I think out of immeasurable tragedy can come opportunity for many of us to achieve personal healing – healing we can share with Haiti.  And it’s not necessarily financial.

A Fondo Esperanza communal bank in Santiago, Chile

As a Kiva Fellow on my third placement here in South America, I’ve had the chance to meet hundreds of microfinance borrowers. But I am no expert. In fact, one of my biggest realizations occurred just this week while visiting a communal bank (a group loan, of about 10-15 members) in Santiago.  I will never forget watching a girl my age, about 25 years old and a mother of two, talk about a time where  she had to sell her first child’s clothing from a blanket on the street so that she could afford water for herself – all while she was pregnant with her second child.  She told the group proudly, and called herself a “luchadora” (fighter) and the entire room clapped.  Microfinance, as a field, is currently very preoccupied with social performance monitoring. That is to say, “Is microfinance helping people actually get out of poverty?”

Hearing this beautiful mother, however, who is still very poor but is now in a place of relative economic stability, there is a different kind of poverty she has broken out of.  She went from feeling ashamed to feeling proud.  Perhaps we can’t measure that, perhaps we shouldn’t try to.

But what this brings me to is a plea I have to not look at Haiti entirely by numbers, but instead allow your heart to express itself.  Whether you write, paint, sing, listen to music, pray, or weep, let your creative expression help you to bring love to Haiti in ways that aren’t quantifiable.  In this way, we can tie ourselves to Haiti, not as those handing aid from above, but as those weeping with the survivors, arm in arm in an incomprehensible battle, together.

For volunteers already in the field or those soon to embark, I hope the following list can help you prepare for the awesomely random and fun adventures awaiting you – and help you avoid some of the less fun ones.  Because really, at the end of the day, all that my three-day hospital visit in Bolivia really served for was a good story.  I think I’d rather have dodged that bullet!

Tips are followed with who they came from, what Kiva Fellows class they are in, and the country they are serving in.

