Encore

Less than two months after my contract ended I was called to go to the office, where the COO (the same one who didn’t want me there) offered me a short-term position to write five investment plans for community-based businesses. By then a lot had changed in the organization and there were many new faces. Some young people, fresh out of college, and a few older ones who came from social movements. I learned that four people were hired to replace me: one young man who would be in the field to help the groups with bookkeeping, a young lady who would take over the bank, a guy more or less my age who would be responsible for knowledge management and methodology, and a young girl who was working on new projects.

My task was simple: do two field visits, evaluate the associations and their activities, but it was made clear that I should only foresee investments in existing activities. It wasn’t too far from the train line project and I knew the logistics quite well: plane, bus, car into the middle of nowhere. I was asked what I would need to do the job and I said the name of the agronomist I had worked with, probably for a week.

And so I went once again to the field, but everything was different, especially me. The woman who was working there already and knew the communities introduced me to them, and I had prepared a script with the new methodology guy, as if field interventions could be prepared using a model. Maybe I was becoming too cynical.

Even though this is the most recent job I have done with them, it is the one I remember the least. I probably had too much on my mind at that time, or so much else happened that not only were the names of the people hard to remember, but I wouldn’t know the community names without checking either.

These communities were formed by slaves who had run away, and some of them were recognized by the government, which gave them special protection and some (very small) support. Two of them worked with fish, two with agriculture, and one with manioc flour. And even though I thought that I had been through it all, there were some surprises left for me in this last job - and one of my life’s most embarrassing moments.