What Will It Take to Change Commuters’ Behavior in Los Angeles?
If any city needs help with its commuting behavior, it's Los Angeles. There's a very easy way to see this firsthand: Simply station yourself on any overpass, on any major freeway, around 8 a.m. on a workday. You'll be able to count on your fingers how many people are riding in carpools. You'll lose track of how many drivers are solo.
Angeleno commuters lose about 70 hours per person per year sitting in traffic—that's the equivalent of nearly ten days! It averages to about 485 million wasted hours that cost the region more than $10 billion annually, estimates Vision Los Angeles. Plus, commutes in Los Angeles are a third longer than they should be, according to a study by Texas Transportation Institute. But it wouldn't even take that much change to see an improvement in those numbers, according to a study by RAND. Reducing the number of cars on the road by only 2 or 3 percent could cut congestion delays by 10 to 15 percent.
While there are plenty of innovative solutions worldwide for reducing the amount of drivers on city streets—from congestion pricing to work-from-home days to carpooling apps—in Los Angeles, which practically invented the single-car trip, it's going to take a larger behavioral shift. The public transportation system is growing—a new major rail line will open this spring—and the city announced an ambitious bike share program last weekend, but those modes are a ways off from being able to support all commuter needs. In the meantime, how can the city help Angelenos share, borrow, and rent vehicles so we don't have so many cars on the road?
Many drivers don't know, for example, that the city can help place commuters in a carpool or vanpool using their Rideshare program. According to April McKay, director of customer programs and services at Metro, drivers can register with their address and place of work confidentially. "There are thousands of interested ridesharers in our database," she says. "We’ll help them find someone close by their home who shares their workplace destination and hours." The motivation to share a ride is often economic: While something like high gas prices might increase the number of calls to their Rideshare hotline, McKay says that what really helps is when employers themselves offer incentives.
When it comes to employers, the local shining example is UCLA, which reported last month that it saw record low congestion rates in 2011—the lightest traffic since it started keeping track in 1990. In the university's annual State of the Commute report [PDF], researchers highlight specific tactics that discouraged what they call "drive-alone commuters": a 50 percent subsidy for transit passes, discounted parking for carpoolers, and a partially subsidized vanpool. It's apparent that the programs are working: Only 52.9 percent of UCLA employees now drive to work alone. Across Los Angeles County, it's 72 percent.
Hannah Polow, an urban and regional planning graduate student at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs, agrees that UCLA's employer-focused approach is impressive. But not all businesses have the financial ability to subsidize transit passes or the organizational breadth to coordinate location-specific carpools. She says where she sees the most potential for Los Angeles is encouraging multiple-car households to reduce their total number of vehicles, getting families to learn to use one car together.
While the economic benefits are obvious, she says aiming for one car per household can help people start to experience a car-lite lifestyle without having to jump right in. "While still having the security of one vehicle, families can incorporate creative transportation trips. For example, the person driving can rotate by day and assist the others with a ride to the bus stop, a pickup to prevent an uphill bike ride, or participate in a carpool group," she says. "And for those times you really need an extra car—and there are these times—depend on your neighborhood car-share vehicle."
It's true that people might be more likely to surrender at least one car if they knew they could have one available when they needed it, and that's how car sharing programs could be another big part of the L.A. commuting conundrum. Earlier this month, Los Angeles announced the approval of a city-wide car sharing program, which could bring vehicles to 300 spaces across the city. The cars would be parked by transit hubs, like the new Expo Line, scheduled to open April 28. The concept has worked well so far: A previous one-year pilot program with Zipcar that stationed cars near UCLA and USC proved so effective that the city added additional spaces near the Red Line subway and, Zipcar has also expanded into other local cities like West Hollywood. Zipcar's not even the only option in town: LAX Car Share currently operates eight locations for car-sharing in L.A.
Of course, transit-oriented car-sharing found in pockets around the city will only make sense for those who live close to public transportation. For everyone else, there's another, newer option. RelayRides, which recently launched in Los Angeles, is a peer-to-peer sharing service that allows people to "rent" cars owned by other drivers. Unlike Zipcar, there are no membership fees, and renters can buy insurance to cover them while driving a stranger's car.
But you don't need a company to share a vehicle, argues Joe Linton, a bicycling advocate and co-founder of CicLAvia, who lives in L.A.'s Eco Village. His neighbors set up a Google calendar for their car, which functions a lot like the peer-to-peer rental service. The owners block out the times they need it, and others can reserve it when it's available.
What Linton would like to see is some city-wide technology that can help groups of people who live near each other connect and create their own car-sharing systems. "We've got a lot of one-car persons, and quite a few zero-car persons like me and not so much in between," he says. "The former can't imagine not having a car for every trip, the later can't imagine having a car for every trip." This way, those without cars can give tips and advice to help wean car owners off their vehicles, while still having a car at their disposal when they need it.
And with the right connections, one can rely on the kindness of social media for car-sharing needs. Kristina Wong, a car-free comedian and actor who lives in L.A.'s Koreatown, says she'll post Facebook updates asking for help with rides or hauling, and publicly offers her "car-sitting" services to friends who are headed out of town (complete with a ride to the airport). "I think for people who are afraid they will be carless, it’s important to know your backup systems," she says. "I am an artist with an erratic schedule and the biggest anxiety with my first few months of carlessness is the 'what-if' situation."
Even with her Zipcar membership and good friends on speed dial as backup, taking the leap was challenging, says Wong. She hopes to see more stories like hers shared by the city with tips on how to go car-free. "If people aren’t willing to part with their cars altogether, I’d challenge them to designate a 'car free day' each week where no matter where it was they have to go, they had to get there without a car," she advises. Or even better, she says, spend a day exploring your neighborhood and see how many needs could be met within a one-mile walking radius. "I discovered so many businesses there were in my neighborhood that I never thought to support," she says. "Look at it as an adventure."
Are you an Angeleno who found yourself inspired by last weekend's CicLAvia, which opened streets for biking and walking? Enter the LA/2B GOOD Maker Challenge where you can create your ideal itinerary for a car-free day in L.A. and have the chance to win $500 to bring it to life!
This post is the first in a series exploring transportation issues in Los Angeles sponsored by LA/2B, an ongoing collaboration between the Los Angeles Department of City Planning (LA DCP), the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LA DOT) and GOOD/Corps, an affiliate of GOOD, that provides an opportunity for people in Los Angeles to discuss the future of our streets and transportation.
Photo (cc) via Flickr user FontFont.
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What Will It Take to Change Commuters’ Behavior in Los Angeles?
If any city needs help with its commuting behavior, it's Los Angeles. There's a very easy way to see this firsthand: Simply station yourself on any overpass, on any major freeway, around 8 a.m. on a workday. You'll be able to count on your fingers how many people are riding in carpools. You'll lose track of how many drivers are solo.
Angeleno commuters lose about 70 hours per person per year sitting in traffic—that's the equivalent of nearly ten days! It averages to about 485 million wasted hours that cost the region more than $10 billion annually, estimates Vision Los Angeles. Plus, commutes in Los Angeles are a third longer than they should be, according to a study by Texas Transportation Institute. But it wouldn't even take that much change to see an improvement in those numbers, according to a study by RAND. Reducing the number of cars on the road by only 2 or 3 percent could cut congestion delays by 10 to 15 percent.
While there are plenty of innovative solutions worldwide for reducing the amount of drivers on city streets—from congestion pricing to work-from-home days to carpooling apps—in Los Angeles, which practically invented the single-car trip, it's going to take a larger behavioral shift. The public transportation system is growing—a new major rail line will open this spring—and the city announced an ambitious bike share program last weekend, but those modes are a ways off from being able to support all commuter needs. In the meantime, how can the city help Angelenos share, borrow, and rent vehicles so we don't have so many cars on the road?
Many drivers don't know, for example, that the city can help place commuters in a carpool or vanpool using their Rideshare program. According to April McKay, director of customer programs and services at Metro, drivers can register with their address and place of work confidentially. "There are thousands of interested ridesharers in our database," she says. "We’ll help them find someone close by their home who shares their workplace destination and hours." The motivation to share a ride is often economic: While something like high gas prices might increase the number of calls to their Rideshare hotline, McKay says that what really helps is when employers themselves offer incentives.
When it comes to employers, the local shining example is UCLA, which reported last month that it saw record low congestion rates in 2011—the lightest traffic since it started keeping track in 1990. In the university's annual State of the Commute report [PDF], researchers highlight specific tactics that discouraged what they call "drive-alone commuters": a 50 percent subsidy for transit passes, discounted parking for carpoolers, and a partially subsidized vanpool. It's apparent that the programs are working: Only 52.9 percent of UCLA employees now drive to work alone. Across Los Angeles County, it's 72 percent.
Hannah Polow, an urban and regional planning graduate student at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs, agrees that UCLA's employer-focused approach is impressive. But not all businesses have the financial ability to subsidize transit passes or the organizational breadth to coordinate location-specific carpools. She says where she sees the most potential for Los Angeles is encouraging multiple-car households to reduce their total number of vehicles, getting families to learn to use one car together.
While the economic benefits are obvious, she says aiming for one car per household can help people start to experience a car-lite lifestyle without having to jump right in. "While still having the security of one vehicle, families can incorporate creative transportation trips. For example, the person driving can rotate by day and assist the others with a ride to the bus stop, a pickup to prevent an uphill bike ride, or participate in a carpool group," she says. "And for those times you really need an extra car—and there are these times—depend on your neighborhood car-share vehicle."
It's true that people might be more likely to surrender at least one car if they knew they could have one available when they needed it, and that's how car sharing programs could be another big part of the L.A. commuting conundrum. Earlier this month, Los Angeles announced the approval of a city-wide car sharing program, which could bring vehicles to 300 spaces across the city. The cars would be parked by transit hubs, like the new Expo Line, scheduled to open April 28. The concept has worked well so far: A previous one-year pilot program with Zipcar that stationed cars near UCLA and USC proved so effective that the city added additional spaces near the Red Line subway and, Zipcar has also expanded into other local cities like West Hollywood. Zipcar's not even the only option in town: LAX Car Share currently operates eight locations for car-sharing in L.A.
