The Transition: Making It Happen

It was funny, because immediately after making the decision, we had another spate of activity on the property, and we started to think that after all the effort to engineer a solution so that we could move and start the new job and still keep the business open, it was going to sell and none of it would matter.  But, those leads dried up and we continued to work to implement our plan.  Tom and I treated this like any other project.  We knew the timeline, we knew the tasks, we knew what resources we had, and we just had to put it all together.  Of course none of it really went according to plan…but planning for that is all part of the plan, as any good project manager knows. 

A big part of the plan at this point was to get Julio and Janeth ready to step into the business.  This involved not only training them, but also helping them get their personal life in order so they could do the job.  While Tom and I continue to do the bulk of the administrative work, when guests are around it’s a 24/7 on-site commitment, and Julio and Janeth have been living in the village for their entire marriage, so moving three miles out of the village is a fairly significant change, and they still have kids who are at an age that they can’t have both parents spending significant amounts of time away from home.  Fortunately for all of us, a few things changed in their life just as this transition was happening.  After fifteen years as village chairman, Julio had decided not to run again, so as of mid-June he no longer had that very time consuming in-town commitment.  And Odaly, their only daughter, was graduating from primary school, which meant that she would be home for the summer and would have time to backfill for Janeth at the house and help take care of her brothers.  (I know, I know, why is it assumed that the girl has to be the one to take responsibility for the housework?  It’s just that way here and even though I told numerous stories of how my three brothers had to chip in on the housework at a young age  after our father died and our mother had to go back to work…it’s just the way it is here.)  Julio and Janeth made arrangements with friends and family in the village so that their kids would be cared for if they weren’t home at night, and they had some serious discussions with the kids about how this was going to be a family project, and they were going to all have to step up to the plate.  We made sure we had enough beds at our place that all of them could stay there for an extended time if they wanted, and made it perfectly clear that whatever had to happen for the good of the family, we were supportive.

The other big piece of the business we had to prepare was communications.  Because Tom and I are doing so much of the administrative work, we had to figure out a good way to keep Julio and Janeth up to date, both for planning purposes and last minute updates.  We have the telephone, but the phones here don’t have reliable messaging systems, and mobiles don’t work, so unless we knew someone would be by the B&B phone and someone would be here, that wasn’t a total solution.  Tom and I had always run the business using our computers, but Julio has never really used a computer and just isn’t comfortable with it, and we’d never pushed it.  Then we had a brainstorm.  We had a local friend’s wedding at the B&B in the beginning of May, and our neighbor Tatiana was taking pictures with her iPad.  Julio was fascinated by it, so after the wedding we started showing him our iPad and how it works, and that not only is it a camera, but it has email and web surfing and calendars and address books and games and books and maps…  I think Julio had sort of wondered at our attachment to the iPad, but when we started showing him all it could do, he was definitely interested, and it isn’t even too much like a computer.  Somewhere along the line G had shown me his new iPad Mini, and I decided that I needed a Mini, especially since everything we need to work up here is in the iCloud, so it would be a good work tool for this job.  I was so convincing in my need for a Mini that Tom decided he would need a Mini too – and the lightbulb went off that we each get a Mini, then put all of our B&B computer tools on the iPad, and give it to Julio.

Tom has accused me of selling crack to babies, but knowing Julio’s aversion to computers, I put some thought into how to make the iPad not just a necessary evil of the job, but something that Julio would enjoy using, since more use makes for more proficient use.  My first line of attack was to find out what version of the Bible they use in his church, and get a copy of that onto the Kindle app.  I showed Julio all the reasons why the iPad/Kindle Bible was a good thing – the iPad is smaller than the print version, you can search, it’s really nicely indexed, it’s backlit (very important for use in a town that doesn’t have electricity), text size can be changed, and so on.  Julio immediately saw the attraction, although his family was initially concerned that he looked pretentious, marching into church with an iPad.  But they too soon saw the benefits, and when the novelty wore off, everybody agreed that it was a good thing. 

