Thinking Beyond Borders 08-09

the Cleveland half-marathon

2009-05-07T18:59:00.003-04:00

Well, after eight months, the inaugural Thinking Beyond Borders trip has ended. We wrapped up with graduation last weekend, and everyone has dispersed to their respective homes. I don’t think the finality of our group’s time together has struck me yet, but it’s certainly different to be at home.

I’m not quite done with TBB, though: I registered today for the Cleveland half-marathon, where TBB has planned its second big fundraising event. I haven’t been training specifically, but I am going to do it. For me, it’s important to continue involvement in TBB and make the same opportunities I had available for other students.

All of the money raised for the Cleveland marathon goes directly towards scholarships. One of the most striking things about visiting high schools in the past couple weeks was how many students asked about the cost of the program. At first it was downright awkward to have to tell them that this was by no means a cheap trip, with a price tag equivalent to a year’s tuition at a private college. I spoke with a couple of incredibly enthusiastic students whose faces fell upon hearing the cost. TBB was able to offer scholarships last year, and creating a diverse group is important. The economy is hitting hard, of course, and more and more families need support to make a trip like this possible.

Having had this fantastic opportunity over the past year, I would love to be able to see more qualified students share the chance to partake. If you have been reading my blog, if you think the trip has been interesting, I am asking you to please pledge towards my run. The philosophy behind Thinking Beyond Borders is not just about a travel tour of the world; it’s about educating a future generation of leaders to think in a dynamic and engaging way about the world in ways that a freshman year of college doesn’t offer. I know it’s a tough time all around, and even a little money could help make this accessible to potential students. Many, many thanks … and I’ll let you know how I feel around mile 11!

secure Fundraising site: http://www.active.com/donate/TBB2009/lizkuenstner

Road Trip Presentations

2009-05-07T18:35:00.003-04:00

We spent the past couple of weeks on three separate road trips, traveling around the country to deliver the presentations of learning that we created in Virginia. One van stretched from Atlanta to Boston, one covered the tri-state area in New York, and mine took on the Midwest: Louisville, Chicago, and Cleveland. We presented mostly to high school audiences, with crowds varying from a couple students to an entire auditorium full.

My presentation focused on our experience in South Africa, stressing the importance of interacting with the individuals behind the large global issues. Getting to know the people, I argued, does two things: first, it gives you a personal and tangible relationship to an issue, like AIDS, that can be overwhelming and vague judged by vast statistics alone. Secondly, it gives you a more nuanced understanding of complex issues; I learned just how deeply-rooted cultural stigmas are against AIDS in ways I could not have by merely studying the facts of the epidemic.

I wanted to relate this lesson to any community-based efforts, not just so far as another continent, but within your own community. To really bring my message home to students and peers, I made a really clear connection to our every-day lives. Thanks to Photoshop, I created a mock-Facebook profile of Sharon, an AIDS patient I met in South Africa.

For those of you not drawn into the Facebook craze, let me preface by saying that every single one of the 65 girls I graduated from high school with has a Facebook profile. Many log in multiple times each day, and pore over minute details of their friends’ lives. I’ve had my own Facebook for years, but coming back to the US, I was particularly struck by how deeply interested we are in our own little networks, while our awareness of someone like Sharon is near-zero. To highlight this paradox, and to perhaps urge those in my generation to invest a bit of their Facebook energy into global consciousness, I showed my audiences the profile.

Receptions were varied; some were quite curious about TBB and our experiences, and others less so. But the Facebook hook definitely drew the attention of people my age. It was undoubtedly valuable to go through the process of figuring out how to articulate what we’ve seen abroad and how to bring that back home. It was also fascinating to see a range of different high schools, my own all-girls experience being a very atypical one. We saw everything from an inner-city Chicago school to an all-boys’ Catholic sports powerhouse, as well as a middle school and a University. I also enjoyed the experience of seeing a part of the country I haven’t visited much.

This I Believe

2009-04-21T23:04:00.004-04:00

The group just spent two weeks in Douthat State Park in western Virginia. We spent the time reflecting on the trip and processing our experiences to create individual presentations of learning. One group activity that we did early on to begin thinking about our travels was listening to NPR's This I Believe series and try writing our own. Here's mine...

I believe in the power of a smile to a stranger.

I have never been the type to strike up a conversation in an elevator or linger at the coffee shop, chatting to the barista about the weather. I’m not naturally at ease with people I don’t know. But spending six months traveling abroad has given me confidence in the ability of this casual gesture to forge inherently human connections.

As if I didn’t already stand out enough as a foreigner in rural villages in Ecuador, industrial cities in China, remote communities in Thailand, and townships in South Africa, I determined to go on daily runs. The habit inevitably drew curious stares; in most of these places, exercise for the sake of exercise is unfamiliar. Furthermore, many of these areas never saw visitors, no less white ones, and there I was, a real live blond in the flesh.

Initially, I ran as I always had, in my own world of pounding feet, pulsing muscles, and rousing music: alone, in my zone. Still, I noticed locals gawking at this strange and unusual sight. It was in no way unfriendly, but it made me uncomfortable to merely ignore it or pretend I didn’t notice. I quickly assumed the habit of smiling at those I passed, raising my hand in greeting. Some people found my wave even more baffling, but by and large, this acknowledgment completely changed the way I was perceived. I was a stranger, yes, a foreigner, and what I was doing seemed a little bizarre, but I was being friendly.

Some folks cheered my progress, others jogged alongside me for a dozen paces. In smaller communities, they came to recognize me and expect my regular passes. Even though these interactions were fleeting, they stand out to me as moments of genuine, cross-cultural engagement. There was nothing more gratifying than a smile returned, acceptance of my presence. For two strangers to hold each other’s attention for just a moment is to recognize someone else’s humanity. We may not know each other. We may be different. But we can connect through this universal gesture.

After six months abroad, acknowledging others in this way had become second nature, not just on runs, but as I walked anywhere. It wasn’t until I returned to the United States that I realized how precious it had been. I understood it during my first run back in New York City. In some ways, I was home. But in others, I was alone. Anonymous. I could no longer smile at strangers – not only would they think me peculiar, but they often didn’t even offer eye contact. I resolved to try, but the only responses I got were a whistle and a bewildered glower.

I despaired, a little, of the culture I had returned to. I missed the smiles and even the stares of locals in foreign places, because they, at least, had acknowledged seeing me. But I’ve persuaded myself our society is not completely devoid of casual friendliness between strangers: people offer up their subway seat, hold the elevator, prop open a door. Thank them. Linger over this brief interaction. People want to connect to each other. It’s human nature. So smile at a stranger. It feels good.

Washington DC

2009-04-21T22:09:00.003-04:00

Our week in DC coincided with the cherry blossom season, so the city was gorgeous and the weather lovely. We met with a number of organizations -- Center for Global Development, the World Bank, and my favorite, the Global Fairness Initiative. With this non-profit consulting group, I was particularly impressed by the comprehensive efforts to solve problems, such as garment manufacturing, by involving all the stakeholders. By creating solutions that incorporate and serve everyone involved -- the government, citizens, the private sector, they are far more likely to be sustainable and effective.

A large portion of our time was devoted to a day on Capitol Hill. We spent one day preparing at the RESULTS office -- an organization designed to train and mobilize citizens to lobby in favor of hunger and poverty legislation that pertains both to domestic and international aid. We went over procedural and persuasive methods for our meetings with reps the next day. The plan was to ask House Representatives to sign a letter in favor of allocating foreign budget to microfinance, and to ask Senators to vote in favor of restoring the foreign aid budget to Obama's original request.

The next day we did indeed go to Capitol Hill, dressed to impress and ready to meet with our representatives. Between the fourteen students, we had a number of meetings with representatives from our districts and from any other states that had time to see us. I met with aids in the offices of Barney Frank and John Kerry, both from Massachusetts, as well as Benjamin Lujan from New Mexico. I was even fortunate to meet directly with a representative from New Jersey, Donald Payne, the first black representative from his state. Just about everyone we met with readily agreed to at the very least sign the letter of support; as soon as they heard direct requests from constituents, they were willing to act. They are, of course, ready to support things that citizens from their districts want, as they are responsible for electing reps.

After meeting with Barney Frank's office

The Boston crew -- making a "B"

Each meeting lasted twenty to forty minutes. Some aides were well-versed in microfinance and already supported those efforts, others needed detailed explanations of how it empowers the impoverished to earn their own income by supplying them with a very small seed loan that they are able to repay with very low interest. We had very interesting conversations with all of them, and almost all of them revolved around the idea of sending money abroad, in this particularly poor economic time. Many of them had humanitarian interests in mind, but admitted that the way they've got to pitch aid to constituents is in terms of self-interest. National defense is the primary argument, using development money as a preventative measure against poverty that could lead to unrest and even terrorism. That of course focuses money towards the middle east but leaves out Africa, which has not been much of a violent threat. I can see how it is hard to tell Americans that their tax dollars are being sent out-of-country when jobs are being lost at home. I'm not even necessarily sure if all international problems ought to be funded by developed countries' governments, but I do know the NGOs on the ground need money to continue their work. More than 50 million people are expected to fall below the poverty line in the coming year due to the financial crisis.

The idea was for this to be an empowering experience, and it was. I was surprised and impressed by how easy it was to have an influence on these seemingly allmighty representatives -- all it took was a quick meeting with good reasoning to support a request. Yet at the same time, I had the sense that to make any substantive impact on an issue, you'd have to move to DC and schedule these sorts of meetings all day, every day. Then I realized some people do do that -- from Marlboro and Monsanto. And no one should be able to purchase political power in this democracy. A theme I've seen over the year has been the need for campaign finance reform; it would address issues across the board, from agricultural subsidies to drug patenting to healthcare.

Back in the US of A

2009-04-05T21:16:00.001-04:00

After six and a half months abroad, we are indeed back in the United States of America! On the afternoon of March 22^nd, we arrived in New York City, a far cry from our last stop abroad – Addo national park in South Africa. I wouldn’t say I was necessarily looking forward to returning from abroad, but the rest of our trip should be good. The TBB program is not over yet; six weeks remain in our schedule.

We’ll spend a week each in New York City and Washington DC meeting with NGOs and larger organizations that relate to what we’ve been learning abroad. Then the group will retreat to an isolated center in Virginia to process everything we’ve seen and create individual “presentations of learning”. We’ll split into groups and present these projects to schools, interest groups, and philanthropy organizations around the country. My group will be traveling to Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Louisville. Our program will culminate with graduation in Boston on May 2^nd and 3^rd.

Our schedule in New York included various meetings with the New York State Department of Environmental Protection, the United Nations, Sustainable South Bronx, Michael Pollan – author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma – Gay Men’s Health Crisis, Just Food, UNICEF, and the Clinton Foundation. Many of the visits turned out to be briefings with Q&A.

One of our more frustrating days was our trip to the UN; I think most of the group came away from it with a sense that this huge organization didn’t have the ability to enforce it’s recommendations and was laden with bureaucratic processes. It actually put me in a pretty aggressive mood because nearly all of the questions we asked were met with defensive, prescribed and evasive responses.