Of course, transit-oriented car-sharing found in pockets around the city will only make sense for those who live close to public transportation. For everyone else, there's another, newer option. RelayRides, which recently launched in Los Angeles, is a peer-to-peer sharing service that allows people to "rent" cars owned by other drivers. Unlike Zipcar, there are no membership fees, and renters can buy insurance to cover them while driving a stranger's car.
But you don't need a company to share a vehicle, argues Joe Linton, a bicycling advocate and co-founder of CicLAvia, who lives in L.A.'s Eco Village. His neighbors set up a Google calendar for their car, which functions a lot like the peer-to-peer rental service. The owners block out the times they need it, and others can reserve it when it's available.
What Linton would like to see is some city-wide technology that can help groups of people who live near each other connect and create their own car-sharing systems. "We've got a lot of one-car persons, and quite a few zero-car persons like me and not so much in between," he says. "The former can't imagine not having a car for every trip, the later can't imagine having a car for every trip." This way, those without cars can give tips and advice to help wean car owners off their vehicles, while still having a car at their disposal when they need it.
And with the right connections, one can rely on the kindness of social media for car-sharing needs. Kristina Wong, a car-free comedian and actor who lives in L.A.'s Koreatown, says she'll post Facebook updates asking for help with rides or hauling, and publicly offers her "car-sitting" services to friends who are headed out of town (complete with a ride to the airport). "I think for people who are afraid they will be carless, it’s important to know your backup systems," she says. "I am an artist with an erratic schedule and the biggest anxiety with my first few months of carlessness is the 'what-if' situation."
Even with her Zipcar membership and good friends on speed dial as backup, taking the leap was challenging, says Wong. She hopes to see more stories like hers shared by the city with tips on how to go car-free. "If people aren’t willing to part with their cars altogether, I’d challenge them to designate a 'car free day' each week where no matter where it was they have to go, they had to get there without a car," she advises. Or even better, she says, spend a day exploring your neighborhood and see how many needs could be met within a one-mile walking radius. "I discovered so many businesses there were in my neighborhood that I never thought to support," she says. "Look at it as an adventure."
Are you an Angeleno who found yourself inspired by last weekend's CicLAvia, which opened streets for biking and walking? Enter the LA/2B GOOD Maker Challenge where you can create your ideal itinerary for a car-free day in L.A. and have the chance to win $500 to bring it to life!
This post is the first in a series exploring transportation issues in Los Angeles sponsored by LA/2B, an ongoing collaboration between the Los Angeles Department of City Planning (LA DCP), the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LA DOT) and GOOD/Corps, an affiliate of GOOD, that provides an opportunity for people in Los Angeles to discuss the future of our streets and transportation.
Photo (cc) via Flickr user FontFont.
7 Easy Steps to Grow Your Own Sprouts
Sprouts are just your everyday seeds, beans or grains taken to the next level in terms of nutrition and deliciousness just by soaking, rinsing and allowing a few days to germinate (sprout) before eating. While you can find many sprout varieties at most health food stores, growing them yourself is fun, easy and much less expensive.
Sprouts abound with antioxidants; they’re full of protein, chlorophyll, vitamins, minerals and amino acids. And talk about good for you: ounce for ounce, they provide more nutrients than any other known whole food. Sprouts also contain beneficial enzymes, requiring less digestive energy, so they actually invigorate you while your body processes them.
Your homegrown sprouts are up-to-the-minute fresh (they grow until ready to eat) and delicious. Grow them right in your kitchen using just seeds, jars and screens. Here’s how!
Getting Started
Beginner Varieties
Any seed, bean or grain is sproutable, but some take a bit more know-how. Easy and tasty seed choices are alfalfa, mustard, radish and clover. Or start with legumes! Lentils, mung beans, garbanzos and green peas are all good choices to start with.
Sprouting Selection
Choose your seeds based on taste preference. If you like the small spouts like alfalfa, which are often used in salads, sandwiches and spring rolls, start with seeds. If you prefer legumes (beans, lentils, peas), which make a killer stir-fry, hearty salad or wonderful soup, start there. Sprouted legumes require much less cooking time than dried and are also more tender.
The legumes you use should be “seed quality,” which are generally recommended for sprouting, as compared to “food quality,” which are intended for cooking. Seed quality legumes are cultivated for sprouting, while food quality are meant for cooking in their dry, unsprouted state, and tend to have a lower germination rate.
Fortunately, it’s becoming easier to find seeds, beans and grains specifically grown for sprouting. These can be found in most health food stores, often right in the bulk bins or specialty shops and are also available online. My favorite online and source is NewNatives.com. Once you have your seeds in hand, store them in airtight containers until you’re ready to use them. Glass jars work well for this purpose.
Setting Up
Growing Supplies
- Wide-mouthed mason jars sized from 1 quart — 1 gallon are recommended, depending on the amount of seed you plan to use.
- Nylon or fiberglass screen to cover the jars
- Rubber bands, or you can use the outer piece of the top to the mason jar to screw over the screen.
- Dish rack or flat, shallow containers for the jars to drain into.
Finding Space
During the germination process, sprouts, like most seeds, prefer a dark, temperate (60 F to 85 F) location, away from drafts and direct heat. An empty cabinet, box or dish rack covered with the cloth all work well.
Step by Step Sprouting
1. Measure out your seeds or beans. In general, 1 oz. of seed yields about 1 cup of spouts, so ¼ cup (for a 2-cup yield), seems to be a good starting point for small seed sprouts since they have a short shelf life. Soaked beans and legumes expand to approximately double the amount as when dried, so plan accordingly.
Place seeds in a mesh strainer or in your spouting jar and rinse in warm (80 F) water, then drain.
2. If you used a strainer for rinsing, pour seeds or legumes into your mason jar. Fill ¾ with water, cap with mesh screen and lid or rubber band and let soak overnight (if prepared in the evening) or for the following times:
- Small seeds: 3-8 hours
- Larger seeds or legumes: 8-16 hours
- Grains: 10-16 hours
*Refer to the Sprout Chart below for more seed-specific soak, rinse and germination details.
3. After soaking, drain the water and rinse the seeds thoroughly. The soaking water is said to contain natural toxins released from the seeds during germination, so a 2- to 3-time daily rinse is recommended.
4. After each rinse, place the jar upside down and tilted at a 45 degree angle in the warm, dark germination spot you’ve selected. The goal is to keep them damp but not soaking in water until they sprout. The warmer and darker the location, the faster they’ll sprout.
5. Let the spouts germinate for the suggested number of days (see chart below). Sprout most seeds 1 to 2 inches, grains up to 4 inches, and beans ¼ to 1 inch. You may want to vary growth time depending on plans for use. Shorter sprouts are great for eating whole; you’ll want then longer if you plan to juice.
6. Small seed optional (skip this step for legumes). Once seeds have sprouted, place the jar in strong, indirect sunlight for 2 to 3 days afterwards to develop some nutrient-rich chlorophyll.
7. When the jar is full and the sprouts or legumes are ready to use, store in an airtight container (a capped sprouting jar is fine) in the refrigerator for use. Note: be sure sprouts have drained for at least 5 hours before storing; too much moisture can cause spoilage.
It is recommended that small seeds be hulled, as in shells of the seeds removed, before placing in the refrigerator. It’s easy to do by soaking in a large bowl of water where hulls will float to the top for easy removal.
Beginners’ Sprout Chart
Once you get the hang of it, sprouting can be rather addictive. You’ll find new ways to enjoy sprouts just so you have an excuse to keep them growing. A complete sprouting chart is available at GrassRootzCafe.com.
Santa Cruz earth mama, change agent and local living advocate, Elizabeth Borelli, is truly convinced that the road to sustainability begins in the kitchen. She offers back-to-basics resources, money-saving recipes and simple health tips designed to empower readers to take control of their health through better dietary choices.
Photo credits: kygp
Reconstruction Zone: Chronicling Haiti’s Post-Quake Struggles
See more photos from Haiti, and what you can do to help.
“There was just a 7.0 quake right outside of Port-au-Prince. This will be a big deal.”
Two years ago today, I was the night editor for a national radio show. Around 5:20 p.m. Eastern time, the AP newswire flashed this sparse dispatch from a videographer working in Haiti, who had seen a collapsed hospital in a town up the hill from Port-au-Prince. "People are screaming for help,” the message added. Within seconds, we were calling everyone we knew with a Haitian phone number.
A colleague’s friend gave me the phone number for France Neptune, a driver for an orphanage, and I began dialing it over and over again. I was the first person to reach Neptune that night—almost all attempts to call Haiti yielded a foreboding variety of beeps. International media wouldn’t arrive until the next night, all flights were cancelled. On the phone, Neptune told me about chaotic streets filled confused throngs wandering, unsure where to go. He asked me to tell his girlfriend Mallery, who ran the orphanage and was in the U.S. on a supply run, that he was safe.
Neptune gave us a short update on the radio before dawn the morning after quake, the scene clearly but sounding dazed when asked about his plans. “I don’t know what I will do,” he said in a shaky voice that began to hint at the scale of the disaster.
By sunrise the next day, it was clear that Haiti faced a worst-case scenario: More than 200,000 people were dead, another 300,000 injured. One and half million people were left homeless, hunting for shelter, water, and basic medical care. Two years later, more than 500,000 people still live in more than 800 makeshift tent camps in and around Port-au-Prince.
I met Neptune and Mallery, who are now married, while visiting the still-shaken country last week. They invited me into the shipping container they're calling home while their new orphanage and apartment are built next door. “Last year was tents the whole year,” Mallery says. “So to go from tents to something that doesn’t blow in the wind is great.
The Neptunes are in better shape than most because of their connections with American donors. Two years later, they say they are almost back to where they started, able to help a tiny fraction people still living in tent camps. Like many Haitian nonprofit leaders, the Neptunes reacted to the disaster by working harder. “I like what we are doing, it’s part of my heart," France says. "It’s hard for me at the same time, because I would like to do lots more for the people, but… we can’t reach everybody.”
