La Copa Mundial

I'm going to apologize in advance for all those I might offend with the following statement, but in the spirit of honesty: I don't care one bit about soccer. What I mean by that of course, is that while playing can be fun because it means I get to run around with some people I probably like, I'm not convinced that sitting on a couch watching other people run around with people they like is quite so much fun. But, South Americans do like them their soccer. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do," right??

One thing I do really like about the World Cup: it means a two hour break from work. Yes, I do like my job, but no matter how much one likes their job, I think breaks are always welcome now and then. During the Paraguay games, everyone from all of the Fundacion's offices gather together to watch and yell and eat traditional Paraguayan food. (And we are not the only ones. Committees won't hold meetings during the games. Schools decided that unlike during the last World Cup, they wouldn't actually close, they would just watch the games in school instead. You get the idea.) And let me tell you, it's crazy. Especially when Paraguay wins. Which they seem to be doing a good bit of, actually.

Some employees after the first game (Thanks for the picture, Manuel!) I think everyone in the country owns a jersey...almost.

Yesterday, Paraguay beat Japan. This is the farthest Paraguay has ever made it in the World Cup, and it's a big deal. When we went out into the field right after the game, everyone was driving around honking their horns waving flags out of the windows (or in some cases, they were doing the hanging out of the windows themselves...or riding around on the tops of their cars or any number of other things that are undoubtedly illegal in the States). And I'll be honest, despite the fact that I just claimed not to care about soccer at all, excitement can be contagious. Mob mentality, anyone? Sure thing.

Saturday, Paraguay has another game against none other than Spain. I should mention that with four people, Spain is very well represented in the intern house. This should be fun...

Una Historia: Laura Nuñez

I haven't lied in this blog. I haven't attempted to soften the truth of the things I've seen since I've been here. I have, however, mixed in stories of smiles and weekends and funny anecdotes to lighten things up. And even in the harder stories, I've been optimistic. I've been able to see that if I were to visit these women again five years from now, their lives would be better. That the work the Fundación does truly improves their lives. Today though, I'm not sure. Today, I'm going to break the facade and give you the brutal truth of one woman's life. I'm going to share my broken heart. Maybe this time it's more about me being able to organize my thoughts and take it all in, but maybe as I go you'll learn something too. Maybe some perspective, if nothing else.

This is Laura. She is part of Comite Nanopytyvomba.

Laura's house. There are no doors. The roof is incomplete.

She has no bathroom. She has to get her water from a neighbor because there is no running water in her own house. She cooks over an open wood fire. There are two roughly full sized beds all in one room that her six family members sleep in, somehow. 

These are the things I can show you, the facts that I can list. You can see for yourself that she is poor. But it is so much more than that. Because the physical things can be changed and improved. What I can't show you is that Laura is one of the most timid women I have ever met. When prompted, she admitted that she struggles to talk even within her own Comité, the place she is supposed to feel the most supported. When asked how she felt about the classes she has taken through the Fundación over things like communication and budgeting, she had no recollection of them. One of them was just last week, and I can attest to the fact that she was there.

She has four children, the oldest of which is in seventh grade this year. She's not sure if she'll be able to send her back to school next year, because her youngest has to start and she doesn't know if she can afford to have all four kids in school at the same time. With this said, Laura struggles with reading and writing herself, and knows nothing of even the most basic math. During the interview her five year old was drawing on a piece of paper that already had a drawing on it because there was no blank paper left, using the four colored pencils she had. I longed to give her my pen and a blank piece of paper from my notebook, but we can't do that because we're not here to give them things. We're only here to teach them how to get these things for themselves.

This is Ikatu, as it was meant to be. To measure poverty beyond its most basic, physical forms. Well, it's measured now. Laura is now a column in one of those excel documents I showed you a few posts ago. But all those red squares don't begin to explain it. Because while it's an important step in the process, the ultimate goal is not to know how poor she is, but to help her overcome poverty. But what can we teach a woman who can't learn? What can anyone offer a woman who is afraid to speak up about what she needs? A woman who has only a vague concept of what it is she needs to begin with. Can you imagine such a life?

