Sometimes, I still forget where I am

I recently took on some additional work responsibilities. Additional meaning an entire program. The woman who was in charge of the disability program left the position, and since I was looking for a new challenge (plus there is no money at the community center to hire someone until next year), I volunteered to help make things run smoothly until 2011. I quickly discovered that there were many things in disarray. Which clients were current? How had they decided to re-stock medications every month? (I found out they 'guess-timeated".) Where did all the clients live? When was the last visit to the client's house? Where were the collaborating special education institutes located? Nothing was written down, the official records on hand were sometimes years behind (not months, years). Enter Lauren.
My first after-college job was at a company that was working on its ISO 9000 certification, and let's just say that that sort of quality management has stuck with me ever since. I have begun to put together a step-by-step guide on how the program generally runs. Which is a daunting task, but I hope worthwhile for whoever is hired to run the program.
I have to lean very, very heavily on the knowledge of Nelly, the woman who has been a part-time volunteer with the disability program for many years. She is amazing. I can ask her about any family in the program and she can list off the disability of the client, where they live, what school the child is in, etc. When she first started collaborating with the community center, she was illiterate. Today she can read and write in both Spanish and Quechua. She attends night school. She is learning how to use the computer. I feel that someday she will be officially running the program, but for now, she is the behind-the-scenes guru. Everyone pretty much knows that if she were not around things would quickly break down. Which scares my little quality management heart to death.
One day this past week, I was making a list of all the institutions that collaborate with our program. I was trying to figure out where some of them were located, and since the Internet is still not as widely utilized by everyone as one would hope, I called on Nelly. Our conversation went something like this:
"Nelly, where is [insert institution name]?"
"It's near the airport. I know where it is."
"Yes, I understand that. I need to know exactly how to get there."
"Why?"
"Because I am creating a document that lists all the institutions that we collaborate with and I want to add the directions on how to get there. " (To this, I got a long stare.)
"You know, in case we all die or something, it will be easier for somebody else to run the program if they have all the information they need at their fingertips."

And with that, I lost her (or completely offended her - I got another really long stare before she decided to give me the information I sought. It may have been too dramatic an example.). In the end, it's a cultural thing. What I am doing is very 'western', I suppose. Plan? What for? I've seen a fair amount of turnover at my job in the last year, and it seems like each new person who comes in invents the wheel all over again. Such a waste of time!! But then again, the concept of time is very different as well. . . and I am reminded once again that I am far, far away from home.