Cinco machetes, una hacha, y la piedra

Aside: I've started to realize that a lot of my posts (some like to call them chapters!) have the same literary arc: a problem presents itself, I stress out about it, a solution is found or occurs naturally, and then everything ends more or less happily. It would be nice if all my experiences thus far occurred according to this pattern, but they have not. Take this post, for example...

We knew that in order to maintain people's interest in and commitment to the project we would have to begin work immediately after the meeting. Creating a lot of hype could only go so far in convincing the community that working together with us was in their best interest. Results speak louder than words.

During the meeting we had asked for volunteers to lead out work groups for the new tasks we had proposed. Demetrio—the community's de facto chief—offered to take the initiative on clearing the land where the self-sustaining farm would be located, and Lina—the wife of an evangelical pastor—decided she wanted to be in charge of the compost program we had devised for the women of the community. Both agreed to start on the first steps of their work the next morning. Lina would organize a meeting with the women, and Demetrio would meet with the municipal government's surveyor and myself to mark the limits of the garden.

The next morning in front of the church Demetrio arrived on time, accompanied by Pablo, a man I already knew fairly well, and a teenager whom I had never met. When the surveyor arrived, we walked around the perimeter of the land that was “available” for use by the community (quotation marks because as the rightful owners of the land, it should all be available to be used however they want to). We discussed the best locations for planting certain types of crops, and eventually we had a relatively good idea of the amount of space we were dealing with. In order to measure it, we would have to first clear a few bushes where the outer limits of the farm would be. It was estimated that we would be able to complete that work by the end of the week.

As we walked back at the church, Beatriz arrived with the municipal government's director of public works, and we did a bit of a public mutual debrief of our morning's activities so that the community members present would know exactly what was happening, and, more importantly, so that the government officials would know that the community members present knew exactly what they had promised to do. The surveyor would measure and sketch out the limits of the future farm,
and the director of public works would provide machinery to clear and level the land once the largest plants had been taken out.

Afterwards, Beatriz and I spoke briefly with Demetrio about what tools or materials he would need for his group to complete work according to the schedule we had agreed upon. He supposed that he could bring about five or six people, so he asked for five machetes, an ax, and a sharpening stone. We promised to have them ready the next day. That night Beatriz traveled back to Salta, and the tools Demetrio had asked for were being sent in the opposite direction, thanks to Beatriz's husband Carlos.

Initially we had planned to form the work groups during the community meeting. Since the meeting had gone long and simply getting two leaders had taken about 15 minutes, we were open to  Demetrio's advice to allow the groups to form organically over the course of the work rather than formally create them. It was neither the first nor the last time Demetrio would be wrong. The following morning, he was the only one that showed up.

“And the others?” I asked.

“I don't know...” he responded with a smile.

We spent most of the gray-skied morning clearing cactus and numerous wheat-like stalks with our machetes. Demetrio had brought his own and was much more effective than I was, mostly because I was using one of the new machetes that hadn't been sharpened yet. Well, it was probably mostly because he actually knows how to use a machete...

We had a few small-talk conversations about soccer, the USA, and briefly about the meeting, but I wasn't too interested in talking about anything deeper. I was too distracted by the thought of the other four machetes going unused. Why had no one come? Was it Demetrio's inability, or perhaps unwillingness, to motivate others to participate? Maybe he was just apathetic? Had the meeting been unclear or misunderstood?

The next morning wasn't much better. Demetrio arrived somewhat late, and Davíd, another self-proclaimed leader in the community, also helped for awhile. Davíd is a artisan of woodwork, so he showed me the finer details of how to use an ax and machete (i.e. all the details). Throughout the morning I asked both of them why they thought more people weren't coming to help, and I always got the same response—“I don't know”. Truth be told, two 10-year-old-or-so boys had shown up and were enjoying going karate on some helpless plants and trees with the machetes, but they were mostly just an innocuous distraction.

After a couple hours it was noon, and we started to make our way back towards the church a few hundred meters away. That's when I found out that the boys weren't as harmless as I thought. One of the machetes was missing.

Demetrio and Davíd didn't seem too sympathetic. “That's just how it is. Some kids are really bad,” they said. “Some of them even break windows to steal from the school, and their parents encourage it.”

The pair started walking back to their respective houses, but I wasn't about to lose a 65 peso machete to some punk kid on the second day of work. I demanded that they do something to get it back. They talked to one of the boys. He blamed his friend. They talked to the other boy. He blamed the first boy, but went to go look for where the machete might be hidden. Not surprisingly, he didn't find anything. Demetrio then talked to the parents. They said they “didn't know”, even though Demetrio overheard them telling the boys to not tell us where it was hidden. Finally, after pressuring a group of other children, a little search party “miraculously” found the missing machete.

A few minutes later I was packing up the tools to head back to the house, and both Demetrio and Davíd asked if they could borrow the ax to sharpen it. Given the recent incident I was extremely hesitant—and perhaps reasonably so—but I knew I was making a huge mistake as I uttered the words of my curt response:

“I'd rather not. I don't want things to disappear.”

Their silent reaction was numbing. It was true, I didn't trust them yet. But they weren't supposed to know that. I knew that their trust in me could be seriously comprised if I didn't do some damage control. With some help from Beatriz, we came up with a plan to smooth things over. We made a formal note making Demetrio in charge of the tools as leader of the work group—showing him that we do indeed trust him—and I told Davíd that I kept the tools with me so I could sharpen them in town with a machine, saving a lot of manual labor—which was true, even if it wasn't my primary motive. Fortunately, both of them seemed happy with the arrangement.

They were not, however, happy enough to bring more people to the future garden the next day. We did get one more recruit—Luis, the pastor of the Anglican church—but it was now clear that Demetrio's “five or six” helpers were not ever going to come. I tried to stay positive. At least each day we had added one more person to the group, a pattern which could be sustainable over time if retention was high.

It was not. The following morning, Friday, Davíd was busy with artisan work. Luis would “be there in a little while”. And Demetrio, completely missing. After waiting alone for an hour, I gave up and went home, furious. I didn't want to see or talk to anyone—least of all Demetrio—and luckily I didn't have to. I knew what lay ahead, and I wasn't looking forward to it: an entire weekend thinking of how to explain to Demetrio that being a team leader isn't just a title, and trying to figure out a new strategy for including more men in the project. These were two tasks I had never imagined we would have to do, and that made them all the more daunting.

¿Sabías que este lunes a la tarde...

After rejecting the idea to hold elections and a couple weeks of forming friendly relationships with various members of the community (see last post), we knew that we had to attempt the impossible: call a community meeting. It felt a little bit as if we were starting all over again, since we had tried to do the same thing the very first week on the project. But we had been in Rivadavia for almost two months already. It was time to get down to business.

