We needed money, and we needed it fast. To get la plata, the cash that is, we had gone to the only option in town. This was the smartest (or the dumbest) move I had made as a Peace Corps volunteer.
¿Cuánto ocupa? ¿ A qué plazo? ¿Tiene fiadores? Translation: How much do you need? For how long? Do you have cosigners? The questions were endless. Why can’t we just get this over with! They know we’re good for it. Three casually dressed people were sitting across from the dull gray table looking mildly combative while filling in a form with our responses.
Sitting to my right was a short woman, middle-aged, short brown hair, fidgeting with here small purse in her hands. Alongside her was another woman of roughly the same description. Respectively, they are the fledgling Boy Scouts group’s Treasurer and President.
The Boy Scouts needed cash. To explain how it had come to this I’ll have to go back and recap a little bit about what’s happened here in town…
Yours Truly is now a temporary dirigente, or boy scout leader. Right now the group has 3 other scout leaders, and we have roughly 40 boys and girls split between us, from ages 7 to 17. We’ve been working with the kids for about 3 weeks now. We had broken the ice and were starting to feel pretty good about being scout leaders. Plus, the kids loved the games and activities we had been organized. Sure we were still pretty rough around the edges and there was a lot more to learn...but we knew we could lead a scout group! This was a big step.
The first day of activities in the town park in front of the church only a little over half the kids showed up. They session went well though, and at the end of the day we handed out little plastic ID cards to with the kids name printed on it. This was something the central office had sent us after the group was signed up 3 months ago.
The next week about 90% of the kids that we had signed up participated. They had heard all week in school about the good time the others had, and wanted to show up to be included and receive there ID card.
Everything was going great. But there was a problem. The town had a fiesta comunal coming up and we still don’t have uniforms for the kids yet. There is only a month left until the fiesta, and we want the kids in uniforms to communicate to the town that YES, WE ARE HERE! Up until now we hadn’t really felt like others believed in us.
It was the recommendation of the Boy Scouts that we have parents pay for the uniforms so they were invested somewhat in the group. They had had bad experiences in the past with simply raising money and giving out uniforms. That made sense to us.
Okay, so what do we do?
It was at this moment that I decided to step in with my brightest (or dumbest) idea as a Peace Corps volunteer. –“Why not get a short-term loan from the town bank?!”
We chewed on the idea a bit. A short term loan would allow us to get the shirts done quickly. Plus, the parents could finance the shirt over 3 or 4 months instead of paying all at once. We estimated the shirt and bandana would roughly cost 4,000 colones…or roughly $8 a piece. This was cheap, but some of the committee members had 3 or 4 kids plus themselves to think about so this would add up.
But financing with a few payments over 3 or 4 months would make the situation much more manageable, right? Plus, we wouldn’t start to make the shirt until we’d received a signed permission from the parent along with the first payment.
The idea started to sound pretty darn good.
…so that brought us to the small side office there in the offices of my counterpart, the micro-finance bank.
The loan application was approved without any problems. A week later the Boy Scouts Regional Representative paid the group a visit (I wasn’t there) and our junta informed him of our plan to “finance” the uniforms. He strongly advised against the financing idea since it had not worked out well in other areas in his experience.
After hearing that, I was totally willing to give up on the idea, but the junta went ahead and voted to take out a portion of the money they had been approved for. They were approved for a credit line of $500 and decided to only take out $300. I wasn’t present at that meeting either due to my participation on the Comisión de Fiesta.
The idea is the money will be used to buy cloth for the uniforms that will be made by the president (a seamstress), and then to pay for food and other things we will be selling during the fiesta. They tossed out the financing idea and decided participants would have to just buy the uniforms outright. They could still finance, it would just have to be a forward-financing type arrangement.
Despite the fact that I still eventually may be responsible for planting the idea that eventually bankrupted the town Boy Scouts group…I was proud of the junta. They decided together to take a calculated risk by taking out the loan, and also tossed out the uniform financing idea after hearing from the regional representative. Plus, with the money we are almost sure to make from food sales during the fiesta, it should more than justify the loan.
As time goes on they are becoming much more confident, taking decisions on there own while my input becomes less and less important. I guess I could feel left out…but the bottom line is it is becoming a sustainable project. I will keep you all posted on the outcome of our loan.
Volunteer Trainee Visit
About a week ago one of the new volunteer trainees came to my site to stay here and shadow me for a few days. It is a normal trip as part of the training program. There are now 54 new trainees recently arrived to the country that will be spending the next 2 months learning how to be PCVs, just as we did.
I enjoyed the company. His name was Mick. He had studied Economics in undergrad, and then got a Masters in Anthropology…a curious mix. His father is actually a current Peace Corps Volunteer in Africa. Mick was researching Peace Corps in grad school, told his dad about it, and then his dad, who was retired after working in international recruiting (human resources), started doing his own investigating. Eventually, he accepted an assignment to Botswana and has been there for more than a year now.
Mick and I went on a hike with the Boy Scouts troop, visited one of the micro entrepreneurs I help out, went to a junta meeting of the bank, and I gave him a tour of the town among other things. It was nice to have somebody to throw the frisbee and BS with for a few days. Some pics from the Scouts hike below.
Visit from Joe Biden
No, he didn’t come out to my site, but he did visit the country to meet with a bunch of regional leaders. He came at the exact same time as the trainee site visit, and so all of us receiving trainees couldn’t go see him in San Jose. The PC office gathered up some volunteers and went over to the embassy where he sat down for a few minutes with the volunteers. Some of my friends who were there said it was enjoyable and he seemed very genuine considering all the people he had to meet with. Oh well…I’ll hold out for Obama!
Project Management Workshop Postponed
At the beginning of April I was planning on putting on a project management workshop here in town, but it didn’t work out because of all the fiesta planning and Semana Santa coming up. I had to push it back to May, which is a bummer, but it will eventually happen.
Fiesta! Fiesta!
The party starts this Saturday (Saturday 18th) and then runs until the following Sunday (April 26th). Its been a lot of work in planning. Most of us on the planning committee have out fingers crossed since this is kind of an experiment. I’ll let you know how things go and try to post some pictures next blog.
This blog goes out to my Mom who had a birthday last month and I don’t remember saying Happy Birthday. Looks like I blew it. She also sent me some great Easter Candy and some plastic eggs that might save the day when we have our Boy Scouts Easter Egg Hunt here soon. Love you Mom!...and errr, sorry ‘bout that.
