Last day musings

Despite all the frustration that some of you may have noticed over the last few weeks, I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to have been here in Guatemala this summer. A lot of the learning and value has come from unmeasurable places, but I'm richer for having been here and have new relationships I’m proud to have made or strengthened. 

Some snippets of all this…

Stop doing things for people. Support and help them do them themselves. Charity and handouts create dependency. Empowerment should be the goal.

Making change has to be slow. If it’s not you’ll waste time and money by trying to move too quickly. Build trust, learn about the people, the history, the culture – social problems are probably more likely to sabotage a project than money. In places of poverty or with histories without reliability or transparency people and families are always watching their backs, always finding a way to capitalize when there’s a chance, and always worried that the person next to them is doing the same.

Language is the gateway to successful work. We all know what it’s like to stumble through another language to communicate – surface content, only getting near an idea but not getting exactly right, and the frustration of having so many thoughts locked away because you don’t know the words. That is what we earn when we fail to attempt the language spoken in the place we travel to.

Good intentions are not enough.

Poverty is not having information. Not having information is lacking control of your own life. This is what anchors poverty. Living in darkness keeps families from moving forward in any purposeful direction. This is the reason diseases like diarrhea and the flu kill so many each year; this is why corruption comes so easily – no one has all the information to confront the often not unique problems constantly invading and violating the life of a family in poverty.

If you’re going to have a career in the service business remind yourself each day what your purpose is – whether you are working for an organization, a family, a disease, a community. Remember to serve that purpose above the others when there comes a conflict. If serving a community means letting someone else takeover a project because they are better, do it. This work is not about putting your name on something, it’s not about making a profit, and it’s not about building a resume.

You can’t force change. It takes a long time. And you can’t know every nuance of the problem unless you’ve lived there, so don’t assume that your survey has armed you with infallible information – if a community doesn’t want something, you either have to put in the time to convince them or you have to change your plan. Make sure you spend time in the place you’re targeting:  eat their food, go to church with them, sit through classes with the kids – you can’t do the work properly from the corner office in the US.

It’s ok to make money. Just watch your thresholds. Watch where you draw the lines. Don’t yield on values for a few dollars. NGOs can be just as harmful as profit-seeking businesses, sometimes more – look at the ends AND the means before passing judgment.

Being "the other"

Have you ever felt every pair of eyes linger on you for a few too many seconds? Have you ever known people were talking about you in hushed voices as you walked by? Have you ever known that no matter what you do people are going to overcharge you, make you feel stupid, and give you bad information? Have you ever had to swallow all the independence you’ve built over the years and admit that you can’t do simple things by yourself? Have you ever known, with 100% certainty that you don’t belong?

Sure, I’ve had people mutter under their breath or watch me a second too long. But never every person I passed. I’ve never had strangers warn me of my safety just a block from my house. I’ve never felt so dependent on others. It’s an invaluable lesson, even if I’d rather not be in the midst of it.

Being a woman in the US has its setbacks: balancing proving myself as a competent young woman while not letting the fact that I’m female cloud relationships with older professionals. I will always be starting slightly behind my male counterparts, suffering from ingrained and often unconscious cultural biases, let alone competing against males from business schools, law schools etc. American society simply values that much more than a woman with an M.Ed. But I have the fortune of being white, having a strong education and a diversity of experience with a passion for succeeding in everything I do. I can at least get in the door, even if I have to work harder than others to be taken as a seriously.

I’m spending my last week in Guatemala by myself, including a few days here in the City and Las Conchas. While I’ve walked around alone before, this is the first time that I know I won’t get a reprieve by having my personal Mexican bodyguard around later. I’m not afraid that something is going to happen to me, but I can’t shake the nerves as hard as I try (because let’s face it, that’s a very realistic fear). And I’m glad I’m here this way. I’ve never felt so conspicuous but I’m glad I’m learning what it feels like to be foreign; to be different; to be the minority; to work through constant discomfort. Now I have some small idea what immigrants and minorities must feel every day. But I can never really know because I’m a white American. Whether I’ve earned it or not and despite lacking language and cultural skills, I will almost always be taken seriously. Whether they want to or not, people will usually listen to me, meet with me, entertain me at the minimum. What must it be like for someone in the United States, for a Guatemalan in the US, who doesn’t draw that inherent respect?


But there have been plenty of people to help ease the discomfort. Even today, during my hour+ spent in a taxi my driver asked to be facebook friends. How sweet... 

Take that extra step to help someone different, someone that is obviously an outsider, feel seen, heard and equal. It doesn’t take much and can mean a great deal – hold a door, make casual conversation, look someone in the eye, ask about their children. If you can do more, wonderful, but these small acts of human decency should be routine anyway. Yet sometimes they are let slide with people that are different because it makes us uncomfortable. If you as the majority feel uncomfortable imagine what the other person feels – make the gesture, it only takes a minute. Step out of your bubble.

Life Update #6: Last few weeks as a Chapina

The last couple weeks have been some to remember…exhausting, frustrating and moving.  I guess I’ll just go in chronological order and attempt to keep it short….

