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VYZYATKA, HABAR, BAKSHEESH, PAYOLA (or A BRIBE BY ANY OTHER NAME …) “Dokuments, please.    Spaceba.   You are coming from where?  Going to where?” “And how many beers have you had, comrade?” I was ready for the question from the moment that the Kyrgyz policeman first stuck his head through the driver’s side window into the new Russian-made Niva truck.   “Beer?  I have had no beer, Officer...”  It was worth a try, wasn’t it?  But the look on his face immediately told me that it just wasn’t going to work.  “Oh, Okay.  Look, I had one beer with lunch.”  “But comrade, you must know that it is illegal in Kyrgyzstan to drink and drive.  It is the same in your country, da?”  Okay, okay – the bribe was offered, accepted and we were once again our way.  Given that we were stopped within 15 minutes after starting on our 12 hour drive SHOULD have given me an indication that it was not going to be an easy trip....
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On Gentrification, Group Living and Other Delights An NPR report on gentrification made me think of the different circumstances in which I have witnessed it firsthand in my life.   As a rule, gentrification of a neighborhood impacted primarily on economically disadvantaged populations and people of color, as younger, upwardly-mobile couples (“Yuppies” in the vernacular of the day) began to move from the suburbs back into urban neighborhoods in search of cheap housing and shorter commute times.   The North Side of Pittsburgh in the 1970s was one example; in this case, the influx of well-to-do young couples impacting on ethnically diverse working and middle class families whose livelihoods and security had fallen away from them with the closing of plants and mills associated with the steel industry. As fallen-down houses were renovated and businesses designed to service the newer, upwardly mobile, predominantly “professional” population increased, so did the tax base - for...
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DO YOU LIKE PIÑA COLADAS? I was sitting at a table in a brightly-lit cafeteria on the outskirts of the city of Guaymas, in the southwest part of the state of Sonora in northwestern Mexico, 242 miles from the U.S./Mexican border.  I was drinking a cold Modelos beer and reading the latest crime novel that I had found in a Mexico city tourist hostel.   I had been in the country for about two months;  sent by  a U.S. based international women’s village banking organization that provides low-amount but incrementally-increased solidarity loans to women so they can invest in small home-based businesses.  Originally hired by the organization to work in their corporate offices outside of Washington D.C., I had been turned into a roving “fireman”.  The day after I packed my bags and flew to 2,000 or so miles from Nicaragua – my residence for the last three years - I walked into their corporate headquarters in the early hours of a Monday, ready to take up my ...
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