poverty

other

Never in my wildest dreams would I imagine that I would want a 16 year old girl I don’t even know, especially a rags-poor student with a scholarship, to test positive for pregnancy.

So what was the result?

Negative.

Which means that we don’t really know why she nearly died this week.

(I wrote this without editing because I only came to the office to grab my computer and head back to the house before the rain comes)

Edit:
Just to be clear, a girl in the sponsorship program got really sick, and after a lot of tests we were still inconclusive, then the doctor recommended a pregnancy test as a last ditch effort, and it came out negative. Right now he says it’s Anemia that nearly developed to Hepatitis A…not sure I buy it.

ideas, other

So I watched this movie yesterday, and for the first third I’m like “hmm..if this guy is the hero for his ‘determinism’ and they don’t handle with his denseness and worthlessness I’m gonna be disappointed.

So then in the second third and I’m like OK, this is looking like they’re gonna handle stuff, this could turn out a great movie.

I’m thinking here that this movie could turn out to be a beautiful re-tone and refinement and media-shifted version of Shop Class as Soulcraft. I’m thinking that maybe, because these are some good actors and maybe the writer’s awesome, it could be not just a “rich suit guy finds meaning in using his hands” gig, but a hard hitting commentary on the meaning of human life.

So then the third third rolls around and I’m like yes, yes I think they may pin this. Maybe it won’t be as great as I want it to be, but we’re goin’ the right way here.

Then the scene on the docks, “these men knew their worth,” and I was like yes. Could’ve been better, I wouldn’t say it’s worth pinning Crawford’s book on, but hey it’s good, not going to whine.

And then a minute later the last scene happened and I found myself sitting in the couch half dazed, with just enough sense to be grumbling some unkind things directed at the directors and writers and producers and actors. Aw c’mon guys.

ideas

It’s hard to do official-ish things in Guatemala. I hazard the guess (literally) that lots of developing countries are that way. There are mountains of paperwork and steps and it’s actually really hard to find any information about anything unless you know somebody. The paperwork is tough: it needs to be done in ink with signatures of you, a notary, and your great great step-mother’s uncle, while the steps usually consume one or more whole days–in the capitol city, which takes a day or two to get to from anywhere else in the country. And deadlines. The world ends if you don’t meet a deadline (they’re usually not met).

Why? I think it’s like a Volcano ice cream bowl from Coldstone: Oreos mashed in with strawberries and chocolate syrup and bananas in vanilla ice cream: there’s a lot goin’ on that makes it what it is.

I’m sure that a significant ingredient is technology, namely how it’s kinda here but not really. There’s online banking but when you make any transaction more significant than a withdraw or deposit, it is first and foremost written and signed in pen in a Book of Acts. Also, there’s an enormous amount of corruption all around. I’ve talked with a lot of Guatemalans about this stuff, they agree and quite benevolently explain that that’s simply how things are here. It’s just hard to do stuff here.

How does a country become this or change away from this? Were the Mayans like this? Where the Spanish Catholics or Evangelical missionaries like this? My word, were WE once like this (possibly not, but I don’t know)? And the North America indigenous?

Gear change: a girl in the sponsorship program is graduating from high school this year and has the desire to keep studying, the aptitude to swing in the big leagues and the heart to actually do good things there. That’s a rare combo. She has a heart that’s not been muted and dumbed and a mind that’s survived a normally crippling secondary “education.” An absolutely necessary condition for this country to climb out of the mud will be for the few-and-far-between individuals like her  to reach for the stars.

But you know what? That won’t happen. If she does manage to keep studying, it’ll be Saturday classes at one of a few local university micro-branches that remarkably effectively board up the mind wherever the secondary education failed to do so. There are only a few good quality learning universities here and only rich people enroll. All the mountainous paperwork and myriad steps aren’t so bad when you can hire three or four lawyers to make sure things work out.

This girl, Ana, won’t ever know what it’s like to reach for the stars, to follow her heart and creativity and imagination, to have the world tell her “go for it and see what happens.” She’ll end up graduating from high school in October and going straight to work in the education system, with absolutely inadequate training to address the problems and struggles the students face, teaching the same poor curriculum that she herself only barely escaped.

Because that’s the way things are here, and it makes my blood boil.

other, photography

Two of the families that have children in the sponsorship program, the Lorenzo León family and the Rodríguez Méndez family. One of the families doesn’t have a father, and one of them has basically nothing and not really enough money for food. The other family has a little bit more than nothing, and still not really enough for food.

Also, I’d forgotten how white I am. Dang.

The Lorenzo León family (and gringo)
the Rodríguez Méndez family (minus the little dude, Sergio)

photography

It’s the May Festival of Barillas, here are some pictures. Today the rural schools, tomorrow the urban schools (literally, not figuratively), so more pictures to come soon. As neat as it all is, the sharp difference between the bands and students of the rich kid schools and the poor kid schools is a hard hitting thing; I wish I was better at saying things with my camera.

ideas

Maybe trying so hard to eradicate poverty is all wrong;

maybe we’d do better to just figure out how to de-problem it.

Hmm.

ideas

“…hopefully at the end of this special, you will join us at ABC in thinking about what we could do to help the Camden.”

-Diane Sawyer, during a 20/20 special about the town of Camden, NJ

Gah! GAH!!

I can’t recall the last time a single spoken sentence has so massively frustrated me. “Think about it?” Lets THINK about it? There are folks who will do something to help Camden, and there are folks who won’t. Neither will do any good to the world by  “thinking” about it “with” you, ABC. GAH.

Ok, I’m done soapboxing now.

Beginning a year or so ago, when I was first exposed to education literature/research, a question has been on my mind more and more: what’s the end game of high school education? Yes, I dearly want slum children to earn their diplomas, go to college, do great things in life, and ultimately escape the terrible modern ghetto. It’s reasonable to posit that we should aim for nothing less than this for every child—lets give them freedom to live out their full human being potential. As with any problem, it’s an intuitive step to check boundary conditions, i.e. what happens if we win. Lets say we reach this golden standard: all poor urban kids graduate, attend university, and go on to lead great lives.

What’s the end game though?

It would then seem that towns like Camden ought to be simply left. Maybe they’d become modern ghost towns, nasty and inhabited by the miserable few who didn’t escape for some reason. Alternatively, maybe they’d be completely torn out, the land re-zoned for whatever the city planner deemed good, and rebuilt. Those are just two possible ideas, nothing really good to base a legitimate argument on; however they’re indicative of something more. They somewhat articulate the idea that’s bothering me–but not too well.

The discord is sharper in a rural context. The hope of graduation/university/great-things, fully realized for all the youth of some given district, would simply end a rural town. That couldn’t be right. What’s the end game?

It’s probably a bit better to ask “what’s a good end game?”

So far I only have a one (unfortunately somewhat vague) idea about a good end game:

Learning to be, fully, as a human beings can, must be absolutely central.