Water Falls

No matter where you're traveling there always seems to be an encounter or two that remind you about just how small the world really is. Vanessa Pridmore, a gal who I've recently gotten to know this last spring through the Microfinance Club and Business Law class, is spending five weeks down in the Dominican this summer as well working with a Nazarene church. She had a free weekend so she decided to take the four hour bus up to Puerto Plata for a visit. It was pretty strange to be spending a weekend in a foreign country with an Point Loma aquaintenance that was totally unexpected. We had a great time though. The highlight of the weekend being the waterfall adventure. Forty-five minutes outside of Puerto Plata lies the town of Imbert. If you continue into the countryside and take a 10 minute hike up a dirt road you arive at the 27 Charcos (pools).

Along with our guide, Wild Bill, Vanessa and I began heading up a narrow river gorge. We swam across ponds and then ascended small waterfalls by rope or just climbing up w/ the assistance of Wild Bill, who never seemed to stop shouting “Arriba! Adelante!Arriba!” in a frustrated tone. Yes…. thank you…. Willy. I understand we are probably going that direction, but this moss is pretty damn slippery and gravity and downstream water are going the other way. But, overtime Wild Bill kind of grew on me, despite his negative attitude and lack of patience. How could somebody be upset when they’re in the middle of a tropical paradise like that? After we reached the top of the 27 pools, the fun part began. Coming back down was one successive jump after another. The green water seemed almost surreal as we bobbed along before hopping down the next small cliff. The way up probably took two hours while the way back down probably only took an hour. As we walked along one of the trails Wild Bill earned bonus points by finding us some fresh mangoes at Vanessa’s assistance. Mangoes have become my new favorite fruit. Dominican mangoes are special, I don’t even know how to explain it. They are the sweetest, juiciest thing I’ve ever experienced. A little messy? Yes. Get stuck in your teeth? Yes. But well worth these small hindrances for such a nugget of ambrosia. Wild Bill did well with the wild mangos, but really proved himself by snapping photos of us along the way, while only keeping my camera wrapped in a grocery bag. I cringed as I watched him plunge off the first waterfall with my camera in hand. He just kept telling me to trust him, trust him, never letting me see if he had destroyed the camera. How was I supposed to trust a guy that kept telling us that the next time we came back we could go for free if we brought a woman to him? Nonetheless, Billy swam on, leaving the camera unscathed. Once, he even dove off of a ten foot cliff, headfirst, bending his arm awkwardly and spinning as he hit the water in order to keep the camera above water the whole time, unbelievable. Anyways, a good time was had by all. I’ll let the Pix do most of the talking.

Business Or Broke

My time here has been an incredible experience thus far. One of the main reasons I chose to leave my beloved Montana for the summer was to try and figure out what I’m going to do with my life. Although I began a career in business administration, making lots of money was never my goal. It was really more just to leave my options open more than anything… although I’ve never thought making lots of money would be such a bad thing. However, after my four months in Costa Rica and Nicaragua last year, my eyes were truly opened to another side of the world, that other three billion people that seem to make it (or often don’t) on just a few bucks a day. And not only did I become aware of the poverty that was out there, but the fact that there were entirely new cultures, ways of thinking about life, and ways of relating to others.
As the last year has progressed I have absolutely loved learning more about development, microfinance, poverty, Spanish, and the ridiculous consumer habits that most of us participate in. I chose to add International Development as a minor, a choice that has left me hungry to learn more about how we are going to save the world. Just kidding (we might not be able to save the world)…… but seriously. My involvement in microfinance this last year has also brought a lot of contemplative thought to the table for me. The greatest question I have been confronted with this year as I choose the direction I will head after college is, “Do I go the route of non-profits, grass roots organizations, getting to work directly in the development field? Or should I use my business acumen to take advantage of the opportunities in the U.S., global markets, and hungry capitalism that often does damage to those without a voice, then use those profits to work for the oppressed and marginalized?” Now, this is a bit of a simplified version of my thoughts, but it gives the basic idea. Each route seems to have so many ups and downs.

As I think about working directly in a grass-roots organization, the thought of noble work and the gratification that comes from working directly with the poor or such objectives is very appealing. While not completely altruistic, I think that we all have that inherent desire to love others, see their lives bettered, and we get a deep sense of satisfaction in knowing that we have done something for someone else. Reason number two, Papa Dios tells us to do it.