33 Tips from Kiva Fellows in Latin America:

1. Invest in a good map and learn the major landmarks. Addresses might not exist and Google maps will almost certainly be confusing and/or inaccessible. (Meg, KF9 Nicaragua)
2. People love talking about their country/city/town. Be prepared to talk about where you have visited and where you want to visit, over and over again. (Meg, KF9 Nicaragua)
3. Peruvians (at least in Cusco) salute each other with a kiss on the cheek. (Sheethal, KF9 Peru)
4. It’s more respectful to call Incan ruins “archeological sites.” (Sheethal, KF9 Peru)
5. When you get on a combi (collective taxi), squeeze in and hope for the best. (Sheethal, KF9 Peru)
6. If you can’t figure out the bus you need to take to work every day, just walk the entire route and note which bus number you see at both the beginning and end. (Suzy, KF9 Bolivia)
7. It is really easy to get sick in Bolivia (it’s not just me, I swear) – be extra, extra cautious and borderline obsessive about what you are willing to eat.  (Suzy, KF9 Bolivia)
8. To avoid getting ripped off by a taxi driver, act like you travel the route all the time.  Don’t ask him for a price, just hand him a reasonably small sized bill and wait for the change.  Chances are, this makes you seem like you know how much change he should give you, and he won’t try to rip you off. (Suzy, KF9 Bolivia)
9. When interviewing someone, try to adapt to the person you are interviewing: If he/she is talkative and willing to share his/her story, try to ask open questions – e.g. “Tell me how you had the idea to start your business.” (Thomas, KF9 Dominican Republic)
10. When taking a photo of a person or a group of people, take the time to show it to them. People who are not used to having a photo taken really enjoy seeing themselves on the screen. (Thomas, KF9 Dominican Republic)
11. ALWAYS carry plenty of change in your pocket (aka “sencillo“). (Josh, KF9 Peru)
12. Probably avoid the morning jog outside if you don’t want to be chased by wild dogs. (Josh, KF9 Peru)
13. Bring those good zapatillas (sneakers) and get ready to walk! (Josh, KF9 Peru)
14. If you get lost, just ask where the ‘Plaza de Armas’ is, which almost always is in the center of the city. (Josh, KF9 Peru)
15. Bring $1 dollar bills and coins with you if you travel to Ecuador. Change is hard to find! (Zal, KF9 Ecuador)
16. If you buy a SIM card from a local cell provider, ask for special offers on pre-paid minutes.  Never pay full price – there are always sales! (Zal, KF9 Ecuador)
17. Watching TV in English with Spanish subtitles does wonders for improving your Spanish vocab. (Zal, KF9 Ecuador)
18. Always negotiate with the taxi driver prior to entering the vehicle, especially at night. (Zal, KF9 Ecuador)
19. Always allow a few minutes to converse and build the person’s trust before taking their photos. (Kimia, KF9 Ecuador)
20. Try your best to learn local phrases and slang. (Kimia, KF9 Ecuador)
21. Smiling helps a lot, as does laughing at yourself. (When this is difficult, and if the situation is appropriate, then beer can also help a lot as well.) (Julie, KF9 Mexico)
22. Try to stay away as much as possible from judging your experience as good or bad, or beating yourself up for “not doing enough.” Try to accept your experience as it is instead of what you think it should be. (Julie, KF9 Mexico)
23. I’ve found that volunteer work involves working with myself as much as working with others. If you can learn how to communicate in a compassionate, kind manner with yourself, then that can carry over into your interactions with other people. (Julie, KF9 Mexico)
24. Do something that scares you every day. Buy a weird looking fruit at the supermarket. Talk to someone in your workplace that you haven’t connected with. Sometimes the fact that you are nervous about something can be a sign that you should just dive in and do it anyway. This is such a big and wonderful world, and there are so many different ways to explore it! (Julie, KF9 Mexico)
25. Don’t forget to put on bug spray before you go to sleep – you don’t want dengue fever! (Victoria, KF9 Nicaragua)
26. A good and big umbrella is worth much more than a good rain jacket. (Alana, KF9 Costa Rica)
27. If you want to seem American, shake hands when you meet people. Otherwise, go for the cheek kiss. Always go for the cheek kiss. (Alana, KF9 Costa Rica)
28. It may be awkward but if you don’t say to your taxi driver “con la maria” they will rip you off. (Alana, KF9 Costa Rica)
29. Learn the different names for beer – cerveza, bira and aguila - and sound like a local. (Karl, KF9 Costa Rica)
30. Get your internal compass functioning. There are no street signs or numbers in most of Costa Rica. (Karl, KF9 Costa Rica)
31. Forget the rain jacket; you’re going to get soaked no matter what so just embrace it. (Karl, KF9 Costa Rica)
32. If someone offers you leche burra, be careful. You will be drinking a “refreshing” mix of coconut milk and controbando, the illegal liquor of rural Costa Rica. (Karl, KF9 Costa Rica)
33. Know that the first lie of  Costa Ricans is the word “sarpe,” meaning the last drink. For the Ticos there is never a last drink. (Karl, KF9 Costa Rica)

For more information about the Kiva Fellows program, go here or read our Stories from the Field blog!

The fact that everybody cannot just get up and go is a major reason that the biggest mistake volunteers can make is NOT BLOGGING! Blogging allows volunteers the opportunity to share the nuances of the cultures they are experiencing, as well as the stories and trials of a particular family in that community.  Through the Kiva Fellows Blog, myself and the other fellows have the awesome opportunity to highlight our favorite stories from the field.