But even these words feel empty. They don't encompass Laura, as she truly is. You would have to see that for yourself.

Es la primera vez que...

(It's the first time that...) 

...I ever opened a bottle of wine. Family, you failed me.

...the boys ever tried to light the grill without Osmar. I'm just surprised they weren't all crowded around it together. And then Osmar did show up to save the day. Thank goodness for Paraguayan boy scouts.

...Iker has ever been so happy. Well...maybe.

...I have no idea. But I'm willing to bet it's a first!

We had a cook-out last night. It was great fun and great food...that we didn't end up eating until midnight. Such is life in South America.

And today, nearly everyone is out on a hiking/rappelling/rock climbing/zip-lining adventure. So what am I doing writing a blog right now, you ask? Well, despite the fact that it's kind of nice that the house isn't swarming with people, I still only have one thing to say about the whole situation: damn knee.

Guaraní

Last week, one of the committees I went to visit was named Ñañopytyvomba. Now, try saying that out loud. Let me know how it goes.

That is Guaraní. That is one word of Guaraní. And no, I don't know what it means. Now imagine hearing a whole conversation of words like that. Good luck.

This is Comité Ñañopytyvomba, as well as jefe and me, and I'm willing to bet you can find us. We stand out. He, because, well, he's a man. And me, because I'm ginormously tall in this culture. Really really tall. And white, I suppose.

I was the only intern at this particular committee meeting, and therefore the only non-native Spanish speaker, and the only one who spoke no Guaraní. Before the meeting started, the women were having a very animated conversation which involved a lot of looking at me and laughing. Eventually Rodrigo (jefe) decided to fill me in. They were discussing whether I preferred blonde or brown-haired men. Frankly, I have a feeling there was more to it than that, but I'll never know for sure! But then I had to give them an answer. I tried to get away with telling them I didn't have a preference, but they weren't inclined to let me off so easily. Alas.

On a perhaps more culturally interesting note: Guaraní is very commonly spoken among the indigenous communities, and any who don’t live in big cities. Many speak both Spanish and Guaraní, and from what I understand, this is best for Paraguayans. Those who speak only Spanish can also be successful provided they live in a city. There are however, groups and communities in which only Guaraní is spoken. These groups are heavily discriminated against both socially and politically. I don't know much more than that, but it seems like this is generally true of indigenous communities around the world. Que lastima.

Resultados

We did our first round of the Ikatu survey last week, and have done a good bit of data analysis. This week we are going to administer the survey to the remaining 110 women.

Here are some of the results from the survey of the first 18 women. (My formatting is very imperfect; if there's an easier way to put things like Excel documents in a blog, feel free to fill me in! I think clicking on the images should make them bigger/more readable??)

But, in case my formatting is as bad as I'm afraid it is, a little information to help you get the idea more visually: each row is one of the 50 indicators, each column one of the interviewed women. Each green square means a woman who is at a level three of that particular indicator (out of poverty), a yellow square means a level two, and a red square a level three (extreme poverty). There's a surprising amount of green, no? This is a good thing.

However, a couple of notes. First, the committees that are being given this first round of surveys were chosen for the pilot program because they are the most successful committees. So, there are many committees that are worse off than they. Also, when we say a woman is at a level three, this means she is out of poverty. This does not mean she is not poor anymore, as you and I would define it. To give a more specific example, I have added a picture of Noemi's (one of the first women we interviewed) main room:

On the right of the photo with the curtains hanging over the doorways are the two bedrooms in the house. Noemi is at a level three for the "separate bedrooms" indicator. The requirements to be at a level three for this indicator are 1) no children sleeping in the same bedroom as the parents, and 2) adolescent children (12 and older) sleep in bedrooms seperate from the younger children. So Noemi and her partner (whom she has been with for 26 years but has never legally married, as is quite common) sleep in one of those bedrooms, and her three children, all under age 12, sleep in the other. The same can be said for some of the other indicators. For another example, to be at a level three for bathrooms, a home must have an enclosed (walls and a roof) bathroom that has a water cistern (basically just means the toilet can be flushed, as opposed to a hole in the ground.) And that is all. And that is all many of them have.

