making change

So, I have a lot of catching up to do. I’ll start where I left off on my long tale of our trip to the coast…we stayed at the lovely Bamboo hostal which was right on the beach, had a cute dining area with cushy chairs and tables lit by shell lights interspersed with palm trees. The next day and a half consisted of a lot of hanging out on the beach with two Peace Corps pals and assorted family members and friends including our new French (fry) friend Clement (which must be pronounced with Jer’s thick French accent as clay-MAW). It was this guy who just sort of glommed on to our group. He never just said much, just was kind of there trying to figure out our motley group of friends. His Spanish was better than his English, and then everyone had to try to use the six French words or phrases they knew over and over, so our conversations seemed at once very international, but very absurd (hence the famous quote was born, “There are lots of French words in English….like bidet”). We had a weird small world moment when we ran into a dude who had stayed at the same hostal as us near Laguna Quilatoa. And later Shelly ran into the Chilean girls that stayed at the same jungle lodge.

I ended up having to go back earlier than everyone else for work reasons. So that Sunday was taken up by a long 11 hour trip involving four different buses. I lucked out and didn’t have to wait long for any of my connections and all things considered it was a smooth trip. It was long, but I would TOTALLY do it again. Since we have been back from the coast we have had three separate invitations to stay at beach houses in various towns on the coast. So, another beach trip will definitely be in the works as soon as we can find some free time...

So, after a great few days of vaca, I came back to a lot of work with the Waorani Women’s Association. One of the recent little projects I have initiated is trying to improve customer service in the store and at the various fairs where they will be setting up a booth to sell their handicrafts. One day I offered a short “charla” as we call them, which is basically a short training class. I set it up with my counterpart, Manuela, so that we did a two short roleplays. In the first, I was the store attendant and she was the tourist. I was the “bad employee”, talking on my phone, not paying attention, etc. Manuela was the tourist wanting to buy stuff and ask questions. I basically ignored her and then didn’t have change when she wanted to buy something, so I lost the sale because the person didn’t have time to wait for change. In the second roleplay, I was the tourist and Manuela played the “good employee” and greeted me when I entered the store, explained that all the artesania is made by hand by Waorani women in communities throughout the Waorani territory, etc. She demonstrated how to use a blowgun, explained how the string is handmade, etc. In the end I bought a bunch of stuff…and she had the correct change and thanked me profusely for my purchase. We tried to make it funny, too, so I was talking in really broken Spanish like many tourists do and asking silly questions. The women seemed to enjoy it. After that, I gave them suggestions on what they should and shouldn’t do while trying to sell, and then had each of them practice being a store or booth attendant. Some of them were really into it, others were too shy and quiet and clearly uncomfortable with the idea.

I did a lot of work with the women to get ready to sell artesania during Carnaval. We had originally planned to have four booths, but thankfully the two of them that were out of town fell through. The two that we did locally were a ton of work and I was exhausted at the end of it all. I had helped to make signs and displays, which then had to be transported and set up and taken down each day of the festival. (I was having flashbacks to the EastSide Designs booth at ComFest.) I got frustrated at several points in the process when the women would show up late, after I had done the lions share of the work. …And when at one point there were three of us working, none of which were Waorani. … And when I asked one of the women to help me put together a display by cutting pieces of tape for me, but she was too busy text messaging her boyfriend, and I ended up doing it all by myself. I tried not to let it get to me, but I admit it did. My role as a Peace Corps volunteer is not to work FOR them, but to work WITH them…but sometimes it certainly doesn’t feel that way. Progress is slow, I know. And I definitely have seen some progress and I have to keep reminding myself of that. Like yesterday, I brought some people that I met at a meeting to the Waorani store. When we entered, there were a bunch of Waorani just hanging out. Before my little training (and frequent reminders), they would have just stayed in the tiny store blocking the displays and being loud and making it an inhospitable environment for customers to shop. But, now they all knew that when customers enter, they should step outside, which they did, and then Mencay stood, greeted them and launched into a brief explanation of the store and did a good job explaining things to them. So, that was great to see. But of course, when they went to pay for their stuff, there wasn’t any change...