Research begins

Within 10 minutes of arriving in the community I’d call home for the next two weeks, my first research site, I was told of the kid in the neighboring community who had his hand macheted off in a drunken argument and the brawl turned machete melee in this town.  Luckily, I was informed, they were just alcoholic drug-addicted day laborers from a different town.  And it wasn’t until a couple days later when I heard of the “machetazos” in 4 other nearby towns that same Sunday.  I had been here a handful of times before, running support for an environmental education program operated by the university.  But this was my first time alone. 

The trip out had been fine.  Took a bus for 5 hours to a small town, with La Bestia running right through the heart of it, decided I didn’t want to wait 4 hours for the next bus and then walk 8 km to my destination so I decided to take a taxi.  So here I am, in Ramonal, Tabasco.  Approximately 4 km from the Guatemalan border.  An old transit point for migrants, drugs and those escaping the law.  Really the middle of nowhere.  Home to about 400 people and surrounded by farms, forest and swampland. 

I sleep in a hammock in the town’s event center.  There’s a spigot with a bucket that I use to shower.  The fan does a pretty decent job of keeping the mosquitos away.  That and I coat myself in repellent before bed.  Heavy DEET.  None of that lemon eucalyptus hippie nonsense.  I have a sweet arrangement with some of the old ladies around town.  They give me food, some really tremendously tasty food.  I spend roughly $6.50 for three meals a day. 

I had trouble sleeping the last couple nights.  I think it was a combination of nervousness and excitement.  Nervous in the sense that I was about to embed myself in communities far removed from society.  Areas without a police presence, or any State or Federal government interference for that matter.  Places were rapists are lynched by townspeople and the sharp end of a machete ends far too many arguments.  Towns where there is little to do aside from working the fields, encouraging many to hit the sauce for days on end or make babies at will. 

Excitement in the sense that this is why I spent the better part of a year enveloped by the Fulbright application process.  I spent my first month in Villahermosa visiting projects, meeting with academic folks, developing relationships with these communities and now the time had finally come to study the impact of aquaculture in rural communities.  My dream since college had finally come true. 

That, and I was also really stoked to peace out of Villahermosa. It’s got pretty much zero going for it.  It’s one of those cities where seemingly every other building is a car parts store or copy place.  The nightlife is limited to handful of blocks with mediocre vibes.  True, it has a nature reserve, a mammoth lagoon and forest in the middle of the city with herons, monkeys and crocodiles, but all the city’s runoff drains in to it.  Heck, many houses and restaurants around the lagoon even dump untreated sewage into it.  The result is a fetid, neon ooze green water with dead fish floating everywhere.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find Splinter and the rest of the gang living there. 

But hey, I can’t complain.  Living here gives me access to rural communities with aquaculture and I’m collaborating with some big players in fish farming.  Also, I realized that getting to DF from Villa is pretty much like SF to Vegas and so I plan to take full advantage of the proximity when I need to let the demons out. 

You see, I love my work and it’s always been my dream to work to combat rural poverty and food insecurity.  I love being in secluded areas, surrounded by nature, taking things real nice n slow. 

But there’s also another side of me.  A raucous, selfishly reckless, boozing, weed smoking molly raving maniac that needs to be let out of his cage from time to time and fed a hearty dosage of fiesta.  You feel me?  So for the first time since leaving SF, and although Villa is not the most happening place, I feel like I have that with the proximity and accessibility to DF and other sweet places in Mexico.  The further I dig into our southern neighbor, the more I find myself falling in love. 

Settling down. New home.

I headed to Guatemala for a couple months to get the Paso Adelante internship program up and running. Spent the vast majority of my time on the road visiting rural areas and meeting with community members about our work.  Really cool experience. Also did something I had wanted to do forever - hike from Xela to Lago Atitlan.  We went without a guide which was both an awesome idea and an idiotic one.  Got lost, did a whole bunch of unnecessary hiking, crossed a river on foot and through jungle up a mountain to reach the safety of a village by nightfall.  Beautiful scenery tho.  Made it to the lake.

Then I went home for a couple weeks for some family time and to sort out my Mexican visa.  It was nice you know, seeing my family, eating good food, all that stuff.  But it feels different now.  It hasn't been a sudden change, but rather something that's crept on me for the past several years. I just don't feel like the US is really the place for me anymore.  Like sometimes I think back to after my first trip to Vietnam, I spent a month back in the US. Then I went abroad for 7 months and then back to the US for 6 weeks.  Then I cut my time in the US to 3 weeks.  Then to 2.  And now to a handful of days.

It's not that I don't like my friends or family anymore it's just I mean let's face it.  We've all changed. And as a result I feel like our goals, dreams, future plans whatever are worlds apart.  I work in rural areas making very little money under conditions that most sane people would scoff at.  Most of my friends are in serious relationships, have more money than I'll probably ever have and live a lifestyle that would be deemed the opposite of ascetic.  Is that wrong?  Of course not.  I like all those things too.  It's just not in my cards right now.

