blog.

2010-03-31T15:19:00.000-07:00

Aung San Suu Kyi – This woman is one of my heroes. Her life has been dedicated to the establishment and consolidation of democracy in her country (Myanmar). She has endured the fight for freedom amid numerous struggles: her father dying when she was very young, her husband dying prematurely from cancer, and then being under house arrest for 14 of the past 20 years as a result of leading her democratically elected party in 1990. Two more reasons to love her: she’s beautiful – especially for a 64 year-old woman! – and we share the same birthday.

And in the most recent news regarding Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi: A couple of days ago her party decided to boycott the upcoming elections – the first elections to be held in Myanmar in almost 20 years - because she believes that fake elections are worse than no elections at all. The military junta in Myanmar is not making a good move by holding poor elections. Many will be boycotting the booths and instead heading to the streets to protest: research has shown that illegitimate elections produce more rebel activity than no elections at all (Journal of Peace Research).

2010-02-25T00:46:00.000-08:00

Today I got into a car accident on my lunch break. My hamburger spilled all over the floor before I had even taken a bite... the french fries on the floor mat were unworthy of the 10 second rule.

A couple of hours later I got accepted to Georgetown, so it's all good.

My take on development... sort of.

2009-07-13T22:59:00.001-07:00

The other day I was talking to a friend… he had been on this “save the world” high after watching a few international development movies (Turtles can Fly, The Killing Fields). Anyway, he said to me, “I am in this mood to get out and help the world be better. I want to go to poor places and help them out.” His sentiments are commonly felt by people in the United States.

The desire to do good in the world is commendable, but what many people fail to realize is that the simple presence of a Westerner in a "suffering" country does not automatically do anyone any good and may even leave the country more helpless than it was to begin with. People often assume that their elevated status in a rich country has provided them enough training to help fix problems in the developing world. It simply is not so. Volunteer programs that people get involved in (myself included) provide time, a negligible amount of money, and a desire to make a change. That sounds like enough, right? Unfortunately, the lack of accountability of these organizations to those they are actually helping may lead to the wrong change, or only a temporary change.

My friend went on to say “I guess if you help one you have done something.” Yes. If you can make a difference in one person’s life, it is a good deed. How good though? I’m not sure. What if you’ve helped one, but hurt a hundred? Anyway, these thoughts are not an attack on the individual, as they are comments made by many people who have good intentions and have yet to study the facets of international development. I certainly don’t claim to be an expert, but I have learned a little from those who spend their lives studying it.

William Easterly from NYU gave a great speech at BYU a few months ago on this very subject. One of the points he made was that, because of the lack of accountability of NGOs, these volunteer organizations tend to be very inefficient. They do not have to conform to free market forces and so often prescribe the wrong solutions to dire situations.

A problem that underdeveloped countries face (especially those in Africa) is that they are consistently pegged as “poor” and are stuck without any hope of foreign direct investment. So by consistently helping poor countries we perpetuate their reputation as being helpless. Commercials with naked babies covered in flies (that sometimes exaggerate the poverty within the country) may prompt the rich Western to donate money, but it turns away those companies wishing to expand their business and bring more wealth to a promising country with cheap labor.

My friend, Wills, also published a great article in the Political Review a few months ago that I really enjoyed. He talked about the tendency for development to be self-absorbed: “Who wouldn’t want to travel to Colombia, enjoy gorgeous mountain vistas and experience another culture while fighting poverty in the region, not to mention taking pictures of natives performing traditional dances?”

“Action without the active agency of those it intends to help does not qualify as development.” Volunteering is vulnerable to the temptations of condescension. I think of the American teachers in the Dominican Republic last summer taking over the classroom, believing that Western teaching practices should replace, not improve, those in Central America.