"Then the King shall answer them, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done unto the least of these, my brethren, ye have done unto me."
- Mathew 25:40

Is this not the fast which I choose, to loosen the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke? Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into the house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
- Is. 58:66

Open your mouth for the dumb, for the rights of all the unfortunate. Open your mouth, judge righteously, and defend the rights of the afflicted and needy.
- Proverbs 31:8

Jesus was constantly calling his followers to give up their family, politics of the state, riches, and called them to love the widows, the oppressed, the orphans, oppressed, and marginalized. He flipped everything upside down. On another note, one of my professors said something that really impacted me this last year regarding how we choose to serve out call and duty to the poor whether as Christians or just fellow human beings. He said something like, “Don’t just give some of your money to help out the worlds needs, give your time, talents, and the very best gifts that you possess”. Very true, thanks Rob.

But I sometimes wonder if to neglect the opportunities around me in the business world would be a wasted opportunity for the poor. When I say that, I mean that we (the educated in developing countries, in my case the business realm) have the ability to make more money, establish critical connections/relationships, and influence businesses and corporations than probably 99% of the world will ever have. Using ones influence in these realms (corporate world etcetera) can have trickle down effects that will impact the thousands and millions that are daily effected by international trade policies, corporate policies, government politics, etcetera. I wonder if we would be better leveraging our personal impact from working within this realm. Another brilliant professor, whom I admire greatly and who has impacted thousands around the globe, shared a bit about his philosophy with me.

“While this doesn’t run that popular in Christian circles, I wanted to become a lawyer (and a very good one at that) so that I could just make tons of money, bundles and bundles of money. But not so that I could go and buy nice things with it, for I know that the houses, cars, and vacations aren’t going to satisfy our longing to be like Jesus, but so that it could be used to bless people.”

And bless people it has done. Check out this link below to see the organization that he started (and where he now invests most of his time).

Restore International

Money and business/law expertise that is acquired in the marketplace, from disgustingly wealthy building mega-contractors (that mess up), is used to free young girls from the horrors of sexual slavery and to bring justice to the oppressed and neglected in the jails of Uganda. Contacts made in the professional world now support this cause through Funding the Kingdom, a group of real-estate professionals that use their involvement in the market to give a part of their commissions to such causes. Suddenly, you have entered into a realm where business communities are using their access to the worlds richest to touch the poorest, narrowing the incredible disparity that plagues our world today. That is cool. These are just a few of the accomplishments of this professor, not to mention his involvement with young life in B.C. Canada and many other fascinating ventures. He continuously uses creative skills, resources, and business mind to just make cool stuff happen, while touching peoples lives along the way (just hanging out w/ them like Jesus, not imposing a religious belief). He’d probably be upset with me for writing this, but I can’t help but brag about really cool people sometimes.

Hmmmm, so should I pursue the route of hero Peter Greer (Hope Intl. prez and just great guy) or Bob Goff? I don’t know, and to be honest I hope I don’t ever really have to make that decision. I’m not too worried about it. If my time down here in the Dominican has taught me something very important it has been the understanding of another world. A world that keeps loving one another because they don’t have things to love, a world of people struggling to survive, and a world that can not remain neglected any longer. What ever I end up doing in life I know that I won’t be able to ignore this part of globe that has touched me so profoundly. Whether it’s working with a non-profit microfinance organization, as a real-estate developer, a lawyer, an officer in a renewable energy-source company, or the manager of the local food distribution center, these people will constantly be a part of what I do and work for, in some way or another.

And you thought you built a condom mountain...

This past semester in my Economic Development class, students formed groups to raise awareness and encourage action against many issues of injustice, oppression, and poverty around the world. One of the groups invested with the task of sharing about the unequal access to health care, education, or supplies around the world, built a mountain of condoms outside of the Point Loma Nazarene Chapel. While a little, edgy for a conservative Christian University, it was effective in not only gaining attention towards their cause (the condoms were representative of the AIDS epidemic and lack of access to HIV prevention/education), but to raising controversy over freedom-of-thought, speech, and ideas on a campus often immersed in conservative thought and controls. (This condom mountain had 160,000 High-Quality Pante condoms)

Well done guys. But I couldn’t help but laugh at their “condom mountain” that contained 50 or 60 condoms when I saw this.