But I can't stand being surrounded by American culture, this constant, omnipresent obsession with money and "career advancement" and increasing convenience.  I mean f me, you stand in line at Starbucks in the US and you're subject to three different asinine conversations about the latest app, sucking corporate dick to get that promotion and Lil Johnny's soccer team politics.  And everyone's parading around with the utmost self-importance.  Hell, maybe that's why so many people hate us.  I don't know.  And obviously I'm generalizing here but you get my drift.  It's simply difficult for me to leave a place where I get coffee in the morning and the day's conversation surrounds the drought that's leaving 500K people food insecure or the murders of local bus drivers that refused to pay bribes to gangs and then be abruptly inundated with discussions about an app to compare and rate your turds.

I'm not saying that the US and first world countries don't have their benefits however.  Obviously it's nice that you can flush toilet paper or that 50% of American children are not malnourished.  Just that it's not the place for me.

Frankly, I don't feel like I really belong anywhere now.  If I had to choose I'd say I feel most at home in Guatemala.  But I'm not there right now.  And I won't be for at least another year.  San Francisco? Used to.  This tech bubble has ruined the city for me.  LA?  Ha.

If this is depressing you, it shouldn't. I view it as a necessary transition phase, something I've always known was inevitable.  I loved my time in SF with my friends, living the dream, being loose partying 20-somethings with too much money, an inflated ego and decadence at my fingertips.  But I'm much happier now.  Working in Latin America with these kinds of projects has always been and continues to be my goal.

I always said that I just had to keep my feet moving.  I was dahncing around the world and I would know when it was time to quit and settle down.  I had this undeniable urge to travel and experience new things but eventually, I said, I'd tell myself to plant myself.  Well it's time.  I'm tired.  I don't want to do it anymore - crash in a place for a few months, meet cool people, start learning about a culture and then move on again.  Nah.  I want that word I renounced when I left San Francisco.  I want stability.

I want real relationships, my neighborhood bars and restaurants, all those things that come with settling down in a place.  And I'm starting to get that now.  Just moved to Villahermosa, Mexico to research small-scale aquaculture for the year.  LTD'ing.  Adios.

Funemployed in Ecuador

Yeah, it's been a while.  Right around 7 months.  Well let's just say that I haven't had the privacy needed to foster constructive thought or to truly express myself for that matter.  Sorry.

So while in El Salvador I applied for my dream fellowship.  Said fellowship was not going to inform me of my status until March or April.  My gig in El Salvador finished in December.   Well my friends, that's when I started searching for some short term gigs.  I fortuitously stumbled across this opportunity to work for an organization called GSE.  It's a pay-to-volunteer organization founded by a couple of trust fund babies in Marin County that brings rich kids to Nicaragua and Ecuador every year to do a bit of reforestation and sustainable gardening whilst providing untold opportunities to update their Facebook profile pictures and share albums showcasing their incredible first time abroad experience with titles like "Todo es posible en Ecuador!!!!!!!!!!".

I've been around international development since Penn, both in the classroom and in the work place and this pay-to-volunteer model is pretty much Satan in the flesh.  From the volunteer side, I've always wondered why the hell one would pay upwards of $2,500 to work abroad for a week.  "Oh but it includes airfare and food," they tell me.  Yeah, well back out the ~$600 flight and the balance can get you through two months in these countries.  And from the "recipient" side, the burden of dealing with roving packs of ignorant white kids without any viable skill set often outweighs any positive result associated with their work.  Stories documenting this phenomenon abound, like this one so I'll keep my thoughts brief.  Just think - why do American kids that have never left the classroom need to come down to build a church in Haiti?  Or is a 108lb. American sorority chick the most effective at planting trees in tropical Ecuador?  One could argue that the financial injection provided by this influx of tourists help the local economy, which is true to a certain extent, but you'd also have to take a peak at management's salaries where you'd realize that the injection pales in comparison to rich white jesus's salary. Oh right, it's about education of the rich white kids.  WTF are they learning that they couldn't do in a much less intrusive, profound way? Like I don't know, just traveling by themselves for a few weeks.  The fact is that no matter how you look at it, having rich white kids come down to poor countries for photo ops with lil brown babies and a sweaty brow in the jungle is just not going to get it done if development is the end goal.  And if we're trying to educate kids about the environment, social issues, other cultures, whatever, I can now tell you that this is the worst possible way of attempting to do so.  Particularly when the staff is as ignorant as the students in relation to those topics.

So with these hesitations before I even started, why did I go?  Am I a hypocrite?  Yeah, a bit.  A sellout?  Let's just say this gig will never see the light of my resume.  I mean hell, with 4 months to kill it was a juicy paid vacation in a part of the world I had never been to.  They asked me to be a camp counselor, essentially arranging brief excursions for kids and babysitting them on the beach and in the forest.  Can you really blame me?