They have “adopted” two tent camps, as they put it, purchasing supplies and funding small medical clinics, mostly for girls. Before the quake, their work focused on the nation's huge child malnutrition crisis, but now they’re treating a new scourge: Sex crimes, they say, are a major problem for Haitian women.
Wearing multiple layers of clothes is the only many girls and women can try to protect themselves in a country with about one police officer for every 100,000 people. “They were begging, you know crying," France Neptune says. "And the OB-GYN doctor would want to see them, and see like 10 underwears or lots of shirts. They are afraid to get raped.”
“People are getting raped because they are still living under plastic,” says Leonard Doyle, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, which coordinates humanitarian services in the tent camps. “They’re just a little razor blade away." Transactional sex is common in the camps, he adds. Many women submit to sex with a man in exchange for living closer the latrines for safety, or being added to a list for social services.
Overall, reports of rape and gender-based violence have roughly tripled in the past year. A UNHCR spokesman characterized the rate of rape in the 800 remaining camps as “alarmingly high.”
One of the organizations focusing specifically on women who have been sexually assaulted is the Commission of Women Victims for Victims, known by its Creole acronym KOFAVIV. One of its workers, Claucina Jean, took me on a tour of Champs de Mars, a sprawling public plaza across from the broken presidential palace akin to Hyde Park in London or the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Today, the park is filled with tents and shacks.
Many of the women who live here have sought Jean's help after being raped. She knows at least 50 women in this camp who have been assaulted, and she assumes many more are staying silent. One rape survivor, Guinize Jean (no relation to Claucina Jean), tells me she was raped, an act of bravery in itself. Wearing a purple streak in her crisp braids and flashing an incongruous smile, she says she doesn’t know who raped her. When asked whether she feels safe, she flatly responds, “no," pausing to rescue a yellow terrycloth hair tie from deep in her baby’s mouth.
Another Brick in the Wall
Amid the rubble, there are signs of hope. The government has stabilized after a prolonged power struggle that left many recovery projects stalled. The battalion of aid agencies—well into the hundreds if you include smaller charities—are finding their rhythm, finally coordinating with each other efficiently enough to chip away at some of the most complex impediments to rebuilding, like relocating tent residents. Jean and her family will soon receive a years rent and assistance in finding housing elsewhere in the country.
Still, every rebuilding project comes with dozens of complications. Consider rubble removal: The United Nations Development Program is coordinating 46 agencies and the local government to clear the streets. UNDP staff took me to a rubble-clearing site in Bel-Air, a neighborhood only recently deemed safe enough for aid workers to enter. Making the area accessible required special outreach to local factions, including gangs, by aid group Viva Rio, which specializes in dangerous communities, with experience forged in the violent favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Viva Rio spent months working with various constituencies to let local groups choose who gets the coveted jobs, which can pay up to $9 a day. Various community leaders each got to appoint a certain number of workers, while an entrepreneurs' association chose others.
The 300 workers on the Bel-Air site work hard because they are paid by how much they carry out, the foreman says. The quake left about 10 million cubic meters of rubble, enough to fill several football stadiums. Half of that remains where it fell two years ago, yet we're watching women—40 percent of the jobs are required to go to women—carrying single slabs of concrete out to the street, a tremendously inefficient process.
The remaining rubble isn't sitting in the road like it was a few months ago, exacerbating Haiti's already-infamous traffic. The craggy heaps are trapped on steep hillsides, or—as at this Bel-Air site—behind inhabited homes with large cracks in the walls, clearly unsafe in the event of another quake. The final alley to this site is so narrow, not even a wheelbarrow can pass. The bricks must be carried out by hand, bucket by bucket.
One problem is that crews can’t knock down half-broken houses without authorization from the owners, a tricky proposition considering the quake's death toll. On this site, all nine family members were crushed, and finding a living heir to authorize demolition poses a huge challenge.
You can’t just dump football stadiums worth of brick in a vacant lot, either: Crushing the debris and re-using it requires an elaborate plan from a U.N. support agency. Cracked houses must be transported to special machines on the edge of town, which can only run part-time because the wind blows too much dust over the city. “Now, as you can see, we are really efficient,” says Jean-Sebastien Roca, a UNOPS project manager, gesturing toward two mammoth machines grinding rubble to dust for recycling.“It took time to understand,” he says. “Nobody faced what we have faced here in Haiti.”
A Home and a Job
Most of the people still living in tent camps are the poorest of the poor—those with no other options. The government has instituted what it calls the 16/6 plan, which calls for residents of six of the largest camps to be resettled into 16 neighborhoods that will be redeveloped. Some 30,000 residents are being offered financial assistance equaling about one year’s rent to move, a plan funded and coordinated in large part by international aid groups. Many outside observers are nervous about what will happen in a year when many of these vulnerable residents may find themselves unable to pay their new rent.
Relocation efforts often move residents beyond the borders of Port-au-Prince, to rebuilt villages or suburban neighborhoods. Camp Corail, which sits in a vacant desert 10 miles outside the capital, is the most ambitious relocation project, home to more than 10,000 people and growing. Corail is the country’s only official settlement, with plywood two-room homes neatly laid out on a grid.
Many of the residents arrived here when flood preparation and drainage construction forced them out of J/P HRO, one of the largest tent camps, which was run by Sean Penn’s charity. Other Corail residents came here hoping that a more formal camp would mean more reliable services. The government has touted an agreement to build a Korean factory nearby that would create 20,000 jobs, but it hasn't happened yet.
Last month, a conference organized by the Inter-American Development Bank courted international businesses to set up shop in Haiti. In addition to the much-awaited Korean garment factory, other multinational corporations are exploring setting up shop in the country. An industrial park currently under construction is expected to bring 80,000 jobs near Cap Haïtien, Haiti’s second-largest city.
“I’m really hopeful,” says Patrick Dessources, a local representative of investment firm Root Capital. “2012 is going to be the year that will define Haiti, the year that will tell us, five years down the road, will we be better or not?”
France and Mallery Neptune are also upbeat in their cozy shipping container. They’ve received plenty of donations to rebuild the orphanage and make it bigger and better than it was before the quake. The new building will house about 25 kids and allow expansion of a business-training program for mothers who can’t afford to feed their children.
The orphanage rebuilding project, like many successful recovery efforts in Haiti, melds foreign generosity with local capacity-building. Today, some businesses are able to get loans and investment, foreign companies demonstrate some interest in setting up shop, and nonprofits like the Neptunes' orphanage are doubling down on their commitment to the poorest nation in the hemisphere. Six billion dollars in aid was pledged to Haiti after the quake by a mix of foreign governments and international charities, just over half of which has been spent. That won’t cover the $7.8 billion in damage caused, but it does mean there are still billions of dollars more in the pipeline for years of more recovery work. Most Haitians know that things were so bad before that there is a chance that the long, painful road toward recovery could make Haiti better than it was before the quake.
At Camp Corail, solar streetlights have been installed by international aid agencies, which don't entirely solve the safety issues they were designed to address. Corail resident Evette Pompiles likes the lights, but told me through a translator they don't make it safe in the camp. She still doesn’t go out at night, choosing to stay in her candlelit home. Another group of residents expressed anger that goes beyond the lights—one man said he felt like they were left to live like dogs. There’s no work 10 miles outside the city in a desert, no natural food source, and no commerce. The residents say they’re going to wait it out.
I left the camp at dusk, just before the vaunted solar street lights would turn on. Staring up the sandy hill, through this refugee Levittown of houses the color of dust, a few barely tended sunflowers stalks offered the only spots of color. The backdrop was a bald mountain, shaved of trees, scarred with landslides. There is hope here, because the camp could become a city with jobs if the factory manifests, but it also seems sadder than many of the more haphazard camps in the city. This place had lasting sadness because, unlike the other camps, it looks permanent.
Photos by Alex Goldmark
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Reconstruction Zone: Chronicling Haiti’s Post-Quake Struggles
See more photos from Haiti, and what you can do to help.
“There was just a 7.0 quake right outside of Port-au-Prince. This will be a big deal.”
Two years ago today, I was the night editor for a national radio show. Around 5:20 p.m. Eastern time, the AP newswire flashed this sparse dispatch from a videographer working in Haiti, who had seen a collapsed hospital in a town up the hill from Port-au-Prince. "People are screaming for help,” the message added. Within seconds, we were calling everyone we knew with a Haitian phone number.
A colleague’s friend gave me the phone number for France Neptune, a driver for an orphanage, and I began dialing it over and over again. I was the first person to reach Neptune that night—almost all attempts to call Haiti yielded a foreboding variety of beeps. International media wouldn’t arrive until the next night, all flights were cancelled. On the phone, Neptune told me about chaotic streets filled confused throngs wandering, unsure where to go. He asked me to tell his girlfriend Mallery, who ran the orphanage and was in the U.S. on a supply run, that he was safe.
Neptune gave us a short update on the radio before dawn the morning after quake, the scene clearly but sounding dazed when asked about his plans. “I don’t know what I will do,” he said in a shaky voice that began to hint at the scale of the disaster.
By sunrise the next day, it was clear that Haiti faced a worst-case scenario: More than 200,000 people were dead, another 300,000 injured. One and half million people were left homeless, hunting for shelter, water, and basic medical care. Two years later, more than 500,000 people still live in more than 800 makeshift tent camps in and around Port-au-Prince.
I met Neptune and Mallery, who are now married, while visiting the still-shaken country last week. They invited me into the shipping container they're calling home while their new orphanage and apartment are built next door. “Last year was tents the whole year,” Mallery says. “So to go from tents to something that doesn’t blow in the wind is great.
The Neptunes are in better shape than most because of their connections with American donors. Two years later, they say they are almost back to where they started, able to help a tiny fraction people still living in tent camps. Like many Haitian nonprofit leaders, the Neptunes reacted to the disaster by working harder. “I like what we are doing, it’s part of my heart," France says. "It’s hard for me at the same time, because I would like to do lots more for the people, but… we can’t reach everybody.”
