The End is Near

This Friday I fly home to the states, landing in San Francisco just before midnight. It has been... quite a summer. This past weekend, a few friends and I went to Las Terrenas, Samaná for our last hurrah in the country before parting ways. All the sentimentality has left me feeling rather numb this week, although the minor cold I've developed may also have something to do with it :(. At some point I hope to write a longer summary of all that I've seen, done, and learned this summer, but I'm afraid I'm not quite in the right state of mind for it right now.

On the upside, I am very excited to head back home and then up to Berkeley, to see all the people I've been missing quite a bit. I'll probably have a few more postings before this blog goes dormant, but I figure I'll just take the opportunity now to thank everyone for reading. Trying to write anything worth reading is hard; hopefully I didn't bore anyone too severely ;)

Jarabacoa

(the view from the guest house we stayed in at a boarding school in Jarabacoa)

I am back from a very long weekend spent traveling, meeting new friends, hanging out, cooking, hiking, rappelling down waterfalls, jumping down waterfalls, wading down rivers, saying goodbye to some who have become old friends, and soaking in still more of the country that has been my home this summer before my abrupt departure next Friday.

After flying home late next Friday, I will spend Saturday packing and will drive up to Berkeley on Sunday to start class the following Wednesday! It is all happening too fast to be believed.

Last Thursday I made my way to Santo Domingo to spend the evening hanging out with fellow interns and staff members there, a couple of whom were leaving the next day. Notable among these was Maira, an amazing fellow intern of mine who was my close coworker here in the San Pedro office. Maira had been here for roughly a month before I arrived, and did so much to help me get settled when I first started working. This aside, Maira is simply an epitome of awesomeness. All of the interns, and I especially, were very sad to see her go.

Thursday night I slept on the floor of my coworkers who lives in Santo Domingo. On Friday, Anne and I went out and explored the Colonial District of the city. Gringos walking around that part of the city are ceaselessly accosted by Dominicans (mostly men) eager to sell us something, drive us somewhere, or give us a tour. In these situations, I find myself feeling a peculiar mix of righteous indignation and guilt. Indignation because “I just want to wander the city on my own accord, so leave me in peace!”, and guilt because, well, I’m a guest in their country, and they’re just doing their damndest to get by. It can be very frustrating sometimes; living in this country, you come to the realization that many people see your skin color and think “opporunity”.

Anyway, Anne and I wandered around, caught up on the going-ons of our respective stations, and lounged in very old, very air-conditioned churches (hmmm... are we really that interested in history? You decide ;). We eventually had to tear ourselves from the AC, as the church was closing and we had other friends to meet who were arriving in the city.

Because I am lazy, I am going to borrow from Anne’s blog a bit here:

“Prying ourselves from heavenly air conditioning, Jon and I joined up with two other interns and a girl (now old friend) who’s doing an independent research project in conjunction with Esperanza and her home university. We headed out to dinner at one of our favorite locales and then checked out a colmado that, in previous experience, had been quite the dance spot. The colmado was much tamer this night and we just ended up enjoying drinks and conversations. While we were chatting and relaxing, I looked over to the left and spotted the front sign of the university that Pedro Julio (my neighbor) attends; he’s taking night classes to obtain his degree in architecture. I gave him a call to see if he wanted to join, but, as it turns out, he was already at home. While that would have been an interesting mix of my two worlds here, it might be for the best that they remained separate.

We made plans to head back to the hotel and freshen up a bit before heading out for some dancing. Tess was definitely leading the pack in the let’s-go-have-fun venture. After we girls had tidied up, we went to fetch the boys. They were watching a movie and we decided to join them for a bit before officially hitting the dance floor. Ironically enough, Tess (our fearless leader) drifted off quickly followed by an apparently tired Anne (another strong supporter of dance adventure) and so we decided to postpone dancing until the next day.

...

The next morning, we checked out of La Res and, while walking to the bus stop, grabbed some fresh fruit for breakfast--I had piña y papaya! At the bus stop, we met up with another intern (David), his friend, and his sister to travel up to Jarabacoa where David attended high school. Staying in the guesthouse of the boarding school, we had access to warm water, bunk beds, and a full kitchen.”

OK, I’m back. The two other interns we were joined by were Tess, who Anne mentioned above, and Nate, an intern who I've traveled with almost every weekend and who I now count as a good friend. The independent researcher is Danielle, who has been doing research in Hato Mayor with Tess. She goes to Northeastern in Boston, and very quickly made herself a beloved member of the group. As an aside, David and his sister are both super-awesome. David is an intern I’ve become quite good friends with over the course of the summer and with whom I have quite a lot in common, despite the fact that the courses of our lives up to now could not have been more different. David goes to a super-small Christian college in Indiana (that he describes as “cultish”) and spent two years of his high school career living in Jarabacoa, as mentioned above. His sister, Emily, goes to Azusa Pacific in LA, and is tons of fun to hang out with. David and Emily have an enviably close sibling relationship, and seem to have a really good time with each other.

When we got in to Jarabacoa, we immediately shopped for groceries to make dinner that night. David is a wicked-good cook, and with help from the rest of us made a wonderful dinner of marinated chicken, vegetable curry, and cucumber salad. One of the things I’ve learned that group activities such as this are really a fantastic form of bonding and getting to know other people. Knowing this, I’m looking forward to having friends over and cooking more frequently during this upcoming school year in Berkeley. I’m really hoping to improve my cooking skillz.

