It's Just Dinner

One of the projects I am working on involves preparing a group of 29 women and one guy to get organized to cook for groups of British students/tourists that will spend a night in the community before going to Cayos Cochinos to do scientific tourism with the Foundation. It is a huge operation for a community like Nueva Armenia that hardly sees any tourists and has no experience hosting them and now they will have about 60 visitors every week for five months. The opportunities for income generation are big, but the challenges of getting them ready are even bigger.

After spending about six months trying to get people organized in Nueva Armenia for all sorts of projects, I think I have the meeting thing down. Meetings here are a world apart from any kind of meeting in the states. Max and I meet with our food group every other Sunday in Nueva Armenia, in Doña Santa’s yard at 1:00pm in the afternoon.

This is how a typical meeting goes…

1. The first step is to call roll. I always start it at 2:00pm, an hour latter than the scheduled time of 1:00pm. That’s when we start having enough people to do the meeting. After that whoever is not there is marked absent in my attendance sheet, with a minus (-) sign. If they show up late, I add the vertical line to the minus (-) to make it a plus (+). That means they were late.
2. At the end of calling roll I announce who is in their third absence and they are automatically eliminated. I cross their name out of the sheet. Usually what happens is someone sends a kid to tell the person they’ve been eliminated and they show up late. I mark them as late then. (Hell, at least that gets them to show up!!)
3. Then I announce who has three late marks and they are converted to one absence.
4. I proceed to read the minutes of the last meeting. If no one disagrees we can move on. (No one ever disagrees)
5. After that is open forum, to discuss the topic of the day which this weekend will be costs for the menu items. Different people were assigned to find out the cost of buying certain food items. I am trying to teach them the importance of knowing your costs before setting your price.
6. Most likely what will happen is that some people will not have their information ready, so I just go ahead and get the information that is available and document it. Start giving them an idea of what each plate costs. To the people that did not bring their information, they are responsible for bringing it to the next meeting. If they were absent, assign it to someone else to follow up or to get it themselves.
7. I always document everything myself to make sure I don’t forget anything for the minutes.
8. Then I ask them what are the date, time, location and topic for the next meeting. They all have a printed schedule of all the meetings and some bring it with them so they should have the answer.
9. At the end of the meeting, I ask for a volunteer to give the food update at the next community meeting. (They have community meetings on the alternate Sundays where different groups give updates on housing arrangements, cultural events, health and hygiene, transportation, etc. for the coming guests)
10. I dismiss the meeting and sit with that person to make sure they know what they’re going to say. We write it down together.

While reading this you might get the impression they don’t care enough, that they are irresponsible, or plain lazy. Perhaps you’re right, but for a community that has lived with no schedules and no deadlines, at the pace of the ocean and the weather, worrying everyday about having enough food to eat themselves, this is all new and a little scary. Some are hesitant to commit, others are truly plain lazy and will eventually be eliminated from the group, but for the ones that come to every meeting and do the work, this is a big risk. They have never done anything like this before, they don’t know if it will work, but they still show up, they still invest their time, energy and hopes on this project.

I’ve been working with the food group for a month and a half now and we still have three and a half months of work before the tourists arrive. I wonder if these students realize how much work is being put into hosting them. I certainly hope they are generous tippers!!