Like many roads in Lima, Avenida Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, in the Ate district, can be treacherous for bikers. (Photo by Simon McGrath)

Brandon Quinn, an undergraduate at Boston College, is taking a semester off to work in Lima as a public security intern for the UN Regional Centre for Peace, Disarmament, and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean.

By Brandon Quinn

LIMA -- On my first day at work in Peru, my boss remarked on my mode of transportation: "Be careful, kiddo. You’ve really got a death wish riding a bicycle in Lima.” She was basically correct, but at the time it seemed a worthy risk.

If there is one thing that has made me most frustrated with Peru, it has been my bicycle. My daily navigation of Óvalo Gutiérrez (a traffic circle that intersects four major roads) is like playing a real-life game of Frogger. And roadside biking is not particularly appealing in a city where cars drive down my 30-kilometer-per-hour neighborhood street at 90 kilometers per hour, and combis (microbuses) race one another from corner to corner to compete for passengers. So I am forced to weave around and dodge the meandering pedestrians on the sidewalk.

By and large, I live in a bubble of Lima, working during the daylight, and confined to my safe neighborhood at night. But my bicycle seems to break that bubble. For one, it is a more liberating means of transportation -- I am not just another one of 35 disgruntled passengers crammed into a microbus. Also, since it clashes so much with traffic and transportation norms, it seems to put me in vulnerable situations in a society where, at first glance, that ought to be avoided. It allows me to get to know the individuals who make up this society, the limeños for whom I can’t help but feel a special love.

I live in a shared house in the tourist district of Miraflores, about 3 kilometers from my job in the business district of San Isidro. Advised against public transportation, I made the hasty decision to invest in a used bike. I went to La Victoria, a district of Lima near the city center with a poor reputation for security, because a limeño told me you could get good deals on secondhand bikes there. Picture rows of bikes as in some of the scenes in the classic film “The Bicycle Thief” (I’m not saying they were all stolen bikes, but one can never be sure). I elicited a lot of funny looks being a gringo venturing there alone. Anyway, a couple saw me looking lost as I stumbled off the combi and were anxious to help me find my way.

Well, I should have settled for the cheapest bike for 45 dollars. Instead, I decided that since I had come this far, I would bargain. It only made the salesman run off to find a bike that he could not sell to anyone else. I followed him back deeper into La Victoria and watched workers tightening the loose parts on my 40-dollar bike complete with an electronic bell and a mirror. As a young child stared at me like I was the first gringo he had seen in his neighborhood, a sense of fear as an outsider overtook me, and I settled with the bad deal.

After I bought it, my discomfort had reached its peak, as it was close to sunset. As I was frantically asking the bike salesman for directions out of the neighborhood, he made the decision for me and put me and my bike into a cab. I ended up having a really nice conversation with this taxi driver. When I tell limeños I am here for four months, it really brings a smile, or occasionally a look of surprise, to their face. I suppose they see most people pass through to fly to Machu Picchu and experience the ancient Peruvian culture, which the taxista told me was lost on the day the Spaniards set foot. The Incans were an orderly people; “no sea ladrón, no sea mentiroso, no sea perezoso” (“don't be a thief, a liar, or lazy”) was a main foundation of Incan moral code, and this was replaced by what he referred to as the disorderly mess of Lima.

Some spots, like Parque del Amor, in Lima's Miraflores district, are perfect for bikers. (Photo by Brandon Quinn)

I am often frustrated with the chaotic rush of life in this rapidly growing city, characterized by interactions extremely lacking in common courtesy. Living in a house largely composed of expatriates, one easily gets caught up in complaining about Lima. I will admit that I had no qualms laughing the other day when my Spanish roommate started cursing out a driver on our street who started incessantly honking his horn at some garbage men doing their job. We even got nods of approval from the trash men. However, on a regular basis, their rants seem like a disturbing superiority complex. An Australian housemate said to me when I first arrived, “It may seem modern here, but everything’s backward. I like to say that in Peru what’s white is black and what’s black is white.” As if Peruvians are born with some kind of incompatibility with modernity.

Then I think of what my taxista said, and I am sure the phenomenon of disorder is not a Peruvian character flaw, but is related to the current social and economic structures. The foundations that Peru’s recently booming markets are built upon are different from America or Europe, and they create a different environment and shape the behavior of people. For example, many of Lima’s 8.5 million live in the outlying pueblos jóvenes (shantytowns). These often began as illegal mass land invasions by migrants from the provinces seeking new opportunities in Lima (Lima holds a third of the country’s population, as opposed to the 1940s when it held a tenth). This rapid change in the shape of Peruvian society presents serious challenges to maintain an orderly and equitable development process.

One day, I was on my way to work when one of the pedals of my bike popped off. So I dropped it off at a little bike shop for maintenance. The owner, Luis, showed me the typical concern and interest I get when I interact with Peruvians in a personal setting. They seem to want to make sure their society is treating me well. He has tried for nine years to make it to the United States, but he says they don't let in those who really deserve it. He only has one son, but he says he could never do what many immigrants do and leave their families behind. Despite his desire to go to the United States, you can hear the pride he has in his country -- its amazing food, people, land, and culture. He told me one thing Peruvian emigrants miss the most is the brotherhood and genuine concern strangers on the street have for one another.

For a foreigner, it can be hard to notice the true Peruvian culture if you just let the negative aspects of daily life here overwhelm your attitude. Sometimes it can be the smallest things that you find yourself complaining about. But if you take a step back and try to get to know the individuals in the society, it is easy to finish the day in a very good mood. I may not be riding my bike much anymore, since I crashed into a man who walked right in front of me after hailing a taxi in a split second. However, it taught me some valuable lessons, and now I know what to look for without my bicycle.

To learn how you can blog for Passport, e-mail Lydia Rebac at lrebac@globe.com

Students in Grahamstown township. (Photos by Matt Kellen)

Elizabeth O’Killea Haney, a Boston College junior, is living in Grahamstown, South Africa, where she is studying history at Rhodes University.

By Elizabeth O'Killea Haney

GRAHAMSTOWN, South Africa -- The education system in South Africa doesn’t give me much hope most of the time.

A group of mothers in the Grahamstown township had to start their own school for their special-needs children because they had no appropriate care. The women are still waiting to receive accreditation from the government, which as usual is incredibly slow. When my dormitory hall dropped off a jungle gym that we had donated to their school, I tried to do a puzzle with one of the children but found that many of the pieces were missing. I looked around until someone told me to stop because the school had been broken into the night before and the pieces were probably gone. Luckily, although the thieves made off with some toys, they couldn’t figure out how to unlock and remove the school’s wheelchairs.

Immense challenges face students in Grahamstown and throughout South Africa. I hear bits and pieces of these challenges everywhere. A little boy I tutor after school is being raised by his 18-year-old brother because his parents are both alcoholics. During a meeting that my friend had with a community center’s principal, a 13-year-old girl knocked on the door and interrupted to discuss her rape prosecution. After the economics teacher at one of the township high schools died, my adviser here at Rhodes University had to send his economics undergraduates to teach economics so that the students could pass their matriculation examination -- even though they’d been without a teacher for seven months. Multiple people who have volunteered and worked in the township tell how much teacher attendance is an issue. Schools are lucky to have half the teachers actually show up on a given day, let alone teach the children; they’re so uncommitted to teaching that they’d rather read trashy magazines and drink coffee in the break room.

At the end of last term, the Xhosa students I tutor had no homework because their teachers were no longer teaching, just writing the reports they have to submit to the government. But for those of us who tutor at the after-school program, it was a welcome break from tedious homework assignments with almost no educational value. The assignments don’t seem that ridiculous at first -- I’ve helped the students to interview an artist, research a South African theater performer, and look up the ecological significance of different animals. The context of these assignments makes them ridiculous. How are children from the township -- without the help of someone like me -- supposed to locate and interview an artist, and then get a photo of their work when they don’t even have running water, let alone printers or access to the Internet? How are my students supposed to explain why a lion is a danger to the ecosystem when they haven’t even been taught what an ecosystem is?

I get frustrated seeing the kids struggle with grammar. When they look bashful or embarrassed, I want to scream at the system. How can the white English speakers demand that these students learn a second language to be able to succeed? I find that the students I tutor are embarrassed for not knowing perfect English, when the vast majority of white English speakers in the Eastern Cape Province don’t take the time to learn any Xhosa, the language of the black majority in this part of South Africa. In the small classroom of a schoolhouse in the middle of African hills, I want to shout: “You are incredible! At age 14, you can speak in two languages!”

Most people here find the outlook for the average poor young South African in Grahamstown pretty bleak. The education system is overburdened with students and lacking in qualified teachers. The kids whom I tutor are in classrooms of 50 students. Outside school, the students face immense challenges and are hard pressed to find good role models. That’s what makes tutoring at the monastery outside town so inspirational.

Every Wednesday afternoon, I catch a ride in a beat-up old white car, up out of Grahamstown to the hills surrounding town, where I have the privilege of tutoring a group of Xhosa students. In a little three-room schoolhouse, I do algebra and projects with five incredible teenagers in the high school classroom. Every day after school the Brothers of the uMama weThemba monastery pay for a minibus to bring 17 students who live on local farms to the school for a snack, vitamins, medicine, and homework help. These children used to go to rural schools, but these became so inept that the Department of Education closed them, inspiring the brothers' scholarship fund to send the farm children to schools in town. The brothers have also given four local students scholarships to various universities across South Africa, including one who goes to Rhodes University with me. A wide array of people help tutor -- the monks, former teachers, and a few American volunteers, like myself. I often find we end up shaking our heads in discussions about the bureaucracy and inefficiency that make these children’s futures seem so hopeless. Then we actually look at the kids who we teach. Despite all of their disadvantages, these children want to learn, they want to do a good job, they want to be able to get a job or go to university. They are funny, sassy, and the most resilient people I’ve ever met.

Realizing this drive, the brothers of the Mariya uMama weThemba Monastery have decided that they’re going to build their own school for these rural children. Starting with a preschool, they’ll then add a grade every year, building a school under their management, to give the very deserving children from the farms a proper education. Much to our astonishment, the Department of Education, a usually nightmarishly bureaucratic and difficult entity, currently supports the project. The brothers will break ground in January.

