My name is Sheethal Shobowale. For six months, I am serving as a Kiva Fellow in South America, working with two Kiva partner microfinance institutions in Peru (Asociación Arariwa in Cusco) and Bolivia (Emprender in Laz Paz).

I have pretty much lived my whole life in New York, one of the largest cities in the world. Before I became a Kiva Fellow in Peru, I was living in Brooklyn. I lived a short month in Spain and worked a summer in Tokyo. I have spent time in India ever since I was a child and I have traveled a ton. I’ve always been extremely independent and strong-minded. So you’d think I’d be ready for the move from Cusco to La Paz. Not true.

Both cities are in the Andes, both populations speak Spanish and another indigenous language, the cuisine is similar (meat and potatoes), and the weather is similar this time of year – it’s the rainy season. So what is my problem?

Thinking more about it, it’s probably not the city that freaked me out, although La Paz (Pop ~1.5MM) is a lot bigger than Cusco (Pop ~ 400M). I think it was about going from a place that was so comfortable and familiar to one that was totally unfamiliar.

I completely forgot what it was like to be a stranger in Cusco because by the time I left after 3 months, I had my caseras (businesses I constantly patronized whose owners knew me). I found my apartment in the classifieds, I knew every combi (public bus service) route, I ate at local markets without getting sick, I boiled water instead of buying bottles, and I had lots of Cusqueñan friends.  I recognized every street, every neighborhood, every market – and every place had a memory. And although tour hawkers in the Plaza de Armas continually tried to give me information about Machu Picchu until the day I left, I actually acted as a tour guide for a stream of visitors because I knew so much about the area. And I loved it.

In short, in Cusco I felt at home.

This is the hugest difference between living somewhere versus being a transient backpacker for a couple days or weeks. You get used to a place. And it’s home.

Now I live La Paz. I started work at Kiva partner Emprender and so far I love it. Everyone has been so welcoming. I am looking forward to helping Emprender raise its profile on the social web, online marketing is my specialty). The Kiva clients I have been visiting in La Paz have shown me why I wanted to do this in the first place. Things are going well except for some minor stomach issues and not understanding the minibus routes (yet).

I know that soon I will feel at home in La Paz, but it just hasn’t clicked yet. For now I am waiting for that moment of peace to arrive…

I am looking forward to sharing my experiences in South America on La Vida Idealist.  Please consider following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LethalSheethal. Or check out my Kiva Fellow stories on http://fellowsblog.kiva.org or on my company blog http://leapwork.com.

Back in September-October of 2009, I was living in Brooklyn and working part-time while I hunted for jobs. I did have a few small successes, but for the most part my resumes were met with deafening silence. Feeling frustrated and anxious that I wasn’t using my degree, I completely changed strategies and re-focused on moving abroad. I applied to the Peace Corps in September and I received a nomination within a few short weeks. While a nomination is far from a guaranteed invitation and placement, I took it as an encouraging sign that I was on the right track.

I then made the decision to return to the country where I studied abroad two years ago. I booked a plane ticket to Quito, without a plan, without a job, but with the conviction that I would find something that would allow me to grow both professionally and intellectually, all while getting the chance to do a little good in the world. As an aside, I hope to one day make a career out of spreading cross-cultural understanding and goodwill through service learning, so I figured I’d find something that would help me on my way. A month later, however, I felt waves of doubt flood over me as my departure date drew near. What was I thinking? How could I have been so reckless as to gamble so much time and money on nothing more than a vague notion that I would “figure it out” along the way?

I was about to give up and continue my fruitless job search in New York, when finally my strategy paid off. After pouring over what must have been hundreds of websites for organizations in Ecuador, I eventually found one that felt like a good fit. While my current position as an Intercultural Coordinator is unpaid, it at least gives me the chance to test out what it’s like to be the broker between two cultures, and to learn the ins and outs of coordinating a volunteer-based project abroad.

I am very excited to contribute to La Vida Idealist, a blog which I have read with great interest since its earliest days. I hope to shed some light on what us college grads are up to during these tough economic times, and how serving abroad can and will pay off in the long run. I also hope that I don’t get any parasites. Some things, however, are simply out of your control.

The sign was actually directions to two barrios of Barranquilla, one called Por Fin and the other called Me Quejo. Barranquilleros seem to enjoy pointing out their—often crude—sense of humor and this is an example. The reason for these names is like two sides of the same coin: these are depressed areas of Barranquilla that lacked public utilities for a long time. While the people from Me Quejo se quejaban (complained) that they didn’t have water or electricity, the more optimistic people of Por Fin celebrated every time a utility was connected: “At last we have water! At last we have electricity!”

As a Kiva Fellow in Barranquilla, a large part of my time here will involve visiting poorer areas of the city, in order to meet microfinance borrowers and to see the effects of microfinance loans on their lives. It was this kind of direct connection with people on working hard to succeed in the face of poverty that originally brought me out an investment banking bubble into the nonprofit sector. My previous placement with Kiva was based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and I’m looking forward to seeing the differences in volunteering in very different parts of the world. Part of me hopes that the optimist-pessimist streaks of different barrios continue, but I think that, like in Central Asia, the real interest factor will be the borrowers I meet and each one’s individuality.