I got a lot of nice feedback on my Word of the Day: Dialectic post, so I figured I would double down. That article was written after the terrorist attacks in Paris. I know that at times it seems that terrorism is an all-consuming threat, but I believe that climate change is a much larger threat. Semi-existential. Among the top three threats to humanity, if not the top threat.
That being said, we have a climate agreement. No one thinks it is perfect. No one is 100% happy with it. But it does go further than any agreement beforehand, and the end goal is aggressive: limiting global warming to between 1.5°C and 2.0°C.
I didn’t study game theory very much in college (I wish I had studied it a lot more), but very often I see issues boiling down to game theory. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you’re an economist, you try to apply an economic theory to all problems and issues. In the past I’ve applied game theory to employee evaluation at my old consulting firm, protracted civil wars, and to climate negotiations. The new climate accord lacks enforcement teeth. In fact, part of it was left specifically not legally binding so that the world’s largest clown car, the United States Senate, couldn’t get its hands on the accord. In some ways international law is always a charade. In the absence of military action, there is no way to force another country to do anything at all. However, prior to this agreement, the world was stuck in the classic game theory “prisoners’ dilemma.” The dilemma is simple. Why will I do something that also benefits someone else if that person can cheat, reap the benefits, and I get screwed over?
I wrote about this dilemma a year ago on my economics blog after the Lima talks.
In climate terms, why should my country reduce emissions and possibly contribute money to the reduction and mitigation efforts of other countries if I do not have any assurances that all other countries will follow through? This agreement, unique from others, addresses this dilemma in two ways. First, unlike its predecessor Copenhagen agreement, all countries need to reduce emissions, not just developed countries. Secondly, the accord also stipulates that all countries will contribute to the global assistance funds, as their economic situations allow. This will compel large developing countries, such as China and India, to pony up as well, not just the United States, Europe, and Japan.
This agreement will allow politicians to go home from France and defend the plan to their people and legislatures. Barack Obama will no longer have to see, “We will reduce and we will pay.” Now he can say, “We will all reduce and we will all pay.” The prisoners’ dilemma has been overcome.
The deal is not perfect. The $100 billion in climate assistance funds is only in the non-binding preamble to the agreement. In addition, there is no global limit on emissions, and countries will have to draw up their own reduction levels. And that’s where the hard work starts. There are climate deniers all over the world. In addition, there are companies and countries that profit from fossil fuels that are billions millions of dollars on lobbying to keep the wells pumping. Their apocalyptic behaviors will have to be overcome.
Which brings us back to Paris, and the dialectic. In some ways it is fitting, in a poetic ironic sense, that Paris was selected as the locations of these talks long before the attacks last month. Just like I wrote after those attacks, it is time to use words, both written and spoken, to learn and compel. Congresspersons and state legislatures need to be convinced that getting re-elected is less important than climate health. We need to listen to our experts, and help policy makers use scientific knowledge to craft effective policy. And lastly, Americans need to learn that we need to make sacrifices in our own lifestyles today to preserve our lifestyles for the future. Cutting back on fossil fuels may be expensive. Contributing to global climate assistance funds will also be expensive. However, they are necessary to save the Earth, and at the most basic level, save the lives and livelihoods of people threatened by climate change and sea level rise, people who primarily dwell outside of the United States and in lesser developed countries.
It is easiest to frame these debates as political, but truly they are moral, so long as you believe it is wrong to cause harm to other people. That is what our carbon emissions are doing, and will continue to do more and more as this century trudges on. And surely, they are not just our carbon emissions. China is the world’s largest emitter. But the United States is much richer than China and we enjoy a much better quality of life. If we ask China to cut back, stymieing their own economic growth, it is just to assist them monetarily, so that they can one day enjoy the same standard of living that we enjoy.
So again I implore my readers, you need to pitch in your part to the international dialogue. Engage in discourse with people who disagree with your opinions. Don’t just post on Facebook about how stupid climate change skeptics are and make fun of them. You need to talk directly to them, and respectfully get them to change their mind. Use writing, use art, use Twitter, use Facebook, use music, don’t use mass news media that gives a podium to misinformation spewing politicians – use whatever media you do see fit to use, but remember that this is dialectic. The fate of the world depends on you remembering that.
