Incidents of Travel

Word of the Day: Dialectic

Posted on November 16, 2015 by einsler

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction…

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.

– President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Farewell Address

Being abroad for more than 20 months now, at times I feel very distant from the United States as well as Nicaragua. I am not Nicaraguan. I do not want to be. There are things that I love about Nicaragua, and things that I do not like. I do not think that I want to live here for the rest of my life. The same goes for the United States. In the news I see many things I do not like about my own country. I see things that scare me. I feel much safer in Nicaragua than I do in the United States. I go to schools every day here and I never worry about a gunman attack, and the same goes for malls and other public places. I could not feel the same way in my home country. After I heard about the attacks in Paris on Friday night I went for a quick walk around León in order to see one aspect of society here that I love. It was the evening and everyone was sitting out on the sidewalk as they always do. True, that night they were talking about how horrible the attacks were, but they had nothing to live in fear about themselves. We have come to think of the United States and other Western countries as ideal societies where we are safe, but a quick stroll down the street in the second poorest country in the Western hemisphere reveals the actual truth. In the West, we are not safe just sitting outside.

I don’t particularly want to live in the United States for the rest of my life either. There is so much hate, bigotry, religion, political corruption, and xenophobia that I don’t think that the United States is immune from a wave of political oppression, internment, or even systematic killings. I don’t know what the spark will be. I hope the spark never ever finds its tinder. But I have unfortunately come to believe that the United States is not immune from its own heinous crimes against its own people that it believes to be its internal enemies. I’m sure that some social critics would say that this mass internment has been underway for decades, if not centuries, and only has the potential to accelerate or spread. Coming down to Nicaragua, I thought of the country as a traditional conservative culture with high levels of intolerance and dogma. I was wrong. We are wrong. Ignorance certainly exists, but many people and very willing to listen to other ideas and change their own. I don’t see this plasticity in my own country. I far prefer ignorance to intolerance.

Maybe this utter disconnection from a sense of home makes me well suited to provide some commentary. I hope everyone finds it insightful.

I wouldn’t call myself a pacifist, but I am about as close to being a pacifist as one can be without actually being one. I’ve never been severely oppressed, so I can’t say that oppression is better than violence. But really, unless something is actively harming you or seeking to do so, I do not agree with the use of violence. My opposition to violence is rooted in my dislike for suffering. Violence begets suffering. Violence is a deliberate attempt to hurt someone else, so I try to avoid it at all costs.

Which brings us to Paris. It was ISIS. ISIS, at the very least, instigated the attacks. So France will now beat her chest and violently react to the attacks. Just now in the news I saw that France has heavily bombed Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State. But why? If France and an American-led coalition have been bombarding ISIS for more than a year now, why didn’t they attack these targets earlier, before the attack in Paris? Why not at the start of the aerial campaign? Why not when the intelligence was gathered? Why not the day before the attacks on Paris? Why didn’t Jordan carry the attacks out when their airman was burned alive and they, like France after them, promised a devastating response? Were we keeping a few targets around just in case we needed some shock and awe for the news media to sink her teeth into?

And why are all of the responses aerial? Why haven’t we seen the United States, or Jordan, or France, send troops to battle ISIS? I suppose that you can’t send troops unless a minimum 0f 2,000 people die in an attack. Anything less and you have to resort to unconventional warfare.

I wrote this last year, and it rings true again now:

We always attack. France has now attacked. We always choose violence. We have not heeded Eisenhower. Nor do I think that violence will be effective. The ISIS attacks are predicated on ideas. Ideas about the “West.” Ideas about religion. Ideas about killing, and if and when it is justifiable and called for. For thousands of year humans have tried to eradicate ideas with violence, but it has not been an effective tactic. I doubt that it will be effective this time.

So how do we attack the ideas? I don’t know. I wish I did. I wish I were an expert in conflict resolution. You can Google it. There are thousands of pages dedicated to this very idea that I am discussing here. I suppose we will need to engage in a discourse. The State Department may need to relentlessly try to communicate with ISIS and ask them, “Why?” and “How could we convince you to stop?” Everyday people may need to engage in this dialectic as well, whether it be through letters, e-mail, or in 140 characters or less. Yes, I am proposing that you talk to a terrorist. Maybe we make that a hashtag. #TtT. We may need to listen to our experts in peaceful conflict resolution, reconciliation, psychology, and dialogue, and put our collective powers in persuasion to use to persuade ISIS to stop. And this is a dialectic. Along the way we may indeed realize that there are things about ourselves we need to change. Ideas of our own that we need to shed.

Even more so, we need to engage in the same activity internally, among our own people. Every few months we are reminded that America has its own special type of soft target terrorism. Both as a country and as individuals we need to concede that our beliefs may not be infallible. Reducing intolerance will be far more effective than reducing guns.

Rather than dismissing a disagreeable person, we must engage, dialectically. Dismissing someone on Facebook is the Raqqa-bombing of social media. Dismissing the person does not dismiss the idea. Donald Trump says these things because people believe them. We need to get these people to not believe those things and to ourselves be open to changing our own beliefs and opinions. If you are offended by something on Facebook, don’t lash out at the author. First ask yourself why you are offended and if your feeling is rational, and if it is, then ask the author why he or she feels the way they feel. Start a dialogue, don’t end one.

The commenter is guilty of dismissing the author, but the author and everyone else is guilty of not trying to bring the commenter back into the fold and discussing his disagreement

Lastly, we need to be more cosmopolitan. We can’t selectively mourn based on race. If we approach this new dialogue without shedding our subconscious sense of Western superiority we will not be successful. We must admit that we too oppress, and be willing to stop that. And certainly, the news media plays a role. But the news media is part of the economy, and responds to market forces. If you read online newspapers or follow newspapers on Facebook that did not report on Beirut or Baghdad, stop visiting the websites and unfollow them on Facebook! Find more cosmopolitan sources of news.

Anyone who reads this far down, I seriously suggest that you Google conflict resolution, dialectic, or something related. Even reading the op-ed from the Sunday Times on “Teaching Peace in Elementary School” is a good start. Maybe war is necessary. I hope not. If it is the case, I wish it were not. Even if it is necessary, we will still have to confront ideas, be them those of ISIS or other organizations or political groups. ISIS is just the newest incarnation of ideas we have been fighting since 2001. Every single US President since I was born has ordered attacks in Iraq. We need to try something else or we are doomed for the list to get longer in 2016.

Posted in Philosophy | Tagged #, Air Force, Baghdad, Beirut, bomb, boots on the ground, cognitive dissonance, cosmopolitanism, Daesh, dialectic, dialogue, Eisenhower, Facebook, France, General Eisenhower, genocide, ground troops, gun control, guns, hashtag, Holocaust, humanism, ignorance, intolerance, Iraq, IS, ISIL, ISIS, Islamic State, liberal news media, mass shooting, mass shootings, military-industrial complex, New York Times, news media, Nicaragua, opression, pacifism, Paris, President, President Eisenhower, Raqqa, school shootings, social media, suffering, Syria, terrorism, terrorist, terrorists, Twitter, United States, violence, xenophobia | 2 Comments

Unholy Trinity of Public Land Management

Posted on November 13, 2015 by einsler

This gallery contains 2 photos.

This is a story of poverty, development and progress. It starts 50 – 40 years ago. Nicaragua has always been ‘too far from heaven and too close to hell.’ At first, this hell was Spain and its brutal colonial system. … Continue reading →

More Galleries | 3 Comments

Work

Posted on November 12, 2015 by einsler

By coincidence, it was the day that the government shutdown of 2013 ended. October 17, 2013 was the busiest work day of my life. I had an immensely long to-do list. I deliberately woke up early at a hotel room in Boston and immediately jumped on the phone with my duo in India to review the analysis they performed for me overnight. From there I hopped on another call or two, one of which while in a taxi to my client’s office, where we had back-to-back meetings into the early afternoon (we were in Boston for the day precisely for those meetings).