I get down to Ecuador and quickly realize that this is simply the most pathetic, poorly-organized company I've ever worked for.  Perhaps I'm a bit jaded but I instantly felt swamped in incompetence, surrounded by people that had seemingly never worked a real job and led by a bumbling caveman wannabe hippie.  The gravy of all this, was, of course, the thick layer of arrogance and superiority many of the workers employed to mask their lackluster qualifications or experience.  We'll talk more about this, in conjunction with the white savior complex, in a bit.

A few of em repeatedly told me how "taxing" or "complex" this job was.  Instead of just telling you that these people are obviously idiots that have never worked an actual job, I'll just give you the deets of a typical week for me in Ecuador and you can decide.  Please keep in mind that my expenses were on the company and I also got a salary, albeit modest, during weeks such as this.

Saturday

6am - Wakeup to sound of soft drizzle, chickens and barking dogs
6:30am - Have coffee and fried rice
7am - Arrive at market and buy 15 lbs of shrimp, 25 lbs of chicken, 30 lbs of beef and 30 lbs of Mahi Mahi; continue to buy ~100 lbs of produce and other assorted items
8am - Catch bus to Quito.  It's about an 8 hour ride which is a bit of a kick in the nuts but not so bad.
4pm - Arrive in Quito and meet up with Jenny, aka La Prima, fellow guide and dear friend now (not part of the incompetent insolence crew)
4:30pm - Arrive at bar #1 and have a few beers
6pm - Arrive at bar #2 and start double fisting rum and beer
8pm - Realize how wasted we are and need for sustenance.
8:30pm - Get sushi
9:30pm - Get to hostel and pass out

Sunday

5am - Wakeup hating life
530am - Catch taxi to Quito airport
6am - Scarf down bagel sandwich and coffee while waiting for students to arrive
6:45am - Students emerge from customs and I call our chartered bus
7am - Load onto bus and head back to the coast
12pm - Stop for lunch and make various phone calls
3pm - Get back home and chill for a bit
5pm - Brief walking tour of the city and sunset beers
7pm - Dinner at our house
9pm - Sneak outside, smoke J and head to bed

Monday

6am - Wakeup
7am - Breakfast
9am - Work session in the community transplanting trees.  My work primarily involves moving bag of heavy materials from one point to another.  Then I must up end bag to pour said materials on ground.
11am - Make various phone calls to arrange transportation and water delivery
11:30am - Unload water jugs from truck and put in house.
12pm - Lunch
2pm - Tour of various sites in town.  I do a bit of translating.
4pm - Eat ice cream.  I teach kids how to say strawberry in Spanish.
5pm - Sunset beers
7pm - Dinner
9pm - Sneak outside, smoke J and head to bed

Tuesday

6am - Wakeup
7am - Breakfast
8am - Market run
8:30am - Call cooks to organize their work
9am - Work session at local high school doing more of the same.  My work is largely the same though I also help carry transplanted trees from outside of the greenhouse to inside the greenhouse.  I sweat.  We have ice cream afterwards to reward us for our arduous work day.
12pm - Head back to the house for lunch in the back of a truck.  Kids take many pictures because riding in truck is so novel.  Yay.  Smoke a cigarette while working on my tan.
1pm - Lunch.  Ceviche - today's a good day.
2pm - Head to mangroves.  Reforest mangroves by crawling through the mud then go on a boat tour of mangroves and bird sanctuary.  See a boa in the mangroves.  Coo brah.
5pm - Head home.  Dip out en route to buy moonshine.
6pm - Casual beers at the house per direction from the head honcho.
7pm - Dinner
8pm - Couple more casual beers and I break out the moonshine.
8:30pm - Multiple students and I borderline blackout.  Talk about life and post-college plans.
9pm - Passed out in bed.

Wednesday

6:30am - Wakeup feeling surprising decent.  Student next to me (in hammock not bed) has wet herself.  Champion.
7:30am - Breakfast
8am - Make calls to organize hostels and transportation
9am - Get in truck and head to beach where we do reforestation
10am - Get settled in and get ready to work
11am - Arrive at the reforestation site and begin work.  My work revolves between macheteing my way through the forest and carrying bags of heavy materials from one spot to another spot.  Must be wary of poisonous snakes, scorpions and tarantulas.
1:30pm - Finish work and head back for lunch
3pm - Free time to swim in ocean
5pm - Start drinking moonshine.
6:30pm - Start bonfire
6:45pm - Half drunkenly splash around in ocean at sunset
7pm - Dinner
8pm - Moonshine and bonfire while talking to students
9pm - Walk down the beach and blaze face.
10pm - Bed in hammock looking out at ocean

