Andy and Cassie

Bolivians

2011-11-05T08:51:00.000-07:00

I had this idea about a year ago to do a few blog posts spotlighting some of the interesting people we come in contact with in rural Bolivia. I’m just now getting around to doing the first one, and at our current rate of posting, it will probably be the only one. Still, here goes…

Leónides López and Josefa Vásquez Claros

Leónides and Josefa were both born and raised near Abra Grande, one of Moro Moro’s many isolated rural communities. They each married young (not to each other), and were both widowed after their children had all grown up and moved away. They then became a couple, moving into the homestead where Leónides was born, and where he had raised his children with his first wife. Leónides and Josefa grow several acres of potatoes and corn, care for cattle, pigs, and chickens, and tend a small vegetable and herb patch. Leónides is in his 80s and walks with a cane, leaving Josefa (who is in her 70s) with a heavy burden. She does the typical work of rural Bolivian women—cooking, cleaning, gathering of water and firewood, caring for animals, butchering, food processing and storage, and helping with planting, weeding, harvesting, and carrying crops to market—while also taking on the main responsibility for the farm that her husband can no longer carry by himself.

Josefa posing with the mound of purple corn she is tending while it dries in the sun.

Leónides looking thoughtful (he carries needles and thread in his hat for emergency clothing repair situations and for sewing up bags of produce).

We began work on a water project with Leónides and Josefa and four other families in August of this year. The families were worried from the beginning that they had very few workers in the community since most of the residents were elderly. Communities building water projects with our institution’s support are required to dig ditches to bury the pipe (in this case, nearly a mile of ditch had to be dug, all by hand), assist masons in building tanks and other infrastructure, and cook meals to feed the workers (and us). We are normally very firm about this requirement, but in this case we offered to help as much as we could with this work. The first work day began as we thought it might, with a hired mason, Andy, and I doing most of the work of clearing out trees and spiny bushes to make the path where the pipe would be laid. Around noon, Josefa and another woman from the community arrived to the worksite with a mountain of food for our lunch. Josefa apologized for not being around to help in the morning. She told me that she usually gets up before dawn, but doesn’t find time to eat breakfast until midmorning, after getting back from checking on cattle or crop fields, carrying water, and cutting firewood, and after lighting the kitchen fire and peeling potatoes or grinding corn. She spent the rest of the afternoon swinging a machete with the rest of us, then sent us home with two enormous grocery bags full of potatoes, onions, and corn, as a thanks for all of our “hard work.”

Leónides can’t get around on the rough and steep slopes that most of the water system work is done on, so he didn’t do much of that work. However, in spite of his ailing body, he seems to spend very little time sitting or lying around. When we would show up in the morning, he was often already in the field near their house, harvesting corn. Even though he could only harvest at maybe a quarter of the speed of a younger person, he spent every free moment in that field until it was all harvested, shuffling back to the house for meals with his hands bleeding from rubbing against the stiff stalks. When water project meetings were held at their house, while the rest of us sat around waiting on late-comers, Josefa and Leónides never sat still, always tending to the corn they were drying on their patio or carrying food to their animals.

Our last two visits to Josefa and Leónides were for parties: one unofficial and one official ch’alla (celebration of thanksgiving) for the completion of their water system. The unofficial one was thrown in honor of my parents’ visit to Moro Moro. Josefa and another woman in the community both butchered enormous pigs (that's right: TWO pigs were butchered to feed the four of us plus the 15 or so community members). They invited us to bless their tank with them, which required drowning it in beer and chicha. Josefa lugged an enormous basket full of canned beer up to the tank for the blessing, and, as custom dictates, would not let the party end until all the beer was gone. Neither of the four of us felt like drinking much, so that tank got an extra helping of blessing from us.

Andy, my stepdad, and I toasting and looking for a way out of drinking all that beer.

It’s normal to splash a little of each cupful of beer or chicha onto the ground or onto the thing being blessed, and then to drink the rest. But Josefa noticed how small my sips were and how big my "splashes" were, and started watching us pretty closely. She also managed to, without speaking the same language, convince my not-the-dancing-type parents to join in the obligatory one-song dance.

Josefa keeping a close eye on me to make sure I'm enjoying my chicha fully.

Josefa, Andy, me, my mom, and stepdad dancing.

