Managing chaos…in a foreign language

Managing people sucks. period. No pun intended. Sometimes you actually like them and their personalities, which makes it worse…especially when you realize they haven’t been honest with you or are compromising your project. You feel mislead from a professional standpoint and betrayed on a personal level. I am 100% sure that I genuinely like 3 out of the 4 women that work for me; the other woman I’m not sure about, which is unfortunate, because she seems nice. Just has a bad reputation that I can’t ignore and is buddy-buddy with another woman in the office that rubs me the wrong way.

It’s not the first time I’ve had disappointments, but yesterday when I realized the potential ramifications of what one of my research assistants had done, I flipped out. Most of all, I dreaded having to confront each one of them about what was going on and maybe having to fire people or give negative ratings on their certificates. The worst part was that what was happening seemed to contradict all the hard work I had seen from my team in the past couple of weeks and it made me sad to even suggest that maybe people were covering each other’s asses because their teammates had fucked up. When I confronted them I could tell they were worried and upset—one of the girls cried later in the day—one of the girls that I would consider a possible friend, did she not work for me. God, I felt awful. However, their reactions lead me to believe that they are being genuine and even if there were mistakes, none of them were intentional.

Aside from that crazy drama, I guess life and work are going well. We finished our school visits this week and next week we are returning to two just to run a couple extra activities, in which I’m not needed for because I don’t speak the language.

It has been quite an adventure learning about Quecha culture and seeing parts of the world that most Bolivians don’t ever see! It has inspired me to travel in my own country and know it better. But I’m ready to dig into the data and stop managing transcription and translation processes, or crazy cronogramas, or making constant revisions of tools and guides…the iterative process can be a real pain in the ass…but with all the extra effort it entails it was extremely necessary in this context. It’s amazing the things that school kids WANT to know but that no one, not even their parents, will tell them. The myths around menstruation sound so crazy and far out, but you realize that the myths are part of this ancient culture that has existed for hundreds of years and you almost hate to know you might one day take it away. Maybe they should be documented first??? That’s actually a good idea…

Ok, just wrote that down, I’m good.

Plus, I think I’m just starting to feel normal here. Don’t get scared! I’m not thinking of settling down in Cbba or anything, but it does relieve a lot of stress to have a normal life. For instance, to know where places are, where you are in comparison to those places, how to get around, where to eat, what things cost, and most of all, what people are saying! My Spanish has improved 100%. I still make mistakes and I’m pretty sure that I’m not going to leave here fluent, but I’m damn near close. I do wish I had more friends here, but there’s still time. Maybe.

My greatest concern as I finish my work here is what happens after I leave. What happens with all the data we’ve collected and how do I know that someone here will use it to create a curriculum or workshops for all the schools that have contributed their ideas to this project? I don’t want to be another person who has come, taken information, and left. The kids have questions and I don’t want to leave them wondering.