CIACEP General Body Meeting

Last Wednesday my coffee coop celebrated their second all-member general body meeting, a yearly affair. Most organizations around here - whether it be an NGO, a community association, or the local government - hold a general meeting once a year to get all the members together (sometimes solely to remind them that they are, in fact, members still) discuss any achievements throughout the year and present new work plans and budget revisions. It's basically one big board meeting, where all the stock holders are allowed to attend and participate.

Since our foundation in October of 2008, it's been a constant struggle for survival as an organization dealing with coyotes threatening our coffee sales, bad weather hurting the coffee yields and rival coops enamoring our associates. So, needless to say, having arrived at this point in our lifetime as a coop was an accomplishment in itself. While it should probably go without saying that this type of affair generally turns into a big party, our board and members were especially riled up for this event. Now that I mention it, it seems like people around here are always looking for a reason to celebrate, something that shouldn't come as a surprise in a country that very seriously celebrates "Day of the child."

So, keeping in mind the true nature of our event, the team of board members and coffee promoters set about preparing the venue the day before. Not so surprisingly, it was an activity that took from lunchtime Tuesday until when the first guests started arriving Wednesday morning and took priority over points to be presented during the meeting – inconsequential details like the work plan, summary of activities in the past year and current budget, haha.

As part of the decorating commission, i was put in charge of the balloons and posters. Luckily my landlord Emeliano has a store where he sells school and office supplies in town. When i arrived and inquired about balloons, he smiled and said of course they sold balloons. What was I thinking? I forgot this place is party central. But, the funniest part, that I hope you'll appreciate too, came when I asked if he sold them inflated. Seeing as my Spanish is far from perfect still, I had to talk my way around the actual words for inflating balloons with a helium tank. Once I had asked he just sort of stared at me with a perplexed expression on his face, and after a few minutes to allow me time to retract my statement, said that no, they did not inflate them, in a way that implied that I was crazy for even having asked.

After a few moments, I had that epiphany that should be automatic by now because it happens so often: in my town, filling balloons with helium and attaching ribbon is unheard of, because blowing them up manually and hanging them with thread works just fine - no fancy helium tanks or shiny ribbon required. So, I quickly put two and two together, and realized that Emeliano had understood that i wanted not only to buy the 50 balloons in yellow and green, but that I expected him to blow them up himself. I could've kicked myself.

Like I said, I should be used to situations like this by now, they happen so often. But luckily I can still have a good laugh at myself.

The event went over really well and we even had some unexpected visitors from the National Coffee Association which made the event seem very official. The members left satisfied and happy, hopefully in part because of the beautiful array of balloons :)