Cacao Tour?

I'm tired. The kind of tired you are when you feel like your head is going to explode. Most of this tiredness is from staining to figure out the meaning of ever word of Spanish everyone has been saying for the last 4 hours. It's the kind of tired you feel when you just want to rub your head and knock it until the right meaning for the right word comes into your head like it had fallen out. I'm so tired of speaking and listening to Spanish that I've started getting lazy and putting English words in between. Tired.

Solomon and I created a presentation for the chocolate group about our plan for tourists. I crunched the numbers and used the research that I had gathered and created tables and pie charts explaining the whole thing. They have been talking about this for about 10 years now and this is the closest they have come to actually doing it. Part of the reason or might I say all of the reason for the quick change into “tourist” mode is for the simple reason that I've been shoving in front of their faces for the last two months. “We could do this, and this, and this is how much we will make, and later on we can build this” is my conversations most times. Not really how Community Economic Development Volunteers are supposed to start projects. Ok, so I jumped the gun a little. And after the meeting we just had I realize that most of these people are ready for such a task but a good deal are not.

There were a couple problems. The members thought that 30 bucks for the Tour, Chocolate Making Demonstration, Making Chocolate to eat, Boot rental, Lunch, transportation from the nearest city, and a packaged piece of our cacao was way to much to charge. I tried explaining that down the street they were charging 60 bucks at one point but that didn't matter. Then was the 1 hour discussion about how we shouldn't have lunch because there wont be enough room in the kitchen. The kitchen here is absolutely huge but I'm going to fight it. In fact, I didn't fight anything. I've already done too much and just planting these seeds should be enough. They are now starting to think about this a reality. This is going to happen. Solomon tells me that the people here really do have no idea about what to charge and what to do with the money. $30 is about how much they each spend on food for the family each month. They also have a couple mixed ideas about what works and how to do it. One of the big concerns was that if we had a website then people were just going to show up and what if the tour guide was in the farm working. For the record I never mentioned a website nor do I think they should have one at this point since making lunch is too big of a deal. About three people spoke and the rest just stared not knowing what the numbers meant and got even more confused when we started changing them.

The important thing is that we got a name: The Oreba Cacao Tour, and we defined a couple other things namely we will charge about $25 for everything sin lunch, and make sure we know who is coming and when the day before. Also, and I'm sorry for this everyone, but we are going to have to start out with Spanish speaking first. I've realized that creating a big tour with matching hats and English speaking tour guides and talking parrots and a gift shop is a little over the top. We are going to have to start on the most basic level possible. One farmer taking people through his farm and explaining things. (I'm still coming up with those things with their help). Solomon understands and its frustrating watching him get frustrated in front of the group when they only talk about how it probably wont work. Solomon is also the only person here that was taken aside by USAID and sent to Guatemala to check out other tours and to create a plan for one here. That was 4 years ago. He has been waiting patiently for someone to spark this up and now here we are. There is going to be a lot of discussion within the group and a lot of people not understanding what is going on but I believe with Solomon leading the group they will see where this is headed. As a couple of the group members said, “once they see the money, there will be no more questions”. And that is just it. That is why I'm here. To help them build the capacity to help themselves.

I believe that they are really close to having the capacity to help themselves. They just need a couple good ideas, some consulting, and some motivation.

On another note, there have been times lately when I will be doing something and suddenly think to myself, what the hell am I doing. Let me explain, after speaking nothing but Spanish for 3 days straight, a language I barely understand, or writing a part of the business plan, or even showering with a bucket of water while staring at a toucan, I realize that I've never been here before. And when I say, been here, I mean thought this way before. I guess I've always been the type of person to look onto others for guidance or if I wanted to learn something I took a class. I've only started to realize of late how alone I really am out here. Months will go by without talking to Peace Corps and I'm making my own agenda, schedule and working on projects that came out of my own head. Who would let me do this. I guess I've always been the type to rely somewhat on others and realizing that I'm doing all these projects and all this work solo is grounding to me. I feel a type of weight and freedom I've never felt before and it's scary and nice at the same time. If these projects fail, I will blame myself so I need to make sure they don't. And after learning a couple days ago that this will be the end of the CED program in Panama after I'm done here do to budget cuts, I feel all the more pressure to get these guys rolling. Keeping that fine line where they take ownership of the projects will be more of a challenge than anything.

Next up, I will be starting a new segment solely for the creation of the bike grinder. I realize that their might be people around the world with the same project and we will be creating a bike grinder unlike all others. I've combined a couple different plans that I have seen and we are going to try to create the entire thing out of the bikes that we have and local hard wood. This should be of particular interest for some people whom want to do the same type of project. We start on Wednesday...