On the way from the office to Logan I was back on the phone. The bottled water I took from my hotel room was confiscated by TSA. I hadn’t opened it and completely forgot that I had it. My boss was on a flight or two before mine and wanted me to get standby on to his flight, so I could get home earlier. But I insisted on sticking with my later ticket. I was looking forward to sitting down in the airport, signing in to the free WiFi, and rattling off a few hundred necessary e-mails while making a few more phone calls.

And that afternoon in the airport was glorious. I wiped out that to-do list like the Romans wiped out the Carthaginians. By the time of my flight I felt accomplished and rejuvenated. By manipulating some spreadsheets, calling some colleagues, and firing off a flak storm of e-mails I had accomplished a monumental amount of “work.”

September 28, 2015 – León (an excerpt from my personal diary):

I woke up at 8:00 AM, ate breakfast, and got myself ready for the morning. At 9:00 I headed out on foot and trudged from local business to business, all of which I had days earlier dropped off fundraising letters at. At 9:45 I had a long visit with Julie at Azul, and at 10:30 I made it to La Union to buy groceries for the week. In my whole morning I did not manage to collect even one cent in donations.

At 2:00 I head out again, this time on my bike. It was blazingly hot. First I headed all the way west to Tech La Salle in fa- Sutiava to drop off a judge invitation letter. Then I traversed the city to go to the Department of Education in Fatima to drop off another judge invitation. To get there I found myself on some backroads northeast of the stadium that I had never been on before. From there I headed to La Estación for a bike tune-up. Within 10 minutes I was back on the road going to La UCC in deep Guadalupe, before doubling back to the Departmental Department of Education in El Calvario to drop off an official communication from the Minister of Education approving a series of events. I got home at 4:15 as it was starting to rain. From then until 9:00 I showered, chatted with Silvio, and finished the plan for tomorrow’s teacher training.

There was nothing particularly noteworthy about this day. It was typically atypical and mundane for my life in Nicaragua. My problem with a day like that one is that I worked very hard, and yet I really didn’t help anyone. I just worked towards planning an event. In the United States most of these tasks would have been accomplished digitally, but in Nicaragua I had to drop of physical letters to ensure that the right people would see them and do the right things with them. I worked particularly hard and felt particularly unaccomplished.

By that day in October of 2013 I already knew that I was leaving my job. I had accepted a nomination to serve as a Small Business Development Volunteer in Peace Corps Nicaragua, and I was expecting to get final medical clearance once my paperwork made it out of government shutdown purgatory. I didn’t choose to leave my job because I didn’t like it. In fact, I applied to the Peace Corps only 10 months into my first job out of college. But I always had a feeling that in the grand scheme of things, although I was helping my clients, my clients just didn’t need that much help. Sure, the country had gone through a financial crisis and we were marginally helping our clients manage risk to prevent another cataclysmic financial shock in the future, but it always felt contrived to me. My clients weren’t contracting us because they truly believed in a cause; they were just ticking off regulatory compliance boxes. In part, this feeling compelled me to accept the Peace Corps’ offer to serve.

I don’t work in professional services here in Nicaragua. I don’t work with any people that have an office culture. I work with teachers, administrators, tourist service providers, government workers, and rural cooperatives. Those who have e-mail do not check it regularly. Telecommunications is a whole new ballgame here because no one has a monthly plan. People buy “minutes” and text messaging packages on a nearly daily basis. Text messaging is hit or miss because not everyone buys texts. And getting someone to call you is not a sure bet either. Your best bet is calling someone yourself (implying that you need to use your minutes), or better yet, visiting them face-to-face (you better hope they are there).

“Work” in America has become making information available for someone else to consume. Send them a text or an e-mail. “Hard work” is using the niceties of office culture to get them to actually do something with that information. And work is completely detached from location. We work in the Matrix. Some sterile cubicle in a corner of Logan airport was sufficient for me to work, but I could have just as easily done that work from my house, office, client’s office, or pretty much anywhere that has a reliable 3G signal.

Whereas in Nicaragua, presence is critical to my success. I am constantly on the move, either with my bike or on a bus (or plopped in the back of a pick-up), off to visit a teacher or business. Teaching, training, and helping people gain experience are inherently face-to-face endeavors. Working in the Matrix does not exist in my Nicaragua. And these stark differences between work in the Matrix and work in Nicaragua beg the question, are we working at all when we are working in the Matrix? Are we actually producing anything of value that people will find truly useful in the future?

Recently, the extremely personal nature of work in Nicaragua has been very frustrating for some of my colleagues and me. The Peace Corps hosts numerous national events: youth camps, teacher trainings, more camps, competitions, counterpart conferences, and all sorts of other events. The Small Business Volunteers are gearing up for a competition/youth camp/teacher training three day hootenanny next week. And the routine is the same every time. Volunteers nominate participants, who have to submit applications, then a committee selects participants, and the Volunteer has to inform them and herd them to the event.

For me this process is infuriatingly time consuming. I get the initial invite, and I have to download the application to my thumb drive, go to a print shop, print it out, and then distribute the application. No one ever has it ready to hand in on time, so I have to go around and around to schools and businesses trying to get the applications back. Then I have to get it to the committee. I can’t scan it (no scanner), so I can either try to take a decent picture of the pages and e-mail it or try to get the actual application to Managua. After all of that hopefully some of my applicants get accepted. I get notified by e-mail (sometimes the participants get e-mailed also, but many Nicaraguans do not check their e-mail accounts regularly) and I have to start the process over again. I download the official invitation form, permission slips, and supplemental information to my thumb drive and I head over to a print shop to print it out, on my own dime. Then I bike around dropping off the papers and telling the invitees when I will be back around. I also make phone calls to invitees further out of town. They usually don’t pick up.

And it still doesn’t end there. Sometimes student camps ask for deposits, photos of participants, for us to travel with the participants, and even follow-up activities after the camp. Invitees drop out. Teachers have trouble getting permission to leave school for events so I have to troubleshoot, which usually entails having to print out even more documentation and dropping it off. For instance, today a teacher told me that the Department of Education did not know about the event so they would not give him permission to go. The local department of education should have been informed by their superiors, but it seems that they were not.

Of course I knew this would happen. Someone, somewhere, would forget to send the names and information to some other bureaucrat somewhere else. Or they would e-mail it, ensuring that the document would never ever see the light of day and be read by another human being. I feel like a courier for an organization I don’t even work for.

All of this is mind-numbing, time consuming, and infuriating. I know that there are more efficient ways of communicating. I know that Nicaragua, despite its challenges, can do better. I have been involved with projects where communication was handled better. I did not come here to be a courier. I came here to volunteer. Worst of all, the organizing committees (usually groups of Volunteers, counterparts, and office staff working out of Managua) are aware of the difficulties we face getting participants to attend these events because they face the same challenges themselves, but the committees always go about things the same way, just adding more and more steps, documentation, and volunteers responsibilities every time.

Here is part of the e-mail Peace Corps Nicaragua Volunteers received for this year’s Leadership Camp:

The application process
This year, you can nominate up to 4 youth from your community. As in previous years, we ask that when you nominate a youth that you fill in the “RANK” box at the top of the application, putting 1 for the applicant you most want to attend, 2 for second, and so on to make known your personal opinion of the best qualified nominees.

Attached are the applications and permission slips that will be due Monday, November 9th, 2015. Applications need to be scanned/photographed and sent to Maria Jane Doe (mariajanedoe@gmail.com) or placed in Maria Jane Doe’s locker (SB 63) in the office. Questions? Call Maria Jane Doe at XXXX.YYYY.

