From the Caribbean to the Gulf

December 21st - Amanda and I temporarily part ways for the holidays. She heads back to New York to visit her family like a good daughter, and I fly to the Yucatan to road trip from the Caribbean to the Gulf coast with Robert, my friend from home. (I thought it was an OK and relatively sensible plan until I got to Nicaragua where everyone almost feinted when they found out I was going to be away from my parents during the holidays. "Do you have a mother?" They asked. "Do you like your family?" And then, "Do you believe in God?" Not sure how the last one is a logical tangent but none-the-less I have been asked this more frequently than one would think.)

January 4th - Amanda, her friend Josh from Boston, and I meet in Quito, Ecuador to continue our shenanigans southward.

* * *

After traveling for two months with Miss Amanda, the one person who now fully understands my every need at any given second, I was nervous to switch gears a bit to take up traveling with a male. Amanda and I have each other down. She knows when I need space and when when it's best to let me sit and dwell in my own thoughts. Or when all I need is an ice cream cone to turn my mood a 180. We can list each other's favorite foods without two seconds of thought. And when my emotions are a rollercoaster from one moment to the next - one second I'm feeling guilty about American consumerism, the next I'm freaking out about the future, and then, two minutes later I'm crying only because I'm counting the miles left on a public bus until I can pee -how is any male going to be able to put up with me?

But while I was anxious at first, driving across Mexico is exactly what you would expect any road trip to be: hilarious moments of extreme confusion. And a flat tire. And of course the typical guy vs gal, driving vs navigation controversy.

Somewhere between Chichen Itza (one of the 7 Modern Wonders of the World!) and the Gulf of Mexico - aka a 1.5 lane highway decorated with pot holes the size of Delaware, I decided I wanted a turn at driving. I figured it was as deserted a road as we would find, and I couldn't get away with sitting in a car for 2 weeks and not driving at all.

And besides, when driving in Mexico, it's alright if you don't already know how. Because it's like going to Driver's Ed all over again. While in the car. The highways have white instructional signs every couple of feet, crap I mean meters. You should not go above the speed limit. Pass only when it is opportune. If you wear your seatbelt your life will be saved. OK, we got that down. Then the words of wisdom you get on Day 2 of your education: No maneje cansado, Don't drive tired. Cuando llueve maneje despacio, When it rains drive slow. Then around Day 3 you start getting the scare-tactic videos: Nada es lo mismo despues un accidente, Nothing is the same after an accident. Dangit, if only that sign had been in Albuquerque perhaps I would still have my Honda.

As we pull a Chinese Fire-drill in the middle of the road only shared by sunflowers, palm trees, and stray dogs, I comment: "This is the first time I have driven in almost 3 months. And I don't remember the last time I drove a stick." Robert, being the calm bloke he is, said it's like riding a bike and proceeded to play with the CD player.

Let me just say this: Driving a baby puke yellow Fiat Panda 4x4 that mildly resembles a turtle across the Yucatan is an experience no one should miss.

Aeriel: Hey, where are we?

Robert: I dunno.

A: You have the map.

R: We're somewhere. Go straight.

A: There's gas ahead so we must be close to Telchac Puerto, right?

R: OK.

A: What hotel are we looking for?

R: It's in the book.

A: You have the book.

R: I have to read?! . . . It says go west. Which way's west?

A: We've been going west all day.

R: Yea that's what I said. Go straight . . . What are you doing??

(At this point in the conversation we are entering a town. And I get stuck on a speed bump in 1st gear. And then get in a confused dance with a dump truck at the following intersection.)

Needless to say we switched seats pretty soon after.

But I have to say I can navigate pretty well when equipped with the proper tools - map and chocolate in hand. Even though we did pass through the same intersection 4 times in 1 hour yesterday.

See You Soon C.A.

I wanted to write a blog about Central America, to conclude our time spent in this part of the world, to at least offer you a concise summary. This is what has come out instead; it isn't concise, and it certainly isn't a conclusion. Maybe I'll try again next time.

For, if seeing is believing than how can I attempt to describe everything I have seen in 500 words? How can I write of all the places I have been, and more importantly the people that have come to define them? As I sat in the airport on Tuesday morning, flying out of Guatemala City to head to the Yucatan, I was overcome by the impossibility of transcribing my pages of notes into any resemblance of coherent thoughts. Perhaps, I'm just not there yet, not quite ready to form my lasting thoughts on Central America. Or perhaps, I'm just not ready to call it the end.

