1st of March, 2018

Today it is (almost) our 1st CSC anniversary and i am feeling blue. A year ago on this day i’ve left to start my most transformative, evolving and life-changing journey. A lot of emotions come to me when i think about our time in Arica, gratitude, joy, happiness, love, … but today i am just as sad as on the day of my return, when i was sitting at the airport feeling leaving my CSC family and flying back home. I was sure i’ll be seeing them again (and i have seen Debbie since!!), but it won’t be the same, it probably won’t be in Arica and not sure if all 12 of us would be together at one place again.

Coincidentally, today is also the farewell party of my friend, Kriszti (CSC Nigeria alumni), who inspired me to apply to CSC and supported me all the way when i had my doubts about it. Haven’t it been for her, i don’t know if i would have met all those wonderful people i had a chance to spend a whole month with in this amazingly welcoming, beautiful country that is Chile. You see, I told you i feel a lot of gratitude. Up to a level that sometimes i have to look at the 2 big photos on my desk to remind me that this actually happened, it wasn’t just a dream.

The 2 photos and a handmade gift from Kriszti ❤

Thanks my Dear Family and thanks to Kriszti – who starts a brand new chapter in her life and for that i bow to her!

PS. Hopefully I’ll be able to write a more cheerful post tomorrow. Stay tuned.

PPS. Look how much Santosh has evolved, this is what he wrote me when reading this piece: ‘Things should keep changing always and longing to meet people you love is a good feeling because when you really meet them it makes it that much more awesome’

The very tearful goodbye

A love letter

I decided to write 2 separate posts on our last week in Arica, as I didn’t want to choose between the work we handed over to the Client and the the personal aspect, how our team experienced a wave of emotions as the farewell was near.

I am already at my home in Budapest when writing this piece. I started to collect my thoughts last week but as it was week 4 of our assignment it was crazy busy, in the best possible way. We all arrived back home or to our next destination safely apart from struggling with jet lag and missing each other a LOT.

They tell us that you will become family, and you try to believe (or some of us think it is never gonna happen to them), but it just happens, you form a team and eventually become a CSC family. You spend four weeks together all day, every day, having meals, going to work and having adventures. Which means lots of emotions, tears and gratefulness when it is time to say goodbye – for now. All of us refuse to think this was a final farewell. I am fortunate beyond words to met these amazing, open, kind and so special people that formed CSC Chile 8 family.

It started to hit me around the end of the third week. I had a difficult day at work and struggled with some sickness too, and without even asking, my family started to take care of me. It was only natural to them and to me too, yet it shook me hard when I realized we only have couple of days together. Not just the twelve of us, but also our Chilean family – Clients and Pyxera team, who quickly became our close friends.

Family portrait from our first day together on the top of El Morro

The last few days were all about saying goodbye and expressing how lucky we were to have met each other.

On Thursday we said goodbye at the office, IMA team was invited for a Townhall meeting where the Client made us cry then made us give a speech. I was the one giving that way too emotional speech. To this day I can’t figure out how our interpreter, Francisco was able to translate my sobbing. Although they told me I was able to reach people without translation.

The same day we said our goodbyes at our favourite coffee places and then went for dinner to a Peruian-Asian fusion restaurant which was on our bucket list. Seemed that they don’t want us to go either, this is the only explanation why they made us wait 2,5 hours for the food. Luckily, the coctail supply was continouos. We finished our night on the beach listening to the soothing sound of the ocean.

Friday was an important one, we had our closing ceremony at 9AM Chilean time. That means it started around 9:35AM. Within Chile 8 team there’s a disagreement if we will miss or not miss the Chilean approach for time 🙂

The closing ceremony was our last encounter with the Client. We thanked each other for the wonderful opportunity that brought us together in this part of the world. Their feedback was deeply touching, praised us for long minutes and presented us with some small gifts that would remind us of our time in Chile. Like we could EVER forget it.

Then it was our superstar Project Assisstant’s turn to make us cry. They shared how this experience was more challenging yet more giving than they expected and how they see us as closest friends now. Pam thanked FSP team for being always there to support her. Gabriela expressed her happiness over learning so much through this program. Sebastián concluded that other than our languages we are all the same (well, except for Zach, who is muy alto 🙂 ). Francisco noted that now we have something new and wonderful to take home and hopefully share with parts of the world.

