Life and such

For all intense purposes I have five months of service left which is both an eternity and a heartbeat.   It has also probably been five months since I spewed anything onto this blog.  I had started writing quite a lengthy one just a week ago but it turned into something that could only be shared with one person....and apart from that the things I experience and feel are in my mind not communicated effectively through my ability to write....so I go silent.  I go silent essentially with other volunteers in relation to my time here...they all know I love my town but I leave out the details of my work and the things that transpire for the most part.  The truth is looking back I never joined the Peace Corps for anyone else but myself but it has turned into something very different.  One could say that anyone who joins the Peace Corps joins with the desire to help others but I can tell you underlying that was a selfish need for change in my life and career.  Did I desire to help others, yes I did but what has come has been something all together different and I should have seen it coming.  I should also say their exists two worlds here my life in my town and my life outside of it...here in my town life is as it should be....

I have a project here in a caserio (which is an outlying area of any central town) so as you leave my street and head for the unpaved, farm areas life changes rapidly.....no running water, no electricity etc.  But it is here where you encounter less you find more.  By all definitions the people are by our standards poor, uneducated, and at the exact same time wiser, richer and over flowing with generosity in ways that we do not usually care to measure.  Our world that we live in does not give us the chance , the privilege to experience the beauty of simplicity.  With this group, myself, and another Non Profit are building an Eco Lodge to promote eco tourism and in turn providing these people with additional income and a better way of life (financially speaking).  While their is nothing out of place they like any others desire better opportunities for their children and perhaps the chance to advance like any other person around them.  So the lodge is being constructed by ten families with funding through this non profit and it has been given to me the task on educating this group of ten families how to manage and run a business.  I know them, I know their children, I know their smiles, I know their cooking style, I know that if I see one in town I will get a hug, I know that when I visit them they ask me not to leave and that I can live in the eco lodge and run it.....they know I love them, they know my spanish is not perfect, they know I love their cooking, but they do not know how highly I think of them and it is this task that I set out upon starting yesterday.

Yesterday was our first official training session, I am using a course designed by the Peace Corps to teach them about entrepreneurship and how to build a business plan for the first step.  So began our first class yesterday with a group training between 11 and 82 years old.  The group was consisting of around twenty people.  I asked them to give their name, their age, and their goal....that is why they are participating in the project.  To a man or woman they all indicated it was to improve their quality of life.  So went my charla stumbling at first as every term uttered is new to them, they are literally babes in relation to business knowledge and anything that goes along with it.  Every activity had to be explained numerous times, every answer I desired pried from them...as they all exchanged looks  amongst each other clearly indicating what is he talking about....and then it dawned on me....they view me as being on a different level, they quite literally believe me to be smarter....partly because I simply am a gringo and partly because I am speaking on things they have no idea of what I spoke.  I got angry..no at them but at the situation and I stopped speaking like a teacher and spoke as I have finally learned is always the most effective way and that is with brutal honesty.  I told them that I am full of embarrassment every time I do a speaking engagement because my spanish is that of  middle schooler, I told them that if they fail to open themselves to the possibility to change that they will fail, I told them that problems will come as they always do, and when those problems come the way we engage them will determine our success, I told them their humility is a gift, I listed my flaws as a person which was quite an easy process and then something seemed to transpire.  They turned their words of  self doubt into building me up...and it dawned on me which I have known for so long now here is that I will walk out of here receiving so much more than I could ever hope to give.
We finished the lecture and things went well, the president is 81 and has an infectious smile he pulled me aside and apologized..he told me he thought the topic was very interesting but that they start at such a low level so these things seem so complicated....I put my arm around him and whispered in his ear that he is smarter than I will ever be and I knew it to be true.  That I may know terms but he knows kindness and I learn from him everyday.  He extended his hand shook mine and told me that we have have a trato or agreement....and I asked what that was...he told me he would become smarter and I shook my head.....and just walked away.  He just does not get it...he does not understand that who he is exudes intelligence in the way he treats others, his humility would make anyone who lays claim to anything seem like an arrogant jackass, and that he and those people teach me more than I could ever dream of giving them in return.