After the youth are selected, each participant will need to pay a non-refundable fee of c$100 to save their spot, which must be turned in to their respective PCV as soon as the youth confirms that they want to attend the camp. The PCV will then hold onto c$100 until the day that their sponsored camper leaves and they will then give this money back to the camper to bring to the camp. We are doing this deposit in order to diminish the number of last minute camp drop outs and insure that the campers come to camp with the money. This c$100 is not for their transport. Transport to the camp will be reimbursed to the youth during camp, meaning the youth will need to front the money for their initial transport to camp. Their return transport will also be given to them during the camp. All meals and a bed are provided through camp funds.

We will contact you about which participants were selected by Monday, November 16th and you will need to help them to prepare to go to the camp, raise the c$100 deposit and acquire the initial transportation funds.

Important:

PCVs are super SUPER essential to the success of the Youth Leadership Camp. If youth from your community are selected to participate in YLC you will be our primary point of contact throughout the process. You will be responsible for:

Making sure applications and copy of permission slips are turned in and complete
Ranking your nominations
Providing the packing list when selected
Collecting non-refundable C$100 (fundraising with your youth) and then holding onto those funds until travel day.
Finding a replacement if your camper drops out after January 1st
Holding on to permission slips (until travel day) because the camper will need a hard copy of parental permission
Accompanying your selected youth to central meeting point before camp
Communicating with your selected camper(s), Maria Alejandra and the rest of the Leadership Camp Planning Committee
Supporting a community project or projects initiated by your selected youth after the camp ***

*** In an attempt to improve the success of TLC, this year we are focusing our efforts on encouraging the youth to implement a community project in the months following the camp. The project can be as simple as replicating a charla they received during camp or as big as they want it to be (and can feasibly manage). We need YOUR help to do this! We ask that you all are intentional with who you encourage to apply to insure they are eager to undertake a project with the skills they learn from the camp – Are there any particular youth in your site that are excited to implement a community project? Are there any youth that you would like to train as a mini counterpart? – We think that sending a local youth to leadership camp will not only be a unique and amazing opportunity for them, but you can use this trained individual as a community ally your own service in site.

After the camp is completed, we ask that you follow up with your sponsored youth and review their community project plan they will have created during YLC. We then ask that you encourage and supervise your youth as they implement their project. YLC counselors will also be assisting the PCVs in monitoring their camper’s project progress. We hope to have projects reports from the youth and their local PCVs by the end of April. Ultimately, the initiative to implement a project post camp is the camper’s responsibility, but we hope that with a small time commitment from a PCV we can provide the support and guidance needed for the youth to undertake a community initiative. More information on how PCVs will help facilitate their sponsored youth’s project will be provided when camper selection is completed. ***

… And end all war by noon.

Work in Nicaragua is too personal, and in America it has become too impersonal. For the Peace Corps, I would set expectations more firmly up front with Counterparts. Unless they live in electric or internet-poor rural communities, they are expected to check their e-mail and have a thumb drive to save files. I think that it is a completely reasonable request of professional workers in a developing country. And as for students, all applications and other important documents can be posted to public Facebook pages. Most adolescents here have Facebook. If we stuck to our guns and forced our counterparts and students to reasonably engage with us over the internet we could cut out a lot of aggravation for Volunteers.

Of course, every Volunteer and every site is different. I live in a big city. Things are spread out. The Department of Education is a 20 minute bike ride from my house. My students and teachers live in dispersed neighborhoods. Other Volunteers have more compact sites and can easily walk around to see all of their students and counterparts. In-person communication is certainly less time consuming for them than it is for me. A lot of Volunteers also spend a lot time working with youth, especially health and environment volunteers. I spend a lot of time in the high schools, but I have hundreds of students and I find it difficult to get to know many of my students. I am closer with my counterparts and my business clients. This makes nominating youth to Peace Corps sponsored camps more difficult for me, as opposed to other Volunteers, who may themselves be serving on the organizing committees. But even more so, I think this variety of site realities calls for new ways of communicating with our counterparts and beneficiaries. The way I have to do things now is simply not sustainable, especially in a big city.

As for work in America, I think that some changes are needed as well. A lot of what we do is predicated on a belief that if something is documented, whether in a PowerPoint “deck” or a memo or other sort of guiding document, anyone can become knowledgeable in the subject matter by e-mail osmosis. Truly, that is not the case. We also need to do a better job with memos and documentation, ensuring that they actually create value for an organization. If not, the organizational leaders need to get to the root of why people feel that the documents are necessary and work towards correcting the need for value-less documentation.

Posted in Peace Corps, Vlog, Work | Tagged America, Britney, Britney Spears, courier, diary, government shutdown, impersonal, Logan, Matrix, moderation, Nicaragua, Oscar Wilde, osmosis, personal, shutdown, Work, Work Bitch | 1 Comment

The Problem with Micro-Finance

Posted on November 10, 2015 by einsler

My article on food processing is not the only economics-related article making its way around the Peace Corps Nicaragua. Another Volunteer recently wrote a blog post about women in micro-finance in Nicaragua. I wanted to take the opportunity of my article being published and the blog post to critique the microfinance system in Nicaragua. It is not providing the kind of economic support that I described in my article. It is not providing the kind of economic support that will create well-paying jobs and the ability for a business to grow.

Before coming to Nicaragua I had heard a lot about micro-finance. I thought that it supported innovative entrepreneurs who wanted to launch new products and services in their communities. I found this extremely appealing.

My first exposure to micro-financing was with León 2000, one of the same micro-financers mentioned in the other Volunteer’s blog post. As a way to get to know the business community in my new site they offered to let me conduct 20 customer satisfaction surveys for them. They were all over the city and I was riding my bike to neighborhoods I didn’t even know existed. It was pretty cool. However, I was disappointed in the types of businesses I was visiting. They ranged from convenience stores to mattress saleswomen, to tortillerías and electronic repair shops in between. However, not one of the twenty small businesses that I visited offered a truly unique product or service. They were all the same old ideas you see all around Nicaragua.

All of these small business owners were entrepreneurs, but they lacked a vital component of success in entrepreneurship: an innovative idea. When more and more businesses saturate the same market they only serve to drive down prices and eat away at their own margins. It is not a recipe for income growth. I was disappointed to see that micro-financers and NGO’s were actively supporting these types of businesses. I don’t doubt that these businesses needed capital, and I do not doubt that these businesses help keep food on the table for millions of Nicaraguans, but they are certainly not driving growth in Nicaragua.

Take the case of the artisan in the other blog post. The Nicaraguan market is absolutely saturated with piggy bank salespeople. Street children roam León trying to sell them to tourists. There are also a few pottery salespeople in the central market. I bought a small piggy bank for C$ 10 there. I use it as a visual aid when I give talks on savings. That’s 36 cents! After taking into account the input costs, the producer and salesperson can only be earning a pittance.

My chanchito

If non-profits are going to continue offering microloans (they are known as micro because they offer far less money than traditional banks, but the capital is sufficient for micro-businesses in developing countries), then they need to emphasize innovation and creativity. They either need to seek out entrepreneurs with new ideas, conduct market studies to identify needs in local markets, or pair their lending with innovation, creativity, and idea generation training. I consider this training for my teaching counterparts and my students one of the most important aspects of my service and something extremely valuable that I can “leave behind” when I leave. One of my main to-dos for the remainder of this year is to plan a teacher training on this very subject (to most likely be delivered in January or February). I’m hoping that the business university I often collaborate with will be interested in hosting the event and contributing expertise.

One theory of commerce and pricing posits that producers are paid based on the amount of value that they add to primary goods. Farmers take dirt and seeds and water and they create edible fruits and vegetables. This is extremely valuable, so we pay them for their produce. However, many other producers take these primary goods and process them into intermediate and finished goods, adding value along the way. Think wheat – flour – bread. That’s a basic chain of value-added production. The more difficult or capital intensive the production, the more value they add, and the greater price they can fetch. Creating a jelly out of mangoes is an involved process, so it earns a greater price on the market than sliced green mangoes. Even more so, processing that uses machines and energy, such as ovens, canning machines and bottlers, tempering machines, mixers and blenders, dehydrators, sealers, pasteurizers, etc., add a lot of value, especially when they extend the shelf life of perishable goods, so their final products fetch a handsome price on the market, especially in the absence of a lot of competition. Unfortunately, most Nicaraguan entrepreneurs are not adding a lot of value to primary and intermediate goods, so they are not generating a lot of income for themselves. Sliced green mangoes abound. And this is just to mention the food sector. The same is true for textiles, metals, chemicals, woods, plastics, and other industries. As you can probably tell, I consider clay piggy banks just some more ‘sliced green mangoes.’

