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.