On Saturday night, we went out to a dance club in Jarabacoa. At first they played a good amount of salsa and merengue, which I had a very good time dancing to, before they started playing endless loops of the same five or six annoying, repetetive Reggaeton songs (basically a Caribbean form of rap). Some of the Dominicans in the club took this music as an excuse to start dry humping in all kinds of interesting positions (there was one guy we nicknamed Crazy Sexual Dance Man).
(Emily and David in front, and the always awesome Nate Sooter in the back. On the way to dancing)

(Tess, Anne, and Danielle, at the ice cream shop before dancing. Anne's expression is classic)

The next day several of us went Canyoning. Canyoning involves wading and hiking down a river wearing a harness and, when the time comes, rappelling down waterfalls. It was scary at times, but still very safe (hi Mom!), and was one of the most fun things I’ve done here.

Sunday night was a much simpler dinner, cooking hot dogs over a wood fire and later making s’mores. Normally, I only want one s’more (a “s’no-more”), but this time I must have had about four, I think because we used these round cookie/cracker things that actually worked much better than graham crackers.

(Nate and I chopping wood with a machete)

The next day, Monday (we took a bit of an extra-long weekend), we traveled up to Imbert to do the legendary “27 Waterfalls”. This involved hiking down a river and jumping off of a bunch of waterfalls into pools below (we had to wear helmets and life jackets, so also quite safe, Mom). Some of the jumps were higher than anything I’d done before, and required a little bit of psyching up before leaping. It was another super fun day doing a incredibly unique activity.
(I'm fairly sure I was stretching here, not dancing)



Tuesday was a long day of travel back to Santo Domingo. Not wanting to go back to San Pedro quite yet, I hung out with David and Emily that day. Emily’s passport expired the day after she arrived, so we had to go to the consulate to see if she could get a new one. The walk from the Esperanza office to the consulate turned out to be much longer than expected, and soon after setting out it started pouring. By the time we got to the consulate, all three of us were soaked to the bone. Once there, an ornery woman informed us that Emily had to make an appointment online to get a new passport and the next available appointment was late September. That, clearly, would not work.

We spent that evening hanging out at the apartment where several of our coworkers live. For dinner, we had an excellent vegetable curry. David and his sister made caramel, which we then poured over oreos for a delicious, if somewhat hard to eat, desert. I slept on their floor that night and was back in San Pedro early Wednesday morning.

At Long Last...

...I am being hit on by hot Dominicanas. I was at a repayment meeting earlier today, and near the end of the meeting, one of the associates inquired with Alejandro, the loan officer I was with, about my relationship status. Alejandro, always eager to put me in awkward situations, quickly told her that I would be happy to be her boyfriend.

She then turned to me and (to paraphrase) said "he said you will be my boyfriend. Let me give you my number." A bit flustered, I replied that I didn't really think that would work out. "Why? Am I ugly?" was her reply.

"No, you're very pretty," I assured her. And she was. Very.

"Are you engaged?" she then asked me.

"No. I'm just leaving the country in two weeks!"

"I can wait!" she happily replied. "Alejandro has my number," indicating I should ask him if I want it.

And so it was. I guess I appreciated the compliment. The female Esperanza interns have to beat away local boys with a stick; generally speaking, no self-respecting Dominicano can hold his head up high to his buddies if he didn't at least try to hit on a rubia (literally means 'blonde', but is applied to pretty much any white woman) when the opportunity arises. But up until this morning, I hadn't noticed any similar interest from Dominican women directed towards gringos like me. In the interest of equity between genders, all I can say is: about damn time.

Caberete

I spent this past weekend with a bunch of the Fellows up in and around Caberete, on the DR's north coast. We had the immense privilege of staying in an apartment owned by one of Esperanza's major donors, a really sweet place right on the ocean. On Saturday several of us rented surfboards and tried to surf. I for one failed miserably; the waves broke so frequently that it was next to impossible for me to even paddle out far enough to catch waves. I basically just made myself really tired and inhaled a whole bunch of saltwater. Fun. It was still a really good time, though! We all went out and got pizza that night, and then enjoyed mojitos at a bar on Cabarete Beach.
On Saturday night, we went to a bar in Puerto Plata where there was a, ahem, John Mayer cover band playing. The house band that opened for them was really good, but the cover band that then played was, ummm, decidedly unremarkable. We all got really bored fairly quickly, and soon were ready to leave.
Still, only a minor disappointment in what was otherwise a very fun weekend.

Cap-Haitien, Haiti: Part II

I've been busy here in the office but I'm back now to tell more about my crazy adventures in Haiti.

I'll start where I left off, Friday evening I believe...

After exploring the community in Trou-du-Nord, all of us piled back into the truck to head back to Cap-Haitien. The car rides were not fun. By some combination of road conditions and traffic conditions I felt as if I were inhaling 50% smoke, 50% dust in every breath.

Once back in our room, we all eagerly showered and changed clothes before pulling some furniture out onto the porch to enjoy the night. We had a dinner of peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, washed down with a Prestige, Haiti's beer, which I actually prefer to the DR's Presidente. We spent the evening just hanging out outside, talking about life, development, family, friendship, love, all of the things that sound cliché when written out but remain the most absorbing sources of late-night conversation among a group of people who have grown to trust each other. It is, as fellow intern David once said about a similar occasion, "raw life", and it is an incredible thing to feel.

Saturday was sight-seeing day! We woke up, piled in the car, and after another unpleasant ride over bad roads arrived at the Sans-Souci Palace, built by King Henri Christophe to rival Versailles. The palace was ruined in an earthquake, and still maintains a sort of exotic beauty as the remnants of walls and pillars mix with the surrounding natural environment.
From the palace, there was a stone road winding uphill for several miles before arriving at the Citadelle Laferriere, probably the most spectacular site in all of Haiti. The hike up there is long, and it is hot. Tourists like us are dogged at the heels by Haitians with horses, just waiting for us to give up and hire a horse to ride to the top. Not long after starting, members of our group began dropping off and hiring a horse, and soon David and I were the only ones left on foot. Fueled by little more than the obstinate determination not to give in to the horsemen who persisted to follow us most of the way to the top.

