Photo credit: Alejandra Abreu & Emily Van Kley
Hello from Barquisimeto! I know it´s been a while since we´ve talked, so let me set the scene. Ale & I, having just come back from an epic journey to the coast, have installed ourselves at a desk with two computers, a plug-in to ward off mosquitos, and a latticed window open to the evening air. Outside, produce trucks are coming and going through the Cecosesola compound to help get the feria set up for tomorrow morning, when crowds of people will be lined up outside the big warehouse doors as usual, by 5:30 a.m. We are tired and sunburned, but quite contented. A lot has happened since the last time I had internet access, so I´ll do my best to fill you all in (and include some pictures along the way).
First: what didn´t happen. Monday, I was planning to go to Senarre with members of U.P.C., the network of producer co-ops that sells directly to Cecosesola. Senarre is a mountainous region about an hour outside of Barquisimeto, and some of the producer co-ops located there include 8 de Marzo--a pasta, granola, and other grain-based producers co-op--San Miguel--which makes a pepper sauce--and MonCar--a tomato sauce maker, which also has an affiliated organic farm. We sent Ale to the meeting, which she said was very interesting, both because of the beautiful scenery, and also because the assembled group was talking about whether or not to incorporate a new member cooperative. I hope to ask her to write a guest blog entry sometime in the next few days to share more about what that conversation was like, so stay tuned.
The reason I didn´t go to Senarre is that rather suddenly this weekend we got the news that Ricardo and Jesus were scheduled for a visa interview at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas. This sent us into a flurry of activity, gathering documents, writing letters of invitation, making travel arrangements, etc. Considering how much there was to do, it made sense for someone from OFC to stay behind. We spent all of Monday printing, signing, and putting documents in order, practicing interview questions, getting prepared in every way we could imagine. By 9 p.m., Ale had returned from Senarre, and we got to wish Jesus & Ricardo a final good luck as they headed out the door for the bus terminal and an overnight trip to Caracas. And I won´t leave you in suspense as I have been until this evening. The meeting went smoothly aaaaaand, Ricardo & Jesus got their visas! (Thanks to those at OFC and Evergreen we called on for support with this). Hopefully it means those for Sneida and Javier will be forthcoming soon.
In the downtime between visa prep I sat in on the collective and feria meetings happening outside the escuela. And this turned out to be a reason I was glad I had stayed behind. At one point, two of the compañeras were working on a wall sized list with people´s names and their equipos--sort of like OFC´s departments, except that they can be either groups doing organizational and shift work--and I had the chance to ask some of the questions I´ve been confused about for some time now, around how equipo membership is determined. What I had learned so far is that each compañer@ gets to decide what equipo they are affiliated with, based on their interest and the needs of the organization. When someone wants to learn a new skill or change groups, they contact the members of the desired equipo to gain consent to join, as well as someone who is willing to train them. The new equipo member then shadows that person for however many weeks or months are needed to learn the skill thoroughly, and then, depending on the needs of the group, the trainer may choose to rotate into a new equipo as well. What I was confused about was that I was constantly seeing these lists with people´s names and what seemed like job assignments. How did that mesh with people choosing equipos for themselves?
As it turns out, the list the companer@s were working on was for reflection in the feria meeting. It wasn´t to assign people to new groups, but rather for the assembled feria workers to analyze, both to assure that each equipo had the number of people it needed, and to assure a fair gender distribution within each group. So the main way that job rotation works at Cecosesola, as far as I have been able to understand, is that workers choose their jobs, equipos decide whether or not to admit new members, and the whole group reflects on whether the resulting work teams are meeting the needs of the organization. I´ll let you know as I learn more.
And then Ale and I took a quick trip to the beach. Sand, waves, turquoise water, a sweet posada with an open courtyard and a small fluffy dog named Princesa. Despite a bus accident in the mountains this morning (Ale´s second for the week...the other was on the way home from Senarre) we are sleepy, sun-kissed and well-rested. At least for the moment. The feria opens again tomorrow at 5:45, and it´s going on midnight, so I think I´ll have to leave the photos until tomorrow.
Until then!
Photo credit: Alejandra Abreu, Emily Van Kley, Conchi Verdesoto
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