Profile: Nikunj Mistry
GBB Panama Blog
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| Nikunji Mistry, Business Administration |
Blog 4
March 21, 2009
This one is going to be really short.
So, we are leaving Panama now and we’re actually in the plane headed back to the US. The last two days have been a blur; actually this entire week has moved by a lot quicker than I expected, but after thinking about all the things we did, I can’t believe it was only a week. After going to the club and getting a few hours of sleep, I woke up a little before 6 AM because that was when light came in through the windows. I sat and listened to music for a while. After everyone got up, we went on a tour of the city and visited the Panama Canal where we saw a ship moving through one of the locks. Afterwards we had a nice dinner at a restaurant nearby. We ate, ordered drinks, and saw some traditional Panamanian dancing. We then went to a bar where we got some tables at the little plaza just outside and sat around enjoying the music and having a good time. We then went back to the hostel, slept for maybe an hour or a little more and woke up to get to the airport.
Overall, this has been one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. It was a great way to spend my spring break. I was able to help a group of people, got to travel to another country, had some fun and learned a lot. I’m looking forward to doing it again.
Thanks for reading.
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Blog 3
March 19, 2009
Today was our last day in El Bale. We’re planning to go out tonight and blow off some steam but there’s some time before that so I figured I would write. On our second full day in El Bale, we went on a trip to visit some of the hives and talk with a man they call “The Professor,” who teaches the farmers about beekeeping. The drive was fun to say the least. Again, some of us sat in the cab of the pickups and others sat in the bed. There were protective roll cages in the back so it was relatively safe. After driving for a little while, we had to leave one truck behind and everyone crammed into the remaining trucks because we needed 4-wheel drive and one of the trucks did not have that. We stopped a little while later and took some pictures; the view was amazing. I spotted a small mountain/hill like thing and asked if we could climb it. We did and it was actually pretty tough for some of us. The farmers and their children got to the top pretty quickly and easily though. It was steep, so it took a little careful maneuvering to get up there. The top was extremely windy but it felt good. We stayed up there for a few minutes, took pictures and just enjoyed the view. The way back down was much tougher because it was so steep.
After getting to the bottom, we climbed back into the trucks and made our way to one of the hives. We parked the trucks and got out to meet The Professor. We talked with him for a little while and asked questions about the training the farmers still needed and any other questions we could think of. After talking with The Professor, we went on a short hike up to the beehives. They were really just located beside the trees and other plants in nature. It was secluded and protected by all the plant growth nearby. Afterwards, we went to what I think was one of the farmer’s homes and got to see how the honey was processed and bottled. We actually got to label some of the bottles. There we sat down and talked some more with The Professor; we learned more about beekeeping and more specifics about the farmers and their operation. A little while later, we had lunch which consisted of a soup that had chicken, some sort of tuber and some rice with beans. We all put in our orders for honey bottles and the group ended up ordering 93 bottles between the 21 of us, which came out to almost $500 dollars.
Once we got back to the school where we were staying, most of us were pretty tired but we held another workshop with the farmers. We thought that we would be teaching them more skills but eventually decided that it was best to have the farmers discuss the progress that they had made. We learned that they were much more organized that we previously thought; they knew exactly what they were doing and where they wanted to go. They came back to us and had created roles for certain members of the Co-op and thought of roles that I had never even considered. They assigned someone to relay information to people who couldn’t come to meetings or had missed out of getting some information. After going over who was assigned to do what and discussing a few other things, we ate dinner and then went outside to the basketball court where a fire had been set up nearby. It had been a long day but a very rewarding one; we could see that everyone was making progress, the farmers and ourselves.
The next day was our last full day in El Bale and after eating breakfast, we met again to discuss the plan for the day. Some of us were going to Santiago to use the money we brought for the farmers to buy materials. Others would stay behind and hold another workshop. I was part of the group that was going to Santiago. We jumped into the trucks again; this time we were all in the cab. We first went to a large store that was a mix between Home Depot and a department store because it had construction materials but also had towels and TV’s and cameras. After buying the construction materials that were going to be used to finish a honey-processing hub, we went to the grocery store that was next to it and bought food to prepare for the farmers on our last day. We bought bread and some of the ingredients needed to make macaroni and cheese, which we had brought from the US along with peanut butter and jelly. We then bought materials for the 17 new hives we were going to buy. We ran into some problems there because the man we went to see did not have any materials. We decided to leave the money for the materials with Father Roberto and another man named Alcides who worked with the Father and the farmers. Before heading back to El Bale, we stopped at Father Roberto’s office in Santiago, where we cooled off and watched a video of all the work that he does. It was incredible, the amount of work that he did for everyone and just how happy he was doing it; he was always smiling. When we got back to El Bale, we were all really tired. We found out that the people from our group who stayed behind taught the farmers some basics about marketing and sales.
The next day was our last day in El Bale, which is today, since I am writing today. Anyway, this morning was pretty amazing. After breakfast, we met with the farmers one last time and discussed with them our plans for the money we brought. After telling them about the materials that we were buying, they all spoke a few words and thanked us for the work we had done. I didn’t understand much but it was an incredible experience; I could tell from the expressions on their faces just how thankful they were and how much they appreciated our help. When the man sitting near me spoke, I only picked up a few words but I heard him say “luchando” which is the gerund form of fight. He was saying something about fighting to make the Co-op work and succeed. That hit me pretty hard, just how real this was. Afterwards, we prepared lunch for everyone and then spent some time with the kids and the farmers. We had brought some school supplies for the kids and some things for them to play with. After all that, we all posed for pictures and said our goodbyes. We shook hands with everyone, jumped back into the pickup trucks and made our way back to Panama City. But before we got back to the hostel, we stopped at a beach for a few hours and just relaxed and had a good time. We had dinner there and most of us had a local fried fish, which tasted great. Once dinner was over, we made our way back to the hostel where we settled in and took showers before going to a club. I think this is where I will stop for today.
