Be The Batteries

“What happens to a radio if you take out the batteries?”
“What are you talking about? The project has to do with computers.”
“No, you don’t understand me, what happens to a radio without its batteries?”
“Nothing, it won’t work.”
“Exactly. It’s like your projects, if you want them to get done; you have to be the batteries.”

This is the gist of a conversation that I had with my counterpart, Velalo, when I was discussing what will be my main project. I told him that I was waiting on my other counterpart, who is the director of the secondary school, to write something for me in Spanish and thus he gave me that bit of advice. He said that I have to be persistent and keep on the director until he finished what it is I need him to do.

I realize that the advice is essentially Peace Corps. We, as volunteers, have to be the batteries. People are motivated and are looking to better their communities but it often takes someone behind them reminding them that things need to get done and giving them an extra push.

Needless to say, I didn’t do such a good job of taking his advice, it is now winter break (which I had completely forgotten about until the day before it started when someone reminded me about it) and the grant isn’t written. The director doesn’t really spend a lot of time in town as it is and he isn’t spending his winter break in town, so I can’t work on the project proposal with him. What I needed him to do was compile the pages of information we made into a grant proposal, in Spanish. We worked for a few hours writing a general outline of the grant proposal and he was going to write it since he speaks Spanish and unfortunately, I’m still not that great at it.

Now, I’m going to have to wait until the first week of August when school resumes in order to finish what I had hoped I could turn in next weekend. The project is a computer lab in the secondary school. Our goal is 15 computers. To complete the project, we’ve estimated about S/.24,000 which is about $8,000! It’s a big project and we are hoping to have everything completed by November meaning the room set up, the computers installed and running and ready for me to start some intense computer courses all summer long! It’s in the infancy of the project but I think we’ll be able to manage it.