They have “adopted” two tent camps, as they put it, purchasing supplies and funding small medical clinics, mostly for girls. Before the quake, their work focused on the nation's huge child malnutrition crisis, but now they’re treating a new scourge: Sex crimes, they say, are a major problem for Haitian women.
Wearing multiple layers of clothes is the only many girls and women can try to protect themselves in a country with about one police officer for every 100,000 people. “They were begging, you know crying," France Neptune says. "And the OB-GYN doctor would want to see them, and see like 10 underwears or lots of shirts. They are afraid to get raped.”
“People are getting raped because they are still living under plastic,” says Leonard Doyle, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, which coordinates humanitarian services in the tent camps. “They’re just a little razor blade away." Transactional sex is common in the camps, he adds. Many women submit to sex with a man in exchange for living closer the latrines for safety, or being added to a list for social services.
Overall, reports of rape and gender-based violence have roughly tripled in the past year. A UNHCR spokesman characterized the rate of rape in the 800 remaining camps as “alarmingly high.”
One of the organizations focusing specifically on women who have been sexually assaulted is the Commission of Women Victims for Victims, known by its Creole acronym KOFAVIV. One of its workers, Claucina Jean, took me on a tour of Champs de Mars, a sprawling public plaza across from the broken presidential palace akin to Hyde Park in London or the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Today, the park is filled with tents and shacks.
Many of the women who live here have sought Jean's help after being raped. She knows at least 50 women in this camp who have been assaulted, and she assumes many more are staying silent. One rape survivor, Guinize Jean (no relation to Claucina Jean), tells me she was raped, an act of bravery in itself. Wearing a purple streak in her crisp braids and flashing an incongruous smile, she says she doesn’t know who raped her. When asked whether she feels safe, she flatly responds, “no," pausing to rescue a yellow terrycloth hair tie from deep in her baby’s mouth.
Another Brick in the Wall
Amid the rubble, there are signs of hope. The government has stabilized after a prolonged power struggle that left many recovery projects stalled. The battalion of aid agencies—well into the hundreds if you include smaller charities—are finding their rhythm, finally coordinating with each other efficiently enough to chip away at some of the most complex impediments to rebuilding, like relocating tent residents. Jean and her family will soon receive a years rent and assistance in finding housing elsewhere in the country.
Still, every rebuilding project comes with dozens of complications. Consider rubble removal: The United Nations Development Program is coordinating 46 agencies and the local government to clear the streets. UNDP staff took me to a rubble-clearing site in Bel-Air, a neighborhood only recently deemed safe enough for aid workers to enter. Making the area accessible required special outreach to local factions, including gangs, by aid group Viva Rio, which specializes in dangerous communities, with experience forged in the violent favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Viva Rio spent months working with various constituencies to let local groups choose who gets the coveted jobs, which can pay up to $9 a day. Various community leaders each got to appoint a certain number of workers, while an entrepreneurs' association chose others.
The 300 workers on the Bel-Air site work hard because they are paid by how much they carry out, the foreman says. The quake left about 10 million cubic meters of rubble, enough to fill several football stadiums. Half of that remains where it fell two years ago, yet we're watching women—40 percent of the jobs are required to go to women—carrying single slabs of concrete out to the street, a tremendously inefficient process.
The remaining rubble isn't sitting in the road like it was a few months ago, exacerbating Haiti's already-infamous traffic. The craggy heaps are trapped on steep hillsides, or—as at this Bel-Air site—behind inhabited homes with large cracks in the walls, clearly unsafe in the event of another quake. The final alley to this site is so narrow, not even a wheelbarrow can pass. The bricks must be carried out by hand, bucket by bucket.
One problem is that crews can’t knock down half-broken houses without authorization from the owners, a tricky proposition considering the quake's death toll. On this site, all nine family members were crushed, and finding a living heir to authorize demolition poses a huge challenge.
You can’t just dump football stadiums worth of brick in a vacant lot, either: Crushing the debris and re-using it requires an elaborate plan from a U.N. support agency. Cracked houses must be transported to special machines on the edge of town, which can only run part-time because the wind blows too much dust over the city. “Now, as you can see, we are really efficient,” says Jean-Sebastien Roca, a UNOPS project manager, gesturing toward two mammoth machines grinding rubble to dust for recycling.“It took time to understand,” he says. “Nobody faced what we have faced here in Haiti.”
A Home and a Job
Most of the people still living in tent camps are the poorest of the poor—those with no other options. The government has instituted what it calls the 16/6 plan, which calls for residents of six of the largest camps to be resettled into 16 neighborhoods that will be redeveloped. Some 30,000 residents are being offered financial assistance equaling about one year’s rent to move, a plan funded and coordinated in large part by international aid groups. Many outside observers are nervous about what will happen in a year when many of these vulnerable residents may find themselves unable to pay their new rent.
Relocation efforts often move residents beyond the borders of Port-au-Prince, to rebuilt villages or suburban neighborhoods. Camp Corail, which sits in a vacant desert 10 miles outside the capital, is the most ambitious relocation project, home to more than 10,000 people and growing. Corail is the country’s only official settlement, with plywood two-room homes neatly laid out on a grid.
Many of the residents arrived here when flood preparation and drainage construction forced them out of J/P HRO, one of the largest tent camps, which was run by Sean Penn’s charity. Other Corail residents came here hoping that a more formal camp would mean more reliable services. The government has touted an agreement to build a Korean factory nearby that would create 20,000 jobs, but it hasn't happened yet.
Last month, a conference organized by the Inter-American Development Bank courted international businesses to set up shop in Haiti. In addition to the much-awaited Korean garment factory, other multinational corporations are exploring setting up shop in the country. An industrial park currently under construction is expected to bring 80,000 jobs near Cap Haïtien, Haiti’s second-largest city.
“I’m really hopeful,” says Patrick Dessources, a local representative of investment firm Root Capital. “2012 is going to be the year that will define Haiti, the year that will tell us, five years down the road, will we be better or not?”
France and Mallery Neptune are also upbeat in their cozy shipping container. They’ve received plenty of donations to rebuild the orphanage and make it bigger and better than it was before the quake. The new building will house about 25 kids and allow expansion of a business-training program for mothers who can’t afford to feed their children.
The orphanage rebuilding project, like many successful recovery efforts in Haiti, melds foreign generosity with local capacity-building. Today, some businesses are able to get loans and investment, foreign companies demonstrate some interest in setting up shop, and nonprofits like the Neptunes' orphanage are doubling down on their commitment to the poorest nation in the hemisphere. Six billion dollars in aid was pledged to Haiti after the quake by a mix of foreign governments and international charities, just over half of which has been spent. That won’t cover the $7.8 billion in damage caused, but it does mean there are still billions of dollars more in the pipeline for years of more recovery work. Most Haitians know that things were so bad before that there is a chance that the long, painful road toward recovery could make Haiti better than it was before the quake.
At Camp Corail, solar streetlights have been installed by international aid agencies, which don't entirely solve the safety issues they were designed to address. Corail resident Evette Pompiles likes the lights, but told me through a translator they don't make it safe in the camp. She still doesn’t go out at night, choosing to stay in her candlelit home. Another group of residents expressed anger that goes beyond the lights—one man said he felt like they were left to live like dogs. There’s no work 10 miles outside the city in a desert, no natural food source, and no commerce. The residents say they’re going to wait it out.
I left the camp at dusk, just before the vaunted solar street lights would turn on. Staring up the sandy hill, through this refugee Levittown of houses the color of dust, a few barely tended sunflowers stalks offered the only spots of color. The backdrop was a bald mountain, shaved of trees, scarred with landslides. There is hope here, because the camp could become a city with jobs if the factory manifests, but it also seems sadder than many of the more haphazard camps in the city. This place had lasting sadness because, unlike the other camps, it looks permanent.
Photos by Alex Goldmark
Sex, Drugs, and DSK: The Year in Sex
Take a look back at what we talked about when we talked about sex in 2011, from the new STD scare to the future of casual hookups.
True love waits… for revolting public kissing. The late-blooming adult stars of TLC's The Virgin Diaries aside, American teens are growing more sophisticated about sex. America's teen pregnancy rate is the lowest it's been in two decades. More kids are using condoms than ever before. And comprehensive sex ed programs like this one are helping out the cause. But the U.S. government isn't ready to grant full sexual autonomy to minors just yet: This month, it blocked an initiative to make Plan B available over the counter to women of all ages.
Tap that app. This year, tech entrepreneurs reversed the stigma against gay sex—they asked hetero singles to copulate more like the M4M set. Of course, they can't just come out and say that. Grindr, a massively popular location-based casual sex app for gay men, attempted to replicate its success in the straight population with a thinly-veiled hetero version, Blendr. Straight Grindr hoped to appeal to single women by marketing itself as a way to "find friends" instead of hook-ups. (When executive editor Ann Friedman tested the app, she met plenty of new "friends" comfortable opening a conversation with a dick pic.) Perhaps the Grindr model works better for a service like Bromance, which eliminates sex from the equation entirely in an attempt to hook up dudes with other dudes for strictly platonic hangouts. Women and gays are also invited to bro down on the app.
Photo via (cc) Flickr user Johan Larsson
The new porn mashup. It's a well-worn cliche that women don't experience sex visually. What, then, to make of the popularity of James Deen, a boyish porn star with a growing online following of teenage girls? Deen is not supposed to be the star of his scenes—his sex partners are. But on Tumblr, a network of young bloggers has emerged to turn the focus on him. They trade Deen videos, post candid photographs, and pluck out all the minute details that turn them on: the way he looks at a woman, touches her, stares into her eyes, whispers in her ear. Clearly, some women do like porn. They just require a little bit more than a disembodied penis to get into it.
