Success is privilege

Today I got to thinking: my official job title is “Economic Development Facilitator”. In other words, I’m supposed to facilitate economic development (just in case that’s not clear).

Earlier this morning, I sat with one of the 4 small business owners in my community. She has a “Bazaar”, which is kind of like a Hallmark-type store. She sells gifts, cards, small toys, candy, stationary, school supplies, and some clothes and shoes. She has, by far, the most successful business in the community. She has a big purple sign in front of her store with a cute slogan, and she says that people from outside of the community come in to buy stuff – which, considering the poor quality of roads here, says a lot. Interestingly, she was born in a bigger city, and long-story-short, she found herself here in the campo.

What I learned from this entrepreneur is that she is in a lot of debt, but more importantly, she a) makes profit, and b) KNOWS she makes profit. And she pays off her debt, poco a poco.

What I also learned from her is that she wants to open up a miniature supermarket (‘mini supers’), a popular business model in Costa Rica. But, she told me, she isn’t jumping out of her skin to do it, because another guy down the road has a pulpería (picture a miniature supermarket, then imagine it shrinking 90%, closing the door, and putting a person behind a big window where you ask for your stuff) and he told her that if she did, he wouldn’t survive. And he’s right. She would CRUSH him. She would also crush the 3 other small businesses in town.

Why? I blame 3 things:

1. She graduated high school
2. She has exposure to more “urban” businesses
3. Her older siblings have jobs, and one even went to college

I’m not saying that if you didn’t graduate high school, don’t have any exposure to “urban”-style businesses, and you don’t have successful siblings as role models, then you CAN’T have a successful business…but I am saying that those things make it a lot easier. I’m pretty sure that is an irrefutable statement, but if you would like to debate this, please email me, because I don’t feel like writing out my justification.

Drumroll…

The moral of the story is the following:

1. Most people who live here were unable to graduate high school because they either had to help their parents on their farms or help their parents raise the younger siblings
2. Most people who live here were born either here or in a nearby community, and have never had the money to live in a bigger city (by city, I don’t mean ‘NYC-scale’; I just mean ‘paved roads’)
3. Points 1 and 2 also apply to the siblings of most people who live her
4. Having the entrepreneurial skills that will crush smaller businesses comes from being born into privileged conditions

But, out of community spirit and respect for others, this savvy entrepreneur is most likely choosing not to follow the ‘mini super path’, because she knows she will crush the others and doesn’t want to do that…

…which led to the following realization: the only way my community will ever be considered “economically developed” is if some rich entity (be it person or corporation) comes along and buys it. Just like that…just buys it, and builds stuff on it, and pushes the people who live here off to some other invisible land.

After meeting with the savvy entrepreneur, I spent the rest of the day laying in my hammock and reading about poverty policy in the United States. So now I want to get a law degree, because I don’t have enough education debt yet (insert sarcasm here).

And of course, like a good blogger, I’ll post some fun pictures:

Peace Corps v. America: Match #1

Albert Camus said, "Life is the sum of all your choices".

So now that I've been in the Peace Corps 10 months, traveled home for 10 days, and then came back, I think I'm in an okay place to look at these two cultures: life in a hot, rural, off-the-map town near Nicaragua, versus life in a sprawling city laced with suburbs, temperature-controlled buildings and cars, and floors that even heat up when it gets too cold outside.

And now for the event that inspired this blog post: I spent 20 minutes in the supermarket the other night trying to decide which protein bar to buy. I'm going to write that again: I spent 20 minutes in the supermarket the other night trying to decide which protein bar to buy. In that time, I could have called a friend, run 3 miles, watched an episode of Sex in the City, visited my grandma, taken a nap, spent quality time with my cat, or taken a walk around the neighborhood. You get the point. Granted, perhaps 20 minutes is a bit pathological, but I can't help feeling...is it really all my fault?

Well according to Camus, I am a 'Balance Bare bar with 20 minutes of deliberation'. But why do we have SO many choices? In America, it seems that choices are synonymous with freedom. We should have the right to express our preferences. We should have the right to buy one of 50 varieties of protein bars. We should have the right to choose Greek yogurt, Bavarian yogurt, Plain yogurt, Goat yogurt, fat-free yogurt, medium-fat yogurt, full-fat yogurt. It is an expression of our freedom that we have the option of selecting out of about 90 varieties of sliced bread, 10 varieties of nut butter, 8 varieties of Triscuits. I guess this falls under the constitutional right to pursue happiness?