First off, we met with Genésis Empresarial, the MFI we came to Guatemala to partner LC with for subsidized housing through the government. Only took 3 ½ weeks to get that meeting. Then she told us they aren’t working with the government anymore and given the upcoming elections, it would be best to table any projects until no earlier than March 2012. Guess it’s a good thing we’d been working on alternative solutions! Frustrating but given her reaction, anecdotes we’d collected, and the experience of ConstruCasa I'm glad we didn’t start the project only to lose money, be put indefinitely on hold, or have homes constructed 25% and abandoned.

The second objective in our meeting was to discuss Genésis’ willingness to be the Guatemalan partner of a new microfinance fund in the US to benefit LC and later other communities in Guatemala. This was very positively received and we’re looking forward to helping construct the fund when we get back to Nashville.

Wondering when we were ever going to do anything other than work this summer, we decided to join Tyler for a trip to Tikal…that day. Tikal is the largest excavation site in the Americas and home to the largest Mayan city. The driver of our overnight bus to Tikal was apparently unaware that a 70-degree night does not require full heat for 9 hours. We arrived sweating and dazed at 6am in Flores where we jumped on a 1 ½ hour shuttle to the ruins. Enormous temples and stunning views – hard to imagine building them then. At the final temple we climbed had a nearly vertical staircase, with the bottom rails loosely held down by a rope (safety first). This is one of the few times I've had anxiety from heights – what a climb, and then in the rain!

A handful of Shalom board members and the Executive Director gathered in Guatemala for a few days, giving us a chance to share the information we’d collected, the projects in process, and our recommendations thus far. Most exciting was arranging for them to see the homes Un Techo Para Mi País built in Palencia, a town outside of Guatemala City. We hoped this would build momentum for partnering with UTPMP in Las Conchas. Everyone was able to walk through a home at UTPMP’s offices but unfortunately only two were able to make it to the town – sometimes cars just don’t make it up the unpaved mountains!

The next day Mario and I set out in the afternoon to join UTPMP on a weekend build. The task: 50 homes, 3 towns, 2 days, 500 volunteers. For a country with a very limited culture of service, there was an incredible amount of energy to start the work! I don’t think I could have organized a volunteer army of 500 college friends for 2 ½ days of work; very impressive.

Villa Canales is actually a resettlement of victims of Hurricane Mitch – 1998.  The owner of the land made an agreement with the government to let them live there, put in roads and water, etc. None of that has happened – he takes pictures of other services, sends them in and collects his pay. After a night of sleeping on a classroom floor, we awoke for jail-style breakfast at 530am and were put into our groups. I had a very nice, very calm group but I enjoyed them tremendously. And appreciated that they suffered through Spanish with me instead of speaking English…which they all speak well. Tomás, our Costa Rican leader, was constantly looking out for me, sure to include me in various tasks and explain things clearly for me. I hated having my hand held but the extra minute or so I needed to process directions meant someone else was already doing it.

The first day we worked hard. The builds include zero power tools because families often live in questionable land situations and may need to take the house apart to move later. That being said, we dug 12 1m-deep holes to secure the pillars that lifted the house. Shovel – iron pole. Level – plastic tube with water. And then secured the floor panels to end the day! A bathing suit and sink shower later we were some of the first to sleep (are we getting old?). The next morning after learning how to play “Ninja” we set off again. We had the walls up before breakfast/brunch and ate with Don Rito, who would receive the home. Then we set about getting the roof up, the windows in and finally the door in place. What an incredible sight to sit on the roof and see the 30 or so sites getting new homes!

Exhausted but exhilarated from such a hands-on weekend – one that made an immediate difference – Mario and I had a project of our own to be excited about. The power of social media graced us when Shannon posted a blurb about making solar lights (55W equivalent) from soda bottles. It didn’t take long to see the potential for such a project in LC. Kevin from Shalom took care of materials and on Tuesday we arrived ready to experiment. After buying 200Q worth of soda and giving it out to a million kids we worked with two Guatemalan high school kids to cut the lamina, cleaned the bottles, secured with wire, and sealed the bottle in the lamina. The next step: who is going to be willing to let us cut a hole in their roof for the first light? Given that almost no one believed us that the soda bottle was going to be a light, this could have been tricky. Luckily Rudy has workshop and volunteered that we could try in there. Skeptical at first, after installing that light he was ecstatic! The light was as bright as any bulb and clearer than the electrical one he had in place already. A roaring success.

Tomorrow I will spend probably my last day in Las Conchas working on these lights. A young boy talked to Mario while we were building at the school and even though he was skeptical, asked if he could have one at his house. When we found out where he lived it was pure serendipity. The boy lives in a tin home of 12 people including 9 kids. They have no water, no lights, no electricity, and no stove. The mom happened to walk by while we were installing at Rudy’s and after showing her, she told us how happy it would make her to know that her kids could do their homework inside instead of having to go outside, if they did it at all. If nothing else comes out of this summer, I think this light project will give both of us enough comfort that it was not a waste.

Career Suicide

 This past weekend we spent an exhausting 2 ½ days helping build 50 homes in 2 days. Yes, those numbers are correct. And we built them without power tools – digging holes with iron poles and your hands is not something I necessarily need to do on a regular basis, but it was great to take part. We built that way because if the families we were helping don’t have machines, why should we? Un Techo Para Mi País (UTPMP) is a large nonprofit organization founded in Chile and currently working in 19 countries throughout the Americas and soon to open an office in Madrid. While the US and Madrid offices were born specifically for fundraising,  Chile has transitioned from constructor to fundraising/operations. Why? Because they literally built so many homes that there is no longer a need for the type of housing they offer. The current director said they are all trying to commit “career suicide” as we climbed a mountainside cornfield to visit a family’s new home.

