The One About Meetings

I had a community meeting a few weeks ago with everyone that was receiving a water catchment system. Here, community meetings can break record books for most inefficient use of half a day. So my strategy was to schedule my meetings for mid-day. I figure they usually eat lunch around noon. So I calculate how much time I think the meeting should last, subtract that from lunch time and start the meeting then. I assumed their appetite would encourage them to keep it brief and stay on track. Unfortunately, I am still waiting for my strategy to work, so in the mean time I am developing a new approach that utilizes the act of the setting sun by starting my meetings in the evening. So when dusk starts to set in, it is a visual reminder that we better stay on track or everyone is going to be traveling home in the dark. They don’t like to be out in the dark, which makes the approach seem kind of cruel, but I guess it could be argued that making them starve at lunch time is pretty cruel too.

Anyways, this particular meeting started at 11 (I thought is should take an hour) and lasted until 3:30 pm. Here were two of my favorite tangents that the community went off on:

Tangent one: When they started talking about the Witch that came a year ago and left a white candle and black bottle held together with duck tape. I remember this incident; they had me take a picture of said bottle. At the time I had no idea what they were talking about because I had not studied my supernatural vocabulary yet but, I knew that this bottle had some sort of significance. Roberto asked me to print the picture, which I did in a very timely matter. Looking back, I realize this was the beginning of a very slippery slope, and the start of my part time (sometimes full time) job of taking and printing pictures for my community members.

So this whole Witch/bottle incident was over a year ago, but when the topic came up in our meeting, Roberto quickly pulled out the picture to pass around. He claims he carries the picture around with him, just in case. Just in case of what? In case the topic of witch craft comes up in a meeting about rainwater catchment systems…..? I guess he was more prepared then I was.

Tangent two: The group’s lengthy discussion about “Coco-nut credit”
This is a system they have loosely established in an attempt to evenly distribute the fallen coconuts among the community members. Note: I don’t get any because I can’t open them… Again, I am not sure why this topic came up in a meeting about rainwater catchment. However, it became apparent real quick that people were not happy with the organization of this Coco–nut system. So, they argued for a bit about coco-nut allocation methods and strategy, Roberto even drew a diagram on the board. I just listened. Eventually, everyone who wanted a voice on the topic was heard, absolutely nothing was resolved, and we continued on to the next point on the agenda.

I spent a lot of my first year here trying to introduce the idea of time management, only to come to the realization that this is a very relative term, as are the terms inefficient and efficient. If they think talking about witches and coco-nut credit is important and an efficient use of time, then why should I try to hush the topic or attempt to put it off to another time

The phrase “patience is a virtue” has never been more applicable in my life, and the meaning of true patience is something I have been learning on the job. At the end of the 4 ½ hour meeting, we did complete the task at hand regarding the rainwater systems. To me that is success and it didn’t matter how long it took us to get there.

Back in my “old life” I had a calendar where the days were broken down to an hourly agenda. Most days, every single hour had something written in it. Back then, it would be absurd for me to think that in the future there would be a time when my agenda would only list one task per day, sometimes even per week.

Things here simply move at a different pace. Not for better or for worse, just different. Here, the only reason someone would have a calendar would be to know when the next full moon is so they can cut down the tree to build their boat, or their house. Their life is not structured in the way ours is, and it shouldn't have to be.

~Meti