Group shot at the first ch'alla. Leónides is next to Andy, and Josefa is out front, posing proudly with her bottle of chicha.

Then, a week later, they did it all over again, throwing the party for the “official” ch’alla. For this party, they cooked and prepared drinks for 50 or so people, hired a DJ, and even got the mayor to drive out and join the party.

We often wonder where we really stand with people like Josefa and Leónides. We spend weeks visiting their homes every day. They cook for us, and we sit in their kitchens or bedrooms and eat with them. We are often present when some of their worst community conflicts blow up. We share with them in the profound experience of seeing water flow out of a faucet at their home for the first time after a life of lugging jugs and buckets up and down long paths. The families we have worked with are experts at hospitality and showing gratitude, so much so that we often finish a water system and feel like more has been given to us than what we earned with our efforts. But still, we’re so different, and it’s sometimes hard to understand what kind of relationship we’ve built when each project is over. However, Josefa, Leónides, and their neighbors are so kind to us and so open with their lives that we feel certain that we’ve built a genuine relationship with them, albeit a nontraditional one. The last time I saw Leónides, he had latched onto my arm and was almost crying because he thought that, since we had just celebrated the end of the water project, we might not go back to visit him. It felt like an expression of real affection, and it made us realize that we might mean more to people like him than we can really understand. Josefa and Leónides know how to take dirt, water, and air and make almost all the food, clothing, shelter, furniture, and tools they need to live--not just to survive, but to live a full and dignified life. I respect them enormously for this, and feel so thankful that they respect two bumbling foreigners enough to invite them into their homes and lives.

Joys of June and July

2011-07-24T18:51:00.000-07:00

Here are a few sources of joy that we've been blessed with lately....

Baby goats with our friend Lider and his family (photo: Jeremy Good)

Learning a new skill – threshing oats! The oats are hand-cut and carried to the threshing floor to have horses trample them. We got a kick out of our little friend somersaulting in the straw between hose passes (photo: Jeremy Good)

Building the tools needed (here in Bolivia, we say "solucionando")– tubing, valve from old motorcycle tube, and tire pressure gauge to test water pressure (photo: Jeremy Good)

Celebrating the Winter Equinox by trying to coax the Sun back. After a dinner of grilled chorizos (sausages), churiqui (chicken gizzard), and choclo (corn-on-the-cob), jumping over the bonfire made in the middle of the street is a must!

A hike to the top of the "Pachapata", our local waterfall. After 3 hours of hiking, we hoped to reach the ledge, but it was just too difficult, so we settled for a dip in the stream 20 meters upstream from the 180ft drop!

Visitors to share our work and lives with, and their reminders to stop and enjoy the scenery (photos: Gloria Showalter)

"A very touristy place"

2011-07-04T08:01:00.000-07:00

In March we decided we needed a weekend away from our sometimes too-small town. We decided to check out a small city called Comarapa, about a 4-hour motorcycle ride away. We had seen it on a poster promoting tourism in the area. Also, Andy had heard that there was a large man-made lake near it, and he remembered it being described as “un lugar bien turístico” (a very touristy place). I will never again hear the phrase, “un lugar bien turístico,” without laughing uncontrollably.

We decided to head for Comarapa on a Friday afternoon, thinking we’d stay the whole weekend and get back late Sunday night. The four-hour motorcycle trip was uncomfortable; even the small amount of luggage we were carrying (one change of clothes each plus a couple books), when strapped on the tiny rack on the back of the motorcycle, forced me to ride Andy like a backpack (or vice versa). Still, the weather was nice, so we were in high spirits. We arrived in Comarapa at about 2 in the afternoon. Since we didn’t know our way around, we stopped at the central market to get drinks and ask questions. We have discovered that, in rural Bolivia, it’s always best to ask directions from three or four different people (we think this is both because we don’t understand Spanish as well as we think we do, and because for some reason rural Bolivians offer directions even if they have no idea what you’re talking about). So, we asked the lady that sold us drinks, a couple resting on a street corner, and a shop-owner what they knew about the lake. The answers were all the same. Yes, it’s a beautiful lake. Yes, it’s a “lugar bien turístico.” Yes, there are places to swim. There might even be a place to stay.

