As many of you know Martin and I are looking for jobs here in Peru.  We were both feeling fairly hopeful about two opportunities but not so sure now.

In early December when we arrived Martin went to the municipality to start some conversations about what they were doing, how he could support them and if there might be some jobs available.  He was invited to attend some meetings with local farmers, NGO’s and the municipality.  He started to talk about sustainability with different people.  He was told there would be a position coming up on the 15th of Dec.  On the 15th of Dec he was told it would be the 15th of Jan.  On the 15th of Jan he was told end of the month.  At the end of the month the position finally became available.  Martin applied and was asked to come along for an interview last Thursday at 8am.  Although, they were interviewing for many positions and he was not interviewed until 4.30pm the next day.  Despite two days waiting the interviewers didn’t even have his resume in front of them and he was asked two questions.  Not about his experience or ideas for the job etc rather about what the municipality was doing.  We will, I believe, find out tomorrow if he got the job.  As you can imagine we are no longer feeling very confident.  The municipality is famous for giving positions to friends and family and certainly in this case it seemed they already knew who they were going to hire before they began for certainly they could not ascertain the best person in those kind of interview situations. I have no doubt that Martin is the most experienced person, the other two were just out of uni,  not to mention he is the only one who is already trying to do things but I guess that all goes flying out the window if one of them as family in the municipality.

I also had a meeting with the Catholic university in late Dec.  They are opening here in Chulu and were pretty much begging me to take the English teacher position.  They just had to assure they had the numbers and would advise in a few weeks.  I have called three times to find out what is going on but still nothing and the last conversation was told that someone else also wanted the position.  I know I am the only qualified and experienced English teacher as well as native English speaker in Chulu but again these things do not seem to count as much as who you know here.

It is very frustrating and makes one realise why things are so slow to move ahead here and nothing ever seems to really happen.  People keep telling us about things available in the private sector but we cannot fully trust their ethics.  We are also both having lots of conversations about community development stuff and again these are very positive but it’s hard to know how to move from conversations to action  As well as trying to support one’s family while doing that kind of work is very difficult.  Anyway, we are feeling very uncertain right now about how long we are going to be able to stay.

I guess we will know more tomorrow and have to continue to hope and trust that whatever ends up happening is the right thing.