Week 1-2 Here we go here we go

So I am jumping on the bandwagon and writing a blog myself about my 8 weeks here in Guatemala. I’ll be writing weekly, so here begins my journey. Look for nuggets of wisdom, development perspectives, spiritual epiphanies, and from what I hear, bad-bad bathroom stories.

A sort of homecoming…
I touched down at Guatemala City at about 9:50 pm after almost an entire day of traveling. (I left my house at around 7 a.m.) I arrived at the hostel I would be staying at for the next few hours with Hannah. Staring down at a huge root looking structure and the tiny slightly dirty beds in front of us, a thought suddenly inundated us. We were going to be here for 2 months. What. The. Random. It seemed like only yesterday that we were furiously filling out our final essays in our blue books in Berkeley. Oh wait, it was just yesterday. We laughed at how random this whole trip for a good ten minutes. There was a sick desperation to our laugh—as if to say omg what have we done and omg are we going to come out of this alive.

The next day I arrived at my homestay family to which point it really hit me that I was in a developing country. As my hostmom showed me my room, I couldn’t help but feel homesick for my small little dorm in Berkeley. The pink decrepit walls had holes leading to the streets, a picture of Jesus, and a Santa covering up a bigger hole. On top of that, my ceiling was a piece of tarp. Está bien? She asked. I gulped. Yeah, this was going to be quite an experience.

Nonetheless, homestay time has been rather enjoyable. My mother Yolanda is pretty sweet and is responsive and patient with my terrible Spanish. Every day I get back from Antigua at around 6 and talk to her and her three daughters while they make tortillas (by the way, my house is a tortilleria…we sell tortillas). One of the daughters is actually my age but I don’t know much about her except that she has a kid who she breastfeeds during dinner. They’re all friendly and one of them is….dare I say pretty? (don’t worry I didn’t come to Guatemala to go wife hunting). I play with the kids every day, apparently my family has about 8 of these. We play soccer in the stone streets with all the neighbors old school style.


“I got diahrrea in Guatemala”
Arriving to this country with an entrepreneurial mindset (after all, this is Social Entrepreneur Corps), I have decided to start my own t-shirt company for tourists here in Antigua. The slogan will be “I got diahrrea in Guatemala” accompanied by an image of a bucket. Por favor, allow me to explain. At around 6:43 am on Wednesday, I woke up and immediately had to use the bathroom. There’s a Chinese proverb that says the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. As I clutched the toilet paper little did I know that this was the step in a long messy journey filled with diahrrea and feverish outbreaks. I sat out the training sessions in the lounge for pretty much two entire days with Hannah and others who were also feeling sick. Every day, more and more casualties rolled in, clutching their stomachs with that defeated look in their eyes. I find it strange now that I think back how our conversations centered around our diarrhea. A typical conversation would begin with “how is your poo?” To which one would respond, “thanks for asking I actually got a few solids this morning!”

After 3 or 4 days of intense diarrhea and fever, I decided to check out what exactly was wrong with me. I headed over on Saturday to Antigua to take a stool test. So when the nurse handed me a small cup and a tongue stick, I honestly thought that I was supposed to poo inside the toilet, then fish it out into the little cup. I decided I would save myself that disgusting process by swiping the toilet with the cup. When the nurse received the cup she asked me why my poo was “como agua” to which I told her that my poo is basically like water right now. Apparently I did the entire process wrong and had to poo in the cup directly. I felt embarrassed , laughed it off and got back to business in the bathroom.

So the verdict finally came out 45 minutes later. I had salmonella and ecoli, I remember when the doctor saw my results. It was one of the most frightening experiences ever when I saw his eyes light up and click his tongue. All I could think in my head was holy crap please God not swine flu. Luckily it was just parasites…yeah just parasites laying their little eggs in me and strategizing on how to screw up my next meal. I don’t know how I got salmonella and ecoli, but its most likely somehow from drinking some unpure water (which I had already religiously avoided) After taking the antibiotics I feel a lot better.