The Citadelle was pretty epic. See for yourself:



Saturday night, well... Nate has already written a good account of what transpired, so I'll borrow his words:

Saturday night, the whole hotel situation hits the fan. What happened is this: Some random employee had said that it’s $120/night between the 5 of us at the hotel. He wasn’t the boss there, just some kid who quoted a number, and said the sorts of facilities they had. As I listed above, the facilities were terrible. Being experienced travelers, we figured the price should have been closer to $50 per night. When we approached the employee who had been around all week about this (via Obed translating), he said, “Ok, fine – I’ll just charge you $350 instead of the $360.” Our response: ARE YOU JOKING?, that’s $3/night off. Ridiculous. After allowing Obed to translate this, the kid called his boss to tell him to come.

This is when it gets real interesting. The boss enters, and doesn’t act anything like a reasonable owner of a hotel at all. Instead of acting as he should have (weighing our complaints about the hotel to figure out a fair price for us to pay), he was extremely aggressive. He entered and immediately began accusing us of being unjust customers, stating angrily “Who do you think you are, coming into MY hotel and telling ME what to charge you?”, and otherwise changing the subject from the faults of his hotel to show why we deserved to pay the $120/night. David, one of the other fellows, did a good job of attempting to keep the conversation focused on the issue at hand – we cannot and would not pay that much, for the very understandable reasons we laid out. We were misled into believing this hotel was of higher quality than it really is. Perhaps someday it’d be that valuable, for now, it was on the same level (if not lower) than a Motel 6.

At some point in the night, several of us started to pick up that we may have started to bring ourselves (or Obed), into physical danger by agitating this man. He certainly was very wealthy, and we assumed he had friends in high places who he could call to deal with the issue of five pesky Americans. We were finally offered $260 for the three nights, and accepted it. Though this price was too high, it seemed to us that we needed to get away from this man.

We went to withdraw extra money from the main Roi Cristophe hotel to give to this man. At the Roi Cristophe, we learn an amazing fact: we had been part of an employee who was committing fraud. The man at the desk on Thursday who said that it was “full” was a friend of our not-so-friendly manager, and would send potentially wealthy people (i.e. anyone white) to the other hotel, which was no where near the same quality. In fact – the other hotel wasn’t even related! It was all a ploy to make us think we were somehow going to a legit place, which wasn’t legit at all.

In the end, the Roi Cristophe offered us rooms to stay the night at their hotel that night as a recompense for dealing with the fraud. We gladly accepted and quickly packed up from the other hotel and moved into a (MUCH) nicer and safer hotel for the last night.

Yep, that's pretty much how things went. The whole ride home all I could think about was the psychology of the owner we dealt with. In a society like Haiti, if you're an ambitious person, as this guy clearly was, it seems to me you probably look at your options in life and find that the honest routes to get ahead are basically closed to you, and so you start thinking OK, I guess I have to be dishonest. This is not to excuse in any way what he did. It was wrong. He took advantage of us, and that infuriates me. But I think it's difficult for us in the developed world to wrap our heads around how much greater the incentives for dishonesty are for people in places like Haiti. Now the specific guy we dealt with probably no longer needed to be dishonest to do okay for himself, but I imagine he had been involved in some decidedly illegal practices to get there, and he no longer cared about the morality of it. I can imagine him looking at people like me and my friends and thinking What are you complaining about? Do you know where I came from? You have no f***ing clue, you sheltered American children. Now shut up and pay.

Whether or not this was his actual thought process, I cannot say. But all-in-all it was an extremely eye-opening experience on many fronts.

Cap-Haitien, Haiti: Part I

I have returned from an extended weekend in Haiti with several of my fellow Fellows, wonderful folks each one. Their names are David, Madeleine, Nate, and Maira. There is much to tell. I suppose I will start from the beginning.

Last Wednesday I came home from work here in San Pedro, showered, packed my things, and hopped on a bus to Santo Domingo. The plan was to wake up early Thursday morning and catch the charter bus going from SD to Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city. I got into Santo Domingo and met my friends at an apartment where several of Esperanza's long-term interns and American staff live. We ordered pizza, drank some Presidentes, and had a fun time just hanging out together. Later, the five of us going to Haiti convened to discuss our plans for getting to the bus station and buying our tickets. We eventually decided to walk to the bus station that night to see if they were still open so we could buy our tickets early. Maira, one of the interns going to Haiti, mentioned something about needing our passports to get the tickets.

Passport. Hmmm... passport.

S***.

Mine, of course, was still next to my bed in San Pedro. Remarkably, it had not once occurred to me that I might need my passport to go to Haiti. Half an hour later, I'm on a bus going back to San Pedro, where I will retrieve my passport and hop on an early bus back to Santo Domingo in the morning.

All of this, luckily, goes more or less according to plan. I get my passport and am back in SD before 8am on Thursday morning. There is one near-disaster: when I get off the bus in Santo Domingo, I walk a few steps before realizing that the front pocket of my backpack is wide open, and my wallet is missing. I almost go into cardiac arrest, but luckily the cobrador from the bus (a guy who collects fares and gets people on the bus) had chased after me, my wallet in hand. I thank him profusely and check to make sure everything's there. It is. Phew. Crisis averted.

I walk to meet my friends at the Caribe Tours bus station. Buying a ticket to Haiti takes forever. In protest, an intern who shall remain nameless decides to steal the inflated Air France plane hanging from the ceiling. He/She unhooks it from the ceiling, deflates it, and shoves it in his/her backpack. The people at the desk don't seem to notice.