Solution? Like Wills says, those people that have an itch to “help around the world” need a little more humility about the power they have to change people’s lives. I include myself in that group in need of humility. Development economists also advocate microfinance as an efficient solution (sometimes), although those ventures are often not profitable for those providing the financial services. Aside from that, the success of individual programs needs to be quantified better by independent parties (the accountability and quantification of the DREAM Project's success last year consisted of a few visits by USAID employees, who did little more than watch us run the camp for a day or two). If no considerable success, shut down the NGO and give the money to a better cause. Unfortunately, people will not always understand this process. NGOs are interested in self-preservation… not just in a selfish way (keeping their job); they will always believe that they are doing SOMETHING good for the world and as long as they are doing something, they deserve to exist. Non-profit workers and volunteers may be outraged at the insensitive and unconnected donors in the US because their saving-the-world money has been taken away, only to be given to an organization that is doing more than just "something".

Wow, I sound like a total cynic! That was a little harsher than I really feel. Volunteering is good!

vacas y palomas

2009-06-12T19:08:00.000-07:00

Leaving for Cuzco tomorrow morning! I even have a travel companion... definitely an improvement to the trip.

Last night I was treated to a meal of cow heart (anticuchos). I highly recommend it. I do wish that I could have eaten it without knowing what it was. It just kind of grosses me out to eat heart. The heart in my stomach did weird things to my dreams, too. Coincidence? I dunno. In any case, I woke up this morning to find a pigeon in my kitchen. I freaked out, so he freaked out. He banged himself into the window about five times before calming down. I then opened the window and he just stared at me. I had to shove my water bottle in his face a few times before he got the idea and flew away. Poor guy.

how to cook a pie in a deep dish cake pan

2009-06-06T20:49:00.001-07:00

The Señor of this house has become my pseudo grandpa. He’s about 70 years old and every time I see him he lights up and says “mi vida! Mijita!” and then proceeds to hug and kiss me. I can’t get through a conversation with him without getting at least five kisses on the cheek, and it is inevitable that my clothes smell like his cologne for the rest of the day. So much love in this house! I love it.

No love in Peruvian bureaucracy, however. I keep getting rejected by every place I go. Archives, political party headquarters, the Palacio de Gobierno (Peru’s version of the White House), the national library… they either don’t care about what their presidents say (and thus don’t have what I need) or they don’t want me to study it (without getting a little monetary compensation themselves). Oooh well.

When I was at the Palacio de Gobierno I saw Peru’s president, Alan García, giving a speech on his patio. When I noticed it was García I was simultaneously excited and perplexed: The president was speaking out in public and, aside from reporters and photographers, there were about 20 people (not an exaggeration) watching from outside the palace. I was talking to a few people out there and instead of calling him “Presidente García”, or even “García”, they just say “Alan”, like he’s their next door neighbor. And no one likes him. He’s corrupt. Haha, oh sad. No love for the president, either. They do love Fujimori though… he was the president in the 90s that ordered a bunch of people dead and is now in prison for 25 years for human rights violations. They rave about him.

Some pictures, finally:

At the Plaza Mayor. You can see the remodeling, haha. I think it's kind of tacky how they didn't even try to make it blend in with the old stuff, but the plaza is beautiful anyway.

The changing of the guards (every day at noon). They do a little dance (seriously) when they get to the cathedral.

The beach in Miraflores, about 10 minutes away from my house. Kinda gloomy... like SF - which is why I love it. Dad's still mad I didn't go in the water.

Making apple pie (nice pie dish, eh?) with the JAS. It's hilarious to cook with them... They don't believe in measuring ingredients, but it still turned out delicious!

Marco came late but we saved him a piece.

i got sneakers on my telephone lines

2009-05-31T12:44:00.000-07:00

I have sweet negotiating skills.