Thursday

Repeat of Wednesday

Friday

6am - Wakeup and run on beach
7am - Breakfast
9am - Work in forest.
12pm - Lunch and swim time.
1pm - Board truck to take us home
2pm - Shower and relax at home.  Get ready for "cultural event" and trip with students
4pm - Get ready for event that I created with Meg - a dance/cooking/local drink class for pregame session
6pm - Pour gasoline on everyone and light em up during dance/cooking class
9pm - Get in party truck.  Buy booze en route.  Party in the back of truck on way to local beach town.
10pm - Arrive in Canoa and check in.
10:30pm - Head out to party
11:30pm - Smoke J handed to me
12am - Help monitor the students, do a bit of dancing and then realize I'm hammered
12:30am - Crawl into back of friend's truck for impending blizzard.  Partake in snow storm.
1am - Emerge with new sense of power and continue monitoring students
3am - Pass out

Saturday

Spend most of day recovering then repeat the night.

Sunday

Recover before hopping on bus back to Quito with the students to drop them off.

Not the most stressful job I've ever had.  Actually not something I'd really call a job.  So let's talk about the Holy Trinity of incompetence, or the 3 employees that for whatever reason tried to kill my buzz during these 4 months.

Starting with the boss, aka el jefecito, or the trust fund baby caveman.  He's really just a giant 14-year-old that has never worked for anyone but himself which probably explains why he's an absolute farce of a leader.  I remember after I interviewed with him thinking that homeboy hadn't managed to master the English language, spouting off non-existent terms and misusing words left and right.  But his narrowed-minded white savior complex is really what got me.  His belief that these people really need him to come down and plant trees and his conviction in that bringing rich white kids down makes a meaningful difference.   This arrogance and self-righteousness of course spills into his interaction and treatment of local populations.  Whether it's instructing people how to work, "to be more productive like an American", nickel and diming small business owners or overworking people, he never ceased to amaze me.  He expected local laborers, working 8 hours/day in the forest and camping on site, to buy their own food AND cook it for themselves when they were earning below minimum wage per day.  Why? Oh, we don't have it in budget.  I was scolded for giving our neighbor $2 for helping move wood for 45 min.

Ah, yes, "it's over budget" was his favorite line.  Unfortunately, not being a full retard as I am, I was quick to teach him that you must first define a budget to then be over budget.  Simply claiming that we're over budget to hoard money for yourself doesn't cut it.  Just like when he was complaining that I was significantly over budget on food costs, I asked him to tell me what the budget was because I knew exactly what I was spending.  When he did so, he realized that I was actually 25% BELOW budget. What a genius.  I even had to show him how to use Powerpoint.

My favorite line of his was when he told me that one of the best parts of the job in his view was that "you get all these like hella young girls that are like hella cool and hella interested in the environment and shit and they just get obsessed with you cuz you're like the group leader and stuff." Ah, right, even better, using his white savior complex to con girls.  Kinda like David Koresh meets George W.

Right.  Next up is La Gringuita, perhaps the most self-important, anal-retentive little rich white girl I've ever met.  You know, the type of eco-centric half-stupid girl that thinks everything is like SOO stressful and SOO tough.  Like writing a college paper.  OMG she was SOOOO stressed out.  Or like booking flights for students.  OMG like SOOOOO many things going on.

This perverse way of life of course translated into a false sense of superiority and leadership.  Which was really odd because she brought next to nothing to the table.  When I interviewed with her I actually thought she was no older than a college junior, not a 28 year-old.  Not just that she is completely ignorant about Latin America and life in developing countries, but that she treated everyone like a slave that was there to be monitored and controlled.  From inventing rules for the students (like check-ins to go swimming), to for whatever reason thinking we had to obey her every desire she is simply and utterly insufferable.  She even tried to scold locals for feeding our dog leftover scraps from dinner, saying that dogs must only eat dog food.  Good thing she doesn't speak a word of Spanish because the locals had some truly choice words for the lil gringuita from her lil rich white bubble about life in Ecuador.

Which brings me to her complete obstinacy in the light of her worthlessness.  She doesn't speak Spanish.  Fine.  But she refused to accept that, instead suggesting that she understood everything and only had a tad of trouble expressing herself.  So, for example, during one meeting in Spanish, when she was being assigned a list of tasks, several of us tried to translate for her and help her out.  She reprimanded us saying she didn't need help.

The task list continued and her glazed look of being lost grew.  We tried again.  Shut down again by her yelling.  So we told the Ecuadorian leading the meeting that she said she understood everything and didn't need our help.  "Alright," he chuckled, "So what did I say?"

"Uh, sí," she replied.  "No, I just gave you a list, what are some of the things I said?"

"Uh, sí," she whispered questioningly.  And so it continued, in awkward tension, with her refusing to admit she was incapable.

Just like after several other failures and obvious shortcomings, I started doing half of her job for her, handling close to 90% of logistics of her job.  Did I get a thanks?  Nope.  Just fluff about her superiority and how I was lazy.  Shocking, that in the face of such incompetence, she continued to be an ungrateful cunt.