And on the bus we go! We stop briefly in Santiago to change buses. Crossing the border takes a long, long time. All of us stay on the bus as the attendant handles getting passports stamped. We arrive in Cap-Haitien after roughly nine hours of sitting in buses. Driving through Cap-Haitien is a surreal experience. We see an endless line of tin shacks lining the sides of a muddy river. We see rows and rows of pick-up trucks converted into public cars, packed with people. We pass a UN armored vehicle next to a UN base garrisoned with Chilean peacekeepers. The place is dirty, chaotic, and unsightly in a way that I haven't seen in the DR. It makes Santo Domingo and San Pedro looked like the developed world.


Getting off the bus, we are immediately greeted by Obed, Esperanza's only intern stationed in Haiti. Obed spent several years of his childhood in Haiti, and as such speaks fluent Creole. He informs us that something had gone wrong with the reservation he had originally made at a hotel in town, and that we had been referred to a "partner" hotel because the hotel we thought we had a reservation at was full.

No problem, we'll just go to the other hotel. When we get there, we find that the place is still under construction. It isn't a hotel so much as a three -story building with partially furnished rooms. The beds are terrible, the shower has no faucet, instead spewing water out of a pipe. Service is non-existent. There is no railing on the balcony outside so someone could quite easily fall off and impale themselves on the rebar sticking out of the unfinished retaining wall below.

Understand, none of this by itself is a problem. We volunteers are fine with staying in cheap hotels. The problem arose in the fact that this place was not cheap. We were informed by the "manager", some guy who met us there and gave us our keys, that it cost $120/night. When we first got there, we were not fully aware of the situation and thought whatever, we'll deal with it later. Mistake #1. The manager leaves, we go out with Obed for food, and return later that night, tired and wanting to go to bed. The manager is there briefly, but we have no way to communicate with him because Obed is not staying with us.

More on that later. On Friday morning Obed picked us up at the hotel with a couple of his local friends who he hired to drive us around for the weekend. Eight of us pack into a small, beat-up suv that has consistent trouble starting and head to Esperanza's office in Trou-du-Nord.

We hang out in the office for awhile while Obed takes care of some business. Later we are taken to the office director's house for a Haitian lunch. The director is out of town, but his wife had made an amazing meal for us. See for yourself:
After eating, Maira and I took the opportunity to go out and meet a couple of the associates with Obed, in my opinion one of the highlights of the trip. We first visited a woman with a small colmado-like store in a road-side shack, stocked with drinks, snacks, and common convenience goods. She wass rather shy, and Maira and I stood around while Obed interviewed her for a story. We got the chance to ask her a couple questions through Obed, and then left, Obed buying a soda from her as thanks.

We then went to meet another small-business owner nearby, who also had something of a general store. This man was remarkable. After Obed talked with him for awhile, Maira and I again had the opportunity to ask questions and take a few pictures. Maira told him that she was planning on going to business school soon, and asked what advice he could give her on running a business. Obed translated, and the man paused thoughtfully before diving into a detailed answer. The gist of what he said is as follows: "Business is about principles," he said. "I form good relationships with my customers because I value them and want them to come back. They come back here because they know I have good prices and because they like me and know I appreciate their business."

I'm paraphrasing Obed's translation, but that's about what he said. What was so remarkable was what I could learn about this man without knowing what he was saying. Despite having a small business in a poor neighborhood, he dressed nicely, wearing slacks, a collared shirt, and dress shoes. He stood up straight and spoke clearly and deliberately, with a evenly measured rhythm. I could tell simply from how he spoke that this was an honest, stand-up guy; a man who knows his business, knows his clientele, and acts professionally despite his humble circumstances. It was truly a privilege to see his business and have the chance to talk with him.
(Obed, right, with the business-owner we talked to)

Whew, I'm thinking there may be too much for just one post. Stay tuned for Part II of our Haitian aventura.

Trip to Haiti

I, along with several other interns, will be heading to Haiti tomorrow to see the Esperanza office in Trou-du-Nord (just outside of Cap-Haitien) and see some of the sites in general. There is one intern in Haiti, Obed, who was born in Haiti but grew up an graduated from college in the States. The rest of us will surely be relying on him quite heavily as he is the only one among us who can speak Creole. On Saturday we will be going to see the Citadelle, a fortress built by leaders of the Haitian slave rebellion. Apparently it's one of the most spectacular sites in all of Haiti, so I'm quite excited to see it. I'll be sure to take pictures.

San Pedro's Law

Anything that can be carried by moto, will be carried by moto:


Those, if you cannot tell, are five or so live chickens.

Playing the Shame Game

On Monday, I interviewed a new borrower, a young woman named Miguelina, planning to take her information and make a Kiva profile for her and her group. She told me about how she is a single mother with three children, ages six, five, and five months. She is 21 years old. That's a year older than I am. When she told me her age, I was firmly slapped in the face with the realization that she is one of my peers. Before me was a product of my own generation, living a life that is unimaginably distant from my own experience. Yet here she was, eager to tell me about her plan to start a business selling food supplies: rice, beans, cooking oil, candy, etc. Here she was, telling me about her determination to keep her kids in school so they can fulfill their dreams.

And I believe her. I believe she will do it.

Perhaps it is wrong of me to stereotype, but I have difficulty imagining that an American girl in the same situation would have that kind of attitude and ambition. I think there is a reason for this. Miguelina, despite having three children at a shockingly young age, is not ashamed of her circumstances. She has the support of her family and community in what she is doing.

In the America that I grew up in, a mostly white, upper-middle-class society, there is an immense culture of shame concerning teenage girls who get pregnant. In a society, shame is primarily a social deterrent mechanism. So the argument goes, if we do sufficient damage to the reputations of those who make mistakes, then others will be more careful. And if we do not use shame as a deterrent, than what else is there? After all, it's far better that we use shame than try to use rule of law.

