Sorry for staying away for two days; I’ve been tired and a little listless for the past two days. This is the first time since I’ve been here in which I’ve done very little walking and physical work. We’ve essentially been holed up all day in the hostel’s living room, virtually taking over the space while we worked on our presentations.
Our presentations - the catalogue, inventory and flyers that we had been working on for the past week - was today. We woke up early, took a bus to San Ramon, and met with Fernando and Jessenia, who seemed excited to receive us. Fernando received training on how to use Facebook and innovative ways to manipulate Facebook’s tools for the benefit of his tourism non-profit. Our group consulted Jessenia and her group of women on how to use some simple marketing tools such as a catalogue or email to increase their business. They confessed that they hadn’t made a sale in 2-3 months before we came and depended solely on the traffic that three local non-profits ferried their way every so often.
I felt that the presentation went pretty well, considering that we literally had no idea what a charla should look like. We had written everything out the night before and practiced, but there were definitely some awkward pauses and dragging along that happened during our training session. Afterwards, many of the girls (including myself, I’ll admit) bought of few of the women’s goods. We literally doubled their monthly sales; combined, I’d estimate we cleared our half of her inventory. Those women better be happy (and they definitely were); not only did we give them one-of-a-kind, one-on-one training, but we also bought an enormous quantity of goods. I’m not too sure how appropriate it was that we bought so much stuff immediately afterwards, since I felt like such voluntourists, coming in for a brief “help” mission and then snapping up goods like any other gringo here for the fun stuff.
Afterwards, during a discussion of how our presentation had gone, I began to feel pretty down about the whole thing. Many of the recommendations made by our team leader, all of which were appropriate and justified, addressed problems that seemed to me deficiencies that I was responsible for. Tomorrow we have another big presentation due at some rural town outside of Matagalpa. It’s going to be a lot like a trade expo; we’ll have stations for each of our products and we’ll be explaining many of our goods. Additionally, about fifty people the year before had signed up for purchasing solar lamps, so we’ll be dispensing those as well. We expect about 200 people, so there’s a lot of pressure on all of us to perform. Another day, another challenge, and another chance for redemption!
The day before today (Thursday), we took the morning off and visited this lovely waterfall (if you look at my cover photo, you’ll be able to see the bottom of the cascade) which was surrounded by natural, lush vegetation. The waterfall was really in the middle of nowhere, and we had the entire place to ourselves for the few hours that we were there. A few of us went swimming in the rapids and the shallow pool at the base of the falls, but most of us opted for just jumping around the rocks for a bit. Altogether, it was a very relaxing, meditative morning. Afterwards, we headed out to a relatively new restaurant called Gallo Pinto, named after the staple Nicaraguan dish of rice and beans, and inhaled an amazing lunch of grilled beef and chicken slices, gallo pinto, fajitas, salsa, queso, and tostones. We ordered one of those group platter things, so there was a very nice, kind of communal feel as we passed dishes around and tasted this and that.
I could totally become a photographer with a shot like this. |
Although I’ve remained sedentary for the past few days, I also haven’t gotten nearly enough sleep. Ironically, when one doesn’t have anything to do, one usually gets less sleep. Once I feel lethargic and passive, I tend to stay that way, even deigning sleeping as requiring too much energy to be worthwhile. However, I do need some good shuteye before tomorrow’s long haul. Goodnight!
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