Ah, yes, and now for my favorite.  The bearded little bitch as I refer to him.  This 28 year-old mommy's boy that still lives with his parents in Marin county.  He surfs and grew out his hair so he likes to play the "I'm a super chill child of the Earth" card.  But don't let his looks or his 4 song repertoire on the ukulele fool you - at heart, he's just a lil bitch.

Upon first meeting him, we exchanged mini bios of ourselves, as you do and when he said he lives with his parents still, he was quick to mention that he actually lived in their guest house so it was pretty much like he lived on his own.  Nah you lil bitch, you still live with mommy and daddy no matter how you slice it.  Not gonna lie, he intimidated me at first.  He fired off a question, asking me how my Spanish was, with an air that made me assume he was either native or close to it.

Wow, was I wrong to make that assumption.  When he speaks Spanish he sounds like a mix of Keanu Reeves in, well, anything he's ever been in and Brendan Fraser in Encino Man.  Not to mention his Spanish is so riddled with errors it's hard to understand what he's actually trying to say.  Like when he fell and was trying to say that he fell, only to say that he had shit himself.  We laughed.  He didn't get it.  Poor lil bitch.

Bearded lil bitch is what I call a pothead armchair scientist.  Essentially a worthless half-retarded piece of shit that sits on his thumb smoking weed and watching Planet Earth that somehow believes himself to be an expert in natural sciences because of his "hard work and dedication."  He repeatedly touted his expertise in all things nature-related, primarily through siting his undergraduate marine biology degree.  Oh yeah, lil bitch?  And what have you done with that degree aside from quote David Attenborough to high school kids?  You use that degree much as a part time sushi maker?  Or how about as a part time gardener?  Oh wait, you call it landscape artistry.  Please you lil bitch.  It's called gardening.

Speaking of gardening, bearded lil bitch saw himself as a god amongst men, as the leader of a group of local laborers working on reforestation in the forest.  He bossed them around with his garbage Spanish, spoke down to them, and floated around our house with this air of self-importance because he was doing God's work or something.  Ah, if only he could understand Spanish better.  Homeboy was the butt of quite a few jokes regarding his work - seems like he's not just a lil bitch in life but that he cuts through the forest like a lil bitch too, with local laborers having to follow in his footsteps and clean up his work.  Hmm, sounds EXACTLY like innumerable white savior stories I've heard.  Ignorant lil bitch.

This was his fifth year doing this camp counselor gig I believe, and he proved incapable of doing anything in terms of planning or logistics.  "I'm the fun guy" was his routine line.  No, my friend, you're just an incompetent douchebag.  Just like the gringuita, I almost always had to coordinate all the behind the scenes stuff for the lil bitch and to my chagrin, he proved every bit as ungrateful as his ignorant white companion.  I'm not sure if it was a factor of stubbornness or sheer stupidity, or likely a combo of both, but he too shared this air of superiority in the face of insurmountable evidence proving otherwise.
Like when we had to travel to another town to renew our visas, the two "almighty leaders" decided to drive us in a 70s Land Rover.  Genius lil bitch over here couldn't get the car into 3rd so we were humming at 60mph+ in 2nd gear for the better part of an hour when the engine sputtered, stalled and forced us to pull over.  Steam immediately started billowing from the hood.  I got out and noticed a puddle under the car.  I reached in to test what the liquid was and was quickly reprimanded by the dubious duo, who "informed" me that it was "just" water and that they would take care of it.  I'm no mechanic but I've been around my fair share of busted radiators.  A maxed out heat gauge, steam and water under the car generally mean a problem with the radiator.

But nooooo, insisted the lil bearded bitch and la gringuita.  The car needed oil.  Alright, I thought.  So I sat back, watched them struggle through their garbage Spanish to buy motor oil.  Soon we were on our way and they said, "aha! see, no more steam after we put in oil."

Yeah geniuses, that's cuz you burned out all the water.  We pull over to a mechanic shop and in about 3 seconds the mechanic diagnoses the issue - cracked radiator.

Anyway, he fixes the radiator but we blow the fix by the time we get to the town.  At this point these idiots are risking my life so I recommend we go fix it again.  Nah, we'll just keep adding water.  The heat gauge is probably broken they say.  Ten minutes down the road and we've blown through all the water.  Again, I recommend we wait at least 30 minutes.  Nah, we'll wait 10 says the lil bitch.  This time the hood nearly blows off and I kindly inform them that they are currently melting the engine.  Surprise surprise I decide to hitch a ride into town for help as their grand idea was to call AAA.  Hahaha rich white morons.  Anyway, a few of us made it home that night hitching a ride and we left the hellacious couple to figure out the problem they created.

Being such a "chill brah", it was really curious how much of a worthless lil bitch he is...I mean he really couldn't do ANYTHING relating to organizing the trips for the kids.  Yet he was the most judgmental, whiny, spoiled lil bitch I've ever met.

