Work

By coincidence, it was the day that the government shutdown of 2013 ended. October 17, 2013 was the busiest work day of my life. I had an immensely long to-do list. I deliberately woke up early at a hotel room in Boston and immediately jumped on the phone with my duo in India to review the analysis they performed for me overnight. From there I hopped on another call or two, one of which while in a taxi to my client’s office, where we had back-to-back meetings into the early afternoon (we were in Boston for the day precisely for those meetings).

On the way from the office to Logan I was back on the phone. The bottled water I took from my hotel room was confiscated by TSA. I hadn’t opened it and completely forgot that I had it. My boss was on a flight or two before mine and wanted me to get standby on to his flight, so I could get home earlier. But I insisted on sticking with my later ticket. I was looking forward to sitting down in the airport, signing in to the free WiFi, and rattling off a few hundred necessary e-mails while making a few more phone calls.

And that afternoon in the airport was glorious. I wiped out that to-do list like the Romans wiped out the Carthaginians. By the time of my flight I felt accomplished and rejuvenated. By manipulating some spreadsheets, calling some colleagues, and firing off a flak storm of e-mails I had accomplished a monumental amount of “work.”

September 28, 2015 – León (an excerpt from my personal diary):

I woke up at 8:00 AM, ate breakfast, and got myself ready for the morning. At 9:00 I headed out on foot and trudged from local business to business, all of which I had days earlier dropped off fundraising letters at. At 9:45 I had a long visit with Julie at Azul, and at 10:30 I made it to La Union to buy groceries for the week. In my whole morning I did not manage to collect even one cent in donations.

At 2:00 I head out again, this time on my bike. It was blazingly hot. First I headed all the way west to Tech La Salle in fa- Sutiava to drop off a judge invitation letter. Then I traversed the city to go to the Department of Education in Fatima to drop off another judge invitation. To get there I found myself on some backroads northeast of the stadium that I had never been on before. From there I headed to La Estación for a bike tune-up. Within 10 minutes I was back on the road going to La UCC in deep Guadalupe, before doubling back to the Departmental Department of Education in El Calvario to drop off an official communication from the Minister of Education approving a series of events. I got home at 4:15 as it was starting to rain. From then until 9:00 I showered, chatted with Silvio, and finished the plan for tomorrow’s teacher training.

There was nothing particularly noteworthy about this day. It was typically atypical and mundane for my life in Nicaragua. My problem with a day like that one is that I worked very hard, and yet I really didn’t help anyone. I just worked towards planning an event. In the United States most of these tasks would have been accomplished digitally, but in Nicaragua I had to drop of physical letters to ensure that the right people would see them and do the right things with them. I worked particularly hard and felt particularly unaccomplished.

By that day in October of 2013 I already knew that I was leaving my job. I had accepted a nomination to serve as a Small Business Development Volunteer in Peace Corps Nicaragua, and I was expecting to get final medical clearance once my paperwork made it out of government shutdown purgatory. I didn’t choose to leave my job because I didn’t like it. In fact, I applied to the Peace Corps only 10 months into my first job out of college. But I always had a feeling that in the grand scheme of things, although I was helping my clients, my clients just didn’t need that much help. Sure, the country had gone through a financial crisis and we were marginally helping our clients manage risk to prevent another cataclysmic financial shock in the future, but it always felt contrived to me. My clients weren’t contracting us because they truly believed in a cause; they were just ticking off regulatory compliance boxes. In part, this feeling compelled me to accept the Peace Corps’ offer to serve.

I don’t work in professional services here in Nicaragua. I don’t work with any people that have an office culture. I work with teachers, administrators, tourist service providers, government workers, and rural cooperatives. Those who have e-mail do not check it regularly. Telecommunications is a whole new ballgame here because no one has a monthly plan. People buy “minutes” and text messaging packages on a nearly daily basis. Text messaging is hit or miss because not everyone buys texts. And getting someone to call you is not a sure bet either. Your best bet is calling someone yourself (implying that you need to use your minutes), or better yet, visiting them face-to-face (you better hope they are there).

