Week 3 Nebaj

The worst morning ever

So the morning that I leave to Nebaj, I feel something all too familiar in my stomach. Something begins to grumble and swirl and I immediately dash towards the toilet. I swear there would’ve been a terrible accident if I had been a few seconds late. (This is part of the reason that many an afternoon I contemplate buying diapers) But I digress, after unloading my waste—I had one of the most discouraging moments ever. After realizing that I once again had diarrhea, I also realized that the toilet paper had run out. I had to embarrassingly shout for more from outside the house. Trust me, it gets worse. There wasn’t any toilet paper in the entire house so Yolanda sent her daughter to buy some from a tienda nearby. All this time I’m waiting in the bathroom with my hands in my face just thinking about awkward and embarrassing the situation was.

I don’t want to complain anymore about my morning, but subsequent to this incident I was given a mayo sandwich for breakfast. When I say mayo sandwhich, I mean two pieces of bread with mayo in between. Not only that, but the mayo irritated something in my stomach and I had to use the bathroom again.

Nebaj-tastic

On a lighter note, the ride up to Nebaj was one of the most beautiful yet insane 7 hour trips I have ever taken. The roads here are terrible to say the least, as we were U turning every minute up the mountain. I’m honestly surprised none of us barfed. Despite being carsick, I was surrounded by beautiful scenic mountains and farms—all facebook worthy that I’ll definitely post later. All 9 of us in team Esperanza chose two songs to burn on a CD to listen in the car and for some reason we got really addicted to a Somalia freedom song. After much anticipation, we arrived to a village with dirt roads and scattered debris. Nebaj actually just suffered from intense bombings during the Guatemalan war two decades ago.

Strangely enough, I really like this place, moreso than Antigua. It really is just perpetually surrounded by beautiful mountains, hills and clouds. The people are also quite amiable, although I did encounter a drunkard yesterday who was a little too friendly. When he saw me he immediately ran up to me and yelled CHINO!! and gave me a humungous bear hug for like the most awkward 15 seconds of my life. People were surprised at how unalarmed I was. Yeah well I’m used to it—I’m from Berkeley, duh.

Asian Sensation?

So on Wednesday we went to a village called Xexucap to advertise for our campaign we’ll be having there this Saturday. We’re going to provide free eye exams and also have prescription glasses available for purchase along with water filterers, seeds, wood burning stoves, etc. It was actually fairly difficult to communicate with many of the people there because interestingly enough, their Spanish was extremely broken too. Part of the reason the indigenous stay uneducated and politically ignored is that they lack the Spanish speaking ability and primarily speak dialects like Ishiel & Quiztche. Simply put, there were a lot of obvious gestures and pointing to pictures in our conversations.

Anyway, as we stopped to rest at a school, I sat down to take a sip of water. I kid you not, when I look back up there are about 20 kids crowding around me. Just staring. A kid points at me and tells the other students “Es un Chino. Un Chino!” I playfully introduce myself and ask for their name—to which I get absolutely no response other than their curiously fixated eyes. Yeah, I knew what was going on, I took Asian Am 20a—they were racializing me as an oriental. I really think that these kids thought they were seeing an extraterrestrial for the first time. Annie later told me that last night her family was asking her if she had ever seen a “real Chinito.”

And that’s just how the Guatemalan culture is. They’re extremely blunt and somewhat insensitive. When they see someone thin they call them flaco (skinny) and when they see somewhat kind of obese they say gordo (fat). Of course you already know what they say when they see an asian. Interestingly enough, I find this all so…refreshing. It’s nice to take a break from all the PC-ness in the states. Here the people are so transparent and open to offend one another.

Credi Capaz & Peanut Butter

So far in Nebaj I have been assigned with two others (one from UConn and one from Duke) to work on a project called CrediCapaz. We’ve found that microcredit hasn’t been successful here in Guatemala because people are unable to pay off what they owe—thus, they end up borrowing from another microfinance bank to pay it off. We’re trying to find someway to get these people saving so that they bear no risk when they need money. With this money they can have some money for emergencies, they could start their own business, or even buy useful products like microwaves and refrigerators. I guess this concept is called “savings based microfinance.”