But if your organization doesn´t offer you a blogging tool, why not make a blog of your own?  Here are a few of my favorite reasons why:

• You are lucky to have this experience! Show how grateful you are by doing justice to the communities you are working with.  Share their untold stories on your blog.  Share their trials and ways to help from both home and abroad.  Include calls to action in every touching post because that is when people are moved most to do something.
• It can be used as your travel diary. Include those quirky stories and taxi drivers´ names that you would never remember four months from now.  This day and age, we practically all type faster than we write.  Most blog hosting sites allow you to privatize a post you consider personal.  Go ahead and write what´s on your mind, and if you don´t want to share it with the world, keep it hidden.
• If you take time with research and your writing style, a future employer may be very impressed by your dedication and thought. It’s no secret that employers search for people´s Facebook profiles for incriminating evidence. So why not maintain a blog – one that would make future employers honored to hire you and help further you career – that instead shows you off to the world?

As I have transitioned from my first Kiva Fellows placement in Peru to my current one in Bolivia, I have met numerous volunteers with countless untold stories.  As they share them with me over a drink, within minutes I am begging them to start a blog.  If not just for themselves, for their friends, family, and extended community.  It is something I think every volunteer should do.  Trust me, what you are doing is interesting and others want (and deserve!) to be a part of your experiences!

For information on blogging for La Vida Idealist.org, please contact bennett (dot) kathleenm (at) gmail (dot) com.

Before that moment, I had never been faced with an environmental experience that brought me to tears.  I grew up in a very outdoorsy family; camping, hiking, backpacking, and eco-tourism were the general theme of our vacations.  But watching a couple hectares in the Amazon Basin of Bolivia burn before my eyes was absolutely beyond my comprehension.  It was an experience in nature I’d never really even thought about before.

Earlier the same day, I met members of an indigenous group that has occupied this unprotected section of the Amazon for hundreds of years, ever since their ancestors began recording history.  These communities know the land better than anyone, and their entire lives are tied to the rainforest.  The fires are typically set to clear a portion of the rainforest for the provision of more land used for growing crops.  After a section has been cleared, its soil allows for only about three years of crops.  After those three years, it will be another 15 years before the soil is fertile enough again.  Thus, every few years, more of the rainforest is being cleared in order to provide room for growing crops.

Despite the harrowing image I witnessed, I felt incredibly defensive of both Bolivia – a country I have come to love – and the indigenous people responsible for the burn.  What I find so extraordinary about the most successful human beings is that they possess a remarkable capacity for compromise on the issues they care most about.  These leaders accomplish what they do because they are willing to give concessions in order to promote the greater cause.  It takes extraordinary character not to run to perpetrators in rage, but approach them in peace.

As my husband and I sat on the boat watching the fire glow, I felt my sense of rage give way to peacefulness.  When we entered this world, it wasn’t perfect, and when we leave it, it won’t be.  With whatever resources we have available to us, we must do the best we can; and often, the most harmful thing to our cause is our own passion for it.  We talked about how one day my husband would come back and teach the indigenous better fertilization techniques that would improve their lives while also protecting the nearby rainforest. Solutions are there, but they require seeing issues from both sides.  Progress can never be realized when staring from the outside looking in; it requires standing on both sides of the river.

This is actually what I did a few times in college, when I knew I wanted to get more international volunteering experience under my belt so that it could help me discern whether or not a future in development would be right for me.  But I had ZERO idea where to start and nobody to go with.  I was already well traveled, but that doesn’t change the amount of caution a 21-year-old woman should exercise – especially on her first volunteer trip.

Several volunteer stints later and with retrospective eyes, I can say that too many of us start completely too broad (myself included).  We do a simple Google search first – maybe “volunteering abroad.”  The first several hits bring up the ‘voluntourism’ type companies that take a profit on volunteers.  In their defense, they provide an extraordinary level of infrastructure on the ground – especially helpful for first time or single volunteers!  But nevertheless, these first few links can really put a damper on a potential volunteer who is both an idealist AND penniless.

Then you come across Idealist.org – where I found my first volunteer opportunity.  You discover the gem of knowledge Idealist.org provides and begin perusing the different countries, but then you feel overwhelmed again, not drawn to one specific place.