This time, however, the meeting took on a new complication. Initially, our only objectives were to formally introduce ourselves and create awareness about the project we would be executing with the community. Now, on top of doing both of those things, we would be attempting to create functional work groups to begin immediately on the first steps of their direct participation in project. Figuring out what those tasks would actually be was difficult enough on its own, but devising an effective, reasonable, and culturally sensitive plan for organizing the community in order to start working together seemed insurmountable. Should the groups be based on existing family groups or arbitrary, bringing people together on a given task from a variety of families? What exactly is a family—immediate, extended, etc.? Perhaps a better deciding factor would be age, or gender, or region? What size should each group be? Should there be group leaders, and if so, how would they be decided?

Essentially the only thing we were clear on was the date and time the meeting would take place, and even that had taken quite some time to settle on—Monday, June 20. So, even though there were so many details still up in the air, we began to turn our emphasis from conversations to invitations. We did nearly everything possible to get the word out. We encouraged our “key players” in the community to invite their family, friends, and neighbors. We announced it on all three radio stations, on multiple occasions. We even went house-to-house (door-to-door would be a misnomer), dividing ourselves up into the four regions we had sketched out for the community-wide survey, handing out a simple flyer I had designed. It explained who we were, what our plans were, and, above all, the necessity of their input in the process. I hoped that all of our publicity efforts would be enough to guarantee a good turn-out, but I was still concerned. Could we be going about this the wrong way? What if people still don't understand? What if they just don't care?

Those fears continued to haunt me more and more frequently as the event grew near. It didn't help that there were a million other logistical issues to resolve at the same time: choosing the best location for the meeting, organizing games for children to play so they wouldn't interrupt, figuring out how to transport materials, and so on and so forth. Probably one of the most stressful aspects of the process was cooking the food we were secretly preparing, which involved me attending to a blazing hot fire for over three hours (We had decided against the typical M.O. of political and evangelistic campaigns to gather people in indigenous communities: la olla [a pot of food]. While giving out free food has proven to be especially effective in guaranteeing attendance, we wanted to be sure that people would come not because they would be receiving something, but rather because they wanted to participate in the design and execution of the project. Since they didn't know we were going to be giving out any food, when we served them it would simply be a friendly gesture to thank them for taking the time to come, and showing them that they are important to us). Cooking is not my strong suit, so it was a very frustrating task.

That Monday finally arrived, and everything was finally coming together on the logistics, but in terms of the actual content—what we would actually present, say, and ask—I felt very unprepared. We were still undecided on a number of central issues, including the eternal debate over what organization we would try to implement. We had tenuously decided to let the community members decide it for themselves, but we weren't at all sure if it would work.

Unfortunately, the weather was not cooperating: overcast and even drizzling intermittently, adding yet more to our fears that attendance would be low. We ended up holding the meeting in the Anglican church, the most central building in the community both geographically and socially. The pastor helped us by putting up the speaker system outside to remind people within hearing distance that the meeting was about to begin. Punctuality seemed to be an issue. Although five or six people had entered on time, others were casually standing nearby, waiting to see what would happen. Our volunteers had begun playing with the 60-some children who had already arrived. To my relief, however, over the next 10 or 15 minutes more and more people were showing up. In the end, although we started nearly 30 minutes after the planned starting time, the small church was full.

Although most of the people in the room were those whom we had invited personally, we introduced ourselves, and the meeting began. To help facilitate a basic understanding of the project, we decided to set up a “big screen” to show some of pictures and videos about our past work in ADRA, most prominently a short piece on a similar project that had been successful in Peru. But the real impact came from Beatriz's supernatural interpersonal abilities. It doesn't matter how many people she is talking to, where they come from, their age, gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status... she is transformational. All of us share her compassion and dedication to helping those in need, but with her it is bursting out at the seams. As always, and especially with the Wichí, It took some time for participation to pick up pace, but as we turned from presenting the great possibilities that La Misión could achieve to describing and organizing the work that it would take to get there, I could tell that there was a new hope growing in that little adobe building that had been long forgotten. That hope was contagious. I nearly cried.

All of the stress that had nearly paralyzed me just a few hours before disappeared, and all of the difficulties I had feared were resolved without a hitch. We explained the work groups: clearing the land for the garden, setting up a compost system in each house, and building a fence for the garden. Leaders for each group presented themselves, and promised to start the next day on gathering people to work with them. We closed the meeting, serving them cookies and the fruit-salad-like beverage I had helped with. As tired as I was, and even though I had an endless list of apprehensions about the work to come, I couldn't help but smile. We were making progress.

¿Y ahora?

Finishing the community-wide survey seemed to be a very positive step in the right direction, but another reality was beginning to set in. We had only completed the first step. Now what?

Our goal was simple enough: organize the community. But simple and easy are not always synonymous. We all knew that community organization was central to the project, but how to achieve it was a matter of some contentious debates over what might work best. Hold elections? Form committees? Call meetings? Support existing “leaders”? We all knew that the stakes were higher than before. Now that we had established our presence, one wrong step might mean a loss of trust in the hearts and minds of the Wichí. No 2^nd chance. No plan B.

Initially we landed on a plan to go house by house asking for nominations for a new communal committee (the old one had been defunct for some 2 years or more), then holding a community-wide lunch party to elect positions. When we began to develop the idea in greater detail, however, we realized that it was probably too dangerous. It's greatest advantage was also it's biggest disadvantage—directness. If we tried to organize by creating a committee the results could be incredibly good. A governing body could create a greater awareness of the goals of the project, delegate tasks, and motivate others to participate. At the same time, if it didn't work, it could complicate existing tensions and even create new conflicts, both within the community and perhaps even with ADRA. Ultimately, we heeded history's advice: the last thing the Wichí need is more politics.

Unfortunately, that meant that there were now a lot of things up in the air. Too many things. As they kept adding up, it began to weigh down on me, and doubt started seeping in... Is this the right time? Are we in the right place? Are we the right people? But there was one question that loomed above all others. It felt like every person we talked to—both in the community and in the town—had a blaring yellow warning sign above their head saying, “You're not the first to try this. Others have come with projects before, and they failed. How are you any different?” It was never said in quite those words, but the message was clear enough: we aren't convinced.

Others were completely certain, although not in the way we wanted them to be. They were convinced that we shouldn't be here at all. An article about our project had appeared in the provincial newspaper of Salta, El Tribuno, and apparently someone was angry enough to write us a strongly worded editorial that appeared in the same newspaper. The first half was about how it made her sick that professionals from the United States would come to Salta with humanitarian projects in indigenous communities, because foreigners always receive more than they give in such situations, and that there are enough qualified people in Argentina to do the same work. The second half was a direct attack on our methodology, saying that our project intended on changing the way of life and culture of the community by “civilizing” and “globalizing” it.

