CIDE update and another bill story.

Buenas noches friends, family, and most importantly donors,

I wrote about paying a bill last time because I thought it was a novel experience. As I write this today, I wonder if perhaps every bill I pay here will be an experience. But in order to stick to my rigorous belief in chronological cataloguing, first I am going to tell you about team Microfinance’s meeting with CIDE Thursday morning.

I mentioned about a month ago, during that official programmatic update, that we had met with CIDE, this organization through ESPE (a local university) to run another set of small business classes. I’m pretty sure I also mentioned that they told us to call back in September, because they were about to go on vacation. Well, we waited a month and then gave them a jingle jangle on Tuesday, September 1. They set up a meeting for 10am Thursday. The night before, Bibi, Erik, and I met to discuss what we really wanted out of this meeting. We had talked about undergoing training to be certified to teach instructors. However, we had had zero (0) luck recruiting people with college degrees or people actively seeking college degrees who wanted to take 40 hours off to do a small business training course and assumed that CIDE had done zero recruiting as well. We decided to go in asking if it was still a feasible class, but still feeling comfortable ending up simply enrolling in a small business class and taking good notes to replicate in the future.

This meeting was much less about the when/where logistics of the course to be taught and much more on the “which course?” discussion than I had expected. We actually spent most of the time talking about prices. CIDE had told us at the first meeting that they were recently turned into a public institution, which meant that they couldn’t say no to anyone but also had no funding. A professor for this course charges $15 an hour. Other than that there are some modest materials costs. The capacitación de capacitadores class would be 20 hours; 4 hours a morning 5 days a week. The simple capacitación is 40 hours, 2 weeks of four hours a day. While the following may be a readily apparent fact, the capacitación de capacitadores class would cost half as much as attending the basic small business class. While they also encourage about 15 students a class, there didn’t seem to be a lower bound as long as they get paid. I am a little hazy on this point; while I understood almost all of this meeting, I was unable to ask this question in a way they understood (which was a little embarrassing; I really did have the feeling that they would think I was a lot smarter than I was if I could just keep my mouth shut). In fact, they suggested recruiting about 20 people to lower the cost of the basic small business class.

So where are we now on these classes? The honest answer is still more up in the air than I thought we would be after this second meeting. But this meeting wasn’t exactly bad news. It sounds to me like Erik and I can get certified to train instructors for $300 and some nubbins. This sounds pretty good: it is half the time and half the cost of the other option. Sure, recruiting others is almost impossible, but if we don’t really need others for the class to happen than it doesn’t matter. Things like certificates and certification are very, very important here. Our flyers for English classes say something to the effect of “we are certified gringos” (Enseóado por licenciados nativohablantes) which makes very little sense when you think about it. The money to fund these courses is a problem either way we decide, though.

But money isn’t as big a problem as it might first sound. I’m not sure if I have said this yet, but thanks to my donors, I have actually met my fundraising goal and actually raised a little beyond. So a very, very big thank you is appropriate for all of you. We actually get a little lee-way with how any money we raise over our goal is spent (but not too much lee-way, it still has to be spent in a way that makes it a legally tax-deductible donation.) and I can think of few things more appropriate for me to spend my surplus on than paying for the training to bring small business classes to the communities I work in. And when team microfinance talked about where exactly we stood walking out of our meeting, I said just that: I think $300 is a great way for the guy who came down really interested in microfinance and small business classes to be trained in useful small business class techniques (Erik can come too; and actually, anyone else we can find who is interested in this class). This sounds like a pretty reasonable game plan (estrategia). It hinges on two major factors: this being a reasonable (and legal) way to use my surplus, and CIDE saying “sure, all we really care about is your money, two is great!” I think we can win this one, but there is no telling right now. But the bottom line is I think the class that will make us more qualified in half the time for half the money is probably the better deal. Stay tuned for the next exciting segment of small business.

I returned home to the house with mixed feelings about our meeting with CIDE, but still overly optimistic. There were two surprises waiting for me when I got home: Seth was home from the Galapagos and there was a $305 water bill on the table. It was great to see Seth again, and he had only been gone a week. I have several phrases, in both English and Spanish, to describe a $300 water bill, and none of them are blog appropriate. Water is cheap here. How, on Earth, could we owe $300?

Well, as it turns out, we didn’t pay last month (worst bill transition ever, right? I know, I’m thinking the same thing. At least I know phone and electricity were, in fact, taken care of.) when we consumed out record high of 124m³ of water (up 40% from our previous high in the 80s). Tack on a late fee to a $130 bill, add 200m³ of consumption this month (whoops) and a $50 charge for wastewater and some other small taxes and you end up at around $300. You also have a bill that needs to be paid immediamente so you don’t have your water shut off (which trust me, in this house would not be nearly as traumatizing as losing internet access). After stressing out about this even though I have very little to do with it (arguably, less than 1/10 when you factor in all the old PDs and all our August guests) and even fewer tools at my disposal to fix this though ways other than paying, we talked to some of our Ecuadorian friends and came to the conclusion that this was, in fact, too high.

So this morning Bibi and I went to Triangulo (a town over, though you couldn’t really tell) to pay this bill. I left the house with $345 in cash and a knife, met up with a Bibi, and took a taxi to Triangulo. The house binder had pretty clear directions on how to find the place; incidentally it is the store in the mall closest to broken change machine number two from my last hunt for bus change. As a quick aside, the change machine was very much in working order this time and while we waited to talk to a desk worker about our bill (about 45 min), I was able to successfully turn 5 twenties into a substantial weight in my bag. When we finally got up to the desk worker, she also agreed with us that the bill was way too high. They are going to send someone out to our house sometime on Monday to examine the meter. The report should be filed by Thursday morning. I’m going to go back Friday to see what the haps is and probably pay them a substantial chunk of change (I‘ll actually pay them in 20s, change is too useful here). In any case, we have until Sept 14 before they shut our water off, so no big deal right?

As a final observation about this experience, I don’t know just how long you have been able to pay a bill without going to an independent location in America but it sure lowers transaction costs. Wow.

I also bought some plants for my room. I feel like they go a long way towards lightening up the mood. I’ve gone ahead and attached pictures now in case something happens to them. And yes, the big one is planted in a bucket. It was WAY cheaper than buying a pot. I think we are going to hike Pichincha tomorrow.

Chao,

Chet

Song of the Blog: “Not a Drop of Rain,” by Robert Earl Keen.

The rainy season should start any day now.