Now in Chiapas

A quick rundown of a few of the wonderful things that have happened in the last two days.

1. Left our host family in Jungapeo. That was actually super sad.
2. Had probably the most exciting airport encounter ever. Our bus dropped us off at the airport 30 minutes before our plane left. Not knowing where the ticket counter was, we ran until we found a security guard, and ran more tossing a rushed "gracias" his way as we continued in the direction he indicated. Before we even got to the ticket counter, Sarah shows one of the Click Mexicana employees our boarding passes and says that we only have 25 minutes to get ourselves on the plane. He says it's possible but very difficult. At this he leads us ducking under the barriers they use to control the flow of lines at airports. We cut the line at security, get waved through (as opposed to the 20 minutes TSA took to search the bags in SFO) and run to the gate. At this point our tireless guide leaves us with 15 minutes to spare. Of course, the plane isn't at the gate. It's somewhere else (which was expected) and we continue down to the tarmac with two Japanese women in the same predicament. Mind you, Sarah and I are still lugging all the bags we expected to check since there was no time for that. We pile into a van on the tarmac, get stuck in traffic for a few minutes (yes, the tarmac has traffic, apparently) and get onto the plane in time to stuff 3 bags into the overhead and two down below before taking off. Epic.
3. Tacos Arabes. Made with pita bread and pork. I don't think any Muslim has ever eaten them. Ever.
4. We toured two indigenous communities with Raúl of the Alex and Raúl tour company. That's right. The Raúl. I'll leave it to Sarah to fill in the rest.

Ezra
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We are here in Chiapas- San Cristobal to be exact. What an incredible place. It feels pretty much nothing like Mexico, in fact I keep thinking I´m back in Antigua and start to look for the hostel we stayed in there. Seriously, it feels identical. We did experience indigenous culture in a whole new way here though. Yesterday we went to two small indigenous villages nearby, Chamula and Zinacantan. They are both home to Tzotzil Maya, but each town has a completely different culture and set of customs.

In Chamula, they specialize in wool, so the women all wear black fuzzy wool skirts and the men where black or white fuzzy wool ponchos. It is a polygamous village, and girls are often married there at age 13 or 14, and begin having kids right away. The religion there is probably the best hybrid I`ve seen. It is indigenous Maya beliefs and customs, such as using the traditional medicine men for soul purification, in conjunction with catholic saint worship. The church there is mind boggling- a colonial Spanish Catholic church on the outside, but when you go in, its like a parallel universe. Pine needles cover the entire floor, and groups of women and men can be found sitting amongst the pine on the floor, each with their own personal medicine man or woman. There are hundreds of candles burning, most of them on the floor with the groups of praying people, each candle with a different color to signify what is ailing the "patient:" health, financial problems, relationship problems, etc. There is incense burning, and people talking and praying out loud. Every once in a while you here a shriek- its a special instrument they use to call back their souls to their bodies when they`ve had a traumatic experience and the soul has left them. Along the walls are images of saints and Jesus with candles burning in front of them. One of the best aspects- Coke has a very important role in these ceremonies- it "purifies" the soul (I imagine because you burp after you drink it?), so it is present at each group of praying people, along with the other four sacred objects- a chicken, eggs, posh (a sugar cane alcohol), and candles. The chicken does not make it out of the church alive.

Zinacantan was almost the opposite- a monogamous village where they weave cotton and attend regular Catholic mass in a regular church. They wear cotton skirts with woven flower designs. We were welcomed into a home of three Maya women there, where they demonstrated how to weave textiles on a loom, gave us tacos made with fresh tortillas, and allowed us to try three different types of sacred alcohols- the posh, a cinnamon liqueur, and a liqueur made from Jamaica flower. Yum.

Today we've spent the day interviewing people at Grameen Trust in San Cristobal. We spoke to Randall Blair, Director of the Mexico Program for Grameen Trust, two loan officers, Maricela and Maria Eugenia, and a borrower who, for confidentiality purposes, we shall call Maria. We basically learned that microcredit is extremeley successful here. The women receive about 300 dollars their first loan, and after they pay it back after the first 6 months, they receive another loan for twice as much, and so on. They begin paying back within a week of receiving the loan. Maria said that it was definitely possible to pay within a week, but of course she felt that the interest was a bit high ( 4.5% monthly). The fact that she actually could pay it back is very meaningful, compared to our experiences in Jungapeo. From talking to Randall and the loan officers, the secret to their success seems to be this: they primarily loan to women who are exapnding their businesses, not starting them from nothing. This is something for us to consider for Costa Rica.

Also, we spoke to them about borrower education. They LOVED the idea. At the moment, they have no program that trains the borrowers in business skills, etc, and they said it would be very useful. This is a pattern in our findings!

All in all, everyone we`ve spoken to seems to like our pilot project, and has just reminded us to really research our borrowers before giving them the money. Hopefully ADAPTE will help with this.

Tomorrow is Costa Rica...
Sarah