Wordless Wednesdays

Living in The Americas

Just after I graduated from college (liberal arts degree in hand) I went to Ecuador to live there for nearly 18 months. I love Ecuador, I love the people, I love Spanish. I love South America. At my current job I get to interact nearly every day with employees in Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru. Having lived in Ecuador means that during these interactions I can use really hilarious slang (though sometimes I've crossed the line not realizing that in some countries funny slang is actually pretty graphic and not to be used with co-workers), that I actually know what Shakira is saying in all of her songs (ok most) and that I have a little more sympathy when our interns (who live in country for about 4 months) write me to tell me all about the happenings in country. This week I've been thinking about living in Latin America and missing it a little. So here is a list of things to miss.

• Collecting banana stickers. Ecuador is home to the majority of the major banana exporters and somehow we found a whole trade of young people who tried to collect as many different stickers which mark the bananas as possible
• Hot Chocolate or Tea and Bread for dinner. I'm not a coffee drinker but whenever we were over at people's house in the evening they would serve us hot chocolate or tea and bread. The tea is amazingly sweet and you dip your bread into your beverage for dinner.
• Bread in general. During one point of my stay in Ecuador I lived above a bakery where they made the most delicious chocolate bread. I think we had at least 3 pancitos every single day (my waist line did not thank me)
• Menestra. I still dream about the traditional bean dish made in Ecuador. I've tried to recreate it here but it's never the same.
• Yucca. We don't eat Yucca too much in the states but there are few things as delicious as the yucca French fry.
• Busses. Here in the states I don't ride the bus very often and my city isn't known for it's all encompassing bus routes but I loved being able to stick out my hand and pick up a bus anywhere as well as being able to get off a bus just by yelling "gracias" and heading toward the door
• Community sports. Every weekday night and all weekend long parks were full to bursting with local futbol leagues, volleyball and other sports.
• The blurred line between church and state when it comes to holidays. Even now I'm envious of our employees who get all kinds of religious holidays throughout the year. Good Friday? Yep. Day of the Dead (today)? Yep. And don't even get me started about how they all get a full month of extra salary for Christmas. Our employees are always shocked when I tell them that we don't have those kinds of benefits here in the US.
• Walking everywhere
• Cars and buses each a memorial to a person's personal design (complete with fringe, lace, and tweety bird stickers)
• Nicknames. I very clearly remember one 9-year old turning to me and asking, "what's my Aunt Negra's name?"
• Most beautiful children in the whole world
• Chickens. This is sort of a love/hate relationship. Once I lived on the second floor and 5 chickens lived in the courtyard below us. I poured water on them almost every day to get them to stop clucking. Funny now, but not funny when it was happening
• Loud Music everywhere
• Ranchera dancing (also kind of a love/hate relationship)
• Fresh Fruit—1 million times better than the fruit here
• How everyone has so many names
  

So what have I missed? What are the best things about living in South America?

Wordless Wednesday

Is it Too Early for New Year’s Resolutions?

Around this office we talk a lot about empowerment and self-reliance. We talk about it as it relates to the people with whom we work and serve but we also talk about it as it relates to one another—our own staff, our own co-workers. Our manager in Bolivia perhaps put it best when he told his team that they all needed to make personal goals in addition to work goals because he said no one would believe what we were teaching if we weren't putting the ideas into practice in our own lives. That puts us in a precarious position. It means that when one of our very best workers decides that he is going to start his own business after teaching small business owners for years, we cheer. When someone takes the Foreign Service exam, we anxiously await the results hoping that they are good as he would like them to be. Those are successes, even if they leave us scrambling to find and train other great workers. It also means that sometimes we get burned.

