Aguacate...like the vegetable

Waking up at 4:30 AM today was, as predicted, terrible. I think my alarm got me in the middle of  a REM cycle, because I woke up completely disoriented and had no ideas as to where I was. After getting my bearings, I was hit by a crushing wave of demotivation; I just wanted to stay in bed and sleep instead of catching a crowded, hot bus so I could walk around for a few miles in some dusty, remote town talking to people in a language I still struggle with. Fifteen minutes later, I had won the battle against my lazy side, but I won’t pretend I didn’t think about the unthinkable, which was skipping the campaign. Of course, I’d never really do that.

Today was our second campaign so far, and it went much better than our first. I think we sold three pairs of reading glasses (along with accessories), two pairs of sunglasses, a solar lamp, two eye drops and two of the energy saving lightbulbs we have. The asesores were happy with their work and each went home proud of their earnings. Luckily, the weather wasn’t too hot. I should have taken a picture of what I was wearing. We received our new Social Entrepreneurship Corp t-shirts, which are a light grey in color. Since I had just washed my clothes, the only pair of long pants I owned were still damp. As long pants are highly recommended while working campaigns for the sake of professionalism, I borrowed a pair of grey jeans from Marisol. My Converse happened to be the exact same shade of grey....so I was grey from shoulders to toe. 

Aguacate, or avocado

In addition to marketing, we also focused on survey gathering this time. After doing an entire presentation on survey making, we quickly came up with an impromptu survey that could be undertaken at various houses. I’ll admit, I wasn’t the best survey administer. You want to be personable and have a conversation with the people you’re interviewing, rather than asking them point blank questions, but it’s supremely difficult to speak in Spanish, analyze your surroundings, try to be respectful of privacy, and appear sociable all at the same time. Often times I met people who were either shy or couldn’t understand me. Sometimes my poor Spanish made the other person feel more comfortable since I clearly appeared idiotic and thus harmless. 

Although our campaign was more successful today, I had much more fun at the last campaign. Both because I was tired and probably also because there wasn’t much to do, I felt that I hadn’t contributed as much as I could to the campaign, nor had I communicated very effectively today. On the way back, we were fortunate to take a van straight from Jinotepe (the town right next to the town we went to, called Aguacate) to Granada, but the van was crammed full of people (more than twenty) and the back windows didn’t open. With the sun beating down on us, the van became a hot, humid metal box in which its human participants (especially the ones in the back, ahem me, who were sitting the farthest away from the windows up front) sweated and suffered. Otherwise, I barely broke a sweat all day. 

Another group stayed behind to do a Consumer Report kind of experiment, where they tested out the effectiveness and efficiency of some new products, including the stoves. I hope their results were positive and accurate. 

Saturday night! Our last one in Granada for two weeks...