Bueno,

So the last blog that I wrote to you had me being a little overexcited and overwhelmed with the situation at hand. A day has now gone by, and yes, we are still connected to the internet and the computers are doing great.  I would like to update you all on how the last month has unfolded, and what we had to do to be where we are today. 

First of all I will remind you that when I moved to my site, I lived in a one room house with a small bathroom. My socios and I added 2 rooms, a tile floor and electricity for the computer center. 

Our check from USAID finally came at the beginning of July.  If you all remember way back in February, that is when I began our initial grant proposal.   What did I learn from all this?  Obtaining a grant takes time, and as they say in the business world, time is money, and government bureaucracy is certainly not run like the notorious Enron.   In the end though, USAID provided us with all the money that our group asked for in a check written by ABN-AMBRO. This check was written to the name of a person in my group who is now sick and cannot come to the city to retrieve the money.   So what was my group forced to do? We left from Asuncion to Isla Ybate the next day, took a sick 70 year old guy on a motorcycle to our bank in Carapegua, he signed off on the check, and we finally had the money deposited in the bank.   The next day I went back to Asuncion with a member from the group to withdrawal the money needed for our computer supplies.  We used an Asuncion branch of our bank in Carapegua, and because we did not withdraw the money from the bank that has our account they gave us a 3% penalty.  3% is a large penalty when you are withdrawing $2,100, especially when every cent counts to my people.   Needless to say, after many arguments with the banks supervisor, I left the bank promising that we would cancel our account and they are going to lose a future big time client.

After the bank, we were off to Accessmovil S.A. our computer supplier.  Our salesperson's name was name Diego, and I had met him at Temple in Asuncion.  He was a good friend of my girlfriend's family, and he ran an import/export business of computer supplies from China.  I explained to Diego about the project that the people in my community were doing and he was extremely helpful when it came to prices that we could afford.   Almost everything that we bought, we obtained at wholesale prices.  Our supplies list includes:

• 4 used Pentium III IBM computers with monitors, speakers, keyboards, and mice
• 1 new Pentium IV Asus computer with monitor, speakers, keyboard, and mouse
• Windows XP and Office 2007
• HP Multi-function printer, scanner, and photocopier
• 3 UPS Electric stabilizers and battery pack (necessary when you have low tension electricity and many blackouts)
• 4 Computer Tables with keyboard sliding trays
• Webcam with microphone
• Mecawin 4.0 Typing Program
• 35 Nintendo 64 games
• 100 Blank CD-R
• 5 Joystick controllers
• 8 Power wires for UPS to CPU and monitor

As you can see it was a lot of things to buy, but even more of an adventure on how we were going to get it all back to my site.   There is only one member in my group who has a car (1970 Chevy Pick-up) and we had to wait for him to come the following day.  That night we decided to leave the supplies in my friend Dionicio's house in Asuncion.  Think of inner-city Detroit on crack and that's what you get when you visit Dionicio's house.  It is in a part of Asuncion that I hardly want to visit during the day, but he was adamant that we leave it with him and that he would protect it with his life.   When I arrived to Dionicio's house with the computer store's delivery truck he was sitting on his couch with a 22 locked and loaded, I took his word that he was serious.   When Tamar came to pick me up from his house, I said my last prayers and hoped that when I returned in the morning everything would still be there.  Well, as g-d was on my side, nothing happened over night and we filled Gilberto's truck to the brim.

When we arrived at my site, many people were waiting at my house to see if this dream would become a reality.  Everyone helped unpack the cargo, and I began my first lesson on how to assemble a computer.  This made me reminiscence of when I went to college, and my Dad was in my dorm room showing me where to insert each cable.   With much luck, the process could not have been any simpler.  Everyone understood where to connect the colors, and actually the son of Dionicio became a huge help to me because he had done this as a job in Asuncion.  Everyone thought that these new computers were much better than my laptop because the size is so much larger; I had to explain it is what is inside is where the value comes.

After we were setup, I had to start the process of installing copied versions of Windows XP and Office in our used computers.   I got all the computers working, but I am not positive if we will not have problems in the future because everyday Windows ask me to register the computer and whenever I enter an office product it ask for my key code. So, if anyone has an idea on how I can fix this problem please email me because I am afraid that after a month we may be locked out of our operating system.

After this installation process, I may have done either the stupidest or best thing in my life.  I installed video games on all the computers. For the last two weeks that we have had the computers in my house, every morning when I wake up I have a line of kids waiting to enter to play the games.   I installed old games like Prince of Persia and Sega Rally Championship to new games like Mortal Kombat 4 and Mario Cart (I guess these games might not be that new but certainly classics). The boys love playing the games and the girls love using the blank word pad to write the names and words of people in my community.  Something that I noticed with these little girls is that they always speak in Guarani when they are with each other, but they can read and write in Spanish.   I find this very interesting on how their brain develops with two different languages that perform three different functions (Speaking-Guarani; Reading and Writing-Spanish).  They would never know the difference between the languages, but when I asked them to write in Guarani they had no idea how to.