We saw some more enlightening things, too. Michael Pollan’s speech was wildly entertaining; our visit to Just Food included a visit to a tiny, acre-large community farm in the Bronx; at the Gay Men’s Health Crisis we volunteered by preparing – I kid you not – “pussy packs” of condoms for distribution. Other highlights included mastering the subway system, seeing Bill Clinton’s office, and receiving an abundance of printed material about each of the organizations we visited.

I feel like I ought to have more culture shock, but beyond the first jet-lagged afternoon, I’ve mostly returned to life as normal. Having experienced only summer weather since the trip began, almost the most shocking part was the bitter chill of lingering winter. It’s nice to have access to the New York Times, to speak to anyone in English, and have cell phones; on the other hand, we’ve never spent more on food and the city is overwhelming.

Final Days Abroad

2009-03-10T22:05:00.005-04:00

We've just finished our time shadowing careworkers in the townships. I ended up getting to know not only Beulah but also her co-worker Anthea, who together cover all of Kranshoek. Our morning routine stayed much the same, visiting patients in their homes to check blood pressure, deliver medicine, clean wounds and schedule appointments with the clinic. I've learned a large part of the careworker's role is to give the patient a sense of accountability, and by dependably visiting time and time again, proving that someone is there to help and to remind. One day we were invited to have lunch by one patient's wife; she cooked us a traditional meal, with mealie balls, fried chicken, and lots of processed snack food. We had a fascinating conversation with her and some other colored neighbors about the upcoming election, and we discovered really complex racial relations. We were at first shocked to hear them say how forcefully they resented "the blacks" and saying that apartheid was decidedly "so much better." Other excursions in Kranshoek included visiting a retirement club where the elderly members sang us songs, and when they demanded us to sing, we chose a Christmas carol. The response of the frumpy leader who'd forced us to perform was, "It's okay. In our culture it's a tradition to sing; clearly, in yours, it is not."

During the final week and a half, I took a number of photographs of them for my media project. For this month's project, I decided to work alone and initially intended to use film. I've been toting around fifty rolls of black and white film that I'd wanted to use with my simple SLR camera, which of course broke by China. Though I replaced it with an ancient $20 point-and-shoot, that camera had no controls or zoom whatsoever. Then I learned that I wouldn't be able to process and develop my film here in Plett, so I had to scrap the film idea all together. I set my camera to its black and white setting and decided to use that instead.

My media project is a coffee-table book of a series of portraits I took of the patients I knew best. Before coming to South Africa, all I knew of the AIDS epidemic were the facts, the cold, hard, immense statistics, and I wanted to give the numbers a face, show the stories of a few patients. I coupled their photos with anecdotes about their life and their illness and my interactions with them. I was hesitant at first use my camera, but after I asked, nearly everyone was pleased to have their picture taken. I got to know about a dozen patients really well, visiting them every other day. Some improved, some did not. Most of them will always be patients, suffering from chronic diseases and old age.

We presented our media projects (many podcasts, a collage, and writing pieces) to an open audience which included our host NGO and all the carers we'd been working with. The Kranshoek crew took our two care-workers out to dinner, to their favorite spot in town -- a gaudy grill chain restauranted themed on native-Americans? Good-byes were very sad, both among the patients and with Anthea and Beulah. I gave the patients extra prints of their photos and we gave the carers a framed group shot, which they insist they will sleep with under their pillows.

It's hard to believe, but our time abroad is only a week! We've got a couple days more in Plett, the chance for independent student travel. I'm staying around and volunteering at an orphanage in another township, Kwanokathula. The children's shelter, Masizami, is home to twenty-six kids. Some have been orphaned by AIDS; others have parents, but they may be mentally incapable of raising them. The shelter was pretty empty this weekend, because many of the kids were on a group outing, but we played with six or seven of them. One boy looks about seven years old. He's eleven. He lacked the nutrition early on in life necessary for development. A couple have HIV and are spindly even for little kids. On the whole, though, the kids are brilliant fun and we're having a great time with them.

The TBB group will go on a brief safari in Addo, and within a week, board a plane back to the US. It'll be bizarre to be there after six months abroad, but I'm really looking forward to our schedule. We have a number of really interesting visits in NYC and DC, with NGOs and the UN and senators. The cold weather will be a shock to our system; days here in the sun get up to nearly 100 degrees!

some of the photos from my project -

Kranshoek

Melissa

David

Kranshoek

2009-02-26T10:46:00.000-05:00

Our work in the townships began this week. Zach and I were assigned to Kranshoek (pronounced Krantuk) to shadow one of the home-based care givers, Beulah. Kranshoek is the furthest of all the townships our group is working in, fifteen minutes' drive. Other pairs say how the gated communities of affluent Plettenberg Bay turn into informal shack communities is frightening -- some people can walk to their township in a kilometer or two. Kranshoek's houses, most of which are identical, one-room concrete homes from a government program, extend about as far as the eye can see. It's no slum; there's an elementary school, a number of kindergartens, small food shops, a soup kitchen, and a clinic. The clinic seems to be a combination of governmental services and an NGO funded in part by the US that focuses on HIV and tuberculosis. 105 people in the community have tested postive for HIV, though there are doubtless others who don't know it.

Beulah is a small, serious-looking woman who is extremely dedicated to her patients, some of whom she's been working with since she began the job a year ago. She makes her rounds daily, Monday through Friday, calling on twenty PlettAid's patients once a week to once a day, depending on the severity of their illness. The services she provides are no so much medical as they are supportive; she checks blood pressure and blood sugar levels, but more I think her dependable presence encourages patients to take their medicine and keep their appointments at the clinic. Her patients' diseases include hypertension, diabetes, paralysis, HIV, tuberculosis (including MDR- multi-drug resistant) and stroke victims.

Most of the patients don't speak English; about 90% of the town uses Afrikaans. I still can't comprehend how there are eleven national languages; most people speak many, but how do you know what to use when you approach a stranger? Conveniently for us, all of the major signs are in English. We don't communicate directly with many of the patients we see, but Beulah does a great job of explaining a patient's medical and personal history as we go.

We've already seen some patients many times. Cornelia is eighty-nine years old, and in very good health, save for an enormous boil on her head. It's been there for three years, and doctors can't fix it, so she needs treatment to prevent infection. We see her quite often, and she's always full of quiet smiles. This morning we washed her hair with special shampoo and clipped hair away from the area.

Sharon is so far the most gripping patient. She's an HIV and MDR TB patient, and she had been in the hospital in a city for four months recieving care. Since she's returned to Kranshoek, however, she's simply refused to take her medication. It's been two weeks, and she's missed her appointments at the clinic and avoided Beulah's visits. When we first met her, I didn't realize how sick she was; she was wearing a down jacket and a fleece blanket covered most of her body. Then I saw her legs -- the quintessential image of severe illness, no thicker than my wrist. I might have guessed she was fifteen; she's twenty-nine. Beulah berated her when she discovered the packets of unopened tablets. It's so frustrating because the medication is free for Sharon - she literally had someone coming to her door to remind her. She stopped taking it because the symptoms of TB had disappeared, but since it's MDR, it's residual and highly-contagious and dangerous; the HIV medicine made her vomit. Now she sits nearly immobile, weak and tired, and her lungs hurt to breathe. When she sneezes, thick blood comes out. Still she neglects her tablets, she sullenly deflects Beulah's questions, not meeting her eyes. She lives with her mother, who was cooperative with Beulah but didn't seem to understand the severity of the situation, laughingly calling Sharon stubborn.

We shadow Beulah all morning, for three weeks. Afternoons alternate between TBB seminars discussing public health and volunteering. In Kranshoek, we're working at the local school to sand and re-varnish old one-room classroom buildings. I'm enjoying getting to know the patients and we'll see how the next two weeks go.

Plettenberg Bay, South Africa

2009-02-21T08:50:00.001-05:00

The end of our time in Thailand also marked the end of nearly four months in south-east Asia; I think the group was ready for a change. Our trip continued to our final country abroad, South Africa, via a grueling fifty-nine hour, six-flight, epic journey. Of all the countries we've visited, I think South Africa was the one I pictured least in my head. I really had no idea what to expect, and there will be a lot to learn here.

We're staying in Plettenberg Bay, a coastal town on the southern shore of the Indian Ocean (!) It was chosen because of it's safety relative to larger cities, and it's this bizarre mixture of different racial and socio-economic groups. Initially, it comes across as a hugely tourist town, attracting affluent visitors during it's summer months (December and January) and Main Street is full of expensive beachy boutiques. But there's also a predominantly black section of town with wholesale discount stores.

We're staying in a hostel - taking it over, really. The boys and the girls each have their own dorm room, and it's already quite crowded for nine girls to share a single toilet and shower. But there's really nice communal space, with couches, a pool table, and a beautiful balcony that overlooks the ocean, where we eat our meals. It will be a welcome change to trade our savory rice breakfasts for yogurt and muesli and fruit! Best of all, we have access to the small kitchen, and the supermarket in town is well-stocked, so we can cook just about anything we've been craving.

Our curriculum focus here in South Africa will be public health. We'll be working with an NGO called PlettAid, a home-based care service for 250 impoverished patients in the townships surrounding Plettenberg Bay. 40% of the patients (as opposed to 27% in the region) are HIV-positive; many have tuberculosis, disabilities, terminal illnesses. In groups of two, we'll be shadowing a care worker on her daily routine for three weeks. PlettAid has asked us to help by giving an evaluation of their organization's services to the patients we meet. Work will start on Monday; I'm partners with Zach.

So far we've spent our days meeting with PlettAid and visiting various townships. They're not at all what I expected, somehow rather than the quintessential images of poverty I pictured, they seem more spread out, and in between different towns lie beautiful green pastures. Also, it finally occured me why the town scene is particularly striking: not a single building exceeds one story, and telephone wires tower high above. It gives the appearance of being vastly flat and expansive.

It's nice to be so close to the beach -- a ten or fifteen minute walk. It's undoubtedly a gorgeous spot, but there's a lot more to be seen. I suspect our perception of Plett will change a lot as we begin to work with the carers.

Ban Huay Hee

2009-02-10T02:44:00.010-05:00

It's been a while since the last blog update because we've been doing homestays in a rural community, sans electricity, let alone WiFi. We've been living in Ban Huay Hee, a village in northern Thailand of the ethnic minority Karen people. The whole community consists of 26 households, about 160 people, and they hosted us for three weeks.

Each of us lived with a family; mine lived on the outskirts of the village, on a peninsula of land that jutted out into a beautiful expansive valley. It's a little hard to describe the setting; half the time I felt as though I could have been in New England during autumn, half the time it seemed like Arizona's dry red dust landscape. But out house was in the middle of it all, overlooking endless mountainside, and it was spectacular at sunset, not to mention the stars at night.

My host-mother, Jipo, was the teacher at the local school, which goes only as far as elementary level. Beyond that, children have to travel into town, Mae Hong Son, which is about two hours by motorcycle. There were fifteen kids at school, in two classes, and she taught the younger group, about 3-5 years old. Most mornings I would follow my host-mother and her 4-year old daughter, Meji, into school, where I learned the Thai script from bossy but well-intentioned five-year-olds, and perfected my crayon abilities.

my host sister, Meji

As a TBB group, we met in the afternoon for Thai language classes. I have to admit that after a couple of days this seemed unnecessary, given that the locals in Ban Huay Hee spoke their own, unrelated language: Pakanyoh, the language that had followed the Karen people from Burma. The first word to learn is the multi-purpose da-bluu, which is appropriate for hello, thank you, and good-bye -- pretty much the fundamentals in a home-stay situation!