Each time our camp gathered this weekend for announcements or to take a moment to try and grasp the reality in which the families we were building for live, one of the leaders or staff invariably mentioned UTPMP’s fervent hope that there will be a day when they are no longer needed, when they become obsolete. What more appropriate goal could any nonprofit have? If the goal is development - is serving the needs of others in order to alleviate those needs – shouldn’t eradication of that particular need, and therefore of your own services, be the ultimate goal?

If you are truly in the business of serving the needs of others, the hope should be that one day that need disappears. When I think about the kinds of programs and organizations I want to work for I search for and strive for sustainable development – not flash in the pan fixes. Don’t give clothes, lets figure out how to establish a business to make affordable clothes in that community/country – jobs, GDP increases, and the clothes. Don’t just give meds to treat diarrhea, fix the source of the illness – water, food etc. Either prevent the problem from existing or provide a solution that will survive after you leave – fostering jobs, growth and pride among the community where it matters most. I hope that every time I embark on a project in development, I can create/be part of something so sustainable that I work myself right out of a job, or at least that the mission is forced to change. What a great world that would be.

...I will also be setting up a personal donation page for my jobless self (Mom & Dad, aren’t you excited?)

900 Hot Dogs

Life Update #5:

Again, our lives have primarily been made up of meetings, luckily a couple have involved traveling…breaking up our routine of the mid-morning decision whether we’ll leave our apartment or not based on if we have internet and how much we (I) want espresso.

We did have the opportunity to have dinner with about 40-50 people, including Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland…sounds a lot more glamorous than it was. It did force me to the mall for real clothes and shoes though, which Mario keeps reminding me I need, as I basically brought a wardrobe of Target clothes thinking I wouldn’t need to look nice much this summer. Little did I know.

We then went to Antigua for several meetings and seeing a few friends. First we met with Constru Casa – another organization I kind of love that works in places like Las Conchas and does its own in-house microfinance to build 2 and 3 BR homes with bathrooms. It costs the family up to $20/mo/4years. Stefan, the guy currently in charge, was incredibly open with information about his organization and his ideas on exploring ways to move the organization away from total donor-dependency. Hopefully we, especially Mario, can not only use some of their ideas in our own work, but help him improve their business practices.

We met with Steve and Allison, from Shalom in the US. Despite only 2 staff in Guatemala, they are dedicated to maintaining the new surgery center, a secondary school, a new nutrition program, 10-15 mission trips throughout the year, and expanding the housing program. Admirable as this may be, it concerns me and I hope more staff will be hired. The money Shalom puts into this work is significant and I am simply afraid that their money and good intentions will be lost or inefficiently used. But Steve was very open to our ideas so I’m optimistic that we'll be able to create positive change.

After meeting up with Omar and my friend Laura – British friend from Spanish school – for dinner and drinks…and a tour of Antigua in the rain…we made plans to see water filter construction in action the next day. After a little bit of a late start we made our way to the chickenbuses and on to Parramos. The 20min trip took a bit longer than planned but what a great town Omar had brought us to! A beautiful square as the center of town, lots of local comedors and none of the tourism you find in Antigua. A mile later we reached the worksite but didn’t participate much, as a group was being trained on filter construction… and really there’s not a lot of rocket science to making a cement filter. The hard part is figuring out the physics of it before you even start building. We pitched in when we could, asked some questions, pondered its applicability to Las Conchas, and got a free lunch (you know I love free food).

We also went to Xela, which I’ve already talked about in the last bit on Compartamos, but the MFI aside I loved that city and hope I’ll get to spend more time there in the future. It’s the 2^nd biggest in Guatemala but feels more like a small town that just keeps on going. What a nice change to be in a big city without everyone telling me to “please be careful” every time I walk around. 

While Mario left me to fend for myself last weekend I went to Las Conchas twice. Friday was the infamous 900 hotdog cookout with the Shalom group. We cooked, dressed - mayo on hotdogs??? - and wrapped 900 hotdogs. Then we drove to LC and had all the people that were waiting for us sit in the dirt in the heat in circles so that the foreigners, who can’t speak Spanish, could hand out free food and trinkets…not even healthy food…for an hour. As much as I appreciate the sentiment, not my favorite life moment. Helllooooo dependency and entitlement. Great lessons. And I didn’t even get to have one! But after my obligatory help giving stuff out and translating was over I hung out with a crew of boys on a truckbed and let them use the camera for an hour while all the little girls thought it was great fun to tickle me to the ground. That was a good time at least! The Shalom crew that was there, and the new one in town this week, had some great people who return to Guatemala year after year – their hearts and intentions are in the right place and their openness to change is encouraging for what Mario and I hope to accomplish.

The weekend was highlighted by going running on Sunday by myself and getting caught in the rain. That and making salad finally, fresh food hallelujah. Oh, and I finally watched Inception…now I understand last year’s hype.