On birthdays
Hannah’s birthday was May 30, last Saturday and I guarantee that she will never ever forget it. Not because she had to go to the hospital, not because she found out she had salmonella and ecoli as well, not even because she had an allergic reaction and had swollen eyes the size of tennis balls and intense heart burn, but because she got to spend it with me. Surprisingly enough, my birthday didn’t come close to being as terrible as hers. God gave me a great gift that morning, solid pieces of poo. heyyy guys, I missed you(you know you’ve gone crazy when you’ve start talking to your poo). I felt a sense of accomplishment and pumped my fist as if I was mamba draining a game winning shot. My birthday ended up being just another normal day, I can’t really say that I even remembered for most of the day. Apparently neither did my parents, until two days later when they referred to me as “birthday boy” at the end of their email. Ah, I’m going to have to celebrate this when I get back home. Brazilian bbq anyone??


Pollo buses
Basically every morning I need to take a one hour bus to Antigua—these buses are freaken nuts. They call them chicken buses or pollo bus because they literally shove 100 ppl into a normal sized school bus like chickens. What happens is they are constantly racing other buses to get to the next stop so what they do is they make you get on then later crawl or squeeze through to ask you for money while you’re moving. The kids are usually the ones who collect the money and its insane what they will do to get to the back of the bus. I saw a kid climb through the window and crawl on the top of the bus all the way to the back while the bus is going like 60 mph. Needless to say, after every bus ride I feel nauseous.


So why am I actually here?
Every afternoon we have been reading articles and discussing different models and theories about development. On the macro level, there are two head honchos with quite drastically different perspectives on how we should attack poverty. Jeffrey Sachs is an economist who is urging the doubling of aid in order to fund his millennium project to officially end extreme poverty as we know it by 2025. I remember he had a huge time article a few years ago—one of the most provocative I ever read. On the other hand, there is Bill Easterly, a guy who is criticizing the tragedy that over $2 trillion has been spent over the past few years that just hasn’t reached the millions of babies dying of malaria and stupid causes like diarrhea. He criticizes he millennium project because nobody in the entire project is responsible for accomplishing anything—there is no accountability.

We also distinguished the difference between relief and development. It’s strange to think that relief…going somewhere and giving out free supplies can actually hurt an undeveloped community. It has also happened to be the case here in Guatemala that relief work is thwarting development work efforts. If entrepreneurs are trying to make an income by selling eye glasses, they’ll run out of business the second a few foreigners come into their town with eye glasses to give out. Helping people is a lot harder than just having good intentions. We really have to critically analyze the pathways from the inputs to the outcomes.

Social Entrepreneur Corps uses a development tool known as the microconsignment model. What we do here is run a full on needs analysis of what the indigenous population here needs, and try to provide access to these products. Now, the most interesting aspect is the distribution method of these products. For instance, our two popular products so far have been eye-glasses and filterers. What we do is then train entrepreneurs (usually women) to take these products and sell them to their respective villages. Thus, these impoverished women make a steady source of income from the commission they make from selling the product. Unlike microfinance, there is no chance they can go in debt because if they fail or decide they don’t want to do it, they can simply return the products, no harm done.
Some buzz words: sustainability, grassroots, building the bridge, savings based microcredit, access.


Ecoli, Salmonella, & Jesus
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance” (James 1:2).

I don’t think I really really understood what James was saying until this week. Some of you have asked me how I am doing and how was my first week in Guatemala. In many ways, it was one of the most physically painful, emotionally draining and loneliest weeks of my entire life. In other ways, it was a week in which I took huge leaps in my faith. In the midst of a swirling stomach and a blazing fever, I finally was able to pray “Lord if it brings me closer to you, then bring it on. Not only that, I will consider it pure joy.” I don’t want to go too much into this on a blog because I really had a very personal moment with God in which I was so aligned with what he wanted for me: true fulfillment and maturation. Ask me about it later.

Nonetheless, I am now really starting to appreciate the country in a strange way. It's beautiful and really I am incredibly pumped to go out to different more poor and rural parts of the country. Next week I'm heading over to Nebaj...one of the most rural villages here. Internet will suck, so....hasta la semana próxima!