That is why we must start thinking backwards.   I would argue that it is much easier to find the right organization if you pick a country first.  For all intent and purposes, let’s say Peru is your choice – you’ve heard great things.  Then, you should ask yourself how long of a commitment you are willing to make, and think about what kind of place you want to live in.  Do you want to live in a rural area, with a trickle of cold water for a shower? Or would you rather volunteer in a city large enough to have a supermarket and big hospitals?

I think the giving heart of volunteers often makes them put the recipient (meaning the organization where they are to volunteer at) first.  Thus, we primarily seek out the organization, but so many deserving organizations lack the infrastructure to advertise online or have a website of their own.  Sooner or later, you feel bewildered and a little discouraged that you can’t find anything that works.

That’s why I argue that volunteers should put their needs first, and allow that to lead them to a city where they can research local organizations on the ground.  You can go right to the city or town of your choosing on Idealist.org and sort through the entries.  And when you Google “volunteer in Huancayo, Peru” or “volunteer in Cochabamba, Bolivia,” you are going to find several awesome organizations working locally on the ground. You might not be able to email them, but usually you can finagle a phone number.  The easiest way to do this is to switch to the Google of your country-of-choice (for Bolivia, it’s www.google.com.bo).  This reduces the hits from your search to just in-country ones.  Next, show your commitment to volunteering by giving the organization a call.  If you don’t speak the language, see if you can find a Spanish-speaking friend to make the call for you.

Sometimes the way our mind works prevents us from getting where we are trying to go – and its times like that you have to stop and completely re-work your strategy of attack.  Be creative, be confident, and start with research.  Giving a portion of your life to volunteering is worth that extra research time and creative thought!

On Sunday night, I was excited to begin my second week as a Kiva Fellow at brand-new Kiva partner, CIDRE.  It was supposed to be a week full of training new contracted employees for CIDRE’s Kiva loans and jetting back and forth from the field collecting new borrower profiles.  We even had a project in the pipeline to post several group loans on Kiva to finance a potable water project in one of Cochabamba’s last remaining communities still without potable water.  Needless to say, I was super excited to get to work on Monday.

I got to work Monday and asked for Diego, our Kiva Coordinator.  It turned out that on Sunday, out of the blue, he fell ill and had to go to the hospital.  He was in complete isolation until his blood test revealed the worst – he has H1N1 swine flu.  All of a sudden, everything came to a screeching halt and suddenly our workplace was all about hand sanitizer, surgical masks, and getting updates on Diego, whose temperature had risen at one point to 40C (about 104F).

I have really wanted to help somehow carry Diego’s large workload but it hasn’t been feasible and I didn’t want to mess up his system.

Since I started my Fellowship with Kiva, my normally Type-A personality has gotten so good at resigning to, “Whelp, guess I will be doing absolutely nothing productive for the next four days…”  So, I decided to throw together a few of my best boredom killers for fellow volunteers:

• Practice the language.  Find volunteer translation jobs online. I help translate Spanish borrower profiles for Kiva, which makes me feel productive. Also, buy magazines in Spanish!  Books are great too, but I love getting magazines like National Geographic in Spanish because you can get the colloquial language and sayings that you might actually use (instead of learning to translate words you never even use in English).  Not only that, you can buy used copies of National Geographic at bookstores for fairly cheap, so you can write definitions in the margins.  Also, often there are articles that I had already read in English.  That really helps the understanding and translation process.
• Research your country.  This week, while bored, I decided to do some research on those Bolivian bowler hats the women wear.  After poking around a bit on the web, I put together a fun blog post that I posted to the Kiva Fellows blog.  It made me feel more connected to the culture I am in.
• Plan your next weekend trip.  In my opinion, traveling should always be done in conjunction with volunteering, even if it’s just on the weekends.  You will better understand all the facets of poverty and environmental issues in your country the more you see it firsthand.
• Be okay with messing around online! You took a great leap of faith flying down here, and you are working for free.  You are allowed a few hours to make yourself laugh on websites like Awkward Family Photos and reconnect yourself with friends from home on Facebook.
• Connect with other volunteers. Even if it’s just by email, I love talking with other Kiva Fellows for encouragement or just to say “hi.” They will understand your complaints about mosquitoes or cold showers better than anyone else!  In addition to Idealist.org, some great outlets for connecting with other volunteers in your community include CouchSurfing and South American Explorer’s Club.
• Write a journal. Even if it’s a simple one recounting where you went and what you did the last week.  Next year, you are going to be asking yourself,  “What was that dish I had in Peru called…the one with the plantains, beefsteak, and eggs?” Also, write down the names of people you meet.  It still stings me that I can’t remember some of the names of the people I was friends with when I volunteered in East Africa in 2007.