Then Monday I headed back to Las Conchas to help Tyler with a health survey and to gather some basic data for our own tracking sheet. After Rudy joined us, kind of an unofficial town leader, we managed to talk to 26 families. However, it’s hard to talk to people about their health when they often don’t even know they’re sick because no doctors are seen until it becomes an emergency. But it was interesting and good to see how surveying goes to preempt any issues we might have on ours.

It’s a fascinating and heart-wrenching place – to see 14 kids living in one tin shack that keeps adding tin walls out the back; to see a kid with a mouth infection that’s been untreated for a year and is probably eating at his jawbone; to hear Rudy talk about trying to teach kids English so they can get jobs but he can’t keep it up when he doesn’t have a stable job; to know the school is considered a treasure when there are 450 kids for 12 teachers. Here’s hoping our time here has a positive impact and that next time I’m here things will be just a little bit better.

 

1- Rick & co. at Shalom site. 2- Denis and the street cat (his family is getting the new home). 3- Home nearby. 4- At least their stove is outside...the source of so much sickness. 5- Hotdog giveaway... 6- My two new friends. 7- New friends and Giovanni returns with more kissing.


More LC Pics: https://picasaweb.google.com/102104549777635189839/LasConchasJunAug2011?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Pleasantly Surprised

As organizations expand we find more hands in the pot, more people involved in decision making, and more variety in outcome expectations - making it harder to truly serve the best interests of a given community. Missions become bogged down in bottom lines while diplomacy and politics grow more important to sustaining the organization. Larger organizations often mean larger amounts of program money – a good thing – but also that the relationship with the community diminishes, leading to a disconnect between the wants/needs of the community and the opinions of the organization.

At least, that’s what I thought. I continue to see these tradeoffs happening at the expense of the people for whom they claim to work, but was pleasantly shocked last week in Xela to have my assumptions of a large-scale, public organization shattered.

Compartamos is Latin America’s largest microfinance bank. Based out of Mexico, beginning as a traditional nonprofit MFI and going public in 2007, they've expanded to Peru (March '11) and now to Guatemala (June '11). The billion dollar bank has opened its first office in Xela and just four weeks in already has 4 offices to handle the demand of its 2,300 clients. This public MFI tapped into my reservations that they (and many nonprofit MFIs) often generate significant profits from the poor they are supposed to be lifting out of poverty.

What shattered my assumptions was the high-touch customer service on which this billion dollar company relies and its flexibility to local conditions. Given its success in Mexico, I would have expected a simple transplant of that model to Guatemala. But instead they recognized the differences: the deeper poverty, the tradition of monthly payment instead of Mexico’s weekly, and the extent of rural poverty, which lies just 5mins from urban centers. They work 6 days per week, 10-12 hours per day and work on their clients' schedules, not their own.

Once a group is formed the two promoters and their supervisor attend meetings for group payments every two weeks (in Mexico it’s every week). These staff members never physically touch the money the women bring – the group’s treasurer handles it and seals it in a bank bag. Each member and staff has a history of payments signed by each of the 3 group leaders and the promoter. The group assigns the required amount for savings and penalty fees - building consensus and ensuring Compartamos won't be "the bad guy".

The first meeting we attended was a group of 12 women making their first payment. Here we saw the careful handling of money and the importance placed on attendance. The air, however, was full of anxiety, as this was probably the first time most of these women had ever made a payment on a loan.

The second meeting was a loan disbursement – the first time the women had officially gathered with Compartamos. We didn't begin until all members were present but the large room was electric with unspoken excitement. A touching moment was when 3 of the women shyly explained that they could not read or write and used the ink pad to sign with their fingerprint. This delicate situation was handled with ease by the staff, as if it were a common occurrence. 

The third was the a group of 14 making their second payment. They were more urban and a little better-off than the others. Where previous groups of rural Mayan women had been friends and family, this group were acquaintances at best – some still didn’t know the others’ names. The promoter handled latecomer fines well – not succumbing to attitudes and explaining that they are an example to their peers and families and by habitually saving they would pass that value to their children, creating greater opportunities in the future.

Not only did I witness a huge, public and profitable organization maintaining high-touch customer relations and flexibility with the poor, I saw a high-level of professionalism inherent in organizations in the game of providing a service for profits. I've felt for some time that organizations of any kind should be run as businesses. But as I am gathering experience with various business models – for and non- profit – I'm finding this is more important than I already thought. So many nonprofits waste time and resources because the bottom line is not a priority. As sacrilegious as this sometimes still sounds to me, that interest – appropriately checked by a strong mission – often leads to better service, efficiency and evaluation of practice and results. Of course this is not the only way to run a successful program, but I continue to see the benefits that come with this model.

There are lots of ways to solve a problem, don’t make assumptions until you see something in action, you never know when you’ll be surprised. The best way to know something is to go out in the field and touch it, I hope we all remember to do that as we work in our chosen field delivering services to others.

First Impressions

Living with and getting to know a new group of people is one of the best ways to learn about yourself and how you are perceived by the rest of the world, especially the world that hasn’t known you since you were 15. Most people never realize it, but new people make me incredibly nervous. I’m fascinated by people and obviously excited when new ones enter my life, but I have this complex where I never quite know what someone would ever find interesting about me, and I worry I’ll bother them – What could I possibly bring to the table in the relationship? This unrealistic quirk, I’m finding, creates a distance that many are uncomfortable crossing.