So we’ve been going around doing surveys with questions we’ve come up to figure out the best system to implement here. Unfortunately, there is little faith in banks here…apparently a bank a few years ago that most of the villagers had their money in just one day up and bounced on them. There are two systems we are thinking about implementing, one is called ROSCA (a group savings system which grants no return) and ASCA (with returns). I won’t bore you guys to death with going too in-depth, you can read up on them online if you want.

We’re also starting a peanut butter business for the locals. Hopefully if the business is a success, we can have teens at our school, Centro Explorativo, make it so they can self fund the school’s books, teachers, etc. We seriously just whipped out a blender, bought a huge bag of peanuts, oil, salt, and sugar and experimented yesterday. It actually tasted pretty damn good. We’re still in the process of figuring out the best way to penetrate the market and how to leverage the health benefits of peanut butter. Yesterday we were going out giving out samples and getting feedback—it was kind of funny because nobody here has ever tried peanut butter before in their life. I can imagine how intimidating it would be when a bunch of gringos carrying a jar of some brown stuff and try to shove a spoonful of it down their throats.


Balllin’

So Nebaj is by far much more rural, much poorer than Antigua. So when I arrived here, I was expecting an overcrowded shanty with a dirt floor, a hole in the ground as the toilet, and just maybe, just maybe, my own room. Man was I wrong. The place I’m staying at is SO nice by Guatemalan standards. The house is actually made of cement and has tiled floors. In addition, there is a shower (but it only has cold water) so I opted to take the bucket baths instead. Not to mention that there’s a freaken guitar here which I was finally able to tune. Man I literally jammed for 2 hours straight when I saw that thing lying alone in the corner all dusty. And for some reason my room has three beds. I’m not really sure what to do with this…I was considering pushing the three together to make one humungous bed but I thought that’d be a bit too ostentatious and greedy of me. Instead I’ve been rotating each night. Just because.

The family here is really different, I got the whole single mother and one child thing going on here. Unlike in Antigua, where I have like 8 children always wanting to play and like 6 aunts and uncles, its just the three of us. My mom’s name is Isolina, an elementary teacher at the local school here. We have great 1.5 hr long conversations after dinner till she goes to sleep about my day, Guatemala, Nebaj, differences in culture, and projects Soluciones Comunitares is working on. She’s really sweet and I’m planning on teaching her some guitar before I leave.

NBA finals

These past few weeks have been frustrating to say the least. You know that you’re in a developing country(or at least in central America) when they don’t play the freaken NBA finals on tv. Instead, they have 5 channels of reruns of Barcelona vs. ManU and Mexican Soccer League. Last weekend while I was still in Antigua all the interns went bar hopping and I swear out of 50 tvs, 0 had my beloved Lakers on. It’s been frustrating to say the least…after watching almost every single game this season (3 hrs every night is not conducive to my studying habits), I can’t watch my team possibly win a championship. Nonetheless, I have to say I am incredibly proud of them for dealing with their Jekyl and Hyde tendencies against Houston and Denver.

La campaña & dealing with disappointment

So on Saturday we all went to our first visual campaign in a village about an hour away from Nebaj called Xexucap. We basically gave free eye exams to find out what glasses they needed and then sold it at a very cheap price. Most Guatemalans have one of two eye problems: presbyopia(a natural condition in which people over the age of 35 lose the ability to focus on close objects) and pterygium(a growth on the surface of the eye as a result of long exposure to UV, dry conditions, dust, and smoke). It’s amazing when they finally get their glasses and they find out that they can still read, still weave, etc. Most people just assume that its normal that their eyesight is deteriorating and that there is nothing they can do about it.

I gotta admit that I am sorta feeling disappointed and at times helpless here in Guatemala. While we are providing access to essential life-changing products, I thought the focus would be more on empowering the entrepreneurs. Simply put, I had this overly romantic idea that we would be like infiltrating brothels and teaching ex prostitutes how to earn an income through selling our products. Our entrepreneurs here, while probably somewhere near the poverty line, are not the poorest of Guatemala. I guess it’s a reality check, I’m not going to change the world through a summer abroad internship—but I still believe that I’m meeting and serving God here somehow and that’s all that matters.

5 weeks left till I return to the states, this week went by really fast. I miss yall back in California, please comment.