To learn how you can contribute to Passport, email Lydia Rebac at lrebac@globe.com

Grahamstown township is desperately poor, with hundreds of shacks made from sheets of corrugated iron. Residents often don’t have running water or electricity. (Photos by Elizabeth O’Killea Haney)

Elizabeth O’Killea Haney, a Boston College junior, is living in Grahamstown, South Africa, where she is studying history at Rhodes University.

By Elizabeth O’Killea Haney

GRAHAMSTOWN, South Africa -- Since I’m studying abroad here for a semester, South Africans will often ask me what I expected when I got to Africa. Lions? Tribal huts with no electricity? People riding elephants? My reply is generally that no, I knew South Africa was a developed country. After one of these ridiculous questionings, I turned the question upon the South Africans -- what would they expect to see in America? I was shocked that the first exclamation was, “I heard that, in America, people leave their cars and front doors unlocked!”

This sounded ridiculous to South African ears. While my situation is not entirely common in the States, I come from the little town of Westminster, Mass., population 8000, where people can and do leave their doors unlocked. In South Africa, nothing is left unlocked. In fact, everything is locked -- then covered with a few more locks, some barbed wire, possibly an electric fence, and plenty of security signs. Many of the South Africans I’ve met are also burdened by a thorny fear and suspicion about theft, violence, and life in general.

For example, three of my white European friends walked into the Yellow House restaurant here in Grahamstown with two black African friends from the township, expecting to have a nice meal and cocktails. But they were promptly met by the manager, who asked them to leave his establishment. His reason?

“Your friend’s type of people steal from my customers.” Presumably, that “type of people” was black, African, and poor, and it was too much of a risk to even have them sit at a table as paying customers.

Fear manifests itself in every facet of my daily life. We’re advised to not let delivery men into our residence building. Guests to our residences have to be walked to the door or else face being reported to our wardens as “unescorted strangers.” Female students are not to walk alone after dark, even on campus. The one time I did, my friend insisted that I carry her knife and bulk up my 5-foot-3-inch frame in a sweatshirt to look more masculine. In July, during a cafeteria worker strike, the library was put on lockdown and my music class was locked inside our classroom to “ensure our safety.”

On the other side of these outrageous racist-classist suspicions is a reality containing massive amounts of violence and crime. My latest history assignment asks us to answer why South Africa is one of the most violent countries (that is not in a state of war) in the world. It has one of highest murder rates in the world. One out of five women here has been raped and one out of five men has committed rape. You hear and see proof of the violence every day. On vacation in Cape Town, three of my friends were followed by men begging, who then threatened them with a pickax if they did not give them money. On vacation, one of my South African friends luckily slept through a break-in where the glass cutters used on the windows would have been used on her if she had awoken. Other friends’ home in Johannesburg was burglarized so thoroughly that the thieves escaped with literally everything in the house -- cars, clothes, curtains.

With knowledge of all this crime and violence, I find myself returning to the question of why exactly is South Africa one of the most violent countries in the world. In Grahamstown, I’ve seen firsthand how much the wealth of this beautiful country is skewed. The gap between rich and poor is the highest in the world, a gap reinforced by electric fences and thick walls. I have no pretensions that I’m in a position to pass judgment since I live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, with its own ugly disparities. Nevertheless, while I study at a university named for the diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes, I can’t help but notice that this land of incredible richness, of diamonds and animals and gold, seems to have left no trace of that wealth upon the vast majority of people here.

What I do see is a desperately poor township, with hundreds of shacks made from sheets of corrugated iron, where people have to use rocks to keep their roofs from blowing off and often don’t have running water or electricity. On my side of town I find the comfortable minority. The area where I study, shop, and go out with my friends holds homes that could be like any in suburban America. That’s except for the iron gates and barbed wire fences surrounding the front yard, and the certainty that the front door is indeed locked.

To learn how you can blog for Passport, e-mail Lydia Rebac at lrebac@globe.com

A gun shot in the window glass is often overlooked at Leopold's cafe as a reminder of the terrorist attack that struck Mumbai almost 10 months ago. (Photo by Puneet Sandhu)

Puneet Sandhu, a student of public relations at Boston University, recently visited Mumbai. Raised in the political capital of the country – New Delhi – Sandhu visited for the first time the financial capital, which has been a popular target for terrorists in recent years.

By Puneet Sandhu

I had heard the name before -- Leopold’s -- but I couldn’t remember where. All I knew was that this cafe was famous, and at my friend’s insistence, I had decided to try it before I left Mumbai. I entered the cafe, took a seat near the entrance, and put the menu under intense scrutiny. I ordered the highly recommended beer pitchers (made popular by their humongous size) after I saw a couple of those beauties adorning neighboring tables. I also remember remarking at the inordinate number of foreigners thronging the place.

And then I saw something that etched that innocuous trip in my memory forever.

A woman walked in and clicked a picture of some glass on the wall behind some tables. And then she left. Curious cat that I am, I got up and walked over to where she had been standing. And then I saw the bullet hole in the glass. My shocked mind put two and two together: What I was looking at was a reminder of the terrorist attack that had taken place in that very cafe almost 10 months ago.

Leopold’s cafe was one of the 10 locations in the city that was attacked by Pakistani terrorists in November last year. The attacks left 173 people dead and a whole nation angry at the utter incapability of its neighbor to control terrorism sprouting from within its borders. I remember the media collectively raging about how India had had enough, how its people weren’t sad or shaken anymore, how we were resilient and strong, how red-hot anger was the only thing we felt anymore. This had to stop, they said, and every Indian I know nodded in vehement agreement.

But that was then.

Today, it’s become yet another date. Sure, people know what you’re talking about when you say 26/11, but do they still feel as strongly about it? We have forgotten. We are too busy to remember. We are too preoccupied with our beer pitchers to think about the carnage that had taken place here. We would rather use the bullet hole to attract attention to our little cafe than to change the glass that had seen so much death and terror.

Our red-hot anger had been doused and we had nothing to show for it. Until the next time something like this happened. Perhaps.

What was wrong with us? Did we just not care? How insensitive could we get? How can I sit here and eat and drink and be merry when I know what happened in this very space less than a year ago? Had I forgotten how upset I was? How very angry at the world, my government and -- surprise, surprise -- the Pakistani government?

I drowned my self-loathing in beer.

And then it dawned on me.

We have become desensitized to terrorism. We have suffered far too many terrorist attacks to remember and feel for each one. At least in my head, some dates stand out for their geographical proximity to me, while the others are one blurry mass of sadness. When I think about it, 9/11 means something to everyone around the world. It doesn’t necessarily evoke the same emotion, but everyone knows what it stands for. I’d really like to know how many Indians, forget the rest of the world, recognize Sept. 13, 2008; Feb. 18, 2007, Sept. 24, 2002, July 11, 2006; Aug. 25, 2007, or Dec. 13, 2001. Mind you, this selection is completely random, and literally the tip of a large, monstrous iceberg. My bet is the average Indian would know only two out these six. Not because he or she doesn’t care, but because all this is too much to remember. In a country where terrorism is gradually becoming "normal,'' there’s only so much grief that you can feel, only so many dates you can recount, only so much you can mourn. If we cared any more than we already did, we wouldn’t be able to get back on our feet.

Is it unfortunate that things have come to such a pass? Of course. Is it unnatural? No. Countries like the United States that have been fortunate and alert enough not to face repeated terrorism can afford to remember that one date, and still feel shattered almost a decade later. In India, we don’t have that luxury.

To learn how you can blog for Passport, contact Lydia Rebac at lrebac.com

Ethiopian women and girls filled 40-pound water jugs to carry home.
Click here for more sights from the nation's southern region by
photographer Eva-Lotta Jansson and text by Anna Kramer, both of Oxfam America.

Cambridge resident Anna Kramer is a writer and blogger for the international nongovernmental organization Oxfam America.

By Anna Kramer

"So, did you see a lot of starving people?" a friend asked me after I returned from my first-ever trip to Africa. I'd just spent two weeks traveling in southern Ethiopia with Oxfam America colleagues, gathering stories about how people are coping with persistent drought.

I flinched a little at his words, even though I understood the reasoning behind the question. For many Americans, Ethiopia conjures images of the famine that made world headlines 25 years ago this month: “We Are the World,” hungry children, and for many of us, the first, early sense that we lived a life of relative privilege.

Maybe that's why I felt a little nervous about this trip. Packing up the gear recommended by my more seasoned colleagues -- mosquito net, malaria pills -- I braced myself for a difficult journey.
But the truth of a place is nothing like you imagine it.

When people ask me about Ethiopia, I tell them I never expected it to be so beautiful. I never expected to fall in love with the long sunsets, the red-dust-tinged landscape, the smoke-scented air, the night sky crowded with stars. I never expected to meet such amazing people, either: resilient, passionate, brilliant, and dedicated.

Yes, I saw poverty -- and water scarcity -- unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. And, truth be told, I found myself missing hot showers and reliable Internet access. But I also saw a lake of black salt and newly cleared pasture land. I saw the beauty of a house painted in colors of clay, the strength of a young girl lugging a heavy plastic water jug, and the joy of men singing as they pulled buckets from a well.

And, more than any images of hardship, those are the sights that will stay with me for a long time to come.

To learn how you can blog for Passport, email Lydia Rebac at lrebac@globe.com

Turkish-born Pelin Kivrak, a Harvard University junior studying literature, recently returned from Istanbul, where she was a reporting intern for various magazine.

By Pelin Kivrak

ISTANBUL – It was an unbearably hot Monday afternoon. I was on a bus along the Bosphorus when I heard two teenage boys talking about their undergraduate plans. After a long conversation about their goals to study communications and sociology -- one of them ultimately sighed and said: “Dude, I think I have to keep practicing my headers.’’ As I was trying to make a connection between soccer moves and undergraduate studies, his friend satisfied my curiosity by asking him what he meant. The other one answered right away: ‘’A soccer player earns a lot more money and respect than a professor in this country.’’