I’m realizing, over the last year or so living in two cities and another country with post-college friends, that I don’t share enough of myself, making my first impression challenging for a lot of people. First impressions are vital, especially as we grow up and our networks of friends spread out around the world, get married, or win the privilege of 60+ hr/wk jobs. We need to learn how to reach out to others around us for fulfilling relationships.

I’m also finding, via this blog, that even with some of my closest friends, I don’t share some of the personal thoughts and feelings that they deserve. Especially when I am privvy to most of their trials and tribulations, their joys and dreams. This saddens me and I am resolved to make some changes. Those lifelong friendships are what, at least for me, make the world go ‘round. My friends keep me sane, keep me happy, and are my priority. To keep those relationships rich, we have to remember to share of ourselves just as much as we need to be there for our friends – relationships are only truly alive if they work in both directions.

Doing the work I want to do – improving lives to a point of self-sustainability and personal development previously unreachable – requires significant interpersonal care. It takes trust. It takes patience. It takes determination. It takes resilience.

If I’m going to not only have the personal life I want, but also the professional one, I have to pay closer attention to my own personal development before I can truly help others in Mayeroff’s sense of a caring relationship (Cass, Shannon, stop laughing right now!). Those relationships require hard work and patience, courage and humility – a first impression of unapproachability will hinder any work I do or relationships I hope for, and therefore this development of my own self is going to become a priority.

Don’t let yourself be complacent in developing your own image, values and relationships. Personal awareness is one of the most difficult tasks, one that is never complete, and one of the most vital if you truly want to impact the world around you – whether as corporate manager, a nonprofit director, a teacher, a doctor, or as a friend. Pay attention to what you put into the world and keep striving to be the person you want to be. 

Chacarra! Chacarra! Cinco! Chacarra!

Life Update #4:

In some ways a LOT has happened over the last week and a half…and in some ways we really haven’t done much.

Last week, our first week in Guate, we met with Claudia & Maria José, who run Shalom down here, to make sure we were all on the same page, do a little brainstorming, and make a few connections in the city. A couple days later we met with Donaldo, the Director/Principal of the primary school in Las Conchas. He is excited at the prospect of moving forward and finally, after several years on his end, getting some houses built for families in the town. But he’s also anxious because so many different attempts have been made and so little progress achieved.

We’ve also been reaching out to anyone and everyone that would be relevant to the community’s needs, primarily around housing and water filters. We’re hoping to move beyond simply the microfinance model we started with earlier this year, but to provide a continuum of options that might help a broader swath of people gain a safe, durable home. The microfinance option with the government subsidy pairing provides most likely the largest and one of the more timely options but it is also more expensive than some can afford.

Our first success has been with Un Techo Para Mi Pais, an amazing organization that works throughout Latin America, started in Chile and began operations in Guatemala in 2008. They build transitional houses for families in extreme poverty (I believe the “line” is less than Q800/month or just over $100). These homes are small, wooden, and intended to last at most 8-10years. They cost $1300 and the family pays a 10% fee. But not only do these wonderful people build homes, they stay involved in the community doing education, health and vocational work tailored to the situation of the community. By the time we finished the meeting they’d arranged time to come to Las Conchas with us the next week. They’d never worked in an “urban” setting and had been looking for places in the City that were safe…a bigger challenge than it sounds!

So the next Wednesday five of us traveled to LC to talk to Donalgo and Camilo – President of the town and an endearingly strong but compassionate man – for Techo to present themselves and their work. Then we walked around the newer, and poorer, part of LC with Camilo so they could assess the situation and if it looked like something they wanted to investigate more. What a great trip! The word “ideal” was used more than once. And these guys are great – once they see a viable project they get started; and once the interviews and family assessments are done, they start building. They’re pretty much my ideal. See pics below for current state of affairs.

In other news, we’ve reached out to several major banks that deal in microfinance to investigate how operations are run here and what options we may have. Genésis has been difficult to nail down and we can’t wait for them, though we continue to hope that that relationship will bear some fruit in the next weeks. We have meetings with several banks, both in the City and in Xela. We’ve also contacted another housing organization based outside of Antigua to see what their projects are like and if they can support an income bracket that perhaps Un Techo would not, in hopes of reaching yet more people. Constru Casa has its own micro-credit like operation to build homes, requiring a moderate but manageable contribution by families for their homes. We don’t know if this will bear any tangible fruit, but the meeting is exciting regardless. Finally, we are pondering solutions to water, inspired by Cody & Omar’s work and our resesarch on various types of filters used in areas like LC.

So it is a lot. And yet, we’ve done it from our computers and phones (first from the “home office” and now the Guate version of Sbux “& Café”). None of it is set in stone but there is building momentum I can get excited about. Un Techo has reinvigorated me in the project and Mario’s connections to MFIs are deep, so there is hope yet there. I’m looking forward to seeing what we can bring to this community in such a short time. We will finally start some manual work and interacting directly with families through home-builds this weekend with Shalom. In a few weeks we’ll get to work in another town with Techo to build their homes and see their program in action.

