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.