He is right. Turkish college students pursuing academic careers in humanities and the social sciences, such as law, and high school students who would like to pursue an academic career in those fields have to make their own way to land some of the scarce financial opportunities. All this is separate from the fact that in a country facing rapid population proliferation and a recession, a single, brutal exam is the only way to supposedly funnel out the best students until the number of people who go to universities is somehow lowered.

The system works like this: Students take a single exam at the end of their senior year that covers all high school and middle school topics. After they receive their scoreiess, they are given 15 days to come up with a list of 15 colleges that they would like to attend. As an example, let’s say that College X’s law department accepts 40 people each year and the student who had the highest scores and did want to go to that institute the year before was received 350.76 and the minimum score was 312.98. So, people this year set their choices according to last year’s highest and lowest scores for that institutions and – believe me -- this is almost like playing the lottery. A lot of people each year cannot get into any places because of this central placement system although they have really high scores. And so thousands of students each year are placed into humanities departments -- and they're not likely to be those humanities-minded students of high quality.

High school seniors don’t have enough time or opportunities to figure out what they might want to do throughout their lives. And yet at age 16, at the end of their studies, they find themselves up against a brutal system that requires very hard theoretical work. They all must take the same 195-minute, multiple-choice exam, known as OSS, to realize their unique university goals. Students and their parents rail against the education system’s attempts to encompass a student’s entire body of academic work into such a test. rapid population proliferation and a recession, such an exam is the only way to supposedly funnel out the best students until the number of people who go to universities is somehow lowered.

Turkish people who lean toward social studies and humanities because they truly care about intellectual values and the importance of studying humanities are very few in quantity although usually very successful in quality. But it is not common for Turkish students to go after their passions in history or philosophy if they have the background and talent to study nanotechnology or financial engineering. If a student is very good at math, he or she is pressured by parents and the country’s economic situation to study engineering or finance although his biggest desire in life might be to study comparative literature or linguistics. Most of the students who study humanities are on such a path mainly because their scores are not sufficient to go to law school. The fact that students’ academic goals often do not match with their performances on the exam or with the expectations of their surroundings ultimately results in lack of dedication to their work.

Talat Halman, Turkey’s former minister of culture and current dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Letters at Bilkent University in Ankara, acknowledges all these problems. However, he is more optimistic about the future than the students themselves are. “I know that the internal problems of the system, when combined with the current financial recession, create serious problems for Turkey,’’ he says. “But from some other aspects, I do think that this combination might have some positive effects on the college education system.”

Although it sounds like a far stretch, he says this whole situation triggers a reverse brain-drain process. Because, he thinks, the top universities in countries like the United States or Britain will begin to employ less faculty, Turkish-born humanities professors will prefer to come back and work for the top schools in their countries instead of working for a second- or third-class institution overseas, where they will make more money and lead a better life.

Whether Halman is right, Turkey has a long way to go to reach a level where people are able to study and learn to specialize in what they truly want and where this independent choice is also efficient for the country’s economy. Until then, it shouldn’t be surprising to see the parks full of kids playing soccer rather than studying for the exams.

To learn how you can blog for Passport, email Lydia Rebac at lrebac@globe.com

Khalida Safi Salesh, a refugee from Iraq, takes out a tray of king kebab
in her apartment in Cairo. (Photo by Lily Sussman)

By Lily Sussman

CAIRO -- I arrive at Khalida Safi Salesh’s flat around 1 p.m.

Plenty of time, I think, to prepare for a party scheduled for 6 p.m. but destined to start over an hour late, as most things in Cairo do.

Upon knocking, Khalida greets me. Wearing makeup and a colorful dress, she looks ready for the evening’s festivities.

After sitting for a drink, a ritual of entrance she never skips, she leads me into her kitchen and opens the small oven, revealing a impossible plethora of simmering dishes. King kebab and dolma, which is vegetables and vines stuffed with rice, meat and nuts, are favorites.

After a full tour of her oven and fridge, delectable nibbles included, I ask my pressing question. So...what is left for me to help with? Salads, she says, carrying strainers of greens, veggies, tahini, chickpeas, and eggplants to the living room table.

The tie that binds Khalida and me is Resettlement Legal Aid Project, a nonprofit that provides legal, psychosocial, informational, and cultural advice to refugees in Cairo.

Originally a client, Khalida has progressed to friend, teacher, and quasi-mother. Because on previous occasions I asked her endless questions about her tantalizing food, she invited me early to cook. The occasion is a party for the resettlement project’s departing director, Jeffrey Hancuff.

When I began working for the project over two months ago I wondered if our Iraqi clients would resent or distrust me because of my American nationality. Instead I constantly encounter kindness, acceptance, and perseverance in the face of tragedy. Khalida, my co-workers, and other clients have also vastly altered my perception of what it means to be a refugee and how refugees' needs can be met.

Aos Ameen, a 28-year-old Iraqi who works as a psychosocial adviser in our office, explained the situation well.

Many people picture refugees as desperate, requiring the bare minimum. For example, Sudanese and Somali refugees often travel to Egypt by land with little money for nourishment or a place to sleep.

In contrast, Iraqis purchase plane tickets, rent flats, and are often highly educated. A surgeon in Iraq, Aos graduated at the top of his class and worked with the Red Crescent in Baghdad after the 2003 American invasion. In 2006 he came to Egypt with his mother, two sisters, and mentally disabled aunt, after being targeted by militia.

He inhales his cigarette, surveying the crowded street. A woman sits on the ground nearby, peddling tissues. Young men compete to sell cheap sunglasses, clothes, old books, and gadgets. A man grills corn ears and another lies on a pile of dirty rags near the metro entrance. In the road people, buses, microbuses, taxis, and dilapidated cars fight past one another, sending out warnings with a constant chorus yells and honks.

Though Aos has found a calling counseling other refugees at RLAP, he is still pained by what he cannot have. Earlier this year his application to practice as a surgeon in Egypt was rejected. We do not need the same material aid as past refugees, he elaborates. We want a better life. Opportunity, choice, and freedom.

Back in Khalida’s kitchen we chop vegetables and she talks about opening a restaurant or maybe a fashion business in Missouri.

A government surveyor in Iraq, she divided unrecognized land into legal units, supervised teams laying pipelines in rural villages and challenged gender barriers. She recounts experiences as the sole woman in rooms traditionally reserved for men.They respected me, she says of the men. They knew I was a professional and could help them.

After quitting her government job in 2000 over pressure to join the ruling Ba’ath Party – Saddam Hussein’s party -- she developed a fashion and marketing business, supervised food suppliers, and then worked with a project to rebuild south Baghdad. She came to Egypt in 2006 when threats from unknown militia, in part because of her cooperation with Americans, became unbearable.

With no job in Egypt, Khalida spends her days practicing English in preparation for her upcoming life in Missouri, where her 24-year-old daughter, Marwa, is already resettled.

Though I want to assure Khalida her skills will lead her to success in the United States. That wherever she goes people will recognize her talents, experience, and diligence. Instead I think about challenges she will face and quiz her on the names of each vegetable and herb we dice.

A multicultural group enjoyed the food at Khalida Safi Salesh’s flat.
(Photo by Lily Sussman)

Within a few hours our diverse crew of Iraqis, Americans, Australians, and Canadians fill her house. Food relished, we push the tables aside to create a dance floor.

The young Iraqi men begin, kicking, stomping, smiling, and laughing through traditional dubka. Soon our legal director, Stephanie Bierdmann, and a couple of the Iraqi women join in, inspiring the rest of us with their joy and grace.

After a while we switch the language.

Yelling lyrics to the Backstreet Boys and dancing around the living room to Gwen Stefani and the Beach Boys, it’s easy to forget I’m in Cairo and not Boston, among college friends.

We take pictures, laugh, and dance. Tomorrow will be another day in our hectic office, making the best of what never should have happened. Doing serious work and enjoying one another’s company and the reality we have found.

If we do our work well, I think, by the time I return to the US. I’ll have Iraqi friends in every state ready to greet me.

To learn how you can blog for Passport, e-mail Lydia Rebac at lrebac@com

A bus in downtown Cairo near Ramsis Station. (Photos by Lily Sussman)


People tried to board a microbus in the 6th of October area outside Cairo.

Lily Sussman, an undergraduate student at Northeastern University, is working at the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo and studying Arabic.

By Lily Sussman

CAIRO -- I stand on the corner, impatiently waving on each slowing cab.

A couple of men stand nearby, also waiting. A green bus, a white, or a microbus. Any will do.

After a few minutes a dirty green bus rounds the bend. Men’s heads, legs, and arms stretch out the window and door, which is nothing more than an open frame filled with bodies.

I step further into the busy street, hand in the air, and the bus slows, stopping a few yards in front of me.

Even for the greater Cairo area, home to about 18 million, it’s particularly crowded today. People are pressed against one another from front to back.

I push my way onto the bus. “Ramsis? Tahrir?” I ask, naming my destination and a place I would happily walk from. It doesn’t matter much -- I’m already on the bus. I know it will pass one or the other.

Standing in the aisle, I dig in my purse for the fare, half a guinea, equivalent to about 9 US cents. I pass my smallest bill, 5 guineas, to the man next to me. He turns, passing it to the man behind him. It travels in this fashion to a man holding a wad of dirty cash. He rips me a ticket and counts my change. The money and ticket travel a weaving path back to me, as the men point, telling one another to whom it belongs.

We’re driving over 6th of October Bridge, named after the Yom Kippur War that Egypt fought with Israel in 1973. I have finished my morning Arabic class and I am heading for the Resettlement Legal Aid Project, where I work as a informational and legal adviser for refugees.

As the bus weaves through the traffic, through a constant chorus of honks and yells, I relax. The rickety windows are all open and my hair blows in the wind, a marvelous break from the 100-degree-plus weather outside.

If you let it, living in Cairo, especially speaking little or no Arabic, can be infuriating. Traffic and pollution are unavoidable, women are harassed constantly, lateness is normal, and buying a simple bottle of water can easily turn into a haggling match.

How to live here and sustain love for the city?

I appreciate Cairo best when, rather than shutting the city out, I embrace it. Rather than seeking reprieve, I work to make sense of it.

