Wednesday, December 29, 2010

De plano...


Adilia made a good point: over the last 4 months since I got to site, nearly every single thing has gone our way. We’ve cut it more than close on numerous occasions, but we’ve achieved everything we’ve set out to do on more things than a sane person would think about taking on. The day the materials arrived for our infrastructure projects, not everything went our way. Actually, a couple of very important things went running away from us in the opposite direction. By the end of that day, I had hidden tears from 2 different groups of women, postponed the materials drop-offs, been given a small pep-talk by 2 different groups of women, and been brought into the bank manager’s office to be told that all I needed for my troubles to disappear was one. Little. Stamp. That’s right – 2.5 days of running around wondering if we had completely screwed up our projects and made a group of 21 women come to 4 months of health talks for no reason, all for a little stamp.

By the time the demonstrations rolled around, I had concluded that things were pretty much out of our hands at this point. People weren’t showing up to the required construction demonstration? “De plano, no van a recibir su proyecto” (I guess they won’t receive their project then), The carpenter refused to explain the steps he was taking in the construction, thus negating the very reason why we had demonstrations? “De plano, no quiere escuchar mandados de una mujer” (Looks like he doesn’t want to listen to women – me and Kate), Only half the women brought their carpenters and/or husbands to the demonstrations? “De plano, van a ser responsables para la construccion adecuada de su proyecto” (Well, they’ll have to be responsible for the adequate construction of their project then).

“De plano,” like many other phrases in Spanish, doesn’t have a single, fixed meaning or definition, but rather carries a general feeling and can be used in a number of different situations. Basically, it means “okay” or “that’s alright” or “probably”. It’s like you’re submitting to something, like there’s nothing you can really do about what’s happening, it’s just the way it is. Americans tend to fight, well maybe not fight, but definitely have a sense of entitlement that tells them they can change the situation in their favor and not have to submit to whatever is in opposition. Our “Culture Matters” book that we received in training called the Guatemalan attitude “Defeatist,” and I’m not sure I would call it that, but I wouldn’t say they go looking for conflict either. I had to tell a woman that she wasn’t going to receive her improved stove because she didn’t comply with what we asked of every single participant in the project, and she replied, “De plano, I won’t receive my stove.” It was so hard to tell this woman, who probably needed this stove more than most in the group, that because she wasn’t able to leave her house and come to the demonstration, that because she didn’t have anyone else to help her prepare and deliver lunch to a group of workers, that she was losing out on a way to improve her family’s health.

I’ve found there are very few easy decisions in this job. Nothing is black and white. Nothing is as simple as it seems. But, de plano, I don’t want to be doing anything else.