He's busy reading his lil fantasy novel while dinner's served.  He comes down and there's tons of food but we've already eaten all the beans.  What happens next?  He throws a temper tantrum like a lil bitch at the dinner table.

He orders coffee and they only fill it 90% of the way.  What does he do?  He goes back to the counter and claims that it's ridiculous, much like a lil bitch.

We're working with the students in the forest and he gets assigned to plant trees instead of use his big boy machete and big grrrrrr manly muscles to cut through the forest.  What does he do?  Whines like a lil bitch.

He doesn't like the music we're listening to.  Does he ask us to change it?  Nah, he just makes snarky lil comments like a lil bitch.  Apparently, he thinks everyone should just smoke weed and listen to reggae.

He finds a hair (ONE HAIR!) on his bed at the hostel.  Come on guys, what do you think he did?  Of course, what else but whine like the lil bitch he is.

The ride I booked for him is running a bit late, as you do in Latin America.  How does he handle it? Oh right, he pouts like a lil bitch.

Well, aside from the Holy Trinity of incompetence, I had a good experience overall.  I mean I met some cool people, dicked around in the forest and beach for a bit.  I can't really say gained any meaningful work experience, but hey the students were not nearly as bad as I had feared and it was a cool way to kill 4 months.

I'm working in Guatemala right now, enjoying it, and I got accepted to that fellowship so I'll be headed to Mexico for the year starting in August.

Reflecting on El Salvador

With the bros in the rat's nest in San Salvador. 

So this a post I wrote for the company I was working for in El Salvador, Vittana.  As such it's missing the coke and hooker parties (minus the hookers), raves, unbelievable women, tales of my chorizo family, cruising through the countryside, soccer championship throwdowns and other lil bits n pieces of my last six weeks in El Salvador when I moved up to the capital.  Needless to say I loved every minute of it.  I'm back home now which feels comforting and odd simultaneously, as always. Leaving in six days for más. 

-------------------------------------------------

Me and Sarita in Ataco for the day

I woke up at sunrise in Juayua, a small mountain town of primarily coffee farmers.  I had spent the weekend with my good friend Sara and her family in the village, where families live in humble, mostly mud, houses and depend on the land for a living.  In recent years, a fungal outbreak, known as "coffee rust" has been devastating plantations in Juayua and across El Salvador.  Though it doesn't kill coffee plants, coffee rust dramatically reduces the plants' production and this year's harvest is predicted to be the lowest in 80 years.  The effect is palpable amongst Juayuans, and many farmers are calling for short term microloans to cover their living needs for the next year while they remove infected plants and effectively replant their farms.  But with uncertain future earnings, these microcredits have dried up and farmers are stuck in a difficult situation.

I rode back to El Salvador's bustling capital, San Salvador, and met up with my tour operator friend, Luis.  We hopped over to the beach to do some parasailing and general R&R along El Salvador's impeccable coastline.  You know, whoever said black sand beaches are inferior has obviously never seen a sunset on black sand.

Flying!

That night I found myself in a hillside mansion overlooking San Salvador dining with a coffee plantation owner and his family.  We chatted about a range of topics but inevitably got to talking about "la roya" or coffee rust.  Quite honestly, he didn't seem too concerned about the plague but rather was more interested in where he'd scuba dive next.

For such a small country (roughly the size of Massachusetts), El Salvador certainly is a land bursting with diversity and extremes.  I came to El Salvador to work with Fundación Campo and Apoyo Integral and help them design, implement and launch their student loan products. Before my Vittana fellowship, I had only spent a handful of days in El Salvador and really only heard two things about the country:

1) It's an incredibly dangerous gangland.

2) It's like an American little brother with strong immigrant ties.

As I've come to learn, however, this black and white perception is far from the truth and though yes, there is a gang presence, violence is almost entirely relegated to intra-gang activities and the country's violent reputation is grossly exaggerated.  Gang activity primarily manifests itself as extortions, basically demanding a "tax" from small businesses.  The word on the traveler circuit, for example, is to use San Salvador solely as a layover between Nicaragua and Guatemala and that if you don't surf, there's nothing for you in El Salvador.  Well friends, in my opinion this is a grave miscalculation.  Not only does El Salvador boast beautiful and unexploited beaches, bountiful fresh (and cheap!) seafood, mountainous jungles and magnificent volcanoes, but the capital itself is a diverse, metropolitan city rich in culture and international influences.

But that's not to say that delinquency and American dependence don't exist.  Especially with high youth unemployment and an average salary of $260/month (closer to $150 in rural areas), it's easy to understand why kids look to illegal means or dream of moving to the U.S. to find better opportunities.  And remittances are really what keeps the country afloat, representing 16.5% of El Salvador's annual GDP.