You might say we should redefine the levels of poverty if what you see in the above photo is considered out of poverty, but it's quite shocking actually the number of people who have so much less than Noemi. It is hard for you and I to imagine, I'm sure, but she truly is doing well. Relatively. Everything is relative. There is a certain perspective that one must adopt to avoid being perpetually heartbroken, I think. You need to convince yourself that this woman is lucky. And she is.

¿Cómo te llamas?

The last post was fairly serious, and the next one will be as well, so in an effort to provide a little relief and avoid scaring you all away:

"¿Cómo te llamas?" Seems like a pretty simple question, no? Well, despite the fact that I'm fairly fond of the names I was given, the answer is up for grabs these days.

Let's start with the obvious: Adrienne
Welcome to a Spanish-speaking country, where the pronunciation of this is quite perplexing. Okay. Adriana it is.
Enter jefe, who has a propensity to shorten names. Adri (pronounced like Audrey) works too. Close enough.
Now, meet women's committees who can't seem to remember my name, no matter which one I use. They can remember though, probably due to the excessively large camera perpetually hanging around my neck, that I'm the photographer. Almost universally and unprompted, they decide that because of this, it is appropriate to call me "Tía Flash" (Aunt Flash).

I'm not so sure how I feel about that one...

Basura

That's right. I'm writing about trash. Should I be taking something from the fact that I feel the need to warn you folks so often that you don't have to read what I write if you don't want to? Alas. I suppose you already know that anyway; such is the beauty of the internet. But anyway:

Anyone who's ever spent any time in big Latin American cities or even driven through one knows they're pretty dirty. Well, okay, they're really dirty. I went out into the field three times this week and while many of the communities were in more "suburban" areas, trash was as big of a problem there as in the city, if not bigger. I'm quite aware that these are hardly wonderful specimens of photography, but they get the idea across:

So what do people around here do with their trash? Well, as you can see, they either throw it in the streets, throw it in piles with everyone else in their neighborhood, or quite often, they burn it. Why? Well, because they don't have a choice. No one comes by every Tuesday to pick up their garbage and recycling and every other Tuesday to pick up their yard-waste and compost too. No one comes by at all. There's no infrastructure or funding to make this possible, and there's no one to take the initiative. There are no dumps to take it to and most of them face more pressing problems on a daily basis anyway. Maybe it's about a lack of pride in their community or some sort of Tragedy of the Commons, but mostly I think it's just a lack of options.

Like so many other things I've seen in these past few weeks, I don't know what the answer is. Maybe there isn't one. Or maybe there are many, but nobody wants to be the first to try. I don't know. What I do know, is that it makes all the fuss you hear about the environment when you live somewhere like Boulder, Colorado, as I do, seem trivial and even ignorant. I don't want to degrade the efforts people make to improve the environment, I understand that every bit helps, but does it matter so much if your SunChips come in a compostable bag if all over the world there are people burning their trash and living with their neighborhood's "landfill" in their back yard? Maybe not.

But what is one to do? We can't change the whole world all at once. We just do the best that we can. So, carry on.

Sonrisas

There should be more smiles and laughter in this world. And that is all I have to say about that.

Ikatu

Again, this is going to be more on microfinance and poverty, so if you're uniterested, consider yourself warned.

Ikatu means "we can" in Guarani and is the name of the main project I'm going to be working on while here. It is a pilot program with multiple objectives and methodologies that the Fundación is in the process of developing and implementing.