However, on the subject of teen pregnancy in particular, shame is a double-edged sword. We may be deterring others from making foolish mistakes, but at what cost to those who do? More importantly, at what cost to the children of these young women? A young woman who finds herself pregnant may look upon her child as a curse, a scarlet letter, something that has ruined her life and her dreams for the future. Indeed, many young women feel compelled to "deal" with the problem before it becomes evident. Even for those who don't, what sort of environment are these children growing up in, when their mothers do not have the love and support of their community? It's quite possible that many of the undesirable results of teen pregnancies today might not occur if we did not condemn young parents so harshly.

All of that being said, I am not necessarily going to come out as strongly in favor of de-stigmatizing teen pregnancy. It is true that if we as a culture become more accepting of it, it might happen a lot more. All I will say at this point is that the costs and benefits of how we handle this issue deserve to be examined much more closely, and may be due for recalibrating.

Why Development?

While in Santo Domingo this past weekend, I had a lengthy conversation with a couple of the other interns, Tim and Nate. At one point, Tim posed the question, "why are you interested in development?" He went on to talk about how when he asks people this, there are generally two answers that one gets. The first answer is religious motivation: "Because God wants me to," or "It's what Jesus would do," etc. The second answer is more secular but can just as easily have a religious motivation by extension: "Because I want to help people."

To which one could ask, why? Why do you want to help people? Why do you think they want your help? When we follow our motivations to their source, we generally find that there's no such thing as a selfless motive. In the end, we're always scratching some kind of itch, chasing some kind of feeling. If we knew that a particular action would yield nothing but bad feelings, we would never do it. We can not help but run towards pleasure and flee from pain. This sounds hedonistic when taken at face value, but when we think of pain and pleasure as being complex entities with a number of different forms, it begins to make a bit more sense. If my grandmother comes to visit my family, and brings a heavy suitcase, I carry it for her. Although carrying it causes me more physical discomfort than I would otherwise feel, my conscience would punish me were I to let her carry it herself. Thus, my motivation for carrying my grandmother's suitcase can be seen as entirely selfish. I am fleeing from the pain my conscience would afflict to the satisfaction of helping my grandmother.

Getting back to Tim's original question, why am I interested in development? Several Reasons. First, how I feel about myself is largely affected by my perceived positive influence on other people (granted, given my level of experience it's debatable how large a positive influence i'm having this summer). Second, as a person I'm very prone to boredom, and so I crave a sense of adventure and feel that this sort of work can provide that. Third, I feel it's extremely valuable to be exposed to other ways of life on a long time-scale, both to appreciate other cultures and to gain new perspective and appreciation for one's own.

I wholeheartedly admit that all of these motives can be seen as selfish, as chasing my own satisfaction in life. The thing is, happiness is quite a complex animal. We can chase it in dozens of different ways. Some of these paths yield positive social externalities, and some yield negative. It should come as no surprise that the paths to happiness that yield positive social externalities are frequently those that require a significant investment of time and effort before they begin to pay off.

So what's the lesson here? That we should try to chase the pleasures that carry the most positive social impacts. It's far from the easiest kind of life, but it may be one of the most fulfilling.

Avast!

I'm back for another week of action here in San Pedro de Macorís. This past weekend was spent in Santo Domingo, celebrating birthdays (of people and countries) and going-aways of a number of people. It was quite a fun time, but an unfortunate dearth of sleep on Friday night led me to exhaustion a bit too quickly on Saturday night. Friday night began with several other Fellows and I moseying to a colmado/bar/local hangout near our hotel, where we met a few interesting folks and were eventually joined by several other interns. I met one amusing character who had come all the way from Finland(!) to vacation here in the DR. I don't remember his name (he had a pretty heavy accent), but he was a pretty big guy with a bleached-blond faux-hawk. When I asked him why he came to the DR, he responded (in a thick Scandinavian accent) "for the rahm (rum), the baych (beach), and the crazy wild seks (guess)". ...oooooookay. I guess that's what does it for him. We later went to an awesome open-air club playing non-stop salsa, merengue, and bachatta (sp?). Didn't get back to the hotel until really late, but it was well worth it.

Saturday was more relaxed. The day was mostly spent hanging out with Nate and Tim, two other Fellows. Nate is going into his senior year at University of Washington. Tim graduated from Princeton, then spent a year in Tanzania before coming to the DR. After wandering around a bit and eating lunch, the two of us went back to the hotel and played a whole lot of Dominoes. Nate won handily, but it was pretty much entirely luck.

Later in the evening we headed to the house where several of the interns in Santo Domingo live. We sat around and talked for awhile, before ordering a whole bunch of pizzas from, believe it or not, Pizza Hut. I guess nothing says Independence Day like cheap American-imitating-Italian food. Later that night was spent at hanging out at a club called "The Blue Velvet". Going there, I was slightly afraid it was going to be a gay bar. It turned out to be a normal, if kind of underwhelming, venue. I would have danced a lot and probably had a much better time if I wasn't so exhausted. It was still fun though, a lot of the time was spent outside chatting with the other Fellows.

All things considered, though, a weekend well spent. More to come soon!

Microfinance: The Next Bubble?

That's the headline of a recent posting on Newsweek's Wealth of Nations blog. It talks about a recent study by two American economists whose primary conclusion is that while microfinance isn't hurting anybody, there isn't a lot of solid evidence that it's helping them, either.