We didn't respond to the editorial, but other rumors in the town and in the community were going around too. ADRA tries to control the Wichí communities it has worked in before. ADRA just wants to make people work for them so that all the benefits will belong to ADRA or the government afterwards. ADRA doesn't actually have any money and is just promising things to the people. And so on... In general we chose to ignore these accusations unless someone spoke to us directly about them. Very few people actually seemed to believe them, so we figured that giving them attention would probably make them seem more valid than if we simply brushed them off as insignificant.

The strategy seemed to work. The rumors generally died out as quickly as they had come. But in a way they did affect our work, albeit indirectly. We became more cautious, taking things slower and planning larger time intervals for our short-term project goals. We discussed the overall project idea in more depth, making sure that it was the best fit given our abilities and the response of the community. We even went a little less often to La Misión, although that was partially because we had so much data entry to do and because I got sick for a couple of days.

And ultimately, we changed how we talked to people in the community. Before, it always felt like I had a mission to complete with every person I talked to. No matter what the conversation was, I knew that by the end of the conversation I would be trying to explain the project or tell them about ADRA's work or let them know about upcoming activities, regardless if they asked me for this information or not. Now that one of the biggest hurdles of the beginning of the project had passed, we decided to take a step back and simply listen. We took a more genuine interest in what people wanted to say to us, and listened to the the details of their daily lives, their history, their needs and ideas and dreams. Obviously we were ready for a conversation about ADRA if they started one, but that was no longer our goal. We wanted to really know in depth—not just in numbers—the people we were working with.

Sometimes, but not always, this resulted in profound discussions and the beginnings of new friendships. Stories about childhood games or learning a father's trade. Stories about travels to far away places or adventures in the woods. Stories about sickness or the suffering of generations past. I was affected most by personal accounts of discrimination at the hands of los blancos (the whites, i.e. non-indigenous). Being mistreated in school, getting sued for hunting in the forest, being called an indio.

In the end, this strategy proved doubly effective. Not only did we feel more comfortable, having done away with our agenda-driven dialogue, but the people community in the community were opening up more. Even though the conversation often ended up in the same place, a friendly visit— from someone who knew their name—was much better received than the two-minute stock speech we had been giving before.

I still had my doubts, and the community certainly still had theirs, but I knew we were not wasting time. On the contrary, we were forming relationships that would be elemental in initiating and developing the project. Without those bonds, we would continue to be viewed as outsiders proposing ideas they don't identify with. A real waste of time.

(I apologize for having so few pictures, they take a very long time to upload!)

Buen día, Rivadavia

“Good day to all the town of Rivadavia, it's always a pleasure to be able to talk to you”. That's probably the most nerve-wracking phrase I've had to speak (in Spanish, of course) in my experience thus far as director of this project, because every time I have to say it I'm “on the air”.

Radio is a big deal here. In a small, rural town where access to TV is limited and illiteracy rates are uncomfortably high, radio still reigns as the king of local news, music, and advertising. Television is definitely present—both cable and satellite (DirecTV)–but with no local programming, the majority of TV viewing time goes to fútbol (soccer), novelas (soap operas), or pelis (movies). These things offer entertainment, but they do not—I would argue—provide the same feeling of interconnectedness with a community that listening to the radio can. And, of course, buying a radio is simply cheaper.

To further prove my point is this fact: there are three radio stations in Rivadavia. The community station, run by the municipal government, plays a mix of everything and is the most popular, followed by the other two, which are privately owned and broadcast exclusively evangelical Christian content.

Interestingly, despite their influence, they are surprisingly willing to give out free air time. And that's where we come in. Since we are doing so many things both in the town and in the community, the most effective way to get out a message is by dropping by the radio once or twice a week and announcing it on the air. Now that we are friends with most of the staff, we can basically just show up and within 5 minutes be in the studio talking about the latest plan or meeting to the entire Rivadavia area. The only unfortunate part is that the other ADRA team members seem to think it's most appropriate that I talk the most because I'm director of the project, even though I am obviously the least fluent in Spanish.

The truth is, though, that even with the semi-present language barrier, by the time I'm actually talking and conversing with the host I feel almost entirely comfortable. For some reason, despite all the nerves I have just beforehand, in the actual moment when I have no choice but to speak I get a wave of inexplicable fearlessness. Even if my words are simple and I make mistakes in pronunciation or conjugation, something about that spontaneous moment in which I am only subconsciously aware of the hundreds of people that might be listening frees me of my normal social inhibition. It's exhilarating, but strange; why is it that talking with more people would make me feel less afraid than talking with just one or two?

I still don't have a good answer for that question, but I do know that I love being a part of the radio medium. Before I arrived in Rivadavia I had actually started a weekly radio program with my friend Brian called “Teh 402 Show”. Using a rather clever combination of internet technology (Skype, Gmail phone, Ustream, and Facebook), we were able to broadcast our discussions, play our favorite music choices, and even take calls and texts. Even though we never got too many listeners, the idea of communicating with an audience was not only fun but fulfilling. In an age when we are overstimulated by the visual, the experience of sitting back and listening to a conversation or a song or a story is still incredibly compelling.

And here in Rivadavia, it's even more important. Being a constant presence on the radio not only helps our project to be better known the Wichí community, it also brings their situation to light in the community at-large. That heightened awareness of the problem is, in my eyes, the first step towards deeper understanding and less discrimination. By breaking down my language barrier, perhaps at the same time I am helping to topple bigger walls.

Flexibilidad

Always have a plan B, they say.

Less than two weeks into the project, we had already found ourselves in a plan B situation. We had come in strong on all fronts, creating positive, strong and mutually beneficial relationships with every institution in Rivadavia, except for the one about which we cared about the most: the Wichí community. It wasn't so much that our plans to reach out had gone sour... they just hadn't gone anywhere. Our attempts to draw people to meetings hadn't worked, so we did the opposite: we went to them.

It's never easy to break the ice when you arrive at the house of someone you don't know. Anyone who was coerced into door-to-door fundraisers in elementary school knows exactly what I'm talking about. Obviously we weren't selling chocolate or frozen pizzas or wrapping paper (curse you Sligo!), but we were, in a way, selling an idea. We had to sell the idea that we weren't selling anything, that we were there to help without asking anything in return. I am convinced that it is infinitely more difficult to do that than it is to sell an actual product. You always know what the motive of a salesman is, so it's really just the quality or necessity of the product that is up for debate. In our case, both our motives and our “product” are in question.

