Lather, rinse, repeat.

About four years ago the town I live in had a new school built. In the compound in one of the two buildings that contains classrooms there is one room that has a padlock and is not used as a teaching space. Inside on the floor are sacs of rice, condensed milk, and sugar. On the ceiling are two massive air conditioners. I'm fairly sure these are the only air conditioners within an hour and a half, and if not they are definitely belonging to a group smaller than a dozen. This room was built with the exclusive purpose of housing computers, the school has solicited several government organizations and one NGO but still remains forsaken.

A Peace Corps volunteer in a different part of the country is organizing a large shipment of computers from an NGO in the states (around 400), and all the other volunteers in country who are interested in computers for the schools in their communities are collaborating with him. The principle and I decided we could probably manage to raise half the money for the computers and get the other half from the mayors office. One of theses computers costs 86.25 including shipping. One of the comities that was formed at the general assembly was to raise the money for those computers. That's 258.75 in two months—trickier than it seems. A day of working in the corn fields will get you four dollars, a bus driver makes ten dollars a day, and people who work in stores in San Vicente make 3.50 a day. During the second training one of the technical sessions we had was learning how to make shampoo.

“It won't pass.” Julio said looking right at me. A man in his earlier sixties, button up shirt, and an almost clean shave were in not for one hair that in the middle of his check that is almost half an inch long now. “It won't pass.” He says again continuing his forlorn gaze, his brow furrowed and holding his hands completive covered with shampoo slowly dripping into a large bowl full of shampoo that we made the day before. The shampoo continues to slime from his hands and he stares me right in the eyes and says again “it won't pass. It's too thick.” and just looks at me mouth agape I stare right back at his extremely troubled face, I suppress laughter and try to stay calm; I wanted to laugh because how seriously he was taking the shampoo too thick and also because I didn't want to completely disappoint everyone. “I see that.” More time passes of us doing the same thing until he says it again “okay, I said. Maybe we added too much salt. We can add some more water and it might make it less thick. Or what do you want to do?”

He touched the surface of the shampoo gingerly and again and tries pouring it into the bottle again, but it just won't pass. “It will not pass.”

The other group who is also trying to fill up that bottles from an other batch made the day before is having the same problem, as Julio stated the shampoo won't pass into the shampoo bottles. He cleans off his hands and picks up one of the instruction sheets, and goes over every possible step out loud emphasizing quantities and verbs; he asks everyone if the read allowed step had been completed properly, and if so, did we do it exactly as the sheet instructs. While he is rereading the instructions out loud an other member of the computer committee has added water and the shampoo passes. However a little too much water was added it passes too quickly and we fill 20% more bottles than the recipe is suppose to make. Which turns out to be a happy mistake because out customers were equally happy with the new batch.