It may surprise many of you that I don't really find these conclusions to be very troubling, even if they are spot on. And yet, I still believe that microfinance should continue to expand, that it should try to reach as many of the poor as possible, all over the world. Why? Because I don't believe that microfinance is truly about helping poor entrepreneurs escape poverty. I believe it's about helping their children escape poverty. The blunt fact is, most of these poor entrepreneurs do not have the education to become sustainably affluent. Microcredit cannot do a whole lot to help them get one, because they need to be working to pay back their loans, besides having children and a home to maintain.

What microcredit can (and does) do for the poor is provide them with the necessary stability of income to keep their children in school long enough for them to have a good enough education to give them a much higher chance of escaping poverty than they ever had themselves. I have no rigorous studies immediately on hand to prove my claim, but it is what I believe after spending a bit of time in the field and it makes a great deal of sense. If one is looking for massive improvements in the well-being of a country's poor population, one will have to wait roughly 25 years after a significant proportion of that nation's poor population had access to microcredit.

Of course, it would also help immensely if the governments of these countries would meet their poor citizens halfway by focusing relentlessly on improving both quality of education and access to it. But that's a whole different battle.

Communication Anxiety

On Sunday afternoon, I returned from a weekend spent in Las Terrenas, Samaná with other Esperanza Fellows. A wicked sunburn aside (I swear, it couldn't be avoided), it was an incredibly fun weekend and I can't wait to hang out again with the incredibly eclectic and fascinating group of people we have as fellows this summer. Getting back to San Pedro from Las Terrenas was quite a haul but was fairly seamless in that I was able to get from one connection to another with little trouble. Three other fellows and I first rode back to Santo Domingo on a gua-gua, basically a public transit van or small bus. No matter how full they may be, they are always willing to take on more people, a fact my fellow... fellow, Tim, learned the hard way. Tim was sitting in the far back of the bus, already quite cozy with three other guys back there, when another guy got on the bus and made his way to the back, insisting on squeezing in between Tim and another guy by the window.

Anyway, once I got back in San Pedro, I had my worst anxiety attact in recent memory. It started when I decided to go down to the colmado on the bottom floor of my building to buy a botellón, a water jug designed for water coolers. Thus far I had been relying on the family upstairs and the office for drinking water, and now I figured it was time to get my own. I told the guy working there that I wanted to buy a jug water, which were kept in a blue cage near the door, and the response I got confused me. I didn't understand precisely what he was saying to me, all I knew was that I couldn't simply walk in and buy a botellón, there was something else to the process, something else I needed.
I was extremely frustrated, because I needed that water, and for some reason it was being denied to me, and I wasn't understanding why. I grew increasingly anxious, as I kept telling the guy what I wanted, and why I wanted it, telling him I was living upstairs in the same building, and I kept not understanding his replies. The words felt like distant memories--familiar, and yet I could not quite connect them with the real, solid meanings that exist, present but ever-elusive, in the corners of my mind.

Eventually, I got the sense that perhaps I needed to bring in an empty jug in order to get a new one. I told the guy that I had a few empty jugs upstairs, and the response I got indicated to me that that would probably improve our little situation. By this time however, I was barely containing the emotion of the anxiety that had been building throughout the interaction. I got back up to my apartment feeling irrationally terrified to an extent I haven't felt in a long time. I knew that I shouldn't feel that way--I wasn't in any real danger, the man understood that I was struggling with the language, and if I had to I could just buy a water bottle or two to get me buy until I figured out what I needed to do. After taking some deep breaths and pulling myself together, I got one of the empty jugs sitting on my kitchen floor and took it downstairs. No good, the jug's opening was cracked and would leak. So I took it back upstairs and got a different one, which looked a little worn but was still fully intact. I took it downstairs, and the guy got out a new one, opened it, and filled my jug with the water from it. I was a bit disappointed, as I was hoping to get an entirely new jug, and I was a bit concerned that my really old jug might have some grossness inside it and might make my water taste funny or not be entirely safe. But in the end, it only cost 25 pesos (about 70 cents), which made me feel very foolish for bringing only a 1000-peso bill ($27.86) down with me.

I suppose my anxiety may have primarily been due to a boiling over of my frustration at having so much trouble understanding a language I've been studying for years. The problem, as I see it, has several parts. The first is word discernment: my ear is not developed to a point where I can tell which words are being spoken when they are spoken at conversational speed amongst other words, most of which I would probably know if I saw them written but some of which I may not. The second is immediacy of meaning: I hear words and sentences that I understand, but I don't fully grasp their meaning as they are spoken without a bit of time and concentration, replaying the words in my head to be sure I hadn't missed something, by which time the speaker is already saying something else. The third issue is familiarity with syntax: I will frequently hear words that I know, but they will be structured in unfamiliar ways, creating sentences that use familiar words but don't make any grammatical sense if translated literally.

Communication has been a fairly rough area for me thus far. I know I will improve with time, I just have to be patient with myself. Which is hard.

San Pedro and All-Inclusives

As I discussed earlier, I spent most of Monday evening at a hotel in San Pedro where the group from Pennsylvania is staying. Before leaving, I was waiting in the lobby while Maira returned another intern's computer to her room. That intern, Claire, has the job of coordinating trips for the various groups that come to visit either through Esperanza or through Hope (to again clarify, Esperanza and Hope are two distinct development organizations despite having the same name in different languages, they just have a partnership for work here in the DR/Haiti). While waiting for Maira, I talked with Maximo, an Esperanza driver who was nice enough to drive Maira and I home. He asked me how I was liking San Pedro, and I replied that I was. Not because it's a particularly attractive or inviting place through the eyes of a first-world foreigner, on the contrary, I like it in many ways because it's not. San Pedro is a true, working-class city in the Dominican Republic, and as such is a real representation of what life here is like for most people. There isn't a lot of attractive architecture, there are no five-star hotels or top-end restaurants; there certainly aren't a lot of people walking around speaking English, German, French, or Italian. Living here, I feel like I will leave having really spent time in the Dominican Republic as it exists for its citizens.

