if your office is in the government building and am at the mercy of their policy, time schedules, and electricity management. The CLC reminds me of the quote, "all dressed up but no place to go". They have the appropriate materials, qualified people, and programs to be successful but just no space to implement them. I would even say that if they had a building and set it up all great and such, they would not need a PC volunteer.
The organization desperately wants to move so it can expand to its original state and beyond. Moving to the few public buildings in Karabulak is not a wise choice: they are either unsafe or the rent is way too expensive. Therefore the organization has decided to construct a new building. My job is to help them achieve that goal. So what I'm doing is helping them get things together so that they can apply for grants, and trying to leverage and maintain the community's support with the project.
Yeah…so that quote from that god awful movie Field of Dreams pretty much describes my work life right now.
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