Big thank you to Preethi who recorded their speeches so I don’t have to rely my brain only as my whole memory is crying, crying, hugging and some more crying. And dancing, initiated by Carolina, I assume she saw all of us falling into pieces and found the Latin-American way to cheer us up, and it worked! We were dancing and laughing with joy. Did I mention this will be a post about emotions? I figure this would be difficult to understand if you are not part of it, you can only trust me on this, it was a real roller-coaster for our hearts and minds.

Laughter, being moved, expressing gratitude and dancing with joy

I had some struggles accepting all this love as I was prepared to give from myself, however I didn’t prepare myself for all the gratitude and love I will receive. It was overwelming at a point, which of course meant some more crying. I’m not sure about the others, but I finished my day with 12 counts of cry, a great part of this was happy tears, still it is my highest personal record by far.

Continuing our day, we went for a nice swim in the Pacific Ocean. Coming from a country without even a seaside, I’m madly in love with the ocean. At one point Basti asked me if it will be our final one, for which I replied absolutely not – after all we still had 13 hours in Arica. We agreed to swim again after lunch. Yes, we are rebels, going swimming after lunch. We needed all the fun to forget being sad about us leaving. Our second swim was even more fun and attracted almost our entire team, all acted like children refusing summer vacation to end. We stayed in the water until we physically could. We simply had to make all of each moment we had in this wonderland.

Our last dinner was at our favorite restaurant, where we cheered for the Chilean soccer team on Tuesday. If you are ever in Arica, I suggest you try Bar Republica. The best one in the whole city.

Carolina (aka Cinderella) was the first one to leave, she needed to be at the airport by midnight. Then it was my turn – the taxi came for me at 3AM Saturday morning. My sweet team said goodbye to me one by one until I cried all my tears. I felt bad for the last few ones, I had no more tears for them. Although they might have been OK with it once they saw my mascara smashed on the shirts of the others.

Waving goodbye at 3AM.

By 11AM on Saturday all of Chile 8 team has left Arica. Our whatsapp group was on fire, in addition to our hometowns, we checked in from all around the world, just to name a few: Santiago, Sao Paolo, Madrid, Frankfurt, Dubai, Paris, Lima, Cusco, Tacna, Doha, Toronto.

Now we are settling back to our old life and our usual days, but I doubt that any of us would ever be the same. This experience enriched our life so much that we will be more concious about other people, more patient and empathetic, not to miss that it made us better in professional life too. From my side it was one of the highlights of my life and the absolute best in my career, for which I am grateful beyond words. I feel that I brought home a light within me, which will be with me eternally.

Hope to see you all again, life is not that short, I know I will take every opportunity I have to meet. Take care my CSC family.

Love, Dóra

Our last sunset in Arica was dramatic

PS. We also had tons of funny moments last week:

• Sorting laundry for 8 people when the laundry man puts all of the 15kg clothes into one bag
• Getting complementary empanadas and drinks for wearing Chilean jerseys
• Tommy’s meltdown over the last Irish teabag on Thursday morning
• Our face when finding out there isn’t any dancing place open on a Thursday night
• Janelle staying at the office after hours and getting locked in
• JUNAEB team not letting Zach to have a coke
• Reporters taping our dance at the closing ceremony and airing in on the news
• Thor not needing a flight, only his cape
• IT’S NOT FUNNY #itsnotfunny

Week 4 of Making a difference – Road to presenting our recommendations

I decided to write two separate posts on our last week in Arica, as I didn’t want to choose between the work we handed over to the Client and the the personal aspect, how our team experienced a wave of emotions as the farewell was near.

I can proudly say – SPOILER ALERT – all of our teams did an amazing job, exceeding our Clients’ highest hopes. But let me start at the beginning.

While the 1st week is to clarify the scope of our projects, and the 2nd to 3rd weeks are diving into the documents, interviewing the Client and analyzing the information we gathered, the last week is all about putting our recommendations together, so we can provide a road map to the Client that will help them achieve their goals. CORDAP and IMA teams presented on Wednesday followed by JUNAEB and FSP on Thursday. This meant we all had a very long night on Monday finishing our presentations, so we can let our translators work on the Spanish version all Tuesday.

