Radio Workshop Counterpart Trouble

On the 9th of August, at 4:54pm, I received a text message from my counterpart. (By the way, anyone notice that this means I have CELL SERVICE at my site?? Call me!!) Basically, it said, I’m not going to your workshop. Find somebody else. Ok, this is not a big deal in the grand scheme of life BUT it’s “deal-ness” gets bumped up a few notches when my workshop (which including transportation is about a week commitment) starts at noon on the 11th. Are you kidding me??? And I wonder how I don’t get enough work done in this place.
Ok, I started immediately looking for options and didn’t get much sleep that night because I was freaking out. How can I show up without anyone?? I realized that, given the choice, my official counterpart would probably be one of the last people I know to invite but what I really resented was being granted less than 24 hours to find a replacement.
Luckily for me, one of my first choices said YES! Yay! One of my friends in town had also recently chatted with me about starting a women’s club and assessing situations such as self-esteem, mental health, depression, and family violence. So, that was definitely enough for me to invite her to the radio workshop because then we can start a show centered on women that address these situations as well as other information that women in our community would be interested in.
So, end of story is that my new “radio counterpart” as some Peace Corps personnel like to say, is awesome and I’m really excited to bring her to PIURA for our first time and to learn about the radio!