I live in a traditional middle-class neighborhood, take public transportation, and follow my Egyptian friends’ lead, laughing and rolling my eyes at chaos and inconvenience.

The first time I took a microbus was unplanned. Unsure of my orientation, I asked a boy where Tahrir Square, the center of downtown, was. Do you want to take a bus? he asked.

He led me to the side of the road and instructed me to wave down any bus or microbus and say my destination.

Successfully squished aboard a white van, I noticed my fellow passengers, mostly men, looking at me differently. I was no longer simply a white woman, assumed to be a tourist, trekking Cairo streets and relying on cabs. Like them, I was navigating the megalopolis of Cairo by the fastest and cheapest means possible. Unlike the norm on the street, the men did not hiss or utter indistinguishable words in Arabic.

When the driver passed me incorrect change, the guys next to me protested, ensuring accuracy to the nearest piaster (Egyptian cent). I ended up far from my location because the bus had not stopped long enough for me to ask. Despite that, I walked home with a sense of satisfaction -- one more thing in Cairo that was not as complicated as it looked.

Ever since, I take buses and the subway constantly. Navigating public transportation I feel capable in a city easy to get lost in. In taking public transportation anonymous faces turn to friends, and suspicious stares to enlightening conversation.

One night, coming home late I meet a woman, Soheir, who tells me about her son studying engineering in New Jersey. She talks about the architecture of the buildings we pass, her experiences in the United States and her deceased mother, for whom she returned to Egypt. She kisses me goodbye, giving me her number and promises of future meetings.

Riding the subway, teenage girls across the aisle stare and giggle. After a few minutes, I ask them what is so funny. In a mix of Arabic and English they ask me where I’m from, my name, how old I am, if I am married, what I am doing in Cairo, and where I am going. I ask them if they know other Americans. They shake their heads, no.

Because my circle includes many expats and tourism is Egypt’s prized industry, it is easy to forget large sections of the population have little if any contact with foreigners. Taking time to talk, I gain increased appreciation and patience for individuals around me and better understanding of the society in which we live. This is the best shield I know against every Cairo vexation.

My bus has crossed the bridge and is nearing the busy intersection, where I work. I gesture to the two men propped sideways by the door and hop out as the bus slows.

I cut past it, through the traffic, before it regains speed.

Crossing the street, amidst honking and yelling a car stops short before me and a man shouts out his car window. I keep walking, smiling, I am just another part of Cairo’s wondrous chaos.

To learn how you can blog for Passport, e-mail lrebac@globe.com

(Ghani campaign photo)

Lael H. Adams, a Boston University student working as an intern this summer for the Afghan Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation, sought answers from Ashraf Ghani (above), one of the top contenders in the presidential elections to be held Aug. 20. Here are his written responses as well as interviews by Adams from four of his campaign workers.

Q. Western media reports tend to give the impression that Afghanistan is a state in dire straits. What is your opinion on the status of reconstruction in this country?

A. Afghanistan stands at a crossroads. The corruption and cronyism of the [Hamid] Karzai regime have indeed left the country in dire straits, where wealth accrues to only a few and reconstruction funds are routinely stolen. This past March the current finance minister even admitted that 70 percent of potential domestic revenue is lost to corruption and mismanagement. When I was finance minister from 2002 to 2004, I helped set Afghanistan on the path to growth and reconciliation, reforming the economy, introducing transparent accounting, and recruiting private investment.

Q. Being the president of Afghanistan is arguably one of the most difficult jobs in the world to have right now. Why do you want this job?

A. I want to fulfill my moral duty to give the people an alternative to the corruption and lawlessness of the Karzai regime. I want to create a just order and give Afghans hope for a better future. We cannot afford another divisive leader who panders to ethnic identities. We need a unifying figure that represents all Afghans, who has experience in development issues .

Q. Warlordism, the illicit drug trade, and corruption seem to be some of the most pressing issues Afghanistan is facing now. How do you plan to approach these problems if elected?

A. Agricultural development is the key to eradicating the drug trade. Four dollars a day is the tipping point for rural farmers’ incomes to disincentivize poppy production. We need to invest in agriculture and security for the farmers.

Q. What role do you think the international community should play in Afghanistan, presently and in the future?

A. It is the mutual goal of the international community and the Afghan people to get foreign forces out of the country as soon as possible. Before this can happen, though, we need to establish a framework for stabilization that installs a lasting peace, and that could allow a peaceful withdrawal.

Q. When you were slated as a candidate to succeed Kofi Annan as Secretary General of the UN in 2006, you were quoted in the Financial Times as saying: “I hope to win, through ideas.” This comment seems to also reflect your current appeal in this campaign to many well-educated Afghans, particularly the diaspora. Do you think it would be fair to say that your campaign is an intellectual, academic, policy-driven one grounded in ideas? If so, how do you think that appeals to the majority of the population of Afghanistan, who reside in the rural villages and may be more likely to base their votes more on ethnicity or tribal loyalty rather than policy?

A. My goal is to unify the country. Politics in Afghanistan have for too long been based on ethnic identity. I want to make this an issues-based campaign, instead of an ethnic-based one, and the good news is that the people are listening. On July 23 we had our first presidential debate broadcast live on Tolo TV. Since then more than half of all Afghans have listened or heard parts of that debate. The people of Afghanistan are interested in the issues, they are engaged in the public discourse, asking questions, supporting candidates. I am peeling away vote blocs that have traditionally supported candidates only out of tribal loyalty. Yesterday I hosted almost 1,000 women at my home to discuss the importance of women’s participation in civic politics. The group of working women pledged their support to me because of my ideas and policies.

Voices of campaign staff

(Photos by Liny Suharlim)

Homaira Haqmal

Homaira Haqmal, who is from the southern province of Wardak, is a law professor at Kabul University and head of a women’s organization, the Movement of Afghan Sisters. Haqmal, 41, and mother of six children, first became involved in the campaign when she met Ghani with her women’s organization to share their opinions for what has now become plan for the country, published as a book in Dari and Pashto. “Dr. Ghani said to us, ‘It’s not my book, it’s your book,' '' said Haqmal. " 'You all have your own opinion and your own answers in this book.' '' Haqmal said she is hoping for a positive change and is frustrated with current president Hamid Karzai’s administration. “All of the candidates say we are doing this and this, but they don’t have any platform or strategy,” said Haqmal.

Sahera Sharif

Sahera Sharif, 47, is a member of Parliament from Khost Province in the south. After living as a refugee in Pakistan since 1989, she returned in 2001 with her husband and four children, working as lecturer of women’s affairs at the university in Khost and advocating for women’s awareness during the 2004 election. As a member of Parliament, Sharif said she has witnessed corruption in the Karzai government. She supports Ghani because of “his personality, his character, and his strength in his ideas.” Campaigning door-to-door in Kabul and in the provinces, Sharif said she has registered nearly 600 women to vote, explaining to them Ghani’s policies on issues that matter most to her: maternal health, female education, and job creation for rural women. “Whenever I explain Dr. Ghani’s work plan and strategy for them, they really accept it and like it,” said Sharif.

Salma Alokozai

Salma Alokozai, 20, was a student of Pashto literature at Kabul University and now plans to join American University to study finance. She became involved in the campaign three months ago through friends, and is now employed as a national media adviser. Alokozai has been a supporter of Ghani since he was minister of finance, following his interviews and reading his articles. "I became a big fan," said Alokozai. “I convinced my parents to vote for him.” She said especially appreciates his “respect for women.” Alokozai said she is most concerned with issues such as insecurity, corruption, and civilian casualties.

Treena Sarwari
Treena Sarwari, 22, teaches Dari literacy classes to adult women in a private college in Kabul and also studies literature at a local university. Sarwari was introduced to Ghani by the headmaster of the college where she teaches, and then decided to volunteer for the campaign. She said she has discussed Ghani’s policies with the 40 women in her class. Sarwari is particularly drawn to Ghani’s stance on education for women. "He will work for women to provide them literacy opportunities, to seek knowledge, and to have more rights."

Allegations of rape, torture, murder, and even genocide reach the International Criminal Court by referral from one of its 110 member countries or the UN Security Council. (Photos by Andrew Tarsy)

Andrew Tarsy lives in Boston. He recently served an appointment as a Visiting Professional in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

By Andrew Tarsy

Angelina Jolie’s visit in the spring to the International Criminal Court in The Hague was exciting. I know because I was visiting there too at the time. The Hollywood star spent her time watching trial testimony about child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and talking with members of the ICC staff. I was doing a two-month stint as a visiting professional in the office of ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo.

Just being in The Hague, a Dutch city of 480,000 on the North Sea coast between Belgium and Germany, was an education. It is, like most of Holland, a bicycle city. I got one as soon as I arrived and rode it everywhere at all hours (headlights are mandatory but helmets nowhere to be found). The city’s treasures include canals, ornate palaces, magical urban forests, and beaches lined by Cape Cod-style dunes. And it’s so international. On the 12th floor at the ICC the staff was made up of people from the US, Vietnam, Latvia, Argentina, Guatemala, Spain, Uganda, China, Canada, Iraq, Germany, Mexico, Ireland, Japan, and Australia. (Oh, and the Netherlands, too.)

My opportunity in The Hague grew from the prosecutor’s relationship with the Brookline-based education nonprofit Facing History and Ourselves, where I had been working for the past year. The prosecutor wants to support wider adoption of educational models that might help prevent the 2 billion children in the world from winding up in his office as victims, witnesses, or even perpetrators of crimes against humanity.

The ICC is the world’s first permanent international criminal court. Allegations of rape, torture, murder, and even genocide reach it by referral from one of its 110 member countries or the UN Security Council. By design, the ICC only takes cases where no country is able or willing to prosecute. Its work begins and ends with seeking to have perpetrators of crimes held accountable to something approximating justice. Founded in Brookline in 1976, Facing History and Ourselves is an international leader in teacher professional development. Its original methods and materials have helped transform many classrooms in the Boston area, and throughout the US and the world. It envisions school as a place to impart not only knowledge of history but also the skills needed for critical thinking and a positive attitude about social responsibility and self-respect.