The rest of life in the City has been much better than anticipated. Zone 10 is lively and relatively safe. The only drawback, other than the currently unusable wifi, is that we are feet from a chickenbus stop where the ayudantes have an impressive capacity to yell “CHACARRA!!!!!” for hours (it seems all the buses at this stop go there, why must we yell so much?!). Drowning out even the horns and whistles and rivaling the planes taking off overhead. Sleeping in is a feat I have yet to achieve. And there are certainly more guns than I’ve ever seen in my life (private security outnumber the police). We are continually told stories of violence and crime…but within several blocks of our place I feel quite safe. We do also live next to the Westin, InterContinental and a few other major hotels, so security is above average. But we’ve met up with friends a few times, explored the neighborhood and found some offices we’re trying to schedule meetings with, all on foot with no problems. Outside of this Zone is a different story, but that’s why we’re living where we are. We even have our cabbie, Vitelio, as we have been all but forbidden to ride the chickenbuses. So far so good, keep your fingers crossed!

 


 


1. Local church  2-5. homes  6-7. my novios  8. how did he figure that feature out?  Me, Mau, Mario & Olivia

You don't have to come to Guatemala for this

I’ve been surprised how many times in the last couple weeks, or even in March, that I’ve said or thought, “That’s just like in Martinsville [or Philly] when…” Poverty touches every town in every country. Usually the problems look alike, sure they have different faces and different depths, but rarely is the situation truly unique. People tell me how remarkable what we're trying to do here his, how noble it is, and I appreciate those comments...but just because I traveled to another country doesn't make addressing these problems necessarily "better" or "more" than facing the ones at home, in my opinion. **I'm not trying to downplay the problems here with this post, I'm just trying to highlight that poverty isn't unique to one or a handful of nations. 

For instance. Last night I was told a story of Guatemalan mennonites smuggling drugs under their caps, because who would be as insensitive as to search the cap of a sweet mennonite lady? Immediately, I thought of Martinsville. Many of you know this story but as a short recap: in 2005 the sherriff, several police officers (including my DARE officer), the pastor of the largest regional Baptist church, and several civilians were indicted for laundering money, machine guns, and selling drugs that had been pulled off the streets. Cops and pastors: Same thing.

For instance. Government corruption and inefficiency. Well, we all know the US isn’t immune to that! It’s far worse in Guatemala – we need only look at the two leading candidates in the election: Sandra Torres - who is divorcing the current President so she can “marry the people of Guatemala” (it’s illegal for close relatives to serve as President) - and Otto Perez Molina - a former military big-whig responsible for a significant amount of death in the country. I don’t think I need to provide examples of corruption and inefficiency for everyone…go read a paper. Same problems different aesthetics.

For instance. Homelessness and alcoholism. They go hand in hand everywhere. While telling me how the boys I'd spent the day with were sons of at least one if not two alcoholic parents, my teacher went on about the drunks that slept in the streets, lost their homes, and left their families in destitution. She was shocked when I said the same thing happens in the US, in big cities and small towns. There are homeless people everywhere, we just do a better job of hiding it in the States. Sure, changing geography doesn't fix these problems - that's not the silver bullet; tough love has an important role. But tough love includes love, don't forget that when you pass the homeless guy laying on the grate for warmth.

For instance. Schools. Where to begin? My private school, Carlisle, has served me well, but the school is crowded and good teachers difficult to keep. However, high standards have kept the school performing well above average. Unfortunately though, this high standard is inaccessible by much of the community – a place suffering from one of the nation’s longest and highest unemployment rates – creating a dual society. The public schools do have high performing programs, but the caliber of teacher and funding from elementary through high school, when college and scholarships become pivotal for disadvantaged students, are sometimes lackluster. Rural, poor and minority populations achieve significantly lower than majority and urban populations. Dropout rates remain high. In Philadelphia the adult illiteracy rate hovers around 24%. The problems in Guatemala are similar: Rural schools suffer lower learning and achievement than do city schools. Indigenous populations are worse off than the majority population. Private schools are inaccessible to much of the population. Funding for school programs is low. Same thing.

*An interesting note on education here. My teacher told me that while the students in private schools achieve higher marks and often have more success after school, their actual learning is generally lower. Private schools are known to be easier than public schools. Corruption fuels these schools and marks are paid for instead of earned. She noted that when she was in school her friends left the public school because their grades were poor and attended private school, where they were among the best in their class. Yet their reading and language skills, both in Spanish and English, were significantly less than her own.

Poverty is poverty is poverty. Sure, the poverty in indigenous communities in the highlands of Guatemala, among tribes in Congo or slums in Bangladesh is far far worse than the poverty faced by welfare recipients in the US. But that doesn’t mean it’s not poverty, does it? Maybe if we stop glorifying the poverty in these far away places, that so few of us can truly touch, we can change the conversation. Maybe then poverty becomes what it is - poverty, the same at its core around the world: people lacking basic human capabilities. Then, instead of tossing aside poverty in our own communities because it's not poor "enough", we can cause real change at home. This is not to say that the extreme problems abroad aren't just that, extreme, but we can't all tackle the problems of potable water in Sub-Saharan Africa. We just can't. But just because we can't do that, we shouldn't forget the problems families face at home either, even if they don't seem as bad. We need people all over the world to focus on the extreme problems we know so much about, it's vital, but if you have another path in life, that doesn't mean poverty is erased from your reality, because it exists in every corner of the world. We all have our part, some larger than others, but we all have our part.