For two weeks, Amanda and I called what may possibly be the most beautiful place on earth home. Lake Atitlan was formed by volcanic eruption and is the deepest lake in Central America. The water is a plateau of deep blue, the three volcanoes and endless mountain ranges frame the lake's edges, and small towns and farms speckle the coasts. Once on land you are overwhelmed by color - bright textiles sold by indigenous women and bougainvillea flowers ranging from bright oranges to dark purples. And the smells - trash that has sat a little too long lingers with the sweet smell of bread baking in the nearby tienda.

Yet, as beautiful as the scenery was, our time was defined even more by our host family and the women artisans we interviewed each day, and by the struggles that were visible in their eyes even while they smiled and opened their warm hearts to us. We met women who live each day on less than I spent on a pack of gum in the airport, yet who are still willing to serve us a plate of rice, tortillas, guacamole, and the some of the best grilled chicken I've ever had.

As I sit writing this in a hotel in Cancun I feel worlds away from Lake Atitlan, from concrete floors, and from making tortillas in the small kitchen while our ten year old host-brother dribbles a deflated basketball around the chairs. Yet in the words of my new friend I met on the flight from Panama City to Cancun, "As long as you leave something behind, be it knowledge or friendship, your stay has a purpose." With eyes that have seen more than I could ever hope to see, and with legs that carry his 70-something years extremely well, my friend - from Trinidad, educated at MIT, and having set foot possibly on 80% of the countries in the world - perhaps knows what he's talking about.

With that, I'd like to think that in replace of the 600 photos and countless memories, that I have somehow left something behind in exchange. But perhaps it is just part of my heart.

Farewell Central America, I will find my way back to you soon . . .

8 Weeks and Counting!

Today - Wednesday, December 15th - marks the longest I have ever been out of the U.S.A. I left Albuquerque exactly 8 weeks ago with 1 backpack, an empty journal, and a few scattered ideas of what I wanted to get out of this trip. Now, I sit in the mountains of Guatemala, still with only 1 backpack but also with pages and pages of thoughts, experiences, ideas, and even more questions than when I left.

So here's a toast to:

8 weeks;

76 hours spent on 30 different buses;

as many emotions as humanly possible in just 56 days, and just as many emotions in 1 day;

missing home, getting over it;

feeling dirty and grungy, forgetting it;

bug bites;

planning, and then not doing any of it;

embracing "just being" and doing nothing for days, doing too much in too few days;

penny-pinching and eating bread for 3 meals, splurging on pina coladas on the beach;

running on soft sand during sunset, running while dodging tuk-tuks in the dark;

deep conversations about culture, politics, and war, not being able to physically form sentences in any language;

eating really good food, eating some really weird food;

laughing;

speaking only in Spanish one day, forgetting it all the next;

being confused about the future, remembering it doesn't really matter;

thinking 8 weeks is a long time, realizing it's no time at all.

Here's to 8 weeks of pure traveling, living day-by-day, and embracing every moment.

And thanks Amanda for being one helluva travel companion!

High Hopes in Guatemala

(I wrote this for Mercado Global's website blog, but it may never make it up there. So I'll post it here . . .)

Bleary-eyed and yawning at 7:30 a.m., I shuffled from my home stay down the steep cobblestone hill to the boat docks. Craving caffeine to wake up, I quickly ducked into a tourist shop and purchased a cup of cafe con leche for 9.50 Quetzales (about $1.20). “A dollar spent well,” I thought, as the coffee not only washed away my morning headache but kept me warm during the brisk ferri ride across Lake Atitlán to Panajachel.

Feeling rejuvenated and awake by the time I arrived at the Mercado Global office, I was eager to conduct my first interview about the daily life as a female artisan. Barbara Quieju, Business Skills and Asset Development Project Coordinator, helped conduct the interview by translating my questions in broken high-school level Spanish to the native language Kakchiquil. Christina, 18 years old, and Paulina, 23, would like to partner with Mercado Global in the near future in hopes of both increasing their wages and decreasing their struggles. The two young women are from Cipresales, a small pueblo in Sololá. They live at home with their families and have been working as jewelry artisans for the last four years.

Working independently off an astoundingly low budget, while trying to subsist in a time when food shortage has never been higher, is certainly not easy. But just how low is their budget, and how hard is their daily routine? Christina and Paulina report that they work from 7:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m., with an hour break for lunch. On an average day, Paulina will sell twelve bracelets and earn just 10 Quetzales. For as much as a tourist cup of coffee, these strong women are attempting to buy enough food to sustain themselves for the whole day, as well as purchase materials needed to make the jewelry. This insufficient income forces many women to borrow money from their neighbors or friends; money which they struggle to ever pay back.

After hearing about Mercado Global’s opportunities from Barbara, seven women artisans from Cipresales are eager to begin a partnership. When asked what they hope to get out of the cooperative with Mercado Global, Christina and Paulina both stated that they would like to double their daily income, which would enable them to buy more food, as well as help to eliminate the need to borrow money for supplies. While they hope to earn 20 Q a day, in reality joining with Mercado Global would bring them 8-12 Q per hour. To bring earnings up from just over $1 a day to more than $1 an hour is huge.

