Life goes on!

After 103 days, 13 countries, over 30 organizations, at least 11 languages and escaping sudden death only twice, Austin and I returned from our round-the-world adventure landing at LAX international airport (and were promptly harassed by customs agents who were not amused that we had crammed every single country we had visited onto one line on the customs form). Traveling for so long, literally changing beds, or sometimes countries every few days was an incredible privilege. I am truly honored to have met so many inspirational, humble and generous human beings along the way. However, I must admit that by the end of our journey, as it came down to the final few weeks, I eagerly anticipated returning home to family and the holidays.

When I am inevitably asked to share any revelations uncovered during our travels I am reminded of my own desires (which is perhaps natural to many NorthAmericanEuropeansPartsofAsia) to collect information, filter for results and work towards the solution. If I have learned anything concrete in my three months traveling is that NOTHING in the greater world is concrete and near fully interpretable. That is to say that I left in search of what I thought were best social business solutions and instead returned with a lexicon of social business questions : Why in the world is there a slum filled with 1 million people living in cardboard boxes directly in the center of metropolitan Mumbai India, a high-tech Mecca and financial capital of India? How is it that women from the microfinance association in Bereba, Burkina Faso have had access to small loans for years, yet they still live in mud huts, struggle to feed their children and have no prospect for further education for themselves or their family? Why have incredibly free markets (without agri-subsidies) and free trade agreements in Latin American countries such as Columbia and El Salvador not increased household incomes for the poor? How is it that engineers and doctors choose to be taxi drivers in Cuba?

This next year I have committed myself to working in El Salvador; first with the micro-credit website kiva.org and then wherever opportunities take me or however long my bank-account works (whichever fails me first). My hope is to continue in Austin and my trip's traditions: meeting new people and their families, exploring their passions and asking plenty of questions in the hopes that someday all of our communal efforts will create a richer world. (By rich I mean, more just and full of life, it's all about how you read it…)

~sam

Club Cuba

We had talked for months about the prospect of traveling to Cuba but we were faced with seemingly endless and unanswerable questions of flights, safety, currency, lodging and political situations. There is simply little to no reliable information on the internet or among North Americans about the massive island just off the coast of Florida.

With the exception of Mexico and the United States, many flights to Havana are offered from multitude of airlines in many Latin American countries including Canada. With current U.S trade restrictions with Cuba, U.S. citizens are not prohibited from traveling to Cuba as much as purchasing goods or services originating from the island nation. All tourists traveling to Cuba by air are required to buy a $20 tourist visa upon check-in to the flight bound for Cuba. At border control in the Havana international airport, passengers present their passport along with the tourist card for inspection. The border agent the stamps the right side of the tourist visa, presenting the duplicate right side for you to keep as your "passport" while in Cuba. The right side is presented to hotels and hostels that you stay at in Cuba as well as when you leave the country. After a brief passport, tourist visa and snap shot taken at the border you are welcome with heartfelt "bienvenidos!"

Safely into Cuba it immediately becomes clear that there are two worlds: Cuba and Tourist Cuba. While this is true in most of the developing world, it is most pronounced in Cuba where the government has established two local currencies as well as rules and regulations regarding who can work with tourists when, where and why. Let me explain: If you exchange Euros or US Dollars in Cuba you will receive Pesos Convertibles at about $1 US per convertible. This is the tourist currency used at fancy restaurants, clubs, hotels, vending machines and a host of supermarkets and stores. 1 convertible can be exchange for 25 Cuban pesos at any currency exchange or at times on the street. Pesos are the Cuban's currency used to buy basic food stuffs, transportation and some entertainment. For example an ice cream purchased at a the "tourist" convertible window of the Coppelia ice cream parlor costs the equivalent of $3 US while the locals can wait in lines of 100 people to buy the flavor of the day for the equivalent of 5 cents.Here it is important to emphasize locals have to wait in LINES fpr the flavor of the DAY. Almost everywhere you look at bus stations, grocery stores or baseball games or banks dozens and dozens of Cubans seem to be waiting in endless lines often without knowing if the products or services for which they are waiting will be available once they reach the front of the lines. Back to tourism, though, the most dominant economic force on the island (yes more than cigars and rum!). The taxi driver that drove us from the airport when we arrived was educated as a marine engineer, designed and built ships in Germany and then when he moved back to Havana decided he could make more money driving a cab for foreigners than building OIL TANKERS. One night a taxi driver even explained to us how he works by day as a computer programmer earning $20 US a month and in one night driving taxis and pulling in tips from tourists he makes more than in an entire year as a programmer. Herein lies a fundamental frustration for Cubans, your neighbor can get rich working with foreigners while you still slave away at the same job that pays you in pesos and you earn less than a dollar a day.