Our curriculum focus was sustainable agriculture. Ban Huay Hee was certainly an agrarian community; nearly all the food consumed there is produced on their own land (picture overgrowth on a mountainside, agroforestry, rather than the quintessential southeast Asian rice paddy fields I was imagining). However, January is the dry season, and there's not much labor to be done. The seasonal farming was in the burning stage, when trees are hacked down and left to dry before being burned to restore nutrients to the ground.

Admirably, the community didn't adopt the industrial farming techniques that were popularized in the Green Revolution, but later proved to be environmentally damaging. They use the same methods they've been practicing for hundreds of years, and by any measure, they're self-sustaining. Seeing what it takes to be sustainable on this level, however, raises questions about how feasible it is to apply sustainable agriculture on a large, world-wide scale. This community devotes so much of its daily life to cultivation and food preparation, not to mention the land needed -- it's hard to imagine being able to feed 6 million people this way.

Food in Ban Huay Hee was, if anything, predictable. It was pretty much a sure bet that any meal, breakfast, lunch, or dinner, would be based on a large bowl of rice. In addition, there would be two or three side dishes that everyone shared, generally vegetables or egg, sometimes with small bits of meat. I was lucky that my host-family ate with me, rather than feed me alone, as other families did. The four of us ate together on the floor, and as I learned early on, you don't help yourself to more than a bite of the communal dishes at a time.

Other highlights of living in Ban Huay Hee -- a day hike to Doi Pui, the highest mountain in the area, where, at the summit, we encountered thirty or forty soldiers of the Thai army, who were in town as security for the queen's tour of duty through Mae Hong Son. They were by far the friendliest bunch of militia I've ever seen; they cheerfully insisted that we all take a group photo. The irony was that with one arm cradling their giant guns, they flashed peace signs at the camera with their other hand.

In the middle of our stay, we had a weekend trip to Mae Hong Son for independent student travel. Zach and I went camping on a nearby river bank, complete with a campfire and a chorus of tree frogs, all night long.

Back in the village, we continued to study agriculture, and went on short trips to the fields to see the various stages in the cycle of burning fields, leaving them fallow, and re-cultivating them. We had a go at chopping trees, the head of the village showed us how to blacksmith machettes, and we worked on media projects.

The farewell celebration was a nice night of singing, thank-you's, and presentations of our media.

with Jipo & Meji

Upland Holistic Development Project

2009-01-17T03:06:00.003-05:00

TBB has spent the past week at a farm in Fang, in northern Thailand. The farm is part of a program called Upland Holistic Development Project, which essentially experiments with various sustainable agricultural methods and recommends the best techniques to local farmers. Many of the fourteen communities they work with are ethnic minorities, who migrated from Burma thirty five years ago and lack the benefits that come with official citizenship.

At the farm we've seen the methods that UHDP is attempting to implement in nearby villages. We've even been able to try our hand at preparing chemical-free compost catalysts, tree propagating, and organic livestock feeding. For more on UHDP's goals and methods, to check out their website (listed at the bottom of this posting).

Mornings are spent taking Thai lessons with two teachers who will travel with us for the rest of the month. Thai is (another) tonal language, with its own script, but we're working mostly with phonetic phrases that will be useful in our homestays. After class, we generally have a TBB seminar that focuses on our topic of the month: sustainable agriculture. We read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, a well-written journalist who explores the state of contemporary food (primarily in the US). It's a really fascinating and eye-opening book about the industrial process -- the history and the governmental policies that created and reinforced the current system. We've also watched a film, on a similar note, called The Future of Food. Both are recommended, particularly if you've enjoyed Supersize Me or Fast Food Nation; these are similar but a little more substantive.

Yesterday TBB not only observed but indeed participated in a pig slaughter. The group was fairly apprehensive upon learning what we'd be doing, but in the end it was an important experience. After all, most of us eat animal products daily and are so far removed from the process that it's hard to conceptualize the system. I'll describe the process, so if you're weary of animal slaughter, skip the next couple of paragraphs.

The first step was to knock the pig out with a wooden club. This was the most difficult part of the whole process to watch. To minimize suffering, this was done not by a TBB student but by one of the four or five local men who led the efforts. At the first blow, the pig was on the ground, convulsing and writhing, and it took two more whacks to render it unconscious. This was when the most adrenaline was running in the crowd, but also the moments when we had to keep moving quickly. Immediately six people grabbed the pig's legs and hoisted it up onto a bamboo structure where the experts pushed forward the executioner: Zach himself wielded the knife and thrust it into the pig's chest. I caught the spilt blood in a bucket, and within maybe thirty seconds the worst of the drama was over.

We next had to shave the pig's coarse hair. We loosened the hair follicles with boiling water and scraped off as much as we could with blunt blades. What was left had to be singed off with burning palm leaves, and after hosing off the corpse, we sliced open the pig and removed the organs. The whole butchering process took a couple of hours and nearly all the parts of the body were consumed in some way.

Amazingly, no one threw up or passed out, and everyone attended. It was challenging to be so involved in the process of killing of an animal that we had seen walking around, but the process felt more humane than a massive livestock factory slaughterhouse, where most of our meat originates.

http://www.uhdp.org/Response.html

Sun & Surf in Thailand

2009-01-10T06:27:00.005-05:00

After a lay-over in the Bangkok Airport – home to the recent political protests – we reached the beautiful beaches of Thailand. We would spend our enrichment week relaxing on a small island in the south called Koh Tao, becoming certified to scuba dive. We stayed at a little dive resort right on the beach, nestled in a beautiful cove, in bungalows overlooking the ocean. A bit isolated from the heart of the town, it was a very serene location, with plenty of hammocks to kick back in.

According to the 2005 version of Lonely Planet, Koh Tao is a gem precisely because locals don’t spend their time catering to tourists, and even electricity hasn’t reached the island. It’s amazing how much a place can change in just four years: now, I’d say 95% of the island’s economy is tourism-based, the place is covered in resorts, restaurants, and adventure sports outfitters. And as for the electricity – it’s everywhere.

The scuba course was four days long, and began with a number of boring instructional videos. The first two days we also did foolish bubble-blowing activities in shallow water. So when it came to day three, I was numbed into expecting very little from diving, and it came as a pleasant surprise when all of a sudden I found myself at the bottom of a beautiful coral reef, freed from gravity’s constraint, and able to navigate a National Geographic setting myself. We made it on four dives, each about forty minutes, to a maximum of fifteen meters. What I never realized about diving is that you have to pretty consciously control your buoyancy – each inhalation and exhalation changes the volume of your lungs, and sends you up or down. After a couple of minutes with the bizarre sensation, you get used to it and buoyancy maneuvering becomes second-nature. It truly was the coolest experience – we got up-close and personal with the most bizarre neon fish, did back-flips on the sandy bottom, and had an underwater dance party. We saw stingrays and barracudas, not to mention sea cucumbers galore.

We were lucky to have beautiful weather, and we’re leaving Koh Tao with healthy tans (or some of us – there’s a good amount of burn, too). Besides scuba diving, we rented kayaks, indulged into cheap Thai massages, and enjoyed amazing cuisine. The pad thai and curries are delicious. I’ve been missing out on pad thai all my life; when we ordered it at home, it always came with shrimp, so I just never bothered to try it. It is so, so not bad. I also love the eating culture here – at local restaurants, and most shops, too, you take your shoes off before entering, and meals are eaten around low tables on lounging cushions.

In transit we spent a night on a larger island, Koh Samui, where I had a pretty striking experience walking back to our hotel through the red light district (safely, with Sandy). Tiny little open-air bars lined the main street, competing music blaring from the speakers, and prostitutes blatantly promoting their bars. Thailand had a large stake in the sex-tourism industry, and though it’s illegal, it’s also largely overlooked. I looked up the issue online, and learned that in Koh Samui, a small little beach town, there are more than 10,000 prostitutes. Having just read a book on modern-day slavery (A Crime So Monstrous, by Benjamin Skinner) the walk through the bar neighborhood was particularly unsettling. I have no idea what proportion of those girls were coerced into their positions, but I also sense that women with economic options choose to go into the business. So far we’ve also seen a couple of lady-men, whose presence is proportionally high in Thailand because it’s culturally acceptable for men to transform themselves into women.

We’ve been pretty cloistered away on a touristy island, so it makes sense that I haven’t seen any indication of the recent political unrest. I wonder how much evidence of it we’ll see later on in the trip, when we go north to study sustainable agriculture in rural homestays.

Final Weeks in Vietnam

2009-01-01T00:01:00.006-05:00

After celebrating Christmas with the group in Quy Nhon, I visited Nha Trang on independent student travel with Emily and Renee. We spent a couple of nights in the backpacker’s beach town, in a little hostel just five minutes’ walk from the ocean. Of course, it’d been sunny all month while we were stuck in sweaty Ho Chi Minh City, but once we reached the shore, it clouded over and drizzled. We got a couple of hours of sun in, lying on the beach, enough to redden a bit. Other than that, we enjoyed the little town: we had an amazing Indian meal, homemade ice cream, browsed the book exchange shops, played badminton. It was a fun challenge to make our own hostel reservations, secure bus tickets back to Ho Chi Minh, and be in charge of all our own meals.

We took a public bus back down to Ho Chi Minh City along a beautiful costal route. We returned to impending media projects and planning for our student environmental conference. That evening, though, when we went out for dinner, we could sense unusual activity in the city. It was a Sunday night, but the place had more energy than we’d seen all month. We learned at the restaurant that it was the night of the final match in the South East Asia soccer championships, with Vietnam competing against Thailand. The game stretched on for hours, and we kept catching glances of it on TV as we worked on media projects. It looked like it was over for Vietnam, but they won in the last moments on an exciting kick. The city absolutely went mad. They won at maybe ten or eleven o’clock, but the celebration lasted well beyond four a.m. Around midnight I ventured out of the hotel to explore the festivities, and it was an absolute mob scene. Everyone was joy-riding through the city on their motorcycles, waving the red Vietnamese flag, banging trash cans, and reveling in general mayhem. At some intersections, it was so crowded that it was literally impossible for a pedestrian to make any headway. It was probably the rowdiest crowd I’d ever seen, but it felt completely safe and good-natured. I think in comparison to Red Sox rioting, this was a national accomplishment, and felt united rather than divisive. On the other hand, I can also see how intense fervor could turn dangerous in a mob setting with that much energy and collective emotion.

On New Year’s Eve, we hosted our student environmental conference. We’d invited local university students, and about sixty attended. For three hours, we shared our media projects, learned about Vietnamese students’ efforts in environmental clubs, and discussed conservation. It turned out quite well – it was very organized and ran smoothly – but I think we perhaps overestimated the collective English level, and in the limited time, it was hard to get very many insightful ideas. The Vietnamese students, however, seemed very willing to participate, and tossed around ideas about emissions-trading and governmental regulation. The most concise point that I took away from our discussion was that Vietnam lacks two things in regard to environmentalism: awareness, and alternatives. Most people remain ignorant of the consequences of their actions, and even those that realize the detrimental affects of particular behaviors don’t have many other options.