We had been going to houses all week to tell them about the upcoming survey, and at the end of each day it still seemed like there were countless more that we hadn't visited yet, or even seen before. Progress was relatively slow because we preferred to go as a group rather than split up. In the end we hoped this would save us time: by going together with our Wichí assistant/translator (Silvana), we could ensure that the message was understood and well-received in a single visit. Going solo meant risking misunderstandings—and repeat visits to clear them up. So, slowly but surely we were reaching the majority of the houses, and after a few long days at the end of the week we had reached virtually all of them on time, ready for the day of the survey on Sunday (22^nd of June).

Planning a community-wide survey of over 100 houses in one day is hard. It's even harder when you're not exactly sure where all the houses are and you don't have any standardized way of identifying them. It's harder still your survey is in a different language than the mother tongue of the people from whom you want to collect relatively complicated information (nutrition, education levels, medical history, work history, etc.). And, to top it all off, the majority of the people conducting your survey are teenagers who have never done one before, and you will be held responsible if they mess up.

Almost always I find that the level of stress I have about a specific problem is not at all proportional to the actual amount of work required to solve it. I'm not sure if I'm just speaking for myself on this point, but when I stress out a lot about a problem that seems impossible to fix, the solution is actually quite simple or presents itself on it's own (for example, one day after talking with a few members of the community, we learned that many families would soon be leaving for a month to find temporary work in a field 100 miles away. After stressing out—no, freaking out—for the rest of the afternoon about how the survey would be pointless and the whole project would have to be put on hold, a simple call to Beatriz revealed that only very few young men would go, never entire families. Problem solved.)

Fortunately this was the case for the nearly all of difficulties facing us for the survey. For weeks we had been asking the hospital if they had a map of the houses that they used as a guide for making their rounds, Silvana—who also works in the hospital—decided to simply sit down and make one herself. Although she is from La Esperanza, a Wichí community 20 miles away, she somehow created a rough sketch of every house in La Misión without even going to the community for reference—it even had names on each house. After a short discussion about spacing and layout, I copied it to a smaller piece of paper that we could hand out to each team leader. Problem solved.

The survey being in a different language was an issue we had been discussing since about a month ago when we had begun developing it. Here we were in Rivadavia and we were still debating whether we needed to translate it, and if so, how we would proctor it. After a five-minute talk with the public health agent who works in La Misión, we found out that he had no problems with communication even though he knows no Wichí and the hospital's questions were much more complicated than ours. Problem solved. (Well, almost. We still had to simplify and format our questionnaire, which did take a very, very long time.)

As for the unprepared surveyors, we were very concerned that perhaps our course hadn't adequately prepared them for being out in the field, especially with the differences in age and culture. Yet, on “D-Day”, we were all pleasantly surprised by the quality of the work they did. To get an early start, we had arranged to meet at 8:30 AM—on a Sunday. Even so, nearly everyone arrived even before we did, and no one was late. Throughout the day they showed respect, responsibility, and a genuine interest in completing the survey patiently, accurately and effectively. And we finished all of the houses before lunch. Problem solved—or maybe it was never there at all.

That's not to say that there weren't difficult moments. For one, of the two survey forms I sent to Beatriz to photocopy, she printed the older one, which was missing some important changes. Photocopies are ridiculously expensive here (50 centavos/page), so we had to hand-write some of the questions and staple in the extra sheet for about 120 forms. There was also some confusion about the map not being not exactly to scale, making it unclear where some houses were supposed to be located, and some houses were missing entirely. Another complicating factor was that on the day of the survey there were a few families that were at church, weren't at home, or were visiting in other parts of the community. There were also a very small number—two—who did not want to participate at all (somehow, nearly all of these cases occurred in my “zone” of about 30 houses). And it was a strangely hot autumn day, so we had to plan to return on another day to finish the seven or eight missing homes.

Needless to say that Sunday afternoon was a huge relief. I was dying from the heat and still on an adrenaline-high from the kind of nerves that can only come from worrying about being responsible for large amounts of other people. But I was happy. Plan B had worked.

Other moments that stand out:

Our new friend Pablo, who invited us into his home when we told him about the survey, and him repaying the visit at our house to talk again even though he was under the weather.

The four policemen we had asked oversee the survey being totally confused about the need for their presence, but patiently standing around anyways.

The negative body language of Pedro (one of the two who didn't want to participate) as he told us that he had already been surveyed, even though we knew he hadn't.

The old man who I mentioned in my last post being so excited to be surveyed that he bee-lined directly to us to let us know that we hadn't gone to his house yet!

The speeches of our students about their experiences during the survey at the final meeting of the training course, talking about how much it impacted them to see how people that lived so close to them were in such desperate need.

Carrying two enormous frozen goat carcasses by myself eight blocks across town for our asado (barbecue) to celebrate the termination of the course and the success of the survey.

Cambios grandes, pasos pequeños

A very exhausting week had gone by, but I wasn't nearly as tired as I was apprehensive. Why? Beatriz was leaving.

From the very start of the planning of this project back in July, my name had been in the spot I least wanted it to be: director. To most people it would be strange for them to hear me say that. There are countless times where I've stood out as a natural leader, even when I didn't intend to, or indeed even when some of the people I was “leading” weren't very happy about it. The truth is, though, that I would much rather just follow someone else and have a specific task to complete. The problem is that in doing my work I always seem to be able to find time to see the errors of the other people working alongside me, and then feel the need to take control so as to minimize those errors. I suppose the jury is still out on if that is a fundamentally positive or negative aspect of my personality. Either way, not having Beatriz to follow scared me to death. I began recognizing all of the things that she had been able to accomplish so easily, realizing that my talents were nothing next to hers.

But this is what I chose. I could have backed out whenever I wanted to. Certainly I did not have the wit, tact, and spontaneity that draws everyone to Beatriz, but I did have one thing: dedication. A lot of it.

With that in mind, we cleared up some technical details and laid out a general plan for the following three weeks until she would be back again. We moved into a rented house (with a large room that conveniently can be used as a depository for donations) which was actually quite cozy once we cleaned out all the cobwebs and arranged a few pieces of furniture. Bathroom, hot water (electric heater), and gas stove, all for $125/month. A steal. We became fast friends with our landlord—the local justice of the peace—whose wife even promised to make us homemade bread every week.

As for the project plan, we settled on a single objective: do a house-by-house survey of every home in the community. Even though we already have a general idea of the necessities of the Wichí, to begin organizing the community—the first phase of the project—it would be necessary to have a very clear idea of how many families live in La Misión, and know exactly what problems they are facing. Given that there are only four of us here permanently—two social workers from the UAP (Silvana and Laly), a veteran ADRA volunteer (July), and myself—such a large scale survey would be very time consuming without some extra help. So, we decided to run a class in the town of Rivadavia to formally train students and adults in the art of surveying, promising a certificate and the possibility of future work in the area.