So I leave for 12 days and Nicaragua’s iconic Momotombo Volcano erupts, complete with a glowing lava flow, for the first time in 110 years! I can’t believe I missed it. By the day I was flying home the eruption … Continue reading →
My last day of vacation brought me back to Old San Juan. Aaron had to fly so I went with two other pilots. The plan was to visit both of the old Spanish forts and take in as much of the historic old city as possible. We did a lot of walking, but I now have a great appreciation for Old San Juan. It is beautiful and offers a lot. I could have spent more time there (I suppose I say that about most places I visit), but I’m glad that I got to see as much as I did.
Puerto Rico was known as the key to the Caribbean in colonial times. The trade winds brought vessels from Europe right to Puerto Rico, and San Juan was the preeminent city, with a deep, easy to protect harbor. From San Juan the Spanish were able to control the Caribbean, exclude other European powers from trading in the Caribbean Sea, and provide safe harbor to all Spanish treasure galleons filled with gold and silver from all over the New World. Because of this strategic location they fortified the hell out of San Juan. The city was surrounded by a strong wall, and at the mouth of the harbor stood El Morro fort, an impressive naval fort. At the other end of the city, overlooking the neck of the peninsula stood San Cristóbal fort, guarding the land access to San Juan. San Juan was just screaming at the pirates, English, French, and Dutch “Come at me bro! Come at me!”
The forts are impressive. The walls are 15 to 20 feet thick and very tall. You can just imagine all the shiny cannons sticking out of the turrets, pointing right at your ship. I would have been horrified to have been a soldier or sailor who was ordered to attack San Juan. The Spanish fortifications were likely a deterrent to many European powers hatching attacks upon the Spanish Americas.
The defenses were tested five times – the English twice, the Dutch, the British (by 1797 the United Kingdom had been formed), and last in 1898 by the United States of America. The English, British, and Dutch all had varying degrees of success attacking San Juan and laying siege to its defenses, but troop attrition by casualties and disease forced all attackers to abandon the island until the successful United States invasion in 1898. Ever since then Puerto Rico has been a territory of the United States (The Philippines and Cuba, also ceded to the United States at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, have since been granted independence).
I couldn’t go a whole vacation without writing up some social commentary. You know you love it. So Puerto Rico: statehood, independence, or the status quo?
The United States took over Puerto Rico from Spain in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. Puerto Rico is a nation, not a country. Politically it is part of the United States (we refer to it as a Commonwealth), and Puerto Ricans are American citizens, but it has a fair degree of autonomy over its internal affairs. As a nation, Puerto Rico competes independently in sporting events such as the Olympics and World Series of Baseball.
In the 2012 election a plurality, although not a majority of voters, indicated a preference for statehood. However, it seems to have stalled in Congress. Republicans are likely to be opposed to Puerto Rican statehood, because the Congresspeople (or person) and Senators would probably caucus with the Democrats (the same goes for Washington, DC, which is the single most democratic “state” in America). The most likely next step for Puerto Rico is to revisit the topic in the 2016 gubernatorial election (the chief political executive of Puerto Rico is an elected governor) and then move forward.
I believe that many would agree that the status quo is not ideal. Puerto Rico is bankrupt. The economy has not been doing well, so the government took on too much debt. Obama and Congress and not trying to come up with a solution to the $72 billion problem. I know that the NY Times is only one opinion of many, but a recent op-ed piece opened my eyes to some laws in the United States which are prejudicial to the Puerto Rican economy. These laws may be contributing to the Puerto Rican fiscal problem. However, the article really opened my eyes to the breadth of the problem. Puerto Ricans are more than 50% poorer than the poorest American state, Mississippi, and the cost of living is higher.
One of the alternative options to statehood is independence. I don’t believe that many Puerto Ricans support this option anymore, but over the last century there have been numerous movements, some which were even violent. Forgotten by history is the 1954 independence minded attack on a session of Congress, leaving bullets in five different Congressmen. The four attackers were all given lengthy prison sentences, but they were pardoned by Jimmy Carter in 1978 and 1979. There was also a nationalist terrorist organization (I use the term terrorism with reservation here – I’ve written before about the subjectivity of the term), the FALN, which made over 100 bombings in its history and did cause loss of life. A member of the organization, Oscar López Rivera, remains in prison, now an old man, and is a divisive figure here in Puerto Rico. Some consider him the Nelson Mandela of Puerto Rico and call for his release, while many people consider him a terrorist who should serve his prison term in full. The figure of Oscar López Rivera is prominent here on the island. There was a big life-sized sticker of him outside of the AirBnB I stayed at, and I saw life size figures of him in a few other places around the island. Yesterday in Caguas, they were having a 36-hour poetry reading calling for his release.
