The lighter side of int'l politics

And you thought WE had it bad.

One of the "downsides to democracy" is having to vote. OK, maybe that's not quite right. It's having candidates bombard us with reasons to vote for them, or more often, why NOT to vote for their opponents. Truly, it's a small price to pay to have a voice in a representative democracy, but still...it can be a bit annoying.

However, I have discovered that the U.S. is not the only country to suffer from this affliction. If possible, it's worse in the D.R. Or at least it's worse in Santo Domingo.

Probably because a third of the voters live in the capital city, but you can't drive a mile on a major road without seeing a sign for one of the candidates. I kid you not, that fully half of the billboards in the city are for a candidate. It's insane. And it's been that way since we got here last August. The election is in May. Finally. At which point all the billboard companies will be declaring bankruptcy, I assume.

Hipolito Mejia

Danilo Medina

 But that's not all. They have flashing neon signs, t-shirts, trinkets, TV ads and noise.

Noise, you say?

Yes, noise. As if the assault in the optics were insufficient, they back it with an amazing barage of sound.

On a recent trip out of town during Friday afternoon rush hour, we came upon (or were come upon) by a political motorcade for Danilo. Ten or twelve late-model, very expensive SUV's, all decked out with signs and lights, weaving their way through traffic, cutting people off in their senseless effort to stay together and spread the word of their candidate.

They expected people would move for them as they honked. They had police lights mounted but have no true authority to part traffic, and young ladies, in tiny tank tops of the campaign colors, hang out of the sunroofs waving banners and shouting. Going for the male vote, I suppose.

As if the one thing we needed during rush hour was to add a bunch of large SUVs weaving around, the worst thing of all was the caboose; a flatbed truck piled with nothing but speakers and lights. It announces the presence of the caravan with an overpowering blast of techno music.

You've been there, I know. Sitting at a stop light minding your own business when some kid in a souped up ride pulls up next to you and decides there is nothing in the world you want to do more than listen to his sub-woofer pounding. It's like that, on steroids.

That truck got stuck next to us for one hellish moment. We couldn't even talk. Our car shook from the waves of sound cascading down on us as the mountain of speakers rumbled their techno anthem.

"Don't worry about it," I would have shouted to them if it would have mattered. "We'll hold conversations after the elections. You just keep on rocking!"

"Does this work?" I asked the companions once we could hear again. "Who could possibly find this persuasive?"

I've asked some Dominican friends and they find it annoying as well. But apparently the campaigns are convinced it brings in votes, because they still do it. Both sides. All the time.

At Malachi's baseball game the other day, a smaller truck drove by the park, doing the same thing. I took a video of it but my cell phone speakers aren't ideal for that and so the impact of the sound was lost. But at least you can see an example, the truck loaded down with as many speakers as it can carry, the banners waving. Again, we had to shout to be heard over the sound, and if anyone in one of the houses happened to be taking a nap or sick at home, well they were out of luck.

As to what these candidates will actually do, I have no idea. If possible, the campaigns are even less issue oriented than ours in the States. Danilo tells us he will "keep what is good, correct what is broken." I guess that's better than the other way around. Hipolito simply declares on every billboard that he has "arrived." Goody gumdrops.

I'll bet if pressed, they would admit, like U.S. politicians, that they are in fact in favor of good education and jobs. And opposed to government waste.

An interesting note, the vice-presidential candidate running with Danilo is the current first lady, Margarita Cedeño de Fernadez. She's the most popular figure in all the polls, and she's more attractive than all the guys that are running (lots of 3rd party candidates) so we see her on the billboards a lot.

And I have no idea who the running mate of Hipolito is. He (or she) must be terribly unpopular or unknown or unattractive because I haven't seen him mentioned once.

I can't wait 'til May and this all ends. At which point I can jump right into the excitement of the full-throttled U.S. campaign.

But I will say, even though I'm a die-hard conservative, if I get back to the States and get stuck next to a decibel blasting Romney or Santorum motorcade, I'm voting Ralph Nader.

A Light in the Darkness--my effort in economics

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBWi3NtND68

As I mentioned last time, when faced with a world of challenges, it's easy to mutter, "I'm one person. What can I do?"



The bright idea


The answer might be to become more than one person. To duplicate yourself. You remember the old saying about teaching someone to fish rather than giving them a fish. That's the idea I've been acting on recently.

I like helping people, and so do you I imagine. But what if you're not there to help? Or what if you're helping someone, but about 6 billion other people on the planet could use some help with something, too. How do you possibly respond to that kind of need? That's why I love business.

Business in its purest form is two parties helping each other. That's all. You give me bread, I give you $5. We're both better off than we were 30 seconds ago. And there is no limit to the amount of help we can be to each other when both sides benefit. This is how God operates. And this is how mankind operates when we are properly following His character.

So...with that introduction, here's the plan. I want to help people in the Dominican Republic become self sufficient as much as possible in the time we have left here. I want to help them mutually benefit each other. I have two ideas (and I'm looking for more), and one of those I will tell you about now.