We celebrated the New Year at a fancy hotel party where there was a buffet, live music and performance, and a balloon cascade at midnight. New Year’s isn’t a very important holiday in Vietnam, but in Ho Chi Minh City it’s celebrated in certain neighborhoods. The entire hotel district was decked out in more lighting than during Christmas, and one street was even named “Times Square”.

Not long afterwards, we were having our last Vietnamese iced coffees and on our way to the airport to head for Thailand ...

Christmas in 'Nam!

2008-12-25T01:14:00.004-05:00

I should preface this by saying Christianity itself does not have a strong presence in Vietnam. Nonetheless, the commercial industry has embraced the Christmas season, in bizarre but omnipresent ways: techno versions of Christmas carols, lights, and gaudy decorations everywhere. This was especially true in Ho Chi Minh City, but the TBB crowd made sure it followed us to Quy Nhon: upon arrival at our guesthouse at 3:30 in the morning, Lily, Becca and I didn't go to bed until we'd hung up our Christmas lights around the walls and on our makeshift tree (a clothes rack draped by a green hammock).

It's been warm and sunny all month, but of course it rained Christmas eve and Christmas day. We had a relaxing day to ourselves on Christmas eve, but had a nice group dinner followed by a round of Christmas carols on the walk home. We made a time in our schedule to honor other faiths, too, on Christmas eve; we broke out Becca's supply of gelt, lit the menorah, and learned how to play dreidel.

Then it was time for the Christmas eve night service at a local church. For years, my parents have literally had to drag me to church, but this time, I decided to go on my own accord. Lily, Renee and I went, and it was quite the experience. From two blocks away, you could see something festive going on (Lily even pointed it out, saying "you guys, I think there's a carnival"). But it wasn't a carnival, it was the church, which had been decorated to the point where it looked as if it should be in Las Vegas. Lights were everywhere, strung from the steeple to surrounding third story windows. Illuminated doves flapped their wings, and massive Jesus figures decorated the outside of the chapel. At the center of it all was a giant Nativity scene, with plastic Mary, Jesus, and Joseph, where people crowded around to pose for photos. All around the church, women hawked balloons and Santa costumes and glow-sticks.

We made our way to the entrance, where we encountered a crowd that was more like a mob scene at a rock concert than anything I've ever seen at church before. We were caught up in a crowd of hundreds trying to get through the doors, with people pushing and shoving wildly. Unaccustomed to the aggression it required to move forward, we never made it to the doors before the security guard baricaded the remaining parishoners. We, with many others, were turned away from the house of our Lord. I was disappointed not to witness the service itself, though it'd have been in Vietnamese, but just being at the church was an experience in itself. Locals asked to take pictures of us, we bought glow-sticks, and we enjoyed the hubbub.

Back at the guesthouse, much of the group gathered around a laptop to watch a Muppet's Christmas carol. At midnight, we broke out milk and cookies for Santa. Those of us who missed the northeast weather made it snow with styofoam packing peanuts from the ceiling fan.

When we woke up the next morning, Christmas, it was still gray and dreary, but we cheerfully piled onto the bus for a short ride to a beach resort where we spent the day. It was a fancy hotel, nestled in a rocky cove right on the ocean. It was festively decorated, but not too tacky, and given the drizzling weather, felt quite cozy inside. We were treated to the most amazing brunch buffet ever -- having had nothing but noodle soup for breakfasts lately, the fresh croissants, waffles, omelet station, etc were absolute heaven. Once we'd gourged ourselves, we exchanged final secret santa gifts; Lily gave me the spiffiest suspenders ever. We lazed around the rest of the day, playing volleyball, pool, and Boggle. We had an amazing meal for dinner, then made our way back home.

It was the most unusual Christmas I've had, but quite nice considering we're all away from home. Merry Christmas, I hope you've all had lovely holidays, and Happy New Year!

Quy Nhon

2008-12-25T01:13:00.002-05:00

We spent a week in Quy Nhon, an industrial town on the central coast of Vietnam. It's right on the ocean, but hasn't been hit by tourism (yet) so as foreigners we were pretty rare. We continued our study of waste management by visiting garbage sorting centers and interviewing workers there. We visited nearby temples, including the bizarre Cao Dai church, which is a combination of all the world's major religions, intended to become the universal faith. There were funky holographic portraits that looked like Jesus from one angle, then Buddha from another.

We took a day trip to visit the My Lai massacre site, a museum commemorating the brutal attack on the Son My village by the US army in '68 in which 504 innocent villagers were murdered. The village itself is no longer much to see, since the US bombed it a year after the fact to hide evidence. The massacre was awful -- in itself it was a catalyst for the anti-war sentiment and protests back home -- but some powerful stories came out of it: one US pilot threatened to shoot his own men in order to save a dozen local people; one soldier shot himself in the foot to avoid carrying out orders.

Another difficult trip was a visit to a local organization that works with children disabled by remnants of Agent Orange. 40 years after the war, there are 4 million people still affected by the chemical that the US sprayed to thin forests and seek out Vietcong troops. These children were severely physically and mentally retarded, with cleft lips and contorted limbs. Their parents were unimagineably patient in caring for them. Sadly, most of those affected by Agent Orange are already impoverished but must face the additional burden of serious incapacitation. This organization has tried to petition the US government to support medical bills, as they do for US veterans ailing from Agent Orange, but to no avail.

We also visited what was essentially a local projects: within the past two years, the government exercised eminent domain and forcibly relocated all the poor residents living on the oceanside (I assume to make way for more profitable hotel industries). The residents we visited seemed fairly content with their new homes, since the government provides them free, temporarily, but since they were fishermen, they’re finding it more difficult to access the ocean.

Quy Nhon is a nice change of pace from Ho Chi Minh City. Outside our guesthouse, if you turn left, you're in the heart of the town, with bustling shops and streetside restaurants and a produce market. If you take a right instead, you're just a block from the ocean, which is quiet and full of fishermen. I'm not sure what the swimming would be like, but it's a great place to run or simply sit on the shore.

Remnants of the Vietnam War

2008-12-17T10:19:00.003-05:00

It's not something I was taught much about in school, but the war is certainly in the not-so-distant past here in Vietnam. Of course, it's not called the Vietnam War, but referred to as "the resistance to the American invasion," telling of the role the US played.

Yesterday the group went to the museum in Ho Chi Minh City commemorating the war and its victims. Some of the particularly interesting exhibits included one on reporters and photographers who covered the war, and one on the remaining effects of Agent Orange, including harrowing photographs of deformities.

What really struck me about the museum, however, was looking through the guestbook and comments that people from all over the world had written. There was a very strong anti-American sentiment; the hardly-surprising overtly "I hate all Americans" statements, which are difficult to take really seriously, since they're so generalized. What really began to get under my skin were the more subtle and legitimate comments about how America seems not to have learned anything from history. The scariest part of the museum was that this -- war -- is not a thing of the past; the news articles and photographs we saw seemed in many ways a reflection of present-day American foreign policy -- Iraq??

In some ways I'm struggling with how to be an American abroad. The other day a motorcycle driver asked me if I wanted a ride (as happens just about every thirty seconds) and although I didn't, he struck up a conversation. He asked where I was from, and when he heard I was from America, he was ecstatic, raving about how great America is. It's one thing for the Vietnamese to be forgiving of America after the war ... but to be that enthusiastic about the USA? It's hard for me to understand how he can feel that way. So many people that we've met have been excited to meet Americans, as we're somewhat of a novelty, but why the popularity among some, when my instinct would be to feel ashamed?

Today we visited the Cu Chi tunnels, about an hour outside of the city, where an entire town of 16,000 people lived literally underground during the war. They carved out tunnels where they sought refuge from America's bombs, and ventured out only occasionally to gather food or hunt down enemies. We got the chance to go underground, and most of the tunnels had been widened and lit for visitors; one part of the tour, however, took us to a second layer of rooms six meters underground with no light whatsoever and a winding downward slope -- that became pretty unnerving pretty quickly.

I've also been reading some books about the Vietnam War -- one, which I'm sure many of you have read, is The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien; the other was The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh. Both were fictional novels about the war, one by an American, the other by a Vietnamese veteran. Because of this contrast, they offered different perspectives on the fighting, but what interested me most was where they overlapped. There was a frighteningly similar description of a man being blown up into a tree by a landmine in both books, and each had the recurring theme of how even distorted memory is reality.

Tomorrow morning we're off to Quy Nhon, where we'll be doing work on conservation and studying the affects of Agent Orange. We'll be on the beach for Christmas!

Environmental Issues in Vietnam: Waste Management

2008-12-13T10:09:00.003-05:00

We've spent the past week or so studying environmental issues here, going to various sites to see waste management. We visited a number of landfills -- as raw and dirty as you can imagine. There's no sorting done, and any recycling is unofficial and inefficient. Pretty much all of the city's waste, organic and inorganic, gets trucked out to the massive landfills, thrown in, and covered. The smell is unbelievable, as you can imagine. The issues there include not only limited space, but also leeching of toxic sludge into the ground water.

My media group, video, spent four days visiting a non-governmental waste collectors' cooperative in District 6. Just getting to the site has illustrated how vast and dense this city is -- an hour's drive in rush hour, and you're still in as urban as an environment as downtown. At the co-op, collectors, mostly middle-aged, and many women, gather all the garbage they've collected from households, and sort it as best they can into organic and inorganic. Unfortunately, there's just not enough space and time to process all of the material that comes into the sorting center; out of 330 tons each day in District 6, this site receives 60 tons, but has the capacity to sort only 8 tons. That means 322 tons daily are not sorted at all and end up in the landfill.

Another important part of the work at the sorting center is off-the-clock recycling. When the workers aren't collecting or sorting rubbish, they're free to pick through it and gather paper, bottles, and tins, which they sell to a middleman who transfers the goods to a recycling company. The global economic crisis seems to have had a drastic effect on the recycling process; whereas just five months ago, the workers could earn 80,000 dong a day for their work recycling, now they receive only 30,000 dong. This is income on top of their stable salary, but that is only about 100,000 a day (at 17,000 dong to the dollar). That means those 80,000 dong were a significant proportion of their income, which has now been drastically reduced. Nonetheless, the job with the co-op is considered fairly good for those without the education for other employment -- it's stable, and after a couple of years you're guaranteed healthcare. It's pretty amazing to see how widespread the damage from the economy reaches. I haven't been home to witness the worst of it, but the consequences are far-reaching and have affected even menial laborers in Ho Chi Minh City. It also has pretty serious implications for environmental efforts which are too-often considered more expensive than worthwhile.

Other activities -- lectures with local development workers, consulting agencies, and volunteers; watching movies like An Inconvenient Truth and The Corporation, visiting floating markets and small-scale factories in a river region in the Mekong Delta.

Unfortunately, we'll also be changing our itinerary. After the attacks in India, our safety is in question there, so we'll be spending the month in Thailand instead, hopefully working on sustainable agriculture there, too. It's disappointing not to go to India, but our presence in the rural community we'd planned to visit would be dangerous not just for TBB but for the community, too. I'm sure we'll have a great program in Thailand, plus the food will be amazing.

