My dream is to....

 I want to work with protected areas and non-protected areas within South America and issues that come up with establishment of, and continuation of having them as it relates to locals and the indigenous that live on or near the parks.

What is being poor.. reflecting back on Paraguay

What is being poor exactly? I have an interesting conversation once with my neighbor in Paraguay. she told me she was happier when they did not have electricity and running water because now it is the norm and she has to struggle to pay for it. she told me that before the light and water came they were happier, they were fine. Now everything has changed. Now I have to pay for my daughters clothes and make sure they have a new outfit each year because if they dont their peers will make fun of them. In the past, no one had money like that for clothes. Everyone was the same. I talked to grandma (her mom) once she said they used to suffer a lot in the old days.. but this was from sickness and feeling helpless. it was more from how they were perceived in the community, their happiness was based off their family relationships and how the community saw them, than money. For me being poor has nothing to do with money, things, or the type of house you have. its access to empowerment and happiness and this is based off of the people around you. if you ask me, many people in America are “poor”. We have so many heart diseases, etc, makes one wonder... I came home after Paraguay to the suburbs where a community did not exist.. it felt impoverished. What is poverty? Should we challenge the conventional view on poverty? People argue accessibility to health care, schools, etc... but i can argue differently and use examples from the states... if we did not have television, would we interact with our families more?To notice our biases.. gosh i had them as well. i would walk into a “shack” and feel sorry for the family inside of it. i thought of cold nights, etc... it took me awhile to recognize how many people these children have around them to love them as they grew up. Grandma was always around her grandchildren... brothers could play with cousins, etc...their lives did not seem bad to me anymore... it took an adjustment. a hard and painful one to admit that i had...i wanted so badly to pick up a child that was playing in the dirt  with a broken toy, next to the chickens, and take him away to safe, clean, America where he would have clean toys and new toys... then i would look down and see the smile, and his brothers and sisters around him, smiling. He would end up being picked up by an older sibling or cousin and carried inside to be fed, changed, loved... it made me realize how sterile my lenses were coming from “a cleaner place”.... my soul could not even see the happiness in this family because the environment seemed “dirty” to me... i could not get past the chicken poop on the dirt floor, the dogs with fleas, or the buckets of “drinkable” water. It took so much effort for me to even open up to the idea that this family was a family like anywhere. It did not lack love, and was not “poor”. In fact, I was just feeling apart of my small world being challenged because it was different than what was comfortable in MY MIND.

The Job I want after my Masters

I want to do a job like Peace Corps but with more money and power and training to get things done to help small communities like the one I was in. More ability. it can be a local government, our gov or an NGO, as long as we are listening to what the people are asking for and recognizing all the stakeholders needs while conserving/ protecting a resource or natural area. I want to work with locals in a foreign context because I love learning so much from them. I want to be around children, farmers, mothers and teachers as well as professionals who love doing the job they are doing because they are like me, they like helping people. I want new experiences, new insights and challenges in my daily job. I want to speak Spanish and build on it. I want to learn new ways to express myself, to laugh at new jokes and to smile each day. I want to make new connections, feel new emotions and have new thoughts. I want to see clearly the challenges and the complexity of them before me. I want to feel love for the new place I am working in, love for my job, for the negatives and positives, the rough times and the easy, I want to feel alive. This is why I want to work abroad. This is why I need to work with others, I need to feel alive, not restrained or pressured to be a certain way but out of my own culture and boundaries to become and be my ideal self. I want to help families; I want to help out health centers, schools, farmers, small gardens, small committees, afterschool programs. I want to start them. I want to bring awareness to young women, that they have the power to speak up, to walk away, to come forward. I want people to look at me funny and laugh and then understand me because that is me. I want to bridge differences through this laugher and through projects that are successful not because I did them but because they did, and I just held the door open. I want to see a weathered face with a button down shirt and a hat, with sweat running down his face, looking at me finally with acceptance.  I do not want things to be easy, for they are not genuine that way. 


What job is this?

Thank you

I remember my first day on the job being picked up by a tall guy who talked slow. He was from Tennessee and I had never knew anyone from there. He drank a ton of coffee and talked a lot.  He was very intelligent, kind and had funny personality. I liked his humor a lot.  I remember sitting down in this café in Mabel, a tiny town. He told me he hunted. I had never knew anyone who hunted. But because this man had a personality I liked, I took interest. If he only knew my prejudgments about hunting, but the laid back open- minded individual with the sardonic humor that I liked, was nothing like my California small boxed of a mind was telling me about hunters. It confused me and made me happy. I immediately liked him for his genuine personality, his ability to have fun and be serious. I liked how he interacted with the participants.

I remember a man behind a desk that gave a friendly aura out that I should respect him. Something about him immediately I knew I could work well with. I never worked well under someone I did not respect nor look up to. Something about him gave me the feeling he had a lot of experiences in his life but did not need to talk about them. I was never good at knowing organizations but something about this man made me feel that he knew a lot of people. Sometimes his emails would frustrate me because I would not know what to do with them or how to do what he was asking me to do. But I recognized that he challenged me often, he kept me wanting to do more and better and be better. For some reason I wanted to impress him. I never worked under anyone like that before. I knew he had done peace corps, that he understood. I was going through a lot at the time, readjusting was really hard on me. I missed Paraguay a ton. I felt I had left behind the challenge of being made to be more open and more understanding of others and their views. This man was modest. I liked his class a lot. Everyone did. But working with him  i liked more. I became addicted to answering his emails asap, it became a goal I worked toward and each work day gave me a sense of accomplishment .

I remember a blond pony tailed man wearing shorts. This confused me and kept me confused for a while, because although both the other men were not like anyone I had met before, this man reminded me of the surfers in santa cruz. He must have a young 20 year old woman or two as a girlfriend. He was probably a stoner who hung around at a brewery all day when the surf was bad. So when I found out more about him, I became unbelievably confused. He was a kind man with a huge heart for his family and a genuine love for conservation and making the world better. I remember a conversation I had with him in the van on one of our field trips. I remember his openness, his ability to be completely honest and his genuity as well. His passion for his work was very apparent.

The small amount of time I spent at the Center meant a lot to me. Each of these crazy men I am going to miss. They have formed a family at the center. Thank you for letting me be apart of it.