Among Haitian women, I have learned that they have learned and been trained to somehow remove feelings of jealousy when their husbands start second and third families with other women. I have seen several situations where the woman is criticized for expressing feelings of jealousy, rather than the man being criticized for adultery. What I felt when witnessing this for the first time was perhaps the most upside down and confused I had ever felt… as though human nature was being completely skewed.

I conclude that if men are taught or influenced or allowed to seek more than one wife and women are taught to remove feelings and actions of jealousy then love is removed from the family structure, trust is non-existent, and the family is completely unstable. With families being one of the most basic building blocks of society, society as a whole, therefore, lacks stability. Perhaps this is one factor behind the instability of Haitian society although I do not mean to say that all Haitians practice this. From Dominican society I have experienced and witnessed more sexual harassment whereas from Haitian society I have witnessed more gender inequality.

The Chinese have a great point with the yin yang symbol, representing interconnected and interdependent polar opposites in the natural world, including male and female. Machismo really creates a lack of balance where men, in an attempt to be masculine, go overboard to the point that they actually do weak and childish things: abandoning responsibilities, lacking self-control, acting victimized when they themselves are abusive, and more. Women, then, are forced to fill in the man’s role if they are to hold things together. It is really quite a mess.

I conclude that the reason this practice continues when it has negatively affected society throughout history is due to the fear of those involved. Sons are afraid to stand up against the practice and may end up practicing it as well when they have already lived through its destruction themselves. Wives are afraid to address the situation head on, open their hearts, and let their jealousy and bravery run wild to protect their families and marriage despite the criticisms of others. Men who live such lifestyles must be afraid of appearing weak or inadequate to just one wife and family, causing them to seek multiple. Neighbors and extended family are afraid to go against the grain and continually stand up against this practice. However, I do believe that there is a simple, yet simultaneously difficult and complicated solution that is declared in 1 John 4:18.

“There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.”

Caitlin McHale is currently living in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic as the co-founder and executive director of Project Esperanza.

9:38 a.m. I receive a second call from my mom and realize she may actually have something important to say. I answer to hear my mom in tears as she says, “Grandpa died.” I immediately think about his sense of humor, his generosity and his strong character, and how much I will miss him. Rachael and Jarvi offer their condolences and hug me tight.

Me on the left with Grandpa LeRoy

10:37 a.m. Delta officially changes my flight from Thursday to the following Tuesday.

The next few days friends and relatives pour into the little town of Glennwood, MN in honor of Grandpa LeRoy. It means so much. One of my grandpa’s good friends was in Omaha on his way to meet his family in Colorado and turns around to come to the funeral. It’s funny how death puts life back into perspective.

My cousin Julie flies in from New York and runs the funeral service. My sister and I sing and play piano, and read scriptures. My cousin Mike shares Grandpa’s obituary and a prayer. My dad and my uncle, and a few of my grandpa’s friends share fond memories. My mom reads aloud a few stories my grandpa had written. We all eat hamburgers at the A&W after the funeral because that was Grandpa’s favorite place. It is all very special and unifying as a family. I will always be grateful that I was able to share such an intimate time with my family as we mourn the loss of someone we love.

11:59 p.m. It is Monday night, and I am excited and feel ready to depart for Chile tomorrow. I will carry with me the wisdom, the confidence and the work ethic Grandpa LeRoy exemplified to me. I will remember the ways he put others ahead of himself, and the way he loved to make people laugh. I will look forward to the future with hope and determination to beat all odds, because that’s what he did.

Lindsey Chapman was recently a volunteer with VE Global, at Colegio Anakena.

Love at your doorstep. Latin America, you will be missed.

Dear Latin America,

Thank you for teaching me how to feign a command over salsa steps and for putting people in my path who will happily sway me to the beat of your music.

Thank you for feeding me fruit that ostensibly appeared downright poisonous, ominous or otherwise inedible and for showing me the beauty that lies behind spikes and inside sharp seeds.

