Limes and Pears

I arrived in Austin yesterday to begin a journey that will take me through Mexico and Colombia. There are 16 teachers on the trip, all of us here to be a little bit better at what we do and because travel is just cool. Last night the group met on a river boat for dinner and to catch a glimpse of the bats of Congress Bridge flying out to catch mosquitos. The bats didn't fly as expected, but we did get most of the awkward first-day introductions out of the way. Today we have endured two seminars about the respective histories of Mexico and Colombia.

Later we heard about the various international markets for Mexican limes. Mexicans, apparently, prefer very small limes because Mexicans always use the same small tool to juice the limes. Only those tiny key limes will work with the tool. Americans like medium limes, very green and shiny and fresh-looking. But what to do with giant limes? Sell them to Japan, of course. Japanese people don't actually like limes and will not eat them, but they love to use them as home decor. The really big limes, they say, are great to set out as a centerpeice.

The guy telling us about the limes, Marco M. Muñoz of IC2, works to help people in Veracruz, Mexico, to be self-sufficient without giving them any money. Lime producers don't make any money if they send limes of the wrong size to the wrong market. And it costs nothing to give them these tips.

Muñoz is also telling us about a group of pear producers he met in a very poor community. I zoned out when he first started telling the story, and when I finally drifted back in, I thought he was talking about purse producers. "Purse" and "pears" sound very similar in a Spanish accent. Just for fun, try substituting "purse" for "pears" in the following story.

Muñoz was sent to this little town in Mexico specifically to try to help the people be less poor. He worked to match the pear producers with a broker who would sell the pears at a market. As is turned out, though, the pear producers weren't actually producing pears; they were just kind of picking pears up from the ground and putting them in a basket. When Muñoz asked one of the so-called producers if he would eat the pears himself, the man said he would not. After all, the pears were basically rotten, just fetched from the ground. When Muñoz pointed out that perhaps rotten pears wouldn't sell very well in the market, the guy got all annoyed that Muñoz actually wanted him to work to pick good pears.

"You are the only ones who come to put us to work," the man said. Why would they want to work, he argured, when the Red Cross gives them medicine, NGOs bring toys and clothes, and the government provides food?

"They are not really helping anybody to be better," Muñoz said of the charities. "I learned why poverty is such a good business."

So, Muñoz said, the first thing you have to do to help a community is make sure they want the help.

"Identify the people that really want to work. Don't waste your time with people who do not want to work."

I suppose the concept applies to both purses and pears, but it doesn't really apply to teaching. I have often heard teachers say something like, "Well, if he doesn't want to learn, I can't teach him." It's a tempting stand to take and one of the reasons teaching is so difficult.

But what do you do about the kids who are just picking up rotten pears and putting them in the basket?