And if you ever run out of silly websites that make you laugh, shoot me an email. I have a lifetime supply.

My whole family came down to visit me and my husband for a couple weeks between my first two Kiva placements, and my sister left Peter Singer’s latest book, “The Life You Can Save,” in my hands.  I was telling my husband that when I read it, my heart starts pounding and I get angrier and angrier.  I read a chapter and then look up to see a local Bolivian woman with a baby on her back, begging each person in the café for some coins.  Then I look up and see something less glamorous, like a group of teenage glue-sniffers awkwardly stringing together sentences, also asking for money.

I remember reading that Marx wrote part of his Communist Manifesto from a basement during London’s Industrial Revolution.  There was a window where he could just see feet marching by, the dirtied feet of the abused and exploited working class marching to the factories.  I imagine the scene of anonymous dirty ankles and worn workers boots, one after another, and think my heart might’ve also pounded enough to produce a manifesto.

As I read Singer’s book, the toughest parts aren’t the statistics on poverty, but thinking of all those people back home, making lots of money and spending it frivolously without regard to the truly needy.  But, in the end, I am happy that volunteering now – when young – allows me to choose an entire life of giving.  Get on a plane, and come meet an illiterate Aymara woman raising eight beautiful, barefoot, and poor children, on a weaver’s salary.  And her husband, who stands outside of local hardware stores to look for someone who needs an extra hand in their home construction.  While they may not know the impact, you will find yourself forever indebted to the memory of that visit.

Children of borrowers

I am talking with a friend about the prevalence of domestic violence in Ayacucho, and frankly, how it seems certain communities are socially accepting of men who beat their wives.  Domestic violence is seen as a solution to keep a woman in line, force them into change or acceptance of change, and most often, it’s a man’s way of releasing pent up anger inside by blaming his wife for all of his problems.  The violence is linked to alcoholism, rampant among men in the community, which then breeds other family-destroying problems such as unemployment and infidelity.  Working in this kind of environment can easily make one disgusted by men (and if it wasn’t for my great husband, I might be there too).  Discussing the stories makes us want to beat the men ourselves – which we know is as ridiculous and senseless as what the men are guilty of.  It’s hard to escape that feeling of wanting to defend a helpless woman and her children, even knowing that violence-begets-violence and that – as cliché as I’m sure it sounds – ‘an eye for an eye just makes the world blind.’

I feel really angry, sad, heartbroken – but mostly just really angry.  I am emotional.  Okay, I am pissed off.  The last charity I worked for, before Kiva, worked with one of the most devastating communities a person can find work with – terminally ill children.  For obvious reasons, we were encouraged to learn the art of not welling up with tears after hearing harrowing stories about the innocent children’s pain.  I found it impossible.  After a year and a half there I could easily still cry at one of the stories I heard on day one.  While I understand the unhealthiness of crying in front of the children, I still would find it hard not to.