Besides the USD, the other major American import is of course MS-13 or Mara Salvatrucha. Originally founded in Los Angeles by El Salvadoran immigrants, the U.S. government began deporting convicted criminals back to their country of origin, and hence it began the Mara invasion here.  And though foreigners almost never have issues with gangs, their presence saturates the country.  In fact, El Salvadorans no longer use the Spanish word for gangster (pandillero) but rather use "marero" regardless of whether affiliated with MS-13 or another gang.

Delinquency and the El Salvadoran dream in America have a marked impact on higher education in the country.  The universities are located in centralized cities, meaning that the majority of students, who live in rural areas, have to pay a small fortune just to get to school. So where you can pay around $10/month in school fees, you might end up paying $150-$200 for transportation and lunch every month.  Tack on another 25% to that number if you take private transportation, which the director of the National University in San Salvador told me is common practice to avoid delinquency issues on public transportation.

Take my friend Sandra, for example.  I went and stayed with her in Intipucá, a beautiful rural town nestled in the mountains about 2 hours from where I was based with Fundación Campo in San Miguel.  Census says the town's home to 7K people but the vast majority of houses are shuttered as some 3K-4K odd Intipucans live in the U.S.  The town has a great, friendly vibe, where neighbors sit on their porch chatting throughout the night and people leave their houses open.

Making pupusas - El Salvador's national dish

Sandra's brother is a watermelon farmer and depends on a $500 annual microloan to stabilize his year's earnings.  Her parents wanted her to quit school at age 15 to start working around the house or to move to the U.S. as her sister had done.  She refused, and with the help of remittances, Sandra commuted to San Miguel everyday to attend university and is now an architect in Intipucá.

Sandra was fortunate that she had a source of external income, but not everyone is so lucky. Some of my friends never even thought about attending university - they hail from rural towns and viewed higher education as simply unaffordable.  They'd rather just cross into the U.S. to find work.  Others decide to work and save money to one day enroll in college.  However, jobs for kids without college degrees are hard to come by and pay peanuts.  Not to mention the occasional low-level extortion which would complicate anyone's saving plan.  For this segment of the population, their options are limited - apart from working, the loans offered by traditional banks are too rigid or are simply not offered to them.  One girl, looking to take out a loan of $500 to pay her graduation fees, was told that the loan minimum was $1,500.  Not wanting to be saddled with unnecessary debt, she declined and was unable to graduate.

With presidential elections coming up in a couple months, we're being inundated with promises focused on three topics: education, jobs and delinquency.  Proposals range from free English courses for youth, a one child-one laptop program and simply "combatting gangs".  Locals don't expect much to change.

But one thing is for certain - starting in January our partners, Fundación Campo and Apoyo Integral, will start providing student loans for El Salvadoran youth to pursue higher education and carve their own path.

life ain't easy, audible, small town livin'

Bedroom and kitchen

It's been six or seven weeks since I came down to El Salvador so I figured I'd check-in. This has been by far the toughest trip or stint abroad I've had. In San Miguel, where I live, there's no expat culture.  In fact there's really no culture at all (locals are the first to note this) and the town closes when the market closes which is around 530/6pm. The first real adjustment was getting accustomed to the pace of life in a developing latin american country. Yeah, I got a dose of that in Guatemala obviously but I also had a madrastra (house mom) that cooked my food and cleaned my room and I took my laundry to the laundromat ($1.50 to have all my clothes washed and dried).  A big kick in the nuts was the reality that without a tourist culture, laundromats don't exist here. So Sundays are dedicated to laundry and I scrub out my clothes by hand...by the end I'm a sweaty exhausted mess and then I wait around as my clothes dry in case a ever-present thunderstorm strikes and I have to run out and take down my clothes. Market trips are nice but a time consuming process. Life is slow, but I've started to appreciate taking the time to really just do nothing. Kinda. My mind still races a million miles an hour thinking bout things.

Closet and bathroo

My room, as ya'll can see in the pics, is basic but comfortable enough. I have AC so I can't really complain. I usually come home, go on a run and then come back and cook something. Watch a bit of TV, read maybe and then pass out around 930 or 10pm. Being able to cook with my "lil stove that can" has really kept me sane. Comfort foods like bachelor pasta and the routine in preparing them make a world of difference for my psyche.

I've hung out with coworkers a few times, which has been nice, but this is the first time I've felt really alone. No one speaks my native language, which is a good challenge for me obvi, but I work in a bank and let's just say that the culture is quite reserved though I do my best to stir the pot with my two closest co-workers. I call my desk "el nido" or "the nest"cuz I sit between two chicks and I like ruffling their feathers and getting some convo going in the otherwise monastery-esque oficina. But a big lesson I've learned is that as cool as it is to meet people from other cultures, I'll never feel truly connected to them. We come from different worlds. I cringe when people ask, "how many countries have you been to?" I really have no clue but I usually just name the central american countries and maybe a couple in Asia. It makes me feel like such a jackass. Here comes this gringo volunteer having traveled all over the place and this local hasn't even left this country the size of new jersey. Clearly differences pervade mere travel experiences, but you catch my drift.