After the computers were ready and functioning in my house, the real fight began.  For months I have been fighting with an NGO called Fundación Paraguaya and a telephone company called TIGO to come out to my site and install internet.   In January, both these companies promised us internet free for two years, but the process for them to come out and get it setup has been slow and laborious.   In fact, it has probably caused me the largest amount of headaches while being at site.  Both companies know that my site is one of the most rural areas that they will be offering internet, and it is necessary for them to construct a large tower to amplify our signal. After going back and forth to Asuncion almost ten times, I finally had the U.S. Ambassador make the call and say, "get your ass in gear because I am paying for this project."   With his help and much perseverance, we were finally able to get someone to come out and say, "yes you need a 20 meter tower, but we are not the ones who build towers, so you must wait for Joe Schmoe to come out."   After another argument, another company came out and finally built the tower, and then they told me we needed to wait for another company to come out.   I was seething with anger by this point, and was wishing I had Dionicio's 22 with me.  After more yelling at the phone companies and explaining, that my area is not that easy to get to, and every time they send a new company out to us, one person from my town needs to search for these people in the city to show them how to get to my site. It would be alot easier and efficient if they just sent out one crew that did all the work (which the workers told me they are capable of) to get the job done.   Finally my savior, Jorge Barrios, came out last night and connected our signal.  As I said in last nights blog, a huge celebration including fireworks were had by all and many calls were made to people around the world.   Google Earth showed my town how I defiantly could be a spy for the CIA, but they learned to love the program.

As I am sitting here now on a nice quiet couch at Tamar's University I think it has been a very productive month.   My view on development work definitely changed over this period.  During my three months of training, the Peace Corps ingrained in our heads that it will be a slow process, you have to let the community do all the work, and our job is to be more of an information resource.   I found that if I did not take a leadership initiative, the community would continue with their usual routine, and the project would go no where.  As I became more persistent with each member in my group and they saw how I was trekking back and forth to the city trying to get things done, they became more active with the project.  As of now, I have a 10 of the 14 members of my group come to my house on a daily basis to practice computer skills, but to also learn how we should reform our business plan.  Another big accomplishment that the group got done without any help from me was getting the organization legally registered with the country.

Peace Corps stresses that my sector start Cooperatives in rural areas because it is the kind of business that is community focused and allows many people to participate.  What I have learned from this process is that the Coop is not competitive enough and registration and initiation fees are enormous.  Every person that works in my Peace Corps sector is working within a Coop and almost everyone has nightmare stories about how inefficiently they are run.   My group decided to register our business at the smallest level possible.  Our status is called Pegqueno Contribuyente (Small Contributor) and it is pretty much the same as a Sole Proprietor.  With this status, we obtain a national business number that allows us to open a bank account in the groups name, and we now have a name to use when buying all of our equipment for ownership.  

As I had joked with many friends during training that I would be the first Peace Corps volunteer to take a business public in Paraguay, I have helped setup the group to be traded on an open market.   Something that I learned from people in my community during my information gathering process is that in Isla Ybate, when a business or organization is doing well, everyone wants to join the group, and when things are tough everyone wants out (only natural).   How I organized my group, and we are only in the experimentation process to see if the members understand how it works, is to give each member 1 stock 1 vote.   The stocks value is like any other market, market value divided by shares outstanding.  I have been experimenting with the group now for almost five weeks and I really think they understand the process.   Before we received our check from the government each socios value was low, after the check our stock shot up, and now that we have made purchases the value has once again dropped.   I am using our value on a real cash basis and not taking liquidity into consideration yet.  I believe after our first accounting period, which will be in October, I will restructure and teach the group to introduce how our assets equal liquidity, thus must be taken into consideration for each members value.

I know this may have been a long email, but I had to catch you all up on what is going on with my people. The blog that I sent out before this one just did not do enough justice.   One last note, way back when I wrote that there was this old lady from Sweden who was one of my neighbors. She was a recluse who never wanted to socialize or communicate with anyone in my community.   She had some kind of mental disability that came with her old age.  I had only talked to her a couple of times and most conversations were pleasant.   Today they found her dead in her house, and nobody knows how long she has been dead.  We called the Swedish consolidate, and they had no record of her being in the country and have no way of communicating with her family.   I find this all very strange and almost convinced she was hiding from something that happened in her past.  The consulate has asked us to bury her in our site, and they will contact us if they have more information.   As I have said before there is always something happening in Isla Ybate.

Adios,

Brad