If the Bible wasn’t enough of a hook, my next effort was to introduce Julio to Facebook.  One of Julio’s nicknames in town is “Pates de Chucho,” or Puppy Feet, because he’s always wandering off to visit and hang with his friends and just be the social creature that he is.  Facebook is made for such social creatures, and within a very short time, Julio had lots of Facebook friends and was enjoying their status updates and chatting and being enlightened to the joys of online social networking, including being able to spy on his children.  Julio also likes to keep up to date on current events, and is as much of a news hound as someone can be while living in an area without TV and radio reception, where daily newspapers aren’t delivered.  The jungle wire generally works well enough that Julio would know when he had to carry the transistor radio off to a place that would get radio reception so he could hear some juicy bit of news, but learning that Facebook users can “Like” different news agencies and reporters and get the news even before it makes it to the radio or TV…like I said, it was like getting a baby hooked on crack.  Suddenly the iPad was Julio’s constant companion, and learning how to use the networked calendar and contact book and email wasn’t so much of a burden.  So, I can now make a change on the calendar from my desk at the farm, and it will appear on Julio’s iPad when he turns on the WiFi at the B&B, and as long as I remember to make good notes on the iPad, the system works.

Actually training Julio and Janeth to do what they need to do at the B&B with guests was quite easy.  Julio has been working with us for a few years, so he knows what he’s doing, and he knows how we expect to have it done.  Janeth has also worked with us off and on, and while she hadn’t been running the kitchen when I was there, she also understood what was required and knew what we expected.  The month before we moved ended up being busier with guests than we had anticipated, so we had ample time for training and hands-on experiences for Julio and Janeth, and they both put a lot of thought into what they were doing and asked great questions, and even made a number of excellent suggestions about how we could do things better.  Tom and Julio had to work out what tools were needed to keep the B&B going, and Janeth and I made lists and went on a few shopping trips to fit the kitchen since I was taking most of the dishes, pots and pans, and utensils.  I finally took the time to write down most of my recipes so Janeth would have them, although she also has many recipes.  Tom took Julio and Janeth out on our pre-guest shopping trips so they would know what we like to buy for the business, for food and other supplies, and where we get our favorite products.  June and July were very busy months at the B&B!

While all of this was happening at the B&B, we were also staging for the move and the new job.  As I mentioned before, our new house was undergoing significant renovation, and G had assigned the whole staff to work on the project to get it done in a couple of months.  But, he didn’t have time to manage it day by day, and didn’t even know how to answer a lot of the day to day questions since they were mostly about what Tom and I wanted.  So, he asked Tom if he would be able to take on managing the house reno project, which Tom was happy to do for a number of reasons.  He knew it would help the job get done more quickly and more the way we wanted it done, and it would give him a chance to get to know the staff before he was actually their boss, which would change the work dynamic.  His original plan was to spend one day a week on the project, but of course he got sucked in and was spending every spare minute not just managing and advising, but also taking on a few minor subprojects…like the kitchen and the bathroom.  The staff was still doing plenty of work, and Tulio is a talented builder, but he is also a wise man who knows it’s better to let a woman’s husband work on the sensitive areas.  And, as I said, he had plenty of work to do elsewhere in the house.  I was also making frequent trips to check on the house and help with key decisions about things such as horse fencing, as well as trips out to building supplies stores to pick out paint and tile and fixtures and appliances and horse fencing. 

We also fit in a few meetings with M&G to finalize our contract, and to better understand some components of the job, especially since, as I’ve said before, neither of us has any work experience on conservation projects, and we both wanted to be up to speed when we started so we could hit the ground running and not spend months figuring out what we were supposed to be doing.  Of course these meetings generally involved dinner and frequently a swim or a hike; after all, getting to know the property was part of the job orientation. 

Even before we had set an official start date, we had started moving some of our belongings to the farm.  We never envisioned that this was going to be a traditional move where one day the moving van would appear, all of our stuff would be packed and loaded, and the move would officially happen.  So, we made it a point to throw a few things in the truck every time we went to the farm.  In the beginning, we just moved random things like driving horse supplies, which was easy since we don’t have a driving horse right now, so we knew we wouldn’t be using them.  We also had a pile of boxes stored in the shop which had never been unpacked since we moved to Belize.  Not seeing any reason why would suddenly need those things, moving those boxes was a no-brainer too.  We became progressively more selective as the real moving day approached, but by the time we came down to the last couple of weeks, Tom had moved enough stuff and organized enough additional stuff that we only had a limited number of well managed truckloads to make it final.  The staff cottage next to our house was open, so we had a place to store a whole house’s worth of stuff, so we didn’t have to worry about no place to put things until the house was done.  We had a few big things to move, like our bed, but we managed to fit even that in on a multi-purpose trip.  We scheduled a break from guests so that we could get moved out and Julio and his family could get moved in without pressure…and it worked.   The move was complete when we rode two of the horses and ponied the third through the jungle and up the hill into the Mountain Pine Ridge, then took a farm vehicle down to pick up the last of the horse supplies and the dogs.