You know there's times here, being by yourself all the time, when you wanna just call mommy and daddy and watch re-runs of How I met your mother. But you can't because you have no Internet to call the rents and they don't show How I met your mother down here.

But as I learned in Vietnam, tho I wasn't nearly as alone as I am here, you need to embrace the solitude and carve your own path out of it. Don't just sit there and sulk about being alone. Your own mind can be your best friend or your worst enemy. With so much time and lack of stimulation, many turn to booze or drugs to pass the hours. And for the first few weeks here I def had a few Bud heavy tall boys every night to numb the boredom. But you can't do that, at least not in the long term. I guess in this regard, I've blended ideologies between the crawling pace of life in the developing world and the american desire for constant development, progression. I mean heck, if I have goals in my life, why not use my buffet of free time to work towards them? So I focus on building vocab and working on my pronunciation and obvi prison-style workouts are part of the daily routine.

Outside patio of my crib...waiting for clothes to dry

Not to say I don't go through swings, but I've come to really enjoy every day here. El Salvador is a really unique place. Just about everyone I've met has either lived in or knows someone living in the US. I've been getting updates on the friend of my coworker who's been making her way to the US. She paid $9K to a coyote for the trip. She went by car from here up through Mexico and now she's living in a house of 30 people waiting to cross the rio grande into Texas. Their border contact pushed back their crossing date because of increased police activity along that stretch last week. Yes, omg i can't believe it either! There's actually corrupt US government officials. OMG!!!

The largest segment of the country's GDP comes from remittances from the U.S....and the first of the month brings long lines outside of the banks. This also adds a unique twist to the higher education market that I'm working in as a lot of kids wanna burn remittances on cars, jewelry and clothes (things that get you laid) instead of education (things that get you paid). The other major US "export" is obviously MS-13, the maras, and their presence saturates the country. You can't go five minutes without seeing a tag on a wall, reading about them in the paper or hearing about something that they've done. Like other developing countries, the cities have pretty decent infrastructure but then living standards drop precipitously upon entering the countryside.

As part of my strategy to hack my way out of solitude, I met a chick named Sandra over Couchsurfing. Really awesome chick that's both older and has traveled quite a bit so we have a lot more to talk about than the average person I meet. She also understands what it's like to be alone in a foreign country after doing it herself in Japan. So here I was this past weekend, sitting in church with her and her family in a tiny rural town. Census says 7.5K people live there but approximately 2/3 spend the majority of their time in the US and most of the houses are shuttered.  I got to thinking how I came to be in this place. A church, adorned to the teeth as best they could, rife with water damage and filled with a zealous crowd in the middle of nowhere El Salvador. Over the past ~2 years I've put myself in some really unique places or situations I never thought I'd be in. And this was another. I had spent the weekend with Sandra and her family, in their rural house in the countryside. The bathroom? Hole in the ground. Brush yo teef camping style outside. The shower is a concrete cubicle a lil less than chest height. So I'm butt naked showering and the family is standing 3 feet away washing the dishes. Her brother farms watermelons and relies heavily on microfinance loans of $500/year. Obviously there's nothing to do in a town that small so you spend the time chatting with neighbors, doing household chores and cooking real "slow food". They're gonna teach me how to make my own tortillas and pupusas next time. Booyah.

Sweet graffiti by my office. 

So after the first month or so and getting some experiences like the above I called an audible and decided I can't move back to the states for at least another year. If I want to work in poverty alleviation in latin america, I need to get some big time experience under my belt and get jedi at Spanish mos def. So I'll spend the next year working with different projects - Ecuador til May 1 and then maybe Nicaragua and as of now I'm hoping to eventually move back to Guatemala and live in the field for a while...yes remote and all but I think it'll prepare me to work in this field long term. The juice'll be worth the squeeze.

Papi's Back

Back to writing the blog folks.  First day of work starts today.  I'm working in San Miguel, El Salvador, designing student loan products for kids.  Gotta say, I'm pretty nervous/scared.  I haven't worked for 2 years and now I'll be in an office for 10 hours/day speaking a language that I haven't spoken in 8 months.  I woke up at 5am this morning tho I would say that's more because I took a sleeping pill at 9pm than the nervios.  Anyway, there's really only one way to go so I spose it's time to tell the job to grab its ankles and be my bitch. adios

Where's Wallys Hiatus

The 1000 year old cave we slept in.

For news about what's been going on in my life for the next month please refer to our team blog:

http://www.whereswallysmongolrally.com/blog.html

Uncle Al's doing the writing.  If you are one a those hugs and kisses types that wants
to know how I'm feeling and what my thoughts are, then pick up a phone or type a message using a keyboard and computing machine.