29Jan

To Give, or Not to Give

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Before I left for the trip to Congo, Jeff was gathering as much information as possible about the do’s and don’ts of international missions work. He has so many missionary contacts it was easy. One story shared with him was a heartbreaking reality check on the unintended impact of every thing you do on a mission trip.

The friend explained his organization has a policy that nothing is to be given to the local people from participants on trips. They understood that when Americans witness the poverty of developing countries the first response is almost always guilt for the abundant life lived in the United States. This guilt causes the traveler to give away nearly everything they brought with them on their trip or even hand out money to the local people.

While the organization will accept items for donations which they can then distribute through the local churches, they do not want personal gifts to become the norm. Not only does this set up a culture where the visiting missionaries are seen as a source of material items, it can actually leave the locals worse off than before the missionary came.

At one of their locations, travelers are encouraged to employ the services of a laundress – an act which provides an additional customer to one of the local women. “Consider the traveler who hires a local woman to do his laundry. He can easily pay the set fee, and because he wants to feel he’s made a difference he overpays her. $20 USD is nothing to him, and he can leave the country feeling like he had done a good thing. But what he doesn’t realize is that $20 USD is an enormous amount for this woman — she can live on that for two weeks or more, which she does.”

“But when the money is spent, she must return to work. But by this time her regular customers have had to find a new laundress. She now has no money, and no regular customers. Her situation is worse than before the traveler hired her.”

Asking why she doesn’t save the money — continue working and use the money to improve her situation — is to ask her why she is not American. She lives her life working for the money she needs to live every day. If she does not need money she does not need to work.

This concept is so foreign to Americans, but explains in painful detail why culture will change the impact of what you do. Your generous gift may not be helpful at all. To be truly effective at meeting the needs of families in developing countries, you need to be able to look beyond your cultural norms to understand the potential consequences of your actions.

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29Jan

Finding Your Path

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I’ve shared a bit about the heavier topics on my mind during the trip so decided to share something I found very funny – so amusing I was laughing at it while it was happening. What you are looking at is aloe, or its Guatemalan cousin. The plants have very sharp points, which make them perfect for keeping people and animals off your land.

Every time we drove to the mountains we saw aloe lined up as fences framing yards. This may seem excessive protection for families in extreme poverty, but makes perfect sense when you realize the cattle, chickens, goats and pigs run around pretty free during the day. So if you want to protect your garden– or banana trees, or the palm leaves that make up your home– from the teeth of your neighbors future dinner, you build an aloe fence.

With that background, onto my story.

Our group had been split in two one afternoon, and while the other half were diligently repairing a house we were sitting at the van waiting. After about an hour of waiting, I decided we could wait no more and convinced the pastor’s 10 year old son to take me to the home (he had been there less than an hour ago to tell the group we had finished our job and that we could come to help). Off we went down the path.

At the first fork he started on the lower trail. I was a bit suspicious as I counted the cows munching weeds around the trail and the waist high cement block wall about 100 yards ahead.

“This isn’t the trail we took yesterday.”
“No, this is the way to the house.”
“But they got to the house from the other trail yesterday”
“This is the way.”

So off we went down the trail, shooing the cows out of our way. When we got to the wall he looked around and noticed the upper trail. He decided that was where we were supposed to be and so back to the fork we went.

He hesitated on the upper trail. This didn’t look right to him either. Scanning through the trees he saw the blue of the tarp our team was using. The house was in that direction.

“This is the trail.” He started into the trees.
“I don’t think that is the trail”
“Yes, see the house. We need to get down there. This is the trail.”
“But there isn’t a path here.”
“Yes, they had to use the machete to get here, remember.”

I did remember we purchased a machete the day before and could accept that they had said something of cutting a new trail. But I could not see any evidence of a trail actually having been cut.

“I don’t think this is the right way, we need to stay on the trail.”
“No, they used the machete.”

We headed into the trees, doing our best to avoid getting scratched by branches and the sharp weeds on the ground. A few feet into the trees I saw the aloe that meant we were at a fence.

“You cannot go through that, it is a fence. We need to go back and get on the trail.”

He called out to the team. They heard him and replied, “Come this way, toward our voice.”

“See, this is the way.”

We started to walk along the fence being even more careful not to get cut. I glanced up and saw rope stretched between trees ahead. The team had talked about finding a way to make the steep path to the house safer, this must have been what they came up with.

