Crossing to the other side – episode 5

Going Cuban

At 10am last Wednesday I called Juliet, the person responsable for the Early Childhood Programme in the Quindio at the Education Secretariat in Armenia, as I needed some help with the first monthly report I had to send to the Ministry.

“Solen, can you come to the office?” she said.

“What, now?”

“Yes, I am here with the Cuban delegation, and we need to work out the programme for the week. What time can you get here?”

“Er, well … I suppose I can be there before midday,” I fumbled, whimsically thinking about all the things I had been planning to get done.

I dropped everything I was doing and got my bag. This is, after all, Colombia, and this is the way things work here. And Juliet is, after all, our supervisor.

A collective taxi and bus ride and wait-in-the-bank-to-see-if-the-government-grant-had-come-through later (it had not), and I got to the secretariat – at five minutes to twelve.

I was a bit taken aback when the “lady” from ICBF lauched her verbal attack

Two consultants from the Cuban Education Ministry had come to give advice and training on the modality of the Early Childhood that we are implementing, the “Family Environment”. This modality was designed on the Cuban model, so these were the real experts, and seeing as we are the only service-provider operating this environment in the area, they were here for us!

In the office were Juliet, Gloria from the ICBF (Colombian Family Welfare Insititute), a young woman form the Ministry, and the two Cuban ladies. They showered me with questions about when would be a good time to visit each municipality in order to observe a mixture of collective meetings with the families and individual home visits.

It soon became apparent that they were planning to visit one of the towns that very afternoon, and I explained that I wasn’t free as I still had a lot of work to do on the reports which had to be sent the next day. I was a bit taken aback when Gloria launched her verbal attack.

“Well, excuse me,” she said, straigthening herself in her seat. “Didn’t you know that the Cuban delegation was due to arrive today?”

“Yes, I did,” I said. “But I didn’t know what the programme was and was waiting for confirmation.”

It was true – Juliet had told me several weeks previous the vague news about the Cubans arriving on the 7th, but then I had heard no more about it. For all I knew, the trip might have been cancelled.

“Well, I’m very sorry,” said Gloria, looking much more self-righteous than sorry. “It was up to us to make sure we were free to receive these people and make the most of their precious time …” – and she went on in this vein until she had had enough and I managed to slip a word in to defend myself, and somebody changed the subject, but she kept shooting me poisonous looks, and I kept wondering what she had against me. It was the second time she had attacked me. On the first occasion she had blamed the closure of a FAMI programme (nutrition and education for mothers and babies under 2) in Filandia on the “fact” that we were stealing its clients.

Cristina and Alba in Córdoba

The next day we went up to Córdoba where one of our Cuban friends was going to sit in on a family visit. Before the visit we had a brief chat with our team about the work they had been doing. Gloria once again came into her own and shot aggressive questions at Alba and her young assistant Cristina, who I’m happy to say stood their ground well.

“What’s she got against us?” I asked Cris in a whisper as we walked out of the school room onto the street.

“She’s always like this,” Cris confided. “She sees every new programme as a direct threat to ICBF programmes.”

I felt reassured that it was nothing personal, but all this made me reflect on the design of this programme and how obvious it was that  it was going to “compete” with other schemes.

A child who is registered for the Early Childhood Programme must not be registered in any other programme, because the whole point is to give care to those children not covered by other projects. In all our municipalities we had been careful only to target families not in other programmes, and the government database rejects such children anyway. Inevitably some less than honest families probably slipped though our net; however, for me this is not our fault but a systemic failing. And it’s not our fault that our programme is more interesting than others!

This feeling was confirmed in later discussions, meetings and trainings with the lovely Cuban ladies, Odalys and Miriam. In Cuba, it seems, the Ministry is all things: designer, operator and paymaster of the programme. Unlike here, where places assigned on the scheme depend on resources put forward by individual municipalities, in Cuba no child is left without care as long as the family is willing and interested. And staff are paid punctually every month on the same day, unlike here where our team has been working for two months without pay and the government has still not come up with the funding.

It all makes me want to go and live in Cuba.

This means very few children without care, zero competition between children’s programmes, because the Education Ministry does it all, and no problem with finances as Cuba’s top budget priority is Education. Roll forward the state! It all makes me want to go and live in Cuba.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, although the week got off to a bed start, it got better. Gloria calmed down and then stopped showing up. We visited three of our towns and our visitors were impressed by the dedication, professionalism and love with which our team are working, although of course they pointed out many improvements we could make – which is fantastic too, as we got exactly the kind of advice we needed.

The Fundación's team in training

The final and high point was a training session in Armenia which bought our entire team together and where I was proud to see their unity and their intelligent and pertinent contributions to the discussions – and of course their hilarious role play of a family meeting where their acting skills came into play magnificently.

All’s well that ends well!