Xela, Guatemala: Yes Means No at the NGO

Action
While living in Xela, Renate and I studied Spanish at Juan Sisay Language School during the mornings. Since our afternoons were relatively free, we tried to volunteer with some local organizations. I found an organization that happened to be organizing participatory budgeting (the topic of my masters thesis) in some nearby towns. Responding kindly to my introductory email, the human resources director set up a time for me to visit. When I arrived at the office, I was warmly greeted, and then transferred to two young men from the participatory budgeting program.

We talked for around 45 minutes, as they tried to explain some of the complexities of the program (e.g. people reluctant to participate because of remaining fears from state genocide) and I tried to explain what I was interested in helping with (e.g. translating, research, writing English text about the program). They said they were sure I could help and we could learn from each other.

Over the following weeks, I came into the office several times to help out, and we chatted and surfed the web together. They also took me along for a few work visits to the nearby towns, which mainly consisted of us chatting with city planners about nothing in particular. Whenever I asked them, or other people in the office, if I could help in more substantial ways, they said “certainly” or “of course”. At one point, another worker mentioned that she needed to prepare a guide describing their participatory budgeting process, but that she was too swamped to work on it. I mentioned that I’d prepared a similar guide in Toronto, and that I’d love to help out with this one too. She responded, “Yeah, that’d be great, oh it’s so busy and the work is difficult, anyway I should get back to this report…”

I never ended up helping with the report or any other work. After a few weeks, I became too busy with school activities and had to stop volunteering.

Visiting a nearby planning office

Reflection
My attempts at volunteering validated previous expectations, but also surprised me. Based on my Peace Corps experiences, I figured that NGO (non-governmental organization) work in Guatemala would be much less structured and more laid-back than in the US. I didn’t go in with huge expectations to save the world, or even complete a project. I anticipated that communication barriers would complicate and limit the work I might do, and that the people I’d work with might have difficulty delegating responsibilities.

I didn’t anticipate, however, how nice and welcoming people would be, nor how little this would seemingly mean. I was repeatedly surprised when everyone I spoke with gushed about how glad they were that I was there and how sure they were that I’d be very helpful, seemingly without reason or justification. I was equally surprised that none of these people seemed interested in discussing how I actually could help. The result was somewhat awkward – I felt compelled to come into the office because people asked me to, but once I arrived, there didn’t seem to be anything for me to do.

I described this predicament to my activist-y language tutor and asked for his thoughts. He grinned and shook his head, and said that when the NGO workers told me that yes, I should come in and help, they probably meant that no, there wasn’t much I could help with. According to his explanation, people in Guatemala tend to be overly polite and find it very difficult to say no, and so they instead say an unspecific and kind yes that should be understood as no. He advised that, unless the other person invites me to help with a particular task, I probably won’t end up doing substantive work. And that to avoid awkward office loitering, I should seek an agreement on what exactly I’ll be doing from the start, even though this seemingly goes against the nature of the local laid-back NGO environment.

Question
Do you think my tutor was right? What else might have been going on? What would you have done in this situation?