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Monday was also the day of our IBM photo shoot. Thanks to José and Mauricio our team has these amazing photos to share with you:

Tuesday went by very quickly with each of the teams preparing for the presentation, doing the last minute translations and – of course – cheering for the Chilean soccer team who was playing (and WON!) against Venezuela on the Russia 2018 Qualifiers.

Wednesday was the most important day of the assignment for CORDAP team and IMA team. Thankfully we got emotional support from Carolina and Piera, who traveled back to Arica for this occasion.

Reminder: our projects and goals were introduced by Basti previously: https://cscchile8.wordpress.com/2017/02/27/our-projects/

CORDAP team was the first to start the final presentation, they presented to their Client on Wednesday morning. It was an extensive one that lasted almost 3 hours as CORDAP had so many questions towards our team. In the end IBM team received the most wonderful feedback, saying ‘their external overview and perspective on the program is even more valuable than the deliverables or products they provided. They introduced ideas and deliverables of improvement to help us build a better program and provided us with self confidence.’
CORDAP learned some of the best practices about planning, marketing communications, monitoring and measurement mechanisms, which can be applied to daily operations of the client organizations.

IMA team was up next on Wednesday afternoon. Our team had the honor to have the Mayor of Arica attending the presentation.

We focused on how to map the social funds carried out by DIDECO, how to ensure the current process captures the required data to ensure the maps are continuously updated. We also provided some strategic recommendations regarding how to achieve a higher level of fairness by implementing a new model. Our recommendations were welcomed with open minds and hearts, our Client already started to plan the actual timeline for the road map.

They will extend our recommendations to other departments of IMA and replicate the solution throughout their organization. DIDECO stated that ‘nothing will ever be the same and thank you for this month, what we learned and we will never forget this experience.’

Let me finish my post with the words from one of the Clients on their impression about CSC, before I hand over to my dear Preethi to continue with our last week’s adventures.

“This program has a value that is difficult to measure. It’s the cultural exchange and experiences that are invaluable to human growth. A very important company like IBM focused on Arica, so this was important for the whole community rather than just for the 4 organizations.”

Coffee Chronicles II. – By popular demand

Correction

Apparently, I was wrong in my first CC chapter. Chileans do love coffee and do have it, they just hide it from the gringos (=anyone from a foreign country). They have coffee at home rather than going out to a café, which might explain why it is so difficult to buy one around here. We are in our forth week here, finally it causes less of a headache to find a place where we have a decent cup. It just needs some organizing and a little flexibility from our whole team. Unless it is a Sunday of course, when everything (apart from McDonald’s) is closed.

The view from one of our favorite places – the remarkable El Morro, symbol of Arica. We were greeted with the biggest smile whenever we had a chance to visit the place in downtown, and got kisses and hugs from them every time during the last week. Something I will try to implement in my coffee place at home.

Last visit at Baristta

 

Our other favorite place, Nusta Cafe is where we stopped by very morning, aka ’The Solution’ from Chapter 1. The lady of the coffee shop always had our takeaways ready by the time we get there, but made sure it is still warm.

Our last day at Nusta café. IMA team = Coffee team 🙂 and seems like someone recognized us and commented that they know us from work at IMA office.

 

Coffee/Tea/Icecream ghosts

Since I published the first chapter of Coffee Chronicles, which is also my first love letter to coffee, a few of my teammembers had similar experience. Even the not crazy coffee drinkers started to crave a nice latte (Hello Debbie, Santosh and Tommy), yet the best Coffee Chronicles moment happened to Jen. Being from Canada, she appreaciates tea as much as I do coffee. For her, tea is a hot black tea with a little bit of fresh, cold milk. Note: milk is as important as the tea bag. It was obvious from the beginning that fresh milk is hard to find in Arica, so when we heard there’s a place called Milkhouse (where the coffee is great too), we had to take Jen.

She was excited to order her Te con leche frío (tea with cold milk), and shocked when she received her order, which was an inexplicable creature, mostly close to a chai tea flavored iced milkshake 🙂 The concept of tea with milk was simply never heard of, so they made their version of it.

