Don’t fight the giant – focus on his toe

(Wednesday, 25 March 2009)

The children library project has been keeping me happy.

An enthusiastic woman, passionate about books, has taken the challenge. More or less alone. Or at least without too much support from the organisation thus far. Due to other women’s lack of enthusiasm. Some jealously too, I think. Like everywhere else, there’s quite of it around here too. After all it’s the human nature, right?

It has been refreshing to work with someone who’s so eager to pull it off and make it happen.

Books have been collected from 3 or 4 different places in UPAVIM. A new space is being set up – small, dark, with very few equipment, but a space. You need to clean up the books. Classify them. Order them.

It’s occupational therapy like work (it hasn’t been too bad for my Spanish tough, as I’ve to skim through the children books to get an idea of the topic and classify them – and you do learn by doing that). You’ve to create a small database in Excel for an inventory of the books – and coach the woman on how to use it. You’ve to print, cut and stick identification labels on the books so that they can be borrowed around the community later on. Repetitive work, but still refreshingly rewarding. Just because of that woman’s enthusiasm.

We’ve been working together in the mornings for the last 3 weeks or so. Yesterday she asked me if I used sleeveless t-shirts. Puzzled, I said yes. Why not, right? I’ve the beard already, so I can well get the full traveller look.

She brought me 2 sleeveless t-shirts in the afternoon. To thank me for my help. She was happy they fitted me (she was afraid they wouldn’t). And I didn’t know how to thank her.


Today I taught my last Portuguese class. One of the last requests from the girls led us to discuss how to say “you’re a moron” in Portuguese. Yep - I did enjoy myself in these sessions in the last month…

These experiences have been left me thinking how much some of my frustrations during my stay here – from wanting to do so much more but feeling impotent to accomplish it – come from me aiming too high to start with.

How can I aspire to enact structural change at UPAVIM in just a few months? At UPAVIM’s bakery and soya production. At Reforzamiento? Everywhere?

Why do I pick to fight the giant? Why don’t I feel happy for just tackling his toe? Or perhaps even only his toe nail?

Many small things can make you so much happier than a single great objective. They don’t let you get easily tired from tilting at windmills all the time, like Quixote. Just print some labels! Stick them in the books!. Put the books in the shelves! Teach the random Portuguese here and there!

That attitude right from the beginning could have made my experience very different, probably… That’s a lesson learnt. One I keep failing at. So one I hope I’m smart enough not to forget later.

Will I? Again?