Ho Chi Minh City

2008-12-04T04:40:00.004-05:00

We arrived the other day in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon) in Vietnam. We flew in on my birthday ... which was celebrated with delicious cake and lovely surprises like furry sweater vests and Sox tickets and yogurt. (Thank you for all the cards, too!)

Ho Chi Minh is an unbelievably busy city; no matter what time of day, you've got to dodge thousands of motorcycles to cross a street -- and even if it's marked as one way, don't expect it to work that way. Christmast is already everywhere, even in early December; all the shops are heavily adorned with gaudy decorations, and horrible techno versions of Christmas songs blare out of every door. But it's great; I'm glad we'll be spending the holiday somewhere withs lots of Christmas cheer, even if somewhat peculiar.

We're living in a dorm-style guesthouse; the girls in two large rooms, and the boys in doubles. We're working closely with CET, a study abroad program, and their office is fairly near the guesthouse. We've spent the last couple of days at the office, having lectures on Vietnam's history and economy, taking crash courses in Vietnamese (which, believe it or not, seems more difficult than Chinese), and having TBB seminars.

Tomorrow we'll start our work with our local NGO, Enda, Environmental Development Action. Our focus is waste management, and we'll know more about it once we start.

The best part of Ho Chi Minh so far? The iced coffee -- a local favorite, served usually with thick condensed milk. Easily found not only in cafes and restaurants, but also on stools on the sidewalk, it is more abundant even than Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts, a blessing after its scarcity in China.

Killing Fields & Genocide Museum

2008-12-01T05:22:00.007-05:00

The other day we flew from Siem Reap to Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh... there could not have been a more striking difference between the two. With its proximity to Angkor Wat and constant crowds of tour groups, Siem Reap feels distinctly touristy: everyone speaks English, cafes and restaurants cater to western tastes, and the main street is lined almost exclusively by fancy hotels. In Phnom Penh we found a much more realistic city, full of local people who were as friendly as Cambodia's "smiling country" reputation would make them out to be.

In Phnom Penh, we visited the Killing Fields and the genocide museum, both in remembrance of Cambodia's genocide (1975-1979). We've learned a lot about the event, considering most of us knew very little about it a month ago. We watched a documentary on Pol Pot's regime and I read a memoir called First They Killed my Father. The sites were very powerful, and I think very well done. They were not nearly as crowded as Angkor Wat, and nearly all the visitors were very respectful. The exhibits had simple yet powerful facts and anecdotes about the history, and the photos that had been salvaged from the Khmer Rouge records spoke for themselves.

My first thought when we arrived at the museum was how similar the building looked to the Chinese middle schools, and it turned out that it had been a school before being converted by the Khmer Rouge into a prison detention center, with routine and brutal torture, for the duration of the genocide. I can't begin to imagine what the visit would be like for a Cambodian who's lived through the recent history, whose parents may have been killed, or who grew up in Pol Pot's regime themselves. Throughout the day I found myself wondering how locals percieved us there, as blatant foreigners, paying respect to those killed. What is our place there? We had barely heard of the event; our nation had played a shameful role in creating the situation in which the Khmer Rouge rose to power -- and then neglected to take action to stop it. And yet the Cambodians seemed to genuinely welcome us as guests, not specifically at the museums, but throughout our whole trip, they were extremely friendly.

It was certainly worthwhile to visit Phnom Penh; it was emotionally straining and I think we all found ourselves trying to comprehend the history that made a catastrophe like that possible, but it was a provocative stop on our trip.

Happy Thanksgiving from Siem Reap

2008-11-27T10:20:00.004-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving! The TBB group had a nice meal together at the hotel -- impressively Thanksgiving-like, considering we're in southeast Asia. The chef made us pumpkin soup, mashed potatoes, chicken with gravy, and vegetables. No pie, but otherwise it was great.

We've had a really relaxing week, visiting temples, renting bikes, taking a river boat to a floating village -- though that was a kind of questionable trip. Basically, we took a boat ride an hour and a half to a community that lives entirely on stilted buildings in the water, and we were surrounded by school children trying to sell us notebooks to donate to the school. Many of us bought notebooks and pencils, which were then given to the teacher. It's possible that they just resell the books over and over each time another tour group comes to the island; I just hope the supplies are getting to the kids in some form. It just felt very invasive to motor on through their community, all snapping away on our cameras, for a mere fifteen minute visit. How often do foreigners come peering into their town? How is their culture being affected by tourism, and are they actually the money, or does it go to the tour agencies? It raised some important questions about ethical tourism. Of course anyone would be curious to see a lifestyle so different from their own, but how to approach the sightseeing in a respectful way?

Other things we've been up to: seeing a documentary on the Cambodian genocide, going to the Angkor Photography Festival, renting bicycles, going to the market, relaxing by the pool. This morning a couple of us went to a cooking class where me made local dishes. The best one was a pineapple-coconut curry soup.

Some of our itinerary may be up in the air at the moment. First,we heard about the coup in Thailand. With all the unrest, that seems like a long time coming. We're scheduled for an enrichment week there in about a month; it may be sorted out by then, but otherwise we may not be able to enter the country. Furthermore, there's this whole mess in India right now. It's in Mumbai, which is nowhere near where we'll be, but it's still being played out, so we'll see.

Off to Phnom Penh tomorrow for a couple days at the killing fields memorials.

Angkor Wat

2008-11-27T09:45:00.003-05:00

Well, I can now say I've seen Cambodia's most famous attraction: Angkor Wat. It's in fact a collection of hundreds of temple sites, Buddhist and Hindu. We spent one day exploring smaller ruins, which were truly overcrowded by tourists, mostly Japanese and European. There's been decent preservation, and one of the coolest parts was seeing enormous ancient trees whose roots had been incorporated into the walls, but overall, the sites didn't feel very spectacular or spiritual.

What was really amazing was seeing the main Angkor Wat temple at sunrise. We woke up early to get there, and entered the main gate while it was still dark, so as we watched the sun come up, we had no idea what we were surrounded by. I got the chance to wander around inside the main temple's corridors before the crowds made it there; it was beautiful in the early morning light.

Definitely worth the early morning!

Arrival in Cambodia

2008-11-24T02:53:00.002-05:00

We flew into Siem Reap last night -- it's about a thousand degrees hotter than Kunming. I've reclaimed my flip flops. Not much news to report, just wanted to let the parents we've gotten here safely, and it's going to be a great week. The town is pretty much dominated by tourism. We'll enjoy the relaxing time at our nice hotel, with pool, Angkor Wat, floating villages, and a bustling market.

Night on the town

2008-11-24T02:23:00.006-05:00

Saturday, we took a ten-hour bus back to Kunming from Shaxi. When we got back, we had media projects to finish up, and we were tired, but it was also our last night in China. We'd been wanting to go out dancing for weeks, but never managed to -- luckily, we made it happen on Saturday night.

My media group, Google Earth, was reasonably finished with our project, so we headed over to the local night scene: "Kundu Night Market". Our first task was to find appropriate attire -- the cheapest, ugliest Chinese apparel possible. Dave and Zach bought matching t-shirts, trucker hats, and sunglasses. Isabel bought earrings, and I got some ugly referee shirt as a last resort: all the ugly sequined shirts were surprisingly expensive.

Then we hit the dancefloor. The entire neighborhood was full of clubs, about half

of them were just bars, but we managed to find some discos where locals packed onto the dancefloor. We enjoyed terrible Chinese / euro pop music; mostly, it was just ridiculous, rhythmless, raging, and appropriate- no one much danced in pairs so much as in a circle.

At one point, the music stopped for a show by a man wearing a ghoul's mask -- I think it was an attempt at a scary interlude at midnight. After the eerie music died down, he proceeded to do a rendition of the ever-popular Thriller (MJ at his best) followed by the Chinese version of "If You're Happy and You Know it, clap your hands". I don't have much experience with American clubs, but I'd be shocked if that was in the usual repertoire.

All in all -- a very successful night.

Shaxi Farewell

2008-11-24T01:55:00.003-05:00

Our time in Shaxi flew by, and before we knew it, we were at the farewell banquet, where local musicians and dancers performed for us. It was a good chance to see the Bai culture and traditions; of course the village life was noticeably different from urban lifestyles in Kunming, but otherwise it was subtle to distinguish between Han traditions and ethnic minority traditions (for us).

After the Bai dancing, they turned to our group, and asked for an American performance. At a complete loss of traditional American culture that we could share on the spot, we settled on the Macarena, followed by a painful rendition of "I'll Make a Man Out of You" from Mulan.

Afterwards, I unexpectedly spent the whole evening with my host family. Other nights, since we spoke no common language, my parents (both maybe late forties, and quite worn) had left me to go to bed by 6:30. On our last night, though, they pulled me into the communal family living space, where we watched TV and exchanged photos. They also called their nineteen year old daughter, who's away for high school, since the village has no higher ed, to speak to me in English. She conveyed that her parents were unsure of how to communicate with me, but urged me to return to Shaxi.

I've acquired quite the collection of local attire from each of my homestay families. In Bua, of course, there was the traditional Tsa Chila skirt. In Kunming, I picked up the scarf (see above) that looks terribly like a boa. My most recent acquisitions include the red Chinese trucker hat, which Dave has enthusiastically commandeered, and traditional Chinese flats. By the end of the trip, I should be able to put together quite the collective outfit!

Shaxi

2008-11-19T19:47:00.003-05:00

Shaxi town center

We arrived in Shaxi the other day, a village outside of Dali, Yunnan made up primarily of the Bai minority group. It was larger than I expected, though, with 4,000 families, and it's not as remote as I imagined. People still have cell phones, televisions, and electricity. It's beautifully preserved traditional architecture, which gives the town a very authentic feel. My homestay is in a traditional courtyard-style home, which is currently under construction. It looks like they're sticking with the traditional building style and methods, though it'll be interesting to see whether they choose to "modernize" their techniques at all.

The Bai language is only oral, and not written, so Han Chinese is taught in the schools. We'll be teaching at the village's one middle school, where 1,000 students go. Of these, about 75% continue on to high school or vocational school, though they must go elsewhere to a town that has these facilities. About 90 students each year enroll at college. We observed 7th and 8th grade English classes yesterday, and we'll be teaching the same ones today. The teachers, however, asked us not to teach our own agendas, as in Kunming, but want us to teach the lesson plan from the textbook.

leaving Kunming

2008-11-17T18:10:00.003-05:00

Last night was our farewell banquet with all of our host families, with dinner, speeches, and pictures. It's hard to believe our three weeks in Kunming are already over. We've all been busy working on our media projects and we'll continue to do that over the next couple of days, so they'll be ready to upload by the time we leave China.

This morning we're headed to Shaxi, a small village also in Yunnan Province of an ethnic minority group called the Bai people. It's about ten hours away by bus, and we'll live there for the rest of our time in China.

the group at a Buddhist temple

A Weekend of Coersion ...

