levi's travelblog: October 2005

flooding in San Andrés Itzapa, Guatemala

photo credit: Elizabeth, English teacher and friend of mine still working in San Andrés Itzapa. This is just down the hill from where I stayed for my month in Itzapa.

You may or may not have heard yet about Hurricane Stan, which hit Mexico and central America pretty hard this last week. In the little town of San Andrés Itzapa Guatemala, where I spent a month earlier this year, a lot of homes were destroyed by flooding and the municipal water and electricity were badly damaged. See, for example:

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1195876

Since I still know a number of people in Itzapa and a good chunk of my heart is still there, I'm going to do a small-scale, informal relief effort. I just want to funnel some money to a couple Itzapa residents who I consider to be very trustworthy to buy food, clothing, water etc. for people who need it. There will be zero overhead and it will directly benefit very poor indigenous people who have just lost everything they have. Also, anything we send has an equivalent value of about 10 times more than what it's worth here, so even a little bit is significant. If you want to help out, please let me know soon for how much, then I'll cover it for now until you have a chance to get the money to me, because I want to get the money there quickly. If you'd rather go through more formal means that might go to areas where help is even more badly needed, and get a tax deduction, I might recommend Rights Action in Canada and the U.S. or Rainbow World Fund in the U.S. One advantage to going through me will be that I will be able to let you know exactly to what and to whom the money goes to. I was going to write a section on the importance of the transfer of wealth from rich to poor countries in the context of sustainable development in its original meaning (not the many perversions which have been adopted since), but in the interest of expedience I'm going to send this as-is with my stated opinion that such equalization is essential to environmental sustainability in the broad sense.

taking the bus

Taking a city bus in a poorly serviced area is good to do, at least now and then. I took the train to Ottawa this week, to meet with my research group. The Ottawa train station is a ways from the city centre, and is serviced by a 4-lane divided highway with occasional bus service. I can't really complain too much, the bus comes every 15 minutes, but when it comes it is crowded, and costs $2.75 just for the 10-minute trip into town. On my way back to the train station at the end of my trip, we stopped at a station where lots of people got on, crowding the bus a fair bit near the entrance. When everyone but one black woman had gotten on the bus, the driver shut the door and drove off. I yelled, "you're missing someone!" to which someone yelled back "we're rather full!" It was a huge bus and we could've made more room if the driver had told everyone to move back, but he didn't care and the decision was made. Earlier this year I saw BC Transit authorities in Vancouver telling someone he couldn't take his washing machine on wheels on the Skytrain, 10 at night, with hardly anyone on the train. Presumably, they thought it belonged in the back of his truck. I hate underfunded and uncaring transit systems. They're racist, classist, ableist, etc. etc. They mean real hardship, to real people, every day. They're the result of the better part of a century of all-out government policy and subsidisation in favour of auto transport, ubiquitous advertising of the power, individualism, speed, sexiness, safety, even environmental friendliness of driving. And of course, a fully willing middle class. One of the reasons I don't ever want to own a car is that I don't want to take part in the privelege of ignoring these problems, or bypassing them whenever it's inconvenient. Rant finished, for now.