One avenue that micro-financers can pursue is finding small businesses that need machinery and to help finance the machinery. To be fair, there are some organizations in Nicaragua undertaking these projects. BPN in Managua comes immediately to mind, but there are far more organizations trying to organize groups of women and teach them arts skills. Unfortunately, I doubt that this will lead to sustainable development.

I suppose I should admit that this article is a thinly veiled attempt to criticize the current approach to gender and development. After all, this article does directly piggy-back off of a post from the Peace Corps Nicaragua Gender & Development blog. I feel that many organizations and volunteers enter the international development world and immediately declare themselves feminists without considering the philosophical underpinnings of feminism and the economics of female poverty. They lament machismo culture and they being to formulate development schemes like Pro Mujer’s women artisan groups, as featured in the GAD blog post. And in the short run, yes, maybe some previously under-trained and unemployed women will earn an income. But in the long run these schemes will have no impact on the reason that these women were under-trained and unemployed in the first place.

Every now and then I see this meme pop up on the internet and it frustrates me. I lament poverty, whether feminine or otherwise, all over the world. But the fact of the matter is that we do not earn based on how hard we work. We may earn more if we work more, but that is only because we produce more. We create more value. Many women in Africa are poor because they are unfortunately fairly unproductive. They are not adding a lot of value. And ironically, the proof is in the picture; it unravels the quote that so many people attach to the picture. Burning wood for energy is not a particularly efficient source of energy, it has severe negative externalities (deforestation), and hauling wood on one’s back is also extremely inefficient and deleterious to one’s health, eventually making people even less efficient workers in the future. Women in Africa are poor because they are unproductive members of economic society. A successful development scheme should target the reason why this is the case, not simply try to make them more productive.

Now I know that human worth transcends economic productiveness. Women all over the world deserve happiness and dignity regardless of their economic productivity (don’t take me out of context here and turn me into a meme, please!). These objectified women most likely are lacking in these aspects of quality of life, and I support and commend anyone working to correct that. Societal programs and women and girls’ empowerment programs may be important aspects of development as a result. And I am personally no expert in how to approach this aspect of development (or any aspect of development I suppose). However, I do feel strongly that the proponents of gender and development need to explore equality philosophically, socially, and economically, and then come up with programs that target the problem. The current solutions are lacking and simply perpetuating the no-value economy that I see here in Nicaragua.

So that my colleagues on the Gender & Development Committee do not feel picked on, I do want to point out an article in Foreign Policy that I have qualms with. For the most part, I agree with the first part of the article. It also calls into question misguided micro-finance and entrepreneurship programs. However, the second part of the article proposes a refocus in the development community on large-scale urban industrial development. I wholeheartedly agree that industrial parks and free trade zones create jobs. However, they are not well paying jobs and although they can be used to alleviate poverty, I don’t see how they can be relied on to promote development.

In the case of Nicaragua, I have a theory about formal employment and wages. Nicaragua has a small formal sector. The number of companies is fairly small, so they are fairly powerful when it comes to setting the prevailing wage. They can set wages as low as the government will let them. And the government has excellent relations with large businesses in Nicaragua. Many prominent members of the government and the Ortega family are themselves owners and shareholders in large businesses. Due to this influence the government has set very low minimum wages; so low, in fact, that many people don’t find it worthwhile to seek formal employment. They would rather sit around on the sidewalk and slice and sell green mangoes.

Bringing in more foreign factories and industrial parks is not going to set Nicaragua on a path to sustained economic growth. Workers earn low wages and profits go abroad. A few weeks ago I was extremely disheartened while working with my absolute favorite student of this year. We were talking about potential clients for his milk with carao beverage and the wages that they earn. He told me that the absolute best source of employment in León is the Yazaki free trade zone factory, and most people aspire to work there. They earn C$ 4,500 a month, the equivalent of $162.25. It may not be destitute poverty, but it is certainly not the quality of life that I hope to see for Nicaraguans. The Foreign Policy article (which, to its credit, focused on poverty alleviation rather than growth) did itself a disservice by downplaying the impact of entrepreneurship programs. 1. Work with governments to create institutional policies that support growth (what the Foreign Policy article called the “Golden Thread”), 2. Promote creativity and critical thinking in teachers and the formal education system. 3. Promote, finance, and support innovative new businesses, That’s my secret sauce for international development to get the private sector to flourish over time.

My favorite student of the year…

Wait, no, here Johnny is doing his charismatic thing at the Entrepreneurship Competition

Posted in Peace Corps, Philosophy, Teaching | Tagged added value, Africa, art, artisan, artisans, bank, banking, blog, blogging, capital, development, dignity, economic development, economic growth, entrepreneurship, Foreign Policy, free trade zone, gender & development, gender and development, innovation, international development, Let Girls Learn, meme, micro lending, micro loans, micro-finance, microfinance, Nicaragua, painting, Peace Corps, piggy bank, production, productivity, quality of life, saving, savings, United States Peace Corps, US Peace Corps, value, value added, value-added chain, value-added production, women, women and development | 1 Comment

The Power of Food Processing

Posted on November 10, 2015 by einsler

Peace Corps Nicaragua has a Volunteer magazine, Va Pué. An article I wrote was published in the latest edition, and I have copied it here for anyone outside of the Volunteer sphere who wants to read it:

Nicaragua abounds with food, fresh from the Earth (or the sea, as will be the case for this article). Coffee, vegetables, pelibüey, citrus, ginger, basil, poultry, and innumerable varieties of bananas and plaintains, to name a few. Coconuts, pineapples, jicaro, sesame, sugar cane, beans, and of course maiz, to name a few more. And using these fruits of the Earth, Nicaraguans make a variety of foods, including my personal favorites, pollo a la plancha, arroz aguada, and chancho con yucca (basically, if it is marinated in naranja agria, I am a fan).

However, for the most part, Nicaraguans do not process their primary edible goods and sell them nationally or internationally. Of course there are exceptions. Coffee is a major export crop, as is tobacco and a few other products. But there is a major untapped potential for Nicaragua to process more foods locally, import less from abroad, and export more. There are a number of economic advantages to this strategy. Rather than paying the Ticos and the Salvadoraneans for their food, Nicaragua would be generating income locally. The Cordóba, which has been on the long slow slide of devaluation, could stabilize. And importantly, there would be more high paying jobs here in Nicaragua. As a matter of fact, Nicaragua, as a member state of CAFTA-DR has favorable trading conditions with the United States and other countries in Central America and the Caribbean, but Nicaragua does not reach its allotted export quota for a staple as basic as dairy.

There are a number of businesses around the country working on value-added production in the agribusiness sector. Nicaraguan beef is popular in Venezuela. Flor de Caña rum is world renowned, and there is a company in Rivas exporting tropical fruit pulps to the United States. Moropotente beer has also gained notoriety nationally, although all of their ingredients are imported, not sourced locally. Unfortunately, these enterprises are the exception, not the norm.

In Poneloya, a Pacific-side beach in León, there is a small fishing cooperative that goes by “Cooperativa de Pescadores del Pacífico Primero de Septiembre.” The Cooperative was formed in the early 80’s after the revolution. Its President to this day, Don Juan Carlos, joined the Sandinista rebels when he was 14. He couldn’t read before some of the other rebels taught him how to. After the revolution he returned to Poneloya and formed the cooperative with his hometown friends. In the early 2000s the government sent Don Juan Carlos to Panama and Peru to learn about deep water fishing. In addition to his new skills, he brought back an idea.