We share our office with a Dominican Non-Profit called CEPROSH, a group dedicated to HIV awareness, prevention, and treatment of people infected with HIV/AIDS (I say treatment meaning counseling, medical attention, and administering Anti-Retroviral medication). Funded mainly off of USAID, Clinton Foundation, and other U.S based aid, it has been a pretty cool experience to see firsthand the impact and effects of such funding. Thousands are given free medical access, the ARV’s which allow them to continue living a normal life for many more years (rather than quickly spiraling to AIDS and an immanent death), and a hope for raising their children who would otherwise be left orphaned if this disease were left un-combated to take it’s toll. Esperanza has a close to tie to CEPROSH here in Puerto Plata and we often share clients through our Esperanza y Vida program, which is dedicated to providing HIV medical attention along with a loan and business training, that enables them to continue living their life and providing an income for their family..... to be added to.

40 Days of Purpose

I moved!

For the last month I have been living in a nice home about a fifteen minute walk away from the office. A single, middle-aged woman named Lucia, who works in the same office as we do owns the place. In traditional Latin style with the family staying close by, her brother and their family live upstairs in the front section of the house, and her sister and their family live upstairs in the back section. I enjoy Lucia’s company for the most part, except for her occasional outbursts and harsh tone with her niece Elliani who lives with us as well. Elliani is absolutely adorable. I don’t think I’ve ever met a six year old with quite as much spunk and personality as her. Every day that she comes home in the evening from school or daycare she comes running in and gives me a big hug and kiss and yells, “Encargame encargame!”, which means pick me up or hold me. Occasionally, she can be a bit much to handle with all of her energy (I don’t know why she doesn’t just want to relax and read for a couple hours), but she has been so fun to have around. About a week ago she left to go live with her mom for some unkown amount of time while she’s on summer vacation.
Elliani struttin' it

Communication here is interesting. A lot of times, they’re OK without it. For example, Elli’s mother, just shows up on the doorstep unbenounced after driving halfway across the country and tells Elli to pack her bags. When I asked Lucia how long she’d be gone for she just sort of shrugged. I can’t imagine that would fly in the US today with child custody matters. Mom, who has gone of the deep end, just show’s up on at the home of the legal caretaker of the child and takes off with the kid for some who knows how long, but that’s perfectly fine. In the states we like to have all of our ducks in a row. Things planned perfectly, legal issues in order, we know when this or that will happen, but not here. People just kind of go with the flow and suppose that things will work themselves out as they go. Well, I suppose there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Anyway, with Elli gone it left just Lucia and I at home. And since Lucia is a “Christian” that means that it is just me at home. Whatever evangelical Christians pioneered the way here in the Dominican certainly put a strong emphasis on church attendance. Unfortunately, that has become the major factor about what makes you a Christian here. Everybody knows that every time you go to a service God puts a chalk mark next to your name. If you help set out chairs, participate in the worship band, or are a dancer on stage you get two. So what we get is five services a week (I’m not even kidding, these people live at church) with lots of chairs, a stage packed with neatly dressed, dancing girls, and a rockin’ worship band with too many keyboards (you get three chalk-marks if you play the keyboard here). I’ll save most of my ranting about my church experience here for another entry. But, things around the Lucia casa were starting to get lonely. The cute neighbor girls from upstairs who loved to come down and play games with me or look at photos on my computer had left for summer vacation as well. When the opportunity came, I jumped on the chance to move in with our manager Noberto. Noberto is a great young guy from Dominican and he’s really fun to be around. He speaks decent English but is kind of hard to understand so our conversations are usually a mix of Spanish and English as we switch back and forth from sentence to sentence between the two languages. It’s pretty fun, but can be a little difficult sometimes when you don’t know what language is going to come out so that you can be prepared to listen for the right words.

The new apartment is great. A bit outside of the city, it is about a ten minute motorcycle ride to get there from the office. The extra distance is well-worth it though, as our third story perch allows me easy access to the roof, my new morning spot. It also gets really nice and cool during the evenings and early mornings as it picks up the sea breeze. The ocean is only about a half mile away too! Noberto likes to cook, which is a definite plus. Just having somebody else to cook with might inspire me to go beyond the tuna melts, boiled veggies, and baked beans that compose my typical dinner. There’s also a couple of fun projects to do at the new apartment. Last night, we worked on making this cool, white leather couch (I say we, but in reality I just painted a little table and then sat back and ate delicious mangos and guacamole while watching Noberto
do the hard work). We are going to
design a dining table this weekend if we have time.