Preparing for the class was a little intimidating. Because of our lack of internet, we had very little source material, and it had been quite some time since Research Methods from college. Even then, my knowledge is oriented much more towards the construction and analysis of a survey or test than it is on what we needed to train people in: the interviewing process itself. In the end, however, that didn't matter as much as I thought it would. Silvana and Laly came up with some great material and activities on their own, and it turned out that what was much more helpful was my extensive training in PowerPoint layout and organization (a skill acquired from my wonderful psychology professors). Apart from the 15 elementary school teachers who dropped out of the course at the last minute because of conflicting meetings, things have gone incredibly well after the first week of classes. Even if the 30 people who did show up didn't fully understand the lecture I gave on Thursday, they were at least nice enough to pretend they did!

When we weren't working on the class, we were doing our best to inform members of La Misión about who we are and what we are doing. This was without doubt the more challenging half of our workload. There are so many barriers between “us” and “them” that it is very difficult to communicate effectively. It is not simply that our language and culture are vastly different. A long history of manipulation and false promises has made the Wichí extremely skeptical of outsiders, even those—maybe even especially those—who come in the name of help and support. In order to get our message across, we either have to oversimplify it or spend a significant amount of time explaining it in detail, neither of which are very appealing options. By simplifying we run the risk of having the other person fill in the details themselves, which can lead to serious errors—for example, thinking that we are a political group. By spending too much time on any given conversation, we are limiting the already small amount of time we have to reach other members of the community.

Most of the time the most we can expect is a muffled si or a slight nod of the head, but every once in awhile there are a few that open up and talking feels much more rewarding. For me this usually happens with the men of the community, with whom I feel more comfortable as I ask about fútbol or the history of La Misión or what they do for a living. Of course these topics are somewhat superficial, but they also create exactly the kind of confidence we are trying to gain, opening the door for more serious ideas—ADRA, plans for the future, community organization, etc.—to be discussed.

This was perhaps most true as we conversed with two of the teachers from the bilingual annex (Wichí-Spanish) to the elementary school in the community. Other times when we visited on other business, Beatriz and I had talked with them briefly as they sat outside watching over children at recess. Those times that we met they seemed to be rather non-plussed by our presence, and they were quick to mention other projects that had come before and failed. At one point one of them, Demetrio, had even spoken against the housing project in the name of all Wichí (“Los Wichí no estamos de acuerdo con...”). Later on we discovered that he might have in fact had the right to do so, because he is the de facto cacique of La Misión (see previous post), although most in the community do not recognize him as such. With this new information I felt the need to speak with him again, and although he still maintained some distance I think something changed in that moment. As I spoke, I could not help but voice how dedicated we are to helping La Misión, how much we feel their pain, how committed we are to not let things keep happening that way, and how this time things will be different.

Clearly what I say—or what anyone in our group says—is not the only important factor in achieving the closeness we are looking for. Having a bilingual aid, even though she is from another community, has been elemental to much of our progress. But after that conversation, I stopped feeling nervous about confronting the issues and, more importantly, I started to see a change in how people reacted to me. Now they seem to be listening more to what I say, and are more likely to enter into a real conversation--even offer to help us reach out to others.

And Demetrio greets me with a smile.

Other moments that stand out:

“You guys need to have neighborhoods with streets and houses. You have to stop living like animals”, the words of the agricultural surveyor of the municipal government to one of the pastors of the Wichí Anglican church in La Misión.

Talking with the two cooks at the “school cafeteria” (3-walled structure with a grill over a hole) about what they make for the children, where they get their food from, and what they thought about our project.

Discussing the possibility of a bilingual dictionary with Demetrio and his co-worker

Realizing how expansive and disperse the community really is. In some places you could walk for almost two miles from one end to the other.

Mispronouncing “democracy” multiple times during my presentation.

Talking with a nearly deaf elderly man who had been sleeping with the radio on full blast playing Lady Gaga. When he finally came out to talk to us, he was legitimately interested in everything we were doing, and made sure he remembered our names.

¡Gracias, REVO!

To the REVO team and all of PUC:

Although words alone cannot express my gratitude for all that you have done, I cannot go without saying a few things. First: thank you, thank you, THANK YOU. Although I am thousands of miles away, your effort, dedication, and generosity have had a profound effect both on me and on ADRA's work here in Argentina. Simply put, this project would have been impossible without your help. You have chosen not only to help people in need, but to bring attention to the many problems facing the indigenous cultures of Argentina, a reality that most people would rather forget or ignore.

As a former student at PUC, I know that sometimes it can be difficult to feel that you are really making a difference, but your participation in REVO—in whatever way you might have been a part of it—is a clear example that you are not “waiting on the world to change”. The revolution of REVO has just as much to do with creating positive change in the world as it does with creating that same change within ourselves: increasing our awareness of what is really happening around us, and refusing to let it stay that way. It is saying NO to poverty, sickness, and death. NO to injustice, prejudice and oppression. And ultimately, NO to complacency, stagnancy, and ignorance. Whether that “NO” is a quiet whisper in the back of your mind or a shout on the tip of your tongue, it must never be silenced. The passion and compassion we have for others is what unites us, and indeed it is the only thing that makes life worth living.

So again, I say thanks to all of you. To the REVO team for their hard work, to President Knight for her incredible generosity—along with other other anonymous donors—and to PUC, my beloved alma mater. Our ADRA team is working tirelessly to make this shared vision a reality, and we are forever indebted to your service. Thank you.

Empezando con el proceso del cambio

“¡Zach!”

“¿Qué?” I respond, more than half asleep.

“¡¡¡ZACH!!!”

“¿Qué pasa?”, still disoriented.

“I think they are taking some of our stuff off the bus!”, said Beatriz (in Spanish, of course).

“Tranquila, Bety. No pasa nada...”, as I drift back into my dream.

Surely there was some danger of losing some of our cargo--by malice or more likely by accident—simply because there was just so much of it; somehow we had fit what seemed like an endless amount of boxes and bags in the carriage of our bus. But after having travelled so many times like this, I had learned to worry about lost bags at the end of the trip. There's just not much you can do, and I desperately needed sleep as we made the big move from Salta Capital to Rivadavia, an 8-hour overnight ride on mostly dirt roads.

We arrived at around 8:30 in the morning, probably exhausted more from the preparation and rush to the bus terminal in Salta than the trip itself. Fermín, Secretary to the municipal government of Rivadavia and our main contact in the region, eventually arrived with his pick-up truck to take us to the hospedaje where we would be staying for the next week or so as we settled in.

And then the fun began.

As soon as we had unloaded our gear and eaten the semblance of a breakfast, we were on our way to meetings. Meetings and meetings and meetings, to establish ourselves in the community and form mutual relationships with institutions that will help us reach our goals.

