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| Egg green bean tortilla and whisquil |
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| Host brother and foam computer we made for school |
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| Bean mustash |
Day 4
One of my favorite parts of the day is riding the chicken bus for a ½ hour into Antigua while telling host family stories and experiences from the night before. I love it because most of what I am seeing and experiencing here is very similar to my 2 years in Peace Corps so the novelty of it all has worn off but the other student’s perspectives keeps things fresh.
This morning Andrew said that he was sitting at the dinner table the previous night and everyone was laughing and talking super-fast to him at the same time. He had no idea what was being said but he just enjoyed sitting there as if he were a fly on the wall watching them be a family. Other slightly less heartwarming stories (but entertaining) also came up like Shane trying to explain to his family his love for goat cheese. He was making goat noises and using his fingers as horns. Then he took a guess at the word goat and said "queso del gato" but he said they all looked very confused. We informed him this morning that gato is cat and that he had therefore told his family he likes cat cheese. As I passed by their house tonight I reassured the family that we do not eat cat cheese in the America! There was also Daryl’s story about his host family asking if the kids were "molestandole" which means "bothering you" but Daryl thought his dad was saying something about molesting kids!?!
I reassured everyone that we all have Spanish mistakes and that when I was first living with a family I told them I loved their homemade bread because it didn’t have "preservativos" in it. I later found out that preservativos is not preservatives but rather condoms! That was the last time I tried to guess a word in Spanish and stick to the dictionary.
Today during Spanish class I decided to really take advantage of the one on one tutoring with my teacher Marta. We got some great conversation in and she helped me brush up on my imperfect subjunctive. After Spanish class we all ate our boxed lunches from home and enjoyed sampling different family’s culinary creations. We found the egg fried green beans and whiskel to be the most interesting dish of them all!
After lunch the social entrepreneurship lesson continued. We went over the micro consignment model and compared it to micro financing and other forms of development work. Despite my plan to just sit back and observe this time, I of course got caught up in some discussions about how far back in the value chain the Corps should really be responsible for investigating, what percentage of the profits go to the American and Australian product manufactures compared to the Guatemalan sales people and how we measure the social impact or the value of the products. I am the one usually asking these questions and I felt very alone in my concerns and almost as if I wasn’t supposed to be questioning anything about the consignment process. I was reminded by another student that this is a business model, and that wholesalers always operate with profits being the bottom line and that not everything has to be fair trade or equal. I replied back that I too was looking at it from a business perspective but this model is also a social business that is growing very rapidly and therefore, has a huge responsibility of ensuring that it is operating as responsible as possible. Meaning, one should inquire about the cash flow, product wholesalers, profit distributions, real social impact and overall business model. Great business models are not created by like- minded complacent people but rather by people who dig deep to work through the nitty gritty of the process. Granted, we only have a few weeks here but that doesn’t mean we just take in the information without questioning anything, does it?
I want to know that there is a real need for the products being sold and that the consumers ARE benefiting. What good does it do to convince a family to spend 3 months’ salary on a water filter if they don’t use it or on sun glasses if they are not worn? I am not saying that is the case, I am just saying I would like to know if each product is having a positive impact on the consumers and not just the wholesalers and Guatemalan entrepreneurs/sales people.
I would hate to see a company like GE, who makes the light bulbs the entreprenuers sell, being the biggest winner out of the process especially since these products are being marketed toward people living in extreme poverty. I mean it’s a great deal for companies like GE who get to expand their market to rural and hard to access areas without paying for marketing, logistics, retail or labor costs but is it what’s best of people living on less than a few dollars a day?
Trust me when I say, I more than anyone, want to find a solution to things like contaminated water. I have held extremely malnourished babies in my arms that are dying from contaminated water and food. I have seen a baby cry but because he was so dehydrated he couldn’t produce tears. So I truly want this organization to succeed and that is the exact reason why I am going to keep asking questions even if I am told I get too emotional about the topic and need to think of it like a business. This model has enormous potential and has already proven to be successful in multiple areas but that’s not a reason to stop trying to perfect it!
