Given all of this, I haven't had a lot of community-wide meetings during my time here. But occasionally they make sense and certainly make good blog fodder. Here's a few observations about community meetings.
Expect to start your meeting 1-2 hours after the designated meeting time. Sometimes they blow a conch shell to let people know they should start wrapping up whatever it is they are doing so that they can start thinking about going so that they'll leave the house in about an hour. A theme that transcends meeting attendance is group think. Let's wait to head to the meeting until we see others starting to make movement.
Meetings are held in the casa comunal. People sit along the periphery. The center is usually taken up by dogs roaming about, small kids running from family member to family member, and the occassional chicken that's lost its way. The women usually group up, with the more outspoken intermingled with the men, while the quieter women and elderly sitting as far as one possibly can while still claiming attendance to the meeting.
The meeting will usually start with my counterpart listing off everything we're going to talk about in Ngabere. I always talk to him beforehand about everything I want to say. This always means that by the time I get up to talk, he's already said everything I'm about to say. I don't mind because it's good to review, clarify, and repeat. After all, no one is taking notes because hardly anyone is literate. I figure repetition is a good thing.
After I'm done speaking, they'll translate what I've said into Ngabere. We usually do this topic-by-topic, alternating between my gringo Spanish and Ngabere. Sometimes they'll get off track. They'll start discussing the logistics of some other project. Again, I don't mind. They don't meet much as a community outside of my meetings, so it's a good chance to get everything out there. And, when I really get honest with myself, it's not like I had a huge list of really pressing concerns that I have to attend to after the meeting.
At the end of the meeting, the water committee will usually collect funds and people will hang around chatting. Then someone will get up on a soap box and talk to whoever will listen. Most don't. Since it's all in Ngabere, I usually don't know what's going on, so I take my leave when it seems like the timing is right. There will usually be at least 5-10 people that stay chatting for the better part of the afternoon.
My final note is probably the most interesting. I feel like community members test my patience with what we in the US would take as disrespect. This happens almost daily. But in meetings, people listen, or are at least quiet. They'll talk over my counterpart's introduction. They'll talk over whoever's after me. But they quiet down when I'm talking. It's a really fascinating dynamic that I love and appreciate about my community.