But first, some political context. Rivadavia is a small town--probably about 3000 inhabitants--which is surrounded by indigenous Wichí communities, some closeby (1km), some quite far away and isolated (60km or more). Even so, the politics are fierce and dirty. In terms of elections, buying votes with favors is commonplace, and often politicians will provide transportation to the voting booth on election day to ensure they get that community's vote. Once in office, the situation doesn't improve very much. Conflicts of interest are well-known and accepted (for example, the Director of Public Works also owns the company that builds public housing units), work is slow and inconsistent, and the mayor--who has a 7^th grade education and recently won his 3^rd term--is never here. Earlier this year when Rivadavia was in crisis due to flooding, it took his staff almost two days to find him. He was at a folklore fiesta in the wine-country town of Cafayate. Needless to say, most people seem to be in disagreement with the government in general, but are also typically dependent on it for their welfare, however mismanaged the process might be.

Since I don't want to bore everyone with every detail of every meeting over the last week, I'll outline here what happened at each place:

MUNICIPAL GOV'T

Main contact: Fermín (Secretary)

What we asked for: Technical, financial, and moral support for the project

What we were offering: Improved quality of life for citizens

Most important thing learned: A housing project had begun in “our” community (La Misión), with 40 homes being constructed and 40 more promised

Most impacting images: The run-down building and primitive technology; the line of Wichí waiting to submit requests and complaints with the gov't

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Main contact: Director

What we asked for: Attendance records for children from La Misón

What we were offering: Assessment of children with learning disabilities by two social workers on our team

Most important thing learned: A shockingly small percentage of children who finish 4^th grade in the school located in the community continue on to the 5^th grade located in the town, and those who do are in segregated classes

Most impacting images: The classroom of Wichí children reading their dictionaries; a quote on the main blackboard about the cultural value and richness of the indigenous peoples of Argentina

HIGH SCHOOL

Main contact: Director

What we asked for: Students who might be interested in volunteering in the project

What we were offering: Guest lectures in our areas of specialty

Most important thing learned: Only 1 or 2 Wichí youth finish high school every year

HOSPITAL

Main contact: Director

What we asked for: Health records for inhabitants of La Misión; participation in community workshops on health

What we were offering: Donated medications and equipment; general help from our social workers

Most important thing learned: The water of Rivadavia, even in the town, is not drinkable (maximum level of arsenic in water should be below .01% according to the WHO. Here, it is .2%, 20 times the limit)

Most impacting image: two Wichí mothers—aged 13 and 15—nursing their babies

RADIO

Main contact: DJ

What we asked for: Permission to promote our project on the radio

What we were offering: Awareness

Most important thing learned: Listening to the radio is very common, and the staff is completely open to our participation

And finally, the community itself. La Misión is rather unique among Wichí communities. Unlike others we have visited, it lacks a central hub of homes and instead is comprised of a number of disperse hamlets, usually made up of only one or two extended families living in proximity. Also notable is the diversity of living conditions, ranging from stake and plastic lean-tos to humble adobe houses to full-on brick constructions. Most interesting, however, is their apparent lack of a cacique (chief). It is normal after the death of the cacique that there be some dispute about who be chosen for the position, but typically after a year or so most of the community will recognize the new leader. Not only has La Misión been missing a cacique for over two years, it appears that no one is really interested in having one. The priests of the local Anglican church seem to have any sway at all, and even then it is only over a very small portion of the community.

With no central leadership, La Misión has been left to a mild but consistent discord and disorganization amongst its' members. As you may imagine, this creates a difficult situation when you are trying to initiate a community-based project like ours. Each time we speak with a different member of the community we receive a slightly different story, coupled with different motives, different ideas... different everything.

There is one factor, however, that might turn all of that around. As I mentioned before, we found out that the rumored government plan to build houses in La Misión had indeed begun. This was indeed the most notable difference we encountered when we first arrived at the community. They had built a temporary structure as an annex to the defunct comedor (soup kitchen, although its an awful translation) to hold and prepare the building materials. A group of four or five men was cutting iron rods which would be later bound together to form posts for pouring concrete.

Why would public housing unite the community? First, because it would centralize most of the members in one place, providing the combination of having a defined center and living in proximity would, perhaps, promote the idea of living as one unit rather than separated groups. Second, because it gives the community a central project that they can all stand behind. Third, and most importantly, because it simply provides hope that positive change is possible.

Still, the project is not without it's difficulties. Since only 40 homes are being constructed in the first phase, certainly some families will be left out of the selection, an unfortunate reality which is possible even after all 80 homes are completed. Also, some people worry that the small plot of land on which the house rests will become their only land, that the government will try to snatch up the rest of the property that they believe belongs to them. Obviously this worry is not without cause, as such practices are common in the history of the Wichí and indeed virtually all indigenous peoples.

Since the public housing project is already taking place, we are trying to show the community how this is an opportunity to reach even higher goals. Certainly the improvement of living conditions is important, but the betterment of nutrition, higiene, and community integration are goals that are necessary to create a real change in the overall quality of life. Furthermore, the existence of a new community structure also will allow for a more formalized request for the legalization of indigenous lands.

And it is on those four goals—nutrition, hygiene, community organizaion, and land ownership—that we are dedicated. We have not yet focused heavily on hygiene, but this week we made important steps in the direction of completing the other three major goals. We met with the national institute for argiculture (INTA) who tested the water and proposed how and where we would start the farming process. We met with the surveyor to discuss the integration of our plan with that of the new housing units. And we met with community members to discuss their perception of our plan, their doubts and dreams, their needs. Slowly but surely we are showing them that we are a hand that is reaching out to help. I hope that eventually the community as a whole will see us as something more, not just as helpers but companions in their struggle. I think it is possible, and will continue to be more apparent as time presses on. As one of the pastors of the church said in the Friday evening service we attended, “we are all one below the same God”.

One of our key phrases this week has been “Rivadavia no es pobre. Solo está en una situación de pobreza”: Rivadavia is not poor. It is only in a situation of poverty. (The use of es versus está es elemental. Both are translated as “is”, but es is a conjugation of the verb ser, a verb for “to be” which implies permanency [e.g., I am a blonde, I am American], while está is a conjugation of estar, also meaning “to be” but in a more fluid sense of things that are changeable [e.g. I am sad, I am tired]). Although our main focus is on nutrition, a fundamental part of that process is showing both the community and the key institutions of Rivadavia that there is a richness here that is in grave danger of being lost if the status quo does not change. As I have noted before, the richness of the land is already being extracted by outside interests instead of being used to feed those who live on it, the rightful owners. At the same time, the richness of the Wichí culture is slowly disappearing because their communities are in a seemingly impossible struggle to simply survive. Our mission is to make sure those two processes are stopped, and hopefully someday reversed.