How do these two missions connect? This is where the prosecutor’s vision comes in. He wants governments and foundations to put serious resources behind the best practices of innovative education organizations, especially in conflict zones. It’s those 2 billion children again that he has in mind, and he mentions them frequently. The theory is that giving more of them access to high-quality education can be a key to preventing mass violence and crimes against humanity.

I share this ambition for education. But even after a successful trial, who can say what it takes to bring an entire society forward from a time of mass violence or to prevent backsliding? Calling education a violence prevention strategy puts an awful lot of pressure on teachers. How can they promise parents that it is safe for students to ask hard questions about the past? How do we know that learning about the horrors behind us can help prepare young people for the challenges ahead of them? Even if we answer these questions, reforming education is a process that works over multiple generations -- and it requires vast resources that most developing countries don’t have and most developed countries won’t spend.

These big questions hovered over the project and could sometimes overwhelm. Fortunately, I could draw inspiration from experts in the field. The Hague is home to hundreds of nongovernmental organizations. EURO-CLIO, for example, is a Europe-wide history teachers’ network. They brought history teachers together from throughout the former Yugoslavia to develop curriculum across overwhelming cultural boundaries. And the Anne Frank House, 30 miles away in Amsterdam, is not only where Anne hid, but is also an educational powerhouse. Its latest work is occurring in Guatemala. Students first read Anne’s diary together and then study the stories of their own families under violent, repressive regimes.

The Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in The Hague, which is home to Vermeer's "Girl With a Pearl Earring.''

On a break from learning about human rights education in Tanzania, East Timor, or the European Union, I could sit in the courtroom gallery and watch a trial; or I could chat with a judge in the cafeteria about why the United States has not joined the ICC (it has not and I think it should). Everyone is an expert on what the US has done or failed to do. It can be hard to imagine what the world looks like when you were not born and raised in a free and democratic superpower. The international arena has a strong allure because there is so much to learn and so much that needs doing. But that allure did not stop a broad smile from coming over my face when the customs officer at Boston’s Logan Airport stamped my passport a few weeks ago and said, “Welcome home.”

To blog for Passport, e-mail Lydia Rebac at lrebac@globe.com

A staff member stood watch at the Children's Railway station in Minsk. The atmosphere is always festive in the train cars. (Photos by Steve Vincent)

Steve Vincent, a former computer consultant from Boston, recently returned from studying Russian in Minsk, Belarus.

By Steve Vincent

MINSK -- My wife and I noticed signs on the Minsk subway announcing that the Children's Railway was running. I figured it would be like the little trains I rode as a kid in zoos and amusement parks. I was surprised, then, to see that it's a fairly large-scale model of a real Belarusian passenger train. We saw the train running along the edge of a city park, and we decided to take a ride.

My real surprise, however, was to discover that the train was operated almost entirely by children in uniform. I'm not around children often enough to guess their ages, but if anybody's voice had changed I didn't hear him speak. Most of them looked to be preteen through about midteens. My wife remembers the railway during her childhood as the first of several such training projects, implemented by the communist party.

Each car had at least two conductors, and the engine carried one adult engineer and two or three young apprentice engineers. I think there may have been a second adult on the train somewhere, but as far as the public is concerned the operators are all children. The train cars even have child-size cabins for the conductors. I believe each car has a separate public announcement system. In our car we saw a conductor in his office talking into the microphone to announce our trip.

The whole railroad is devoted to children in a Disneyesque way. The architecture reminded us of many Soviet train stations, but much smaller. And whereas in a real railway station they play tinny patriotic music when a train arrives, here they played tinny children's music continuously. There was also an actor or actress who kept reappearing in various animal suits reminiscent of cartoon characters.

The exhibits inside the station included a fine electric-train diorama operated by kids in railway uniforms. At the back of the station I found a huge classroom filled with kids in railway uniforms, including a few of the giant hats police and military officers wear here. The kids in the classroom were generally younger than most of the kids running the trains, and if I spoke better Russian I could have tested my theory that this was a training school for future operators of the Children’s Railway.

Inside the train, families chatted and stared at the scenery as we rode and listened to more of the same tinny children’s music we'd heard at the station. We got off the train at its remote terminus to take a walk in the secluded picnic area. Watching the next train arrive we realized just how serious these kids are. When a train pulls out of the station, all the conductors stand in their doorways holding yellow flags straight out. As each door passes the end of the platform, the conductor lowers his or her flag with an authoritative snap. And the conductors are clearly in charge of their cars. I suspect that many of these kids will end up working at bigger railroads as adults.

To blog for Passport, contact Lydia Rebac at lrebac@globe.com

In India, we play bumper cars -- amusement parks are irrelevant. These sepia-tone photos weren't taken decades ago. Here, dying clunkers still share the roads with rickshaws. (Photos by Mudra Mukesh)

Excuse me, sir, but there is no HOV lane.

Does GPS even work here?

At left, your rock. At right, your hard place.

Puneet Sandhu is a student of public relations at Boston University. She was raised in New Delhi, and after a recent visit home, found that she could manage to laugh at Delhi’s chaotic traffic situation -- now that she doesn’t have to endure it every day.

By Puneet Sandhu

I checked the car clock. 11:37 a.m. I looked up and saw the elusive traffic light in the distance, whose commands we all awaited on the busy road in south Delhi. I glanced around at neighboring passengers on cars, trucks, bikes, auto-rickshaws -- and I pondered our collective dilemma that didn’t feel like one, thanks to its sheer banality. I’d give about 13 more minutes for the traffic to move enough to put me at the head of this long, serpentine queue of vehicles. Another three minutes or so to wait till the light turned green again. “It should be relatively smooth from there on,” I said to my American cousin, pulling at the handbrake and allowing myself to relax.

It was only when I got no response did I look to the passenger side. Terror had taken over his tall, lanky frame. With an expression I reserve for slasher flicks, he was staring at the vehicle next to ours. Which happened to be a huge, daunting truck. Which happened to be not more than 2 inches from my sideview mirror. Which happened to shock, fascinate, and terrify my cousin all at the same time. Which was a far cry from his experience with his country’s wide roads and orderly traffic.

Which I found atrociously hilarious.

I went on to explain to him that there was no reason to be alarmed, that this was not an aberration, that we weren’t going to die, that we would make it back home without any scars or dents to show for our journey. He looked at me incredulously, sort of stared right through me. I imagined him having an out-of-body experience, his whole life flashing in front of his eyes as he prepared to die on an unknown continent, away from everything he had ever known.

And just then, the serpent jerked back to life. I lowered the hand brake, yanked at the gear stick, and danced with the clutch and accelerator. I was back in action. I could feel my muscles tense and my face frown in anticipation of what was to follow -- apocalypse to the foreign eye, absolutely normal chaos to a Delhiite.

Like everyone else on that road, I had my own idea about which lane would move fastest. Obviously, I wanted to be in that lane. As did every other driver, regardless of which direction they finally had to turn to. (Unspoken traffic rule in Delhi: You can be in whatever lane you want. Your final direction is irrelevant.) The next minute was spent flashing my indicator, positioning my car between the slower and faster lane, dodging fast cars in the latter, trying to wriggle into the little space they’d leave among themselves. With every inch that the car lurched forward, I imagine my cousin’s heart skipped a beat.

We finally made it to the desired lane and I raced forward, hoping that I would make it out of that street before the lights turned red again. After about a kilometer, when I was much closer to the intersection, I saw a stagnant sea of vehicles. Suddenly, the traffic lights, which were responsible for the minuscule amount of order in that scenario, became superfluous. If the intersection itself was jammed with traffic, then the lights might as well be nonexistent. This was a situation in which only some aggressive cutting through lanes, rolling down of windows, putting your hand out to signal your direction, giving scathing looks, and hurling the choicest of abuses could solve. Road rage works on any land mass.

I, on the other hand, decided to change my route. I looked up at the sign that said “free left turn’’ (where those wanting to turn left can do so regardless of what the traffic light says) and then back at the traffic that was clogging the left lane and snickered. How typical. But with the indefatigable spirit of a Delhi driver, I joined that line. I was six cars away from the turn and I was not going to wait till some traffic-rule-breaking drivers thought it was OK for me to pass.

That was my left turn and I wanted to turn left now. The look of determination on my face did not do wonders for my cousin’s heart -- he could see me getting into war mode. “Can’t you, like, just relax?” he said. One nasty look (from my pool reserved for other Delhi drivers) and the boy was quiet.

And then I honked. And honked. And honked some more. I honked through dirty glances in rearview and sideview mirrors, through high trucks and small cars, through sentences hurled at me that were angry and exasperated at the same time. One by one, the cars in front of me moved to let me go. As I passed them, I looked at their drivers with all the self-righteousness I could muster.

When I finally took my turn left, my cousin let out the loudest sigh of relief I have ever heard and giggled nervously. Somehow I had managed to add six cars to the crowded chaos that the intersection was. The lights still kept changing, oblivious to the mess around them. And just as fist fights and profanity were threatening to take over the street, I zoomed away from something I can always laugh at. Delhi moving at its best. And worst.

To blog for Passport, e-mail Lydia Rebac at lrebac@globe.com

Savings group members discuss potential projects for generating income in the tiny village of Sanagiwe, Tanzania. (Photo by Sterling Roop)

Sterling Roop, a resident of Brighton, is a graduate student in international relations and African studies at Boston University.

By Sterling Roop

IRINGA, Tanzania -- Here in Tanzania I have been working on writing my thesis on how to improve microfinance for the rural poor. I have witnessed a wave of microfinance based on small groups saving money together and loaning it out to one another. One group that I visited in a poor dust-blown in northern Tanzania has been saving for five years. The first year they saved about $1,000 now and they are managing nearly $14,000 – all the while improving their incomes through business loans and group profits.

Throughout the world microcredit (small loans for the poor) has become one of the main tools used to address poverty, even earning the father of microcredit, Mohamed Yunnus, the Nobel Prize. In the last few years, development agencies, nongovernmental agencies, and some banks have realized that credit is not the only financial service that the poor need. Just like us in Boston, the poor need a safe place to save their money, access it when needed, and take out loans.

