Living in the developing world

[jim king]

I will answer some of the  questions asked in the other post in my now that I got the phone bill paid and a new phone line.  As I didn't look like my wife on my photo ID I could only pay the bill but they would not reconnect the line so I had to apply for a new line and finally got it.

Here in the Amazon as in many parts of the developing world we are about 50 years behind the US and in many areas of the world they are even more behind.  When I got my first job out of high school I worked for $1.25 an hour welding the crusher rolls in a rock crusher at night and saved enough money to buy my first new car.  Here the minimum wage is now about $1.20 an hour.

We don't have a housing loan crises here as 95% of the houses are built a few bricks or boards at a time and when done in 4 , 5 or 10 years are debt free. For that reason everyone here has a net worth of something.   If someone does get a loan to build a new house they have to have a second house to guarantee the loan and the loan is for 10 years maximum and a minimum of  15% annual interest.  Construction cost here is about $10 a square foot for an American style house .  Poor people live in wood houses and the better off live in clay brick stucco inside and out houses with tile floors as wood or carpet  doesn't work out well in the tropics for flooring on cement, no basements in the Amazon.  Housing in the better areas here is much like England with only a very small area between the house and the street and the houses are row houses with one against the other.   Only the cocaine people live in McMansion type houses as most people in the Amazon don't want to spend the time cleaning and caring for a big house and a lot of possessions.  The mentality here is quite different than the States, in Brazil they say that there will never be political problems if there is good electricity as with electricity the beer is cold and there is music to dance to and everyone will be happy.. 
Iquitos , Peru where we have lived the last 20 years  is the biggest city in the world with no roads going to it and access is by air or boat so a good share of the cost of everything is freight .  About half a million people they think live in the city.  The state in about 30% bigger than Oregon and has a total of close to a million people.   We have very little serious crime yet but a lot of petty theft mostly by drug using kids.  About the worst crime we have going on is stealing motorcycles and then extorting $200 out of the owner to give them back.

Cars are not financeable but motorcycles are for 2 years and the interest doubles the cost in 2 years.  There are over 50,000 motorcycles  including 20,000 motor taxis in town and maybe 500 cars.   I don't have a car or motorcycle but instead use the three wheeled motorcycle taxis and it costs me about $1.50 to go up town and back and no insurance , maintenance, parking problems etc..    The traffic is a nightmare as most of the people with motor cycles or motor taxis came from a dugout canoe direct to driving and you can only imagine what it is like.

The top medical doctors here earn about $3000 a month and with that they live like kings.  They work in at least two hospitals to earn that and are paid by the government with no cost to the patients as with all hospital employees.   Health insurance for the general population is about $10 a month per family and that covers the most of the medicine, tests and other costs. If people don´t have insurance the neighbors all chip in and help and also put on a BBQ every Sunday and sell meals to raise money to help.  There is a lot of use of natural medicines and witchcraft also practiced by the witch doctors.   I have had Malaria 26 times when working in the jungle and Denge twice in town and the treatment was always free and readily available even in remote villages hours or days  by speed boat from town.  Usually the head of each village has a stock of medicine supplied by the government.  Malaria is not that bad if treated as soon as possible, it is just a fast diet  and sometimes you shake and sweat a lot  , the same with Denge which there is no medicine for but it just runs its course and in ten days or so it is gone.  The best thing for Denge is a table spoon of salt and two soup spoons of sugar in a liter of water as it acts the same as an IV and keeps you hydrated.   In contrast to the Doctors  the people living outside of town that are not cocaine producers earn about $20 a month per family and that will never change as they don't want anymore.  Snake bites from a cousin to the rattle snake "The Hergon" are the biggest cause of early death in the jungle.   If you took the aluminum cooking pots and their clothes away the $20 a month people  would not appear much advanced over the stone age. 
Business loan interest rates are an average of 30 to 35% a year and short term loans are 10% a month minimum.  The economy is growing at 8% a year in Peru  and the stock market is one of the highest  earners in the world.    It is very rare here for anyone to have a workshop in their home as  Sundays are reserved for street barbeques and beer for the better off and sugar cane liquor for the less well off which costs 45 cents a liter and will knock you over quite quickly.

