Poverty Project International Stories

Walking the back streets can seem a little daunting. I know, I do it all the time. You find yourself in places that are a little uncomfortable, out of your comfort zone. In fact, it can be quite a culture shock. Usually when people travel they go to the tourist spots and focus on carefully pre-planned stuff to do. For example, on the main island of Bocas Del Toro, you walk down the strip, go to a nice restaurant, and buy a ticket for a boat tour that will take you to a nice beach. That's fine, and you should do it because it is part of the experience. But to get a little deeper into the culture, all you have to do is walk a few streets back into the neighborhood and you will see a different world. Yes, it is dirty, yes, it may not smell very good. But if you stop looking at the poor conditions and look at the people, your perspective will start to change. You will see grandmothers sitting on porches watching the world go by. And if you smile and wave, they will wave back ...

It isnt about doing elaborate projects. It isnt about throwing money everywhere. It isnt about working with groups of volunteers It is a lifestyle experiment What on earth does that mean? I left the States for Mexico 5 years ago after the death of my husband. We had been there previously and fell in love with a little Mexican village. We planned to retire there, but unfortunately, it became his final resting place. I sat on every park bench in the park in that little village. My Spanish was terrible, but I attempted to talk to the locals as much as I could. I started to build some friendships. I ate a lot of street food. And I cried a lot. Eventually, I met Lee. He had been traveling for almost a year and had been to the most unlikely, off the grid places you can imagine. He took me to the "other" side of town. He was not afraid to swing in a hammock in a home the size of a closet watching old westerns in Spanish with a Mayan mechanic. He was not afraid to g...

This is the cacao market. The white bags are full of cacao just picked from chocolate forests in the wild. These people are Ngobe farmers. They are bringing cacao to market to sell it for almost nothing to make a few dollars to buy the things they need. I want to talk about a few things here. First, the value of the cacao. It is coming to the attention of many that chocolate, in its purest form, is actually good for you. That is so true, in fact more than true. I spent some time in Costa Rica with the Bribri. A woman there who was in her late 70's told me she never puts any chemicals into or on her body. She eats only things that are natural and she drinks 5 or 6 cups of raw cacao a day. Its unsweetened and boiled in water and tastes nothing like what your mother made. The native people in Costa Rica are some of the longest lived people on earth. In fact, the little old lady climbed a noni tree right in front of me to pick some noni leaves and show me how to make tea. Bu...

Naranjiots Its called a naranjito (pronounced nar an hee toe). It's a wild fruit that was growing in Anthony's back yard. You split it in half and squeeze the juice into a cup of cold water, strain and drink it. Everyone loves it and it has a lovely orange taste. We met Anthony--Roldolfo Anthony--on a walk out of town and up the hill that over looks all the islands. He called us into his yard after explaining to us about the very dangerous sleeping snakes that live in the area. He said they love to sleep all curled up and if you walk by too loud and wake them oooo, they will chase you and bite you and you will die. But if you carry a machete and use it to poke at the grass and the ground in front of you, the snakes will know the sound of the machete and will run away. He said they are very smart and he didn't know but he figured God made them that way. We vowed to always carry a machete when walking in the grass and then we followed him into his yard (minus a mach...

I spent some time talking with an old man on the corner in a small Jamacian flavored town in Panama. Before I tell you what he said, I want to describe the town for you. It used to big a bustling port for Chiquita Banana. The best bananas in all of Central America are grown here. But due to modern machinery and a drop in the banana market, the town was all but deserted of its high rollers and the 1000 plus jobs at the port were reduced to just a couple hundred. Now tall wooden houses stand, ravaged by time and subdivided into small apartments. Some are leaning a little too much and some have literally fallen into the sea. A few newer concrete homes have sprung up and heavy gates and bars guard their windows. To walk the streets, one would think the place poor. More than poor. The people who live in the more touristy nearby islands speak of this town using words like "unhealthy," "poor," and "dirty." So when I came to spend a few days here, I ...

CHOCOLATE! real, raw, organic, as close to nature as you can get chocolate! Fully ripe cacao pods are picked from the chocolate trees (called theobroma cacao) that grow wild everywhere in these islands. They are split open and the seeds are washed. If you like, you can suck the white, licorice tasting cotton candy covering from the seeds yourself. It tastes fantastic! After the seeds are washed, they are laid on flat beds in the sun to dry.  At this point the dried cacao seeds are great to nibble one. We like to cover them in chocolate and eat them that way. They are not sweet, but slightly bitter, almost like a coffee bean. The locals here then pound the seeds into smaller pieces called nibs. The nibs, like the whole seeds, are great to just munch on. They also make a fantastic tea! Just steep in hot water and add a little honey to taste. You can mix it with peppermint for a chocolaty mint tea or, if you come visit me, I will pick ginger flowers from the rain fores...