Humility

My time in Peru has taught me much about humility, but yesterday I think I finally hit my peak and now just don’t care when I am perceived as a complete idiot. Wednesday, in the afternoon I was told that we were going to have a human rights workshop for about 40 youth in and around Huancavelica.
Sounds great.
Then I was told to research human rights online.
Ok. Where do I find this information?
Google (as if there were any other place).
Ok, which human rights and from where, Peru, international…?
Just do a summary of human rights.
Ok…. Thinking that there are quite a few.
So I went down stairs to the office with internet access and started researching human rights. If you type in ‘human rights’ and ‘Peru’ in the search bar of Google you will receive hundreds of thousands of pages dealing with the terrorism years between 1980 and 2000. That’s when it first hit me that a gringo from the US should not be researching this topic for them. So I stuck to the good ol’ UN’s website where they lay out 30 fundamental human rights. I returned up stairs an told my co-workers that I had some pretty good information concerning human rights. Then I asked what they wanted me to do with it. Apparently that was a dumb question.
You’re going to present it tomorrow for the youth.
Haha, I don’t think I can do that.
Why not?
Because I have a hard enough time talking to you guys in Spanish, how am I supposed to do a presentation in from of 40 youth over the topic of human rights?
(Laughing) Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.
Shit!

Now keep in mind that the night before the same co-workers and I had a language class. I taught a little English, and they tried to help me with Spanish. Seeing that they were not going to be much help on the grammar of Spanish (How many of us know the grammar of English?) I decided to ask them for some verbs that I should learn.
They thought for a minuet…. ‘’Comer’’ – to eat
Then some one else chimed in with ‘’Hablar’’ – to speak
My head hit the table.
Now how is it that the same people who thought I didn’t know the words in Spanish for ‘’to eat’’ and ‘’to speak’’ are asking me to do a 20 min presentation on international human rights?

After fighting them, I realized that I was going to do the presentation the next day whether I wanted to or not. So I created a presentation which I could pretty much just read of the slides, say thanks and sit down. Of course I had to practice this many times because there are big words in the realm of human rights.
The next morning they asked me how the presentation was.
Short.
Well make sure you just don’t read the slides, you need to expand.
I have done many presentations before and I agree completely but, you really don’t understand, I don’t have the language in Spanish to expand on Human rights.
(laughing, again) You’ll be fine.
Damn it!

So I sat down and expanded a bit on my notes, hating everything.
The workshop was supposed to start at 8:30am. So in typical Peruvian fashion everyone started showing up at 10:30am. I was told to go ahead and give my presentation while we waited on the rest of the youth and presenters to show up.
Sweet, there were only 6 youth in the room. I got up gave my presentation, we talked for a minuet, I said thanks and sat down feeling pretty good.
Finally about 40 youth showed up and the rest of the presenters. A woman stood up and gave a very detailed description of her organization in Huancavelica that works for legal representation of human rights. I was feeling pretty good that I had gone before her, when they announced that the next presentation would be me.
Son of a Bitch!

Reluctantly I got up and started my presentation. Now imagine trying to tell 40 youth, who have worked to earn money for their family since they were probably 8 years old, that the UN says they have a right to a paid vacation. This concept made many laugh out loud. After a few questions during my presentation I suggested that we wait till I finished to discuss the rights. At the end I repeated that they should not think of these rights as laws, (because many are not in Peru, or the US) but rather a guideline for which they should be working towards.
Questions? (as my heart leaped to my throat)

Of course there were questions, and in Peru when some one has a question it can sometimes be longer than the presentation.
First question: You’re up here talking about UN human rights, but didn’t your country invade Iraq, against the will of the UN? (It was a solid 3 min question, but I think that was the gist of it)
$%@&!
That’s a great question, for which I have no answer. I stumbled to tried and explain the faults of my country, but I realized by some confused faces that I should try again. I then tried to explain that we are all in the struggle for human right together.
Question two was prefaced by ‘’you don’t speak much Spanish do you?’’
Thanks for pointing that out.
After a few more questions I sat down, relieved it was over and hating every, single one of my co-workers.
I’m afraid after a year I’m going to be like the 40 year old dad who embarrasses his kids by wearing the really goofy hat and shorts because it makes him comfortable and he really just doesn’t care anymore.
- Dave