Photo by Scott Grover
The generation-defining STD. As AIDS marked its 30th anniversary this year, political attention focused on a much different STD crisis—that of the human papillomavirus. Today, about 20 million Americans are infected with one or more strains of HPV. Six million more are infected each year. And the virus' proliferation has complicated Americans' moral judgments concerning sexual activity. The ubiquity of HPV has democratized sexual stigma—the virus infects people of all races, classes, and sexual orientations. If contracting a virus from sex is the norm, it makes it more difficult to dismiss people with STIs as moral degenerates or irresponsible sluts. But that hasn't stopped the political right from trying. Though a vaccine that protects against the most harmful strains of the virus is now recommended for both girls and boys, many parents refuse to vaccinate their children for fear that it will encourage their kids to engage in sex too young. But if they don't do it now, they may be too late—40 percent of women will contract a strain of HPV within just 16 months of their first vaginal intercourse.
Understanding sexual harassment. Herman Cain's brief, strange bid for the American presidency rekindled a national debate over workplace sexual harassment—namely, whether it actually exists (seriously). Cain spent his short time on the national stage attempting to swat down accusations that he had harassed several women while heading up the National Restaurant Association. One woman claimed he "reached over and he put his hand on my leg under my skirt and reached for my genitals," then "grabbed my head and brought it toward his crotch" after she asked about a job. The accusations—four in all—compelled us to revisit America's strange relationship with sexual harassment. In 2011, Republican men were more likely than Republican women to believe that the charges against Cain were true, and commentators on both sides of the aisle weighed in on whether harassment was a true workplace hazard, or just the fantasies of a bunch of sensitive women. Ultimately, the harassment accusations were not enough to derail Cain's campaign—Cain benched himself after a consensual affair was revealed.
Photo via (cc) Flickr user Gage Skidmore
Rethinking rape. In 2011, a very powerful man faced rape charges on the international stage—just as a very powerful man did last year and the year before that. The story hit some familiar notes. In May, a New York City hotel maid accused then-IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting her in the bathroom of his suite; in August, charges were dropped after prosecutors dredged up portions of the maid's history that compelled them to doubt her trustworthiness. In the interim, the accusations against DSK inspired their fair share of bizarre sexual assault excuses. Ben Stein stood up for his fellow economists: "In life, events tend to follow patterns. People who commit crimes tend to be criminals, for example. Can anyone tell me any economists who have been convicted of violent sex crimes?" Bernard-Henri Lévy also stood up for his friend: "The Strauss-Kahn I know, who has been my friend for 20 years and who will remain my friend, bears no resemblance to this monster, this caveman, this insatiable and malevolent beast now being described nearly everywhere. Charming, seductive, yes." Even American Prospect co-editor Robert Kuttner stood up, amazingly, for johns: "There’s a knock on the door, a young woman enters. Strauss-Kahn expecting his hooker du jour to emerge naked from his toilette, and despite her protests he doesn’t believe that she’s not there to service him. This could be the parsimonious explanation for otherwise almost inexplicable behavior."
Photo via (cc) the World Trade Organization
Zygotes are people too. This year, the state of Mississippi came awfully close to reclassifying fertilized eggs as people. The ballot initiative to amend the state constitution was a clear swipe at Roe v. Wade, and an utterly unimplementable law—would embryos be issued Social Security cards? Would a miscarriage spark a criminal investigation?—that was destined for the courts. Clearer heads prevailed, and the initiative failed. But it serves as a valuable remainder that large swaths of the United States believe that women's bodies should be commandeered by the state at the moment of conception.
Photo via (cc) Flickr user biology flashcards
Sex, Drugs, and DSK: The Year in Sex
Take a look back at what we talked about when we talked about sex in 2011, from the new STD scare to the future of casual hookups.
True love waits… for revolting public kissing. The late-blooming adult stars of TLC's The Virgin Diaries aside, American teens are growing more sophisticated about sex. America's teen pregnancy rate is the lowest it's been in two decades. More kids are using condoms than ever before. And comprehensive sex ed programs like this one are helping out the cause. But the U.S. government isn't ready to grant full sexual autonomy to minors just yet: This month, it blocked an initiative to make Plan B available over the counter to women of all ages.
Tap that app. This year, tech entrepreneurs reversed the stigma against gay sex—they asked hetero singles to copulate more like the M4M set. Of course, they can't just come out and say that. Grindr, a massively popular location-based casual sex app for gay men, attempted to replicate its success in the straight population with a thinly-veiled hetero version, Blendr. Straight Grindr hoped to appeal to single women by marketing itself as a way to "find friends" instead of hook-ups. (When executive editor Ann Friedman tested the app, she met plenty of new "friends" comfortable opening a conversation with a dick pic.) Perhaps the Grindr model works better for a service like Bromance, which eliminates sex from the equation entirely in an attempt to hook up dudes with other dudes for strictly platonic hangouts. Women and gays are also invited to bro down on the app.
Photo via (cc) Flickr user Johan Larsson
The new porn mashup. It's a well-worn cliche that women don't experience sex visually. What, then, to make of the popularity of James Deen, a boyish porn star with a growing online following of teenage girls? Deen is not supposed to be the star of his scenes—his sex partners are. But on Tumblr, a network of young bloggers has emerged to turn the focus on him. They trade Deen videos, post candid photographs, and pluck out all the minute details that turn them on: the way he looks at a woman, touches her, stares into her eyes, whispers in her ear. Clearly, some women do like porn. They just require a little bit more than a disembodied penis to get into it.
Photo by Scott Grover
The generation-defining STD. As AIDS marked its 30th anniversary this year, political attention focused on a much different STD crisis—that of the human papillomavirus. Today, about 20 million Americans are infected with one or more strains of HPV. Six million more are infected each year. And the virus' proliferation has complicated Americans' moral judgments concerning sexual activity. The ubiquity of HPV has democratized sexual stigma—the virus infects people of all races, classes, and sexual orientations. If contracting a virus from sex is the norm, it makes it more difficult to dismiss people with STIs as moral degenerates or irresponsible sluts. But that hasn't stopped the political right from trying. Though a vaccine that protects against the most harmful strains of the virus is now recommended for both girls and boys, many parents refuse to vaccinate their children for fear that it will encourage their kids to engage in sex too young. But if they don't do it now, they may be too late—40 percent of women will contract a strain of HPV within just 16 months of their first vaginal intercourse.
Understanding sexual harassment. Herman Cain's brief, strange bid for the American presidency rekindled a national debate over workplace sexual harassment—namely, whether it actually exists (seriously). Cain spent his short time on the national stage attempting to swat down accusations that he had harassed several women while heading up the National Restaurant Association. One woman claimed he "reached over and he put his hand on my leg under my skirt and reached for my genitals," then "grabbed my head and brought it toward his crotch" after she asked about a job. The accusations—four in all—compelled us to revisit America's strange relationship with sexual harassment. In 2011, Republican men were more likely than Republican women to believe that the charges against Cain were true, and commentators on both sides of the aisle weighed in on whether harassment was a true workplace hazard, or just the fantasies of a bunch of sensitive women. Ultimately, the harassment accusations were not enough to derail Cain's campaign—Cain benched himself after a consensual affair was revealed.
Photo via (cc) Flickr user Gage Skidmore
Rethinking rape. In 2011, a very powerful man faced rape charges on the international stage—just as a very powerful man did last year and the year before that. The story hit some familiar notes. In May, a New York City hotel maid accused then-IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting her in the bathroom of his suite; in August, charges were dropped after prosecutors dredged up portions of the maid's history that compelled them to doubt her trustworthiness. In the interim, the accusations against DSK inspired their fair share of bizarre sexual assault excuses. Ben Stein stood up for his fellow economists: "In life, events tend to follow patterns. People who commit crimes tend to be criminals, for example. Can anyone tell me any economists who have been convicted of violent sex crimes?" Bernard-Henri Lévy also stood up for his friend: "The Strauss-Kahn I know, who has been my friend for 20 years and who will remain my friend, bears no resemblance to this monster, this caveman, this insatiable and malevolent beast now being described nearly everywhere. Charming, seductive, yes." Even American Prospect co-editor Robert Kuttner stood up, amazingly, for johns: "There’s a knock on the door, a young woman enters. Strauss-Kahn expecting his hooker du jour to emerge naked from his toilette, and despite her protests he doesn’t believe that she’s not there to service him. This could be the parsimonious explanation for otherwise almost inexplicable behavior."
Photo via (cc) the World Trade Organization
Zygotes are people too. This year, the state of Mississippi came awfully close to reclassifying fertilized eggs as people. The ballot initiative to amend the state constitution was a clear swipe at Roe v. Wade, and an utterly unimplementable law—would embryos be issued Social Security cards? Would a miscarriage spark a criminal investigation?—that was destined for the courts. Clearer heads prevailed, and the initiative failed. But it serves as a valuable remainder that large swaths of the United States believe that women's bodies should be commandeered by the state at the moment of conception.
Photo via (cc) Flickr user biology flashcards
For a South American Getaway, Cartagena Is the New Buenos Aires
Colombia, to many Americans, is a land of narcotraffickers, kidnappers, and cocaine. Those things are certainly there if you go looking for them, but Colombia is safer that many tourists assume, and there are myriad options for any visitor, from hard-working Bogota to golden Barichara to salsa-infused Cali. But our favorite is the romantic, cobblestoned town of Cartagena de Indias.
Cartagena is smaller than popular destinations like Buenos Aires, but its rich Spanish-Caribbean cuisine, bustling markets, and all-night music venues make it a must-do on the Latin American travel list. For starters, it's a stunner—the Old City is a UNESCO heritage site, and the streets are narrow, winding and flanked with candy-colored buildings dripping with bougainvillea. The wider city is juxtaposition of the old and the new, with a kind of colonial-meets-Miami aesthetic. New Cartagena is glass and steel; old Cartagena is Love in the Time of Cholera.
Like Buenos Aires, there isn't a lot to do other than enjoy yourself—"seeing Cartagena" mostly entails wandering, eating, and drinking. That isn't to say that there aren't things to see. Manga's cemetery de Santa Cruz has been sadly neglected, but there are plenty of famous-name gravestones and elaborate mausoleums. If you want to release your inner 85-year-old, Cartagena's antique shopping is some of the best in South America—it gives San Telmo a run for its money. Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas, a Spanish fortress, is worth a climb. And Mercado Bazurto is a crazy, dirty, hectic labyrinth—it's not a sanitized tourist destination, but it's a fabulous market for the brave buyer.