I don't have time to go into detail about all of the things I have seen and heard, but I'll leave you with some of the most important things I haven't yet mentioned:

• The pastors of the church conducting nearly all of their Friday service in Spanish simply because we were there, and them asking us to speak up front (very nerve-racking!)
• The children of the community drinking water directly from the water spout with putrifying water surrounding them, all the while knowing that the source is poisoned with arsenic
• The worn and wrinkled faces of women not even my mother's age
• The way the surveyor talked about the Wichís living like animals
• The Wichí children surrounding us while we snapped photos of them, laughing and playing and fighting and joking in both of our half-Spanish tongues
• The two women who were kind enough to come to our meeting even we had invited nearly half of the community (who didn't show up)
• The endless repetetive songs in the church

Un día agridulce

Last minute errands. Stuffing my backpack again. Finalizing plans. The day has come.

And so it goes.

I have been waiting for this moment for over half a year, and yet I still cannot quite come to terms with it. Ever since the first trip we took to Rivadavia, I always wanted to stay longer, learn more, live amongst those who so many reject or simply forget. Most of my friends from down here think it's crazy that my dream was to come all the way from the United States to live in a place so desolate. But it was my dream, and it is at long last coming true.

I am excited, and I am afraid. Leaving a comfortable place is never easy, especially when on the other end there is a sea of unknowns and expectations. But I am jumping in. And after all, I am not going alone.

So I say an unsure farewell. But if all goes well and I can continue to keep in contact with you all, this good-bye will have been unnecessarily melodramatic and I will have to apologize for it :) Chau, amigos.

Luchando con el pueblo Wichí

In July of 2010 we went on a trip (read journey-project) to Rivadavia Banda Sur, a desert-like region on the western border of the Salta province that is without question one of the poorest places in Salta, if not all of Argentina. The population of Rivadavia Banda Sur is comprised almost exclusively of the indigenous Wichí, a group that has unfortunately suffered the plight of most indigenous peoples: subtle manipulation, overt oppression, and extreme poverty. Since it is so rural, they have been able to conserve most of their cultural traditions--most importantly their language--but their original way of life is becoming increasingly unsustainable. Deforestation and an increasingly violent climate cycle between drought and floods have all but destroyed their ability to maintain a hunter-gatherer existence, and as a result they now depend heavily on state welfare programs. (For more on this situation, read this piece from the BBC)

ADRA in Salta has an intense compassion for the Wichí and their struggle, visiting the region at least two to three times a year to provide much needed food, clothing, and other goods. Within the last year, however, ADRA's leadership has come to recognize that this is not enough. Although it is clear that giving food and clothing is an honorable task in the face of such great need, it is equally clear that doing so is much like placing a band-aid on a gaping wound. In other words, to create a real change, we must search out the source of the problem and begin working there.

Still, in Rivadavia Banda Sur, it's hard to know where to start. The situation is desperate: lack of access to drinking water, malnutrition, shack-like homes, unsanitary disposal of waste, little to no birth control, corroding schools... and the list goes on. But the saddest and most frustrating problem the Wichí are facing is much less apparent and much more dangerous. It is discrimination. To average Argentinian citizens and even some of the very people who supposedly represent and work for this group, the Wichí is dirty, a drunk, and above all, lazy--an indio. Thus, not only is the Wichí poor, he is told and often convinced that he has no choice but to be that way, that his suffering is not the result of his situation but his culture.

Given this gut-wrenching scenario, where DO you start? Something must be done, but what? How?

While we were on that trip back in July, one of the 33 communities we were able to reach had a particularly strong impact on us. It is called La Misión, and is about 1km from the small town of Rivadavia. In La Misión, the school "cafeteria" (photo left) was about 8 bricks in a circle, practically in the open air. When it rains, children go hungry. During vacations, children go hungry. When the government failed to send food, children go hungry. And not just children, because they often share their tiny rations with their family, most of whom are also malnourished. They asked for help, and we decided to respond.

But "doing good" isn't as easy as it sounds. Formulating a solution to a complex problem is itself a complex task. You have to consider all aspects of the problem and all of the potential positive--and negative--outcomes that your idea might generate once in place. But perhaps more important than the actual proposed solution is the attitude and perspective with which you do it. For example, if you believe that poverty is cultural, you would make one of two common mistakes: 1. try to change their culture (ethnocentrism), or 2. create assistance programs that help reduce suffering but do not resolve the root issues (welfare dependence). If you believe that the government is ultimately responsible, you might make different mistakes, like 1. assume that a certain political party could fix everything "if only" they were in power (ideologue) or 2. try to get rid of all government because everything they do is ''bad" (anarchy) or 3. simply believe there is no solution since the government will never be effective (apathy). So what is the "correct perspective"? Obviously that's up for debate, but I think a few aspects are key: respect for local culture, dedication, openness to compromise, and a constant search for balance between bronca and paciencia--anger and patience--when considering how things should.. must.. be different.

Maintaining that perspective as much as possible, and after some tough thinking--and arguing--we came up with the following:

Project name: Cocina Comunidad

Location: Community La Misión, Rivadavia Banda Sur, Salta, Argentina

Beneficiaries: 60 Wichí families 

Duration: 9 meses

Goal: Develop a sustainable system to guarantee food security and an improved quality of life for all community members

Objectives: 

a. Build and equip a communal, ecological kitchen

b. Facilitate the production of vegetables and poultry for consumption by establishing a community garden and chicken coop

c. To introduce basic principles of health and hygiene to the community, especially in younger generations

d. Highlight the ongoing environmental damage that is occurring in the region and teach the community about their part in reversing it by living in harmony with the fragile ecosystem

e. Promote community integration and gender equality by encouraging the establishment of an inclusive Committee on Health and Culture within the community.

As is evident from the title and objectives of the project, our first priority is community. That priority is reflected in a major and unique part of this project that is not described above: our team will be living in the community itself. Whenever we tell people that, they look at us as if we were a little crazy. And maybe it is, but we strongly reject the idea of helping by doing for rather than doing with. No matter how great the  might be, those who would come in and make big changes and then simply leave could not afterwards expect for their idea to have continuity or be sustainable. Change comes not from outsiders providing solutions according to their own criteria but from the integrated efforts of a community dedicated to their own progress. Achieving that requires forming a lasting and genuine relationship with the community.

The project focuses on the problem of malnutrition because we believe it is a stumbling block to development and is elemental in the continuation of the circle of poverty we are trying to break. Without proper nutrition, children cannot perform as well in school. If children are not well educated, as adults they will likely be less productive. If adults are less productive, they cannot provide food for their children. This is not even considering negative health outcomes, which also stunt development and can generate exorbitant costs for the whole family. Furthermore, having a local source of food will increase their economic power by freeing up other money that would be normally spent on expensive fruits and vegetables.

