Our first week flashed before my eyes faster than the bolts of lightning that have been striking the city since we arrived. With a flexible daily schedule of working at the office in preparation for the field, attempting to try food from every single comida corrida truck in the local vicinity, and sprinkling-in typical tourist activities (museums, historic castles, and a performance of the Ballet Folklorico), we stayed busy and tried our best to keep dry. After spending a week in our posh, comfortable hostel in the heart of the “hipster” colonia of Mexico City, Kiara and I boarded our two-hour flight to Campeche, a Mexican state located in the Yucatán Peninsula.

We flew into the airport, which sat alongside Campeche’s beautiful tropical beaches. For just a second, it felt as if we were going on a relaxing honeymoon. This quickly changed as we exited the plane and the humidity smacked us in the face like a damp dish towel. Even as I opened my mouth to speak, the air felt thick and I sensed that I was eating very small, hot water droplets. Gaspar, one of the local Iluméxico engineers, picked us up from the airport in what we would come to consider Mexico Time (MT= 30 minutes late is still early). As soon as he began to speak, I knew the language barrier would be more like a brick wall; and while Kiara was armed with a ladder and a rope, I felt as though I was left with a small step stool. We hopped into the Iluméxico truck and headed on our way “home” to Escárcega for the next couple weeks. After reaching for the seatbelt and finding that there was none, I sensed it was about to be an interesting adventure.

I seem to remember as much about our first day in the field as I do about my co-worker’s lesson on Mexican slang: everything seems jumbled and I’m not sure if anything will come out sounding normal. The three muchachos that represent Iluméxico-Campeche came for us at 8am. The five of us crammed into the small truck, and we drove…and drove…and drove…until almost two hours later, we had left all signs of civilization except for the fences made of wooden posts and barbed wire that divided various properties along the dirt road. As we approached a dead end into the jungle, we saw a one-room school house, recently constructed by the federal government (as the sign read), and a scattering of about seven dwellings a few hundred yards back from the road. I would say houses, but if I did, you would imagine the wrong kind of building. These homes weren’t like anything I had seen in person; they reminded me of the pictures of developing countries that we see in the media, or maybe even the grass huts on the beach that appear in Sandals commercials (minus the romantic couple lying in lounge chairs). And here, in the middle of who-knows-where, with the sweltering sunlight, the humidity that soaked my clothes as I stood, and the lack of any kind of familiar bathroom system or English-speaking guide, they left us. With other clients to attend to that lived close by, they said they would return in a couple hours after we had finished our surveying.

So, off we went. That day, much like the day after, and the day after that, was like nothing I had ever experienced before. Walking through high shrubbery (with hopes that nothing that rubs against us is poisonous), three-inch thick mud, up cerros, half-walking, half-sliding down rocky hillsides, we go from home to home, introducing ourselves, our purpose, and asking customers  about their Iluméxico experience. Some families live in huts constructed of palm leaves and misfit wooden planks, with small children playing with the cochinitos (piglets) and pollitos (chicks) outside, while the older children help with household chores like cooking, washing clothes, and even dragging large branches from the jungle for firewood. Other families live in government-built homes made of brick and cement, fit with a television, a house phone, and sometimes, we can even hear the rhythmic beats of a stereo bass inside. No matter the house, every household has at least one maca (hammock), at least two kinds of animals (whether they be turkeys, a litter of dogs, or parrots), and will offer us to come stand in the shade or take a seat inside.

While I would like to say that these first few days have gone better than anything I could have imagined, I would be lying. In fact, as I sit here typing this blog, I have a cold washcloth on the back of my neck to soothe the sunburn, and Cortizone cream on my arms to calm the bug bites. We wake early, go to bed late, and sweat more than I ever have in any of my water polo workouts. While we have been testing ways to better communicate our questions to Iluméxico users, we also face the chance that people may not like us simply because of our nationality. With no wifi, cellphone service, or local contacts, we also feel more distant from the world we are familiar with than we ever have before.

