Thursday, December 1, 2011

stage 2

well after having been in-site for 3 months, i think i've finally advanced past the honeymoon stage of my time in perú. reality is setting in and things are looking harder and harder every day. doesn't mean i've given up -- not at all actually. i am still as dedicated as i was day 1 -- it's just that i'm beginning to notice more and more each and every day the challenges and problems that exist at my site. i am realizing that one person alone -- a gringo probably isn't going to solve all of them. doesn't mean i shouldn't try to at least positively impact the life of some of the people living here. it just means that i'm not going to affect the change that i had hoped i'd affect.

yesterday i attended a capacitación in a place called cruz blanca right outside of chincha. i was warned that i should "watch myself" being that they aren't so used to seeing gringos. i went with a colleague of mine from an ngo i'm working with here. looks like this ngo may have its days in chincha and grocio prado numbered. they aren't advancing with their project with the speed that they're jefes would like them to. vamos a ver en diciembre que pasa...

anyways, back to the capacitación. the project the ngo is doing is meant for my site grocio prado and the provincial capital, chincha alta -- not necessarily for cruz blanca. but, the president of the artisan association has some family members, friends, other connections out there and as a result, the ngo is testing out doing some of their capacitaciones there rather than here in grocio. in order to achieve this, they need at least 25 people. at one point yesterday, there were 30 y pico artisans in attendance. but, in the end, just 9 or so remained. my colleague then went on to praise the 9 artisans remaining for the attendance of all 30 artisans completely ignoring the fact that more than 20 had left.

the problem was that my colleague wanted to take a short break -- that we did. upon returning, we saw a flood of female artisans going towards the bodega to take a break themselves. we waited a few minutes for everyone to return...then a few more...and a few more...and then we started. i went out to let everyone know that we were starting up again but no one listened. at a few points, i mentioned to one of the artisans that did remain at the end that she should let the other women drinking a gaseosa know that we were starting and that they were going to miss everything. she didn't. they weren't coming back she said.

my colleague went on to present on the tema of enfoque al cliente or customer service. i don't believe that he was the one who had created the presentation and i don't believe that he reviewed the presentation. as a result, he read directly from the slides. to me, it seemed like his goal was to get through the presentation just for the sake of getting through it without much regard for whether the artisans were understanding anything.

bueno...i left a bit frustrated and with a massive headache. the house we were in was dirty. it was really dirty. i guess my gringo body isn't accustomed to that type of environment and so upon returning to chincha alta (the city), i had a massive headache. sick again, i thought. qué suerte!


i recount this story not to be negative. there is no doubt that it is a negative story and it was not an incredibly fun experience. was it valuable? yes. did i learn something? yes. am i frustrated? yes. am i giving up? no.

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