I discovered why people become teachers!

I was in my house working on my third coffee of the morning, trying to generate tons of coffee grinds for the worm compost project I´d started in the school. I teaching them to make a bunch of worm boxes so that we can use the compost to organically fertilize a tree nursery in the school. And into my early morning solitud barges my host sister. She just ran into some kid down the road that had been in one of my classes the day before. He had gone on & on to her about how cool my worm lesson was and how pretty the posters were and how he had won the game we´d played and isn´t it weird that worms have a mouth but no eyes?? I was stunned. Not only did the kids enjoy what I had taught, but at least one kid had found it so interesting that he was passing on his new knowledge to others!! It´s an incredible powerful, scary and humbling feeling to teach kids. And I´m just teaching things like, "No, worms aren´t snakes and no, they won´t bite you."
I also experienced my single most reaffirming moment in nearly five months of Peace Corps service. I was out with a class putting together their worm box and a random woman walks by and asks me, "What are you making?" So I turn to the kids and shout, "Class, what are we making??" hoping someone would reply "worm boxes," but fully prepared for a long, akward silence. Instead, one kid shouts, "We´re making organic fertilizer!" I almost cried.
Of course there was one class that even after two days of reminders had only managed to bring one banana peel for their box. But then the ninth graders blew me away, bringing so much organic material and getting so into the project that I told them we had to stop because I didn´t have enough boxes. In 5 minutes they had found more boxes (I had spent an entire week going all over begging people for my boxes) and we only stopped when we ran out of worms. Also, after I´d shown them how to make the first box, the kids put together the others completely on their own. AND NOW they have started discussing using the school´s broken cistern to begin a large-scale composting project! If anyone is interested, read "Two Ears of Corn" about international development. My vermiculture project is turning out so textbook!!!