In Peru, he saw fishermen grinding their catch of the day and making “tortas de pescado” – fish cakes. Don Juan Carlos saw this as a profitable idea and introduced it to his cooperative. The coop invested in equipment for the process, and a foreign development organization helped them build a factory where they could process their fish in a sanitary environment. And ever since then they have been making fish cakes from the local catch and selling them locally. A half-pound tray (the fish cakes come in small, medium, and large sizes, but all the trays have a half pound of food on them) sells for C$35. However, their only clients until recently have been small restaurants and bars at the beach and in the city of León. Business has been slow, and many members of the cooperative and the community have become disillusioned with the fish cakes idea.

The fishing cooperative needs to expand its market and increase sales in order to produce enough trays a month to be profitable. Students from the University of Commercial Sciences (La UCC, León) have recently began working with the cooperative to help them increase sales, particularly by approaching Wal-Mart of Nicaragua (Pali, Maxi-Pali, and La Unión) about selling within their stores. This would be a great boost for the cooperative, and importantly, it would give this impoverished fishing village another source of steady income, in addition to the trickle of backpackers that stream through to enjoy the beach.

The cooperative is not stopping at fish cakes either. They have an innovative solar drying oven that uses solar panels and volcanic rocks to concentrate dry heat. They are dehydrating fish (a delicacy for Semana Santa, I am told) and also working on making fish flour. Basically, they take fish heads and fish bones, dry them out and then grind them up into a powder. It is a great natural alternative to consommé, and it can also be used as an animal feed, especially for pigs.

As Volunteers are working with members of their communities, I encourage them to think about commercial development. In the Entrepreneurial Education sector, I think we have valid roles as advisers and as consultants. As consultants, we can help our clients improve their business management skills. But as advisers, we can talk about strategy. We owe it to our clients to talk about the economic realities of the country and help them filter through good and bad ideas for the expansion of their companies. Value-added production is certainly a valid theme for advisory work, in my opinion.

And this sort of work does not have to be limited to the Entrepreneurial Education Program (the new name for the Small Business Development program). Why do families who get a new oven only have to sell baked goods within their community? Packaging and distributing the products could be far more profitable. Community gardens are undoubtedly beneficial for local nutrition and health, but their effect could be magnified if participants worked on processing the vegetables. Yuppies at Whole Foods back in the States would salivate over all natural chutneys and salsas made from a small community in the Nicaraguan highlands. Anyone working with a youth group could also take a more industrial route and build a simple solar food dryer. There are instructions in the Peace Corps Nicaragua cookbook and it is a far more efficient method than putting stuff up on the tin roof and hoping it does not rain. Anyone with one of these solar dryers could easily dry fruits such as papaya or mango, and then slather them in chocolate and outsell the chocobanano lady down the street.

Granted, successful commercial development, especially on an international scale, is not an easy, nor a quick process. However, there are many organizations in Nicaragua that can help Volunteers and communities. I would personally recommend partnering with universities that have agronomy and business concentrations. In addition, there exists a number of NGO’s working in this sort of rural business development. Technoserve is currently making a push in Nicaragua, and the One Acre Fund is another option for Volunteers that want to pursue grants with their counterparts.

The next time you make a trip to the supermarket, take note of how many items in your basket are imported from abroad. Then reflect on your surroundings: the fruit trees in your patio, your host family finca, and the crops produced in your rural communities. Let’s pull a 180, and instead of seeing Hecho en Costa Rica in Nicaraguan supermarkets, let’s strive to see Hecho en Nicaragua when we are back in the States!

Click here for a Google Drive link to the full magazine edition if you are interested.

The mangrove walk

Nearby Las Peñitas gets most of the visitors, but I love Poneloya. It is one of my favorite places in Nicaragua and when I walk down the street I feel like I am in my own little Caribbean village.

You can visit the Cooperative if you want to. They also offer tours of the mangroves behind their property. They try to charge $10 per person, but I suggest haggling that down. It is not worth $10 and it is really just a short walk through the mangroves. It is nice and tranquil though. Pair it with a day at the beach (usually empty, with very strong surf, but no rocks in the water like at the more popular Peñitas beach). There are makeshift cabañas set up on the beach that you can rent for C$ 50, but if you buy food and drinks they may not charge you for the use of the cabañas. And I recommend the food, especially the fried fish and the shellfish soup. There are a group of ladies in one of the cabañas near the bocana that make great food and the prices are really cheap for León.

Beware the rocks of Penitas

The Cooperative is a short walk from the bocana of Poneloya. That’s where the bus turns around to head back out. Just get off there and walk up the hill. Take the first right and walk until you can only go left or right. Go left, and walk a few more hundred yards until there is a dirt path off to your right leading to a building with a fence around it. That’s the Cooperative.

Buses leave for Poneloya every 40 minutes from Mercadito in the Sutiaba neighborhood of León. The trip costs C$ 12.50 and it takes under an hour to get to the bocana. Getting back from Poneloya takes longer because the bus enters Las Peñitas first before heading back to León. The buses are frequented by tourists so the attendant should be able to help you with any questions if you speak Spanish. Avoid walking around in either beach community after dark.

Posted in Logistics, Peace Corps, Philosophy | Tagged beach, economic development, exporting, fish, fish cakes, fishing, food processing, magazine, Poneloya, Va Pues | 7 Comments

Momotombito

Posted on November 8, 2015 by einsler

There is nothing like the sweet taste of working on a project, planning, communicating, seeing it through, executing, and feeling a sense of success at the other end.

Back on Ometepe I was introduced to Marco, from Mateare. He works with a fellow Volunteer, Dave. Dave lives in Mateare, which is an hour from León on the road to Managua. Marco is a hammock maker. And he makes nice stuff. He also belongs to a fishing cooperative (Mateare is on the shores of Lake Managua). At the conference on Ometepe Marco got the idea to use the cooperative to offer tours to Momotombito, a volcanic island in Lake Managua. Dave and I hatched a plan to help Marco and his cooperative. Dave would help the cooperative with the business end of things, and I would help the cooperative make connections with tour operators in León (Mateare is not on the tourist radar).

Unfortunately Dave is in the United States at the moment, but the plan coalesced today in a pilot tour for tour operators. I brought five different tour operators from León to go with the cooperative on a boat tour to Momotombito. Momotombito means “Little Momotombito.” It is a small volcanic island near the grand Momotombo Volcano on the mainland. The island is not inhabited, and there are no tour groups that go there. There are also pre-Colombian petroglyphs on the island and on other small islands in its vicinity.

The summit is completely forested

Three Americans, three Nicaraguans, and an Italian

Was the tour perfect? No. Was the boat fast? Definitely not. Did we see any petroglyphs? Nope. Does the cooperative need to invest more in preparing their boats and the island for tourists? Yes. And is Dave up to the job of advising the cooperative as they go through this process? Absolutely. There is a lot of natural beauty on the island and it affords excellent views of Momotombo volcano. The tour guides appreciated the trip and all seem interested in bringing some of their clients there. From the start I always said that I saw myself as a networking agent. Now it is the job of the tour guides to stay in contact with the cooperative and organize tours with their clients. If they have any questions along the way I will of course be there to help them and the cooperative.

Even though it was a tour to Momotombito, in some ways Momotombo still stole the show. It just reigns majestic in the background. It is fitting, since the volcano has been central to many different episodes in Nicaraguan history. The city of León, the oldest European city in our entire hemisphere, was originally at the base of Momotombo. And people with interest in building a canal through Panama circulate a stamp depicting Momotombo exploding, which prompted the US Congress to back the Panama rather than the Nicaragua canal. Also, don’t you think that Momotombo would be a great name for a jazz lounge?

Momotombo

Momotombito, innactive and completely forested

Surveying the terrain of the island

Some people saw the image on an elephant. I just don’t see it though.

