Central America

Madeleine uses her hard earned dough as a barista at Hermanos Colombian Coffee Roasters in Barnes, frequently opening the shop at 6:30AM, an ungodly hour for anyone but especially a 23 year old who needs her sleep, to travel Central America with Tilda who she meets in Nicaragua.  From there, our gal goes to Guatemala and El Salvador where she hikes to the peak of an active volcano, explores rivers and rain forests and meets like-minded young people in the hostels she visits.

Post Manhattan and pre business school, I worked in Belize for a period of time helping set up the country's eye-health program with the Belize Council for the Visually Impaired and the Pan American Health Organisation as partners.  Belize a beautiful country and poor with then-undeveloped cays a Cessna hop from Belize City. The emerald Blue Hole, a submerged marine cavern where hammerhead sharks in the thousands circle and mate, can be found at a nearby atoll. 

As for the eye care, it became a model for primary care delivery in Pan America and a Harvard Business School case study, "Help The World See", published in 1997 and still in classroom-use today.