After the initial moment of shock, Jen was a hero and drank it with a smile. Janelle has the best picture of her, I’ll update the post when I have it. Until then I give you our lazy Sunday at Milkhouse (check out Jen’s drink with the yellow straw. That is the ‘tea with a hint of cold milk’)

Couple of us also developed an addiction to icecreams while in Arica. Usually coffee places served all different kind of flavours, so after a long day at the office, it was not too difficult to get the teams gather for a coffee/icecream run. So the term of icecream ghost (courtesy of Santosh) was born.

I loved that after the 2nd week, whenever someone was having a nice coffee or saw a reference about coffee, it was on our whatsapp group the next minute. I got pictures from Pam, Debbie, Caro, Basti, Tommy – wow, I hope I didn’t miss anyone.

 

Once a cappuccino not always a cappuccino

Surprises with coffee became part of our Arica life. You could never tell what you’ll get when you order something, and we got used to it. To give you an example, ordering the same cappuccino at the same place on the very same day can be two very different drinks. Around lunchtime it is a less foamy-more milky coffee, while early in the afternoon it is shorter coffee with milk served with whipped cream and chocolate. Yet it seemed so normal, it just fits into the Chilean experience which I miss already.

 

Sunday blues.

I can’t even write it, it is just too painful. No.coffee.on.Sundays.until.4.pm. Nothing is open.

The solution? Sleeping in then going for a refreshing swim in the Pacific Ocean.

Yes, it is Sunday again, but this time I’m in Paris, in the middle of my layover, having my second nice coffee. It makes me happy, but I’d even trade these 2 cups for extra 2 days in Chile. Saying goodbye was difficult, I’m writing that post simultaneously. It might be the reason why instead of the funny moments we experienced my focus is more on the emotional moments we had.

 

Coffee chronicles – blog post only for coffee-drinkers (and have a cup with you while reading)

The beginning

I come from a big coffee drinking country. We don’t grow coffee beans, don’t have any famous roasting companies, yet it is in our culture: even my 90-year old grandmother, living in a small village, can’t imagine a day without a good, strong coffee.

When I learned that my CSC assignment would be in South America (aka home of the coffee beans), I figured I will have plenty of opportunities to try fresh and local coffee. But when I arrived to Chile, Santiago to be more precise, soon I had to realize that Chileans simply don’t drink coffee. As strange as it sounds, this is the case – they don’t drink coffee, they prefer tea, hot chocolate, anything but coffee. So even in their capital city I had trouble finding a nice cup of espresso.

At that time I thought it was just the jetlagged me who couldn’t find the best cafés, but once in Arica, I’ll ask around. Silly, naïve me. I had to note to myself that I should never assume anything from any nation anymore. Drinking coffee is not for every culture. So I was in trouble. At least I was not alone, Janelle is also an every day coffee drinker, who understands that it is more than the simple need of caffeine, it is also a ritual and a way to make our days better and our minds calmer. Thank God we ended up in the same subgroup.

My coffees on the way from Budapest to Arica

The Coffee Ghosts

In China, alcoholics are called ghosts as they are addicted to the venomous liquid. When our team, who loves to banter, heard this story, our sweet, non-drinking Helen from Shanghai quickly got the nickname of ‘Ghost’.

It only took Santosh less than 12hours to apply the knowledge he recently acquired, he named Janelle and me the coffee ghosts. To this day, we resist to be addicts of coffee, but in a short moment of full honesty, he might be right with this.

When in Rome Arica

So Chileans are not coffee fans, to say the least. As a consequence they are not really good in making them either. The best we could get was instant americano. I rebelled, rejected to drink any and took an advice from our tea-drinking teammembers to have tea instead. Now please imagine that I, who drinks 3-4 cups of coffee every day and never leaves the house before having at least one good-morning-coffee, had to find a way to start my day without coffee. It was ugly. We had to find a solution. So I googled for the best coffee places in Arica and there was one that opened just 1 week before our arrival to the city and had one of the best coffee machines I’ve ever seen! YAY! And only 400meters away from the office! DoubleYAY! Haha, if only that was that easy. On our first day at the office, it turned out that we will be working in the secondary building, which is 3,6kms away from the best-ever-coffee-machine…

