Heavy things and light things

I met an interesting person. Erin is an American, volunteering here and also researching for her second masters thesis. She is studying the effectiveness of nongovernmental organizations in local poor populations. This is pretty exciting, considering I´m going to write my senior thesis on something similar. Her argument, she says, is that aid is most effective when delivered through NGOs. This is pretty much the opposite of the argument of Giles Bolton, the author of Africa Doesn´t Matter, a book I finished reading a few weeks ago. Giles says aid is best when delivered through a struggling nation´s government. Yes, sometimes governments are corrupt, but corruption occurs because the state can´t afford to pay its bureaucracy. A police officer (or other public official) who can´t afford to feed his/her family will be quite likely to accept a bribe. And there we have corruption. Giles argues that when sending aid, we should expect to take an initial loss, but that it will be made up in years to come, in trade and other international relations-ish stuff. It´s a good book, very readable, but still thought-provoking. Anyway, Erin is interesting because she is studying what I plan to study, and we talk about it. We are exchanging books, so I can read one that promotes her argument for NGOs. It is great.
In other news, I would like everyone to know how hard some people in Guatemala work. There seems to be very little heavy machinery anywhere near Antigua. Every time I walk to or from Casa Jackson, I walk by a lot that seems to sell cinderblocks. There are probably a few thousand of them stacked up in that lot, and they aren´t always in the same places. This means that they are being moved. I never see machinery there, but I do see people moving them by hand. It is outrageous, the physical labor people do here. I imagine a Bobcat (or whatever other machinery) is pretty much outside the bounds of most companies´ budgets, so manual labor is the way things are done. There are currently a few dudes scraping all the paint off a school building near my house. They´ve been at it for a week or so now. I have seen people walking along, carrying loads that must weigh 100 pounds. It sounds outrageous, but I don´t feel like that´s much of an exaggeration. They carry big loads on their backs, with a strap going under the load and across their foreheads to balance out the weight. Again, it is unbelievable. With a third world economy, people work so hard. Just to live. Unbelievable.
And now for an abrupt transition to something much less weighty (inappropriate pun?), I heard both Beyoncé´s ¨If I Were A Boy¨ and Van Morrison´s ¨Brown Eyed Girl¨ in Spanish yesterday. I was amused. Beyoncé´s was officially Beyonce singing, but singing in Spanish. Thought you should know.