I was originally
placed in the high school in my town but I knew from the beginning I really
wanted to work in an elementary school. Maybe a month into my service I went to go
check out Guardia’s elementary school and see about opportunities to work
there. One of the first people I met was Don Alvaro, a.k.a. Alvarito, the school’s music teacher. Alvaro is barely 5 feet tall, with pepper
grey hair, and is always charming all the lady elementary school teachers with
his sweet disposition. Right off the bat he asked me if I could help him get
instruments for the school, and I was a bit hesitant at first as people often
expect Peace Corps volunteers to bring money to the community as foreigners,
whereas Peace Corps mission is based around grassroots sustainable community
development and not dumping money into communities.
Several months later
Alvaro was still working to get a community band off the ground with around a
total of 10 functioning instruments.
Alvaro is an amazing individual and would come ever Sunday and volunteer
his time to teach students to play percussion instruments. An opportunity opened up for us to attend a
Peace Corps training in February in the capital, the “Project Design and
Management Workshop”, and Alvaro seemed like the ideal community member to take
with me to hone our skills in project design and execution. I came to the realization that a community
band would be an excellent project to embark on because it was vision championed
by community members and something I could help make possible. Coming into Peace Corps I knew I wanted find
community leaders and support their projects and visions and not impose what I
thought the community needed.
Through the training
we were able to put into words Alvaro’s vision and goals for Guardia. We returned
to site and set to work writing an extensive grant to CRUSA, a branch of USAID.
It was an intensive process, and was a big challenge for me translating
everything from Spanish to English. In May the grant was finally ready for
submission, and two weeks later after some revisions we were approved $5,000
dollars to purchase instruments for the drum line segment of the band. We were
able to purchase 45 high quality instruments which will hopefully last for many
years to come including: bombos (base drums), cajas panamenas, liras (xylophones),
tenores, one trumpet, and one bataria de calle.
It’s funny because honestly the world of drums exists for me in Spanish and
I don’t know what these drums are called in English for the most part….
After some debates on
where we were going to buy the instruments we finally purchased the instruments
in Liberia (a bigger city half an hour away) in July. A month ago the
instruments arrived and we started signing kids up from the elementary and high
school for the band, and the kids quickly swelled in ranks from the original 10
to 25. Because of other projects I’m
involved in I wasn’t able to attend practice for several weeks and yesterday
when I went to practice I was blown away when there were 80 kids at the
practice!
Biking up the street
to practice all the kids were lined up in the street practicing marching for
Costa Rican independence day and I had to hold back tears I was so moved by
what my community had achieved. There in
the street were my students from the high school and elementary school, kids as
young as 5 rocking drums alongside the older carajillos from the colegio. There
was Ana Luz the only girl on drums holding it down with the boys on her big
base drum, there was a teenager from my community who is in a wheel chair on a
tenor drum, and several kindergarteners who couldn’t tell their right foot from
the left making music.
Yes, I helped Alvaro write
the grant but what has come after I can claim no responsibility for. Several weeks ago Alvaro and the school
principal held the first parents meeting to organize the band, and I was blown
away when 40 parents showed up. As
volunteers in Costa Rica one of the biggest challenges we face in the schools
is a lack of parental involvement and this meeting proved to me that Guardia is
a special place where many parents really do want the best for their children.
They want opportunities, they want extracurricular activities, and they want
their kids to be musicians. The parents have come together and planned a raffle
and are going to sell food in order to pay for a trip to Liberia to play in the
big Costa Rican Independence day parade on September 15th.
Everything that has happened since the arrival of the instruments has shown to
me that this project is going to last long after I board a plane next April and
finish my service. (More pictures to come soon of the complete band!)
