Leadership

Today the sun came out. Today I pulled off my socks. I removed my fleece jacket and my fleece pants. I did a little happy dance. I danced my way out to my latrine. I brought in my dry clothes after four days of it not drying. Then I took advantage of the first transport in four days and made a bee line for the clinic to sort out the serious mischief that has been brewing in my intestines. A couple more solid weeks of rain have hit Bocas during this supposed dry season. I have surrendered my quest to understand the Bocas definition of dry, but I have not and will not surrender to those mischievous little amoebas that are apparently quite fond of dwelling in my intestines.

Despite the will of my one-celled friends and the rainy cold front stationed over my province, it has been a very productive few weeks. Last week my counterpart Jorge and I gave a two day leadership and project management seminar that covered topics from goal setting, scheduling, budgeting, and group structuring, facilitating, and advertising to formal letter writing, public speaking, and interacting with agencies. In an effort to make the material as interesting as possible, I recruited a group of community members to be actors in skits performed at the start of each session and inserted quick games into the schedule as necessary.

The results surpassed my greatest hopes. Twenty-two participants arrived on the first day, and attendance actually increased for the second day. Better still, I left the seminar with tangible results: two thank you letters for the Ministry of Agriculture’s Department of Rural Development director, a letter of request addressed to me by a young women’s group that formed during the seminar, and a dozen potential logos for my farmers group, which will soon be a formal association! The young women had requested that I facilitate their group’s formation and help them start a project. Yesterday in our first meeting, we decided to pursue native artisan work: baskets, carvings, and jewelry. We all ready have a teacher, and our first work days set for this weekend.

I am quite at a loss for how it happened. Despite my amoeba-sponsored races to latrines, sporadic mud slip-and-slide antics, and language mishaps where things like ‘create children’ rather than ‘raise children’ leave my mouth, I have become a role model. I have a collection of teenage girls that show up at my house to hang out, and now they even seek my guidance. Unfortunately I have started a silly fashion trend of pink handkerchiefs. I seem to sweat a lot, especially here, and in my vain attempt to retain a bit of femininity I thought that a pink hanky would be a good solution. And now they are apparently all the rage among young women in my community. Neck scarves, bandannas, pony tail holders... all in the form of bright pink hankies.

The bridge I cross to enter my site

Kind of scary, but atleast it is being repaired

From the leadership seminar

Leadership seminar

Jorge, starring as the devil in a skit. I, of course, played an angel.