One of my favorite parts of the day is riding the chicken bus for a ½ hour into Antigua while telling host family stories and experiences from the night before. I love it because most of what I am seeing and experiencing here is very similar to my 2 years in Peace Corps so the novelty of it all has worn off but the other student’s perspectives keeps things fresh.
This morning Andrew said that he was sitting at the dinner table the previous night and everyone was laughing and talking super-fast to him at the same time. He had no idea what was being said but he just enjoyed sitting there as if he were a fly on the wall watching them be a family. Other slightly less heartwarming stories (but entertaining) also came up like Shane trying to explain to his family his love for goat cheese. He was making goat noises and using his fingers as horns. Then he took a guess at the word goat and said "queso del gato" but he said they all looked very confused. We informed him this morning that gato is cat and that he had therefore told his family he likes cat cheese. As I passed by their house tonight I reassured the family that we do not eat cat cheese in the America! There was also Daryl’s story about his host family asking if the kids were "molestandole" which means "bothering you" but Daryl thought his dad was saying something about molesting kids!?!
I reassured everyone that we all have Spanish mistakes and that when I was first living with a family I told them I loved their homemade bread because it didn’t have "preservativos" in it. I later found out that preservativos is not preservatives but rather condoms! That was the last time I tried to guess a word in Spanish and stick to the dictionary.
Today during Spanish class I decided to really take advantage of the one on one tutoring with my teacher Marta. We got some great conversation in and she helped me brush up on my imperfect subjunctive. After Spanish class we all ate our boxed lunches from home and enjoyed sampling different family’s culinary creations. We found the egg fried green beans and whiskel to be the most interesting dish of them all!
After lunch the social entrepreneurship lesson continued. We went over the micro consignment model and compared it to micro financing and other forms of development work. Despite my plan to just sit back and observe this time, I of course got caught up in some discussions about how far back in the value chain the Corps should really be responsible for investigating, what percentage of the profits go to the American and Australian product manufactures compared to the Guatemalan sales people and how we measure the social impact or the value of the products. I am the one usually asking these questions and I felt very alone in my concerns and almost as if I wasn’t supposed to be questioning anything about the consignment process. I was reminded by another student that this is a business model, and that wholesalers always operate with profits being the bottom line and that not everything has to be fair trade or equal. I replied back that I too was looking at it from a business perspective but this model is also a social business that is growing very rapidly and therefore, has a huge responsibility of ensuring that it is operating as responsible as possible. Meaning, one should inquire about the cash flow, product wholesalers, profit distributions, real social impact and overall business model. Great business models are not created by like- minded complacent people but rather by people who dig deep to work through the nitty gritty of the process. Granted, we only have a few weeks here but that doesn’t mean we just take in the information without questioning anything, does it?
I want to know that there is a real need for the products being sold and that the consumers ARE benefiting. What good does it do to convince a family to spend 3 months’ salary on a water filter if they don’t use it or on sun glasses if they are not worn? I am not saying that is the case, I am just saying I would like to know if each product is having a positive impact on the consumers and not just the wholesalers and Guatemalan entrepreneurs/sales people.
I would hate to see a company like GE, who makes the light bulbs the entreprenuers sell, being the biggest winner out of the process especially since these products are being marketed toward people living in extreme poverty. I mean it’s a great deal for companies like GE who get to expand their market to rural and hard to access areas without paying for marketing, logistics, retail or labor costs but is it what’s best of people living on less than a few dollars a day?
Trust me when I say, I more than anyone, want to find a solution to things like contaminated water. I have held extremely malnourished babies in my arms that are dying from contaminated water and food. I have seen a baby cry but because he was so dehydrated he couldn’t produce tears. So I truly want this organization to succeed and that is the exact reason why I am going to keep asking questions even if I am told I get too emotional about the topic and need to think of it like a business. This model has enormous potential and has already proven to be successful in multiple areas but that’s not a reason to stop trying to perfect it!
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| Solar lamps |
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