Elections Postponed

The election was today, or it would have been today. Unfortunately, I was told that someone had died in the next village over and that many artisans were attending his funeral. While there were a total of about 40 artisans represented, at least 10 of the attendees were teenagers filling in for their parents.

The artisans that were there were not about to let the kids vote, so the election has been postponed until next Sunday. Here's a picture of the artisans that did attend planning to reschedule the election. Mario, the president is on the right.
Obviously, in the artisans' lives, postponing the election one week is fairly insignificant. For me, spending only six weeks in Peru, it's incredibly frustrating. I've already found out that a group of artisans are leaving on the 24th for a fair in Ecuador, so postponing the election until the 16th doesn't leave me much time to train the new officers. I was hoping to get the director of education trained first and get that person working with the designer to organize workshops. But - as is often the case with development work - change happens slowly and I probably won't get to see the changes take effect. My consolation is that Nexos has a stream of volunteers coming for the next six months to see this work continue.