Interviews and Computers

I finally did my interviews these last two days. The interviews are part of the diagnostic I am conducting about the community. Basically, I asked people what they thought the strengths and weaknesses of the community were and statistical things like their age, number of people that live in their house, and the education levels. It went wonderfully. My project partner set me up with a guide to help me because I am white (and therefore people think I am there to give them money and will not give me honest answers) and because I don't have the best Spanish (so he translated people's ramblings into something comprehensible for me). Thank God for him, he made it so easy. He's probably the best person I've worked with here. He had a plan for us before I even explained everything, where we were going to get the most houses done, and I didn't even have to explain what I wanted, he just kind went with it and did wonderfully. The best part, he's one of the people in the "youth" group (he's 26, but youth here include people up to 30), so I get to use him whenever I want and he's willing to help.

What did I find from the interviews, nothing too unusual. People want a new highway and streets. I'll admit, they're HORRIBLE, it takes and hour to go less than 30 Km. (that's about 18 miles). But, even if the road was good, that wouldn't really "fix" anything in the town, it's not like people can't leave or even choose not to, it would just make things more comfortable, and it's not like I can finance the construction of 30Km of road on a mountain. Second, people want better electricity. That would be nice, but, again, not something I can really accomplish without being President of the country. Next, a hospital. Correction, they have the hospital building, which some foreign NGO built for them. Then the NGO turned it over to the government to staff and equip, which they have never done. This is actually something I could possibly help. There are a lot of NGOs I could ask for help and I could get a meeting with the Secretary of Health and plead my case. My hesitation is, do they really need an entire hospital? I agree that they need medical staff here permanently. Right now they have a Dr. that travels to the town 4 days a week. So, if there is an emergency, that person has to wait over an hour (if they can find someone to take them, there is no ambulance) to get to the city for help. If that person is from one of the surrounding campos, it's more than an hour, if at all. But, I'm not sure an entire hospital STAFFED 24/7 is necessary or cost effective. Lastly, they want jobs. Well, I am an economic development worker, so hopefully I can help here at least.


My next project for the week was thanks to the Secretary of Education. As a political ploy he decided to give computers to the top performers in the graduating high school class. He failed to realize that he gave them ENGLISH versions Microsoft Vista. They are pretty nice computers, 64-bit, 320GB hard drive (not that these kids would ever need 320 GB, they don't have internet to download anything). Well, because they're in English, these kids couldn't use them, so they came to me to figure out how to change them. Apparently, unless you have Vista Ultimate or Enterprise, you cannot change the language (you were supposed to by the correct language in the first place) without upgrading. Obviously these kids can't pay the US$200 to change their computers, so I found some pirate software to change it for them. Well, because the internet here is super slow, it took ELEVEN hours to download, geesh. Now, they have working computers in Spanish. Next problem, none of the kids have ever owned a computer, many have hardly used one. So, my project now is being "on-call" when they want to do things like copy music or change their desktop screen (which is basically all they can do, they didn't even come with Microsoft Works, let alone Office). At least I'm on the good side of the high school's top performers now, I can tap them for help when I need it.