In the midst of Copa Mundial fervor here in Chile, every home appliance and electronics store is offering “baratísima” deals on TVs of every size and shape, but particularly on Plasmas. I assumed that the frenzy of these “buy your new high-definition, 50-inch, Plasma [which refers to either a plasma or an LCD TV, as it turns out]” advertisements was only reaching well-to-do Santiaguinos. But a visit to a client’s home yesterday proved me wrong.

This home was missing a window – unrepaired damage from the February earthquake – and did not have a refrigerator. (Although now, in winter, with no heat and an open window, room temperature is about 45 degrees which means that perishable goods store just fine.) Yet, in the center of the living room, there it stood – the new Plasma.

There is something about the big black (or white, in the case of the one you see here ) screen turning on for the first time to make its high-def debut that never fails to startle me. I had the same surprise when I arrived to my last apartment in Honduras, which was furnished with a flatscreen TV, yet tried to pass off a mini fridge and a hotplate as a “kitchen.”

For some people, a television is more logical than a refrigerator. A group of clients I once visited in rural Honduras had recently celebrated the arrival of electricity to their village by purchasing televisions. Their new power grid was run by solar energy, and worked very effectively to power lights and small appliances, but was not designed to power large appliances – like televisions and refrigerators – for any amount of time. But unlike fridges, you can run a TV for only a few hours per day; and for this community, the televisions were an important symbol of a new era of better living standards.

Though the same economic logic cannot necessarily be applied here in Santiago, Chile (a new refrigerator costs around $350, and even “en oferta” the cheapest Plasma is going for about $700), TVs definitely serve as status symbols.  And there’s no doubting the social obligation to be plugged-in in high-def to watch the Orgullo Rojo win their World Cup matches.

To read more about the overwhelming pride Chileans feel for their team, read Lindsey Chapman’s post,  “A Week of Three Firsts.”

Ají, lime, onion, and coriander

I can’t leave South America without writing a post on one of my favorite things in the world: FOOD!

Many of  the clients I met working as a Kiva Fellow sold food in various forms – whether they were wholesale potato dealers, raised and prepared cuy for functions, cooked lechón at the local market, made lunch plates for school children or squeezed fresh orange juice on the corner.  Most microfinance clients are women – and in South America women dominate the food industry.

Eating new things is a great way to get to know a culture, since food plays such an integral, practical and historical role in a culture.  You will meet a lot of people in your work abroad who will invite you to eat with them, either at their home, store or  favorite local spot.  Here’s a sampling of food I’ve relished in my travels in both Peru and Bolivia:

Peru

Tamales y Humitas – Salty or sweet flavored ground corn steamed inside a corn husk.

Masa mora morada con arroz con leche – Hot, thick purple corn gelatin served with rice pudding.  Usually eaten for breakfast or on cold nights in Cusco.

Choclo con queso – Corn and cheese.  Urubamba valley produces great corn with HUGE kernels.

Lechón – Roasted suckling pig, usually served with corn, potatoes and salad.

Rocoto relleno – Hot pepper stuffed with meat and vegetables.

Corn drying in a field in Bolivia

Cuy - guinea pig, usually oven roasted or stuffed with herbs.

Chiriuchu – Cusqueño dish usually served during Corpus Christi and special occasions like microfinance institution Arariwa’s 25^th anniversary, which I attended while working there.

Pollo a la brasa/al broaster – Roasted/fried chicken served with french fries.  You can find this everywhere!

Anticuchos de corazon – Sliced and grilled cow’s heart or other cuts of meat.  Found at kiosks on the street, it’s cooked on a skewer and served with potatoes and hot sauce.

Ceviche – Cubes of raw fish or seafood marinated in lime, topped with onions and canchita (roasted salty corn kernels) and served with corn and sweet potato.

Tiradito – Thin slices of raw fish marinated in line and pepper.

Causa – Mashed yellow potato sandwich filled with various items like tuna, avacado, tomato, etc.

Chifa – Peruvian Chinese food.

Ají – Hot pepper used in comida criolla and as an accompanying hot sauce made with lime.  A popular one is rocoto or amarillo.

Fruta – The abundance of fruit in Peu and Bolivia is amazing.  I’ve had some of the freshest, right off the tree oranges, star fruits, papaya, guava, bananas, pineapple, passion fruit, grapefruit, pomegranate, etc.

Drinks

Mate de coca – Tea made with coca leaves.  Used to combat altitude sickness, indigestion, hunger, tiredness, etc.

