If you’ve been following the story closely, you may recall that we are actually trying to run two SPA projcets: one in our village, and one in the neighboring village of Yulais. PCVs are usually limited to one SPA project each, but since we’re a couple, we can support two sites at once… if the villagers are willing to play ball, that is.

The main guy in Yulais is Diego, and to meet him, he’s almost the exact opposite of Manuel. He’s very challenging to talk to, and not just because of his mediocre Spanish skills. You see, he… um… grovels. Yeah, that’s the best way to describe it. It’s awkward and uncomfortable, and all the pleases, thanks yous, and mumbling make it even worse. But the villagers in Yulais are fantastic: they show up in force to the health lectures, they laugh and smile and participate, and there are even have a few men that show up as well. Wow! So, we’ve been working with them all along, though they’re not as “with it” as our village. Poorer people, tougher living conditions, less Spanish skills.

So, imagine our surprise when they called me the the other day to meet and show me all the work they’d done. They opened a community bank account all by themselves, and wanted to go over the rest of the project paperwork! This is a big deal, because most people here have never even had a personal bank account, and it’s mandatory if they are to receive aid money from SPA. So, I hiked down the valley and reviewed everything with them, and explained how tight the timeline was.

“Well, we’d better start measuring houses!” they said, immediately grasping the urgency. “Can we start to tomorrow?” That sort of caught me off guard, but I am here to serve, so we set up a plan to visit and measure just under 50 houses in the coming few days.

As I was leaving, they stopped me to clarify one more thing. “And Manuel? Are you sure he won’t mind?” Ugh, THIS again. I explained to them again that Manuel is not our boss, and that Yulais can have a project on purely their own merits, regardless of what our village does or doesn’t accomplish.

“Notice how whenever he tells you he’s our boss, he says it in Q’anjob’al? You’ll never hear him say that in Spanish, because then we’ll understand what he’s saying and correct him,” I explained. That amused them. They know Manuel for what he is.

So, the next day a strange women came to our house. We invited her in and made five minutes of awkward small talk, as we always do in this situation, and then she finally got to it. Turns out, she was from Yulais.

“I just wanted to let you know that Diego is charging us 5Q to attend your health talks, and he wants us to pay more to get on the project list. He says that only the people who attended the most talks will receive aid, but if someone has attended less talks, they just go and pay him, and he puts them on the list anyways. I don’t want to pay him, because I don’t think it’s fair,” she lamented.

Emily and I managed to remain calm until she’d finished, we thanked her, and sent her on her way.

“ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” Emily said once the door was closed. We heard a rumor months ago about Diego charging people to attend our talks, and that’s not Kosher. We are here to help anyone, regarless of their poverty level. The first time it came up, we confronted the village about it and they all denied it, so we let it go. To hear the same story again from a different person is just way too much coincidnece.

So, we called Diego and told him there was an emergency with the project, and we needed him to come to our house right away. And, being a people-pleaser, he dropped his hoe and came over about 10 minutes later, still muddy from his fieldwork.

Once we closed the door, we laid it all out while trying to not get angry. How could they lie to us, again? These sort of projects are based on trust. He sat there looking sad, as we aired our concerns.

‘Who told you this?” he asked.

“We can’t tell you,” Emily said, “or else you will all go and hassle her, like the women wanted to do last time we heard this rumor.”

He nodded. “Well, it’s not to hassle her, it’s to correct her,” he explained. “Sometimes people misunderstand things here, then start rumors. It’s worse if they see that someone else is getting something and they aren’t.”

“But what about the 5Q?” I asked. “This isn’t the first time we’ve heard that you are collecting money, so don’t try to deny it. We can’t have people think that Peace Corps is charging for these lectures. We’re here for the good of everyone.”

He looked pained. “That is what I’m talking about. You see, we HAVE been collecting money. But we’re not charging for your lectures. We’re taking up a collection to pay my bus fare when I have to go to Huehue to get a lawyer to do the paperwork to legalize our entity, or to go into town to open the bank account, or to get the community seal made. These things all take money, and you said yourself that the funds from the project can’t be used for this.” He paused. “I give my time for free, I miss days of work to do these things. So do Gomez and Simon. But the regular villagers, they are simple people. They don’t understand the work we’re doing for them, and they don’t realize that we need to spend some money to get more back in return.”

At this point, I felt pretty silly. Of course. And since the SPA fund isn’t big enough to cover all 200 famlies in Yulais, we had decided to help the 50 that came to the most health lectures. It’s the most fair way, but I can imagine how if someone was number 51 or 52, they’d really feel like they got cheated. Add that to a lack of understanding of things like “opportunity cost”, and it’s a recipe for potential disaster.

We talked some more, working through the misunderstanding, and Diego asked us to help him by coming to the village and telling the people about what he and the leaders have been doing. We agreed it was a good idea, and a good opportunity to remind the people that the money being collected was THEIRS, to help the leaders to help the community, and not for the Peace Corps Volunteers.

Two days later, I began house visits in Yulais– and that will appear in the next post. It’s ironic how a sweet-talker like Manuel can be so ineffective, while an awkward and apparently dim guy like Diego can actually get the job done. Where we once thought that our village was the best hope, now we’re realizing the reverse it true. Poor, backwards Yulias worked together, got their bank account, and are eager to do fill out all the SPA paperwork. And our village? We just found out that Manuel lied to us several months back, and none of the comminuty groups in town actually have a bank account. They’ve just been using the personal accounts of the people in charge… you know, people like Manuel.

You truly can’t judge a book by its cover.