One of the first projects of Ikatu was to decide how to define and measure poverty. As I'm sure you can imagine, this is a somewhat daunting task. Ikatu came up with 50 "indicators" of poverty, ranging from the income level or the availability of potable water to the education level of the women and their children, to the ability of the women to communicate effectively and resolve problems or the ability to make a budget that includes saving some portion of their income. The indicators cover a wide range of factors, some of which are very obvious and physical, others of which are more internal. For each indicator, there are three "levels." Level one is extreme poverty, level two is general poverty, and level three is out of poverty. There are also vital behaviors that are linked to each indicator that will, in theory, allow for the progression of the women into higher levels of that indicator.

There are many programs and organizations that have as their stated goal the eradication of poverty, but few of them actually have comprehensive and specific definitions of poverty, and even less what it would actually look like for an individual to have pulled themselves out of poverty. Ikatu is somewhat revolutionary in this sense.

So this week and last, along with two other interns, I've been working on developing a survey that we can administer to women to accurately measure their level of poverty. This will be repeated some time after the implementation of Ikatu to measure its success and the women's progress. We are also attempting through this survey to discover which behaviors the most successful women and committees have that contribute to their success. It's a long survey! Once these vital behaviors have been pinned down the main goal of Ikatu will be to provide capacitaciones (trainings) and other means of influencing the women to adopt these vital behaviors, thereby augmenting the loans in their effort to pull themselves out of poverty.

Rumor has it that we're going to get to go out into the field with the asesores and observe and assist with the administration of the survey...but I'm unconvinced of this. Vamos a ver!

El Mercado

Disclaimer: due to safety concerns about carrying my big camera around downtown, all of today's photos were taken with my point-and-shoot; you'll have to forgive the low quality and general lack of inspiration.

But here's a little downtown and the weekend market. Enjoy.

La Cámara

I had another opportunity to go out into the field on Tuesday out in Caacupé where the Fundación has another office (meaning I got to leave Asunción for the first time; turns out Paraguay is a beautiful country!), and I had a photography assignment while there. Well, I got there and took all of one picture when my camera decided to stop working. Good timing, huh? I had my point-and-shoot with me also, but having A camera is not the same as having THE camera. Bummer.

So Michael, our internship coordinator, took me downtown yesterday to take it to a camera shop where I left it overnight, and I got it back today, fully functional! There was a part inside that had worn down over time and needed replacing; not terribly surprising considering I've had it for more than three years now. It cost me 460,000 Gs ($90 or so) and while this feels like a lot I'm willing to bet it would have been more had it happened in the States.

The fated final photo. I like to start farther away and work my way in, so it's not even all that interesting, sorry!

But it's back into the field with me tomorrow, I think! I've said this already but I'm going to reiterate: I'm exceptionally glad I have photography to offer--from what I can tell I'm getting out in the field way more often than any of the other interns. Awesome!

Un Fin de Semana (y algunos puntos de la cultura)

Friday night, some of us went out for pizza and beer. ¡Que Americana! Though at least the pizza wasn’t your typical American pizza, and we drank Paraguayan beer. Well, we started with Paraguayan beer; it’s really not all that good. Some interesting notes about beer: first of all, the bottles are huge. You can order a beer, but they bring you a one Liter bottle! That was more than I’d bargained for. Even more strangely, they bring beer out to you in buckets of ice, like they do with champagne in the States, and pour it into cups for you (which I guess makes some sense, considering the size of the darned things!) and then leave the rest in the bucket.

Saturday night, we all trekked out to the middle of nowhere for a feria (fair) one of the comités was putting on. The fair was a fundraiser in case they were unable to make loan payments for some reason, and to allow them to have a little extra spending money for Christmas or emergencies. Still, despite being a fundraiser, it was amazingly cheap. Each piece of food (empanadas, chipas, etc.) was 1,000 Gs. For some perspective, 5,000 Gs = $1.00. So, we were able to eat dinner for less than one dollar each.

The fair was in the street in the women’s community. There was food and sack races and a fashion show put on by the kids, and just a lot of happy energy. It was pretty small gathering and most of the people there were others from the community, but they seemed really pleased that so many people from the Fundación had showed interest, even if we were just lowly interns!

