Nicole’s Final Week in Ecuador
We are now into our 4th and final week, just finishing off our reports and trying to get a meeting with our ‘boss’ who has been overseas for the past week and is madly catching up with a lot of work.
In some respects the work has been a little frustrating. We’ve had to share a computer, which has meant lots of time spent in internet cafes for one of us. And I have not been able to get hold of any samples of our products (except what I have bought in the supermarkets) which constrains my ability to write a marketing plan a little!
But on the flip side we have had the opportunity to come in and analyse an industry and really apply skills that sometimes you don’t even realise you have. We have been welcomed into the family and invited to tour family farms, started to learn a new language and learnt how to salsa.
And Ecuador is currently under new far left-wing leadership which is making the business community very nervous - a situation we have never really experienced in Australia where party changes usually mean subtle changes to policy.
So it has been a very rich experience and taught us to take the resources we have available to us in wealthier countries not for granted anymore. It has also taught us that the pace of work does not move as quickly here as we are used to!