“See the rope, this is the way.”
“No, the rope starts up there at the trail. We should have stayed on the trail and we could have come down that way.”

We were close enough to hear the team, but the fence and trees meant we were still far away.

“Stay there, we’ll send the boy who lives here to lead the way.”

They had heard us talking. The boy emerged from the trees ahead of us and waved us to come to him. We traveled slowly, though it felt faster now that we had a purpose.

When we got to the rope I showed him how we could have stayed on the path.

“Oh. Well, I didn’t know where they were working. Our path worked too.”

The team finished their work, and as we headed back to the van we asked the family if there was a different path to the road. They pointed down the hill/cliff to a trail. It was less steep than the one we used to get there, so we went that way. About a 100 yards from the house we came to a waist high cement wall with some makeshift steps. We climbed over and followed the lower path right past the cows and to the van.

28Jan

Climb Every Mountain

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I just realized I should show you this photo of a path up the mountain. Yes, what you are looking at is a path. If you fallow this path up the hill and around a shallow ravine you will pass two or three houses (one being a store) and come to the local government school. Let me interpret for you the other things you may not realize you see in this photo.

The man with the packages is basically the delivery truck for the local store. He is the home owner returning from the town with the goods he purchased in bulk. He was on road to this point, which provides an easier trek up the mountain, but it took us nearly half an hour to drive to this point from the closest town.

In the bags he is carrying are small packages of chips – junk food. While we were visiting the school one of the boys with us purchased 5 or six of those bags for less than $1US. He is probably also carrying some of the cereal we distributed and a few other items.

Notice the steep grade of the path. This patch of mountain is not unique–in fact, at the other mountain school we had to basically walk a few yards up a cliff to get to the store. This is the landscape of the mountains. Steep grades, difficult climbs and the people who live here use their bodies to move everything. So as you can probably guess, joint issues and pain are common in people as young as 20.

This is the steepness of the terrain in which you will find coffee fields – although we are not high enough on this mountain to see coffee. This is the terrain the farmers must navigate to care for and grow their coffee, pick beans and deliver it to the weigh station. It is difficult work that provides little pay. This is the terrain families use for growing food. I can still see the images of the farmers standing on the near vertical hills, picking their coffee, but I wasn’t brave enough to let go of the truck to snap photos to share.

Just something to think about as you enjoy your next cup of coffee.

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28Jan

Food for a Day

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What you see is food. Black beans (the traditional bean in Guatemala) and corn meal that can be made into a type of cereal. Twice on this trip we purchased and distributed food to rural mountain families. This caused great internal conflict for me.

According to the World Bank, 18% of Guatemala’s children under age 5 live with hunger. (For comparison, 1% of the children in the US live with hunger, and 34% in DR Congo.) 13% of the population live in extreme poverty – live on less than $1.25 a day.(There is no data for extreme poverty in the US, and 59% of individuals in DR Congo live in extreme poverty). And as is true in just about every country, rural communities are more poor than urban communities – which means mountain families have higher rates of malnutrition and extreme poverty than the country as a whole. It was easy to see in the children.

So everything inside me wanted to feed these families. With the money we had we were about to provide about 5 pounds of beans and two bags of cereal to about 75-80 families in one community. In the other we were able to provide 10 pounds of beans, 5 pounds of rice and 5 bags of cereal to 50 families. But this amount of food will not even get the average family through a week. And this is where the internal conflict begins.

Providing free food is merely a temporary fix to the long-term problem of poverty. And while these families will be able to eat for the next few days – or more likely to continue their inadequate eating by stretching the food out longer – eventually they will run out of the free food. Yes, it gives short term relief. But I know the only way to really end poverty is with longer term solutions – education and improving the economy of the area.

As we passed out the food I kept running through possible solutions in my mind – could we have used the money to help the community develop a food co-op where they purchase larger quantities of beans and rice at cheaper prices? Could we have used the money to help educate the people about better farming techniques? Any real solution will take time – something we did not have on this trip. Any real solution will take a good relationship with the communities – which is what the organization is trying to build by providing free food. And so the reality was all we could do was to help alleviate some of their hunger for a few days.