2008-11-13T04:11:00.007-05:00

The weekend was ours to do what we wanted. Friday evening started off tamely enough, when a couple of us saw the new James Bond 007 movie. Cinemas in China are quite different from in the US -- there were no young people under the age of mid-to-late thirties, and the woman next to me spoke on her cell phone the whole time. The movie was decent, though, and I don't think it's come out in the States yet. In fact, you can already buy the bootleg DVD here on the street for about seventy-five cents, even though it hasn't hit theaters back home yet.

Saturday, Renee, Lily, Isabel & I decided to use our independent student travel priveleges to explore outside of Kunming. We had hopes of reaching a region known for it's beautiful nature and tiny temples, and someone from our NGO gave us a piece of paper with the characters for our destination written on it. We learned just how difficult it is to navigate in a country where not only the spoken language, but the written characters, are completely foreign. After going to multiple different bus and train stations, we finally found a salesperson who was able to sell us tickets to Li Yiang, our destination. Well, sort of...

We thought we were going 120 kilometers outside of the city, but after only an hour or so, we were woken up by the driver and told quite clearly in charades to get off of the bus. Dazed from our naps, we looked around and saw that we were quite literally simply pulled over on the side of a multi-lane highway. No, we explained, we're going to Li Yiang. This is clearly not right. But they insisted this was Li Yiang, and we were forced off the bus. (I should say we never felt in danger, and I think it's quite common for these buses to make stops on the way .... other passengers also were dropped off at various exits)

What we found once we'd walked miles off of the exit ramp was a small industrial town with few redeeming tourist attractions. We made do, however, and managed to find a cute restaurant for lunch. This far outside of the city, no one spoke even minimal English, and the woman who owned the shop called us back into the kitchen to choose what we wanted by pointing at ingredients.

Back in Kunming later that afternoon, the four of us were walking through Greenlake Park, one of the city's central locations, and a bustling place on a beautiful autumn afternoon. As we passed by a group huddled around a street performer, the woman singing in the center spotted us foreigners, pushed through the crowd, and literally dragged us in. She thrust a microphone in our hands, began playing a traditional Chinese instrument called an erhu, and insisted that we sing every English-language song she knew, from Jingle Bells to Eidelweiss. Unfortunately, none of the TBB singers were in the group. The four of us combined had severely limited musical skills, and despite our protesting, we were coerced into singing song after song for the crowd.

Me & Isabel

On Sunday, my mother woke me up bright and early, and led me out of the house. I wasn't sure where we were headed, but we picked up Zach and his host-mother on the way, and proceeded to go to the local ballroom dancing club. No, really. Some people go to church on Sunday mornings, apparently my family here goes ballroom dancing. This center was reminiscent of a seventies roller-rink, a giant floor with dark lighting, flashing disco balls, and loud music -- waltz, pop, and techno. I was paired with a fifty-year-old Chinese man with quite the mustache, who was not quite tall enough to spin me, but proceeded to drag me round and round for a number of hours. I should mention that my dancing skills are about on par with my singing ability. Nonetheless, our mothers got great amusement of watching us struggle, and the experience was pretty comical. Unfortunately, since I had no idea what was in store for us that day, I didn't have my camera. But use your wildest imagination -- and that's probably the reality of our experience.

Afterwards, we went to lunch, where we were brought some fruity alcohol drink, which we explained we could not drink. Our mothers scoffed and insisted we could. When we did not, my mother reached into her handbag and pulled out two candies. Zach and I ate what seemed at first to be an innocent chocolate truffle- until we bit in and discovered a liquoer filling: our mothers hooted in laughter -- see, you can have alcohol!

All in all, it was a good and amusing weekend, but one we had little control over. We were coerced off the bus, into a singing performance, onto the dancefloor, and into consuming spiked candies.

More on Education

2008-11-12T03:30:00.012-05:00

The past two weeks in China have flown by. We've been busy with Chinese lessons (which, to be honest, haven't progressed beyond the most basic words), TBB seminars, and teaching English. As a group, we've been reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator who wrote on the philosophy of education in the 1960s. The book essentially breaks the world down into the oppressed, and the oppressors, and uses the idea of being "more fully human" to criticize the "banking-method" of education (rote memorization, didactic teaching, and indoctrination) and espouse liberating education (a process of dialogue in which teachers are not authoritatively forcing knowledge upon students). It has provoked some interesting conversations and fits well with what we've been observing about the Chinese educational system.

We've had a number of lectures from local professors about China's education policies, about minoritys' education in rural areas, about the examination system. Yesterday we had a panel of three generations -- a 90-year-old man, a woman who grew up during the Cultural Revolution, and a high school student in the midst of the university entrance examination process himself. It was interesting to hear about their experiences anecdotally. It doesn't seem as though the educational system and overall attitudes towards it have changed much, with the exception of the period between 1966 and 1976 when Mao essentially halted education. And why should the attitudes have changed -- they date back thousands of years to Confucius and general reverence for the value of education. Yet China faces criticism from a number of education experts internationally, with their system based on a passive role for students, rote memorization, and grueling competition between students.

I've certainly seen some instances of this in the classrooms I've observed. In one, outside of Kunming, students were unable to answer some of the most simple questions orally -- "how old are you?" and yet their textbooks had fairly advanced essays and the written exercises were correctly answered. In this case, students were well trained to comprehend written English (and perform well on exams), but could not carry on a basic conversation.

In my school, the students are so practiced at answering certain questions that they cannot understand similar ones. When I asked "what school do you go to?" looking for a simple answer with the name of their school, they all answered, "I go to school by bike." "I go to school by bus."

Each day I began class by asking, "how are you?" I quickly learned that the students understand this phrase, and without fail, each time, they chorus in unison, "I am fine, thank you, and you?" After a couple of classes, I decided to teach the students other responses to the question -- add some variety -- and so we generated a list of other adjectives.

Because we saw each section only three times, for forty-five minutes each, we didn't cover much by way of complicated concepts. The schools had asked us to share American culture, so we talked about our families, teenage life, school, music, holidays. I don't have any delusions that I taught the students much , but I hope that they got to practice their spoken English, and perhaps found incentive to learn English -- a difficult subject that probably becomes frustrating in a class of memorization and testing. It was hard to reach all of the students in the class -- of sixty-five, maybe eight or ten volunteered to speak each class.

All in all, though, it was a fun experience. The students loved to see pictures of my family -- they all thought Stephen, who just turned sixteen, was in his twenties. They all gasped when they saw postcards of Boston, and a couple of boys recognized it for the Celtics.

Today the school had a huge sports celebration. There were no classes, and the entire school (four or five thousand) gathered at a stadium. The opening ceremony consisted of each class (three grades - twenty four classes in each grade) marching into the stadium and around the track, dressed in matching uniforms, for a good hour and a half. The ceremony was full of balloons, flags, music, banners with slogans like "nothing is impossible," "never say never," and "besides win, what else can we do?" Despite being mind-numbing after a few minutes, the ceremony was so interesting because I can't imagine American middle schoolers having the patience or discipline to march in unison like that, and I can't imagine the schools devoting the time and money to orchestrating it. In a way, it was a microcosm for the very system of education here in China -- a collective spirit, a seriousness, impressive grandeur. The sports will continue for the rest of the week so we're done teaching at that school.

Kunming

2008-11-05T19:39:00.004-05:00

We've been in Kunming for a week now, and started teaching. I'm teaching twelve-year olds at Yun Da Fu Zhong, the city's most prestigious middle school. It's absolutely huge, with more than six thousand students, and has noticeably different resources from the public schools I've seen here. The facilities are new, the classrooms technologically advanced, and the teachers speak far better English than at other schools. I teach four different sections of seventh graders; each class has sixty five students. I'll only see each section three times each, so we don't actually have much time for substantive lessons. Mostly we're doing introductory presentations on American culture and giving them the chance to practice conversational English.

with middle school students

The educational system in China is somewhat different from the one back home. Historically, Confucian ideals have instilled the importance of education, and because of the one-child policy, parents push their only child to excel in school -- thus school is hugely important. The kids we've seen go to school sometimes six days a week, often until nine o'clock at night! The ultimate goal of middle and high school is to pass the matriculation exam for university (SAT, anyone?) But this test is far more grueling than anything in the US -- often up to forty-eight hours, the tests assess rote memorization. The raw score alone, and nothing else, determines your admittance to university. Only 21% of the students who take the entrance examinations find spots in a university.

a typical classroom

Things in China continue to be interesting and exciting ... Last Friday, we celebrated Halloween by watching a Chinese ghost film (perhaps the least frightening scary movie I've ever seen). This past weekend, we did some exploration of Kunming, learning the bus system, visiting temples and parks. On Sunday, my family taught me how to make dumplings. One night this week, I went with my mother to a dance class for middle-aged women: complete with traditional music and fans. I've learned the difficulty of going for a run during rush hour here - it's next to impossible with all the cars, buses, bikes, and pedestrians.

Each Thursday at the local park, there's an informal but well-attended gathering called English Corner, where all the students, businessmen, and ex-pats who want to speak English meet there in the evening to chat. Last week a couple of TBB-ers went, and I had the most interesting conversations about what I'm doing in China, about US politics, and about Taiwan. Everyone was extremely inquisitive and curious and friendly, eager to practice speaking.

The TBB group read Three Cups of Tea, written by David Oliver Relin about Greg Mortenson's work building schools in Pakistan. It related to a lot of our work, in development volunteer work, and in education. We met at a cafe to discuss the book, and we all pretty much agreed that though the story was amazing, the writing could hardly have been worse.

We'll keep teaching for a couple of weeks, having guest lectures, and TBB seminars. After that we'll visit a rural area also in Yunnan Provence, before heading off to Cambodia ... !

making dumplings .. hao chi

OBAMA WINS

2008-11-05T00:31:00.003-05:00

We're all watching the election results live from here in Kunming, China. Just saw McCain's concession and Obama's acceptance speeches. We're all wearing our Obama t-shirts that Becca's mother sent for her birthday -- we've been walking around the city like a giant propaganda group for the past couple weeks while our other clothes were in the wash. Since it's been such a blogger-generation campaign I thought I'd make my contribution ...

GO OBAMA!

Arrival in China

2008-11-01T07:12:00.002-04:00

After five flights, nearly forty-eight hours of travel, and a hectic connection at LAX, our group has finally made it to our second core country, China. This month in Kunming we'll be focusing on educational systems. Kunming is the capital city of Yunnan provence in the south of China, bordering Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Though it's a fairly large city, with a population of four million, it's not well known internationally or even necessarily within China. I actually stayed in Kunming last summer when I came to China with a program called Where There Be Dragons.

We're working in collaboration with our host-NGO, the Kunming Center for Cultural Learning & Development. They're helping to coordinate us with three local middle schools where we'll be teaching English. The TBB group is divided between a public school, a private school, and a half public / half private school in either pairs or singles. I'll be teaching solo at the half-and-half school, and classes will begin on Monday. In the meantime, we've been observing at the schools to see what the Chinese educational system is like and how English classes are generally taught.

We're living individually with homestay families -- pretty much everyone lives within a twenty minute walk of the TBB communal classroom, and all of our families are middle-class and live in high rise apartments. I'm living on a university campus where I think my host-parents are professors; most of what I think about my host family is based on inference, since no one speaks English, and my Mandarin is limited to "thank you". At meal times, my host mother calls in reinforcements - the English-speaking nephew.