“Work” in America has become making information available for someone else to consume. Send them a text or an e-mail. “Hard work” is using the niceties of office culture to get them to actually do something with that information. And work is completely detached from location. We work in the Matrix. Some sterile cubicle in a corner of Logan airport was sufficient for me to work, but I could have just as easily done that work from my house, office, client’s office, or pretty much anywhere that has a reliable 3G signal.

Whereas in Nicaragua, presence is critical to my success. I am constantly on the move, either with my bike or on a bus (or plopped in the back of a pick-up), off to visit a teacher or business. Teaching, training, and helping people gain experience are inherently face-to-face endeavors. Working in the Matrix does not exist in my Nicaragua. And these stark differences between work in the Matrix and work in Nicaragua beg the question, are we working at all when we are working in the Matrix? Are we actually producing anything of value that people will find truly useful in the future?

Recently, the extremely personal nature of work in Nicaragua has been very frustrating for some of my colleagues and me. The Peace Corps hosts numerous national events: youth camps, teacher trainings, more camps, competitions, counterpart conferences, and all sorts of other events. The Small Business Volunteers are gearing up for a competition/youth camp/teacher training three day hootenanny next week. And the routine is the same every time. Volunteers nominate participants, who have to submit applications, then a committee selects participants, and the Volunteer has to inform them and herd them to the event.

For me this process is infuriatingly time consuming. I get the initial invite, and I have to download the application to my thumb drive, go to a print shop, print it out, and then distribute the application. No one ever has it ready to hand in on time, so I have to go around and around to schools and businesses trying to get the applications back. Then I have to get it to the committee. I can’t scan it (no scanner), so I can either try to take a decent picture of the pages and e-mail it or try to get the actual application to Managua. After all of that hopefully some of my applicants get accepted. I get notified by e-mail (sometimes the participants get e-mailed also, but many Nicaraguans do not check their e-mail accounts regularly) and I have to start the process over again. I download the official invitation form, permission slips, and supplemental information to my thumb drive and I head over to a print shop to print it out, on my own dime. Then I bike around dropping off the papers and telling the invitees when I will be back around. I also make phone calls to invitees further out of town. They usually don’t pick up.

And it still doesn’t end there. Sometimes student camps ask for deposits, photos of participants, for us to travel with the participants, and even follow-up activities after the camp. Invitees drop out. Teachers have trouble getting permission to leave school for events so I have to troubleshoot, which usually entails having to print out even more documentation and dropping it off. For instance, today a teacher told me that the Department of Education did not know about the event so they would not give him permission to go. The local department of education should have been informed by their superiors, but it seems that they were not.

Of course I knew this would happen. Someone, somewhere, would forget to send the names and information to some other bureaucrat somewhere else. Or they would e-mail it, ensuring that the document would never ever see the light of day and be read by another human being. I feel like a courier for an organization I don’t even work for.

All of this is mind-numbing, time consuming, and infuriating. I know that there are more efficient ways of communicating. I know that Nicaragua, despite its challenges, can do better. I have been involved with projects where communication was handled better. I did not come here to be a courier. I came here to volunteer. Worst of all, the organizing committees (usually groups of Volunteers, counterparts, and office staff working out of Managua) are aware of the difficulties we face getting participants to attend these events because they face the same challenges themselves, but the committees always go about things the same way, just adding more and more steps, documentation, and volunteers responsibilities every time.

Here is part of the e-mail Peace Corps Nicaragua Volunteers received for this year’s Leadership Camp:

The application process
This year, you can nominate up to 4 youth from your community. As in previous years, we ask that when you nominate a youth that you fill in the “RANK” box at the top of the application, putting 1 for the applicant you most want to attend, 2 for second, and so on to make known your personal opinion of the best qualified nominees.

Attached are the applications and permission slips that will be due Monday, November 9th, 2015. Applications need to be scanned/photographed and sent to Maria Jane Doe (mariajanedoe@gmail.com) or placed in Maria Jane Doe’s locker (SB 63) in the office. Questions? Call Maria Jane Doe at XXXX.YYYY.

After the youth are selected, each participant will need to pay a non-refundable fee of c$100 to save their spot, which must be turned in to their respective PCV as soon as the youth confirms that they want to attend the camp. The PCV will then hold onto c$100 until the day that their sponsored camper leaves and they will then give this money back to the camper to bring to the camp. We are doing this deposit in order to diminish the number of last minute camp drop outs and insure that the campers come to camp with the money.  This c$100 is not for their transport. Transport to the camp will be reimbursed to the youth during camp, meaning the youth will need to front the money for their initial transport to camp. Their return transport will also be given to them during the camp.  All meals and a bed are provided through camp funds.