Maximo and I eventually got to talking about the all-inclusive resorts that the majority of tourists come to when they visit the DR. It seems to me that if all you do is go to one of these places when visiting a country and don't venture much outside it, you haven't really visited that country. Maybe the employees are a different color, perhaps the weather is a tad different, but after that, it doesn't make all that much difference if you're in the DR, or Hawaii, or Tahiti. Being in an all-inclusive prevents people from engaging the reality of a place in any meaningful way. The thing is, this is probably deliberate. People go on vacation, in many cases, to try and escape reality. They are, much of the time, craving the sort of stress-free, whitewashed, soothing illusions that all-inclusives offer. So, really, who can blame them? It's not a rhetorical question, and I'd love to hear readers' thoughts on this one.

Money Spent vs. Good Done

On Monday, Maira (another intern here in the San Pedro office) and I went to go help out at an English camp for Dominican children in a nearby town. The camp was mostly run by a group of maybe 40 or so American teenagers from a Pennsylvania church's high school youth group. The group's stay here was facilitated by Hope International, Esperanza's partner organization. Hardly anyone from the Penn group spoke any Spanish, so Maira and I were sent there to assist them in that area. We were kind of superfluous, however, as the group already had two interns who were assigned to travel with them, both of whom speak fluent Spanish. Monday was their second day there, out of a total of ten days they will be here. Most of our time was spent at a church just outside of town. The teens played around with the Dominican kids for a while, then led them in a rudimentary English lesson, teaching them the words for different body parts (heaaaad, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes).

The interns traveling with the group invited Maira and I to come back and have dinner with the group at their hotel. Not wanting to pass up free food, we quickly agreed. Getting down to dinner a bit late, we interns sat at a separate table from the rest of the group. Claire, one intern, brought up the topic: what is the point of a trip like this? What does this group honestly think they can accomplish in ten days, with a bunch of high school kids who can't speak the local language? Is this not a huge waste of time and resources, both for the group itself and for the interns?

For the most part, I have to say yes. Yes, it is. The Dominican kids may know how to greet each other in English, but at the end of it all they're going back to their regular lives with nothing more than the memories of a group of strange white people who sang silly songs and gave them piggy-back rides. And getting down here costs a lot of money. Between flights, hotels, food, and transportation within the country, we're talking about a sizable sum that could have been put to all kinds of better uses. The best I can possibly say about the trip is that it may arouse interest among the students to come back someday and do something more substantial. One can hope.

Were I a Dominican politician...

...I would run on the platform of "I will bring about the mosquito genocide". Somehow I've managed to get 31 mosquito bites on my feet alone. I wear shoes all the time, and have a mosquito net over my bed, which means that while in the shower or between the shower and putting on socks I've been bit by mosquitoes 31 times. WTF? The little buggers seem to be absurdly aggressive in this country. Another thing I would do if given god-like powers over the DR: turn down the humidity roughly 20%. I sweat a lot at home in norcal. Here, I'm practically a human waterfall.

OK, I'm done complaining! After all, these things are all part of the experience.

Meanwhile...

For a more detailed description of our first few days here in the DR, I highly recommend people check out Anne's blog.

San Pedro de Macorís

First off: I only have internet when I’m in the office, so I won’t be able to update on the weekends, unless I find an internet café somewhere (working on it).

On Friday I was dropped off at my new home in San Pedro de Macorís, a city of roughly 270,000 or so inhabitants. Fun fact: San Pedro produces more major-league baseball players per-capita than any other city in the world. Despite this, the city is hardly a tourist destination. The province is one of the nation’s poorest. In the countryside outside the city are bateys, sugarcane plantations, where one can find some of the worst living and working conditions in the Western Hemisphere.

My living situation here in San Pedro was... not exactly what I was expecting. I thought I was going to be living occupying a room in a family’s house or apartment or something, and that breakfast and dinner would be included in my rent. The reality is quite different. I’m living in four-story building with apartments occupying the top three floors and a “colmado”, basically a small corner liquor store. The second-story apartment is the one I’m living in. It’s occupied by an elderly couple whose children and their respective families occupy the two upstairs flats. What I learned when I arrived here is that the elderly couple is in Houston with other family until December. Which means I have the entire flat to myself. Before you think “awesome!”, consider my situation. I am in an unfamiliar city whose people I can rarely understand despite speaking their language with some degree of competence. It can get a little lonely. Neither I nor my supervisor, who drove me to my place, were aware of this predicament before arriving.

In the end, however, everything turned out fine. I met the family who owns the building, and they told me that I was free to come hang out upstairs in their place whenever I liked. They live on the top floor, and have a beautiful, wide, shaded balcony with four comfortable rocking chairs (I spent hours this past weekend reading in them!). The family consists of a mother and father, a daughter, and a son. The daughter’s name is “Libny”. I’ve heard plenty of “Libby” in the past but that was definitely a new one. She is a med student at a nearby university. When she was young, she left her family for a few years to live with relatives in Houston. Consequently, she speaks perfect English. To me, this is both a blessing and a curse. It means I can communicate with perfect clarity if I need to, but it also means I have a crutch that I must try not to use unless absolutely necessary.

On Sunday, the mother and her niece, whose family lives on the third floor, took me with them to go shopping at a local supermarket. I was able to pick up some household items I had been needing, including hand soap, a hand towel, dish soap, a sponge, a cheap plastic bowel, and some sugar. Monday was my first day of work, which has already happened, but I’ll talk about it in another post!

Hasta luego!

