Poverty Project International Stories

A BIG part of the culture in the Yucatan Peninsula is Maya. The people who live there today are direct descendants of what you may think of as the Lost Mayan Empire. You hear about Mayan ruins and pyramids, but you may not realize that the Maya people still live among the jungles and farmlands of the Yucatan even as I write this. Most of them still incorporate traditional clothing, food, building techniques, art, language (YES! You can learn the speak Maya!) and religion into their daily lives. In January, when my daughter and I went to Mexico, we visited the state of Yucatan where the famed ruins of Chichen Itza are. Standing on the sacred grounds of the temple of Kukulkan is an experience that makes you pause, almost stop breathing, and try to take in the energy of the place and imagine what it was like to be there hundreds of years ago when life in the city was in full swing. But one of the most humbling things about the site, is to stop and take time to connect wit...

Maria with a guanabana ripe off the tree. Panama  Tell me please: What are SECRETS OF HAPPINESS? According to the Happy Planet Index , Costa Rica is the #1 Happiest Place on Earth!  I love this quote from the study:  People  living in Costa Rica have higher well being than the residents of many rich nations including the  USA and the UK, and live longer than people in the USA. Panama has repeatedly been the NUMBER ONE SPOT to retire overseas according to  International Living.  Check out this quote:  Internatio nal Living’s   Annual Global Retirement Index is hitting the presses. And in the top spot: Panama. I should say: Panama  again . Because this tiny powerhouse has topped this index more times than any other country. And this year, International Living is going over the top promoting Mexico as the up and coming best place to retire saying: The U.S.’s southern neighbor consistently makes...

My time spent living with the poor and the indigenous people of Mexico and Central America has turned up some interesting correlations. You understand that your life is full of stress in the Western world and I am sure you have been exposed to the idea that people who live simpler lives with less things seem to be happier. But do you know WHY? Is it just a mental thing? Is it because they don't know what they are missing? I believe it is much more than that. I lived in an impoverished community in Panama. Many of the home were square wooden boxes that were partially open to the outside. There was no plumbing, no running water or electricity. There were no beds nor any furniture. Families slept on the ground and cooked over an open fire outside. They had no refrigeration (and neither did I for nine months). They collected rain water in buckets which they used for drinking, cooking and bathing. They often went without shoes. They ate very little meat and instead a lot of th...

There is a park in the middle of town on the island of Colon in Bocas Del Toro, Panama. Streets run around all four sides of it. Fantastically huge trees grow in the park and the peeling-painted benches offer seating to travelers and locals alike. If you walk down the street on the west side of the park and you see Good Times walking down the street on the east side of the park, you better hurry up and decide if you want to buy one of his free newspapers. Yes, buy one. Good Times is my nick name for Sergio because he is always trying to sell me a copy of the little free newspaper called The Good Times. I get it. He needs to eat and he doesn't want to beg. I buy his newspaper occasionally and sometimes I just buy him lunch. But this is not about his financial situation. It's about his intuition. If you walk down the west street and Good Times is walking in the opposite direction down the east street and you just catch a glimpse of him through those great trees, the one...

Please, Mama, tell me about love? Love is when we see the hurt, the pain, the suffering. We do not deny it. We feel it. We let it run through us and in it we see beauty. We see comfort, we see compassion, we see appreciation. We rise above the pain and we see the beauty in the world because without the contrast of the dark, the light is never so beautiful. We lift our hands and our hearts and we dance in the rain. We celebrate our breath and the sun and the heat and the coolness. We smile at a homeless man and he smiles back at us. We play in the dirt with a child who has only an empty soda can for a toy and we laugh as he shows us how the game goes. We get up in the middle of the night when we cant sleep and we look at the vastness of the stars and we know somewhere deep inside us that all of this human experience is designed to teach us to love. It is designed to show us the contrast, the depth of despair and the height of joy and the sameness of our human-ness no matter our ...

Maria and her baby brother used to live next door along with the rest of the seven people in their family. They had a little house with running water and electricity, a privilege many do not have in this community. But several days ago all seven of them were asked to leave their home because they could not pay the rent. They stood outside my house, hearts broken, a few simple things in bags, and said they planned to live in the parking lot at the bank. There was a policeman there and a wide over hang on the building, so it was a good place to sleep. This is the house out behind my house in rural Panama. Both homes belong to a lovely older woman named Shirley. She is tall and dark with high cheekbones. She wears her silver hair in a bun and always dresses in skirts and she has the mostly lovely Jamaican yah-mon English. Shirley is a woman acquainted with sadness. She lost her soul-mate, the husband of her youth, when she was in her twenties and became a widow. She lost two mo...

This is Pato. He is deaf and cannot speak. When we first met him, he stood in the background and didn't really connect with people. He spoke some sign language, and read lips, but he didn't interact with many people. I am sure growing up in a poor community did not make many resources available to him.   So we started waving and then buying him M&Ms and acting funny and making him laugh. Soon he was coming over to the house and cutting the yard and fixing the fence. We paid him, which I am sure was a great boost to his self esteem. But the most important part was, he was learning to relax and interact with people.  Well, last week we found Pato a job! There is a little shop around the corner where they build beautiful handmade furniture from local hardwoods. I had them make me a bed and two dressers and they did a beautiful job for a price that made me really happy.  We walk by the place every day on the way to the store, and after being so happy w...