I think it is very interesting that some Puerto Ricans call him the Nelson Mandela of the island. Forgotten in the Nelson Mandela saga is why he was imprisoned. Mandela was involved in a violent liberation movement. I believe his participation was reluctant, but he participated, was captured, and imprisoned nonetheless for violence. I’ve written about my thoughts on violence before, and I don’t think I agree with the use of violence to fight oppression. Of course, the philosophical basis of any violent revolution is that oppression justifies violence when other options are exhausted, but I tend to think that the suffering of oppression may not be as bad as the suffering brought on by violence. I know, that is a strong statement to make, especially for an upper-middle class White American. I’d like to educate myself more on these philosophies, but I don’t think that anyone would disagree with me that human suffering is bad and any alternatives to violence are superior to violence itself. I’m very glad about the outcome for Mandela and South Africa, but I can’t say that I support clemency for this Puerto Rican man.
Some other nice photos from Old San Juan:
Other posts from my vacation trip to NY for Thanksgiving and Puerto Rico:
Not much happened on day four after I got back from Nevis, but day five was a pleasant day trip.
The pilots (my brother’s co-workers) got tipped off by Anthony Bourdain (No Reservations) and Andrew Zimmerman (Bizarre Foods) about a “pork highway” in Guavate, in the central highlands of the island (nothing is too far in Puerto Rico – the island is only 100 miles long and 35 miles wide). Aaron and them had been there before, but we made the pilgrimage again today in my vegetarian honor.
2 pounds of lechón (roast pork), one pound of ribs, half a chicken, a pound of sausage, rice, yuca, Coca Cola, Corona, and a few fried plantains later, we were full. Even I had a few morsels of the lechón. We ate at Lechonera Los Pinos, but over about one kilometer of a windy mountain road there must be 20 lechoneras lining the road. Los Pinos is one of the most famous of the spots, and was crowded with a senior citizen group and a high school group who were dancing together to the little band that was playing over everyone’s lunch.
After Guavate we got back in the car and headed further south in search of Charco Azul water hole, but we didn’t find it. We did drive higher up into the mountains though and got some nice views of the central region of the island.
Last stop after our mountain drive was the town of Caguas, just south of San Juan. I had read about Caguas on the internet, and I couldn’t give up the opportunity to visit a smaller cultural town. Caguas has done a nice job setting up a “Heart of Creole Culture” route in the city, taking visitors around to a bunch of small museums and sites. The sites are well signed and they have put nice colorful tiled markers into the sidewalks. It reminded me of the municipal tourism work that San José de los Remates has done.
We quickly went to three places in the town: the Tobacco Museum, the Town Museum at Town Hall, and the town plaza. In the plaza there was a sit-in poetry reading to free a Puerto Rican political prisoner, which I found interesting and pretty Nicaraguan. The Tobacco Museum was cool, and the Town Museum was also very well done. Aaron and his friends were less than amused though, so we didn’t stay in Caguas for long, which was a shame.
Tomorrow for my last day in PR I will be heading back to Old San Juan. Then back to Nicaragua on Sunday.
Today was the best day that we have had so far. I suppose that Puerto Rico, more than anything, is a beach destination. I’ve got great beaches at my fingertips in Nicaragua, so I’m not that eager to catch some … Continue reading →
Today we went to El Yunque, a national forest and one of Puerto Rico’s most famous and visited site. It is a “cloud forest.” I put cloud forest in quotes because I find the title quite dubious. Sometimes I think … Continue reading →
I got to Puerto Rico today. We took it easy to day and took a trip to the old Spanish fort in San Juan, El Morro. Our entrance fee is good for a full week, and I will be sure … Continue reading →
It’s me. I was wondering if after all this time you were wondering where I was. Surprise! Hello from the other side. I came home for Thanksgiving. Some things with my family conspired last week to make a trip feasible, so last Wednesday night I booked flights to NY, and then a flight from NY to Puerto Rico to visit the island and my brother who is living there for work at the moment.