Quinoa/Maca/Avena – Some of the healthiest grains on the planet, eaten from ancient times.  You’ll see women on the street in the morning serving hot, thick healthy breakfast drinks made with or without milk.

Jugo natural – The omnipresent women with juice carts or in the market creating any combination of fruits blended with either water or milk.  Great way to start the day.

Drinking chicha in Calca

Cerveza – Pilsen, Callao, Cusqueño, Cristal, Arequipeña. Peruvians love their beer.

Chicha – Corn beer from the Incan times that is traditionally made by chewing and spitting the kernels in a large vat and left to ferment.  I haven’t tried it made the traditional way but it’s an acquired taste nonetheless.

Chicha morada – Sweet purple corn refreshment usually made with pineapple flavor.

A friend of mine just introduced me to a documentary on Peruvian food called De Ollas y Sueños (Cooking up Dreams).  Please see the trailer for De Ollas y Sueños and you’ll understand why I love Peruvian food so much.

Bolivia

Api con pastel – Hot, thick, sweet purple corn drink served with fried dough for breakfast.  Try it with a helping of sugar on top.

Salteñas y tucumanas – Dumplings of sorts filled with meat or cheese and baked (salteñas) or fried (Tukumayu) served with many accompaniments. Usually for breakfast although you can get them at most times of the day.

Chuño and tunta – Freeze dried potatoes popular in the Andes.  Potatoes can be stored for a very long time after this process.

Pollo al spiedo/broaster – Roasted/fried chicken usually served with french fries.

Silpancho – Thin piece of breaded and fried meat served over rice topped with salad and egg.

Lechón – Roasted suckling pig usually served with corn, potatoes and salad.

Pique Macho – Chunks of grilled meat and chorizo served with tomatoes and peppers.

Charque – Dried llama or beef. The origin of the word jerky.  Usually served fried.

Churrasco – Bolivian BBQ.  In Santa Cruz there are tons of outdoor eateries where you can get skewered meat and huge pieces straight off the parrilla.

Picante de Pollo - Spicy chicken stew over rice with a side of potatoes.

Caldo de Cardan – Bull’s penis soup.  It’s supposed to improve men’s virility.

Anticuchos de corazon – Sliced and grilled cow’s heart or other cuts of meat.  Found mostly at kiosks on the street, it’s cooked on a skewer and served with potatoes and hot sauce.

Chifa – Bolivian Chinese food.

Llajwa – Omnipresent on Bolivian tables, this hot pepper and tomato sauce is used to spice up any dish.

Fruta – The abundance of fruit in Peu and Bolivia is amazing.  I’ve had some of the freshest, right off the tree oranges, star fruits, papaya, guava, bananas, pineapple, passion fruit, grapefruit, pomegranate, etc.

Drinks

Maté de coca – Tea made with coca leaves.  Used to combat altitude sickness, indigestion, hunger, etc.

Quinoa salad

Quinoa/Maca/Avena – Some of the healthiest grains on the planet, eaten from ancient times.  You will see women on the street in the morning serving hot, thick healthy breakfast drinks made with or without milk.

Jugo natural – Omnipresent women with juice carts or in the market create any combination of fruits blended with either water or milk.  Great way to start the day.

Cerveza – Huari from Oruro (my favorite), Paceña from La Paz, Taquiña from Cochabamba (usually drunk while playing cacho.

Vino – The best Bolivian wine comes from the southern region of Tarija, close to the Argentinian border.

The biggest meal in both Peru and Bolivia is almuerzo (lunch).  It usually has a first soup course followed by the second course and a maté (herbal or fruit infusion) or refreshment.  And it’s always a ton of food.

Hungry yet?

Just be sure to take it easy when you first get to South America.  The differences in flora, fauna and health standards can wreak havoc on your stomach.  Eating in local markets is super cheap but is only for the strong of stomach or after being there for awhile.  After settling into your new home abroad, you will find your caseras (the businesses you trust and continually patronize) and they will treat you like family.

Email me at sheethal@leapwork.com for my Cusco and La Paz caseras and recs on my favorite restaurants in Peru and Bolivia!

!Que comas bien!

I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t (and won’t) get the chance to visit many of Costa Rica’s main tourist attractions. Instead, I have slowly gotten to know the country through talking to small business owners who receive microloans and the Fundación Mujer loan officers that work with them. As a Kiva Fellow, I have seen breathtaking views that aren’t on the regular tourist circuit and I have also seen heartbreaking poverty. The most lasting images I will take with me are all of the ordinary people I got the chance to talk to: the pineapple grower in Paraiso, the piñata maker in Naranjito, and the pedicurist in Cartago.