People here consistently have problems with me taking pictures of their books. Of course there are copyright laws to consider (even though these are just speeches published by the government), but that is never their concern here. They just want money. At the Instituto Riva-Aguero they were going to charge me almost $2 per page to take pictures. Copyright laws only extend 70 years and these books were from the 1920s (I had four 200 page volumes... not gonna work). I was about to leave, but then with my womanly wiles I convinced this particular librarian to let me take the pictures for free. I asked him if the library was in a process of digitalizing and preserving these old, damaged books. He said "oh no... that is way too costly", and I said "well... I'll do it for you for free". HAHA! He took me outside and told me I would need to come back with a formal letter from my institution requesting permission to take pictures. I whipped out my already-prepared letter (with a fancy BYU letterhead and two signatures from my professors) and handed it to him. He said, "oh... you're from BYU?" He said he knew about BYU from his infancy. So he took that letter to his jefas and then we waited as they deliberated. As we were waiting he asked if I wanted to have lunch with him, so we went to a little cafe for some good eating. On the way there he told me that his whole family was Mormon (not him) and he has a brother living in Orem (the city right next to BYU campus). We talked more about my project and he offered to introduce me to another librarian who could help me out. Anyway, the end of the story is that I now have my speeches.

The other day my friend Marco blew off work so that we could do some touristy things downtown (I did not advocate that he play hooky... after we had lunch he told me he was late for work and if he's late they don't let him work the shift). We went to the catacombs in the Convento de San Francisco and looked at a bunch of femur bones, skulls, and pits where they used to drop the anonymous dead before the Catholics established cemeteries. After our tour we sat on the church steps, populated with hundreds of pigeons, and talked for a while. Something that I have been curious about, and something that we discussed at length on those steps, is how different the concept of "family" is here. Maybe I've just been living in Utah for too long, but it seems that people here don't have as much of an affinity for getting married, or even dreaming about being with only one person for the rest of their lives, as people do in the United States. Granted, there is a lot of divorce in the US, but I think most people at least hope that they will be with that one person the rest of their lives on the day of their wedding. Most people here just live together for a while and then move on. Interesting difference. Anyway, it was a good day.

Oh. Something that I've learned about Lima (some people say it's an urban legend but it's been proven true wherever I go): the more shoes hanging over the telephone lines of your neighborhood, the more dangerous your neighborhood. Don't worry... there are no sneakers on my telephone lines.

Parks and spokes

2009-05-15T13:53:00.000-07:00

I'm in Peru. I'm safe.

I don't think I will have much of a culture shock here. Lima doesn't feel a whole lot different from the DR, and it's kind of just a run-down version of Madrid (really, really run-down). Yeah, Lima Centro is pretty dirty and smoggy. I'm glad I'm not living there. Fortunately, I am in Miraflores which is... rich, safe, and has more parks than you could imagine. When I first saw all of these parks I thought it was nice - lots of gorgeous flowers, park benches, birds singing... kind of romantic (though I am completely alone). No, they are actually a curse. I was coming home from the supermarket today with all of the essentials that I had just bought (heavy bags) and I got lost for at least an hour. I passed through 5 or 6 different parks, asked 10 to 15 people on the street for the parque villavicencio (no one knew what that was... because there are so many parks!) and each person would just point me in the direction of the nearest park and claim that to be my destination.

Fortunately, the outlet converter I had bought started melting the spokes in my computer plug so I got to go out again to get a different one and now I know my way around Miraflores. I am an expert.

By the way, my apartment is great. I really couldn't have asked for anything better (unless it was closer to the library). The landlord is so nice - he took me around the city a little bit to show me around (lot of good that did for me, haha). His dad (who actually lives in the house) came up to me later and said "estas en tu casa... si quieres algo, cualquier cosa, avisame y estoy aqui" (You are in your house... If you want something, anything, let me know and I am here).

I now have to go to the Biblioteca Nacional to start my work. I almost feel like I only have one shot at this. I have to brush up on my negotiating skills a little before I leave so they don't shoo me away and render my time here useless.