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28Jan

The Economy of Coffee

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I have only recently become a coffee drinker. It was part an aversion to bitter flavors and part the superior feeling I got from being the only person I knew who didn’t need a cup a day. I learned how to drink the stuff this past spring, and am actually at a point that I can enjoy a cup – though still not addicted. All of which made me slightly more interested in the mountain economy than mere concern for the Guatemalan people.

What you see in the photo above is coffee beans drying in the sun. This is probably about half-way through the economic life-cycle of a coffee bean. They start out by growing on bushes high in the mountains. I’d seen tea plantations in Rwanda, and expected the same beautiful fields in Guatemala. The colors were beautiful-the deep greens of plants growing in wet areas always make me feel earthy- but forget the orderly fields. The mountains are steep, and the coffee is planted in as close to rows and you can get on a steep mountain side.

The bushes are cared for by the local people who are called the Chortie. I was a bit confused about the delineation of the sub-population but from what I gathered they are Mayan descendants. They are a bit of a closed community, and unless you are in an area near a town they will hide from outsiders. They will speak Spanish, but as you get further from towns they have their own language.

The life of the Chortie is simple and difficult. The male head of house (and when possible female head of house and children) will pick coffee beans all day. The beans will be carried (on your back) down the mountain to the closest weigh station where the volume of beans is determined. Payment is made per weight, and the farmer returns up the mountain to get home. I didn’t understand who owned the plants, whether individual families owned the property and sold their beans or if coffee companies owned the land and paid families as workers.

Homes are made of a combination of palm branches and clay bricks. Families who are close to towns may use cement bricks for part of their home but there are some limits to this. Cement blocks cost money, but clay bricks can be made freely by anyone. Cement blocks need to be transported to the home site, so will need to be carried one at a time or a truck will need to be hired (more money). So most families will use the clay bricks and branches. This means their homes are constantly at risk for pests and insect nests. Below is a picture of the type of palm branches used to build homes and structures.

Cooking is done outside. The diet is very plain and nutritionally inadequate. Corn and black beans are the staples. Bananas grow in the mountains so can be added to the diet. We saw some melon fields on the lower slopes of the mountains, but these were obviously a business with the product being sold in the nearest towns rather than being intended for families up the mountains. The furthest we went into the mountains (about a 45 minute drive from the nearest small town), still had a small supply of junk food available – small bags of chips and some soda for sale at a store (the home of a family living next to the government school). Here is a kitchen from a different family who operates a store from their home – again right next to the local government school.

After the coffee is weighed, it is taken to the drying center as seen in the photo above. Coffee is dried, roasted and then packaged for sale. I was able to purchase a pound of roasted and ground coffee from a local plantation for $35Q – with $1USD being equal to $8.2Q this means my coffee cost less than $5. And as a recent coffee connoisseur I will admit to finding the Guatemalan coffee to be lacking the harsh acidic taste I sometimes find in coffee. At my local grocery store or Target I can purchase a pound of good coffee (sorry, I don’t buy Folgers) for about $8 per pound. I have been paying more lately because Josette and I had been trying to purchase fair trade items rather than “regular” items.

The Fair Trade concept sounds good. Basically the corporation selling the product contracts with a farmer or group of farmers to purchase the item at a living wage. This way the farmer is not paid pennies a day for their work. But there are flaws to the system – mostly the price. Few people are willing to pay a higher price for a Fair Trade product. I can get Fair Trade coffee from two companies during my regular shopping trips. They sell their beans in 12 oz contains instead of the standard 16oz  and the prices are higher than the other brands. But the prices for all their products are higher than the other brands. Check out the fair trade products in your coffee and chocolate aisles by looking for this symbol (if you live near a Target, you can purchase Fair Trade coffee):

I have many questions about the impact of Fair Trade on communities. I have significant doubts that fair trade alone is able to end the poverty cycle. I also wonder why price setting (refusing to lower the price when market prices drop) is considered a good thing because the farmers are poor when similar high price setting by companies in developed countries is considered greedy. One concern I have read about Fair Trade is the way the price setting can influence increased production without increasing demand – which leads to overall lower prices. It reminds me a lot of the problem when sugar companies began paying farmers in parts of Africa (I’m pretty sure it was DR Congo, but its been 15 years since I took that class) to produce sugar. The money received for the product was welcome, but families spent less and less of their agricultural resources on food for the family. The money received for the sugar needed to supply the families food, but the family structure and the culture did not support this lifestyle. The men (who by law owned the money) spent the money on drinking and other fun things, while their wives and children were left to try to provide food with fewer and fewer fields. It was a cultural disaster.