Only my parents and brother knew that I was coming. Last year I made fun of Thanksgiving travelers. Karma in the form of Spirit Airlines standby purgatory came back to bite me this year, but I did get home on Tuesday as planned. On Thursday everyone at my Aunt and Uncle’s house were very surprised to see me, and I have contacted many of my local friends to meet up as well.
On Friday I do the most Westchester thing possible with some of my hometown friends. All of my friends have made it out of the town where nothing ever happened, but were around for Thanksgiving. We got coffee in Tarrytown and then walked down to the river and sat on benches overlooking the river and the bridge. I made sure to get a picture because last week I had a conversation with a friend about the Hudson and he didn’t believe me that we have a bridge that is 5 km long and such a wide river.
On Saturday I did the other most Westchester thing possible: I took the train into the City to see a friend and meet his girlfriend of two years for the first time. I walked to and from Grand Central and just admired the City. All I could think was what reaction a Nicaraguan would have to the City and the architecture. There’s such a difference between NY and Nicaragua, and a million miles. It is so profoundly different that I think my friends in Nicaragua would be in awe, I am sure. I can be very critical of the United States on this blog, but there are some excellent aspects of our country, such as the relative safety of New York City and its architecture.
On Monday I fly down to Puerto Rico to visit my brother’s winter work home, where I will stay until next Sunday, when I fly back to Managua. It’s no secret that I am running out of time in Nicaragua. And looking back on this week, I didn’t get to see all of my friends, but at least I can say that I’ve tried. I’m gonna throw some more photos up on this post when I get some from my Uncle that we took on his camera on Thanksgiving Day.
I got to a Volunteer get together at ETCA late, and as soon as I get there they are releasing turtles from their turtle sanctuary: ETCA actually purchases eggs from poachers (turtle eggs are a delicacy here) and then buries … Continue reading →
This is Part 3 of a three part diary style blog post on Entrepreneurship Competition Season. Part 1. Part 2. And apologies for how long it took to write and post this. I lost a bit of motivation to write about the event after it had concluded. In addition, photos are sparse. When the official event photos are sent to me I will post some of them up.
In this diary style post I am going to include fewer daily entries. Less is going on, and many of my feelings have already been captured in my blog post on “work.”
Tuesday, October 27
No alarm!
With the competitions that I am responsible for in the rear view mirror, I can now focus on the volunteer activities I am most interested in. This afternoon I will be going down to Poneloya to meet with the cooperative. Tomorrow I will be going to Estelí to help Matt with his departmental competition up there. But sitting on a judging panel is a cinch compared to organizing one of the events. Plus I love Estelí, and we are planning on visiting an eccentric sculptor out in the campo on Friday after the competition.
Thursday, October 29
Today was the Estelí Departmental Competition (and five other competitions around the country). Yesterday was a blood bath for Matt. All well laid plans crumbled due to factors beyond his controls, and he had to run around all day patching things up. He is a competent Volunteer though and did a very nice job. The competition went very well. My job was to act as an auxiliary fifth judge. After all the judges had made their evaluations I convened a little discussion with my balancing thoughts, and they made some adjustments to ensure that the best team advanced to Nationals and as many teams as possible were awarded awards and certificates.
There were a bunch of interesting products. Two of the best were a gas tank gauge so you know when your tank is going to run out of gas and a cough syrup made from a local fruit known in English as star apple. After our deliberations the cough syrup won first place. I don’t have any pictures from the event because I did not bring my camera, but many of the products were impressive, especially the packaging. The packaging may have actually been one of the pitfalls of the gas gauge. They had cardboard packages printed up in color, and they totaled to roughly 50% of the total unit cost. All of the parts for the gauge can easily be found and not so difficultly assembled (I suppose you could just Google it), so at the point in which you are paying so much for a cardboard box you are just going to throw away, it doesn’t make sense to buy the pre-assembled product.
Following Estelí my day-to-day activities were much less related to the competition. I only had two responsibilities left: Receive permission for two students and teachers to attend the three day Congress & Competition event with me in Managua, and prepare a session with my counterpart at the local business university for the Entrepreneurship Congress.