Ralph

Yesterday, I was walking back home from the local gym along a crowded and busy street when I heard my name yelled from back behind me. I turned to look and saw an older man seated along the sidewalk, begging for money with a small Styrofoam cup, giving me a grin. I’ve met a fair number of people here and unfortunately they don’t all stick in my mind quite as clearly as the gringo kid does in theirs. I inquisitively went up and shook his hand, searching my memory for where we had met. Ralph reminded me that it had been in the park a week earlier, where he had invited me to come and sit with him and some of the students he was teaching English to as I waited for a friend. He sheepishly looked down at his cup of money and said, “Well, this is what I do”.

We began to talk and I asked him what a guy like him was doing begging for pesos. Ralph was born in the DR, but spent 35 years in the states before returning back to the Dominican several years ago. At sixty years old, Ralph is intelligent, speaks 5 languages (English, Spanish, Italian, Hebrew, and German) fluently, and used to be the number one telemarketing salesman for his old employer. He even ran me through his typical sales pitch, imitating the women on the other end of the phone as well. He knows what it’s like to live with money, and he knows what it’s like to be at rock bottom with a Heroine addiction. He said he’s been clean from heroine for a couple of years now and I asked him why he didn’t choose to work. He responded to me, that despite the fact that he is intelligent, speaks perfect English as well as other languages, an employer just doesn’t want to hire someone without any top teeth, that is dressed poorly, and smells bad. He said, since he is living on the streets, he has no way to overcome this very first hurdle; he is caught in the cycle of poverty.

I sat there listening to Ralph share his story, thinking that there has to be some way of overcoming this initial hurdle to get Ralph a job and back on his feet. A man as intelligent as Ralph spends his days drunk and begging, because he just can’t make it past that job interview that could allow him to leave his current life of despair.
Probably the most impacting part of my time with Ralph was his confession to me that he drank. “Travis, I’m not going to lie to you, I have a couple of drinks…. Because I’m on the street”. At first I didn’t understand what he meant by that and prodded a bit more. Pausing, he looked at me and said, “Do you know what it is to beg? You can’t understand the hurt and humiliation that I go through when I sit here and ask for pesos from people. I ask for 1 peso, 1peso, that’s nothing! I am perfectly capable of standing, but if I stand no one will give me anything. I have to slink beneath them, sitting here on the cement, enduring the pains from sitting on the cement below the people all day. I drink so that I can beg. I’m not a drinker Travis, but I drink to numb the humiliation”.

It hurt me to see someone that once, must have been so proud, now here stuck in a rut of loneliness and humiliation. A father of two girls in the United States and once a successful business man and patron of the U.S Army for nine years, Ralph now sat alone on the island of Hispaniola, only wondering were his daughters and wife had ended up, alone and disconnected from the world. As I left, Ralph let me know where I could find him if I ever wanted to help. I assured him that I did. But I’m sitting here now thinking about how I can help Ralph, how I can be like Jesus for Ralph. I’m sure he’d be pretty stoked if I gave him five bucks and he could eat for a couple of days, but that’s really not helping Ralph, maybe just making my conscience feel good. It’s quite a bit easier to toss him some money than it is to actually care about Ralph, and help him to try and step out of the cycle of poverty. I think that I’m going to go and get Ralph some shampoo and deodorant tomorrows (I know that might seem offensive, but he let me know that he realized his underarms are “barking” and his bad smell is one of the reasons employers reject him). Then, maybe we can sit and brainstorm some ideas for work or about establishing a small language-tutoring program. Keep Ralph in your prayers and if you read this and have any thoughts or ideas for Ralph or how I could continue building a relationship with Ralph let me know.

Here is a photo of the Ladies from the project in Munoz as we celebrate the final day.

A Day in Shoes...

It’s hard for me to believe that my time here in the Dominican is halfway over. Each day passes by so quickly. There is a lot of work to be done each day, but it’s really pretty much a paradise, spending my days hanging out with people that give me a glimpse of what it is truly like to have nothing, to suffer, and how to depend upon God and his Grace to make it from one day to the next. I get to read, write, spend a lot of time thinking, and even learn a new language during the process. While I don’t want my time here end, I am also anxiously awaiting the end to near, because the end of my time hear means one glorious week in MT with my family, friends, and girlfriend, Cristen. After that, it’s on to my last year of school at Point Loma Nazarene.