When we found the best place and had a good coffee for the first time in 4 days

The time when we made the Client wait for …. instant coffee

After all the struggles, we took every chance we had to have a decent coffee. Whenever we were in (or near) downtown we would go to our favorite place and order 2 cups each – una para tomar y una para llevar (one to sit with and one to go). On the Tuesday of the second week, we had a meeting in the central office, which meant COFFEE! But the schedule was so tight that in order to get coffee, Janelle and I had to make 5 men wait for us. So we quickly decided that instead of going to the best place, we will go for the second best, which is only 200meters away. So we ran in, asked for 2 café con leche para llevar, and expected our well-deserved paper cups when – to our utter shock – they handed us a big cup of steaming hot milk and 2 bags of instant coffee, with the italian espresso machine being only few centimeters away. Poor girl got so confused that she called his manager to talk to us. By that time we were able to tell them that we would like to ask for the espresso machine version. They looked surprised but switched on the machine and made us two really nice cups of coffee.

No coffee

Before coffee – After coffee

Chickas locas – the day of the morning coffee run

Our driver, Don Jorge, who comes and picks us up every day 8:30 sharp (btw this punctuality is basically nonexistent in Arica), couldn’t believe when Santosh told him that we left the hotel at 7:45, took a taxi to get coffee before getting to the office. Ever since, we are just chickas locas for him. In the sweetest way possible.

The afternoon of the very same day, our dear Client sat down with us, looking really blank, asking what this morning was about. We realized that unintentionally, we made him feel uncomfortable with something that was making perfect sense for us. And with that, we decided to skip the morning coffee run. We were depressed about it, but as were are both quite tough and determined, it was decided and end of discussion.

The next day we looked poor. Santosh was prepared that we would be less energetic (and less happy), but we tried our best. Clearly it was not good enough – our Client asked us 10 minutes in of the morning meeting if we are feeling sick or did we had something bad for dinner last week, because we look so different and not in a positive way. So we had a long discussion about what coffee means to us (luckily, he is a psychologist with a lot of patience and empathy), until he was convinced he cannot take coffee away from us. This was the point when our sweet Client and dearest driver, both of whom eventually gave up on understanding us, simply accepted that we need the coffee.

Yes, we run in the dark

The solution (sort of)

I’m not the one to give up easily, especially if we talk about something very important to me. I had to find a solution, I was so sure that it exists, but it took me 12days to find it. We tried to make amends with instant coffee, which was even more difficult than I’d expected. We tried to order coffee to our office, but such thing doesn’t exist here. We tried coffee in the hotel, which was worse than instant coffee. We also tried going for a run every morning to see if has the same affect on us (the answer is No). And then, out of the sudden, I find a forum where someone shared how he survived in Arica – with a tiny little coffee shop we pass by EVERY SINGLE DAY. I got too excited but didn’t want to get Janelle’s hopes up just yet. So I did my research. The place is really on our way to the office. It has a nice coffee machine based on their pictures on social media. They open at 8:15 on weekdays. And they have a telephone number on their webpage. All of these are completely unusual in Arica. At this point, I had to tell Janelle. We were in a taxi heading to this tiny place within 10minutes. And it was amazing!

Being us, the efficient IBMers, we agreed with the coffee lady that moment that from now on, every day at 8:35 we will stop by to get 2 coffees to go – while our driver is waiting for us with the engines on. She laughed but agreed. And from that Thursday, we were greeted with our precious morning coffee. Except for those days when the coffee lady doesn’t open at 8:15 (not even at 10:05), because she has to drive her son to college. But it’s Chile, we know these things can happen.

THE solution – no wonder we didn’t find it easily, right?

Ah, I guess I write as I talk – way too long. Yet this is only about one third of our stories. Let’s call it Coffee Chronicles I. Those of you who ask what Santosh, our not coffee ghost teammember has to say about this, please do not worry. He is being really sweet about it towards us, and I bet he is having a great deal of fun of us with his friends. 😀

Happy IMA team

We do know how to share, coffee is not only for IMA team, I got to surprise Debbie with a really great latte and she was so touched we hugged for at least a full minute.

Coffee selfie

Did I mention that one good coffee costs more than a whole meal with entrée and second course?

I hope you enjoyed and worth shipped every sip of that cup of coffee that you have in your hands.