Moving through the frustrations
Our plans are constantly changing, which is difficult for me but is a good lesson for me to learn to go with the flow. The current volunteer coordinators at Otra Cosa are highly disorganized and led us to believe we could do a project in the cloud forest, teaching English. (Apparently they promised another volunteer the same time frame as us…but she got fed up and found a different project run by other people). We confirmed it before we even arrived in Peru, then for our whole time in Huanchaco they wouldn’t discuss it with us–it was always let’s talk about it next week…until we were ready to leave and forced them to tell us there were volunteers there and no room for us.
I’m finding it difficult to get most people to give me straightforward answers…it’s nice they don’t want to disappoint us but I’d rather hear a no a month ahead and make new plans than believe something is possible. I get me hopes up too easily. Anyways, we decided to just head east anyways and see the cloud forests and travel on through. Three days before we left town, the coordinator told me the volunteers were leaving and there was room for us (hooray!) and lucky for us, the guy who runs the program (Maibel) was in town (he’s the brother of one of the girls who runs the restaurant) so we met with him before we left…only to hear him say the volunteers were NOT leaving and he doesn’t know why she thought they were (booh!). So apparently the communication is poor among the locals as well, but poor Maibel, he’s organized and is a man of his word. He was disappointed to lose us and after many discussions and ideas and plans changing and seeing the program in Leimembamba, Matt and I decided to spend a few weeks in Ecuador and return to Leimembamba in December to volunteer when there will be guaranteed work for us.
I’m learning to take a big breath and just move forward…but it’s frustrating when we only have so much time in South America and to be pushed and pulled around like we can just waste time and money…it’s not right. Otra Cosa is paired up with some really great projects, but the new coordinators both work full time and have a family. I don’t know why they are coordinating Otra Cosa if they can’t even be organized and tell volunteers what is available when. It’s a great concept and I hope it improves, but for now I recommend to just deal with the projects directly if you are interested in it…