Around the world on a GS850G for a cause

[spchips]

still watching...........

You know what they say... if life gives you lemons, make 5,000 gallons of lemonade!!!

[four_shot]

Chris, are you still kicking?

[Hacked850]

Ok now this is WEIRD !!!!!.I have the same bike ( even the same color)and I'm building a RTW sidecar rig out of it...This thread is gonna keep me up ALL NIGHT..!!!!!!!!!!!!

[shirazdrum]

Hey guys i'm alive and well. Have been busy with work and taking over 1000 acres of farm land in Paraguay for the project. We had to register the organization from scratch down here to be eligible to work here and that took for ever.

The bike is doing well, except the battery is dead finally after 2.5 years and need a new battery.

i'll post this here as well so if "richsuz" sees this:


Hi Rich,

I have a huge favor to ask you. A friend of mine (One of our ambassadors), Greg Powell, was robbed and assaulted while traveling around Lake Atitilan in Guatemala. It seems that they took his cloths and most of his stuff and he has some injuries. His bike was damaged as well and I would appreciate it if you could give him a helping hand. He is currently in Guatemala City and his email address is mustgo2011@yahoo.ca

I CCed him on this email so he knows about you.

Thanks a million,

And if we have any other members in Guatemala i would appreciate their help.

[Richsuz]

Hey Chris,
Got your email. As I was rounding up help around here and trying to locate your friend, I found out that he was already un good hands. He is staying at a friends house just outside Guatemala City. As warm and comfortable as possible, as his host is not just an avid biker (GS1200 Adventure rider, not Suzuki) he also is a Chef.
We will make sure things get fixed up for him.

Rich

[Richsuz]

Report on Greg,
I did not talk to Greg, but with his host Julio. The bike suffered minor damage. Mainly a broken mirror. He was "stoned" of the bike by three bandits with machetes. I have never heard of that. Since Greg had been in Guatemala City and staying iwith Julio and his wife Luisa Fernanda, he had left most of his belongings there. So at the moment of the attack they took carry on and tank bag, with a substantial amount of cash (that is a no-no, no matter where. Traveling papers, as far as I know are safe. I will try to meet with him tomorrow.

[shirazdrum]

Rich,

Thanks a million buddy, I know how hard it is to be in a strange country and things not going as planned. He knew not to carry cash like that, well you just live and learn. I also have never heard of anyone getting stoned off the bike, these guys are getting creative.

I'm glad that you guys get to meet tomorrow, Greg is a nice guy and i'm sure he appreciates the hospitality. Take some pictures if you can. It's a shame we never got to meet.

[mcloud]

Hey guys i'm alive and well. Have been busy with work and taking over 1000 acres of farm land in Paraguay for the project. We had to register the organization from scratch down here to be eligible to work here and that took for ever.

The bike is doing well, except the battery is dead finally after 2.5 years and need a new battery.

i'll post this here as well so if "richsuz" sees this:


Hi Rich,

I have a huge favor to ask you. A friend of mine (One of our ambassadors), Greg Powell, was robbed and assaulted while traveling around Lake Atitilan in Guatemala. It seems that they took his cloths and most of his stuff and he has some injuries. His bike was damaged as well and I would appreciate it if you could give him a helping hand. He is currently in Guatemala City and his email address is mustgo2011@yahoo.ca

I CCed him on this email so he knows about you.

Thanks a million,

And if we have any other members in Guatemala i would appreciate their help.

Glad your friend Greg is OK.
Can you tell us more about your project?

[Tim Tom]

Ok now this is WEIRD !!!!!.I have the same bike ( even the same color)and I'm building a RTW sidecar rig out of it...This thread is gonna keep me up ALL NIGHT..!!!!!!!!!!!!

Haha I also have the same bike (and color) and am planning on doing an Alaska tour on it next summer. Something about the 850GZ must inspire adventure.

Chris,
Glad to see you are doing well and still kicking. Don't really have to look closely and enjoy your photos and recent adventures yet but I'll be back soon!

Cheers,
Tim

[shirazdrum]

Hey guys, thanks for being around. I have been really sick for a few days with high fever and I’m hoping that it's not Dengue Fever again.