Finding comfort in friendly faces, familiar and delicious foods, and the idea that our work will be a great benefit to Iluméxico, we look forward to each day with a renewed energy (that, in all honesty, starts to fade after we’ve surveyed about 15 houses and Kiara’s stomach starts to growl). BUT, this does not stop us, and we continue to be thankful for the opportunity to travel to new communities, meet the people who live there, and make a greater impact on the world we live in. Stay tuned for more stories on Alex’s newest bug bites, Kiara’s search for the perfect mole, and developments on our research!

Taxi Ride to Chicbul

My name is Alex Cabral I am a rising senior at Santa Clara University. My partner-in-crime, Kiara, and I have been given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to complete a 9-month fellowship through SCU’s Center for Science, Technology, and Society’s Global Social Benefit Institute.

If you’d like to find out more about how we got involved with the fellowship and where we came from, check out our personal blogs!
Alex Cabral: http://blogs.scu.edu/alexcabral/
Kiara Machuca: http://blogs.scu.edu/kmachuca/

After three months of intensive research surrounding topics such as social entrepreneurship, base-of-the-pyramid customers, last-mile distribution, micro-finance institutions, and all the good stuff, we have departed on the second part of our journey.

We had the good fortune of being paired with Iluméxico, a social enterprise based out of Mexico that aims to provide light to the energy-impoverished populations of Mexico through solar power technologies and community development programs. We will be conducting a customer service analysis and marketing and communication analysis in a couple rural communities where Iluméxico works in order to give the company a clearer idea of what they can do in order to improve their product line and customer satisfaction levels. After completing our two-month research plan abroad, we will return to SCU to piece together the parts of our research which will benefit the enterprise most.

First, we will be spending a week in Mexico City to get to know the ins-and-outs of the enterprise before we set out to visit more rural areas.

My impressions of my first day in Mexico City:
1. Traffic is scary. Cars will turn wherever, whenever they want. I saw my life flash before my eyes more than a few times, which may or may not have been due to the cautiously-aggressive driving of María, our mentor here at Iluméxico. Speed limits? Cameras at stoplights? Staying in your own lane? These phrases don’t exist here. Crossing the street is a do-or-die mission.

2. Plans in a start-up company can switch in another direction almost as fast as María’s lane changes. On our way between the airport and breakfast, she filled us in on many major changes currently happening in Iluméxico that we will get to witness this summer. All of them will have a large impact on Iluméxico. Who knew we would be so lucky? Or are we…

3. We grabbed breakfast at an awesome café that sold books, food, and hosts a slew of concerts throughout the week. The Omelette Juliette I ordered, filled with spinach, goat cheese, and mushrooms, tasted like the best food I’d ever had, especially since we ate it after a 4-hour plane ride at 5am PST. It was a warm welcome to the colonia where we will be staying for a good part of our journey, which is one of the cultural hubs of the city.

4. After eating, I went to browse through the books while we waited for a suspiciously-young valet to bring María’s car around front. But I could not browse through the books, because every single one was wrapped in plastic. Probably so that no one could sit in the restaurant all day and read an entire book without paying (like they do at Barnes ‘n’ Noble), but I took it as an action that stifled my liberty to flip through the pages before I buy a book.

5. Ilumexico’s office headquarters looked very small from the outside. It was on a very narrow street. with a very skinny building facade, and a little doorway. As we were given the tour, the office continued back further and further, until we reached a patio, a back office, and a make-shift movie theater the team had created in order to get the best World Cup-watching experience possible (which we watched on our first day, of course, because “El Tri” was playing). The employees seemed young, energetic, and close to each other, which I think is very important. Building trust between the team is vital for a company’s success, especially when that company is just completing its start-up stage.

6. Rain is just as unpredictable as a start-up company. Both me and my soaking wet jeans paid that price tonight.

We shall see what more this trip will bring!
Hasta Luego,
Alex