The community-based savings groups I have worked generally consist of about 30 members who buy shares in the group, which then loan out a set portion of the group’s collective money to members who need a business or personal loans. When a member buys a share, he or she must also put a small amount of money into the collective community fund, which can be used for emergencies that the groups deems fit. At the end of a set period of time, usually a year or two, everyone gets his or her money returned and a percentage of the profit earned by the interest of the loans based on the number of shares held.

A Maasai women’s savings group begins its weekly meeting in dust-blown Karatu, Tanzania. (Photo by Sterling Roop)

Eighty percent of the poor in Tanzania live in rural areas, but most of the microfinance institutions, or MFIs, and banks that I have interviewed operate in urban areas. Rural areas are hard to serve because of high transaction costs for MFIs, and this has been cited as the greatest challenge facing all of the organizations that I have interviewed or worked with in Tanzania. There is poor infrastructure, long distances between clients, and the small nature of the transactions. Reaching rural communities requires either a Land Rover or amazing dirt bike skills. This has led to an underserved population and a preference toward extending credit to the middle and lower-middle class, leaving the poorest of the poor not served at all.

As we have learned recently by the financial crisis in the United States and Europe not everyone needs a loan, but everyone needs to save and saving is the focus of these groups. Saving is very important for the poor, especially in rural areas of Tanzania where drought, crop failure, or an unexpected death can rob a family of everything they own. In addition, my research has revealed that most banks and MFI provide microloans that can only be used for business, leaving those who need an emergency loan out in the cold. As one mother that I spoke with said when one of her children got sick she couldn’t take him to the doctor until she borrowed money for a local money lender at 50 percent interest, a debt she has only recently paid off. Now she is a member of a savings group and has a safety net for emergencies in the future.

I have found that community-based savings groups in Tanzania not only provide basic financial services to the members and a safety net, but also teach members basic financial management and budgeting skills. Members told me they like that all of the transactions are transparent and they are involved in running the group. One of the greatest impacts of these groups for members has been they now have savings to use throughout the year, which shortens the “hungry season” because most group members’ incomes are often one-time payments each year after the harvest.

With savings groups, the interest and profits stay in the community, instead of going to an outside institution such as a bank. It provides loans for all aspects of life, from school fees and funeral expenses to business loans. It decreases the length and intensity of the hungry season, while teaching members basic financial skills -- preparing them to not only run their households better, but also teaching business and leadership skills in a sustainable manner. Because members run the groups, they need limited supplies and training. I have been happy to see how groups are often spreading to new villages and communities by themselves.

To learn how you can blog for Passport, contact Lydia Rebac at lrebac@globe.com

Matchbox houses composed from corrugated metal, scrap wood, cardboard, and sometimes cement similar to these shacks in the Kliptown community south of Johannesburg make up the hundreds of neglected squatter camps and informal settlements that more than 1 million South Africans call home. (Olesia Plokhii photo)

Olesia Plokhii is a Boston-based freelance journalist currently living in Soweto, South Africa.

By Olesia Plokhii

JOHANNESBURG -- Frustration has turned into looting and violence for many of South Africa’s poorest citizens more than half a century after an unfulfilled edict led by the African National Congress to abolish all ghettos.

In an unusual flurry of strikes in South Africa this season, ranging from those organized by doctors who wouldn’t operate, to construction workers who threatened the erection of several 2010 World Cup stadiums, to municipal workers who halted policing, garbage removal, and water flow for seven days recently, the most violent and urgent of the protests have been waged by squatter camp residents angry at the government for a lack of service delivery and at local councilors who continue to offer empty promises.

Those empty promises come in the form of intermittent electricity, little to no healthcare, scarce running water, limited access to education, and inadequate housing. With more than 1 million people living in tin shacks and squalid conditions in the nation that represents the epitome of African development, hundreds of discouraged residents have decided to put their words aside in exchange for a louder negotiating tool -- weapons.

Protests that began peaceful with the singing of songs and congregation of residents July 22 ended with stone-throwing, arson, and the firing of rubber bullets by police in Balfour, a squatter camp in the northern Mpumalanga Province near Pretoria where local media reported the attacks as xenophobic after residents vandalized shops belonging to Ethiopian, Zimbabwean, and Namibian foreign nationals who were subsequently chased out of the area and remained in protected police custody a week afterward.

Throughout July, similar scenes in Thokoza and Diepsloot, both near Johannesburg, and other rural areas surrounding major South African metropolitans such as Durban and Cape Town roused the spotlight of national media, law enforcement, and government agencies. President Jacob Zuma has even put together a task force to investigate the recent spate of protests and on Tuesday visited Balfour to speak to disgruntled residents.

But Thulani Madondo, a resident of Kliptown, the squatter camp that was made famous in 1955 for the signing of the bipartisan Freedom Charter that advocated for the abolishment of ghettos and whose inhabitants rioted against a lack of service delivery in 2007 only to be met by rubber bullets, said there is nothing to investigate -- except the unethical mismanagement of government funds.

“One thing I know for sure is that this country has a lot of money, but it’s not wisely spent. They spend the money changing street signs, giving bonuses to ministers, and building an underground parking lot for an underutilized hotel,” said 27-year-old Madondo of the new Soweto Hotel, built jarringly across from Kliptown’s mounting heaps of garbage, public toilets, and dilapidated shacks. “But they cant build us new houses?”

Madondo, who recently embarked on an independent Kliptown redevelopment project because he is tired of waiting for government assistance, said that in the rare case that the hundreds of South African slums were redeveloped by municipal agencies such as the Gauteng Department of Housing, government-subsidized housing would be laced with stipulations and remain too expensive for most squatter camp residents -- an overwhelming majority of whom are unemployed and survive on less than $20 a day while South Africa’s gross domestic product remains the continent’s highest.

Across a small river that runs behind the Kliptown squatter camp southwest of Johannesburg, a pack of swine has managed to carve out a comfortable existence surrounded by mounds of garbage -- both a familiar sight and smell in the 45,000-person slum.

“These housing projects, if they ever see the light of day, will still be too expensive for the people who want to live there,” Madondo said. “And those who do live there will be chased out once they have nothing left to pay.”

According to Municipal IQ, an independent agency that monitors municipal services, the number of protests waged this year over poor public service is 24. Since it’s only halfway through the year, the number of protests is on track to far eclipse last year’s figure of 27.

The protests, turning increasingly more violent and desperate, come at a crucial time for Zuma and his administration, whose main support came from blue-collar workers, farmers, and squatter camp residents such as Madondo, counting on a populist Zuma to fulfill lofty campaign promises of jobs and housing for all in just a matter of years.

“He made impractical promises that he can’t fill,” Madondo irritably said. “As far as I’m concerned, [the service delivery protests represent] the people fighting back. By voting for Zuma, the people have done theirs. Now it’s time for the president to do his.”

Even with the country facing its first recession since democratic elections in 1994 and suffering from a 23.6 percent unemployment rate, Madondo refuses to believe the Zuma administration’s hands may be justifiably tied.

“I know this administration wants to pride itself on having a surplus of money, but still, [we] have people living like animals; I’d rather run a government on a deficit and make sure everyone is fed.”

To learn how you can blog for Passport, e-mail Lydia Rebac at lrebac@globe.com

Commuting each day in Kabul, Afghanistan (left), offers reminders of the violence this historic city has endured over the many years -- bullet-pocked walls, bombed-out buildings, abandoned bits of Soviet military equipment. Below, Afghans have a picnic at Salang, north of the capital. (Lael H. Adams photos)

Lael H. Adams, a graduate student at Boston University studying international relations and journalism, is working this summer for the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development in Kabul.

By Lael H. Adams

KABUL -- I attended a briefing recently to 200 newly-arrived US soldiers at the Afghanistan Counterinsurgency Training Center in the capital. After the presentation, a soldier, realizing I was a foreigner, tapped me on the shoulder.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said in a thick Southern accent. “Doesn’t it scare you here?”

This question has been coming at me from friends and family back home, and from strangers, since I came to Afghanistan in May.

While it may be difficult for many Americans to think of Afghanistan as much more than a faraway, giant mess of a war zone, I feel relatively safe in Kabul, contrary to the fear I had conjured up in my mind before I arrived. Though I would not categorize Kabul as a “safe place,’’ for many expatriates working in Kabul offices, living here is less of an exercise in dodging bullets than in dodging annoying security restrictions placed on them by the companies they work for.

The international community does a good job of encouraging fear in people, especially with the upcoming presidential elections tightening the security situation. The result is that some expatriates just work here. It becomes a challenge to block out that fear in order to really live here.

On my way to work each day, I see reminders of the violence this historic city has endured over the many years -- bullet-pocked walls, bombed-out buildings, abandoned bits of Soviet military equipment, mine clearing signs. My driver one day pointed out to me where the British charity worker Gayle Williams was gunned down in broad daylight while walking down the street last October.

Regardless of these daily reminders, I don’t feel the danger. For me, Kabul is a city shrouded in a false sense of security. So I allow myself to do some things I hadn’t imagined I would be able to do, whether taking a picnic trip outside the city, going shopping in the bazaar, walking down the street to the neighborhood restaurant, or hopping in a yellow taxi on the street with some Afghan friends.

But things do happen.

I live in a house in a residential area in the north of the city. Despite many of the secure guesthouses frequented by expatriates, my house has no armed guard and, until recently, no barbed wire. When I first moved in, there were not even locks on the doors. My roommate, another Western woman, had lived in the house for a month and didn’t seem to think it was a problem, so neither did I. Three weeks later, I woke up to find the kitchen door wide open and the rug missing from the floor. The carpet never reappeared, and the next day I had a carpenter install dead bolts on the doors and string barbed wire along the garden wall.

Just as I was starting to shake the fear from this incident, I was sharing a car with a co-worker when she casually asked, “Did you hear about the shooting two streets down from your house last night?” A vehicle belonging to a nongovernmental organization that had been transporting money had been hijacked at gunpoint in the late evening. The driver was shot, though not fatally, and the robbers made off with the car.

However, the most fear I’ve felt thus far has not come from anything native to Kabul, but ironically, from the pervasive foreign military presence here. About three times a week on the hourlong commute to work, troop convoys, usually American or French, come careening up the road, splitting the bumper-to-bumper traffic down the middle. I’ve been told they have a “no-stop’’ policy. A soldier hangs out of the hatch frantically waving for people to clear the way, looking as though he’s doing the breaststroke through the air.