Take a tourist taxi in Cuba and you ride in a Volkswagen or a toyota, ride in a shared taxi with Cubans and you'll squeez into a 1950's classic car without floors and with 6-7 other passengers. Traveling around Havana and hitch hiking around the countryside was one of our most memorable experiences. Learning the taxi driver hand signs for "full", "driving far" or reading the color of the license plates for "private" "government" or "tourist" cars was fun and took a lot of trial and error. We stayed in comfortable and CHEAP "casas particulares" or private homes that are licensed by the government as guest homes. These families in our experience were extremely nice and eager to learn as much about us as we were to learn about them! One evening our host mother (whose husband was depicted shaking hands with Fidel Castro in a framed picture in her living room) even cooked us a scrumptious Cuban dinner. Besides all the logistical details previously mentioned including the implied advice about trying to balance exposure to tourist and "real" Cuban locals Cuba is really most fantastic for it's music, dance and alcohol and cigars (probably in that order). Every day and night on the street, in restaurants in clubs you can enjoy FANTASTIC live music and dance. A all Cubans seem to professional dancers for some reason. A bottle of Havana Club Rum costs $2.90. Yes sir.

Cents of Community in Colombia

About month since our last post to the blog, it is finally time to report that we are alive! After a two week stay in Europe visiting loved ones, friends and family we are back in adventure mode touring around Colombia, South America. During our first week we stayed in the capital, Bogota, with the wonderful family of a fellow Santa Clara student. We hadn’t expected it but our schedule soon became filled with meetings and visits in barrios all over the city of seven million people. While an initial impression of Bogota central may surprise you with its mild “Northwestern U.S.” climate and chic “Portland Oregon-ish” coffee shops and bookstores you need only to look to the hills that surround the city for scars from Colombia’s decade-long civil war: the hills that enclose Bogota from the realities of rural Colombian life are littered with millions of extremely modest, single story, double room, brick homes of desplazados (millions of farmers displaced from violent conflict in the far reaches of the country.) One result of the ongoing violence and consequent migration to safe, urban centers is that Colombia has at least economically become one of the most inequitable countries in all of Latin America. Though the issue of economic equity lies at the root of efforts to provide micro financing services to the “bottom billion” there are also other strategies emerging to encourage entrepreneurship at the family level.
First, I’ll mention concept that was introduced to us by Jacquie, an Ashoka Fellow who runs Laudes Infantis, a Bogota based organization that assists urban desplazados in building the community of their dreams. One barrio we visited, Bella Flora, which overlooks a valley of skyscrapers and stadiums has been developing in their own unique way: a community cafeteria, home-made playground, a community center complete with library and a radio station as well as local preschool. Each building constructed by the community with the help of Laudes is splattered with bright colors and a custom, colorful windows of all shapes and sizes. Bella Flor even features public trash bins constructed of recycled tires and (of course) painted in vibrant colors (public trash receptacles of any sight are a rarity in these parts!). Finally, the centerpiece of the community and indeed the organization on a whole is the concept of Banco de Trueque or a Bartering Bank. Here’s a scenario that was used to explain to me how a bank with no money works: A family goes to eat at the community cafeteria and if, despite being offered a subsidized, yummy, 13 cent lunch they cannot afford it the family simply agrees to a visit to the Banco de Trueque and then are served lunch. Later, during their visit to the bank the family explains that theory have no work and therefore cannot afford to eat for at least two weeks. In return for the food service the family is offered various outlets of community service to pay for the food they will eat over the following weeks. For example the father and mother are assigned shifts to empty the trash bins around the community and the children promise to visit the library to work on their homework and study for at least three hours every week. Upon completion of the assigned tasks, the father, mother and children are given special bartering bank currency (the wooden coins pictured left) that they take to the bank in order for their community “debts” to be cleared from the books.
The fourth type of bank we visited apart from commercial banks, micro financing banks, and bartering banks was a clothing bank run by the Arquidiocesana Foundation in Cali, Colombia about an hour’s flight south west of Bogota. Originally started by a psychologist Sofia Sarasti, Arquidiocesana Foundation’s banco de alimentos is surprisingly one of the first food banks opened in Colombia only eight years ago. Outside of distributing food donations to local families-in-need, the foundation has focused on targeting the causes of hunger, thereby lessening the need for donations in the first place. One of their programs designed especially for woman is called a “clothing bank” and it looks something like this: the foundation collects clothing donations (of completely new products) from local businesses and displays them in the clothing bank store in their headquarters complete with labels and price tags. Then, a group of about 100 women representing neighborhoods all over Cali are invited to take a one year class meeting once every two weeks on basic business skills such as accounting, product presentation as well as self-esteem and personal presentation. Once enrolled in the class, women are allowed to choose a daily quota of 50,000 pesos (~25 USD) in clothing from the clothing bank to take with them back to their local communities where they sell the clothing from their homes. Any resulting sales are split 50/50 between the bank and the entrepreneurs. Finally after one year of classes, when the women are cut-off from the free supply of clothing from the bank, the hope is that they will have the necessary personal and professional skills to buy products and start their own, sustainable businesses.
~sam