Getting to Mateare is easy from Managua. From Mercado Israel, take any bus headed to Mateare, Nagarote, La Paz Centro, León, or Chinandega. It shouldn’t be more than C$ 20 or C$ 25 and it takes about an hour. And coming from León, take any bus heading to Managua except the Carretera Vieja bus (C$ 35 ish). On a slower ruteado bus it could take an hour and a half or longer. The interlocales mini-vans will also drop you off in Mateare, but they will charge you the full C$ 54 fare to Managua. They only take an hour though.

The cooperative currently only works with groups, but if you are willing to pay for gas I am sure they will take small parties out on the lake. You can call Don Marco at 7736-7087 (Movistar) or 8351-0113 (Claro) or the Cooperative President, José Guido, at 7780-7121.

The five tour agencies on the trip were:

I only invited tour operators who organize group and private tours, are known for quality trips, and could be flexible enough to offer a new tour such as Momotombito.

Boat selfie

Last thing – Don Marco is a talented hammock maker and displays his craft on the side of the highway in front of his house in Mateare. You may catch a glimpse from your window on the bus, but I suggest a visit. He makes all sorts of styles, and if you call ahead you can ask him to design something for you, such as a hammock with your name, initials, or the flag of any country in the world.

Hammock contraptions

Don Marco’s hammocks

And the current status of the Occidente Bucket List:

Isla Juan Venado
~~Salinas Grandes Beach~~
~~Volcan Cosigüina~~
Volcan San Cristobal
~~Volcan Telica~~
~~Momotombo~~
~~Momotombito~~
~~Nagarote~~
León Viejo
Jiquilillo Beach
Wetlands of Chinandega
~~Climb the Cathedral~~
~~Ruben Darío Museum (which is a block from my house)~~
~~Myths and Legends Museum~~
Botanical Gardens

Posted in León, Logistics, Travel | Tagged boat ride, boat tour, boat trip, bucket list, community tourism, island, lake, Lake Managua, León, logistics, Managua, Mateare, project, project management, sustainable tourism, tour, tour guide, tourism, tourism development, volcano | 4 Comments

Gender Equality in Nicaragua

Posted on November 8, 2015 by einsler

This article is being cross-posted on my economics blog, The Economics Of … Check out the other blog if you’d like! The article was also submitted to the Peace Corps Nicaragua Gender & Development Committee for publishing on their blog, but they declined to respond.

A book that I read recently that influenced me greatly was Why Nations Fail. The thesis of the book is that the main differentiator between the development path of nations is neither geography nor culture, but instead the institutions of the country, and how inclusive they are of the population. The more politically and economically inclusive, the more development potential, past and present.

I am very compelled to the thesis, and I tend to agree with the theory that culture does not have a strong effect. For the very most part I believe, scientifically, that all humans have equal capacities for intelligence and that characterizing a culture as “lazy” or “hard working” can be an inaccurate generalizing claim based in racist tendencies. The authors instead demonstrate that what may superficially look like a lack of economic motivation on the part of citizens may instead be a response to the lack of economic stimulus and opportunity that exists in the country due to poor societal institutions. For instance, a farmer may not exploit her land to its fullest potential because agricultural price policies lead to over-supply in the market. Or rather, laborers may not seek full employment because of strict government wage schedules across all industries that keep wages artificially low and working is literally not worth the bother.

Nevertheless, the idea that culture may inform economic divergence between nations nags at me. Rugged individualism, the importance of hard work, and the Protestant work ethic are well engrained in my American psyche. In addition, I routinely hear from Nicaraguans that they are an haragán (lazy) people, don’t like to work, and that their labor doesn’t size up to other countries’.

So how do I reconcile the theory with my conditioning and what I hear here in Nicaragua? First of all, folk-theories about rugged individualism, the importance of hard work, and the Protestant work ethic are probably just artifacts of a colonial world riveted by racism. I’m sure there are thousands of essays, papers, and books on Max Weber and his virtues and follies. I won’t delve further into that. As for the self-characterizations of the Nicaraguans as lazy and not hard working, I think that they may have internalized their own oppression and poverty. The imperialism, tyranny, and their derivative poverty that they have lived under for hundreds of years have become to such an extent part of the Nicaraguan psyche that they legitimately start to believe it and express it in their actions. I have seen multiple times teachers, who are poor people themselves subject to the same oppressive institutions as their students, lecture their students telling them that they are poor, come from a lazy culture, and are inferior to other countries. The result of this conditioning is that the students will begin to act accordingly. And these attitudes and behaviors will last for the rest of their lives. In effect, even though culture does not have a direct impact on development, cultural norms and beliefs can become entrenched in the institutions of a country itself, and institutions do affect development.

“The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Another profound aspect of the Nicaraguan culture that has become more deeply entrenched and truly institutionalized is machismo. Machismo is a cultural system that values qualities traditionally considered to be masculine over qualities traditionally considered to be feminine. It manifests itself in many aspects of life. At its most innocuous machismo dictates the games and activities that parents play with their children, and at its most destructive it leads to domestic and psychological violence against women and even femicide. Economically, machismo manifests itself through gender roles: jobs that are assumed to be for women and others that are presumed to be more suitable for men. For instance, in Nicaragua employers typically search for women only for positions such as clothing store attendant, house maid, secretaries, childcare, nursing, and chefs/waitresses (often the same person) at small eateries. Men are deemed more suitable for management, transportation, medicine (especially surgery), physical labor, finance, and engineering. From what I’ve seen, secondary education is more equitable, but primary education is more of the feminine realm (and yes, primary school teachers make a little bit less money than their secondary counterparts, which I find asinine given the importance of primary education and how challenging the work is).

The results of this culture are numerous and deleterious. First, women on average earn less money than men, so they often find themselves financially dependent on men even when they would be better off single. This leads to health and emotional consequences, such as being coerced into having unwanted children. Furthermore, seeing less potential for financial attainment after school, women will seek less education. This leaves women with fewer opportunities, especially well-paying opportunities, so they turn to the informal sector, which constitutes 80% of Nicaraguan employment, and is overwhelmingly feminine (men are more likely to immigrate out of Nicaragua, especially to Costa Rica or Panama).

I work with a cooperative that has 12 male members and one female member. The cooperative is acquiring a small restaurant to feed their guests, and they let me know that the female member would be placed in charge of the restaurant since that is naturally a feminine task. The woman immediately interjected, stating her reluctance and her lack of knowledge about cooking and restaurant management. Nevertheless, she remains in this capacity. This decision winds up hurting the whole cooperative. Maybe she is better at guest relations or accounting, and maybe a male member of the cooperative has skills suited for cooking and restaurant management. If their roles were re-arranged the cooperative would be operating more optimally and probably obtain more profits for its associates, but a machismo culture prevents this from panning out.

The informal sector in Nicaragua is hard work for a pittance. It usually involves waking up early to buy basic food ingredients, then making snacks to sell on the streets or in the bus terminals. Competition ensures that margins are thin to non-existent. In addition, being self-employed, these women have no benefits. They literally cannot afford to get sick and miss a day or work, and they are not paying into the Nicaraguan social security system to hopefully one day retire with even a modest pension that the system provides.

This is the institutionalization of machismo, and it pervades the public sector as well. In Nicaragua, the law states that for high ranking officials, there needs to be equality. For instance, if a mayor is a woman, then the vice-mayor must be a man, and vice versa (curiously, the President and Vice-President are both men). But this mandatory equality is only at the highest levels of government. The bureaucratic ranks are male-dominated.

Apparently only women are suitable for retail

Basically, I am describing the institutionalization of culture. Insofar as an exclusive culture (such as machismo) becomes institutionalized, culture very much can have an effect on the development of a country, and I believe it is having that profound effect on Nicaragua.