Some notes about transportation: it’s an adventure, in short! We started with a walk through Asunción. The sidewalks, like in many places in Latin America, leave much to be desired. They are the responsibility of each property owner, so they are made of different materials and are at varying levels of disrepair in front of each different property. This makes them very uneven, which can occasionally cause problems for someone who is at once still recovering from a knee injury, as well as exceptionally uncoordinated at times! Then we took a couple buses. You can hail buses from anywhere along their route as there are no designated bus stops, and you can push the buzzer and get off wherever you want along the route. Most of the time, the buses drive around with their doors totally open and whenever someone pushes the buzzer, slow down enough for them to jump off but don’t actually stop unless someone older is getting off, or a group of people. All buses in the area cost 2,100 Gs no matter where you’re going. Quite the experience!

Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of any of this…oops! I’m quite good about taking pictures of some things, but snapshots of social situations are not my forte. I’ll try to work on that.

Today is for grocery shopping and relaxing, and I think we’re getting a new intern today, so I won’t be the new kid on the block! And she’s going to be my roommate, as I’m currently the only one in the house without one.

La Casa

Mom, this is for you. Just saying. You're the only one who actually wants to see pictures of things like my bathroom. Probably. So here you are.

The bedroom. Yes, it's a little messy; I just got home from work and put my stuff down, deal with it!

The bathroom. Fancy, huh? The shower is to the left.

Sitting area/living room. It looks big, but keep in mind there are 12 of us living here.

Finally, the kitchen!

Microfinanzas

Disclaimer: This is going to be entirely about nuances of microfinance, and I realize this might not be of interest to everyone. Feel free to skip it if that’s the case! Also, my thoughts aren’t fully organized or developed yet, these are just a few ideas.

First, some basic information. Fundación Paraguaya charges an interest rate of 37%. While this may seem high, it is really quite good, comparatively. The loan sharks are one of the only other options available to these women, and they charge 100-200% interest. Each comité goes through cycles of loans, each of which lasts 3-4 months. At the end of each cycle they have repaid their loan and can get a new one. The amount they can receive goes up each cycle, as long as they have made all their payments on time, have a certain number of members in their comité, and a few other basic requirements. Apparently many comités get stuck on the fourth or fifth cycle because they are unable to continue meeting the requirements. When this happens, they can continue to receive loans, but the amount does not increase. As an example to put this process in perspective, one of the comités I had the opportunity of visiting yesterday was signing papers for their third cycle, and each woman was going to receive 300,000 Guaranís (the local money). This is the equivalent of $60, and these women were exceptionally excited about it.

People often look at microfinance through rose colored glasses, and see it as something that can work miracles, a simple and effective solution to a huge problem. But poverty is an extremely complex problem with many sources and manifestations to which there is no one solution, and like all solutions that have yet been offered, microfinance has its downfalls. I’m not saying microfinance doesn’t do great things and provide many opportunities, it absolutely does. I won’t be here if I didn’t believe that, my point is just that there is more to it than people often consider at first glance.

For one, the possibilities for growth are limited. Many of the loans that women receive, especially once they’ve gone through more than one cycle go to the purchasing of more capital to expand their businesses, or just to continue to provide the daily needs of their stores. From what I can tell, a huge majority of these women either sell vegetables, or sell clothes. But after a woman has a successful clothes or vegetable shop, where can she go? What can she do to improve? Very little. Also, this cannot be a solution for everyone. Not everyone can have a clothes or vegetable shop, the demand is not there.

One idea that has been offered as a possible solution to this is to combine micro-franchise with microfinance. This is a very new idea that hasn’t been tried in many places, but seems like it has some potential.

Another difficulty in this process is the basic concept of comités. Loans are dispersed through comités for several reasons. The first is that it provides the lender with some form of security, because if one woman is unable to pay back her loan, the other women in the group are responsible and capable of paying it back. The other facet of this is the idea of social capital—the idea that when these women have common interests they will band together and help each other to reach their goals. While sometimes this works as it is meant to, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes there is a lack of leadership and coalition between the women. Other times when a woman is unable to pay back her portion of the loan or problems of some other type arise, it can result in conflict within the group, and can have opposite the intended effect—it can tear a community apart.