The TBB group is also taking Mandarin lessons each morning, in small classes of five people. It's certainly a difficult language to get a foot in the door, what with the 2,000 + characters, the tonal differentiation, and the seemingly unphoenetic Pinyin anglecized words.

It's great to be back in China. I've seen places in Kunming that I recognize from my last trip, but I'm also living in a different neighborhood and seeing plenty of new things. With our Chinese classes, our TBB lectures, and teaching English, we'll have plenty to do and I suspect our time here will fly by.

The Inca Trail & Machu Picchu

2008-10-25T19:16:00.003-04:00

This past week, our group ventured to Peru to hike the Inca Trail. We flew into Cusco, where we had a day to explore the winding cobbled streets and the marketplaces. On Tuesday, we took a bus to our trailhead and began our four-day, three-night trek.

We hiked 6-16 kilometers each day, of varying altitude changes, and hiked 40 in total. The trail was beautiful. In places, it was dry and desert-like; in others, we saw snow-topped mountains. Each night we camped in tents under the gorgeous southern hemisphere sky, and at altitude, the weather was freezing after sunset. Local Quechua porters helped to carry all of our gear -- tents, sleeping bags, food for the duration of the trek.

Wednesday was our most difficult day of hiking, culminating in a high-altitude pass called Dead Woman's Pass. We all made it, however, and made it to camp to relax for the rest of the day.

By Friday, we made it to Machu Picchu, the capital city of the Inca empire. The site itself was something of a tourist attraction, swarming even by eight o'clock in the morning, so the most exciting parts were the mountain passes and the early morning sunrises that came on the Inca trail itself. After taking a tour of the site, four of us hiked up Wayna Picchu (the singular peak famous in many post card pictures) where we had the best view yet of Machu Picchu.

The group at the trailhead of the Inca Trail

Afternoon sunset from our campsite

Hiking along the way

The group at Machu Picchu (Wayna Picchu in the background)

View of Machu Picchu from atop Wayna Picchu

Quito

2008-10-19T09:55:00.005-04:00

We´ve spent the last four days in Ecuador´s capital city, Quito. We´ve had time to ourselves to go to the local market and stock up on traditional woolen wear, to go to internet cafes, and reaquaint ourselves with other types of food: Mexican, Indian, and Italian.

We went as a group to Quito´s largest water treatment plant to see, in contrast to Bua´s situation, water purification in an urban area. It was quite interesting to take a tour and speak with some of the employees, and it was surprisingly clean. It was on a hill, and had a great view onto the city. It meets international standards and is one of the most efficient treatment plants in the Americas.

We´ve also been working hard on media projects (text, video, podcast, and google earth), trying to finish them so we can publish them before we leave Ecuador.

My media group (text) working on our article at the hostel

Yesterday, the group, minus the sick people, went on a day hike of Rucu Pinchincha, a mountain just outisde of Quito. We started early, when the day was still crisp and clear, and took a gondola up part way. From there, we hiked four hours up to the top of 14,000 feet. The elevation was definitely touch, but hopefully it will help us acclimate before we start hiking Maccu Pichu next week. At the bottom, we had a great view of the sprawl of Quito, but by the summit, we were completely engulfed in clouds -- and it was quite cold!

Today we have an overnight flight to Peru. After a day in Cuzco, we´ll begin our five day trek to Maccu Pichu, an ancient Incan town.

Leaving Bua

2008-10-17T15:51:00.004-04:00

The Aguavils

On Wednesday, October 15th, the group left Bua for Quito. We packed up our bags and said sad goodbyes to our families -- my host mother cried when the truck picked us up. They send their regards to all of my family and friends back home, and they hope that someday we will return. It´d be really interesting to see Bua in a couple of years or decades, since it´s already changed so much in only a couple of generations.

Noah and I on our log perch outside of our casita

... we spent many an afternoon passing time in this way

Farewell Celebration in Bua

2008-10-16T09:43:00.007-04:00

Noah & I with our host family

Rafael, Andy, & Diana

On Tuesday, our final night in Bua, the community had a despedida, or farewell celebration, for the TBB group of volunteers. My host-mother was happy to prepare me for the party -- I wore my new traditional Tsa Chila skirt that my family gave me: the vibrant, brightly colored striped skirt, and she also gave me a make-over. John got the male Tsa Chila treatment: the traditional achiote hairstyle, which involves crushing bright red berries into hair gel, and putting a crown of cotton balls on top.

John and I, in traditional Tsa Chila dress

We had one last traditional dinner of fish cooked in leaves and the infamous "log" (boiled unripe plantains, smashed and rolled into a flavorless, dense log) and then the festivities began ... Community leaders thanked us for our work, we thanked our host families, and each volunteer recieved a small gift of a beaded bracelet. We saw traditional Tsa Chila music, complete with a marimba and maracas, and a group from the cultural preservation center danced for us. After the ceremony, it was our turn to dance ... It was a great night for the outdoor celebration; we were under a full moon.

The cultural dance & music group

Traditional Tsa Chila dance

Guayaquil

2008-10-15T18:48:00.003-04:00

Last weekend, some of the group traveled to Guayaquil on Indepedent Student Travel, meaning we made all of our own arrangements for transportation, lodging, and food, and we traveled without leaders. Eight of us went -- Alexandra, Alexis, Renee, Lily, Emily, John, Ian, and me -- on Friday and we returned to Bua on Sunday.

Guayaquil is on the coast in the south, and historically is a much more liberal and diverse city than Quito, because it was exposed to foreign merchants via sea trade. We noticed a number of signs and graffiti opposing the constitution, because it also tends to be more economically conservative. Much like the United States, Ecuador´s political affiliations seem to be very regional.

We stayed at a really interesting hostel with lots of open-air spaces, hammocks, parrots, and free (delicious) breakfast: french toast. It wasn´t in a central location, however, so we took a public bus to the center on Saturday morning. We walked along the Malecon, the boardwalk that follows the river. We wandered into an older part of town, Las Penas, where we got lunch and discovered freshly churned ice cream. We visited the MAAC, the museum of Anthropology and Contemporary Art, where the exhibits varied from old pottery remains to progressive political artwork. One of the biggest surprises there was seeing a real Salvador Dali watercolor -- I noticed it, and thought that someone was ripping off his warped clock motif, but when I looked closely, it turned out to be a genuine piece!

the group on the Malecon

Saturday evening we got dinner on the boardwalk where there was live music and far more people than we´d seen all day. We were in Guayaquil just days after the city´s independence celebration, and we´d expected it to be crowded and lively. All day, it seemed deserted, but at night, people did come out to celebrate. The boardwalk was full of people, and we spent the evening just wandering and taking in the sights: tons of vendors selling food, people with wild hats, and fireworks.

It was a great weekend trip, and we made it back to Bua in time to watch Ecuador beat Chile in qualifying rounds for the 2010 World Cup!

Water Issues in Bua

2008-10-11T08:17:00.006-04:00

In each of our core countries we focus on a different aspect of development; in Ecuador, our focus is clean water. We´ve seen a number of water issues in Bua, and most of them seem to revolve around the river. About twenty or thirty years ago, the river water was potable and large fish lived in it -- a large part of the local diet. Now, the water is not remotely drinkable, the water level has shrunk, and only tiny minnows live there. Firstly, pollution has contaminated the water -- both from litter (there is no trash disposal in Bua, since wrappers from consumer products are a relatively new thing there), and from agricultural pesticides. Run-off from erosion has led to stagnation and weeds growing. People use the river for just about everything: bathing with non-biodegradeable soap, gutting fish, washing clothes, using bleach. Lastly, human waste disposal is contributing to the problem: currently, the sanitation system is either to simply use the woods as a bathroom, use an outhouse, or to use toilets that lead to overflowing septic systems. The run-off from all of this is making its way into the river, making the water contaminated and allowing algae to thrive.

This all raises a number of issues. One day our group went on a river clean-up walk, picking up the trash we saw, but because there is no disposal system, the bags of litter we collected will probably ultimately end up right back in the river. If the river is going to be cleaned up, there needs to be a garbage system, and everyone has to agree not to litter. Similarly, with agricultural pesticides, which the Tsa Chila say come from Mestizos (mixed ethnicity Ecuadorians) without education about how to use them, the lucrative economic benefit of seems to outweigh the long-term environmental impact. The government pays $100 for each hectacre of preserved forest, but that same amount of land can bring in $4,000 from yucca cultivation, which leads to deforestation and erosion and chemical pesticide contamination.

We're in the middle of working on our media projects which address this clean water issue -- there are four groups, and each works with a different form of media: text, podcast, video, or Google Earth. I'm in the text group, and within a couple of days our final pieces should be up.

Constitution Passes!

2008-10-04T13:43:00.002-04:00

If you´re interested -- http://cnn.mlogic.mobi/cnn/ne/world/detail/175115/full;jsessionid=1FBBCF8C5A672952CF40A77407FBB3E7

The Constitution passed by a pretty large margin, about 60 - 30, roughly.

books: The End of Poverty and The White Man´s Burden

2008-10-04T13:34:00.004-04:00

The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs
The White Man´s Burden by William Easterly

A big part of our curriculum in Ecuador has been learning about general international aid and international development -- reading about the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF, etc. For reading, we split the group into two, and each group read chapters from either The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs or The White Man´s Burden by William Easterly -- many people ended up reading both. Both authors are esteemed economists who have worked directly in large international organizations, the World Bank and the UN, but each has come up with drastically different perspectives about how to address poverty in the future.

Sachs, who played a large role in creating the UN´s Millennium Development Goals, calls upon developed nations to collaborate with developing nations, giving increased percentages of GDP towards extreme poverty alleviation -- a comprehensive, collaborative international effort to eliminate extreme poverty (under $1.25 a day -- one sixth of the world population) by 2025. Easterly, who wrote his book as a direct response and critique of Sachs´, calls for the opposite, essentially grassroots initiatives to assess each community in need individually, rather than money coming from the top, where it may get lost in corrupt governments.

We simulated a debate between the two, and we ended up tackling the assumptions of each author. I enjoyed reading the two, and the contrast offered really interesting perspectives about big questions.

Weekend Trip to Sua

2008-10-04T13:21:00.003-04:00

This weekend the group is taking a weekend trip to the coast - to the touristy beach town of Sua (not to be confused with Bua). Friday afternoon we caught a five hour bus ... Lily´s camera was stolen, making that the third theft. Two other cameras have broken, as well. I´m just biding my time until mine die, too.

We´re staying in a hostel right on the beach. It´s a tiny little town full of cabana bars and little hostels, a pretty tourist spot at its prime, but it must be the off-season. We pretty much have the weekend to ourselves; we´ve been wandering and walking on the beach. So far a little too overcast to swim, but I wouldn´t rule that out for the whole weekend. It´s been nice to have a shower, rather than bathing in a twelve-inch river where people clean fish, bleach clothing, and dispose of pesticides -- the river in Bua is really a pollution issue. Had yogurt for breakfast, rather than tuna and raw onions. It´s a nice change of pace and scenery from Bua, for a couple of days.