Yet when "Fair Trade" equals earning $1 an hour to make gorgeous, handcrafted textiles, what does "fair" really mean? In the States, we complain about the economy downfall and how it is impossible to find a "good" job. But perhaps, what we really need is a little perspective from an entirely different point of view . . .

Honduras: An Emotional Week

Although we spent only 7 days in Honduras, I am struggling to formulate concise, accurate thoughts about our time there. And that's not because we were only there for a few days, or because we didn't see enough. But rather because we saw too much . . .

"Had he gotten himself into such an emotional state that nothing meant anything any more, or had too much meaning now entered his life, more meaning than he could handle?"

Honduras: A beautiful mountainous country, scattered with pine trees and quaint rivers meandering through the countryside.

Tegucigalpa: The capital of Honduras. An aspiring-to-be-Mexico City with busy, littered streets; surrounded by shanty towns and extreme poverty; riddled with government corruption, drug trafficking, and political angst. And toss in the residual turmoil from the coup d'etat that occurred a few months ago last June.

While couchsurfing with our friend Dan in Tegus, as the capital is fondly referred: If we stayed at the AguaClara office past sunset, we ran the three blocks home. When we went walking around the city in broad daylight on a Sunday afternoon, Dan was careful to only pull his cell phone out of his pocket on certain streets. On our final evening, we went to a music club to grab a drink, and drove the five blocks there so as not to get mugged. Over a lovely glass of Cabernet, Dan told us nonchalantly about how concerts with music containing any political insinuations are routinely shut down with tear gas. The front page of the daily newspaper showed a decapitated bus driver one morning, the next a pile of deceased. Why? That's all hush hush, but you can bet your bottom dollar it ain't a pretty, or simple, story. Yes, our week in Honduras gave us plenty to think about.

Amanda and I didn't even realize the effect the city had on us until we were drinking hot chocolate in an outdoor cafe in the quaint, quiet town of Copan, Honduras, situated just 10 minutes from the Guatemalan border. Our nerves took two days, a long run along the highway, and a couple Salva Vida beers to finally rest easy. And we eagerly embraced being a tourist for a day while we visited the Mayan ruins of Copan - the main tourist attraction in this complex country.

Las Ruinas de Copan boast the "longest pre-Columbian heiroglyphic inscription in America." The staircase here reveals over 2000 hieroglyphs on 63 steps that recall the dynastic history dating all the way back to the first founder K'inich Yax K'uk' Mo. (Don't ask me to remember too many more details than that.)

From Copan, we had a 12-hour travel day - which included 2 microbuses (shuttles that careen through the mountainous roads way too fast for comfort), and a water taxi - to finally get us to San Pedro, Guatemala. We are now getting settled into life on Lake Atitlan: living in San Pedro with a gorgeous host family and commuting across the lake to Panajachel to volunteer at the microfinance NGO Mercado Global. The lake is beautiful, the people are always smiling and happy to stop for a moment to chat, and the work here promises to be rewarding. On just our second day here, we were swept into a relay race around the plaza of the Catholic Church by seven neighborhood kids eager just to hold our hands. Running alongside these laughing children was a wonderful, and much needed, reminder of how beautiful Central America really is.

Back in Guatemala where my love of Central America truly began!

Human Trafficking

Well this made my Wheaties taste sour. So without wishing rain on your Tuesday parade, here's some serious food for thought...

In the States we read about the slavery of the 19th century. And then we think to ourselves, "Wow, what monsters people used to be! Glad that's over."

Yet human trafficking, aka modern day slavery, still exists.

The U.S. Embassy compiled a list (that stretches far too long) of countries across the globe that are in some way involved in human trafficking. From Argentina to Burma to Uzbekistan, approximately 800,000 people annually are trafficked across national borders for labor and sexual exploitation. And this does not include the thousands trafficked within their own country. 80% are female. 50% are children.

Guatemala falls within the list of countries where the government does not fully comply with the rules for the elimination of trafficking. Guatemalan children and women are exploited to Mexico, and - don't think the problem is exclusive to "those countries down there" - the U.S. of A. for forced domestic labor and prostitution. All genders and ages are trafficked for cheap agricultural labor - especially on coffee plantations. Along the Mexican border, Guatemalan youth are exploited for forced begging as well as labor in municipal dumps. Child sex tourism is high in Antigua, Lake Atitlan, and Guatemala City, with the main "tourists" arriving from Canada, U.S., Germany, and Spain, according to the 2010 Human Trafficking report released by the U.S. Embassy.

