Here is a letter written and signed by many of our brothers and sisters in the Global South. We must not ignore it. Please pass this on to people you know as well.
p.s. Erika Izquierdo works for the Paz y Esperanza office in Lima and I stayed at her house when I first arrived, which is pretty neat.
-Michael
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
Independent Study
Time to update again, seriously.
Well, life had been rough for a few weeks. I didn't want be with people and I spent a lot of time alone wasting time on my computer (but not even blogging). My independent study got off to a pretty bad start, but it has since started shaping up somewhat.
Basically, here's what the study looks like it's shaping up to be: all the people in these villages are migrants from the mountains (though most not as recent as I had hoped) and they are all coffee farmers. The majority are quite poor though they work very hard, although there are a few who are doing pretty well (assuming they told me the truth on the various questions designed to sneakily calculate their income without directly asking). These villages are not accessible by road; they all must be walked to up a mountain for 45 minutes or so. They lack accessible clean water and electricity. Deforestation is somewhat a problem but apparently not as bad as other places in this region. Many of the farmers are members of associations which sell their coffee together (often certified organic for a better price), wash their coffee together and some other stuff. But many of the farmers (different amount depending on each village) are independent. So one direction I'd like to take my study is to focus more on what the benefits and drawbacks are of being in an association or independent, what factors contribute to each and that sort of thing. Some trends I've noticed from the few surveys I've done are that the younger men and more recent migrants are likely to have less land (money) and are less likely to be part of an organization. Their land also seems to be a little more likely to decrease it's harvest of coffee each year, yet these men all want to join associations.
I hope that by focusing on this (other things too) I can do something pretty practical and be able to say what the benefits are for the village (and by extension the region if it involves environmental problems) if more farmers are members of associations, and I can maybe say why despite their desire to join an association, most haven't and how NGOs or government workers could help this.
This is less broad and ambitious than it was when I started, but it still feels so big. I hope I can do it.
-Michael
p.s. Buy organic coffee.
p.p.s. Seriously.
Well, life had been rough for a few weeks. I didn't want be with people and I spent a lot of time alone wasting time on my computer (but not even blogging). My independent study got off to a pretty bad start, but it has since started shaping up somewhat.
Basically, here's what the study looks like it's shaping up to be: all the people in these villages are migrants from the mountains (though most not as recent as I had hoped) and they are all coffee farmers. The majority are quite poor though they work very hard, although there are a few who are doing pretty well (assuming they told me the truth on the various questions designed to sneakily calculate their income without directly asking). These villages are not accessible by road; they all must be walked to up a mountain for 45 minutes or so. They lack accessible clean water and electricity. Deforestation is somewhat a problem but apparently not as bad as other places in this region. Many of the farmers are members of associations which sell their coffee together (often certified organic for a better price), wash their coffee together and some other stuff. But many of the farmers (different amount depending on each village) are independent. So one direction I'd like to take my study is to focus more on what the benefits and drawbacks are of being in an association or independent, what factors contribute to each and that sort of thing. Some trends I've noticed from the few surveys I've done are that the younger men and more recent migrants are likely to have less land (money) and are less likely to be part of an organization. Their land also seems to be a little more likely to decrease it's harvest of coffee each year, yet these men all want to join associations.
I hope that by focusing on this (other things too) I can do something pretty practical and be able to say what the benefits are for the village (and by extension the region if it involves environmental problems) if more farmers are members of associations, and I can maybe say why despite their desire to join an association, most haven't and how NGOs or government workers could help this.
This is less broad and ambitious than it was when I started, but it still feels so big. I hope I can do it.
-Michael
p.s. Buy organic coffee.
p.p.s. Seriously.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Some days here I feel tired and lonely. Today has been one of those days. I really feel like I've been failing. My independent study has gotten off to a rocky start at best, I don't feel like my Spanish has improved much at all lately, and I spend too much time alone. I just don't feel up to this anymore right now. I know I'm just having a bad day or week, but it can be so hard to see past these times when they come.
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