In Guatemala I’m constantly reminded to support the local artisan or farmer instead of the mass-market stores/restaurants. I’m reminded that while it might feel unfair to spend Q20 more per boat ride just because I’m white, that $2.75 means a lot more to them than it does to me, so I shouldn’t get upset. I remember that I’m luckier than literally billions of people…I need to leverage that luck, not exploit it. Sure I think I’ve earned a few luxuries and I’m not ashamed of that, but we should all be careful about how we use our money and resources, where we use them, and who we support. Think about the poverty in your town – you don’t have to come to Guatemala to find it. The solutions can be small - there's no silver bullet - and we all have a role. Go support a farmer’s market, join a Board or do pro-bono work, buy the Contributor a few times a month in Nashville, or help out the teachers at the local school.

Life Update: Last week at the Lake...musings later

Update #3:

It has been an incredible week since my last writing…and I’ve done quite a bit! Will try to give you a vivid but concise sum (not likely, sorry!)…

Monday we had another cooking session at school with the maestras – chuchitos, doblados (fried tortillas stuffed with potatoe) and guacamole. Followed by some delish (disinfected) strawberry birthday cake…gotta love disinfected fruits! Birthday celebration part deux was at Pana Rock in town for two students. Met some fun and interesting Guatemalans they had befriended – good to know some locals for sure.

Wednesday was my last day of class and I spent most of the 4 hour session answering Florinda’s questions about what we’d all been up to at Pana Rock. Gossip never gets old, eh? Thus a great last day of class. Then we all went to a nature reserve in Pana for the afternoon. A nice little walk out of town avoiding being obliterated by chickenbuses led us to a park of fruit trees, café, monkeys and waterfalls.

Lisa and Tricia arrived on Thursday midday from Antigua as their last stop before heading back to the States. Since they weren’t getting in until a little later I decided to visit Santa Catarina Palopo, the town just to the left of Pana. Little did I know private boats are the only option and they start at Q150 (normal public lancha rate: Q25). So I walked.

The 4km took about 40minutes between flip flops (oops) and the rolling mountains…and avoiding the tuk tuk’s barelling downhill. Despite the semi-confused look on almost everyone’s face upon seeing a gringa, sola, walking on the cliffs, I felt very safe and the views were stunning. When I finally rolled into Sta. Cataraina it seemed very small, less touristy, and had a great little square with a simple church even though it clearly served as the hub of town. I grabbed a Q1 ($0.13) wedge of fresh watermelon on the street and wandered to eat by the dock. School was still in session and I found some great soccer fields close to the water. Sitting on the docks you can tell this is primarily a fishing/farming town and for reasons I’m still working out the tourism exists but they don’t attract that many people. The rains really hamper the ability of bigger boats to get in and out of the docks because of washed up algae/plant life, so maybe that’s part of it.

 

After my watermelon and musings I wandered back towards the center to find that school was letting out! The chaos of that many kids dumping onto the street is electric. And all the stands of fruit, bags of colored drink, toys, and etc had popped up in that little bit of time. Soccer games ensued and little girls giggled together in corners. I obviously sat myself right in the middle of it all on the steps of the church, debating which soccer game to join and when. I am now probably the background on about 15 different kids’ cell phones. All of a sudden a little girl with her backpack and a bag of clothes joined me on the steps. Melba wasn’t nervous to talk to me at all! We did a quick introduction, talked about school (classes of only 24! Hallelujah), and she decided she wanted to take me around. So off we went – first to find her friend Cindy across the little plaza, then to the beach. There was some kind of handoff of the clothes I still haven’t figured out…I think someone was going to wash them later in the lake. Then Melba and I wandered up into the depths of the town where clearly few gringos go – based on the snickers and grabbings of little kids we passed – and saw her house and her friend’s house. I felt very uncomfortable with the intrusion but didn’t know how to explain to her why both her friends and I to an extent seemed uncomfortable. Anyway, problem avoided because we headed right back down to the lake. She took me to some of the local swimming holes, explained that the plants in the water kept some of the boats with tourists out, I taught her how to skip rocks, we collected snails, and then played soccer with a tiny ball on the beach. I met her grandfather briefly (he has four wives) and an aunt – both of whom just laughed at the pair of us wandering hand in hand through the alleys! Then she got a hold of my camera. Well, we all know kids are sponges and technology is exceptionally easy for them. I found myself on a modeling shoot and she managed to take around 86 pics with my camera until the battery ran out. *Word to the wise: careful about teaching kids about the zoom feature or you wind up with an unnecessary number of photos that are just far too close to look good. Despite the large amount of deleting I would have to do later, spending the day with Melba was enchanting and I’m so lucky she found me!

I finally extracted myself from Melba’s tiny hand because I needed to get back to Pana to find Lisa. Unfortunately I had no texts left and she couldn’t use the phone, so we really were uncoordinated. Then I found there weren’t really tuktuks in Sta. Catarina so I hoofed it back another 40 mintues. Got a great tan though!