I just sold 3.3 million dollars of US made steel to a barge company that transports oil .  That sale  is financed by the US Import Export bank for five years at 5% annual interest to promote American products and create jobs.  Other than that the vast majority of things here are from Brazil or China.  One of the last American made things I have seen was a turkey a couple of years ago from Jerome Turkey Products in Barron , Wisconsin just down the road from where I grew up.  Our Ford and Catapillar products come from Brazil.  When you do see an American brand name it is likely a knock off from China using the American  name.  We get the new American movies here for $1 each about a week after they are released, all illegal knock offs.   It is easy to see why the US has such a whopping trade deficit every year as the American companies just don't make the effort to sell overseas like they should.  We have small motor cycle factories from Japan and China and of course a brewery which came from Hungary and a lot of primitive clay brick factories.  It is hard to believe that American companies simply are not interested in overseas markets but it a sure fact.  The bricks are 6" x 8" and 4" thick and sell for $100 a thousand delivered.  Clothing is cheap but not made for Gringos.  I have to buy used clothing that the missionaries bring in from the States as they have the only clothes are my size. Size eleven shoes are impossible to find. If you have size 10 or up you wear sandals or wait for someone coming down to bring shoes.   I have an American friend here that when young rode his motorcycle from Los Angeles to Tierra del Fuego at the Southern tip of South America and then came back here to the Amazon and started a tour company, he wears size 14 and they don´t even have sandals that big.

The biggest immigrant population is Chinese and they all have their own little business selling Chinese products and on the main streets there is a Chinese restaurant on every corner.  The last figure I heard was about 4000 Chinese immigrants in town and a few years ago the best President in the history of Peru was Japonese.  He is in jail now for killing terrorists in the wrong way but it looks like a good chance that his daughter will be elected as President next year and pardon him which would be good.  He operated much like General Pinochet in Chile and they both were responsible for getting their countries back on the right track but politics and international pressure don´t  always favor the the people who get things done.   With the one child per family law in China it is a good business here for them having kids and selling them in China as they being born outside the country somehow do not fall under that law.  There are less than 60 Americans here in Iquitos and most of them are missionaries and many others are here to stay for a reason.
 
Here the biggest cash crop is cocaine and it fuels the Amazonian economy but it is a business that does not allow for a long life span.  Of the hundreds of  people I have known in the business over the last 30 years in various parts of the Amazon there are only a handful that are not dead or in jail.  During my wife´s crises I and a friend of mine were also under investigation for money laundering  as I sold my machinery to him and a person that had lumber sawn at the mill was caught with a few hundred kilos of pure stuff and when questioned he told the police that I received a million $ from my friend in cash.  I wish it was true but luckily I am receiving monthly payments and well documented so we got that problem solved rather easily.  As the majority of the wood that goes to Mexico is for money laundering I am sure he will be investigated many more times as he custom saws for everyone.  Talking to the General of the police the other night he estimates that about 100 tons of cocaine leave this area every year now and it is increasing and they cannot control it anymore.   The biggest market here for the cocaine is Brazil . 

The lumber business in the Amazon is almost nothing but could be the solution to a lot of problems if we didn't have the World Wild Life Fund and others earning so much money lying to people about forestry destroying the Amazon.  The annual harvest of wood in the Peruvian Amazon which is second only to Brazil in size is about a board foot per acre.   The deforestation is caused by people not being able to earn a living cutting a few trees legally every year and selling them and so instead they are forced into subsistence farming or cocaine and slash and burn resulting in the rural problems .  This  makes the ecologists a lot of money telling the sad story blaming it on the lumber industry which is nothing but a lie. 

We don´t have, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, pickled herring, spagettios, whipped cream or cream and a lot of other basics of life but we live actually quite a normal life.

The Amazon is a land of contrasts.

[DanG]

" As I didn't look like my wife on my photo ID I could only pay the bill but they would not reconnect the line so I had to apply for a new line and finally got it."

It sounds like you're right up to date on some things. :D :D

[Bill Gaiche]

Very intresting Jim. Its amazing how people live in other parts of the world. We are pretty lucky to live in a country that has so much to offer. It may be expensive but thats the way it is for now. There may be a time in the future that we may be just like Peru. Not soon but way down the road when we are gone. bg

[sawguy21]

Thank you for sharing that, it is a very interesting account.

[Planman1954]

Thanks for taking the time to write such an encompasing article about your lifestyle. This morning at my church, the preacher talked about being content about our lot in life, no matter what it is. And here was your post to read to day! Coincidence?? Maybe.
Anyway, one story the preacher told was that there was a poor fisherman sitting by his boat on the dock. Just sitting there. Another big time fisherman passed by and said, "Hey, why aren't you out there catching more fish? You could make more money, maybe get a bigger boat, and then even later buy a fleet of boats!" Than poor man looked up at him, and told him, "But I have all the fish I need. I don't need to go back out today." He then looked up at the big time fisherman and asked, "If I do all that work you talk about and have all those boats, what will I be doing with all that money I'll be making?" The rich man responded, "You can then have more time to sit around and do what you want," to which the poor man replied, "Isn't that what I'm doing right now?"
Point made. We need to be content with what we have and trust God.
Again, thanks for your post. I enjoyed reading it...in fact, I will read it again later!