No matter how good it may sound to pay farmers in developing countries to grow what you want, it is important to remember that their society may not operate in the way you expect. Giving them more money to produce your food isn’t really a way to prevent that. That being said, I do still purchase Fair Trade. I’m just more of a fan of purchasing and using local products – which is again more expensive and time consuming than the regular grocery store trip.

So yeah, this is what I was thinking about as I road up and down the mountain standing up in the back of an old pickup truck. It is a wonderful experience to have had, the view was amazing – but it was very cold, damp air and the truck went very fast on a one lane dirt road. My heart broke as I saw families picking beans or carrying bundles down the mountain. Poverty is real, and I am blessed to not experience (even if my family lives below what most Americans consider adequate income levels).

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28Jan

Guatemala Facts

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Welcome to Guatemala! OK, so actually I’ve been home for nearly two weeks. I needed time to recuperate from the hectic schedule I created for myself. But I am ready to share the stories and photos now, so lets begin with some basic facts about the country of Guatemala.

If you are geographically challenged, Guatemala is in Central America. Sharing borders with Mexico and Belize to the north, Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast. The Pacific Ocean is to the west, and a small piece of coastline on the Gulf of Mexico completes the borders.

When you think of Guatemala think of mountains. Lots of them. Also think volcanoes. This creates a beautiful country with very fertile soil, but makes travel slow and difficult. The occasional earthquake or volcanic eruption can cause devastation. In fact, the colonial city of La Antigua has been destroyed two or three times. And though you may guess the country is nothing but rain forest, you’d be as surprised as I was to be staying in a desert. Turns out Guatemala boasts multiple eco-systems. There are lowlands where it gets hot, highlands were it gets cold. Areas of high humidity and wide arid expanses. So if you are touring the country, pack for anything.

The beautiful and fertile landscape makes it easy to understand why the Mayan people built their cities in the region. Although I would have loved to see the ruins, it was not part of this trip. Today the population of Guatemala is estimated to be about 14.5 million with less than 4% of the population over the age of 65. Literacy rate is 70% – which means 30% of the population over the age of 15 is not able to read and write. And most importantly to me, the infant mortality rate is 35.5/1000 live births (this is about 3.5 babies dieing per 100 born). Maternal Mortality is 240 per 100,000 live births, or .2 per 100 births. These are much better statistics than Sub-Saharan Africa, but still higher than they need to be.

Economically the country is just as varied. Guatemala City is bustling and modern, but it is estimated that at least 75% of the country lives below the poverty line. 50% of the workforce is agricultural and 35% is service. That leaves a mere 15% employed in industry. Agriculture accounts for a quarter of the GDP and a third of all exports – you may have enjoyed coffee, bananas or sugar from Guatemala. I was delighted to find several of the articles of clothing I purchased for the trip (from a thrift store intending to leave in Guatemala) were actually made in Guatemala.

Politically, the country is becoming more stable. Officially the civil war ended in 1996 with the signing of a peace accord. But ongoing political violence and corruption scandals make it difficult for foreign investors to feel confident enough to invest.

And that is Guatemala in a nutshell, or at least in a list of facts. But it does give you some background to understand more about the trip.

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28Oct

Guatemala

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I am excited about an opportunity I have to spend a week on a humanitarian trip to Guatemala with some college students. The trip will happen in January 2010, and the sending organization has said they can set up a nursing clinic for me to participate in.

I intend to make full use of this gift, ensuring I learn about the structure of organizations who do humanitarian work overseas; running a clinic and performing nursing tasks in a foreign country; working within a foreign culture. The skills I learn on this trip will be directly applicable to the work I have set before me in the Congo.

Because I do need to raise my own support for this trip, I welcome all gifts. You can make a donation at http://www.globalinfusion.org – be sure to indicate the gift is for Jennifer Vanderlaan for the January 2010 Guatemala trip. I need to raise $1600, which works out to $200 per day. The fee covers my flight, visa, accommodations and food while there. I already have my passport and the necessary vaccinations, so no need on that end this time.

Thankful for your prayers and support, and check back for updates. If possible, I will write updates while in Guatemala – but even if I cannot photos and information will be posted as soon as I return.

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