Until next time.
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Blog 2
March 16, 2009
So we spent our first full day in El Bale, the community we are staying in. It is about a five-hour drive away from Panama City. A lot has happened since the last time I wrote. But let’s start from the beginning. When we arrived in Panama, after getting through customs, loading all of our luggage onto the bus and meeting the leaders from the organization who would accompany us on the trip, we went to get some food. The air was humid and it was pretty hot but we were all too excited to care. The bus ride to the restaurant introduced us to Panama City, and it became obvious that the city was booming. It was a very different experience from visiting a metropolitan city within the US because Panama City was still being developed and the gap between the rich and poor was still evident. After dinner, we got to our hostel and got settled in. We all slept on cots and most of us were in the same area. After we all showered and changed, we sat around for a while and watched some old movies on TV.
We got up relatively early in the morning and quickly had breakfast, packed up and loaded back onto the bus to go to El Bale. The drive was long but we drove near the Panama Canal and drove over the Centennial Bridge, which is a really cool suspension bridge that goes over the Panama Canal. We stopped for lunch at a small roadside café and some people bought snacks and drinks for the rest of the trip. When we got near El Bale, we had to get off the bus because it wasn’t built for the terrain. The Priest, Father Roberto from El Bale, came to receive us and we traveled the rest of the trip in pickup trucks. Some of us got to sit in the cab while others sat in the bed of the truck. After another 30 minute ride, we got to the local school, which was where we would be staying in El Bale. The school was out of session when we were there. We stayed in the dormitories on bunk beds.
After getting settled in, we all went to play baseball with Father Roberto and some of the kids from the area. Needless to say, they were very good and it turned out that Father Roberto actually trained them a few times a week. After baseball, we went to the gym where dinner was being prepared. The food was amazing. There was marinated beef, fried plantains, rice and a mushroom dish that everyone loved. After dinner and a short discussion, we went outside to the basketball court and just lay there looking at the stars for a while. I’ve never seen so many stars. There wasn’t any electricity in the area so it was pitch black and the sky was covered in hundreds of stars. We were all excited to start the next day because we would meet the farmers and could actually get to work on figuring out how to help the Honey Co-op.
The next day, we woke up early. We had an amazing breakfast which included small fried discs of batter, called Hojaldres, which I can only describe as tasting like funnel cake without the sugar. We ate those with cheese and a beef dish with bell peppers and a really awesome sauce. We even got to have some honey, and it was awesome. I ate a lot of it. After breakfast, the farmers arrived; we sat down and introduced ourselves and they did the same. We found out that some of them had walked three hours through the mountainous terrain to meet us, and two of the women were carrying babies with them. We started to discuss what we would be doing with them over the next few days and decided that we needed a few hours to prepare some materials to hold a workshop for them. They initially didn’t want to wait as long as we asked because they would have nothing to do, but they soon agreed and we got to work.
We split up into two groups. One group worked on coming up with a guide to help them structure their Co-op and the various things that they would need to take care of, such as regular meetings and roles for certain members. The other group worked on basic accounting skills. We created a simple ledger for them to keep track of their supplies and processed honey inventory. We also came up with a basic summary of their costs. It was very hard to get their costs though, because when they explained the costs to us, we all had one understanding and when we calculated the costs, some of the numbers were huge. On our first attempt, we had calculated that they spend something around $5,000 on transportation every year. After asking the proper questions, we were able to get the correct costs and found that they only spend around $400 on transportation every year. The language barrier was one problem, but it was also just hard to get information from the farmers because they did not write anything down and they sometimes gave us incomplete answers. We found this out while we were presenting, when one of the farmers stopped the presentation to say that we had forgotten to include some costs. The presentations took a few hours. Afterwards we got ready for dinner. Again, the food was amazing. After dinner, we had another discussion and then went to the basketball court again and just sat around and enjoyed the night and the stars.
Until next time.
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Blog 1
March 13, 2009
We are leaving for Panama tomorrow and I’m actually very excited about finally getting there and being able to put the collective knowledge of the group to use. I’m wondering if I should have brushed up on my Spanish a little though.
Before we get started, here’s a little about myself. My name is Nikunj Mistry, and I’m currently a sophomore double majoring in Business Administration and Economics. I got involved with the Global Business Brigades back in September of 2008. When I heard about the projects and the type of work we would be doing, I knew it was something I wanted to be a part of. It’s a unique opportunity for undergraduate students to be able to put their knowledge to use outside of the classroom and be able to see the positive effects of their efforts.
Our project is in a village a few hours outside of Panama City, Panama and we’re going to be trying to create solutions that will improve a struggling honeybee farm. Although there was no reason for it, I started to try different types of honey to get more familiar with the product. I didn’t really eat much honey before because I thought I didn’t like it. Now I actually like honey. Anyway, our group consists of about 20 students and we’ve all been assigned to different teams that focus on different areas of the honeybee farm. I’ve been assigned to Operations and my team and I are going to be working to figure out what is preventing the honeybee farm from running smoothly and how we can try and remedy it.
Well, I’m almost done packing and I should probably get to sleep since we have to leave from USC at 5:00 AM.
Until next time
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