As a long-term volunteer, the picture I have of Costa Rica is so much more complicated, and, in my opinion, much more interesting than what short-term visitors get to see. And while at times it can being incredibly difficult, even heart-wrenching, to talk to people who have so little and so few opportunities, it both inspires me and reminds me of why I wanted to be a volunteer in the first place.

For another perspective on how hard it can be to move between being just a visitor and seeing what everyday life is like in a developing country I suggest reading Rob Packer’s blog Living in Two Worlds at Once.

Meg Gray is finishing up her work as a Kiva Fellow at Fundación Mujer in San José, Costa Rica. Follow her or La Vida Idealist on Twitter to get more frequent updates.

A friend was driving us back to Barranquilla from Cartagena, where I’d spent some of the weekend, and we decided to spot by a beach to see what it looked like — it was beautiful like so many beaches in Colombia, but this isn’t a blog about beaches. On the way out, we had an “orientation breakdown” and ended up taking a road that wasn’t the way we’d come. As the dirt road became worse and worse, we started to wonder how the car was going to make it out with five people in it, and when we came to a hill that I would have said needed a 4×4 before I came to Colombia, it was time for a friend and me to get out and see where exactly we were going. We ran up the hill and found someone working in the hacienda there — pretty much the only person we saw on the road. I asked him how the road to get onto the main road was and how far it was: I was told it was good and the main road was closed. Then I realized I was asking the wrong kind of question.

I’ve written before that almost every time we interview a microfinance borrower working as a Kiva Fellow in Colombia, we ask them what they think of their barrio and that the answer is normally that the barrio is “safe,” “quiet” or that the levels of muggings are “normal,” which often ends with a raised eyebrow back in the office. It’s not that I don’t trust our borrowers — I have no doubt that their barrio is safe for them but wouldn’t be for me — it’s more that their perspective is completely different and that more than often, you have to ask what other people think of their barrio to get a more individual answer.

Our journey from the beach was just another one of these cases. The proper question to ask was, “In this car, is it best to carry on this way, or go back the way we came?” It was better to turn around and go back.

Rob Packer is currently working as a Kiva Fellow with the Fundación Mario Santo Domingo in Barranquilla, Colombia. For more on his experiences, check out his blog or follow him on Twitter.

Me (second from right) with my make-up class on graduation day. And yes, for a final project we dressed one classmate up as a bride.

That’s right. Every week for the last month or so, I’ve spent three hours a week learning how to curl my eyelashes, apply lipstick, and pick the right eye shadow colors for any given outfit. This may sound like a huge waste of time and I’ll admit at times I had trouble sitting through it, but in the end I’m glad I did.

Fundación Mujer’s Executive Director originally insisted that I take the class along with 6-8 Fundación clients because she thought it would be fun, that I would learn a lot, and that as a volunteer I deserved break from the daily grind. I resisted, not wanting to give up three working hours every week, but she won in the end. I’ll be the first to admit that my very limited makeup skills have improved each week, but more importantly being part of the class let me get to know a group of Fundación Mujer clients in a way that wouldn’t have been possible in many other contexts.

Unlike many volunteer experiences, I don’t spend extended periods of time with the same clients. It’s just not the nature of being a Kiva Fellow. I make visits to the field to collect information about clients and their loans for Kiva and I do follow-up visits to see how loans are being used, but most of my time is in the office working with and training MFI staff, so they can use Kiva effectively long after I am gone. My borrower visits are fairly infrequent and I rarely see the same client more than once or for more than 30-40 minutes. This often makes it hard to truly get past the cultural gap between me and the clients.

Lack of time to build a relationship means that during most client visits, I’m viewed as the “powerful” stranger. But in make-up class, I was just another student. This shift in the perceived power structure was a vital change for really having clients open up to me about their aspirations, family life, and crush-of-the-day. As two classmates did my makeup (fake eyelashes and all) this morning, the power dynamic was blissfully absent. They teased me, we laughed together, and I got to threaten to make them look like clowns if they messed up my eyeliner.

Thus, despite my lack of enthusiasm for the topic, I’m glad I carved the time out each week to get to know these women. And I would encourage anyone to take a similar chance without hesitating, even if it is the form of a make-up class.

Meg Gray is currently a Kiva Fellow working at Fundación Mujer in San José, Costa Rica. Follow Meg or La Vida Idealist on Twitter to get more frequent glimpses into her experience in Costa Rica. Learn more about Fundación Mujer and the other trainings it offers for clients here. Or make a loan to a Fundación Mujer client or another small business owner here on Kiva.org.