The best way to enjoy Cartagena, though, is to put pleasure first. Meander. Buy unusual fruit from a street vendor. Get freshly caught fish on a paper plate from a dingy stand for a few dollars, or have a perfect slice of coconut pie at a white-tablecloth restaurant. Drink rum at a cafe in the Old City as the nighttime lighting makes the whole town glow gold, or mosey into any bar in Getsemani for an all-night live music dance party. If you’re looking to quit your life for a few months, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more enjoyable spot for relocation.
And if weeks of eating and drinking are too much, get out of the city for a few hours or a few days. Playa Blanca, a white-sand beach almost too pretty to be real, is an hour-long boat ride away. Or, in a few hours, you can get to the hippie-ish beach town Taganga for scuba diving, the sprawling Parque Tayrona for hiking, the Ciudad Perdida, or beaches that look like they're out of Jurassic Park. Flag down a bus on the side of the road and you can get yourself back to Cartagena for a few dollars.
For all their beauty, the areas outside the city are quite poor, and there are a slew of social problems—the income inequality in Cartagena is much more stark than in the rest of Colombia. The "discovery" of Cartagena by the North American tourist industry may also create some environmental problems, as increasing numbers of cruise ships now stop there. So help take care of this gorgeous city by traveling responsibly. And don’t miss the coconut pie.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user JillNic83.
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For a South American Getaway, Cartagena Is the New Buenos Aires
Colombia, to many Americans, is a land of narcotraffickers, kidnappers, and cocaine. Those things are certainly there if you go looking for them, but Colombia is safer that many tourists assume, and there are myriad options for any visitor, from hard-working Bogota to golden Barichara to salsa-infused Cali. But our favorite is the romantic, cobblestoned town of Cartagena de Indias.
Cartagena is smaller than popular destinations like Buenos Aires, but its rich Spanish-Caribbean cuisine, bustling markets, and all-night music venues make it a must-do on the Latin American travel list. For starters, it's a stunner—the Old City is a UNESCO heritage site, and the streets are narrow, winding and flanked with candy-colored buildings dripping with bougainvillea. The wider city is juxtaposition of the old and the new, with a kind of colonial-meets-Miami aesthetic. New Cartagena is glass and steel; old Cartagena is Love in the Time of Cholera.
Like Buenos Aires, there isn't a lot to do other than enjoy yourself—"seeing Cartagena" mostly entails wandering, eating, and drinking. That isn't to say that there aren't things to see. Manga's cemetery de Santa Cruz has been sadly neglected, but there are plenty of famous-name gravestones and elaborate mausoleums. If you want to release your inner 85-year-old, Cartagena's antique shopping is some of the best in South America—it gives San Telmo a run for its money. Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas, a Spanish fortress, is worth a climb. And Mercado Bazurto is a crazy, dirty, hectic labyrinth—it's not a sanitized tourist destination, but it's a fabulous market for the brave buyer.
The best way to enjoy Cartagena, though, is to put pleasure first. Meander. Buy unusual fruit from a street vendor. Get freshly caught fish on a paper plate from a dingy stand for a few dollars, or have a perfect slice of coconut pie at a white-tablecloth restaurant. Drink rum at a cafe in the Old City as the nighttime lighting makes the whole town glow gold, or mosey into any bar in Getsemani for an all-night live music dance party. If you’re looking to quit your life for a few months, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more enjoyable spot for relocation.
And if weeks of eating and drinking are too much, get out of the city for a few hours or a few days. Playa Blanca, a white-sand beach almost too pretty to be real, is an hour-long boat ride away. Or, in a few hours, you can get to the hippie-ish beach town Taganga for scuba diving, the sprawling Parque Tayrona for hiking, the Ciudad Perdida, or beaches that look like they're out of Jurassic Park. Flag down a bus on the side of the road and you can get yourself back to Cartagena for a few dollars.
For all their beauty, the areas outside the city are quite poor, and there are a slew of social problems—the income inequality in Cartagena is much more stark than in the rest of Colombia. The "discovery" of Cartagena by the North American tourist industry may also create some environmental problems, as increasing numbers of cruise ships now stop there. So help take care of this gorgeous city by traveling responsibly. And don’t miss the coconut pie.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user JillNic83.
Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Are Going Mainstream
The first electric car charger I ever saw was in a parking garage in Princeton, New Jersey. It was hidden in a corner, amid a tangle of wires. No one was using it at the time, but with its high-income population, Princeton is likely to need more chargers soon—I don't doubt drivers will value that spot at least as highly as one directly in front of The Bent Spoon, Princeton’s artisan ice cream shop. (If they have it, try the peppermint.)
Electric vehicles may still be an oddity, even in rarefied worlds like Princeton, but governments and charger manufacturers are taking a Field of Dreams approach to charging infrastructure—assuming if they build it, they will come. Chargers are being installed in municipal parking garages, at highway rest stops, and in parking lots at IKEA, Kohl’s, even Cracker Barrel. As clean tech consulting firm Pike Research points out, two years from now drivers will have a choice of 80 different models of electric vehicles. The consulting firm estimates that by 2017 the EV charger industry will turn $4.3 billion in profits, while the United States alone will have 1.5 million locations to charge electric vehicles.
Public-sector enthusiasm, not private demand, is driving the growth of charging infrastructure—according to Pike Research, most of that $4.3 billion profit will likely come from markets in China, Japan, and Korea, where electric vehicles enjoy strong government support. In the United States, too, funding from the federal government has spurred the proliferation of chargers. Coulomb Technologies, the maker of the Princeton charger, received $15 million from the federal government’s 2009 stimulus program to expand its ChargePoint Network. A competitor, ECOtality, received more than $100 million in 2009 and 2010 from the Department of Energy for the EV Project, which will deploy 14,000 chargers in six states and the District of Columbia. The company calls it “the largest deployment of electric vehicles and charge infrastructure in history.”
The vast majority of the chargers being deployed now can be divided into two groups: fast enough and quite fast. Level 2 chargers take at least a couple of hours to fill up a car battery. Level 3 chargers can take as little as 10 or 15 minutes to do the same job but will continue to be the exception. (To find one, keep an eye out for what may resemble a larger iPod mini.) Most owners of electric vehicles do their charging in the privacy of their own homes. It’s even possible, as of this week, to acquire a home charger without venturing out: GE began offering its WattStation for purchase on Amazon. (Not included: the licensed electrician it will take to install the thing.)
The expansion of charging infrastructure is probably most useful right now as a salve to range anxiety, the fear of running out of juice before your EV gets you where you need to go. If it prompts more people to buy electric vehicles, though, expect to see more of those chargers in the very near future.
Photo via (cc) Flickr user Flying Amos
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Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Are Going Mainstream
The first electric car charger I ever saw was in a parking garage in Princeton, New Jersey. It was hidden in a corner, amid a tangle of wires. No one was using it at the time, but with its high-income population, Princeton is likely to need more chargers soon—I don't doubt drivers will value that spot at least as highly as one directly in front of The Bent Spoon, Princeton’s artisan ice cream shop. (If they have it, try the peppermint.)
Electric vehicles may still be an oddity, even in rarefied worlds like Princeton, but governments and charger manufacturers are taking a Field of Dreams approach to charging infrastructure—assuming if they build it, they will come. Chargers are being installed in municipal parking garages, at highway rest stops, and in parking lots at IKEA, Kohl’s, even Cracker Barrel. As clean tech consulting firm Pike Research points out, two years from now drivers will have a choice of 80 different models of electric vehicles. The consulting firm estimates that by 2017 the EV charger industry will turn $4.3 billion in profits, while the United States alone will have 1.5 million locations to charge electric vehicles.
Public-sector enthusiasm, not private demand, is driving the growth of charging infrastructure—according to Pike Research, most of that $4.3 billion profit will likely come from markets in China, Japan, and Korea, where electric vehicles enjoy strong government support. In the United States, too, funding from the federal government has spurred the proliferation of chargers. Coulomb Technologies, the maker of the Princeton charger, received $15 million from the federal government’s 2009 stimulus program to expand its ChargePoint Network. A competitor, ECOtality, received more than $100 million in 2009 and 2010 from the Department of Energy for the EV Project, which will deploy 14,000 chargers in six states and the District of Columbia. The company calls it “the largest deployment of electric vehicles and charge infrastructure in history.”
The vast majority of the chargers being deployed now can be divided into two groups: fast enough and quite fast. Level 2 chargers take at least a couple of hours to fill up a car battery. Level 3 chargers can take as little as 10 or 15 minutes to do the same job but will continue to be the exception. (To find one, keep an eye out for what may resemble a larger iPod mini.) Most owners of electric vehicles do their charging in the privacy of their own homes. It’s even possible, as of this week, to acquire a home charger without venturing out: GE began offering its WattStation for purchase on Amazon. (Not included: the licensed electrician it will take to install the thing.)
The expansion of charging infrastructure is probably most useful right now as a salve to range anxiety, the fear of running out of juice before your EV gets you where you need to go. If it prompts more people to buy electric vehicles, though, expect to see more of those chargers in the very near future.
Photo via (cc) Flickr user Flying Amos
Capitol Ideas: Dining in D.C.
In June of this year, I left my lifelong home of New York City for the nation’s capital. Having grown up in a mecca of vegan (and raw) dining options, I was spoiled: I had no idea what it meant to live in a place without juice bars in every zip code, vegan bakeries around the corner, and a mix of both fine dining and fast dining options for the herbivorous eater.
It took some time, but as the summer went by, I began to explore and discover DC’s lean, green, and vegan scene. The city may not be able to rival New York or L.A. in terms of creativity or availability, but it does boast a strong and vibrant little collection of vegan-friendly dining options. We’d expect no less of the city that houses offices for PETA, COK, and PCRM; a local farm animal sanctuary, and a passionate community of plant-based eaters with an eye on political activism.