On a recent trip to the Salang Pass two hours north of Kabul, going for a leisurely picnic with an Afghan friend and her family turned into a scare. My friend’s brother was driving when we became lost in the winding mountain roads. We drove slowly around a blind turn bearing slightly into the left side of the road. Suddenly facing us was a US armored vehicle. A soldier popped out of the hatch clutching a gun. He immediately took aim at our car, but we swerved sharply to the right out of the convoy’s path. Later, while we were eating by the river, the convoy came back through, bringing with them a burst of gunfire. I don’t know what they were shooting at. I just remember the fear I felt.

In retrospect, many of these experiences aren’t unique to Kabul, but are just as likely to happen in New York City or Miami or even Boston. It is pointless to live here, or anywhere, in constant fear, despite what you may be advised of. I have come to realize that the poor security situation is not the biggest obstacle to living a close-to-normal life in Kabul -- that obstacle is fear.

To learn how you can blog for Passport, contact Lydia Rebac at lrebac@globe.com

Although the small green-and-white plastic laptops stand out in the Kliptown squatter camp southwest of Johannesburg, few in the 45,000-person slum realize its educational potential -- except the children. From left, Tando Thandolweu, 8, Thembisile “Puna” Dube, 10, Mbali Mbalenhle, 10, and Noxolo Queen, 8. (Olesia Plokhii photo)

Olesia Plokhii is a Boston-based freelance journalist currently living in Soweto, South Africa.

By Olesia Plokhii

JOHANNESBURG -- With the help of a little green-and-white plastic laptop, two Boston sisters are changing the way a handful of South African slum kids think about their future -- and the world around them.

The Kliptown squatter camp, occupying a small corner of Johannesburg’s Soweto, itself synonymous with slum life, boasts little in the way of basic societal needs: It has obsolete infrastructure, no electricity, unsanitary living conditions, and next to no access to new technology.

In Kliptown, children -- many of them HIV-positive -- sleep on floor mats, eat only one meal a day, use unclean public toilets, play barefoot on dirt littered with shattered glass, and huddle around a fire of burning tires for warmth during crisp winter nights.

It was on a tour of this slum in 2006, as part of a high school group from the Boston area, that Hannah and Julia Weber decided they could make a difference by introducing something that children in the rest of the developed world take for granted.

That something was the durable, affordable, and child-friendly machine known as the XO, a laptop made popular by the Cambridge, Mass., nonprofit organization One Laptop Per Child, or OLPC, an initiative aimed at producing an affordable laptop to train children in developing countries in computer literacy.

The small laptop, which runs on a Linux platform and uses the Sugar operating system, has a retail value of about $180, is water- and damage-resistant, and can function on solar power when used in rural areas that lack basic electricity or money to purchase fuel-powered generators.

Its software is wired with basic scholastic applications such as a word processor, an encyclopedia, a calculator, advanced graphic design and music programs, a built-in mesh network that allows as many as 10 XOs to communicate without an Internet connection, and of course, an Internet browser.

The man who took the Weber sisters on their tour was Thulani Madondo, the 27-year-old director of the Kliptown Youth Program, a two-year-old nonprofit that provides an alternative to life on the streets for more than 300 of the thousands of children and teenagers in the slum, which is home to 45,000 people. Madondo said the women were so confident in the XO that they offered him an all-expense paid trip to the OLPC headquarters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to judge for himself whether the little laptop that could, would -- in Kliptown.

"When we were at the OLPC office, we used applications like video, the mesh network, chat, and the Internet, something which is a challenge to use here in Kliptown,’’ Madondo said, referring to the neglected state the teeming slum still finds itself in more than a century after poor Africans first inhabited the settlement in 1903 and the ANC used its soil as the stage for the Freedom Charter, a document promulgating African freedom during apartheid. "Since Kliptown is still not electrified, I had to go to Internet cafes every time I wanted to use wireless, so after seeing that the XOs could connect to the Net, I knew that there were companies that would sell us Internet bandwidth.”

Hannah and Julia Weber returned to KYP with their father -- a friend of Nicholas Negroponte, the man behind the OLPC idea -- in 2008. This time, they brought with them 250 XO laptops, a wireless server, a generator for electricity, solar panels, and monetary donations for initial Internet costs.

And so, while OLPC’s strategy of trying to persuade governments to purchase XOs en masse continued to be contested, the first independent XO pilot project in Africa began.

Upon the laptops’ arrival, Madondo said he felt lucky for the opportunity to teach spelling, grammar, English, and technology skills to children who may never have had the luxury otherwise.

“As a child, it is not your responsibility to look for food; your responsibility is to learn and do all the other things that children are doing all over the world,” he said.

KYP member Mbali Mbalenhle agrees. She said she uses the XO to do homework and talk to her friends.

“I play games and I also write something to my friends, like ‘hi friend, I love u, do you love me,’ and make photos using the camera,” the outgoing 10-year-old said. “I love the XO because the XO helps you do homework,” added Mbalenhle, who admits she never knew what a computer was before the arrival of the XO.

Three years ago, a computer at KYP seemed a distant reality, reserved mostly for privileged white students enrolled in private primary and secondary schools in affluent South African areas like Sandton and Pretoria. Today, with 250 XOs in tow, two Boston sisters and this educational nonprofit in the heart of Kliptown are, if not changing these children’s circumstances, at least broadening their outlook -- not only about the world beyond the chicken-wire borders of their shantytown, but about their own futures.

To learn how you can blog for Passport, contact Lydia Rebac at lrebac@globe.com

Mohammad Ehsan Zia, minister of rural rehabilitation and development, inspects the construction of a school in Uruzgan Province with members of the local development assembly. (Photos by MRRD/NABDP)

Lael H. Adams, a graduate student at Boston University studying international relations and journalism, is working this summer in Kabul, Afghanistan.

By Lael Adams

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A couple of weeks ago, a tall, old man wearing a dust-colored turban and a perehan tunban, the traditional Afghan dress for men, walked into the office at the Afghan government’s Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development, or MRRD, in Kabul, where I am working as a donor relations intern for the summer. His stark white beard was neatly trimmed on his round face and contrasted vibrantly with his watery brown eyes and leathery reddish skin.

"Sister," he said to me in Farsi. "Do you speak Pashto or Farsi?" Despite my blonde hair and blue eyes, and perhaps because of the shalwar kameez, traditional Afghan dress for women, I was wearing, it was not the first time in the past two months that I'd been mistaken for an Afghan. I understood him well enough to respond, “English.”

The old man explained in broken English that he had come in search of work from a village in Uruzgan, a central province about 200 miles west of Kabul that has only recently become accessible to the Ministry because of security problems. He said there are no jobs in Uruzgan.

“Insha’ Allah, things will soon be better,” I said to the old man, using the Arabic term for “if God wills it.’’

“Yes, I like this word – Insha’ Allah,” he said. “It is a good word.”

About 80 percent of Afghanistan’s population lives in the rural areas of the country, where infrastructure never truly existed before 2002. The National Area-Based Development Program, or NABDP, one of the six branches of the Ministry and the one in which I work, has implemented about 1,750 development projects in rural areas of all 34 provinces, in partnership with the United Nations Development Program and with funding from the international community. Since its inception in 2002, NABDP has directly benefited more than 1.5 million families with the construction of schools, wells, irrigation systems, roads, economic regeneration programs, and other infrastructure projects.

Despite this progress, the status of economic and infrastructure development in Afghanistan is, as the old man said, altogether not good. Yet the status of development in Afghanistan is neither hopeless nor degenerative, as dominating Western media headlines would have us believe. Judging from my experience working with the Afghan government on development, I have found it to be a refreshingly hopeful situation.

Mohammad Ehsan Zia and US Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry attend the inauguration of a bridge project in Uruzgan Province.

The MRRD has a reputation for being one the most effective and efficient ministries in the Afghan government. According to an independent evaluation report from the UK’s York University, MRRD shows a very low prevalence of corruption compared with other development aid organizations in Afghanistan. Most importantly, it is an Afghan institution, thus defying international stereotypes of rampant government corruption and ineffectiveness.

The minister, Mohammad Ehsan Zia, is a soft-spoken man with a unique frankness for a politician and a degree in postwar recovery studies from York University. He is a far cry from one of the many former warlords whom President Hamid Karzai appeased with a Cabinet position. Sitting in his office, Zia posed a timely question whose outcome hinges on several factors related to development in Afghanistan, including the cooperation of the international community, the questionable fate of a declared failed state, and the patience of a war-weary people: “How can we promote hope in our population, who live in a desperate situation, and allow them to believe they have a government which is working if this government is not funded?”

The ministry’s development approach highlights the fundamental relationship between development, security, and local governance, going right to the source of hope. The Ministry has set up mixed-gender local assemblies in every district who prioritize and implement projects in their area by employing locals to do most of the labor.

But acquiring adequate funding has been the major obstacle for the Ministry in reaching its goals. On a recent trip to the United States and Europe to address politicians, Zia said his main message was for the international community to support the Afghan government.

“What I have found when traveling to the villages is that the villagers never attribute the good works of an NGO or foreign organization to the government of Afghanistan,” said Zia. “They don’t thank President Karzai. I never heard any Afghan criticizing NGOs for not providing drinking water, but they do criticize the government of Afghanistan. The government is taking all of the criticism, but very little of the funding.”

To overemphasize what has not been done, what has failed, or what obstacles continue to cripple the country is the nature of the media and the international community, but does not reflect the nature of the Afghanistan I have come to know through working for the ministry.

Unfortunately, the hopefulness that Zia is trying to foster among Afghans through a strengthened governmental development initiative has a big price tag and an international community reluctant to carry the costs.

Insha’ Allah, things will soon be better.

To learn how you can blog for Passport, contact Lydia Rebac at lrebac@globe.com

Bangalore's Outer Ring Road after the rains. The once-quiet, small city has exploded into a busy metropolitan. The upcoming Metro is one of the most noticeable changes. (Ayesha Aleem photo)

Ayesha Aleem, a resident of Brookline, is a graduate student at Boston University.