Friday they headed to Tecpan to see the Mayan ruins there. Since I visited the site in March I decided it’d be a good day to climb a volcano. So at 6am I waited for my bus…nothing. 6:15 Andrea from the tour place picks me up and explains that the guide is waiting in San Pedro for me at a café. I talk to him, all is good, eventually get a lancha across the lake..which of course stops at every little nook of a town on the way there. I get to the café over an hour later than planned and no one but an older American guy is there – no guide. I wait, I call the four office numbers about 20 times, leave messages, go back to the café – nothing. Angry and really not wanting to waste the day I get some coffee by the lake to regroup. Wound up with a Q200 guided hike down El Noz (a mountain there looks like a face laying down…thus “the nose” or “el indio”). Off Pedro and I go – solo tour with a guy I don’t know? Why not. Chickenbus #3 has been survived, btw. After telling him my volcano tour saga he helps me call the office, where someone finally answers, and get them to pay up. I know my Spanish has advanced if I can yell at someone, on a low-quality cell phone, in Spanish, on a mountain, in a chickenbus. Good sign.

Anyway, we get up the mountain, jump out on the side of the road by some farms, buy some corn from a lady walking down the street for breakfast (absolutely delicious corn), and start our wander through the farms. I could never have found this trek on my own and no group would take this route. But being just the two of us we just walked through the coffee and corn farms while everyone was out working to get to this small path he knows. At its most luxurious the path was a foot wide, at its least a few inches and we would pause so Pedro could machete some of the brush away…followed by me praying the roots of the tall grasses were strong enough to keep me from toppling over the side! What a VIEW. He even took me to a small waterfall tucked into the mountain that serves as the main water source for the town of San Juan. Basically there’s a 3in PVC pipe that just hangs among the trees all the way from the waterfall in the mountain to a tank somewehre in town…so every now and then you step over or duck under loose PVC pipe. This is the “clean” water – compared to towns that get it from the lake, anyway.

We walk out of the path after passing the corn & frijoles, café, and aguacate fields and right into San Juan. Unexpected but a great surprise so I call Omar, who I find out isn’t working and even when he is it’s on the coffee co-op at the mouth of the trail. How fortiutous. Pedro then takes me to a sewing co-op where I get suckered into an incredible bag. Spent the rest of the day at the coffee co-op hearing about the water project, life in San Juan, and waiting out the monsoon.

After the rains a group came to hear about the project he’s doing and I made friends with the neighbor kids. They were so adorable and so excited about the camera. Once I let them have it there was no turning back. Pictures of EVERYONE and EVERYTHING. Unfortunately there was a fence and barbed wire between us so some of the pics are less than stellar. But I didn’t get that camera back for at least an hour. That night when I got back I made sure to print out some pictures to give them – printed photos are not common so I thought $3 was worth a little excitement over a simple gift.

In the morning (Saturday) we headed to San Pedro for some wandering. There’s not a ton there – a cool set of cafes and restuarants tucked into a maze in the back of town but not a ton to do and they wanted to shop a bit more. So off to San Juan we went and had a great second tour of the co-op’s! They bought a pretty decent amount and the women were fantastically kind and appreciative. One woman explained that by supporting their stores we supported the women, and when the women have money, their kids go to school. She said that was why the streets were cleaner and calmer than most of the other towns. Talk about hitting Lisa and I where we’re weakest! Such a phenomenal sentiment from her and one that cemented my need to go back at least once before I leave. Anyway, then back to San Pedro and immediately caught a lancha to Santiago so only had a quick goodbye with the duo.

Santiago was good, it’s the biggest town on the lake like I said last time. We went to get custom leather sandals made for him from a local guy – one hour for custom shoes at only $20? Sheesh. Then had a leisurely lunch, grabbed the shoes, took a decent hike out of town to buy hot sauce, and then back to San Pedro. My last night on the lake – so sad!

Sunday I headed back to Pana. I wandered up to a woman making jewlery on the road and her stuff was incredible. Before I knew it I’d bought a ring and am looking forward to seeing her again for more. My bus was to come at 12…it came at 1240. Then we drove inefficiently all over a town the size of Manayunk for another hour before heading out to the back roads instead of the highway. What a drive! The views were incredible and it was the epitome of rural Guatemala – caves, farms, etc. We got to see a little bit of something real. Including a bridge still unrepaired after washing out last rainy season, which meant we drove through the mud to cross. The tourists that say things like “well this is an interesting choice” about situations like that are an embarassment – how can you think that anyone would choose not to fix a bridge or would choose not to take the main highway if there were another choice? Can’t they see that it’s rainy season and this bridge has been out of commission for some time? There are men literally shoveling mud to give water a path – that’s not just a quirk of Guatemala, that’s the reality that no one, including the government, has money to address basic issues. Sorry, rant over.

Got to Zone 10 and found Mario at our hostel – Quetzalroo…Aussies are the best. Finally a hot shower on Monday!! Looked at an amazing apartment on one of the main streets in Zone 10/Zone 9 and over breakfast at McDonald’s we decided to just bite the bullet and take it. The area is “safe” (aka, safer), the apartment building is secured, run by a company not some under the table situation, and the area has places to eat, drink, wander, etc. $7 taxi to Shalom. And it’s really nice…my conscience hurts a little but considering that the safe zone involves 8 armed men guarding Chili’s on a Monday night, I’m surviving the moral twinges just fine. Home Sweet Home!

If you're trying to reach me, my address is below, as are my phone numbers:

Cell: Country Code 502  4279 9886

Apt: Country Code 502  2203 5900

Ave Reforma 15-25  Zona 10

Apto 206

Ciudad de Guatemala, Guatemala, C.A.