Lunch bites and snack breaks
Featuring wraps, sandwiches, salads, and sides, Java Green is a great option for weekday pop-ins or early dinners. It features fresh vegetable and fruit juice, a clearly marked gluten-free menu, hot and cold soups, and even a gluten-free and vegan burger. Try the raw pizza and live “trio” salad (kale, sea veggies, and kimchi) if you’re in the mood for something extra green. The downside? Portion sizes are tiny, so order in bulk.
A winner of the Food Network’s cupcake wars, Sticky Fingers offers the some of the finest cookies, cupcakes, and pastries in town–vegan or not! The sweet and salty cookie is to die for, and the peanut butter-fudge cupcake may just monopolize your birthday celebrations for good. If you’re craving something more savory than sweet, you can enjoy the restaurant’s tempeh BLT, it’s cheesy quesadillas made with Daiya cheese, the chick’n ranch wrap, or some good old-fashioned biscuits and gravy. If you’re a gluten-free eater, help yourself to the gluten-free chocolate cupcake, and float home on a chocolate high.
Founded by three Georgetown students who were fed up with the area’s limited dining options, Sweet Green has now expanded beyond its flagship location, dotting the entire district with the best and most innovative salads around. Simple, healthy, and fast, Sweet Green sources local and organic ingredients, and offers such innovative salad options as the Chic P (Falafel, pita chips, chickpeas, and a delectably tart hummus-tahini dressing) and the Sabzi (spicy quinoa, raw beets, white beans, basil, sprouts, and dried cranberries). You can make your own salads or wraps with any of the restaurant’s seasonal offerings (I’m partial to the roasted butternut squash), and you can also help yourself to any of the tasty soups, many of which are vegan. If you’re fending off the DC heat, try the incredible watermelon lemonade for a cooling treat!
Comfort food
There’s something for everyone at this casual cafe, which also offers catering services. Raw foodies and health freaks can feast on the garlicky, raw kale salad, the pickled beets, or the parsley with plum vinaigrette. Other options in the restaurant’s extensive (and-100 percent organic) salad bar include Asian noodles and corn-and-black bean salad.
If you’re in the mood for something hot and filling, though, you’re really in luck. Try any of the restaurant’s daily rotation of hot bar options: highlights include veggie steak n’ cheese, a battered basket, spaghetti pie, barbecue tofu, and sheppard’s pie. With fresh smoothies and juices to boot, you can’t go wrong!
Another crowd pleaser, Busboys and Poets serves up comfort classics in both vegan and vegetarian formations: most of the pizzas can be ordered with either vegan cheese or regular cheese, and and paninis range from tempeh to chicken. The restaurant’s hummus is not to be missed, and its ful medames dish is perfectly spicy and rich. Vegans will flip over the vegan nachos.
An inclusive list of desserts and coffee beverages–not to mention a small bookstore in house (in which diners are welcome to sit and explore)–ensure that all diners will be tempted to linger long after a meal is done.
Dinner for two
DC’s only gourmet raw dining establishment, Elizabeth’s offers a five course pre fixe dinner every Friday night featuring a sumptuous and seasonal tasting menu. A weekly selection might feature such entrees as Wild Mushroom and Tarragon Bisque with Fennel Salad & a Sunflower Cracker, or a raw apple cobbler for dessert. Elizabeth Petty, the owner, opened EGR after a diagnosis of breast cancer in 2009, and her passion for the restorative power of raw food shines through these light and brightly flavored dishes. She’ll be glad to greet you as you dine, and share more of her excitement for raw food with you. The price tag at Elizabeth’s Gone Raw is not cheap (it’s a $75 tasting menu), but the experience is truly unique, and there is no finer raw foods mecca in DC.
Cafe Green is the place to be if you’re seeking out a casual and health-minded dinner bite. The restaurant features extensive raw options, including an impressive raw pizza with sprouted quinoa and buckwheat crust, raw avocado and spicy soup options, a marinated kale and mango salad, and raw crackers. Fresh juices are served up daily, along with fresh coconut water and kombucha. If you’re not into uncooked cuisine, try the gluten-free mung bean pancakes or the incredible mac n’ cheese. Let the buyer beware, however: the restaurant is very often out of options, especially raw ones, so be prepared to be flexible.
Though not vegan or even vegetarian, this restaurant, which is situated three blocks from the White House, is famous for sourcing local produce. The restaurant’s architecture is LEED- certified (a fancy way of saying it’s eco-friendly and environmentally conscious) and it’s other green features include front-of-house and back-of-house recycling, high-efficiency water and energy usage, menus printed on recycled paper with soy-based inks, and water served in reusable glass carafes. Veggie dining options aren’t exactly innovative, but they do include some tasty grain salads, entree sized salads, a savory veggie burger, and a roast eggplant tartine.
Restaurant Nora has bragging rights as the nation’s first certified organic restaurant. This means that the restaurant was churning out organic fare in 1999, long before there was consumer pressure to do so. Nora Pouillon, the restaurant’s founder, has stayed true to her original intention of serving the DC population dishes that are freshly sourced from local farms. Though this is not a vegan restaurant, nor even vegetarian, it is focused on produce, and very high quality produce at that. Many of the salads are easily veganized, and your server will be happy to help you create a vegan meal. (When I went, I was lucky enough to enjoy a creamy risotto with morel mushrooms and fresh corn.) Prices are on the higher end of the spectrum, but the restaurant itself delivers a true fine dining experience, and is well worth it for a fancy dinner.
This trendy restaurant in DC’s trendy Dupont circle offers up a menu of local and seasonal fare, including numerous vegan options. Though portion sizes tend to be modest, you can count on robust flavor and New American classics served up with creative flair. All vegans are accommodated: I recommend the tofu skewers and the quinoa with roasted fennel. Another notable feature is the restaurant’s extensive gluten-free menu, which features risotto, quinoa and a heaping of sides. A great and inclusive spot to bring friends of all dietary orientations!
Nightcap
Science Club operates primarily as a bar and lounge, featuring a solid (and reasonably priced) wine list. What’s most notable about this particular bar is its emphasis on vegan dining options on the bar menu. These include a quinoa salad with balsamic reduction, hummus, and tofu skewers. DJ’s spin at Science Club every night of the week, and the restaurant also hosts private parties. This is your best late night bet for a vegan snack and sip of wine!
As you can see, DC’s vegan scene may be less outspoken than other cities’, but seek and ye shall find many an option. Enjoy plant-based fare while you soak in the spacious parks and green vistas of our nation’s capital!
For more information on how to optimize your health, visit choosingraw.com
Photo credit: Chris Hall, ciao-chow, Michael Banabila, Martin Kalfatovic, James Sullivan
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The Drive-Through Middle Class: The Surprising Link Between Income and Fast-Food Eating
It's trendy to blame fast food for the alarming obesity rate among poor Americans. But a new study shows that the largest population of eaters venturing out to Burger Kings, Chick-fil-As, and Taco Bells are those on the lower rungs of the middle class.
According to researchers from the University of California at Davis, the sweet spot for fast-food franchises are upwardly mobile consumers moving from the lowest income bracket to middle one. In a study of about 5,000 adults, DaeHwan Kim and J. Paul Leigh found that the relationship between fast-food eating and income looks less like a negative linear relationship—where the lower one's income, the more fast food they eat—and more like an "inverted U." Patronage of fast-food restaurants increases as families move out of the low-income bracket, peaks in the lower regions of the middle-income population, then declines after families begin to earn more than $60,000 annually.
The study relied on data from the mid-1990s, the most recent information available on the subject—but the researchers expect that the general patterns still hold today. “The relationship between poverty, obesity, and fast-food restaurant use is more complicated than people realize," Leigh says. "Fast-food restaurants aren’t the only factor contributing to low-income obesity.” That's partly because the poorest Americans have too little cash to catch the eye of the McDonald's marketing department. “McDonald’s and Burger King don’t cater to low-income families simply because they are not going to make that much money," Leigh said. "They’re targeting middle-income families. The results of the study make complete sense from a business standpoint."
The middle-class families who frequent the drive-through the most may have some money, but they tend to operate under a perpetual time crunch—less free time, more children, and little disposable income result in more quick trips to the Golden Arches. And they're paying for the meals out of their own pockets—Leigh attributes the lack of low-income patrons at fast-food restaurants partially to the fact that food stamps are not accepted at most fast-food locations.
But just because a family or individual is using food stamps at a grocery store doesn’t mean they truly have access to higher-quality foods. “There is plenty of food in grocery stores that’s full of fat and very cheap,” Leigh says. “If you’re interested in poverty and obesity then there are other ways to go about addressing it as opposed to saying that the fast-food restaurants are the only bad guys here.”
Photo via (cc) Flickr user busyPrinting
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The Drive-Through Middle Class: The Surprising Link Between Income and Fast-Food Eating
It's trendy to blame fast food for the alarming obesity rate among poor Americans. But a new study shows that the largest population of eaters venturing out to Burger Kings, Chick-fil-As, and Taco Bells are those on the lower rungs of the middle class.
According to researchers from the University of California at Davis, the sweet spot for fast-food franchises are upwardly mobile consumers moving from the lowest income bracket to middle one. In a study of about 5,000 adults, DaeHwan Kim and J. Paul Leigh found that the relationship between fast-food eating and income looks less like a negative linear relationship—where the lower one's income, the more fast food they eat—and more like an "inverted U." Patronage of fast-food restaurants increases as families move out of the low-income bracket, peaks in the lower regions of the middle-income population, then declines after families begin to earn more than $60,000 annually.
The study relied on data from the mid-1990s, the most recent information available on the subject—but the researchers expect that the general patterns still hold today. “The relationship between poverty, obesity, and fast-food restaurant use is more complicated than people realize," Leigh says. "Fast-food restaurants aren’t the only factor contributing to low-income obesity.” That's partly because the poorest Americans have too little cash to catch the eye of the McDonald's marketing department. “McDonald’s and Burger King don’t cater to low-income families simply because they are not going to make that much money," Leigh said. "They’re targeting middle-income families. The results of the study make complete sense from a business standpoint."
