I co-wrote this blog with Fikrte Abebe, a fellow Fellow.

We were recently exposed to the results of a study done by the UN in 1998. The results were published in a book titled “Voices of the Poor.”  Through the reading we believe we have a deeper understanding of poverty. What we have come to realize is that what poor people experience goes beyond materialistic lack and affects them psychologically, and physically.
Before reading “The Voices of the Poor”, for us the image of poverty consisted of emaciated children without clothes and families without food. Having had experiences in three…

I was raised to be chaste, to wait until marriage, to not discuss sex openly because if I were discussing sex openly then it must be that I have lax moral views towards it. I must not think that it is as sacred or solemn as I was thought to observe through the language our parents and teachers used. In other words I am viewing it lightly and it must not be viewed lightly. I would not have any problem with this view projected by our parents and teachers if only it did not prevent the open discussion of sex. Because in…

Growing up in a society with people who look exactly like me, I never truly understood the term racism and how it was talked about in American Schools.  I learned about slave ships, the civil war, and Martin Luther King Jr.  And every February I listened to the quotes made by famous black women and men but I never truly understood the humiliation, the shame, and the anger, those people experienced. I am not saying I understand the horrors of slavery and the hell people went through to secure our civil rights. But, experiencing discrimination based on the color of…

One morning my host mother in Nizag and I were eating breakfast when I noticed the unusual abundance of eggs in the kitchen. Eggs, at $0.15 each, are expensive for my family. For this reason we eat eggs only occasionally. So I asked my host mom how we got them.
My host mom bought the eggs from her cousin at $0.25. There were at least 15 eggs in the basket in the kitchen. My mother’s 40-year-old cousin had three children to feed and no money to buy food with. Her husband worked in the coast but when he came back to…

This is my new host family. By far, they are the most welcoming and loving group of people I have met in Ecuador. My 18 year-old host sister is this athletic ball of energy that monopolized my attention the first time I met her. My host brother is a jokester. My host parents, caring and understanding. I really could not have asked for a better, more down-to-earth family.
One thing that really caught my attention about this family is how they interact with each other.  During mealtimes or even when one finds the other in the same room, they immediately…

Lots of things have passed since the last time I wrote a blog: Fall Training at Stanford in August and in-country orientation in Quito from September and October. But by far the most interesting and challenging events happened to me in the last month and two weeks.
Waking up in a rural village to the crowing of a rooster is the first reminder that I am as far as I have been from my home. As I step out of my house and walk on the dirt road to the school where I teach English, I hear the sounds of…

Do you know the feeling? I mean the feeling of belonging somewhere, within something, or with someone? I do. Getting to this point or feeling, however, was by no means effortless. Unlike most of my classmates in high school, I was always indecisive and uncertain of my future; it scared me. I would always think I had (insert number here) year(s) to find a profession that will fulfill me and will help me provide for myself and my family, but that never happened. And when I became a senior in high school, I applied to the best colleges and universities,…