But if we are the sum of our choices, and Americans are CONSTANTLY making choices, what are we? I'm sure that Camus wasn't talking only about consumer choices, but it's worth asking ourselves. In Las Nubes where I'm doing my Peace Corps service, we don't make these types of choices. In Las Nubes, our consumer choices are more like, should I buy the big bag of rice so that it lasts longer, or the small bag because it's cheaper? Or, should I  buy a loaf of bread or should I make bread myself? At the end of the day, Camus would call most people in my town 'practical consumers' (or 'impractical', depending on who we're talking about). Again, you get the point. So does that mean that it is easier to know yourself when you have fewer choices to make? Maybe, maybe not.

Well, I'll leave you with that to think about, plus some visual comparisons of the two cultures...

...of course I'll update my blog regularly!

Let's see: the last time I updated this blog was September 27th, 2013. I wrote about how it had been a whole THREE WEEKS since the last time I had written. And then I moved to the town where I am currently doing my Peace Corps service, and have not written since. Whoops.

So between October 2013 and April 2014 (7 months), the following has happened:

• I moved out of one family's house and into another
• I got a kitten 
• I "ran" a half-marathon (some might say "crawled") 
• I cut bangs for myself and let them grow back out 
• I got a yoga mat AND a hammock (aka, I became a happier person) 
• I saw my first wild monkeys and snakes just hanging out 

And now... 

• I flew home to visit family and friends!

So here I am, back in the bedroom I inhabited years ago when I lived with my parents, freezing in the 40-degree-Fahrenheit April, gorging myself on the smorgasbord that is the American food industry, stressing out over traffic jams and too many iMessages, planning exactly what I will do for the rest of my days here, and wondering: have I changed at all? 

Have I changed at all? Meaning either, have my core values changed, or have I changed anything about the world around me. Because isn't that the point of Peace Corps? We all want to change the world, and we all know that we must "be the change we want to see". This isn't new stuff. But how do you know if anything has changed? Some brands of toothbrush bristles turn blue when they've scraped away enough crust, and Brita filters light up now when they reach their water-cleaning capacity. Unfortunately, though, people are a lot more discreet. But I think that one of the core lessons I've learned so far is this: all of life is a continuum. There is no such thing as a flashy indicator that lets you know when you've made a difference. Sure, people develop diagnostics, evaluations, and questionnaires that supposedly measure the spaces between befores-and-afters...but really? Think about it: in my line of work, I can teach small business owners the importance of tracking their income and expenses. The space between before-and-after is big. Cool! But...what difference really happened? Is it that they learned the physical act of writing things down, or that they learned the importance of keeping track of things? I could get existential and say that "it doesn't really matter", but let's be real: it does matter. 

Well, I'll leave you with that to ponder, along with some pictures, because I'm sure there is some research out there that says that people prefer when blogs have pictures. 

Río San Juan - the other side is Nicaragua 

Fishing hole 

Fresh cacao (or, what dreams are made of)

Pineapple field on a cloudy day 

By the way, this blog marks the beginning of my new ongoing blog project. AKA, I am going to update this weekly, and I also just launched another blog specifically about food and fitness in the Peace Corps. Check it out!

Lost in the clouds...

It's been a little while since I've written, so I'll try to sum up the time between the last time and this time within a reasonable amount of space.

Things that have happened since the last post (in no particular order):

• An entire month 
• Found out I'll be assigned to a community called Las Nubes, near Nicaragua
• Visited Las Nubes 
• Went to my first Costa Rica beach and confirmed the popular belief that the beaches here are awesome
• Took my second language exam to see whether I've improved my Spanish skills since getting here (or gotten worse - but I don't know the results yet) 
• Got too fat for most of my clothes
• Sang Celine Dion at karaoke night with my host family
• Finished PST (training) 
• Officially started training for the Dec. 1 half marathon 

I could ramble about the details of each of these events, but instead I'll just post pictures and make silly comments. Of that list of things that have happened in the last month, the most significant is obviously my site - I've officially been assigned to work/live in Las Nubes, in the cantón of Los Chiles, in the province of Alajuela, in the Zona Norte. I'm basically 45 minutes from Nicaragua on motorcycle (this is how 95% of the population gets around), and about 2 hours by bus.

Here's the chancho (pig) I'll be eating for Christmas...

And here's my kitty! I love him so much. I want him to make babies so that I could steal one, but apparently there are no eligible single ladies in the community for him. He has high standards.

This is where I will go running every day, basically. It's how I will stay sane and hopefully avoid becoming obese.

This is where we go jungle fishing! I didn't catch any fish, but everyone else (my family and a couple family friends) did, and they were DELICIOUS. Also, while we were fishing, we listened to the sound of congo monkeys in the background. If you don't know what a congo monkey sounds like, check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ4y6uCwbY4

And last but not least, I'm pretty sure this is why they call my community Las Nubes....