The middle-class families who frequent the drive-through the most may have some money, but they tend to operate under a perpetual time crunch—less free time, more children, and little disposable income result in more quick trips to the Golden Arches. And they're paying for the meals out of their own pockets—Leigh attributes the lack of low-income patrons at fast-food restaurants partially to the fact that food stamps are not accepted at most fast-food locations.
But just because a family or individual is using food stamps at a grocery store doesn’t mean they truly have access to higher-quality foods. “There is plenty of food in grocery stores that’s full of fat and very cheap,” Leigh says. “If you’re interested in poverty and obesity then there are other ways to go about addressing it as opposed to saying that the fast-food restaurants are the only bad guys here.”
Photo via (cc) Flickr user busyPrinting
In Fitness Deserts, Working Out Isn’t as Simple as Hitting the Gym
Four times a week, Kaleena Welch risks her life for a workout. She walks down the shoulder of La Brea Boulevard in South Los Angeles, where the speed limit is 45 mph and cars usually go closer to 60. When she comes to one blind curve in the road, she waits for a lull in traffic, then steps into the road.
“I have to run and jump and then the trail starts again,” she says. “It’s ridiculous. I just hope and pray.”
Welch would like to join a gym, but there’s only one option nearby, and most days it’s so crowded she can’t get time on a machine. There are no parks in her immediate neighborhood, either. She’s one of millions of people who live in a “fitness desert,” areas with few opportunities for exercise.
Like food deserts—areas where residents don’t have reliable access to fresh food—fitness deserts pose health challenges to millions of Americans, mostly low-income ones. A full 80 percent of census blocks do not have a park within a half-mile, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released last year [PDF]. Studies have shown that these disparities exist in cities all over the country, including Chicago, San Francisco and Washington D.C., complicating efforts to fight obesity in poor communities.
David Sloan, a professor of urban planning at the University of Southern California, says the difference in fitness opportunities between affluent and low-income areas are stark. While wealthy West Los Angeles has 70.1 acres of recreation or green space per 1,000 people, low-income South Los Angeles has 1.2 acres per 1,000. Meanwhile, private gyms are much more common in the more affluent areas. The recession has made it even more difficult to rely on public parks for fitness and recreation, as public resources earmarked for those spaces dwindle.
There are many explanations for why the disparities exist: poor city planning in the 19th and early 20th centuries, allocation of resources to new development at county fringes rather than the urban core, and reticence on the part of corporate brands to enter poorer communities. The result is that many people in those neighborhoods don't exercise at all, while others develop innovative ways of getting a workout.
In the Baldwin Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, dozens of people hike up steep Valley Ridge Drive throughout the day, with more arriving after work. Community members hold fitness classes in their homes. Every day, just south of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Martin Luther King Blvd, several dozen people run laps, bike, or play games in an asphalt parking lot. Victor Martinez has been running there five days a week for the past two years. The nearest open space to Martinez’s home is half an hour away. The parking lot is just 10 minutes away, on the route between his work and home, and unlike a gym, it’s free.
“In South Central,” he says, “there’s not a lot of areas for walking and exercise. We need more parks in the community.”
Sometimes, the creative exercise solutions of a few leads to the creation of formal exercise spaces. For example, the stairs and trail at the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook are now part of a popular state park, but people used the hill as a hiking and exercise path long before the space earned formal designation in 2000.
“This is the way things have worked from time immemorial: people find areas that have natural features that suit their uses. Now, people gravitate to streets that have steep inclines if they want to get exercise,” says David McNeill, executive director of the Baldwin Hills Conservancy, a state board that works to increase access to open space and recreational opportunities in the Baldwin Hills area.
McNeill is working to secure funds for a proper trail where Welch walks on La Brea, and for barriers to protect hikers from the busy traffic. The project could cost anywhere from $60,000 to $300,000.
But critics say such expenditures are not always worth the money, arguing motivation is a far more pressing public health challenge than the lack of options in fitness deserts. “We’re talking about a relatively small segment of the population that utilizes spaces like these,” says Toni Yancey, a public health scholar at UCLA.
Yancey points to a 1999 study that found 30 percent of people in West Los Angeles, where exercise opportunities abound, get no exercise at all, suggesting lack of access may not be the biggest problem. She has concluded that limited public dollars would be better spent on motivational programs, like workplace exercise regimens targeting people who lead sedentary lives.
But she acknowledges that “having more options can’t hurt at all,” and more parks could help close the gap between more and less affluent neighborhoods. More people would almost certainly take advantage of trails if they were safer and clearly marked. But for the moment, dedicated fitness buffs in South L.A. and fitness deserts across the country are blazing their own paths.
Driving on La Brea recently, McNeill pointed to a runner jogging on the median between cars zooming past in both directions. He may not know it, but that runner is an activist, McNeill says.
“You gotta’ tune into these people, because they’re making a statement: they are going to find a way to take their walk or get their exercise. And I gotta’ say ‘You go, and we’ll try and support you.’ Because you shouldn’t have to make that statement—it should be there for you.”
Photos by Alex Schmidt
This story was partially funded by the community through Spot.Us
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Choosing Confidence
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By Amber O’Connell
So often we (or at least those of us who struggle with confidence) tell ourselves that confidence is one of those intangible, inherent qualities. Either you have it, or you don’t. We see people who seem to just ooze it. You know who I’m talking about. They walk into a room and you can just see the puddles of leftover confidence that’s just dripped off of them as they meandered gracefully from one person to the next. Little social butterflies with the presence of something so much larger and greater.
I’ve wanted to be that person for a long, long time. I’ve wished that I had the confidence to be the “life of the party” or, if not that, at the very least someone who didn’t shy away from the party altogether. People are attracted to confidence. I’ve always wanted to inspire that. But, here’s what I’ve learned over the years: we can choose to be confident.
Confidence After Heartbreak?
If you don’t think so, let’s try a little experiment. Think back with me to your last major, serious heartbreak when you were left crying on the curb (hopefully not literally). Do you remember the feeling of thinking you would never be good enough for anyone ever again? That you might as well accept that you were the ground upon which everyone else walked?
Okay. So, we’ve all been there (even the most self confident have, trust me). Now. Think about this. Have you gone out on a date since? Have you dated since? Oh, well you see, that was a choice. You chose at some point, to not believe that no one else would want you, you gave yourself another chance, and you put on, at the very least, the bare minimum of confidence necessary to get dressed, get yourself to the requested location, and put yourself out there again. That, my friend, took confidence.
The Inevitability of Confidence
You can really only be at the bottom for so long. Sooner or later, you have to rise up. Maybe not much, but some. Otherwise, none of us would survive. We’d throw in the towel and call it quits. And, the bright spot in all of this? That little fact alone should give you a huge boost. If you’ve managed confidence before, you can manage it again, a little more every day in fact. You’ve been tossed aside like a wildflower, and you’ve come back and are standing on your own two feet. Did you ever fail a class? Lose a job? Get rebuked unfairly? Anything that has brought you down that you didn’t allow to conquer you took confidence. You chose it. Simple as that.
What to Do With This
Now, you’ve been given a revelation, hopefully, with this article. I hope if you haven’t realized that you’ve had much confidence before, that suddenly, you’ve seen and taken stock of countless times when you confidently came back from something harsh and took a step forward. And, whether this is good news or bad news, those of us with “less” confidence usually take more put-downs than the rest simply because we’re easy targets. So, while you may have endured more pain than you think is really quite fair, the upshot is that you’ve been building confidence through all of those situations and you probably weren’t even aware of this. But now, the ball is in your court. Chances are, you still have nowhere near the confidence you’d like, right? So how to move forward? Here goes.
One Person/Situation at a Time
Oozing confidence, unfortunately, does not appear overnight. Confidence builds upon confidence. The more times you build it up, the stronger each layer and each level gets. So, you build your confidence one situation and one person at a time.
For starters, think of the last situation or person with whom you felt your confidence was shot. Let’s say, for the sake of continuity here, that it was getting “dumped.” I’d be willing to bet you’re not feeling confident about yourself, nor about being around that person again. (We’ll call him Will.) Will left. Will’s gone. And, while the rejection, or sting, or loss of a future, whatever it is, definitely cuts and hurts, the trick is to think and act confidently. Right now. At some point, Will fell in love with you, right? Right. Find confidence in that. You’re still the same person that you were then. So, continue living as you lived then, confidently. Change nothing about yourself but the fact that you’re going to step forward with some spring in your step knowing that:
- You are a person that people love;
- This hurt is only going to make you stronger, and
- Both of those things together is adding on another thicker layer of confidence!
Same thing with a lost job. You were qualified enough to be selected for the job. Regardless of circumstances at the moment, you can know:
- You were selected for a particular job out of a pool of other applicants;
- You’re available now for something even bigger and better, despite the fact it isn’t pleasant in the moment; and
- Both of those things are… yes you got it: going to make you a more confident person in the future.
Next time either one of these things or something similar knocks you off your feet momentarily, your confidence won’t take such a hit next time because you’ve been there, done that, bounced back and risen above. See how that works?!
Confidence Builds Confidence
Now, while you may still feel lost and still feel lacking confidence, you have to muster confidence to know that confidence builds confidence. Every time you use it and choose it, you get more of it. That’s one of the best things about it! And there’s basically a never ending supply. So stand up, put your two feet squarely under yourself and go do something you normally wouldn’t. That little stretch? Yeah, you’ve got it, it will build confidence. And the faster you want to be that most-confident-of-confident people, the more you have to willingly put yourself out there. Just know that nothing, nothing can knock you down. You’ll always get back up and you’ll always be stronger.
Author bio:
Freelancer Amber O’Connell writes about inspirational pieces whenever possible. She also writes alongside an online ecommerce site helping them promote the use of a small and affordable electric heater to create an inviting home hot-yoga studio perfect for relaxation and meditation.
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