And this is just one of the many countries that is both experiencing such horrible activity by human traffickers and such inactivity by the nation's government.

Sorry, I really can't think of a way to spin a good conclusion. Perhaps send a little prayer or chant a good omen for the world to change . . .

Clear Water Solutions

For years, water treatment solutions among villages in rural Honduras were as murky as the water that was coming out of the crude pumping systems. In a town that lay a few hours outside of the capital Tegucigalpa, houses scattered across the arid, mountainous landscape amazingly had running water. Yet what was even more astounding, was that this water - the water people paid to have access to every month - was coming out brown. Why bother with installing a plumbing system if people are going to buy bottled water anyways because the tap water is too dirty to use?

Among these rural towns that had running water, the water came directly from the river or lake and gave many people dysentery diseases and skin conditions. Flakes of dirt, debris, and bacteria visibly swam in the water. Yet no one did anything. It was just how things were.

Until Monroe Weber-Shirk, a civil engineering professor at Cornell University, headed South with his innovative ideas. Weber-Shirk designed a water treatment system that is able to both filter out debris and disinfect the water with chlorine using no electricity or outside power source. Since 2007, Weber-Shirk, his teams of Cornell students, and the local NGO partner, Agua Para el Pueblo (APP), have brought water treatment plants to 5 communities in Honduras.

Amanda and I were lucky enough to spend this last week getting an inside view of Weber-Shirk's organization AguaClara. We couchsurfed with Cornell grad '06 and Fulbright Scholar Dan Smith, who is working directly with both AguaClara and APP. We were able to personally visit 3 of the water treatment plants and see how simple water can be cleaned, purified, and distributed.

All of the systems work off of the principle of gravity. The steep mountainous terrain of Honduras provides the perfect location for this system. In all of the towns, the water is pumped from a nearby lake or river and flows into a holding tank, where the water is first treated with polyaluminum chloride. Without getting too technical, this chemical acts as a coagulate which makes the dirt molecules bond together.

The water then passes into a floculation tank which helps bind the debris together into bigger particles. The water, all flowing via gravity, next passes into the settling tank where the chunks of matter settle to the bottom. The water at this point (about 3 hours later) is very clear. It is lastly treated with chlorine to disinfect any bacteria.

The entire system is constructed from parts available in Tegucigalpa. The treatment plants are all operated by locals. E.i. the system is sustainable. The people are now paying $2-$4 a month to have clean and disinfected water. We spoke to a local nurse in the town of Agalteca, who reported that cases of dysentery in children under 5 have been cut in half since the water treatment plant was installed 6 months ago.

In less than 5 years, AguaClara has already touched the lives of 14,700 people, and has plans to build two more plants in the near future. And with start up costs of $40,000 to $60,000 depending on the size of the plant and the town's population, the real question is not if the plant is working or if it is worth it, but rather how has something like this not happened sooner?

A few thoughts to chew on:

Approximately 100,000, 000 people are living with water systems that are daily distributing untreated water directly to household taps. (Pulled from AguaClara's website.)

Water usage in Honduras is estimated at 50 gallons per person per day. In the U.S. water usage is 200 gallons per person per day.

Where Things Come From: Meat

Carne de res, or beef, comes from a cow.

Where Things Come From: Sugar

Hate to break it to you folks, but sugar doesn't come from Walmart, Albertsons, or the Piggly Wiggly. It comes from a plant called sugar cane. Through a relatively simple, but time consuming and labor intensive process, sugarcane juice is converted to raw sugar.

This morning, Amanda and I hiked just outside of Agalteca, a small town nestled in the mountains of Honduras, to observe how sugar cane is broken down into dark, sweet blocks of goodness.

Sugar cane grows in stalks reaching 6 to 15 feet tall. It is first cut down by hand. Using a machete, the workers cut the stalk at the base, and then strip it of it's leaves and flowery plume.

The canes are then loaded onto a wooden cart that is pulled by oxen up the hill to the sugar mill.

The cane is fed through this machine made of a single conveyor belt and heavy iron wheels. The stalks are crushed and the juices are squished out.

The liquid sugar is transferred to a large wooden vat. Fueled by a constant fire underneath the vat, the liquid is brought to a boil.

Until it becomes a thick, bubbling, caramel mess.

Next, the boiling sugar is gradually poured into a second vat, away from the heat. The sugar is stirred constantly to avoid any chunks from forming and to bring it to an even consistency.

When the sugar is blending thoroughly, a team of two then works together to pour the sugar into the square molds to cool.

1 cube costs 20 Lempiras. (Just a little over $1). The sugar can be eaten by itself or used in cooking. It is a special gift especially during the holidays in December and January.