Those are some pretty clouds. (Nubes = clouds, in case you are wondering what I'm talking about.)

Well, that's all I feel like writing now... bye! 

Pleasantville, Costa Rica

…aka, Zarcero. Land of beautiful views, people, and cheese – and, of course, of the infamous Tech Week! Basically, Tech Week is an official Peace Corps debacle where trainees visit the sites of really successful volunteers to try out the things we’ve learned so far, all the while being evaluated by our supervisor. For Community Economic Development trainees, this means doing a DiCE analysis (a really in-depth interview with a business owner that should take months to complete, but we do this in a day), doing a SWOT analysis, teaching the Junior Achievement sequence – a series of classes about basic economics and financial management – to high school kids, and teaching (“facilitating”) a computer class.

And in case it was unclear, I had the good fortune of being sent to Zarcero, the coolest of all Tech Week sites (fact)! This site belongs to an amazing married couple, known informally as the “golden couple”, because they’re awesome and successful at everything they do. Of course, I’m sure it helps that Zarcereños are probably the nicest, most hard-working, and genuine people in the whole world. It’s kind of a phenomenon.

DiCE

I was paired up with another trainee and assigned to interview La Finca Segura, a pretty big farm that grows/sells potatoes, carrots, and cabbage. We asked a ton of questions and then met up later in the day to give some “suggestions” for how to “improve the business”, but it felt kind of artificial because the DiCE tool is really supposed to be spread out over the span of several months, so that you can build rapport with your clients. But hey, it was cool, and I had the opportunity to pick enormous carrots out of the ground.

Not weird at all.

Here’s a photo of the 3 brothers who own/work at the finca, the volunteer who lives in Zarcero, my partner-trainee, and myself, hanging out in the fog…

SWOT Analysis

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. We did this as a big group the first night we arrived in Zarcero with a bunch of young people from Jovenes Empresarios de Zarcero (JOVEMZA) who want to start an agroculturismo business (it doesn’t really translate smoothly, but I’m sure you non-Spanish speakers get the idea…agricultural+cultural+tourism). Basically, awesome idea, and there is a ton of potential for this type of enterprise to take off in Zarcero, so we went around the group presenting ideas and stuff. We were really poorly organized and a bit taken off guard, so our supervisor wasn’t thrilled with our performance, but JOVEMZA seemed pleased with our suggestions and at least we all enjoyed ourselves.

Junior Achievement

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Basically, Junior Achievement (JA) is a pre-organized series of lesson plans directed for high school students, and our role is to deliver these lesson plans in a way that is (hopefully) not totally boring and lame. The idea is that a ton of high schoolers don’t graduate (statistically, MOST don’t), and JA really presses the idea of education and the role that it plays in getting a decent-paying job. There aren’t any reports on how successful JA is, unfortunately, but hopefully it keeps at least one kid in school.

I look ridiculously short standing next to my CED boys!

Computer Class

What can I say? We taught computer classes. I helped someone make an extremely tacky PowerPoint presentation because she wanted to learn about all the transitions and noises that you can add. I shouldn’t be snobby about it, but I’m kind of a PowerPoint snob. If any of my Rockefeller ladies are reading this, I’m sure you can empathize with my pain… but it was pretty cool, because a bunch of the other women in the class had never used a computer before, and by the end of the class, they walked away with some pretty solid skills.

Fun Stuff

All work and no play makes Peace Corps trainees no bueno. So we went to a waterfall that was basically the temperature of ice, and we swam-ish (more like, walked painfully on rocks), and got dirty because there was no path, so we had to scale the side of the riverbank by grabbing onto trees and stuff.

We also rode horses! I rode this beautiful mommy horse who had recently given birth, so at first she was being stubborn and didn’t want to follow the rest of the group out of the stable but then our guide realized that the problem was her baby, so we brought the baby and it was absolutely darling.

Prettiest horse ever. Her name is Pepita!

Qué cosi… (omg omg adorable)

The Famous Zarcero Park

Zarcero is known throughout Costa Rica as the town with the cool park. Here’s why:

Last-but-not-Least

That pretty much sums up my Zarcero/Tech Week experience. The host family I stayed with was amazing, but unfortunately I forgot to grab pictures with them. Jo (my awesome trainee housemate) and I learned that Zarcero sells REESES (unlike anyplace else in Costa Rica we have seen so far), so we stocked up and ate Reeses until we were sick, which made me grossly happy. And here’s my favorite view of the weirdest cloud formation I’ve ever seen, but this is how clouds look every morning in Zarcero…

Happy anniversary!