Time will tell if we are successful or not, but I think hope and fate our on our side. People's living conditions all around the world are slowly improving, and the Wichí should not be left out of that process. I am moving to the region this week, and hope to be able to continue updating about the progress we are making and my struggles as director of the project. I want to thank REVO @ Pacific Union College for supporting this project--for believing this kind of change is possible--and for all of those who have helped both me personally and ADRA in general. ¡Hasta luego!

Un paso adelante

It has yet again been a long time since I've written here, and an even longer time since the things I was writing about have happened. In fact, it's been over a year since the events of the last post I made. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to start again. Things are happening in the here and now that I don't want to leave unsaid and later forgotten. That said, I don't think I can summarize an entire year's worth of experiences in a single post, and I don't think I will try. I took a few notes over the months about the things I did and the places I went, the ideas I formed, and at some point I think I will go back and fill in the spaces. But for now, I leave you with some of the most important images from that year and will start anew.

WORK:

Training Sessions in Jujuy

 

Food Distribution in Rivadavia Banda Norte

Construction of temporary homes in Constitución, Chile

 

Food Distribution in Rivadavia Banda Sur

Training Sessions and Community Assessment in Jujuy

Project Assessment in La Misión, Rivadavia Banda Sur

Food Distribution for flood victims in Tartagal/Embarcación, Salta

PLAY:

Carnaval in San Antonio de los Cobres

Machu Picchu, Perú

Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

Lake Titicaca, Bolivia

Obviously there are hundreds of photos from this year, and I hope to be better about organizing my Picasa albums as well. I'll be sure to post the albums when they are ready. Updates soon.

Edit: Picasa Album ready to rock! https://picasaweb.google.com/zbenton

Jardincito pt. 2: ¿Ya terminamos?

(events correspond to Jan.-Feb. 2010)

The sun was blazing down, and I was sweating even more than normal. For quite some time now I had been donning long pants and long-sleeved shirts to prevent myself from being covered in paint, but there was something else that was really putting on the heat. It was inauguration day.

The project had taken somewhat longer than expected. In other words, significantly longer than expected. Sanding down the walls turned into fixing inconsistencies in the walls which turned into refilling and resurfacing many parts of the walls. Removing paint from the window panes turned into sanding down every window pane and door frame which turned into a complete re-varnishing. We sanded, painted, and repainted all 4 legs of over 30 chairs and 6 tables... twice. We painted every interior wall with three passes, and every exterior wall with two, all with two or more different colors. We sanded and repainted the flagpole and as well as every piece of metal work, from handrails to the barred fence and the enclosures of every window. We even repainted two blackboards and re-stained the brick patio.

...and we still weren't finished.

I'm trying to make it sound like it was a lot because, well.. it was a lot. My typical day was a little like this:

8:00AM Wake up
8:20 Actually wake up
8:25 Eat breakfast (Granix cookies with mate cocido or cereal w/ milk)
8:40 Drop by Beatriz's apartment for planning
8:45 Drag other volunteers out of bed or away from their breakfast
8:55 Leave on 20 minute walk to "Jardincito" worksite (early estimate)
9:20 Arrive at Jardincito (fashionably late?)
9:25 Finish listening to complaints. Try to wake myself up. Wait for critical mass of workers
9:30 Give orders
9:35 Finish listening to more complaints :)
9:45 Start work
9:55 Coax the late-starters into starting
9:57 Realize some essential tool is missing (usually sandpaper), preventing one or more groups from working
9:58 Call or text Beatriz to figure out what to do
10:01 Send someone to find or buy essential tool. Everyone else hangs out.
10:34 Tool arrives, work continues
10:44 Get silently annoyed at people who aren't working hard enough
10:48 Put on some music that only I like. Sing along with aforesaid music
11:03 Beatriz calls to ask how many people she needs to cook lunch for
11:25 Remember to text back
11:30 Send someone to buy bread and juice with $100 peso note
11:48 Receive change in $2 peso notes
12:04 Receive text from Beatriz telling us to prepare table for lunch
12:28 Receive text from Beatriz that she is about to arrive
12:35 Finish preparing table
1:04PM Beatriz arrives
1:14 Lunch. Conversation about slow progress
1:32 Siesta
2:05 Wake up and meander around, lamenting things that aren't done yet
2:15 Wake up everyone else
2:25 More orders. Becoming more visibly annoyed.
2:30 Work again (early estimate).
2:55 Yell at someone who went back to sleep
3:20 Take a break to drink juice or "terere" (mate with juice instead of water)
3:28 Back to work
4:14 Break. More juice/soda
4:23 Back to work
4:25 Realize that at this pace, the plan I had for tomorrow will have to be moved back yet again
4:26 Yell at someone who isn't doing anything
4:48 Beatriz randomly shows up to go on an errand
5:11 More orders. Leave with Beatriz. Tell her how frustrating work is
6:09 Return. Back to work.. again
6:48 Start clean-up process
6:55 Stop water-fight
7:14 Lock up
7:40 Arrive back home
7:45 Shower
8:20 Take "afternoon" tea
9:05 Hang out on Beatriz's couch. Get on Facebook.
11:35 Eat sandwich for "dinner"
11:55 Ponder sleep
12:45 Ponder sleep again
1:15 Sleep

There were times where it felt like I couldn't go on. Some days I would hear my name so often that it would drive me crazy. Sometimes I would wake up so tired that I didn't want to listen or talk to anyone. There were times I even wanted to break down and cry in frustration for fear of not meeting deadlines, both real ones and others I had created in my head. I became so tired that my lunch-time ritual, even on weekends, was to finish eating lunch and promptly fall asleep at the table.

And it turned out that my "leadership" methods as director weren't working too well. As hard as a tried, people just didn't want to work as hard as I wanted them to. In fairness, I expected far too much of them. I was treating them as if they were full-time employees of a professional contractor, when really they were just teenage volunteers spending their summer slaving away under the hot sun. Unfortunately I wasn't very good at remembering that. At one point I had a rather large outburst because someone had touched a part of the wall that wasn't dry yet, even though I had just told her not to touch anything. The "culprit", a normally cheery girl named Juli, was brought to tears. I did some damage control, but it was pretty obvious that I had overstepped my bounds. From then on I resisted the urge to yell, but it certainly was not easy.

But as people trickled into our inauguration program, the difficulties seemed to fade away, at least momentarily. Our volunteers beamed as they received their recognition in their ADRA uniform; it was certainly the cleanest they had been at that hour on any other day. I, too, received a special recognition from Beatriz, even though it certainly did not feel as if I deserved it. Though I had to admit, hearing people's praise for our hard work--which was nearly "finished"--and their excitement about the year to come was refreshing, even as the sun continued to beat down.