I feel sorry for my future family

2009-01-13T20:56:00.000-08:00

Holly and I just finished our first cooking class of the semester. We discovered it is not a cooking class but rather (as described by Holly) a bake-off with a bunch of Martha Stewarts that already know how to cook. I felt like I was in Sabrina where Audrey Hepburn goes to Paris to learn how to cook and ends up getting egg yolk all over herself while everyone else’s soufflés turn out to be perfect.
This is how the class went: We were assigned to make raspberry streusel muffins. The cooking class doesn’t actually consist of any instruction; we are just given a recipe, told to do it, and then we are evaluated on how it comes out.

So after the muffins go in the oven we make our second, optional recipe. We chose the cherry tarts. As we begin assembling the wretched cookies, our teacher comes in and looks around and then turns to our group (keep in mind, she is a little ornery because she's been having back issues) and says:

“What are- are you guys making cherry tarts? Kitchen number 8 is making cherry tarts, you guys are supposed to make raspberry streusel muffins. Why would you make a recipe that you were not assigned to make?”

“Oh, sorry, we thought that you said we could do an optional second reci-“

“Well, I don’t know why you would think that, it doesn’t say that anywhere… You have to ask if you want to make an extra recipe and if you do an extra recipe you can only do chocolate chip cookies… Well we have a problem because the other lab is making cherry tarts too so now we are going to have 24 extra cherry tarts.” Oh no! 24 extra cherry tarts!

So while all of the HFL majors (not a knock on the major - they just... know what they're doing) pull out their perfect cookies, tarts and bran muffins, we pull out our raspberry muffins and they have completely sunk in the middle and aren’t even done. So we double the cooking time. When we finally pull them out they just crumble and turn into a giant lump on a paper towel.

We were supposed to try each other’s masterpieces, so this girl walks by and I’m like “They actually really taste good, they just look bad.” And she looks at me, and just starts laughing! And then walks away. They really did taste good.

Fortunately, our cherry tarts turned out perfect, though they were not appreciated by anyone because they were illegally made... and no one wanted to try food from the failed group.

The Dominican Republic

2008-08-21T14:29:00.000-07:00

One morning during camp I woke up early with Tamara, Joe, and Jess to go surfing. It was 8:15 when Tamara and I got dropped off in the Callejón after a beautiful hour out in the water, and we were a little late so we had to grab breakfast before hurrying over to the Dream Center. I was caught up in my thoughts as we were walking, when I heard an amused “oh no…” from Tamara. I looked up and five of my favorite boys in camp were running at us in full speed with huge smiles on their faces. After being completely bombarded we continued to walk to school with them. That was a turning point for me.

Amongst the hours of herding kids from class to class and disciplining them when they unavoidably won’t quiet down, it always warms my heart when I experience moments like that morning. After the first couple of days of camp it was hard for me to imagine that we would have to go through four whole weeks of what we had already endured, but when I saw my kids running towards us that morning I knew the extent of my love for them and that I would be sad to leave at the end of camp.

Something that one of the other Dream counselors brought up at the end of camp was how forgiving these kids are. I was able to understand a lot better what Heavenly Father means when he says that we should become as little children. Even if we were putting them in time-out or taking away privileges or yelling at them to get in line all day, they would still show up the next day bearing gifts for us (avocados, mangos, paletas, flowers) and would have completely forgotten the harsh feelings from the day before.

I was also very pleasantly surprised at how much they loved to learn. Of all the things we could do to get the kids to quiet down, taking out a book and reading to them worked the best. By the age of 11, most kids in the United States have gotten over the idea of “story-time” and do not get enthralled by picture books as much anymore. My Tiburones group loved when we read to them and we could have spent hours taking turns reading stories to them and having them read to us. It was sad for me to see that those kids love learning so much but all they lack are the resources for learning more.