This has happened to several of my friends in Cusco. One friend tried to pay for our salsa class with a 5 soles coin. Then someone else paid with a larger bill and got his coin as change. “Falso!” he exclaimed and asked the person collecting the money to find out who gave the false coin to return the useless metal to the proper owner. Another friend found out he had a false 50 soles bill (ouch!) and was just happy that the checkout person at the store he tried to pay for his meal with it didn’t do something more serious than just give it back to him.

Having false money is like holding a hot potato or playing the card game Old Maid. Whoever has the false bill is stuck with it, because there’s simply no way to get rid of it.

I found out I had a false 5 soles coin (equivalent to approximately $2.50), when I tried to pay for my one and only cuy (guinea pig) meal in Tipón, the capital of cuy in the Cusco area. The waiter would not accept my coin and I had to pay with another coin. I looked at him and said “¿Cómo podría ser?” (How could it be?)

After this incident, (simply as an experiment mind you,) I tried to buy some fruit with this useful coin. Even in the dark, the fruit lady knew it was false and gave it back to me. I then tried to pay my combi (bus) fare, and the collector also returned it to me. After these two failed attempts to part with the Old Maid, I was resigned to keep the coin as a souvenir of my travels to Peru.

I haven’t received a fake bill in Bolivia and my friend and I have a bet as follows: If I get a fake bill during my time in Bolivia, my friend will buy the bill off me for face value. If not, I owe him lunch. I’d rather catch it before I get it but at least I have a backup!

No false money accepted here!

Both microfinance institutions I have worked with in Peru and Bolivia have signs on the cashiers in their offices that say “All false bills will be perforated and confiscated” with a sample fake bill stuck in the window.

Just so you don’t get stuck with the hot potato when in Peru or Bolivia, here are some ways to tell if you money is counterfeit:

For Peruvian soles:

Bills -

• The color of the number (whether 10, 20, 50, 100 or 200 soles) should change when you wave the bill back and forth. It will go from a light purple to a dark purple or blue.
• The paper should be thick and of quality stock. You can pull opposite sides of the bill to tell the thickness. After using real Peruvian money for awhile, you will be able to distinguish proper paper quality.
• The portrait etching should be intricate, with no detail left out. The quality of the carving is key.
• There should be a shadow of the portrait when you hold it up to the light. When you look at the bill on the plane, you should see the denomination. It’s one of the hardest things to fake.

For coins –

• The weight should be heavy. After handling Peruvian coins for awhile you will be able to tell if a coin is lighter than it should be.
• The coin should be round and well-formed.
• The color should be a light and shiny silver and for 2 and 5 soles, light and shiny gold.
• The coin should be smooth without pock marks or rough parts.
• The engraving should be smooth and detailed.

I’ve gotten pretty good at this recently and have become the resident fake money expert.

For Bolivian Bolivianos:

• The easiest way to tell if a bill is real is to rub some water on it. If the ink bleeds, the bill is fake.
• Other ways include –
• Texture in the engraving. Run your thumb across the bottom right corner of the bill and the two lines usually at the top left.
• You should see a faint BCB (Banco Central de Bolivia) when you look across the bill at eye level. It shouldn’t be too obvious. It’s a subtle embossing.
• There should be a shadow of the portrait on the left side of the bill.
• There is a square symbol on the left side of the bill. On both sides of the bill, this shape should be in the same spot. If there is any variation, the bill is fake.

How do you tell a fake bill in your country? Please feel free to share in the comments!

Now, to be clear, I agree that there are many problems back home.  I, by no means, harbor a blind patriotism that is ignorant of the progress we still need to make domestically and abroad.  But it’s not all bad.  Spending a year as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer opened my eyes to the incredible energy and dedication the American people have to keeping their communities alive and vibrant.

And these same people are dedicated to being good world citizens.  I have a number of friends who have gone abroad to volunteer their time and skills to impoverished countries, genuinely trying to make an impact.  The majority of my fellow bloggers on this site are U.S. citizens, and I believe each of them is sincerely trying to make a difference in his or her country of current residence.  Aren’t these individuals great examples of the good that comes from the United States?  I would never want to bad mouth a country that has genuinely good people fanning out all over the globe trying to make the world more just.

So my question is: how do we become good ambassadors?  How do we make sure that all those fantastic people out there, doing incredible work, are proud to say they are U.S. citizens?  Because I for one want to take credit for all the good that is being done by these people, these people and these people.

Lauren Foukes is currently teaching English and helping local businesses in Ecuador.  For more about her experiences, check out her personal blog.