I’ve chronicled my trials and tribulations mobilizing the invitees in another blog post (to which I have received both support and criticism), so I won’t go into too much detail about it here. Getting the session ready with my counterpart was its own kind of special though. A month or so ago we were asked over e-mail to give a session on Business Administration, both concepts and studying it in university. I had no idea that the organizing committee was going to ask us to present anything. And that day I was actually upset with my Counterpart because he had cancelled on me last minute and I had to run to catch a bus to meet with the fishing cooperative in Poneloya. And when I got home that evening the invitation e-mail was waiting for me, as well as the confirmation from my Counterpart. I was reeled in and on the boat before I even knew that I was out of the water.
From there things moved slowly getting our presentation together, and I was not especially pleased with the content that he put together. It was not the first time that I got stood up either. I respect him though. He is very intelligent and motivated and dedicated to helping me in my work. He is also a very busy man, running an entire department of a university as well as his own family business and being an active member of professional organizations.
Wednesday, November 11
Today, in the afternoon, I felt a profound sense of boredom. There was nothing pressing on my to-do list. I had no meetings to attend to. I had not felt that way in many months. It was welcomed. I wound up lying on my bed in front of my fan reading (Peace Corps Volunteers do not get Veterans’ Day off).
Friday
My counterpart stood me up for our final review and edits of our presentation.
Saturday
We finally met up to firm up our presentation for Tuesday morning at the Congress. We started the meeting 45 minutes late (and I was trying to catch a bus to Managua for a little music festival).
Sunday – One Day to Go
After a difficult week getting permission for teachers and students to attend the three day Congress & Competition I finally got word that all participants were approved to attend by the local superintendent. It did take an administrator calling a principal “tonto” though. I thoroughly enjoyed that.
Monday, November 16 – Day One of the National Entrepreneurship Competition
We met at the Bus Terminal at 7:30 and were on our way to Managua by 8:00 AM. Really, it was a good day. Everything went will with my counterparts and students (everyone arrived, on time!).
The National Congress & Competition are held at a nice hotel and conference center near the airport in Managua. All the winning teams from the departments go, plus we invite extra teachers and students. Not all Volunteers get to go. This year there were a lot of Volunteers from the newer group, Nica 65, and fewer from my group, Nica 63. It is 65 time’s to shine now. I can understand the decision completely.
Tuesday
Today was my big day, the day of my session on business administration with my counterpart. And it went splendidly. Perfectly, no. People had some doubts about the case study we had put together for the students. They said that it may be too challenging. My counterpart and I made some changes so that it would be more manageable, and it went great. The Volunteers really helped out, and the kids did a good job. Did they hit it straight on the head? No. But with some more time and with the improvements that I could now make with hindsight, I think that they are capable of the challenging critical thinking exercise that I had put together.
After the session we went to lunch, and while I was waiting in the lunch line I realized, “I am done for 2015!” It dawned on me; it really hit me in the face. That session was the last big obligation that I had for this year. Grad school applications are in. The school year is basically over. And with only five short months in Nicaragua in 2016, the sun is setting on my service.
That night I was sitting around with the Director for the Small Business Development program and Thomas, Matt, and Jessica. They started giving me a really hard time for picking the cough syrup over the gas gauge in Estelí. It had me really upset that they did not value my judgment. I had serious reservations about the gas gauge, and the cough syrup had an excellent presentation. The team was very very sharp. Everyone was riding on me that there was no reason to believe that the natural ingredient in the cough syrup worked, but I found that irrelevant. Natural medicine is very popular in Nicaragua. Even the government supports it. This group had made it to the Departmental Competition because their teacher, schools, and classmates all believed in their product. Not a single other judge challenged the efficacy of their product. I am a huge skeptic of natural medicine. If natural medicine was so miraculous all along why did we develop a pharmaceutical industry in the first place? However, at the point in which no one so much as raises an eyebrow at the ingredients in the product, I had to exercise cultural deference. I am not Nicaraguan. I was not put in the panel to correct problems with Nicaraguan culture. As a Peace Corps Volunteer I do not find being on a judging panel to be an appropriate time to challenge cultural norms, such as natural medicines.
Wednesday, November 18, 2015 – The Day of the Competition
The organizers assigned me to media today. I was supposed to help members of the news media understand the event and find people to interview. It was challenging but I liked it. One writer did ask me some tough questions about why the Peace Corps does not operate in the Northern Caribbean Department (Volunteers are not allowed up there for safety reasons), but I just got someone from the Peace Corps office to answer his questions.