When I started this organization, the biggest thing that struck me was lack of a helping-hand rather than lack of food. The poor people, believe it or not are some of the most creative economist – they have to be. They stretch a dollar bill for so long that makes my head spin, but the fact is that this very same class is excluded from the very basic financial assistance that others take for granted. The more I got into it, the more I saw the negative effects of traditional handouts, and I changed my focus to a much bigger picture. Not by giving out a bag of rice, but by letting them decide what to do with 10 bags of rice. And that’s where the microfinance project was born. I did my experiments in Paraguay with giving out very small loans, ($80) for duration of 4 months, and if they returned the loan, they could take double and so on. The money that was going to be handed out with no expectation in the first place, now brought in honesty, creativity and made jobs. Their requirement were simple - to send their kids to school, raise small farm animals (chicken and goats) and plant a tree. Out of all participants, every single one of them returned the money, all fulfilled their contracts, and a few opened their own business(fruit stands, wood cutting business,…) with just having an $80 help. It’s amazing how much a 100 dollar bill can do down here, sometimes it’s a matter of life and death.

Then this evolved to something bigger. Instead of just loaning 100 bucks and letting them figure it out, we would loan the money and give them advice on how to put it to good use. Through some contacts I made, we are taking over 1000 acre of farming land which has excellent soil. Here if you spit on the ground, something will grow, but these people struggle with growing and most importantly selling their products. Not that there is no buyer, they just don’t understand how to compete with the commercialized farms and corporations. Paraguay has been mono cropped for a long time with soy and sugar being its most profitable crops and that pushed the peasants to verge of starvation because they can’t grow their daily food and they are dependent on the big market if they grow soy and sugar. Every year, more people lose their lands because they go in debt to corporations like Monsanto (they are big down here) and they end up in the cities washing windows.

Paraguay just celebrated its 200 anniversary of independent and from what I saw, this event (a month long celebration) made the 4th of July like a Wednesday night party. They are very patriotic and I’m using the very same concept to sell them the idea of caring for their own people. We are planning a gigantic parade and carnival from every group in the country and that’s what I’m working on at the moment.

I’ll write more when I get a little better and will keep you updated.
P.S. I found a Yuasa battery for 50 bucks and now I don’t have to park on the hill anymore

[Dogma]

Very interesting approach. I wish you all the success in the world with helping folks to stand on their own.

How many participants did you start with?

[shirazdrum]

I started with 9 households, actually 8 and the first one was asset-up to get the rest to participate. They don't take my word that something is good for them, but they take their neighbors word between these families, there were 31 children and this was just a fraction of that community. I used another organization's research to find these people and that's working very nicely. They do the leg work for their own projects and we use their data for ours without wasting resources.

I've learned that (very sadly) these people follow a leader without much creativity. For decades, they were under dictatorship like much of South America, and the creativity was beaten out of them. When asked a question, they all look at each other and if one person is brave enough to take a guess, the rest will side with him. This is worse in the female population as the women will wait for a man to step forward and follow him with no challenge.

This is the life in rural South America, a system that came in place from our own government trying to fight communism, overthrowing every democratically elected official and replacing it with puppet dictators. To get the job done down here, a dictatorship approach is applied even in the non-profit sector. What I hope to break this cycle is education but that doesn't come overnight. Paraguay is moving towards the same class of capitalism that drowned our economy, and the US embassy is doing everything it can to make it happen. I (an American citizen) was denied entry inside embassy, and had to speak to the head of security 50 feet from the building. All I was asking for was a meeting with any official and was given an 800 number. Go figure.

[bccap]

I'm not American, but if that was my country I'd be notifying every news agency I could think of. { denying embassy entry } However, when you are trying to make small inroads in a country with questionable government ethics. It can be best to speak little and allow your actions to speak for themselves. I applaud your efforts !

[Skateguy50]

News does not cover real stories... they only cover what they are told to, this would be brushed over for sure. Just keep doing what you are and hope you are feeling better. If you can email me some more details and time frame for stuff going on I will try to find a way to come down in the next few months.

[Eliseo Monteverde]

Happy Birthday Chris, wherever you are