meet

Standing in the dusty street, facing the lion's share of the town's adults I drew breath and addressed the crowd sitting on half painted rocks under the 'amate tree'. A week had passed since the end of the second training period. Second training was geared more toward learning technical information that could be applied in the towns where volunteers live. Three days had passed since I met with six members of the 'directive' where I presented five ideas to them and they chose the three they liked the most, and each of the projects chosen was accompanied with a member to lead it. The directive is eleven people in the town most directly involved in the towns development and the government. Long sleeves and pants donned to garnish respect but invite much more sweat than respect. Screaming children, animals, people standing around joking, ranchero music, and other meeting goers battled for attention as well. I introduced myself, hopping the gesture was not necessary seeing how I've been to every house in the town at least once. “Today, we make committees for projects. The directive has thus started committees, but each committee has a need for five or six more members from the town. Leader of group, going to present the idea.” Then the members of the directive representing each project explains it to the general assembly, in good Spanish. While presenting the projects the president of the directive is standing behind me with his back facing the crowd joking with someone, I can count maybe a dozen people who are consistently paying attention to the presenter. The second presenter frequently reminded everyone to pay attention, especially when an suv pulled up idling loudly behind him and the driver chatted with the president of the directive and a few others. The members of the directive on the third project were not prepared at the meeting so I presented it to the assembly, while I was doing so a town drunk who resembles Bilbo Baggens and an Ewalk staggered up to me shook my hand and started explaining something about a small banana tree he had once seen; I grabbed that little bear's shoulders and said as through my teeth 'later', he stumbled away and I continued. After all three idea had been presented we begun the rather sloppy process of getting twelve to sixteen people from the audience to sign up for one of the committees. The representatives from the three committees quickly recruited those most willing and then browbeat a few more to complete the committees. The hope was that these committees will be sufficiently more agile and more self managing then the larger assembly general...vamos a ver.