I just got off the phone with a friend from Peru. Peru has been causing us more concern than any of the other places where we work. The volunteer from Peru called to ask me some simple questions and then told me that our troubles in Peru come from trusting too much. He needed to get some things off his chest and told me that we shouldn't have trusted the way we did and that we should have had other people checking up on what was happening. He told me we needed tighter controls (which is true. But we're still working on the best way to do that). His anger did make me think. He's right. There are some things that we need to work on, we need better communication and we need better documentation. But in some ways it made me think that he still doesn't get it. He still doesn't get what we're trying to do and he doesn't' understand why having a volunteer call on a paid staff member at random to verify his work and to do all of the fundraising isn't promoting the kind of development that we're trying to espouse in the villages where we work. However, I don't want to be the kind of person who hears criticism and then gets offended or defensive and doesn't do anything about it.

So, even though we're a few months away, I'm making my resolution list for 2010—his suggestions in mind. Here goes!

1. Expand our evaluation of programs to Peru and Ecuador
   
2. Statistically analyze the results of Bolivia's evaluation (with professionals) and talk to the staff about what's happening
   
3. Follow up with staff goals
   
4. Appropriate controls in admin and accounting—as shown by a procedure manual and enforced procedure to be presented at Jan training
   
5. Historical, searchable database for projects
   
6. Continue to believe that people are basically good and want to help other people
   
7. Have faith in other people.
   
8. As Ronald Reagan put it, "Trust, but verify." (I can't believe I just quoted Ronald Reagan. Don't tell my parents)
   

Carbon Footprinting

This weekend we have some big plans. Some neighbors of ours are laying sod (not a resource friendly option in Utah but I have a grass yard that's at least 2 times the size that they are putting down so who am I to talk?) this evening and they need some help. Saturday morning I'll head to my local health department early because they are finally offering H1N1 shots in my area to ladies who are in the family way. Saturday plans also include drying apples we scavenged from my parent's tree, raking and bagging leaves and walnuts from the trees in our yard, using the last of the kale and chard from the garden to can some veggie broth, two quilt squares for a dear friend whose baby is due next week and attending a college football game with my husband. I hope to find time to exercise and would love a couple of hours to nap and recuperate from my normal weeks of working 1.5 jobs (and growing a baby) which leave me exhausted (and with puffy ankles).

This morning, while getting ready to write a blog post I came across this story. About a man who is hoping to sell his autographed picture of Bridget Bardot to pay for surgery he needs ($2500) after the working as a coal miner for his whole life. I was struck with how different my life is than his. Health care is available to me. When I want the H1N1 shot I just have to wait until it's available and it's offered at my local health department clinic, just a 10 minute drive away, for free. My life is busier than I would like it to be but I am so blessed and my life is comparatively easy. It broke my heart to read that the portrait similar to the one this man had is currently selling on ebay for $35.

Earlier this week I got sucked into taking an internet quiz about my lifestyle. I should probably admit now that I love internet quizzes and if we are connected on twitter and you post one I will pretty much take it. The purpose of the quiz this week was to find out how many earths it would take to support the whole world's population if everyone lived the way I do. The answer is 4.5. And I think that's low. The quiz wasn't super comprehensive and I'm pretty sure that the only reason I wasn't on the "above average" side of the US is because we have a tenant in our mother-in-law apartment so we were technically "sharing" the use of all of our utilities. I am embarrassed to admit that I live in a state where state and local leaders refuse to admit that climate change is, even partially, due to human behavior. This morning, driving to work, on NPR they were talking about a group of local Doctors and Scientists who met last night to affirm that there really is no doubt that science indicates that global climate change has been affected by human behavior.

It's scary to think that earth can't sustain an entire population living the way I do but I do believe that there are more than enough resources to ensure that there is medical care for everyone, that clean potable water is available to all families, that children can be provided with an education, that mothers can get adequate prenatal care, that businesses can grow no matter in what country they are located. I, for one, because I do believe that climate change is affected by humans and that my carbon footprint is directly affecting women who now have to walk farther and farther to get water because their rivers and wells are drying up am willing to make some sacrifices to level the playing field. I can start with these…maybe not all of them, but some of them at least. We're talking baby steps here (thank you public radio for being a source of knowledge on all kinds of things).