I will be one of the first to admit, however, that camp and living in the DR was hard. It was a lot harder than I ever would have expected. It was emotionally and physically demanding and I was completely exhausted by the end of every day.
The most difficult experience that I had was during the second week of camp when a couple of counselors and I took some kids to the beach. As we were leaving we realized that there were 3 boys out in the water calling for help. A kite-surfer brought in one of the boys, while I had to swim out and rescue another boy and Caroline had to perform CPR on the third kid who had already drowned. I will share an excerpt from my journal when I wrote about the experience a day later:

“A couple of minutes after I got to where Caroline was doing CPR, she looked up at me with a pained face and just shook her head. That was kind of when everything became clear to me. I realized that those two other boys could have drowned if no one heard them yelling. I realized that this 16 year-old boy in front of me was dead and he probably wouldn’t be revived, and that he had a family at home who probably didn’t even know about it yet. And finally, I realized that any of those three boys could have been our kids that we were with, had we not been watching them. And that is what haunted me the most.”

It took the four of us a while to come to terms with what happened that afternoon.

It was really hard for me to accept the poor medical services that they have in Dominican Republic. Kids would show up to camp with really bad infections that hadn’t been taken care of or broken bones that were healing poorly. And worst of all, emergency medicine was practically nonexistent. However, in the midst of all the problems, life still goes on. People accept that they can’t rely on medical clinics and that death is just a part of life, even if it comes too soon.

Coming to the Dominican Republic has opened my eyes to all of the things I take for granted in the United States. I am so grateful that my children will have the opportunity to learn the basics, like reading and writing, at an early age. However, there are plenty of things that the Dominican Republic has that the United States doesn’t have. I will miss the fact that everyone knows everyone in the Callejón. I will miss the gorgeous secluded beaches in Samaná. I will miss seeing kids in orange shirts running around everywhere. I will miss learning more and more Spanish every day. I will miss running on the beach in the morning, and then coming back to the same place in the afternoon to cool off. I will miss the sweet avocados and mangos. I will miss seeing Kendly’s face light up when learning something new. I will miss Efraín’s big teeth. I will miss the aguaceros. I will NOT miss rice and beans.

The last day of camp. Yeah, your head would explode too after 4 weeks of this. Literally, explode. Into tiny fragments.

DELTA

2008-05-22T21:57:00.001-07:00

I have finally come up with something to blog about. Delta Airlines. And probably most other airlines.
I returned home a couple of hours ago after a wonderful experience at the airport. I was on my way to getting on a plane to spend the Memorial Day weekend at home in sunny California with my friends and family. Delta Airlines ruined that.
Ok, I admit, it is definitely my fault that I have misplaced my driver's license and have failed to get a new one and by the time I got to the airport and remembered that fact I knew in the back of my mind that there was a chance they wouldn't let me on the airplane.
So all I had was my BYU ID, and the Delta agent didn't accept that as a sufficient form of identification because BYU is a private institution so the ID is not issued by the state. The dumb part is that the agent would have issued me a boarding pass if I had a library card. A library card? It has no photo, it is easily stolen, and is easy to get. That really didn't make sense to me. And yes, I did cry at the airport. She still didn't give me that little piece of paper. She did however transfer my flight to tomorrow night, free of charge.
So I went home and stripped my room to look for my license while sitting on hold with Delta Airlines and then TSA for an hour to see what forms of ID I could use to get on the plane tomorrow. Let me preface this by saying that I understand that it is a federal law that they can't give me a boarding pass without proper ID. The problem is that no one knows what proper ID is. This is how the 3 separate phone calls went:
1) The first lady said that I could use my library card and she said that her supervisor told her that he was 80% sure that my International Student Identity Card would pass through an agent, but that I should call TSA to make sure.
2) TSA didn't help me because they said you can pass through security with practically no ID as long as you have a boarding pass. They just do a secondary screening.
3) The third lady (back at Delta) said that I couldn't use my International card and that I couldn't use a library card and that the agent that said I could was just being nice.

So if the agent wasn't "supposed" to let me in with a library card, then why couldn't she just let me in with a BYU photo ID (which is harder to fabricate and cannot be used in someone else's name)?

Fortunately, tomorrow I am going to the Provo library to get a library card using my BYU ID as a form of identification. I love working around bureaucracy.

Still, I am very upset about this. I could be in California right now!