October 4th marks one month into the trip! It seems as though it´s gone really quickly so far. One more month til the election! Some people have already received their absentee ballots in the mail; I´ll get mine in China. I´m anxious for all the campaigning to be over and finally know the result (fingers crossed.) We´ll be in China at the time.

book: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

2008-10-04T12:17:00.003-04:00

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins

We all read this book over the course of Costa Rica and the beginning of Ecuador. It´s all about the ¨corporatocracy¨of international development aid in which the US economists predict hugely exaggerated forecasts of economic growth in developing nations, justifying their credit so that the World Bank will grant them a loan to invest in infastructure or natural resources, with the condition that the construction projects be leased to huge US companies. Of course, when a nation cannot repay the debt, they are at the mercy of the World Bank and the corporations. Many countries must devote more than half of their GDP to repaying interest alone, not even making progress on the initial sum.

I wasn´t necessarily so shocked by the fact that there are greedy CEOs out there who want to make enormous profits. What was more surprising was that all of this selfish capitalism was happening under the farce of international äid¨to improve the living conditions of those in extreme poverty. It was pretty disillusioning about the role of the World Bank and the IMF and the multi national investing companies.

What´s more, the book offered a pretty interesting psychological aspect as to why Perkins, the author, continued in his profession for decades. He understood what was happening, and considered quitting for years, but didn´t. The excuses he offers time and time again are frustrating and raise questions about what really drives people.

I would recommend this -- it´s a quick and easy read, and introduced me to a world of corruption that I hadn´t realized existed.

Photos from Bua

2008-09-27T14:27:00.005-04:00

Our homestay house -- on the right, the family house -- built by a government grant about a year ago, with one central room, two small bedrooms, and an add-on wooden kitchen in the back built by the family. On the left, the guest ¨casita¨, or little house, that Noah and I share, that they built earlier this summer to house relatives for Andy´s baptism.

The construction site at the school -- in the foreground, the bases for the six eco toilets (with two chambers each so that one can lay fallow half the time). The hired skilled workers did most of this concrete brick laying -- the TBB group mostly worked to dig the trenches in the background, haul dirt, and do other various projects around the school like redoing sinks.

Me with my host-brother, Andy (on the right) and a neighborhood kid.

Some kids at the elementary school where we´ve been working on toilet building.

Evening sunset over a game of volleyball at the local tienda.

New Constitution Rally

2008-09-26T15:36:00.002-04:00

We had an exciting trip the other day. On Monday morning (22nd), the group all reported to the school, ready to keep digging trenches for the project. Someone mentioned that they had watched the morning news with their family and learned that Rafael Correa, Ecuador´s president, would be speaking that day in Santo Domingo, the nearest city to Bua. His administration has been promoting the new constitution, which is being voted on this Sunday (28th). We jokingly agreed that we should all go to the rally, and Sandy and Robin agreed, so we actually all hopped in the back of a cattle truck and headed for Santo Domingo.

The rally was in a giant open-air pavillion, and since we got there a couple of hours early, we had legit seats within the first fifteen rows or so. Eventually the entire place was completely full, mostly with older interest groups or field trips from local high schools. Some local government officials spoke and awarded micro-financing checks to certain individuals, and then Correa came out. The crowd loved him. He gave a very compelling speech about the unique aspects of the constitution, which, if approved by citizens, would replace the previous one from 1998.

The constitution seems to be pretty liberal -- calling for health care for all, education, allowing abortion, preserving culture, favoring local business rather than foreign investment, protecting oil reserves. I have learned from my host family that it is an obligation for all citizens to vote -- they have to recieve a slip of paper confirming that they voted in order to pay taxes and avoid a fine. In fact, this whole weekend, Friday through Sunday, is a nation-wide dry weekend: alcohol cannot be served so that everyone is in fit shape to vote! It seems that there is a lot of support for the constitution, and my host father predicts that it will pass.

At one point in the middle of his speech, Correa saw the large group of foreigners in the crowd, directed his attention to TBB, and said, in English, welcome, and that now was a time of change and revolution. We had woken up that morning expecting to manhandle piles of dirt, and instead we were quite literally personally addressed by the president of Ecuador... no big deal.

Afterwards, we were approached by many curious people. One of them is a lawyer for the district government here in Santo Domingo, and she was interested in our volunteer work in Bua, so she came out later in the week to see the project -- raising awareness, and perhaps funds, for YanaPuma and for the school.

Bua, Ecuador

2008-09-20T15:04:00.002-04:00

We´ve been at Bua for a couple days now. We arrived on Tuesday and settled in with our homestay families: Noah and I are staying with Rafael (27), his wife Diana (23), and their son Andres (7). They are members of the TsaChila nationality, a group of Ecuadorians who live in seven remaining communities. The TsaChila all speak Spanish in addition to their native langauge, Tsa Fiki.

We live, conveniently, right across from the elementary school where we work everyday. At the school, we are working with Yanapuma and a group of volunteers from Engineers without Borders to construct six ecotoilets. The school´s current sanitary system was designed to accomodate 75 students when it was built ten years ago, but now, because the school´s principle has worked so hard to attract students from neighboring villages, the school has more than 250 students. The nearest city, Santo Domingo, doesn´t have the capacity to clean out septic tanks, so once they´re full, they´re simply abandoned. Thus the school has serious issues with contamination and overflow.

Ideally, the toilets will be able to accomodate the school´s increased population and will be eco-friendly: in addition to safetly containing waste, it will ultimately produce a useable and nutrient-rich soil. So far we´ve helped to dig trenches and lay pipes. Hired skilled workers are the ones who do most of the concrete laying, and so far the engineers have had to modify their original design. We have been able to observe some of the difficulties in implementing development in a rural community like Bua: firstly, communication. There are several different groups of volunteers here, Thinking Beyond Borders, Engineers without Borders , funneled here through Yanapuma, and these different groups have to work in conjunction with the community, the school itself, and the skilled workers. Secondly, we´ve seen how designs created in the USA cannot necessarily be implemented in other places: the engineers made sure to ask if Ecuadorian cement blocks had holes in them, but they didn´t realize that the holes don´t go all the way through, so we can´t thread riebar through them. Thirdly, the community itself sometimes doesn´t understand the intent of those volunteering. When Yanapuma intially came to the village, they learned that no map of the community existed, and when they tried to make one, the community reared back because they thought the information would be fed to the government to make them pay taxes.

Back at our homestays, we often bathe in the river, help to do dishes, play marbles with Andres ... I´ve learned some really interesting bits about the TsaChila culture through speaking with my host mother. She came from one of the other seven TsaChila communities and seems to miss her own family a lot. She explained to me that the TsaChilas ären´t allowed to marry white people¨ -- I actually got to look through a TsaChila ¨rule book¨ type pamplet in the living room, and it had rules like you must marry within the nationality, what types of roles women should play (cook, clean, and raise children), and the customary clothing (for men, black and white striped skirts, for women, very brightly striped skirts). The men also have a tradition of dying their hair red with berries that grow here.

It´s really exciting to be in Ecuador at this time. In a week or so, the country will vote on whether or not to implement a new constitution. Their constitution changes pretty regularly, I think about twenty times in the past couple decades. My homestay family was shocked that our USA constitution ´hasn´t been changed in more than two hundred years! Correas, the current president, is proposing a fairly liberal constitution that would allow abortion, is vague on gay marriage, and, some hope, would equalize socioeconomic conditions.

Something else that struck me about being in Ecuador is that they use as thier national currency the US dollar. They dollarized about eight years ago due to hyperinflation and have used the dollar ever since.

We certainly don´t have internet in the village, so right now the group is on a day trip to Santo Domingo, a hyper-industrial, kind of grimy little city about forty minutes from Bua by cattle truck. Tomorrow is Sunday so we won´t be working but spending the day with our homestay families.

Ecuador

2008-09-15T22:31:00.002-04:00

Yesterday we flew into Quito -- apparently the most difficult airport to land at because of the runways and the altitude. We're at almost 10,000 feet above sea level, nearly two miles.

Today we met with our in-country host organization, called Yanapuma. It's an NGO based in Quito that has been around for about 2 years and does various projects around the country promoting sustainable development and cultural preservation. Tomorrow we'll be beginning our month-long homestay in a TsaChila village called Bua, about forty minutes outside of a town called Santo Domingo. We'll be living with families there, building eco toilets at the elementary school.

2008-09-13T23:50:00.001-04:00

The group after hiking down to a waterfall.

Introductory Post & Orientation in Costa Rica

2008-09-13T22:24:00.003-04:00

Hello everyone!

I should have posted an introductory post before I left, but between packing and that strenuous life-guarding job, I never got the chance, so let me say a little bit about the program.

I graduated from Winsor in June, and I’ll be going to Columbia in the fall of 2009, and in the mean time, I’m taking a gap year with a program called Thinking Beyond Borders. I actually never planned to take a year off, but in April, my college counselor mentioned that there would be a gap year fair at Nobles, and so I decided to stop by one weekend. While I was there, I discovered and fell in love with TBB.

www.thinkingbeyondborders.org

This is the first year that they’re running the program, but it seems to be incredibly well run so far. There are sixteen students and three leaders: Sandy & Robin (who are married) and Nina. We’ll be spending the next eight months together, traveling the world and studying global development issues.

The basic structure of the program focuses on five main countries, and in each one we focus on a different issue: Ecuador (clean water), China (public education), Vietnam (the environment), India (sustainable agriculture), and South Africa (public health). In each main country, we do an individual homestay and work directly with a local NGO (non-governmental organization) that specializes in our focus. In between each of the main countries, we have an enrichment week, essentially a vacation week to decompress and process and come back together as a group, so those trips will include hiking Machu Pichu in Peru, going to Angkor Wat, scuba-diving in Thailand, seeing the Taj Mahal in India, and going to a National Park in South Africa. After all that, we come and spend six more weeks together in the United States, drawing connections between everything we’ve seen. We’ll be meeting with the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and small NGOs in New York City and Washington DC.

I’ll explain more about the program as I go, but that’s good for now.

The trip began on September 4^th, when the group met in Houston and flew to San Jose, Costa Rica, for a ten-day orientation. We spent the time in a small costal town called Playa Uvita, which is on the Pacific, south side of the country. We lived at a small co-op owned hostel type place, on an unpaved road with few local shops. We were a half hour walk from the beach, so many of the mornings some of us would wake up early to catch the high tide and surf, which I’ve never done before, but began to get the hang of.

Early morning surfing -- catching the high tide at 5:00 AM (Zach & Noah)

We spent the week having group discussions (rules, safety, curriculum) and doing outdoor activities. Highlights included kayaking in a mangrove grove, hiking to a waterfall, taking a boat trip to an island, going on a nighttime beach hunt to help preserve turtle eggs from poachers, and seeing a local soccer tournament.

We discussed our summer reading – Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, and The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs. The group opinions differed about each book, but I would recommend them both. Ishmael, or its sequel My Ishmael, is a quick read with a heavy message about the nature of human society. The End of Poverty is a very well written, easily accessible book written by an economist who pioneered the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals.

We’re back in San Jose now for the night before our flight to Quito, Ecuador. From there, we’ll drive about four hours to our site.

The group is great so far; everyone is really getting along and seems to be having a great time. I’m really excited to start our first main country and hopefully remember my Spanish!