Today marks my "1-Month-Anniversary" of leaving for the Peace Corps, but it seems like so much longer. To celebrate, I'll sum up a few fun things:

FOOD!
Costa Rica prides itself on its delicious fresh fruit. It's super cheap and you can get it everywhere (well, everywhere besides Concepción, where I live). Mamones, papaya, cas, mango, sapote, manzana de agua, bananas, pineapples, grapes, watermelon, etc.! Also, the carrots here are ridiculously delicious.

But realistically... I usually eat super-sized portions of fried chicken, fried pork fat, fried cheese, fried plantains, rice and beans, and rice by itself. Usually with a small salad on the side. Which leaves me to the next part....

EXERCISE!
I live on the middle of a giant hill/mountain thing, which means when I go running in the morning, I can either start out my runs on a steep incline and then run back down, or start out my runs on a steep decline and then run back up. There's no leveling-out, until about 15-20 minutes into the run. It gets old, but hills will never be challenging for me again because.... well, I have no choice here. So that's good.

Also, Chris brought the "Insanity" videos (for those of you who aren't familiar... it is a set of super intense exercise videos meant for crazy people - hence, "insanity") with him, so we decided that we would start doing these after Spanish class. To make it more fun, though, my entire family also does these videos with us, including my dogs. Me, Chris, my host mom, my host brother and sister, my host aunt, my little host cousins, and approximately 3 dogs. It is really quite the spectacle, but it's insanely fun (get it? insanity? insane? yeah). Tomorrow our "classes" might get even bigger, because a few other volunteers want to join the party.

WATER AND RAIN!
It rains a lot here. And because I live on the middle of a giant hill/mountain thing, I sometimes can't drink my water after it rains a lot because the dirty water from higher up pollutes our water source. It kind of sucks, but it's always cleaned up again by the next day. I also drank it once (dirty) by accident, and I survived. But it tasted kind of gritty and you could see dirt in it. Yum!

BUGS!
No Peace Corps volunteer would be happy if there weren't any bug stories. So the other day, as my host sister was picking up and examining everything that I own, we discovered a large, crushed, cockroach. I didn't crush it... so that was weird, and gross. Two days later, on the bus headed to San Jose, I reached into my backpack to take out my sunglasses, and was greeted by the dead cockroach's friend. He wasn't very big, but he was a cockroach indeed, so that was gross also. I dumped him out and he was brutally murdered upon arriving to class. Finally, last night at around midnight, I was woken up by what sounded like large wings smashing around the walls. When I turned on the light, there was a giant moth bashing itself around my room - and for those of you who know me very well, I HATE MOTHS, more than cockroaches. They are horrible creatures. So finally the moth landed someplace, and I dowsed him with hairspray until his wings stuck together and then I put him in the garbage.

But for every three gross bug stories, there must always be on cool bug story. So here's this guy! I like him.

MOTHER'S DAY..? 
This Thursday (August 15) is Mother's Day in Costa Rica. It is an official holiday, so I don't have training! My host family really wants me to share something of my own culture with them... but I don't really know how to cook, so it was tough deciding what to make. After spending about an hour and a half looking at pictures of food on Pinterest, my host brother and I decided that I would make chicken parmigiana, spaghetti, and cheesecake. I would love to make eggplant parmigiana instead, but Ticos apparently hate eggplant. I'll post pictures after the "event" (/debacle)!

BORING STUFF.
Despite all the silly banter that I've been writing about, I am actually learning a ton and working my butt off. Tomorrow I have to "teach a class" (I use quotations, because my "class" is really just Chris and my Spanish teacher, so it's just a practice class) on any topic of our choice, so I'm doing it on "El Pensamiento Crítico para los Negocios" (Critical Thinking for Businesses). That should be fun, and I'll have to update about how well (or poorly) it went afterwards.

Well that's all... bye!

La Romería

There is a national holiday in Costa Rica called La Romería - it's a pilgrimage to la Basílica de Los Angeles in Cartago, and people from the farthest ends of the country walk, some barefoot, to see the Vírgen de los Angeles. I went with a group of volunteers and had an awesome time eating delicious street food and stopping for drinks along the way, but aside from that it was a really humbling experience. The church itself was super beautiful, and people get on their knees to go pray at the altar. We walked 16 miles from San José to get there, but I'm a lot less sore than I would've expected! I guess my jogs up the giant hill in Concepción are doing me some good...

Crawling to the altar... 

Inside the gold altar is "la Negrita", which is what makes this holiday so important. If I understood better, I'd explain here, but I don't. So here's a link to Wikipedia if you're interested! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeria

I'm not feeling particularly "writerly" today, so I'll keep this entry short. Bye!