Despite what I have observed about the pervasiveness of institutionalized machismo, I have seen some conflicting reports in the news. The Economist reported last year that the World Economic Forum’s Gender-Gap Index ranked Nicaragua sixth-place globally for gender equality. Based on what I have observed and described here, I find this very hard to believe. And a deeper dive into the WEF’s data seems to corroborate my doubt.

The score each country receives in the index is an average score of four sub-categories:

Economic Participation and Opportunity (0.635)
Educational Attainment (1.000)
Health and Survival (0.980)
Political Empowerment (0.544)

Nicaragua’s 0.789 was sufficient to rank sixth place worldwide.

Nicaragua receives low marks for female participation in the work force, wage equality, and participation in civic life. On the other hand, it gets high marks for education and health. And it is true, as I mentioned, Nicaragua has a high number of female government leaders – statutorily. Nicaragua even had a female President, elected in 1990. Doña Violeta was the first in the line of three non-Sandinista interregnum presidents. Overall though, Nicaragua’s marks for economic participation and political empowerment were mediocre. Nicaragua’s relative strength in the ranking comes from educational attainment (theoretically perfect, according to the WEF’s methods) and health outcomes.

WEF’s data for educational attainment come from UNESCO. However, UNESCO compiles its reports from figures sent in from the Nicaraguan government, which recent investigative reports have exposed as being highly suspect. UNESCO’s last submission from Nicaragua was for the 2010 school year. Publically released information in Nicaragua has been self-contradictory with regards to enrollment levels, and over a ten year period prior to the numbers released for 2014, publically released data actually registered a decrease in the number of students (despite population growth and a large youth population), and then an enormous increase in 2014. In addition, there is evidence that the numbers are being smoothed by selectively including tertiary education, technical education, and adult literacy courses. In addition, there is no comparison in public data between students in conventional daily classes vs. secondary school students in weekend classes. Taken all together, the WEF’s educational attainment score is not reliable, even though it is the largest contributor to Nicaragua’s impressive ranking.

Nicaragua’s score for “Health and Survival” is almost startling. It ranks first place worldwide, which is an amazing accomplishment, especially for the second poorest country in the hemisphere. But again, on closer inspection, I doubt the conclusion. Health and Survival only takes into account two statistics: sex ratio at birth, and healthy life expectancy. Worldwide, women have a longer life expectancy than men. The index attempts to correct for that. However, I think the effect may be particularly strong in Nicaragua, which may account for some of Nicaragua’s strength in the area. Men, on average, have riskier lifestyles. Many more men than women are alcoholics, and men, due to their prevalence in heavy labor jobs, face many more occupational hazards. Fishing and logging are the two most dangerous jobs in the United States; imagine the risk in a country where OSHA does not exist and most fishing, logging, agriculture, and small industry is nearly completely unregulated. In one town alone, Chichigalpa, there is a neighborhood known as the Island of Widows because so many men (an estimated 20,000) have died from kidney failure related to sugar cane harvesting.

In addition, “Health and Survival” does not take into account other indicators of feminine health, such as domestic violence and abuse and teenage pregnancy. This is a methodological choice on the part of the index creators. They want to capture gaps between the sexes, and these factors are not subject to gaps – men simply cannot get pregnant, and there are no data collected on domestic violence and abuse against men in Nicaragua (or most countries). Nevertheless, Nicaragua has the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in Central America. One in four new mothers are under 18 years old. This leads to health complications for the young women, plus lower educational attainment and lifelong economic dependency on providers, who very well may be the abusive men who got them pregnant in the first place. Domestic violence and abuse is also prevalent in Nicaragua due to the machismo culture. The psychological element of this abuse leads directly to political disenfranchisement.

Overall, I would take the index results with a grain of salt. Methodologically, the index omits a number of important variables to capture the type of data it is selectively looking for. In addition, by averaging the four categories evenly, the index implicitly assumes that economics, health, educations, and political participation are all ends in and of themselves, but many would consider economic participation and health as the ends, with educations and political participation being the means. And lastly, the unreliable nature of data collection and dissemination in Nicaragua makes me suspect of the statistics and results compiled for the index in the first place.

So culture can in fact affect the development path of a nation, if an exclusive culture (such as machismo) becomes institutionalized.

Sources:

Economies

http://www.economist.com/news/economic-and-financial-indicators/21629478-gender-equality

http://www.laprensa.com.ni/2015/04/22/nacionales/1819357-increibles-datos-en-matricula-increibles-datos-en-matricula

Posted in Philosophy, Third Goal | Tagged economics, economy, education, employment, equality, gender, gender equality, health, index, machismo, machisto, sex, Why Nations Fail, womens' equality, womens' rights, Work, World Economic Forum | 3 Comments

Day of the Deceased

Posted on November 2, 2015 by einsler

Today was a national holiday in Nicaragua. Day of the Deceased – Día de los Difuntos. It is the same holiday celebrated in Mexico with the stylistic skulls and the candles, but the traditions down here in Nicaragua are different.

Halloween is not heavily celebrated in Nicaragua. Some clubs have parties, but that’s about it. There is not much dressing up or any trick or treating whatsoever. Nicaraguans save their trick or treating for the Gritería. Some Peace Corps Volunteers celebrate, but I was getting over a stomach infection, so I didn’t go out. However, on Sunday I saw tons of photos on Facebook, plus Larry posted an interesting article. I disagreed with most of its points, but it was stimulating nonetheless. You bet I am going to critique it now!

The title of the article is, “Dear White People/Queridos Gringos: You Want Our Culture But You Don’t Want Us – Stop Colonizing The Day Of The Dead.” Let’s start there. I’m pretty tired of the “Dear White People” memish title. I understand why authors use it. They want to emphasize that despite what many White people think we are not in a post-racial society. Many White people remain racist without even realizing it. We tacitly perpetuate oppression. But the fact of the matter is, not all White people are the same, just as not all Black people are the same, not all Latinos are the same, and in any given racial or ethnic group there is a lot of diversity in ideas, living situations, and appearance. And not all White people are colonizing Day of the Dead. And all the same, by starting the title of an article with “Dear White People” the author is taking an authoritative position for all Mexicans (the author is of Puerto Rican descent, but certainly has an appreciation for Mexican culture and pan-Latinism). But I doubt that all Mexicans feel how the author feels.

That’s all semantics. The actual article sets up a difference between Mexican and American (“gringo”) attitudes towards death. And the author believes that slasher horror films and other aspects of gringo culture expose an inferior attitude among American towards death than among Mexicans and other Latino cultures. First of all, slasher horror flicks are but a small portion of the horror and suspense genre. There are thousands of films, Hollywood and independent, that forego mindless bloodshed and emphasize actual art and storytelling, even if death and the supernatural is involved. I have very little respect for Hollywood in general, and I am not a fan of scary movies much at all. However, they are popular in Latin America as well as in the United States.

And even more so, one of the most famous Mexican film makers, Guillermo del Toro, is a horror director. His latest English language film, Crimson Peak, is about how ghosts aren’t always there to get you. They are marks left over of love and can be there to help and heal.

Secondly, Mexico, and Latin America in general, is more religious than the United States. More people believe in life-after-death and an actual spiritual connection between the living and the dead. Furthermore, the larger, but shrinking, Catholic community in Latin America emphasizes the strength of this connection every November 2. The United States is less Catholic and less religious. However, religious motifs have a way of sticking around in next-generation societies (Christmas in Christianity, indigenous ancestor veneration as Mexican Day of the Dead, etc.). As a result, Halloween is now a completely secularized holiday in America. I’ll spare everyone my thoughts on religion and religious belief, but in no way does this secularization expose a weakness of American culture or an inferiority in our attitudes towards death.

