6 months. We’ve been living and working in our community now for 6 months, which means we have 18 months remaining in our service (if we choose not to extend). So, in terms of time in site, we’re a quarter of the way done. Now, if you choose to look at our whole service (training included), we’ve been in the country for over 8 months, although training is advertised as being a 3 month commitment, making the whole term of service 27 months. Thus with 18 months remaining, we’re one-third of the way through our service. What do all these fractions mean for us? This is flying by!

What have we been doing in our six months so far? The easy answer is – we’ve been trying to figure out what we should be doing. The slightly more detailed answer (because it is hard to know without experiencing it) is that we’ve been talking a lot. We’re talking about the culture, the people, the history, talking about their work, their needs, their dreams, their failures and dashed hopes, their knowledge, their fears, their curiosities about life in the United States. We’ve learned that only in truly knowing the people, and being accepted as a part of their community, can we begin to know where our business knowledge and work can fit in and help in the future. And we feel like we’re getting there!

Initially we thought we might spend much of our time here working on developing business plans for many groups to use to solicit funding or other necessities. As time went on we learned that actually, the first step is teaching about planning. What is a plan? Why is it important? What is the situation today – good and bad? And what are our dreams for the future? Then, how do we get there? That’s been our work so far. We could push people to develop business plans, but in truth, we wouldn’t be doing them a service by giving them anything that they don’t understand or see the use in on their own. We might, in fact, be doing them a disservice by wasting their time, raising false expectations, or producing yet another poor interaction with the developed world.

The deadline-driven, results based, “get a good grade to know you’ve done well” part of me isn’t a big fan of the slow pace of the work at times. There are days when I feel like I’ve done nothing here. That I should be planning more to do, having more meetings, touching more groups, etc. And that I can’t possibly be “saving the world” through repeated use of a SWOT analysis, and talking about a vision and goals. Luckily, I also have something inside me that is slowing me down, and reminding me that more than anything, my work is about sustainable development, and even more than that, about being a member of the community. I had a nice experience this last week to remind me of my most important work.

Last Thursday afternoon, I spent hours sitting with a group of community members under the campamento in town (a tall open structure with a metal roof), as they ground corn to make chicheme (a corn based drink). Ben was at home working on making me a door for our latrine (YES!!!! After 4 months of living in our house, I finally have a door on my latrine! No one can see me peeing, or more, anymore!) so I was just hanging out. In all honesty, I did nothing to help them work on making the chicheme, but they were teaching me about the process, and they answered my questions about the “corn with beards” (the corn kernels with sprouts) and how to make the drink. In the hours I was there though, we spent most of it just talking and sharing stories. The people had heard that Ben and I went to the balseria near our town in early April (that will deserve its own blog shortly), so we laughed as I told stories about how men didn’t want to fight Ben for me because he’s so tall and has such a big beard. We talked about all kinds of things related to life in the states. They asked me about life in the community, and we talked about pulling ticks off our husband’s asses (yes, I did this the other night too). I can’t remember everything that we talked about that day, but at the end, they asked me how my work was going. As I sat there, reflecting for a moment, I thought about SWOT analyses, and my presentations, but I also thought about sitting around with some incredible people, sharing stories, and being an accepted and important member of the community, and I answered that the work is going good. Really good.