Just a few ideas for now. I was going to try to keep this brief, but have already failed, so I won’t go on! I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this once I’ve been here longer though. Feel free to contribute any thoughts you may have (Or just to prove to me that someone actually read my ramblings ;) )!

El Campo

Last summer, I was known to complain now and then about my 50 hour work weeks with no overtime pay. Today, I worked an 11 hour day for no pay, and you won't hear me complaining. I got to spend six hours in the field meeting 'comites' (groups of women receiving loans) this afternoon. Turns out it pays off to have a skill that they're in need of that no one else has. Photography, in my case. I won't get to do that every day, but it was a great way to get a feel for the place and the people. I know there's a lot of blanks I haven't filled in, but I'm not going to, yet. Tonight, I'm going to put some pictures up and leave it at that. It's all I have the energy for, and this blog has been absurdly wordy as of late, so it's time!

Marthi, and her son

Aurora. It was never explicitly stated, but from what I could tell, she was the leader of this 'comite'

On the left is the back of Aurora's store. Behind is her house.

The second 'comite' we visited, as well as a couple of people from the Fundacion

 On a final note, while talking to Mackenzie last week and mentioned that I was living in a house with interns, she said something about how I wouldn't learn as much Spanish, but I would have more fun. Well, I'm here to say that Sister, you were wrong. Very wrong. We speak Spanish, here in the intern house. A couple of the interns are from Spain, a couple from Paraguay, one from France, one from Quebec...you get the idea. Our common language? Spanish. But I'm beginning to wonder if I actually speak Spanish...

Brasil

Well that’s confusing.

Yeah, I’m in Paraguay. Brazil was just the most eventful stop on my journey. Starting with the fact that…I don’t speak Portuguese. I flew Continental all the way to Sao Paulo (ten hour flight…popped a benadryl and passed out, no problem.), but then switched to TAM, a South American airline. So I had to get my boarding pass for the last two flights in Sao Paulo and the lady behind the desk kept telling me (in some combination of Portuguese/Spanish/English that I somehow managed to make sense of) that she saw that I had a reservation but she couldn’t get a boarding pass for me without a confirmation number that I didn’t have, and later learned wouldn’t be able to get, because of where I bought my ticket. Which is a problem. So finally I told her (in my probably grammatically incorrect Spanish) that I was going to be on the plane and she needed to figure out a way to make that happen. I told her more politely than that. So she stood around for a few minutes, asked a few people what to do, stood around for a few more minutes, and then printed me a boarding pass. Awesome. Not sure why it was so complicated, but hey, I got my boarding pass so I don’t much care!

So after my Brazilian adventure, imagine my relief upon arriving in Asunción and hearing SPANISH! Now, I was expecting to be more confused than anything else at my sudden immersion into Spanish, but after a lot of hours of Portuguese, it was nothing less than wonderful.

And then there were a few minutes of fear after I got my bag and couldn’t find anyone who looked like they might want to take me home with them…well, I guess I probably could have found someone, but not a someone I was looking for too! But then the guy I’ve been emailing back and forth with walked in and took me where I belonged. Though not a familiar face, of course, it was at least a familiar person, of sorts. So that was nice.

And now I’m home! My home for the next two weeks, anyway. Then we’re moving. To a new house. A better house, apparently. But in the meantime, I got a tour of this house (in really really fast Spanish) from one of my new co-workers, after stumbling through a greeting with her. Apparently in Paraguay, when greeting another woman, you “kiss” both cheeks. Now I know. I won’t be so awkward next time, I swear!

And this internet rumor was true. I do in fact, have internet. Though this internet is slow and knows where I am and has transformed everything into Spanish. Full immersion, lets go! I’ll try to post again soon with how the first day goes, maybe pictures of the house, we’ll see! Now the adventure begins…