Wearer of Many Masks

I was sitting in a bar in the South End of Boston (it's one of the really trendy neighborhoods right now. Known for fashionable bars and nightlife, a growing gay community, and old world Boston charm) and laughing to myself while my friend went outside to take a phone call because I really am the wearer of many masks.

I realize those words come with heavy connotations, so let me first dispel those misperceptions in what I am saying here. I dont mean it to say I am a chameleon or that I dont have a real personality. As any of my friends or people who work with me can tell you, I am very definite and uncompromising in who I am. Sometimes to the point of conflict (but hey, how many activists do you know who ARENT confrontational and ready for an argument? Answer: none. We live to cause some trouble and shake it up).

I mean it in the sense that I like a lot of extremely and exceptionally different things. That's probably why the first word people often use to describe me is "quirky," and not as an insult or euphemism.

I was laughing and thinking about my masks because I was enjoying a lovely, mild summer evening in one of the WASPiest cities in the country, drinking something sweet called "tokyo rose" and essentially gossiping with a friend who has known me for my entire life. All while a week earlier I was walking through open sewage pipes in sandals in the monsoons in Dharavi and asking people I didnt know, who I had just met in my passages, to tell me about their lives and their businesses.

Whereas, now I was drawing attention to myself in the bright red pants I purchased when I came home because they remind me of one of my absolute best friends, I was doing everything I could to try and blend into the walls. I was covering myself from wrist to ankle in subtly colored Kurtas and leggings and everything that I could find to match the locals -- no jewelry (for me this is weird. I am a layering kind of girl...), plastic shoes, hair tied into a knot ont the back of my head... and still I couldnt do anything to blend in. And here, bright red pants, summer clothes, henna still all over my arms... and I went about unnoticed, as I had hoped.

Exploring has taught me to love many aspects of life.

From the questionnaires I am writing about now for Colombia, to the emails I'm sharing with friends I met along the way... it's been a really great ride.

Even now as I sit here thinking about Colombian history and what I want to ask people about, I am thinking through a creative project I want to do when I get back to create something to give a friend for his birthday.

And you realize, too, that what makes all of this possible -- what keeps me pushing through the more challenging moments of these experiences, fears of being different and going down the uncharted path (away from consulting or worse -- Ibanking-- which Yale seems to push HARD on us), and defining my own version of success, since I am well aware that I will never happily meet that cookie cutter, Yale definition of success (read: money, rank in a traditional, tried and true company, and my own version of a trophy...husband? even writing that makes me gag)-- are the people you met along the way. My parents who notice when I send them emails at 4:30 am and then tell me to GO TO SLEEP and STOP WORKING AND GO HAVE FUN, my best friends, one whose voice soothes all pain and will never judge me and the other who sits on the phone with me and walks me through new technology apps I should know, fights with me through my ideas and projects, and who doesnt put up with my crap, and all of the people who surprise you by caring more than you thought they would.

I am a wearer of many masks because people show me things, and tell me stories, and invite me into their spaces. And for this, I am grateful.

Split Families, Split Personalities

Some of my older research... for fun!

ENRIQUEZ: Split families, split personalities

BY DIANA ENRIQUEZ

GUEST COLUMNIST

Thursday, September 1, 2011

‘Listen. My boyfriend is in a hospital just outside Guatemala City. He doesn’t have enough money on him to pay for his medical services in cash, like they asked him to. I have never done this before and the money needs to get to him today. I have time to run to the bank to take out money and then run over to your store to wire him the funds, but I do not have time to go back and forth a few times so I need to know exactly how much I will need to take out to pay for any transfer fees and the difference in exchange rates so that he will receive $200 from me. Can you help me?”

I don’t have a boyfriend in a Guatemalan hospital. Nor do I usually make phone calls and demand information from people I don’t know personally. I am not really as emotionally distressed as I sound, except for the fact that I have had to call the same woman three other times, change my accent and my story, and request the same information in different ways. I like to call this one my “entitled” voice. It is the one that I fall back on when personalities one through three fail to get me the data I need.

I spent the summer working on a research project comparing remittance costs from different cities across the United States to various Latin American countries. This means posing as someone who wants to send money to family abroad and comparing transfer costs.

Remittances account for $60 billion that go to Latin America every year, but most migrants are sending home somewhere around $200 or maybe $500 at a time. The differences in exchange rates from the daily rate give some of these companies a chance to significantly boost their profits without disclosing these hidden costs.

Remittance tellers are usually happy to tell you about initial fees, even when they vary from different sending locations, but they will not tell you the exchange rates without careful prodding. The exchange rate from one company in particular means that 10 percent of the money sent to a family in Guatemala really goes to the transfer company. But they would rather not have that information out there.

When I asked for that exchange rate in my first, “very pleasant, Spanish-speaking local with family back in Guatemala” personality, the remittance teller told me she could not give me that information and hung up the phone. The same woman told me that I would have to come into the store for information when I spoke in my “very spacey, city-girl Chilanga” accent. She told me that she could not help me over the phone, because it was against their policy, when I called her in “desperate Spanish,” pleading for her help because my mother was sick and needed me to send her money so that she could buy her medication. So the “entitled American English” voice came out and I finally got the information that I needed.

Sometimes people answer the phone and ask me what company I am calling from before they hang up on me. Most migrants do not call remittance locations beforehand to compare prices and select the best one. I am lucky in that usually one of my personalities gets something out of them.

The Frank-Dodd Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act includes provisions that require that remittance transfer companies disclose all information regarding transfer fees, exchange rates and taxes in a simplified and easily comprehensible format. Companies like Western Union and Moneygram disclose all of their information online, making them the most transparent but not necessarily the cheapest services. The challenge, in future years, will come from trying to regulate money transfers between two countries, like Guatemala and the United States, that have different levels of technology and financial structures used to reach their clients. For now, families will have to find their own way to navigate through the fancy wording, hidden fees and transnational exchanges.

Diana Enriquez is a junior in Saybrook College.

Original found here: http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/sep/01/enriquez-split-families-split-personalities/