The rain finally decided to fall in Caracas after a week and a half of dark clouds coming to nothing. I woke up at 6 a.m., panicked my way through the next few hours, and made my single-stop subway ride at 8 a.m. for the 9 a.m. appointment. The address on the Infocenter Foundation's website hasn't been updated to reflect their apparent move to the nicer building across the street, so I stood for about a half-hour at the old (abandoned) building outside of which a number of homeless men slept and read their morning papers before I made my way over to the new building, in which no mention of the IF offices was posted. Standing outside a bit more, I eventually convinced myself the old building really was abandoned and had to ask a few people in the lobby of the new one before I found out where the office was.
I made my way up to the office and was eventually greeted by someone who was designated to talk to me who was not the person I was expecting. She was exceedingly nice and answered as many of my questions as she could, jotting down those that she couldn't. I had sent my questions by e-mail the previous day, thinking that the in-person interview wouldn't happen, and so this initial conversation was more of her spouting information to me while I tried to keep up and bumbled my way through a few new questions I thought up on the spot. When we were done talking, I packed up my things thinking I was done for the day; I was disappointed in what I little I had gotten, but glad that the ordeal was (seemingly) over in time for me to make it back to the apartment to catch the Brazil-Netherlands match on TV. However, she led me not to the office entrance but to the IF's "Communications Brigade", where three young (again, exceedingly nice) people were given the lingering questions from the first conversation and proceeded to take random turns giving me more information. This kind of round-robin format only made it tougher for me to keep up with what was being said, exacerbated by the fact that we were now in a large room full of people watching the football match on a TV in the corner and a young boy of about five or six who would intermittently come around to us to see what was going on. One of those I was talking to was a young girl who I believe in hindsight was trying to flirt with me - she kept touching my arm and knee while talking to me (which I had chalked up to Venezuela having a culture in which such things aren't awkward as they are in the States) and seemed dejected as I left, and only as I was walking to my next destination did I translate in my head that she had been asking me for my e-mail and/or phone number.
After about 45 minutes of this, one of the "Communications Brigade" led me downstairs to an Infocenter located on the ground floor of the building. It was a really impressive facility, with 18 fairly new computers (about the same or slightly nicer than those we have in the Cornell libraries) with a quick internet connection that I tested out while waiting for yet another person who was slated to talk with me. The users at this particular site were actually mainly professional-looking middle aged men who likely work nearby. Snooping around a bit at their screens, they actually seemed to be using the computers more or less for their intended productive purposes, which is a far cry from the younger users frequenting Facebook or playing computer games that I have been accustomed to seeing in private internet cafes here and in Turkey. After my wait, I talked to a blind lady who is the director of the center's program for technology assistance for disabled persons, which I thought was absolutely amazing. I was completely unprepared to talk with her, but the guy from the CB who had led me down there bailed me out by asking her some questions while I was fumbling around trying to think of some. She was actually the only person I talked to that day who knew any English, even though she only spoke a few words of it to me while I was departing.
I was then led back up to the main office to talk to the IF communication director, who was the person I had thought I would be speaking with all along. She gave me a list of Infocenters that apparently I have already been cleared to visit next week, completely unbeknownst to me. In addition, she told me about a conference of directors from different states that is occurring next week about 45 minutes from Caracas, although I don't know if I'll be able to attend. As a parting gift, I was given a little bag full of IF pamphlets and two free books, one about Simon Bolivar's thoughts about journalism and the other about freedom of expression and "media terrorism", which seems to be a jab at the preponderance of anti-Chavez media and their connections to the political opposition.
All in all I'm incredibly happy with the amount of information I received and how enthusiastic everyone there seemed to be to help me with my project. The flip side of this, though, is that I have an incredible amount of data to sift through and transcribe, which is time-consuming enough in English, let alone Spanish. Plus, it seems like I have a full slate of site visits to do next week, well ahead of when I thought I would have to conduct them and much more compressed than the long-term repeat visits I had been planning - although given what I'm thinking about the direction of my project this might be a good thing as the Infocenter component is looking less and less to be the central focus, albeit still an important one.
No comments:
Post a Comment