Soon I will be setting foot in the Land of the Maya, in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Its a land filled with ancient ruins, extensive cave systems, remote jungles, endangered reefs,  and one of the world most mysterious histories.  Thanks to your generous charity and many wonderful donations, I will be handing out gifts to poor children and families who are dealing with poverty while I am there.  As they say is Maya, JUMBO TIK!  (thank you!) While I am there I plan to spend time with indigenous people and learn some of the Maya language. I cant wait to do some traveling across the Yucatan Peninsula, which is one of my favorite things to do. My daughter will be with me for this trip and we will definitely drink ice cold coconut water and munch on sliced mangoes tossed in chili powder, lime, and salt as we stop in little villages and check out local art and meet the people.  YEY! I now have a GoPro and that means lots of videos. I promise I w...

I love the color. And then there is the time it takes to produce something so intricate and handmade. The art of the indigenous people in Mexico is so vibrant and rich. I bought one of these purses and now I wear it proudly and everywhere I go I brag about its workmanship. I feel like I brought home a bit of the soul of Mexico with me. The woman who made these lovely bags made these amazing blouses too. All cotton and hand-stitched. Just imagine holding one and feeling the threads and thinking about the endless hours of labor that went into it creation. This art is a labor of love. Can we love the people who labored? Always looking around the bend, laura Please check out our FULL WEBSITE at www.PovertyProjectInternational.com Connect with us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/povertyprojectinternational/ If you want to chat, you can email us at povertyprojectinternational@gmail.com Or if you want to help us out and DONATE, you can go to PAYPAL and ...

Rocks from the sea, balanced on each other at sometimes inconceivable angles. We have seen them before, in remote places where travelers and seekers have left offerings to the coast or to the gods of wanderlust.  And here we find totems, scattered along the shore.  But there is a difference. Here the spirit is not the same.  While others I have seen hold a sacred quality, built under sacred circumstances, as amazing as these may look, they hold sadness and a feeling of desperation for me.  You see, they were not built by pilgrims. They were built by a man and his wife who live here. Not because of any holy endeavor, but in a desperate bid to make a living.  I stood and watched as this old Mexican cabellero demonstrated his ability to balance one stone on another. He did it with the pomp of an entertainer and somehow it lost all its magical charm.  He had been balancing rocks for twenty years he said. In truth, it wasn...

This is St. Jude Thaddeus. He is the patron saint of hopeless cases. Here he is in a tiny outdoor church in the mountains of rural Mexico. The beads you see around his neck and on his staff are thank offerings for miracles the local people believe he has done.  I spoke to an old man who was sitting in the church waiting for mass to begin. He said not many people come to that church. It was so remote, I can understand why. There is something wonderful about connecting with the locals  It gives me the chance to hear their stories and their hearts. These are simple people, working hard and struggling. They come to this rural church several days a week to share a faith that is obviously very deep. It blessed me to see the whole family together. In order to know how best to reach out to people, I believe it is important to get to know them. And trips like this one to the mountains of Mexico are heartwarming and eye opening. Setting my feet in remote places....

Wanna listen to a story? There is a street bum in Bocas Del Toro, Panama named jack Sparrow. Well, that's what he calls himself anyway. I don't know his real name.  Relax and enjoy this recording of a little story about Jack.  Interested in more? You can get all the short stories put together in one book called  I RAN AWAY TO MEXICO: An Unexpected Spiritual Journey.  Its on Amazon now on KINDLE and in PAPERBACK you can order it here Enjoy! Laura Please check out our FULL WEBSITE at www.PovertyProjectInternational.com Connect with us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/povertyprojectinternational/ If you want to chat, you can email us at povertyprojectinternational@gmail.com Or if you want to help us out and DONATE, you can go to PAYPAL and send your donation to   povertyprojectinternational@gmail.com All donations are tax deductible. Live is an adventure, Live it!

We crossed a swinging bridge in the mountains of Costa Rica and climbed the hill to where the Watsi village spread out among the trees. Thatched roofed homes greeted us, and simple people opened their hearts wide and took us in. The Watsi are delightful. They live close to the earth and in connection with a sacred chocolate forest.   ​ “Cacao is the Mother of us all,” the daughter of the village medicine man explained as she led us past stone statutes of warriors and crocodiles guarding the entrance to the ancient cacao grove. We entered a dark hut where a tiny wrinkled woman was roasting dried beans over an open fire. She scooped up the hot beans and spread then out on a well-worn stone. She rocked another stone back and forth over the beans until they were crushed into a warm paste which she formed into a ball. ​ “This is the cacao,” she explained in heavily accented Spanish. She let me taste it. It was bitter. ​ Theobroma—Greek for God Food—is the ...