In Santa Fe, it has been very emotional. Edit and Walter have asked me to stay and live with them, and work at their English Institute for another month. I thought long and hard, and it was very difficult for me to turn down this generous offer. Saying goodbye to my family here has been difficult also. I have never been so close to a family like this.  I have been embraced as a son and brother as though these people have known me for their entire life.  In all honesty, I wish I could stay here in Argentina, and I plan to return.

Last week our student group eamed up with tons of local GSE participants and volunteers to paint the inside and out of an adult literacy school in a very poor Santa Fe neighborhood.  The work was tedious yet rewarding. The school was called ¨Centro Comunicario Juven¨ and it´s a school for adults in the area who never learned to read and write.  Some of the students helped us paint the school, while others stopped in to bring us gifts and food.  The students we met ranged from ages 18 to 70, and were there because they had left school at a young age, and had never learned to read or write.  At this particular school, they were just finishing 5th grade at the time we begun work. Unfortunately because of the dangerous surrounding area, we were not able to learn much about the community, as we often were rushed home after work to avoid potential threats. It was incredibly rewarding to work with students, to see their reaction and gratitude, and to help make their environment better suited to learning. We spent one day doing the Santa Fe tourist track, which is really a half-day adventure.  We walked along the famous bridge, which is like the Golden Gate (a reddish suspension bridge) only way smaller, visited a university and went to some of the museums, stopping at the government building and also some cathedrals. We spend the last few days with lots of free time and family get-togethers.  Spending time here with my family is what I will miss the most about Santa Fe.

Tomorrow morning we will board a bus to Cordoba. By Monday, we will be heading up to Salta, a city known for its distinct culture and climate, more like Bolivia or Peru than traditional Argentina.  Next, we will travel over or Igauzu Falls, a huge waterfall on the boarder of Brazil, Paruguay, and Argentina.  On our way to the capital, Buenos Aires, we will stop back in Santa Fe to say hello to our families and visit the sites of our community projects.

Students in Santa Fe have also now just begun their Winter Holidays, a two week break from school.  This means that by last Friday, we had to finish up all of our work at Pilares, which we did by working harder and longer days and using the help of the students and staff at the K-12 private school.  We finished by Thursday and gave workshops on Friday to different age groups and showed students how they could maintain and benefit from the beautiful garden. We planted four fruit trees, three Orange and one Lemon.  We planted five vegetable beds with lettuce, broccoli, spinach, collard greens, and cauliflower.  We also planted a flower bed to help attract beneficial insects like bees and butterflies. There is also an herb bed with mint, lavender, oregano, and other local herbs used for making teas and seasoning.  We left a beautiful greenhouse with many plant starts inside so the students can build and plant additional vegetable beds with radish, carrots, onions, fava beans, and arugula. Inside the greenhouse, we planted about 20 eggplant starts into the ground. The school cooks and uses local food for the students everyday for lunch.  The garden will be used to provide food for consumption directly on school grounds for students who have expressed a desire to see more healthy foods in their school kitchen.  It will lower the costs of Pilares, which is funded by passionate educators, teachers, and parents, who use hand-on activities as a way for their students and children to learn more about the world.  Gardening classes will include all students from the K-Secondary school (equivalent of K-12) including those with disabilities, as Pilares strives to provide integral educational opportunities for students with disabilities, which apparently is uncommon in Argentina. This particular project has made me very happy.  I am proud of everyone involved and the students at Pilares were so happy to help us.  They were impressed with the garden and many of them walked us to our transport on Friday to say goodbye and thank us for our support. Maria Jose, the principle of the school, was in tears.  The students from California worked extremely hard. They never once complained. I was working in the garden and Maria Jose came over and told me there was a local reporter from the Santa Fe news station, which broadcasts to the entire city of over half- a-million, that wanted to interview me.  When his crew got there, they filmed the kids working in the garden and asked Maria and few questions in Spanish, then, on video, asked me a few.  Apparently, I got one of them wrong, and answered something off the wall about how we are all very happy and excited to be working at Pilares.  Anyhow, I was on TV in Argentina speaking Spanish with a local reporter.  It aired that night.

Let me explain my typical weekday to you thus far.  I wake up at 730am, and wait for the students to arrive at my house at 8am.  I have cereal for breakfast.  We take a bus to Pilares school where we teach English lessons, paint the mural (pictures), and work to create a healthy vegetable garden.  We eat lunch at Pilares (its a K-12 school with 350 students) with the Kindergartners. In the afternoon I teach workshops on composting, amending soil, and building a greenhouse with the students. We have been well received.  At 3:30pm we return to ISDI, the English Institute where Virginia and Edit (our GSE Argentina Directoras) work.  We often teach workshops to local students.  In the evening we have various activities: tango lessons (picture), trips into the city, and just hanging out with our families.  I eat around 10 pm and usually stay up talking with the family at the table until around midnight.

The family dynamic here is unbelievable and has nearly brought me to tears.  As I mentioned, my family has adopted me, told me I have a place to live anytime I am in Argentina, and called me their son, brother, grandson, and nephew. We eat together and will stay at the table talking untill midnight.

The most exciting news is that The Morogoro Youth Training Center is up and running! The MYTC is a facility that we have been designing with our Tanzanian partners throughout the past year. We have rented a beautiful space on the second floor of a building in downtown Morogoro where there are sweeping views of the Uluguru Mountians. Our Califronia members have brought over 25 computers, and a projector for the computer training courses we will offer here. The center will benefit local GSE students, and the Morogoro community as a source of computer training, and Internet access. The revenues generated from the project will benefit GSE Tanzania’s youth leadership courses, and pay local staff in Morogoro to facilitate after school workshops in partnership with 4 local secondary schools. The workshops will focus on health, rural/ agricultural development, computer training, youth leadership, and globalization (including communication with our students in California, Argentina, and Peru). Revenues will also be used as microloans to support the implementation of profit generating projects at participating high schools.

Challenges include: creating the computer network, installing air-conditioning, building the desks, negotiating the lease, training our staff, interviewing candidates for the receptionist position, configuring the network, as well as jumping through the countless bureaucratic hoops. The energy and shared beliefs of our supporters in the United States motivated us to succeed. The MYTC is a beautiful room, and over the past 4 days since we opened, customers are beginning to come in increasing numbers. We have communicated with many university students at Mzumbe University, and Sokoine University of Agriculture who are excited about volunteering for our organization here (which was registered as an official Tanzanian NGO in early May).

We have 2 and a half more weeks here in Morogoro with our ambassadorial group, and we look forward to spending more time working with the GSE Tanzania students and volunteers. Everyone has been incredibly welcoming and excited to work with us, and we’re all learning a lot. Thanks again to all our supporters, and rest assured that all of our hard work and dedication is paying off, and that we are establishing positive international relationships and making real grassroots development in our world.

Godfrey and Deogratius have also arrived from Morogoro Tanzania. It is wonderful to have everybody here in the same place, and we look forward to the progress we will be making over the course of the next weeks.

Please feel free to use this blog as a means to communicate your thoughts, suggestions, observations, and ideas related to GSE! This way, participants all over the world will understand the progress and path of each branch of GSE, and we can inspire eachother to continue our work!

I wish you all happy peaceful holidays

Lucas Oshun

It is my hope that we will make our organization to grow and grow and grow until it is known everywhere in the world.

Thanks my dear students

Godfrey Deogratius from Sokoine University of Agriculture Tanzania