just a thought...

so about 6 months ago I called a meeting. close to 150 people showed up, on time... now that says a lot for a town my size, and I thought that I had had a breakthrough. you could say that i felt integrated, so integrated, it was like i was one with the town. not only was i a member of the community but a respected one, supposedly.

that day we decided that the town was interested in one project in particular: vocational courses. we selected a number, 12 to be exact, from the list that had been provided to me by the local vocational institute, and we elected (from a set of volunteers), 12 coordinators, who agreed to wrok with me to make these classes a reality.

today was the first meeting of many where we were supposed to begin the process of getting these classes moving (you may ask why it took 6 months to get here, but that can be attributed to a number of reasons, including the coffee season, the institute, and everything else possible). finally, we were at this magnificent point. and 4 people showed up. 4. out of 12. go figure, right? you think that after getting 150 people to show up (and i only invited 40!!!), i could get 12. fuck no. apparently integration is a lot harder than i thought. i wonder what people really think of me here...