It’s about 6:00am here right now. This is my time, I love it. The incessant reggatone and bachata music (a Dominican special that’s really pretty terrible) that blasts from front porches or distant bars is nowhere to be found. Waking up at about 5:30 each day, I seem to have the Dominican to myself for about an hour or so. I spend this time reading or writing over a strong cup of coffee made on a little Italian coffee pot. The only thing we have to cook or heat food with, is the propane stove, so I make little adjustments like heating my milk in a pot rather than the microwave to make my latte. Then I go outside to watch the sky start to light up from our front porch. It’s sort of looking out of a well-placed cell on Alcatraz, peering upon a lush green mountain through the cell-like bars that enclose every courtyard and window here. Nonetheless, it’s great, and is one of my favorite parts of the day.

I spend my mornings in the office, catching up on emails, perhaps writing a short grant proposal for an independent, woman entrepreneur, and writing up stories for Kiva. If you’re not familiar with Kiva.org I’d encourage you to check it out. It’s a website that allows anyone around the world to become involved in Microfinance by presenting the stories of individual entrepreneurs or small groups of people that form the microbanks. Lenders can then invest amounts as small as $25 in someone’s business in a developing country. Six months later, they get the loan back (without interest). It’s a pretty cool way to take money that would just normally sit in a checking account and use it to truly impact the lives of others, and pretty risk free (I think it’s at least a 99% payback rate). So that is one of my main responsibilities here. I will interview the leader of the small groups of woman that form together to receive their loans (usually of about $150-250), hearing her story, background, and the details of her business. Then, I write a short story, snap a photo, and post in Kiva for people around the world to see and invest in, providing one of the major funding sources for Esperanza.

My morning work is usually broken up by a trip to the bathroom pictured here. In typical fashion here, you would NEVER through your TP in the toilet... I’d recommend folding versus crumpling on this one. This toilet is special though because to flush, you scoop water from the bathtub and pour it into the toilet until you’ve cleared your goods. Every man has, instilled into his human nature, the instinct to put up the toilet seat before pouring liquids into the toilet. After thousands of years of being chastised by angry wives, it has basically become a sixth sense in us. Unfortunately, I work with an office full of women. And it still has not occurred to them that, while they may not need to put the seat up while taking care of business, they should do so when pouring buckets of water down the toilet. This lack of consideration has caught me off guard a number of times as I sit down, only to find my ass thoroughly soaked from the previous flushing. TP doesn’t make for a great material to dry off either. Oh well, live and learn. I now do a much more prudent inspection of the turf before going to play. The beauties of another culture.

Some mornings, I will go with one of the loan officers out into one of the surrounding communities. I always love this, sitting in a dimly lit house (usually just 1 room, maybe with an adjacent kitchen) with floors of dirt or cement and ceilings of corrugated tin. About 10 women sit in a circle with their small booklet holding the records of their payments with their biweekly payment (usually about 500 pesos or 15 dollars) in one hand and a young baby in the other. Breast feeding certainly isn’t a private activity. Actually, there is a pretty neat patience and unity that exists among the women here as they help one another to care for a baby, endure the crying, or maybe leave for a quick spanking of the kid outside the doorway. When each woman has 3-10 kids, it’s understood that the kids can’t be stuffed in the nearby daycare while they carry on with their “careers”. It takes a village to raise a child; this saying is pretty literal here. Each of the community meetings begins with a prayer and is often accompanied by a teaching on HIV awareness or perhaps just how to arrive to a meeting on time. As many of the poor communities that we work in are primarily Haitian, the woman all jabber amongst themselves in Creole. Only one of our loan officers speaks Creole, so we are usually left to depend upon the one or two women in the group that can speak Spanish as well to translate the dialogue. Even, though I don’t understand what they’re saying, I love to see the women laugh, joke, and argue together. After finishing one loan meeting we will hop on the back of a motorcycle and head off ten minutes to the next village. It’s a pretty liberating feeling to be hauling-ass along a dirt road, watching the green fields pass by, filled with chickens and donkeys, passing along row after row of small wooden/tin homes patched together, dodging stray dogs, and just praying that the motoconcho driver knows what he is doing. Well, that’s my typical morning. I’ll save the afternoon for another day.