Everything really kicked off when the Ambassador (she’s new, maybe just two months into the job. She is career Foreign Service and was previously working at the Mexican Embassy) arrived. It was arranged for her to come with Daniel Ortega’s left hand man (that’s exactly how he was explained with me – left hand because he takes care of politics. Mr. Right Hand takes care of the money), and they did indeed walk in together. They went around together to every single student group, hearing about their products and services.
The morning was long, listening to all of the groups. There were some good products though:
Fungicide for crops that does not contaminate soil
Natural animal feed
Natural mouth wash
More animal feed
Cream for muscle pain
A really cool contraption to separate beans from their vine, great for small-time farmers
And more stuff that I do not remember at the moment
This year the organizers also asked Volunteers to send in short videos of innovative products, regardless of how much work the team did or how far they advanced in the competitions. I sent in three videos:
Bolsa de Zipper won first place, Most Innovative Product. Everyone at the Congress & Competition voted and my team was selected as the winner. It’s a shame that the group did not do any work all year, because this goes to prove that they could have been very successful. I’m probably going to be sassy and say that when I present the award to them later in the week.
Overall at the competition the cough syrup got second place. Vindicated!
My Final Thoughts
The event was excellent. It was very well run, and in my opinion better than last year. The talks were better, the kids and all of the teachers were more engaged. I do believe that the goals that Thomas, Matt, and Jessica had laid out ahead of time were met, which is a great accomplishment for them. I am just skeptical that the immense investment, in terms of time and money, is worth the payout. The participants received great trainings over the two days, but they will now all scatter. What effect will all of the conditioning have, especially in the absence of strong follow-up? I always say that people need to hear or see or experience things three times to believe them. This was number one. How are we going to get two and three to all of those kids? The Peace Corps does a ton of these summits/youth camps, and I am truly skeptical of their effectiveness, especially given the immense investment they take.
Given the money that these types of events require, the organizing Volunteers have to get grants. I have come to see grants as a grand waste of time in the Peace Corps, and potentially counter to our goals. The Peace Corps is intended to be hand-in-hand development. Become a community member, and dedicate yourself to informed community and human development. The Peace Corps is premised on human capital, not financial capital. Many NGO’s make uninformed handouts and create dependencies among communities. Ever worse still, some organizations build structures like schools or health clinics without working with locals to create a sustainable operating plan. And now these structures stand vacant.
Volunteers are actually prohibited from fundraising on their own. That rule does not bother me at all. What bothers me is that our staff in Managua disregard this rule and require us to fund-raise within our communities for certain projects, such as the Entrepreneurship Competitions. It is very difficult to asks for donations in the second poorest country in the hemisphere when you come from the richest country in the world. I suppose that the office would say that we are supposed to be fundraising with our counterparts for their projects, but many of them do not feel comfortable fundraising on their own. It is out of the question for the Ministry of Education.
Over time a few grants have become available to the Peace Corps. One of which is through PEPFAR, the Bush-era AIDS eradication initiative. It is for HIV and AIDS related activities. Second is USAID grants, which are few and far between. They are directed towards projects that relate to USAID’s political goals. And lastly there is PCPP, which is basically just crowdfunding funds from the general America public. However, very few strangers surf on over to the PCPP website and donate, so PCPP is usually Volunteers hitting up their friends and family in the states for cash.
Larger Peace Corps activities, such as the National Entrepreneurship Congress & Competition, as well as other youth camps, all hit up Volunteers for help. Girls camp. Soccer camp. HIV camp. Boys camp. Leadership camp; the list goes on. I am constantly getting e-mails, asking me to send PCPP links to my friends and family. I simply do not feel comfortable turning my friends and family into a revolving line of credit for Peace Corps Nicaragua activities; activities that I have repeatedly expressed skepticism about. And if my friends and family were the only viable sources of funds, I certainly wouldn’t go through the nightmare that is the Peace Corps small grants process. I would just directly solicit the money and bypass the bureaucracy. Assuming that my friends and family want to help me in my service as well as the country in which I serve, I suppose that they would trust me to properly administer the funds that they donate to me. In fact, there are probably some friends of mine who prefer to bypass the government altogether.
So that’s a wrap for 2015 and ostensibly my service. Back to León this afternoon. I’m glad that I now continue to focus on my business advisory projects, particularly the fish processing coop and the volcano cooperative.