The author’s main criticism is that Day of the Dead in the United States has been “colonized” by Americans. In Oakland, CA the Day of the Dead events were gringo organized and the performers were all gringo. I don’t see why this is a criticism of the gringos. Short of the Oakland gringo community overtly blocking Latino organized events, why didn’t the Latino community organize events or participate in the gringo events? And there is every reason to assume that Mexican culture has evolved over hundreds of years and no longer purely considers DotD a day of familial-spiritual connections. On Facebook yesterday I found two photos from my Mexican friend Fernando at a Mexican (as in the country) DotD party:

From that criticism the article morphs into an attack on immigration reform, the rhetoric coming from the election, and mainstream disregard for Latino culture. And this is where I disagree with the article the most. This is where the Whitewashed title of the article betrays the author. Not all White people hate Latinos. Not all White people want Latinos deported and kept out. Not all White people want to keep them from voting and speaking their native languages. Many White people themselves learn Spanish, appreciate Latino neighbors, fight alongside them for rights and equality, and grow up seeing Latinos as equals in their local communities and the world. In fact, I would presume that the gringos enjoying micro-brews, face painting, and music at the DotD festivities in Oakland and around the United States are mostly sympathizers who appreciate Latino culture, want to celebrate it, and want to find a place in the United States of America for all nationalities. Just because they infuse the festivities with some of their culture, such as micro-brewing and chicken dancing, does not mean that they have a disrespect or a tendency for colonization of Latino culture.

Furthermore, I feel that gringo impulsed Day of the Dead events demonstrates a respect and appreciation for Latino communities. There are probably many other minority groups in the United States that would welcome more White collaboration in their cultural events and lament the lack of participation from White people.

At the end of the article the author includes the obligatory fine print that all White people may not be cultural colonizers, and calls on them to boycott gringo-led events and patronize Latino DotD activities. However, she fails to realize that the very White people she is trying to speak to are the same ones she had been complaining about in the paragraphs. She also circles back to the cultural bankruptcy of Halloween. Halloween has certainly taken on some negative aspects of American culture, such as racism and the exaltation of excess consumption. However, it also celebrates creativity, families, communities, safe public spaces, art, and the outdoors.

And it just so happens that I went to the author’s main blog site right after finish that little diatribe. Turns out that her article is from 2014 (I suppose I wasn’t sick of the “Dear White People” meme quite yet), and many people posted similar opinions to mine in the comments of the original article. Read the author’s response, written a year later.

So with that off my chest and a free day here in Nicaragua, I went down to the largest cemetary in León to see what was going on. Don’t worry, it was a Latino organized event.

The first thing I noticed was lots and lots of young men with machetes. But that is not a play on Halloween. People clean grave sites on Day of the Deceased, and there are young men waiting-for-hire at the cemetery with machetes and shovels.

Generally, I found a normal Nicaraguan environment. There were people walking around, kids running around, and vendors everywhere. Lots of people had placed flowers and wreaths on graves and tombs, but there weren’t many candles, and none of the traditional Mexican skull motifs. Outside of the gate to the cementary there was a stage set up that said “Feria de los Flores” – Festival of the Flowers. I’m not sure why they had that name, but it was fairly fitting.

There were also lots and lots of buñuelos and paco vendors. They are the two traditional food of Day of the Deceased down here. Buñuelos are kind of like Nicaraguan doughnut holes. They are fried fritters doused in syrup, made out of yucca, corn, or eggs. And pacos are a sweet tortilla stuffed with a little bit of Nicaraguan cottage cheese. I got one and had it for dinner. It was pretty good.

Posted in León, Third Goal | Tagged bunuelo, cemetery, cinema, Crimson Peak, Day of the Dead, Day of the Deceased, Dia de los Muertos, doughnut, film, flowers, grave, graves, Guadalupe, Guillermo del Toro, Halloween, horror, horror films, horror movies, movies, Munchkin, Nicaragua, tamale, tombs | 2 Comments

Thematic Pictures

Posted on November 1, 2015 by einsler

Another reward for the donors of my Kickstarter was a thematic picture of their choice. I have curated three excellent photographs here for their viewing pleasure. Thank you for your contributions Aaron, Eric, and Mom!

Shelly Insler (my Mom)
Scenery or People of Nicaragua

My mom is a huge fan of pictures of kids, so this just seems perfect for her

Aaron Insler (my Brother)
Baseball or Aviation

This gem I came upon on Friday was inspired by the wars of Nicaragua in the 70’s and 80’s

Eric Lubben (WSP ’04)
Landscape, Possibly of Ocean or Body of Water

Sunrise looking out over Volcano and Lagoon Asososca

Posted in Photography, Third Goal | Tagged amateur photography, amateur photos, aviation, children, crowd funding, crowd-fund, crowdfund, crowdfunding, Kickstarter, kids, lagoon, lake, lakes and volcanoes, landscape, photo, photograph, photography, photos, scenery, volcano, water | Leave a comment

Digital Interview

Posted on November 1, 2015 by einsler

When I set up my Kickstarter crowd-fund to finance the continuation of this blog, I offered a series of awards to my backers. One of the awards was a “digital interview.” Backers could send me one question about my life in Peace Corps Nicaragua and I would respond to it here on the blog. Four people sent me questions. Read the “digital” interview below:

What do you miss the most from “home?”
Shelly Insler (my Mom)

I’m not just saying this because it is my mom who asked the question. I miss my family the most. Especially my mom and dad. Plus, I haven’t seen my aunt or uncle or cousins Amy and Laura since getting here. From the time I left for Nicaragua to the time I get home Amy and Laura will have both had their first babies. They are making everyone in my family very happy and I wish that I could see everyone.

Then there’s the Goldmans. Jake posts great Instagram photos, and it looks like Luke becoming a Bar Mitzah in Israel was fabulous, not to mention the impending wedding of my cousin Andrea to the wonderful Meredith, which I may have to miss since I will be at the end of my service.

And that’s just to mention my mom’s half of the family. Jen’s new baby daughter whom gets a lot of featurettes on Facebook reminds me of her great-grandmother.

Inslers in Nicaragua

… and Asian food. I miss Asian food a lot.

What is the nightlife like in your current town?
John Carlisle

I live in the second largest city in the country, and it is the largest university town (there are probably more students in Managua, but it is not a university town. They are all commuter schools). So night life is big here. There is a “Zona Rosa” with bars and clubs. Karaoke is popular. Some bars have salsa nights also, and there is a lot of live music. León is known as a big nightlife town, and it is fun to live here.

When your service comes to a close, what do you think you will miss most about Nicaragua?

Of course there are people that I will miss a lot. And there are are many aspects of life and society that I will miss. This is very sad, but I will miss not being fearful of being randomly gunned down in a school, mall, or other public place. Those sorts of things are rare here. Not so much in the United States.

One thing that I will definitely miss is how easy it is to purchase food. Supermarkets are a middle-class luxury here. Not a way of life. So there are lots of food vendors all around town that make it easy to buy food, on the run. On the way home from school inthe afternoon I can pick up bananas for breakfast the next morning, and maybe some mangoes too, if they are in season. I can keep going and get gallo pinto for dinner, and maybe an avocado and cheese to throw. And I can gather all of this on an easy route home without ever having to bother with a super market.

Are there any tangible aspects of your life in Nicaragua that will remain with you when your service ends and you move back to the states? I.e objects, rituals, utensils, foods?
Aaron Insler (my brother)

I intend on being an urban bike rider when I am back home. I have found it to be a very efficient way to get around a city.

Lemon, the worst bike I will ever own

I may also continue with my breakfast routine of blended milk and bananas. However, I will probably substitute milk for a non-dairy replacement at home. I also put in peanut butter and chia seeds, although I am out of peanut butter at the moment so I put in cinnamon for some more flavor.

I also became a vegetarian and plan to remain one, probably for the rest of my life.

Posted in Peace Corps | Tagged backers, bicycle, bike, crowd funding, crowdfund, crowdfunding, digital interview, family, food, friends, interview, Kickstarter, nightlife, rewards | 1 Comment

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This article is being cross-posted on my economics blog, The Economics Of … Check out the other blog if you’d like! The article was also submitted to the Peace Corps Nicaragua Gender & Development Committee for publishing on their blog, but they declined to respond.

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