I’m grateful for those feelings though, the angry ones, the sad ones, the uneasy feelings and anxiousness.  If it wasn’t for those exact emotions, you better believe these organizations wouldn’t exist in the first place.  Not until you are really stirred by something can you attack it with every battle weapon you’ve got.  It’s about mastering the art of channeling the anger into a relentless ‘I’ve-absolutely-got-to-do-something-about-this’ attitude.  The ‘who’s-with-me’ attitude.  Or the ‘I’m-annoying-people-by-trying-to-get-them-on-board-with-me-but-I-don’t-care-about-that’ attitude (which is basically me… all the time).

That’s why I hope the sad stories keep making me cry and the happy ones keep making me jump for joy.  I wouldn’t be a Kiva Fellow without having had that unrefined emotion, because I wouldn’t want to be.  I’d be somewhere pushing papers, crunching numbers, clocking out, and hitting happy hour.  This life I’m living with a foam mattress on the hard floor, no TV, no microwave, no internet – it isn’t easy but it’s the one that helps me sleep at night.  I love what I’m doing.  And I know I can say that even if today I became a vegetable, I’d be happy with how I’d lived the life I’ve lived.  I may not be the best at hitting the gym everyday or avoiding sweets and curse words – but so far I have lived with purpose, and for that I feel content.

One of the strangest (and sometimes dangerous) things that happens to me when I travel is that, as soon as I overcome the fear of releasing the comforts of home and board the plane, I magically lose all inhibitions.   On my first volunteer trip, to East Africa in 2007, I was newly engaged to be married and about to go to Uganda and Tanzania – alone – for nearly three months.  It was not easy at all, and trust me, I’m no tougher than the next girl.  In fact, I still remember very vividly saying goodbye to my now-husband Matt, at LAX, in tears as an unimaginable aura of anxiety consumed the both of us.  If you had told me in that moment that four weeks later, I would step foot in the most volatile and war-torn part of the D.R. Congo, a region called North Kivu, to go see the endangered mountain gorillas at Virungas National Park, I would have frozen with disbelief.  But being so far removed, living in southwestern Uganda, it didn’t seem like a big deal at the time.  A week after my quick trip in and out of the DRC, the BBC ran a cover story on several gorillas that were killed by rebels in that very same national park.  The killings had taken place the day after I left.

To get to Ayacucho, Peru, in the Central Andes, is a nine-hour nauseating bus ride from Lima that is absolutely not for the faint of heart.  It can be done overnight, which is what most people do.  I myself have made the trip six times now.  But if you told me I had to get on a nine-hour windy bus from San Diego six times in two months, I would be on Expedia searching for flight alternatives faster than you could say ‘let go of comfort.’

These two stories illustrate what I treasure the most about living abroad.  Something happens to my mind where I just let go of any premonitions or habits I was in, and roll with it.  I think that’s when you see personal transformations start to happen.  You really don’t have to go sky-diving or eat guinea pig.  If you break your norms in any way, you are transforming the way in which you see things, sometimes without even being aware of it.  And it’s an addiction to that learning which keeps me stepping on planes, pushing myself further, even as I’m scared senseless about taking the leap and letting go of home.

The image encapsulated my experience as a Kiva Fellow in Ayacucho; I am in a culture so incredibly foreign from my own, but with a people more beautiful and hardworking than I could have imagined. As I interview women at FINCA Peru, Kiva’s partner microfinance institution in Ayacucho, they are often breastfeeding and tending to their children. It is a classic image of the perpetual struggle women around the world face as they try to balance it all.

Interviewing a few of FINCA Peru’s Kiva borrowers in Ayacucho.

What a beautiful thing it is to live in a part of our world where its people have been succeeding in the battle to preserve their culture while climbing out of poverty. What extraordinary proof that the Kiva Fellows Program, and volunteering in general, is just as much about personal development as it is about growing the communities we work with.

I am thrilled to be blogging with Idealist.org and look forward to comments from readers as well as posts from other contributors. Viva la Vida Idealist!