Santo Domingo, DR

I meant to post this yesterday, but I was only getting internet while out on a patio, then it started raining and I couldn't finish the post. All references to ‘yesterday’ refer to the 16th, and references to ‘today’ or ‘tonight’ refer to the 17th.

Anywho...

At approximately 2:30 PM yesterday, local time, I landed in Santo Domingo. I was unable to sleep on either of my plane flights, as I am basically incapable of sleeping while sitting up. As such, I hadn't truly slept for almost 40 straight hours. Despite that, I didn’t feel all that wiped out, although much of this is probably due to the constant stimulation of being in a completely new place.

Although new to me, SD will certainly strike a familiar chord with anyone who has spent time in a big Latin American city. It's a bit dirty and more than a bit chaotic, both in traffic and in manner. Pastel-colored buildings line the streets. Many houses and establishments have rod-iron fences, gates, and barred windows. Sidewalks are frequently lined with trash. Drivers do not have much regard for pedestrians; you will never find a car willing to stop for pedestrians waiting to start crossing, but mercifully they will not hit you if you are already crossing—hitting pedestrians causes dents.

Later we checked into our hotel, La Residencia. It’s pretty cheap ($12/night to share a double room), but still is adequately clean. I’m sharing a room with another intern, a guy named Nate who goes to UWash. There is no AC in our room. There is, however, a fairly powerful fan in the middle. The ceiling is very low, so we have to be really careful to avoid getting our hands broken in the fan!

What else...

Today we had a lengthy information/training session in Esperanza’s main office here in Santo Domingo. Our time was really productive, and the hours flew by. The leaders in charge of our orientation are all recent college graduates, and are very competent and professional. My job will involve a lot of talking to borrowers, and as such what I’m most concerned about is my ability to understand what people are saying. I’m fairly confident in my ability to speak and be understood, but being able to understand what people are saying at a decent pace is a whole different learning curve.

How It Works

Before departing later tonight, I figured I would post a brief outline here describing how Esperanza's microfinance operations work. Most of this information is available on their site, but I'm going explain it here for the convenience of anyone reading.

Esperanza more or less follows what is known as the "Grameen model" of microfinance services, taking its name from the practices of the world-famous Grameen Bank, pioneered by Dr. Muhammad Yunus. Additionally, they offer health and education services to complement the core program of microcredit.

Here's how it works:

• Poor entrepreneurs are organized into groups, called Solidarity Groups in Esperanza. Each group receives its microloans together and are collectively liable for the sum total of their loan repayments; if one member cannot pay, the others are responsible for covering their payments. In the event of a default, the entire group is disqualified from borrowing again (I am not positive if Esperanza enforces that particular rule, but it is how Grameen has traditionally operated).
  
• Members are required to deposit 2% of their loan balance into savings and are encouraged to deposit more into a voluntary savings account.
  
• Business training is available to entrepreneurs who want it. Solidarity groups normally undergo business training together before receiving their loans.
  
• Health services through local clinics are offerred free of charge. These services include but are not limited to basic vaccinations, PAP tests for women, and dental exams.
  
• Educational services are also offerred free of charge. Available courses teach skills ranging from basic literacy to computer skills to vocational training.

I'm sure I will have more to say about all this later but for now I need to finish getting ready to leave!
10:50 PM flight out of SFO.
DR here I come.

In other news...

Questionable Content is an awesome comic. This is one of my favorites.

Ye Olde First Blog Post

Welcome! I decided to start a blog so I could keep a running journal of my experiences in the Dominican Republic (the DR), and so I could share it with other people. The title, "En Desarrollo", is Spanish for "In Development".

If you are here, chances are you already know me to some extent. But just in case, here's a little background info about me. I'm Jon, and I am a student at UC Berkeley, studying development economics. In my spare time I do theatre, play and listen to music, read (mostly nonfiction or sci-fi/fantasy), and enjoy the company and conversation of interesting folks.

My interest in development, working abroad, and improving my Spanish led me to apply for and accept a summer internship with Esperanza International. In the DR I will be spending time both in the field, visiting borrowers and assisting loan officers, and in an office, blogging about aforementioned borrowers and posting their business profiles on Kiva. These activities will hardly make up the full extent of what I'll be doing, much of which will depend on my own initiative and creativity in making the most of my time in the DR.

All that said, I sincerely plan to post here consistently and in significant detail. I will also be posting stories on Kiva's blog for the DR, but anything I post there I will post here as well. Please feel free to comment on posts or send my questions about stuff! I love hearing people's feedback.

Today is my last full day of packing and preparation before I leave. I'll admit that I'm somewhat OCD about how I pack; I worry constantly that I may be forgetting something, that I'm packing too much/not enough of one thing or another, even about how I should arrange things in my bag.

Included in what I'm bringing:
-A UPA-standard disc (a 175-gram frisbee of the kind used to play Ultimate)
-A foxtail (those rubber balls with a long nylon tail that you swing around and throw by its tail; it's a gift for the neighborhood kids, I'm wondering how long it will take them to try to play baseball with it)
-A twenty-four pack of Breathsavers peppermint breath mints (this is my one addiction, cut me some slack)
-A costco-sized box of sour skittles (a gift for my host family, my coordinator recommended candy as a gift)
-A stack of books. I did some research into highly recommended fantasy series and ordered several different ones on amazon. I won't be able to read everything I bought, so I'm only taking about half of the books with me. The two series I'm bringing are The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone by Greg Keyes, and The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb (yes, I know the titles are dumb but the books are still good).
-Digital camera. I've never been big into taking pictures but I'm going to try and take more this summer and post a lot of them here.

My basic itinerary is as follows:
June 15: Depart SF at 10:50 pm
June 16: Land in Atlanta at 6:28 am. Depart Atlanta at 10:00 am. Land in Santo Domingo at 1:34 pm.