Thank you for making princesa (princess), amorcito (my little love), preciosa (precious) and querida (dear) my middle names and for the affection that drips into all your words.

Thank you for teaching me that development and a commitment to peace can crop up right next to coffee and conflict. Thank you for exposing me to your people–ex-combatants, victims of conflict, sufferers and perpetrators–whose thirst to learn and reconcile with history is a lesson in living.

Thank you for showing me the beauty of cloud forests, volcanoes, and thunderstorms – and for highlighting the kindness and benevolence of strangers who come together when these natural phenomena go awry.

Thank you for making it impossible to sleep without the sound of a bus exhaust, the ice-cream bell jingle, or a woman selling tamales. Your aromas will follow me home.

Thank you for aggressively overflowing with passion. For your vivid gesturing, your poetic harpings of love in the face of Garcia Marquez, Neruda or Benedetti, your feverish addiction to soccer.

Thank you for diminishing the distances, for poking into my personal, private space, for forcing the conversations on love, religion, family, marriage, children, poverty, war, and opportunity, and for coloring everything with a hug.

Finally, thank you for teaching us or reminding us or encouraging us to feel, and learn, and serve, and give of ourselves, and lead, and follow, and love, and dare, and appreciate beauty – and for carving such a space for yourself in our memory that we are just bound to return.

Roxanne has just completed a cycle of post-conflict development projects benefiting women in war zones worldwide and, most recently, in Latin America. To read about Roxanne’s journey, visit her blog.

I have yet to meet an expat or traveler who does not worship Jack Kerouac. Kerouac idealized the romanticization of wanderlusting or throwing a life’s belongings on one’s back to… do what exactly? Find oneself? Learn experientially? Feel a tug at idle heart-strings? One of the reasons for my existence in Guatemala is to codify the stories of indigenous women’s experiences of the civil war as a process of memory reconciliation. This is an account of the other stories – the stories of the women and men passing through this continent in a constant (self) search.

The Open Road - How did you get there?

An uncanny pattern in these stories has been love as a catalyst of travel. When I ask people “Why did you leave home?”, an unusually uniform motif in responses, from Uganda to Egypt, has been “Because I was recovering from heartbreak.” Equally common is the “I fell in love with someone who lives in insert unlikely place here and packed up my life shortly thereafter.” Some are passing through countries for professional reasons, others are enjoying some last moments of freedom before university or an army commitment, but for many, love recurs as the theme setting them on the road.

And what keeps them out there? If you are afraid of attachment, do not buy a one-way plane ticket; better yet, do not board the first flight at all. Countless stories begin with “I arrived in Nicaragua for an internship and ended up staying for four years” or “I ran out of money while traveling in Argentina and just decided to live there for a while. I am now married with kids.” The way in which people listen to their happiness astounds me; once they find an environment that coaxes the best out of them, a community that feels intimate, or a job that mirrors their passions, travelers put down roots in an environment previously foreign in a way I would not have imagined while sitting in a college classroom in New England.

As for the receptacles of all the creative energies away from homelands, they can highlight a stark contrast to what previously used to get people out of bed in the morning. I met a former UN worker who now owns a private business organizing travel for retirees in Latin America. A former investment banker is now running an orphanage. A writer has switched gears to found an ice cream company. Public service, private entrepreneurship or merely enjoying a breath and pause in life take turns forming professional trajectories, which people admit they may never have pursued at home.

I do not know what it is about the ‘away’ that inspires boldness. Whatever it is that has set everyone on the road – heartbreak, love, religious quest, the joy of the first travels, dissatisfaction with life in its previous rendition or professional hopes – I am grateful for it. The stories from the road are my own motivator, keeping me inspired out there every day.

Why did you set out on your journey? If you have stayed, what kept you there?

Roxanne is currently  designing and implementing projects in communities of conflict worldwide. For more of Roxanne’s experiences with conflict-related work, follow her on Twitter or read her blog.

