Day 4: Jungapeo/Zitacuaro

Things worth noting: we had a meeting with Compartamos, an MFI operating in Zitacuaro, the "big city" right next to Jungapeo. It was just a preliminary meeting, so hopefully we'll get a follow-up to find out more about the wonder that is microloans.

Other things worth noting: Sarah and I are enjoying the many things a bigger city has to offer, such as faster internet cafés, hustle and bustle in copious amounts, and police officers in uniforms instead of the more alarming army fatigues. It's a wonderland over here. We also made the purchase of a pair of computer speakers for our host family's computer. Theirs broke, and we've been looking for ways to pay them back, since it's been nigh impossible to compensate them monetarily.

Last but not least, the Mexican political process is awesome. As far as I can tell, it consists of driving hours to get to broken down elementary schools in the mountains and making speeches. What really makes it special though, is that every few sentences a group of women will interrupt the speaker with a cheer, culminating with noise makers. When these quiet down the speaker is allowed to continue stumping, soapboxing, filibustering, or relieving his lungs of an excess of hot air. It's pretty great.

Hope everything is good wherever you are. I assure you, it's not as great as here.
Best,
Ezra
Red Scissors Alliance Coolguy

PS: (From Sarah)
Yesterday, I spoke with the PRI candidate for president of Jungapeo Javier Ayala and his Wife Margarita Gallegos a little bit about microcredit opportunities. One of his campaign promises is to create more jobs for women in the area, and they were saying that microcredit would be extremeley beneficial to this population of women. They are mostly interested in starting up small businesses, such as sellnig fruit, or this certain type of mushroom that grows on the oak trees. Also, craftmaking is a desireable job here, but they need the start up resources of course. Also, at the campaign event, one of the main issues was the horrible state of the highway (if you could call it that). To get there, we had to cross a river, causing the car to smoke and/or steam, and then we almost got stuck in a ditch right in the center of the road that was about 2 feet deep and 1 foot wide. If we wanted to do a grant project, helping the local government fix these roads would be an incredible thing.