Reflection on Career Change

Adelante Logo and Slogan

This past January I made the decision to leave teaching after eight years to embark on a new career. It seemed like I had to wait forever to start – the school year didn’t end until the first week in June, and then my family and I went to visit my parents and extended family in the U.S. for two weeks. Finally, on July 1^st I walked into the doors of the Adelante Foundation office eager to get started as the new International Development Coordinator.

The position appeals to me because it gives me the opportunity to give something back to the less fortunate here. I’ve been living in Honduras for over eight years now, and in my work at a local American school most of my daily interactions were with a small percentage of the Honduran population – privileged children and their families. I learned much during this time and got to know many wonderful people. But I often felt selfish living so comfortably in such a beautiful country and knowing how the vast majority of the population lives. I have spent enough time visiting the Honduran countryside and talking with the people there to grasp the immensity of the chasm between these two “classes” of the population. To call them classes seems like an understatement. They might as well be different subspecies.

Colonia El Naranjal

The wealthy minority in Honduras lives in a way not that different from the middle-to-upper class in the United States. In an uncomfortably hot country, they are able to live in comfortable, air-conditioned homes, and drive new, air-conditioned cars.  If the power goes out, which it does regularly, many have generators that keep their air conditioners

Colonia El Toronjal

and appliances running.  The lucky few are able to outfit their children with fashionable clothes, iPods, Nintendo Wiis, and Motorola Razr phones. They frequent U.S. chains like Dunkin’ Donuts, Burger King, and Kentucky Fried Chicken and fly to Miami for the weekend to go shopping. One notable difference is that due to security concerns, many of the wealthy in Honduras live behind 10-foot high walls topped by spirals of razor-sharp wire or several strands of electric wire and with an armed security guard outside their homes.

Typical building structure in rural Honduras

 

Very poor Honduran peasants, in contrast, live in make-shift structures pieced together with whatever they can find – cardboard, corrugated tin, plastic tarps, branches, and even mud. Often these dwellings lack doors, so the family’s livestock – chickens and pigs perhaps – wander in and out of their homes. Living in such close proximity to livestock at least partially explains the high incidence of intestinal parasites. Lack of access to clean water is also to blame.

 

Ceramic wood-burning stove

Since wood is the most readily available source of cooking fuel, wood-burning stoves are commonly used; this often leads to respiratory illnesses. Many people also suffer from malnutrition because they consume basically the same things, day in and day out: corn tortillas, plantains, rice, manioc, and if they’re slightly better off, beans add a little protein to their diet. The disproportionate amount of starch explains why, despite malnutrition, they’re often overweight.

They move from place to place on foot or by bicycle, often an entire family together, which can be quite an impressive site. The father may sit, for example, on the seat and pedal the bicycle; meanwhile the mother sits on the crossbar holding a younger child in her arms; and finally the older child, carrying a chicken, a bag of goods to sell, or even a baby sibling, sits on a rack placed over the rear wheel.

 

Barefoot children in the street

The children, with bloated bellies, play barefoot in the dirt, pretending some plastic piece of garbage they found is a toy truck. If they are lucky and a foreign government or NGO has installed a system of latrines in their village, then they have an outhouse connected to a septic tank. Otherwise they go to the bathroom in a hole in the ground. They may have running water if they live next to a stream; otherwise they walk as far as necessary to get to the nearest stream or river – a place where they bathe, wash their clothes, and collect water for drinking, cooking, and cleaning. In some cases, this walk may take an hour or more.

 

River near Jutiapa

Their lack of access to education is crippling and the resulting level of ignorance when it comes to the most basic issues of health and sanitation is incomprehensible at times. Although primary education is technically free in Honduras, parents must provide money for uniforms, books, and transportation; and the children must not be occupied with more critical responsibilities like helping to run the family business or farm their plot of land. As a result, most people have at most a second-grade education and lack basic knowledge that one might consider to be common sense. The most shocking thing I have witnessed is a young mother throwing a dirty diaper in a stream, and a few moments later, collecting water with a bottle from the very same stream to mix her baby’s formula. The fact that this poor woman was spending her family’s meager earnings to buy expensive formula to mix with dirty stream water for her baby instead of giving him her own breast milk is the topic of another discussion entirely.

Reflecting on this dichotomy makes me wonder how I fit in. My life is certainly more similar to the

Downtown California

former group than the latter. I own a car, sleep in an air-conditioned bedroom, spend more money on food in a month than many Hondurans probably do in a year, and I make sure that my beautiful well-nourished son has enough toys to keep his heart content. It’s difficult not to feel guilty about having those very basic comforts when you’ve witnessed such poverty, but I don’t mean to imply that the situation is hopeless. There is a wide range of economic classes in between these two extremes, and most people that I’ve met have been cheerful and generous, despite what many people in the developed world might consider a miserable existence. It would be unreasonable to expect to bridge this gap entirely, but in most cases some basic education and a small amount of capital can result in a dramatic improvement in the standard of living of those at the lower end of this extreme. Over time, small changes can add up to bigger ones, and a new generation may look forward to a brighter future. I hope that through my work at Adelante, I will have the opportunity to work towards that end.

 

 

As is common when starting a new job, I felt insecure at first. There were so many new people to meet, some computer glitches, and I was facing responsibilities that were new to me. But now, after just having completed my third week, I not only feel more at ease, I can feel the Adelante spirit seeping into my bones. It truly is infectious. The people with whom I have interacted here are excited about their jobs and committed to the cause of the organization.

 

Adelante clients

In order to prepare myself, I have spent some time reading. I began by reading The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank by David Bornstein, a truly inspiring account of how the Grameen Bank, founded in Bangladesh, successfully implemented the system of microcredit for the poor that became the model for microfinance organizations, including Adelante, working in developing countries all over the world. I continued by reading the multitude of Adelante client stories left for me by my predecessors – stories of women who have become empowered by education and capital to work their way out of poverty and improve the lives of themselves and their families. Finally, I’ve perused the websites of donor organizations (for example, see http://www.wholeplanetfoundation.org/partners/microentrepreneurs/); and watched the Adelante video on YouTube (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBBP8SRMJOo).

 

Adelante clients shouting slogan "Unity, discipline, work, and courage; this is our way of life."

This week I will make a trip out into the field to meet some clients and observe their Asambleas, or meetings, where they will discuss the status of their loans and receive a talk on one of many business, health, or human rights topics offered by Adelante’s education department. I look forward to meeting some of the amazing women I have been reading about and witnessing first-hand the difference Adelante is making in their lives. Perhaps I will find it makes a profound difference in my own.

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