When I parachuted into Colombia after months of work in environments of modesty and reservation, I was taken aback by the abundance of unbridled affection. A walk down the street in Bogota revealed that Toto, this was not the Middle East any more. Couples here want to shout their love from the rooftops and, given the scarcity of tall buildings, they settle for walking attached to the hip and kissing goodbye with passion of “Gone With the Wind” proportions prior to the men’s departure for war. Pet names, such as amor (my love), amorcito (my dear love), hermosa (beautiful), preciosa (precious), and princesa (princess) are all terms of endearment decorating interactions from a taxi ride to a business meeting. A police sign featuring armed officers in uniform at the Pereira airport,  for example, replaced the o in “policia” with a graphic of a red, pulsating heart.

Love, faith and color in Candelaria, Bogota

Colombia, country of love. Alongside it: Colombia, country of conflict. I have come to Bogota to direct the women’s programming for a Centre of Reconciliation between former combatants and displaced victims of conflict. The curriculum of post-conflict reintegration draws on principles of conflict resolution, development, and women’s empowerment. While I have implemented a version of this program in numerous conflict and post-conflict environments worldwide, the women in my workshops here surprise me by revealing the beauty and harshness of the paradoxes of Colombia.

During a “rights education” exercise, which required reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and identifying an example of adequate fulfillment of each right in Colombian society and a case of its insufficient protection, the participants offered multiple examples of rights violations and dismissed my examples of adequate rights fulfillment with a resigned “this is not how things work in Colombia, princesa.” A different exercise, aiming at jarring the participants’ imagination about sources of happiness, asked them to define elements of a good week. The room flooded with examples of love. The next prompt was to make a ‘bucket list,’ naming activities in which the women would like to engage over the course of their life, places they would like to visit and experiences they would like to sample. The exercise virtually demands idealism; participants are encouraged to think of everything they could desire, regardless of its feasibility. Lists remained sparse. Conflict has a remarkable way of wiping hope for the future and one’s capacity to imagine life otherwise.

In the post (?)-conflict world of Colombia, memories of injustice and brutality coexist alongside manifestations of love. A commitment to peace and transitional justice on the part of some is coupled with a bombing involving strapping explosives to a 12-year-old boy perpetrated by others. Welcome to Colombia, country of contradictions.

Roxanne is currently a designing and implementing projects in communities of conflict worldwide. For more of her attempts to navigate the paradoxes of Colombia, check out her blog.

This lust for romance was originally brought to my attention one hot, sticky day as my class and I worked with some adults in our community garden. Throughout the day, both the kids and adults pestered me to translate into English what they believed to be important phrases. Of the near 30 odd sentences I translated, the vast majority went something like this: ¨Mi amor te quiero.¨ Another big hit was: ¨Tus ojos aparecen tan bonita en la luz de la luna.¨ Meaning, ¨Your eyes look beautiful in the moonlight.¨

Llama giving a beso

After my garden experience, I started to take a good long look around me in order to find out just who or what was to blame for the overly done romanticism. It didn’t take long to find the culprits.

Let’s start with the music, which in my town is broadcast on and off throughout the day thanks to a megaphone strapped to the roof of our local bodega. When you stop to listen to the words, not only is every single song lovesick to a fault, but they are also painfully redundant. Particularly when it comes to the word “corazon,” or heart. This word appears so often that I challenge anyone who disbelieves me to come to Peru and find a song where corazon is not proudly belted out in the main chorus line.

How about television? It’s no secret that the Latin world loves telenovelas. However, the extent to which these soap operas  highlight raunchy, ludicrous, revenge-ridden love is insane. I truly worry at times that after the 14 year old girls in my class watch La Mujer en el Espejo, they expect every man in their lives to whisk them off to romantic amusement parks and confess their love, as Marcos so regularly does with Maritza.

Not surprisingly, it’s not just the Latin produced media that’s devoted to portraying love. I guarantee that if you stroll into any one of Peru’s movie theaters you’ll find dubbed or subtitled Hollywood comedies so horribly romantic that even the kids in Dawson’s Creek wouldn’t watch them.