Letter-44: Hey Aaron, you forgot your wheaties

Being a Peace Corps volunteer has in fact been more than it is cracked up to be. Indeed, thirty-five years of dedicated procrastination have paid off in that I have the confidence to contribute to the technology transfer programs of my agency and accomplish more than I did working longer hours while dodging real and bureaucratic bullets in a development agency overseas. Ironically, until a month before my deployment to México, I had a vision of teaching school in a remote hill-town on the Baja Peninsula, meditating at night, writing the great American novel by day and giving Siddhartha a run for his money.

Yet, I arrived in Querétaro, an internationalist city of about a million people, somehow selected for the Technology Transfer Program without the vaguest notion of what tech transfer was or why I should be selected for such a heady program given a rather ‘grey-flannel’ background in banking and government work. But here I was and the last thing I wanted to do was nothing. After all, I had come to México to contribute and, by jingo, I was going to do that.

Realizing within days that my background was quite unlike most others here, if only because I had taken one science course in the last forty years, I deflected daily panic by remembering how Kansas City Athletics infielder, Bert ‘Campy’ Campaneris, pulled of a truly remarkable feat in the Major Leagues in the 1960s by playing a different position in the field – including both positions of the battery – in each of nine innings. If Campy could pull that off in the Major Leagues, well than a classic ‘jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none’ like me might do something here in México as well.

What has made this tour profoundly maturing for me as a merry misfit are two things: the support of the Peace Corps, particularly in language training and some orientation on technology transfer, as well as the openness consistently exhibited by my host country agency, El Centro de Ingeniería y Desarrollo Industrial (CIDESI). Additionally, I cannot fail to credit two other Peace Corps types at CIDESI – Miss Daisie Hobson of Arizona and Mr Gerald Meyer of Utah – who have empowered me in matters technical and shown me the way to goodwill.

After three months of grueling – but excellent – language training in the Peace Corps, I landed in CIDESI for a project that did not start moving forward until seven months later. So I read and read…and read…would get a piece of raw meat just in the nick of time…and read some more. Eventually, I would cull the 50-60% of the material not relevant to CIDESI of a Mexican government accounting manual to be applied in implementing a new system of book-keeping imposed all governance entities, agencies and state-owned enterprises at all levels in the Mexican government.

In short, I had willingly signed up for the grunt work of the project. Again, this challenge proved to be one of perspective. Three thoughts reassured and reconciled me to that sought after servitude. First, the busy-work would keep me engaged, knowing that I would come to understand fiscal economics and accounting in México as few other Yanks. Second, not only were my colleagues already over-burdened with the normal grind of finance but also had to cope with an institution writhing its way through a radical restructuring of the organization and re-shaping of its culture.

Third, in finance, one simply has to do the crud-work, do it well and display a willingness to do it to earn professional credibility. In that respect, at least, Querétaro is no different than Canary Wharf and CIDESI is identical to Citicorp. Reading several thousand pages in Spanish of regulations, laws, accounting standards and the like kept me busy for four months. Nevertheless, glutted with my intellectual Wheaties, soon I yearned for more; that is, to do more, to contribute more and, most of all, to learn more.

So, with the encouragement of CIDESI acquaintances outside of my department – together with the kind support of my finance colleagues – on my spare time, I prepared a vision of tech transfer and how it might work at CIDESI. To accomplish this rather herculean task, way outside the realm of my experience and pushing the parameters of my project plan, I got a reading list of eight books, primarily from a mechanical engineer at CIDESI who is the in-house visionary. More than anything, however, I took the cotton out of my ears and put it in my mouth and listened…a lot.

All of these things, again with thousands of pages of preparatory studies force-fed mainly at night and on week-ends, enabled me to put together a decent ‘first-stab’ vision expressed in a slide-show. The senior engineers graciously invited me – a French Literature and ‘Politics’ major – to join their efforts. Their invitation was allegedly based on that slide-show, my rudimentary command of Spanish (a/k/a, lisp and giggle) and my “mente hiperactiva” (i.e., right-brained, at worst entertaining, enthusiasm). The five words I have repeated over-and-over, for I can not pretend to be a jock at this stuff, are “solamente primas materias para refinarse”.

Since then, I have held intensive meetings the line Directors of the major research areas to solicit their respective visions; developed two technology road-maps; written ‘off-white’ papers analyzing risk management and financial oversight of projects; as well as, participated in presentations to, or speeches by, senior agency officials. Soon, very cold-sweat soon, I will suggesting ways of integrating financial concepts into project management be led very well by Daisie Hobson.

CIDESI has really stepped up its support for me with four months of daily Spanish training, attendance at a national accounting forum, and three outside courses / conferences on tech transfer, accounting standards and communications skills. Once again, my fellow Peace Corps volunteers, both trained engineers, have been critical in my effort to discipline whizzing thoughts, divergent ideas and dancing pages into some decent ideas.

These contributions, together with my open encouragement for others to take what I produce and make it so much better, have proven to be instrumental to being invited to more interesting tasks. Just as I wash the dishes after my ‘novia’ makes dinner for me, however, I never want to let go of crud-work entirely because, after all, I am a Peace Corps volunteer and helpfulness remains the name of the game, at least as long as the cotton remains out of my ears and in my mouth.