Joel Sholtes, senior
School for International Training
Ecuador
"I got a [NGO] contact from a professor and she had a project she wanted to get started on getting data about watersheds.... So I was down there measuring streams in the summer, the rainy season, close to the Amazon, but not really in there. But it's still jungle and crazy so that was a great little bonus there. I'd measure widths and depths [of streams], take the water insects out and classify those--chemical analysis. It was pretty crazy, throw lemons in water to measure the velocity and then chase after them just 'cause I didn't wanna lose them down the stream.
Another day, I went out to this community in this valley, like an hour and a half hike on a trail that was mud up to your knees. It's really a short hike but it takes so long because you're slippin' and slidin' in the mud everywhere. And I really wanted to measure the rivers in the valley because the land above it was less interfered with. So I come in, spend the night. The first day I'm out there measuring a stream and I'm walking through and I end up trespassing on someone else's land and so they see me, a white person, and they're freakin' out that some Colombians are comin' in and gonna kill them. So it was intense. I probably shouldn't even have done it. [Later that day,] I ended up playin' soccer in my rubber boots with the whole town. They'd come out every evening to play soccer . And they play until it's dark and you can't see anymore and they keep playing. And [that night] someone just put me up in their house and fed me a duck stew."
Emma Boa-Durgammah, junior
Grant study tourism effects on the porters of Macchu Picchu
Cusco, Peru
"Now what the porters do is, when you go on the Inca trail, they're the ones who carry your bags, your tents, who cook for you, who basically make sure that you have a great trip. So my project was to interview them on their working conditions, their living conditions and also what it is that they get paid.
You can't just go and talk to anybody and expect them to be open with you. So when I went the first week to talk to the porters, they almost thought I was from an agency, because that's something they have to fear. The porters run the risk of losing their job. I think that being black in that case made it easier for them to relate to me 'cause I was darker and there are not that many black people in Cusco. Another cool thing is that Cusco has a black Jesus. As soon as you enter the Cathedral, you make a right and right there you have a black Jesus.
They look at you in a positive light if you're [black and] not from Brazil or Peru. Me saying I'm from the US definitely helped a lot. In Cusco, people from the US are appreciated and welcomed. From a porter's perspective, the US tourist are the ones who tip the most, who bring clothes and blankets. European tourists tend to be more stingy.
I got altitude sickness... on the Inca trail. As you're approaching 4200 meters the oxygen gets lower and lower and lower. I get to the top and it started hailing and it started snowing. I was cold, I had on a wool jacket that was getting soaked, was not a happy camper, and I was running out of breath. I asked the guide to find the person with the oxygen tank but that person was two hours ahead of us on the trail. It was so intense that I had to walk for four minutes then rest for three. The thing about the Inca trail, you look up the stairs and all you see are stairs. Like there's no end, you feel as though you will not ever get out of the situation. The nice thing is that every morning we were awakened by a porter. They knock at your tent, you unzip it and they give you tea: coca, chamomile--anything you want in terms of tea, they have it."
Lyndsey Beutin, senior
Christian Medical Action
Sahsa, Nicaragua
A big part of our program was working with the children in the community. Since our house was a little bit nicer than other houses in the community, it [served as] a community center. And so the children, they [live in] houses and stuff, but they're just always in the street because there's not a lot of space. So they would come over all the time and we would sing songs with them, feed them sometimes, take care of them. Just give them attention you know, hold them, play with them. The kids were a very important part of the experience because it was kind of like doing justice... we did all these seminars that were bigger ideas of justice. But it was really being in solidarity with the people, like living as a person does out there to understand where the problems come from, to be with the children, to be as a child with them and also then to be almost as like a parent. It was a really good experience in getting a less censored view of poverty and also of humanity."
Tyler McCormick, junior I was at this outdoor market--it was kind of a tourist trap--and people were asking where I was from and that kind of stuff. Finally I told them the US and the [vendor I was talking to] had already told me how much the price was for a tablecloth I was thinking about buying. So I'm like, 'Ah, I guess the price goes up now.' And she was like, 'No, we like Americans and we like for you to come.' She said the same thing that everybody says, that 'the American people are very different from the American government. We love the American people, we really like Americans. We don't like the American government.'"
Casa de las Americas
Havana, Cuba
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