By Ayesha Aleem

On a recent trip back home to Bangalore in southern India, the most noticeable change was the ongoing construction of the Bangalore Metro. The winding, elevated mass-transit rail system that promises to give locals easy transport and greater connectivity is emerging from piles of rubble and gray cement. The state government has tried to keep the construction as unobtrusive as possible. Barricades have been erected on busy roads to streamline traffic and detours have been created to avoid bottlenecks.

But it’s hard to keep a 20.5 mile-long, 40-station, $1.2 billion project, serving an area of about 170 square miles, subtle.

Kolkata (known to many as Calcutta), the capital city of the Indian state West Bengal, was the first to get an underground rail system in 1984 followed by the New Delhi Metro in 2002. Kolkata is India’s third-largest city with a population of more than 15 million people. New Delhi has a population of almost 16 million people and is India’s second-largest city. Comparatively, Bangalore is much smaller: It’s home to about 7 million people.

Bangalore was where the elderly planned to live out their retirement, where the cool afternoon weather was perfect for a nap, and the greatest worry of the people was deciding whether to spend a Sunday evening outside Vidhana Soudha, the building housing state government offices that is bathed in a pretty blue light at night, or Mahatma Gandhi Road, the city‘s main street. But in the last few years, Bangalore has morphed into a pulsating, expanding, powerful new place, largely because of a thriving technology industry. The roads have become wider, the cars are faster, the incomes are higher. Bangaloreans now shop at multi-level malls instead of stand-alone stores and fly to Malaysia for the weekend instead of driving to Coorg, a district in southern India. The once-small city is growing up. And fast.

Construction of the Bangalore Metro began in 2006. Almost four years later, people are still waiting for Phase 1 of the project to open to the public. This would mean one of two lines of the Metro would become functional. Phase 2 is expected to take even longer. However, the wait is not as agonizing as the changes the structure is bringing to the city.

A few years ago it was possible to walk down Mahatma Gandhi Road during the annual Bangalore Habba, or weeklong celebration of all things Bangalore, when local artists would display photographs and paintings in makeshift tents between the trees. Indiranagar’s 100-Feet Road, named for its dimensions, had much more of 100 feet to drive on than the paltry 25 feet available today. The scariest news is of proposals to chop down beautiful old trees at the Lalbagh Botanical Gardens so that the Metro can run right through the space.

Obstacles to change are annoying, of course. Bangalore was heaving under roads that always seemed blocked because of serving more traffic than they could handle. The new international airport opened about 20 miles away from the city center and people needed a way of getting there. In the past few years, Bangalore has grown from a space of about 125 square miles to about 435 square miles. Greater connectivity was essential and the Metro was a logical solution.

But the canopy of trees that once lined M.G. Road from as far back as the 1950s is gone. No more artists will showcase their work on the strip where pedestrians would amble. The roads that once seemed narrow threaten to turn into lanes. The solution will be to build bigger, broader, roads. Four- and six-lane expressways. This means more trees will be sacrificed, many more like those big beautiful ones in the Lalbagh Botanical Gardens.

This is not the Bangalore of our grandparents. There’s no time for afternoon naps. The Sundays are much shorter, condensed to prepare for upcoming Monday. Now, learning to love this new, bigger, faster, crazier Bangalore begins. Because this is still Bangalore, after all, and it is still home.

To learn how you can blog for Passport, e-mail Lydia Rebac at lrebac@globe.com.

Juana Gonzalez sells homemade potato chips on a main pedestrian street in downtown Guadalajara, Mexico. Her daughter Ariana partially blocks a sign of a woman on vacation that advertises the importance to "sell and make money.'' In this photo gallery, Kevin Kovaleski documents their story.

By Kevin Kovaleski

In shared space and under dire economic circumstances, Juana Gonzalez and her mother, Felipa, have created a home for their four children that stands in stark contrast to their perilous neighborhood in Cerro del Cuatro in Guadalajara, Mexico. The story of Juana, Felipa, and the children is one of hope and progress.

I recently stayed with the family as part of a Truth With a Camera workshop, a US-based nonprofit organization that uses photography as a vehicle for social change and global awareness. Photographers are assigned to nonprofit groups in the workshop’s host country to document the group’s work.

While in Guadalajara, I was assigned to CODENI, a nonprofit organization that provides direct outreach to the city's most vulnerable families. Many are Otomi, a minority group in Mexico, and most live in Cerro del Cuatro, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Guadalajara. CODENI specifically targets families that work the streets as potato chip vendors. This livelihood is economically unviable for the families and hazardous for the children who help their parents sell potato chips. Many such children in Guadalajara fall victim to drug abuse, trafficking, violence, and child prostitution.

CODENI also runs an afterschool program that provides further educational opportunities and a safe place for the children to spend time while their parents work. For the parents, CODENI has organized an adult education program and an artisan group, the Mnini Collectivo, that encourages them to seek alternative income from handicrafts made in the style of their Otomi heritage.

Kevin Kovaleski is a freelance photojournalist based in Cambridge. To learn how you can blog for Passport, e-mail Lydia Rebac at lrebac@globe.com.

Beekeepers inspect a panel from a manmade hive, heavy with honey and ready to harvest. Jonny Lopez (below) prepares for a hive inspection. (Photos by Mary Cinadr)

Mary Cinadr, a former Cambridge resident, is a Peace Corps volunteer serving as a small-business adviser and beekeeper in Paraguay.

By Mary Cinadr

PUEBLO-RA, Paraguay -- White suits plod through thick forest until the faint hum becomes a distinct buzzing. A candidate for a wild hive capture is located. The task: to transfer the entire hive to a manmade hive -- a wooden box with 10 panels inside. This wild hive is in a tree 30 feet up, and so an invention is born. A long straight branch is used to spear a termite mound, about 3 feet in diameter, like a marshmallow that is then lit on fire. Smoke envelops the treetop hive. Below, the tree is chipped away by machete, until it falls, slow motion, to the ground. The rest is fast motion. Disoriented bees scatter and the smoke of burning termites fills the air.

With the beekeepers on hands and knees, the search for the queen begins. The capture and relocation of the queen attracts the workers to the manmade hive, where she will be placed in a matchbox, dangling from a string in the hive’s center panel. Upon first sniff of the queen, dutiful worker bees begin chewing the matchbox, trying to free her, while others file in and set up camp.

A handful of leafy branches makes a brush, which is dipped into the mounds of bees that have not yet decided to move into the new hive, while others are scooped up by gloved hands and plopped inside. The buzz of more than 60,000 Africanized honey bees brings both a rush and a calm, making the 110-degree heat less noticeable.

In a few weeks there will be the reward of lifting a heavy panel up to find it full of fresh, golden honey.

Back at the cooperative, veils are lifted, and steam rises from stomachs into thick air. The white goop of larvae drips from knives to the tops of sneakers. Fingernails scrape stingers from the backs of necks and soothing onions are applied. The heat lurks, like a big man blowing stale, hot breath. Children swarm to the honey bucket, devouring huge pieces of honey in the comb — the leftovers from the capture.

Beekeepers in Pueblo-ra, Paraguay, get hushed calls at all hours from unknown numbers: "Tienes miel pura?" in Spanish or "Nde rerekopa eira pora?" in Guarani. Everyone wants the pure stuff, and because of rampant tampering, pure honey doesn’t last long on the market.

Four years ago, in the 22-house village of Pueblo-ra (Guarani for "pueblo to be"), farmers discovered beekeeping to be a lucrative practice that does not compete for other resources, increases crop production, aids in nutrition, and fetches a decent price in the market. Honey is valued for its nutritive qualities. Doctors prescribe honey for various illnesses, and it is found at all pharmacies. It is also sold among neighbors, on the street and in the mercado.

Farmers in Paraguay, one of the poorest countries in South America, are finding it harder and harder to make a living in the countryside. Jobs are few and far between in the cities. More and more Paraguayans are working as maids or construction workers in Spain and Argentina. Beekeeping is one way to make money while at the same time improving the small-scale farm. The start-up costs are minimal, there is a constant demand for honey, and considering the labor involved, the profit is high. Beekeeping is beautifully economical -- there is no waste. The propolis and pollen that bees make can be collected and consumed. The leftover wax can be made into candles, soap, or ointment. The hive itself can be made out of milk crates or scrap wood.

There is still a ways to go, however, in dispelling myths about the dangers of bees and educating the community about how to keep bees in a safe, sustainable way. There is a general fear of being stung, and stories spread far and wide about bee-sting disasters, mostly as a result of honey-robbing without proper equipment. There are three ways to interact with bees: bee-killing (robbing the hive for honey once or twice a year, thereby leaving it with no food source), bee-having (having bees in a box without any knowledge of how to care for them to produce optimal results), and beekeeping, which is the most ideal practice, involving basic maintenance and a general understanding of how to care for a hive.

In an effort to boast about honey’s qualities and impart more knowledge of bees, I teach a beekeeping class for children in Pueblo-ra. We do sugar vs. honey taste tests. “Which one tastes better?” I ask a circle full of young children? “This one!” they respond, pointing to the honey. Above the ground, their little legs swing back and forth in their chairs. We list the foods we produce in town and how we produce them. I ask them to tell me what they think of bees. I ask them if they know where we keep our hives and if they’ve ever heard the buzzing from them. We do skits about the queen, all her suitors and workers, and the way bees make their magical recipes, like honey, propolis, pollen, and royal jelly.

Maria, our first female beekeeper, told me that her 6-year-old son Carlos came back from class one day and said he wanted to be a beekeeper. “OK, my child, my little beekeeper,’’ she said. “I will make you a bee suit.”

Maybe the fierce curiosity and appetite for honey will lead these children to work with bees. Maybe the honey they make will bring in some much-needed money. Maybe they will then resist the temptation to flee for a job in a big city or another country, and instead, stay on the family farm or start one of their own. Maybe the possibility exists for this small, 22-house community to be truly sustainable. And if the people here learn to care for what’s in their own backyard, Pueblo-ra (“Pueblo-to be”) may have to come up with a new name for itself.

To learn how you can blog for Passport, contact Lydia Rebac at lrebac@globe.com.