We will contact you about which participants were selected by Monday, November 16th and you will need to help them to prepare to go to the camp, raise the c$100 deposit and acquire the initial transportation funds.

Important:

PCVs are super SUPER essential to the success of the Youth Leadership Camp. If youth from your community are selected to participate in YLC you will be our primary point of contact throughout the process. You will be responsible for:

• Making sure applications and copy of permission slips are turned in and complete
• Ranking your nominations
• Providing the packing list when selected
• Collecting non-refundable C$100 (fundraising with your youth) and then holding onto those funds until travel day.
• Finding a replacement if your camper drops out after January 1st
• Holding on to permission slips (until travel day) because the camper will need a hard copy of parental permission
• Accompanying your selected youth to central meeting point before camp
• Communicating with your selected camper(s), Maria Alejandra and the rest of the Leadership Camp Planning Committee
• Supporting a community project or projects initiated by your selected youth after the camp ***

*** In an attempt to improve the success of TLC, this year we are focusing our efforts on encouraging the youth to implement a community project in the months following the camp. The project can be as simple as replicating a charla they received during camp or as big as they want it to be (and can feasibly manage).  We need YOUR help to do this! We ask that you all are intentional with who you encourage to apply to insure they are eager to undertake a project with the skills they learn from the camp –  Are there any particular youth in your site that are excited to implement a community project? Are there any youth that you would like to train as a mini counterpart? –  We think that sending a local youth to leadership camp will not only be a unique and amazing opportunity for them, but you can use this trained individual as a community ally your own service in site.

After the camp is completed, we ask that you follow up with your sponsored youth and review their community project plan they will have created during YLC. We then ask that you encourage and supervise your youth as they implement their project.  YLC counselors will also be assisting the PCVs in monitoring their camper’s project progress. We hope to have projects reports from the youth and their local PCVs by the end of April. Ultimately, the initiative to implement a project post camp is the camper’s responsibility, but we hope that with a small time commitment from a PCV we can provide the support and guidance needed for the youth to undertake a community initiative. More information on how PCVs will help facilitate their sponsored youth’s project will be provided when camper selection is completed. ***

… And end all war by noon.

Work in Nicaragua is too personal, and in America it has become too impersonal. For the Peace Corps, I would set expectations more firmly up front with Counterparts. Unless they live in electric or internet-poor rural communities, they are expected to check their e-mail and have a thumb drive to save files. I think that it is a completely reasonable request of professional workers in a developing country. And as for students, all applications and other important documents can be posted to public Facebook pages. Most adolescents here have Facebook. If we stuck to our guns and forced our counterparts and students to reasonably engage with us over the internet we could cut out a lot of aggravation for Volunteers.

Of course, every Volunteer and every site is different. I live in a big city. Things are spread out. The Department of Education is a 20 minute bike ride from my house. My students and teachers live in dispersed neighborhoods. Other Volunteers have more compact sites and can easily walk around to see all of their students and counterparts. In-person communication is certainly less time consuming for them than it is for me. A lot of Volunteers also spend a lot time working with youth, especially health and environment volunteers. I spend a lot of time in the high schools, but I have hundreds of students and I find it difficult to get to know many of my students. I am closer with my counterparts and my business clients. This makes nominating youth to Peace Corps sponsored camps more difficult for me, as opposed to other Volunteers, who may themselves be serving on the organizing committees. But even more so, I think this variety of site realities calls for new ways of communicating with our counterparts and beneficiaries. The way I have to do things now is simply not sustainable, especially in a big city.

As for work in America, I think that some changes are needed as well. A lot of what we do is predicated on a belief that if something is documented, whether in a PowerPoint “deck” or a memo or other sort of guiding document, anyone can become knowledgeable in the subject matter by e-mail osmosis. Truly, that is not the case. We also need to do a better job with memos and documentation, ensuring that they actually create value for an organization. If not, the organizational leaders need to get to the root of why people feel that the documents are necessary and work towards correcting the need for value-less documentation.