If you watched the attached link above, I won't have to explain the vision much, but I want to find a market for these solar lights in the D.R. and some people who will install them. I decided to start with this project because, well, I think it's doable. It's not huge, but it's something, it would benefit both the buyers and the sellers, and I think we can actually get it done.

A month ago I spoke with Veronica. Would this work in Bienvenido? She thought it might, and there's a young man there, Juan, who might be just the guy to take it on. I envisioned him installing these solar bottles all over the place, grossing $500 pesos a pop. Maybe it could provide a steady income.

I had talked with some guys who would be willing to help, started making a supply list, and watched the video a bunch of times, when the first setback hit. Veronica called. She'd been looking around and thinking about it. She wasn't sure that the homes in her area were dark enough inside. They aren't stacked up like the ones in the video and there may not be much demand. The plan was to have a practice run in a few days out at her center, but she wasn't sure if it was worth it. She'd keep an eye out though for maybe a better spot.

I hung up the phone a little discouraged. I was relying on her location and contacts to start this.

What now? Do we bag it? Try to find another place to work? Looking back on life, I've had a lot of ideas. Things that I thought were real winners that I should try. Or someone should try. Then invariably someone would give a reason it wouldn't work. Like Dad telling me I couldn't build a functional, full-sized airplane out of balsa wood and fly to the bottom of the hill in it. That woud have been SO awesome!

Or how about the bird trap made out of bean poles to catch starlings. Or the functioning two-story elevator for my tree fort.

Yeah, the balsa-wood airplane was probably a bad idea. But maybe I should have tried anyway. Start on a smaller scale. Just gone for it, keep trying until I crashed and burned, (hopefully not literally in this case,) but see what you can do until the idea proves undoable. Go to failure.

That's what I decided to do here. I would "go to failure." This was an obstacle, but every project has them. It hadn't proven a failure yet. Maybe in the end, this idea won't work here. But I would push on until I was sure. I called her back a couple days later. Let's start anyway. First, let's figure out how to build the light, and then find the market to sell it to.

We trooped off to the hardware store, the four of us. Bowin and I, joined by short-term missionaries Brendan and Jeremy. I'm not what most people would refer to as a "handyman," or "construction competent" or "capable of using a hammer," so having others along helped in picking out the right materials. We came back to my apartment and started in the parking lot.




Brendan and our building watchman, Nelson, cut the sheetmetal.




I'm "carefully observing." Not to be confused with "standing around watching others work."

Once we had some of the pieces cut, we packed up and headed out to Bienvenido. We met up with the Oliveria family, where Shawn pitched in as well.

Juan and Shawn (that should be rock band name; or maybe a sports drink) apply the silicone to hold it and prevent leaks. 

Pounding out the hole in the template

Bottle and skirting drops into the "hole in the roof." We'll use an actual roof soon.

So finally the moment of truth. The above events took place over two different trips and days. Remember, I'm still working full time in my insurance agency so we can't be out there everyday. Yesterday, the Oliverias picked us up and we headed out again. Brendan and Jeremy have since headed back to the states, and Bowin wasn't available to come out this time. But the day's plan was to get 'er done. We would put the light in the roof and see if it worked.

I had pointed out to Veronica that the bathroom in the little church/kids center was actually quite dark when the door was closed. I thought it would be a perfect spot to try out the solar light.

She agreed. We should try it there.

Up on the roof. We sweep off the leaves and debris then carve a hole in the tin.



From inside the bathroom. A hole appears in the darkness. You can see the rotting support beam in this photo.



The roof is weak. This had been a point of concern from the beginning stages. These tin roofs aren't exctly built to code, and their ability to hold a person's weight will always be an issue. But we stuck to the main beams and no one went through. It sounded like an elephant parade from inside the building, with the crinkling metal and sagging beams groaning. But thank God that was all.

Then is was just a matter of dropping the template into the hole and gluing it down. While the ladies did arts and crafts with the kids down on the ground, we did our finishing touches on the roof. Well, actually I took pictures and passed the broom back and forth. But that counts as manual labor, right?

Now the big test. The whole point of this project. (No, that's not true. The point in just a second. But still, this was important.) What did it look like down inside the bathroom?

It worked! Better than I had even hoped!

The bathroom has a 75 watt lightbulb in it, and this solar-pop-bottle-light-bulb was almost that bright. I'd say about a 60 watt equivalent. When the power is out (which is all the darn time in these parts) they can still use the bathroom. Even when they have power, they won't have to turn it on during the day.

We had the ladies come check it out. They beamed as brightly as our little bulb.

"Now that's energy saving there," one of the neighbor ladies said excitedly.

So now what? That's the question. We know it works. I'm sure there's a bug or two we'll learn about, but it works. Can it become a business here? Will Juan, the young man who spends three days a week cooking for all these kids and one day a week, Sundays, in high school, will he take this on as a trade? If he doesn't, will anyone else? 

Maybe the next step will be teaching the sales process. How to find a prospect, show the benefit of your product, and close the sale. Juan said he wants to put a light in his bedroom, which has no windows. I said we could help him next week, but he said it would be done by then. After seeing this one done, he intended to put one in that afternoon.