Excited by the prospect of a dip in a real live lake and maybe even a boat ride (Andy had heard there were boats for rent), we headed toward the lake, another 15 minutes passed the city on a dusty, bumpy dirt road. We arrived at a point overlooking the lake and could see that it was, indeed, a real lake. We could see the dam on the far side, and a couple buildings near it. “Hey maybe that’s where they rent boats!” I exclaimed. Andy nodded hopefully inside his helmet.

Comarapa lake: great views…and that’s about it.

As we neared the dam, however, we started having doubts. There was no one there. No one. And it was a beautiful, hot, sunny day, perfect for swimming or boating. We got to the dam and stopped to look around. No one. We were close to the buildings now, and both suspected but did not voice what turned out to be the truth: they were abandoned. Nothing. Nada. We pulled into an overgrown driveway at one of the buildings. “Where’s the boat launch?” Andy asked no one in particular. We both started laughing and shaking our heads.

Comarapa Lake Boat Launch and Resort...or not

He turned the motorcycle around. “Surely there’s a place to swim,” I said. We were still hopeful. We stopped again on the dam, this time appreciating it as possibly the only thing worth seeing.

Comarapa dam: "Worth the trouble."

“Hey look!” I said, pointing at a little outcropping of land about halfway down the lake, back the way we had come. “There’s a road leading down to that little peninsula, and it looks like nice grass right up to the water. I bet we can swim there.”

“Let’s check it out,” Andy replied, firing up the motorcycle.

We found the entrance to the road and followed it down to the water’s edge. I stripped down to my bathing suit and sandals. Andy removed his shoes. We walked closer and looked around.

There was nothing to do but laugh. The whole area surrounding the water’s edge was covered in cow patties and discarded condoms. Just next to what I had, from afar, declared as the “swimming beach,” a line of rusty barbed wire filed into the water and disappeared. We could see more fence-posts farther out. Everything smelled weird. We laughed again.

The swimming beach.

“But look!” I said, pointing at a trail running off into the woods and toward the other side of the peninsula. I dashed down it, hoping beyond all reason that something more promising would meet me on the other side of the trees. I got about 5 steps before a giant thorn bush reached out and snagged my leg. I started bleeding. Moving forward, pushing more thorny branches out of the way, I heard Andy mumble something about piles of used condoms. A few more steps, and the path ended at another shoreline. This one was more open, fewer trees, no barbed-wire, less stink, but definitely not a beach, per se. As hot and dry as we felt, we couldn’t bear the thought of putting a single body part into that water, not knowing what tetanus or STD agent was waiting on the lake bottom. We found our way back to the motorcycle.

“Well, we’re here,” Andy said. “We may as well relax a bit.” He took out his book and, laying his jacket down for a pillow, lay down and started reading. I did the same. “Watch out for that cow patty,” Andy warned me. I scooted over a bit, sitting myself down in the only cow-patty-free spot available. “It’s a really nice day,” Andy said, salvaging. “Yeah,” I agreed, enthusiastically. We read for another 30 seconds. Ants began invading every part of my clothes. I said nothing, forcing myself to read. I glanced up at Andy over the top of my book. He was swatting at them, too, but, like me, pretended he was cool with it. We read for another 30 seconds. “Okay, okay, okay,” we both said at once, standing up. “Enough.” We beat the ants off of each others’ backs, put our clothes, shoes, and helmets back on, and got out of there.

We arrived back in Comarapa and decided to look for a hotel. We passed a pharmacy with a lone woman attendant at the counter. I decided to fake a need for ibuprofen in order to get some (hopefully) accurate information. I went in, asked for the ibuprofen, and started asking about the woman’s baby, who was sleeping on a couch nearby. She asked where I was from, if I had any children myself, and what we were doing in Comarapa. I told her we were looking for a place to stay…might she have a recommendation? “Oh yes,” she said. “There’s really only one nice hotel in town.” I felt hopeful. She seemed to know what she was talking about. She told me where the nice hotel was.

“What else is there to do around here?” I asked. “You know, are there places to see, museums, lakes, fun things like that?”

“Oh…” she replied. “Yeah, there are a few things.” She listed off the following tourist attractions, declaring them all “worth the trouble:” the lake, the boat rental shop (“go to the hospital and ask for so-and-so”), the cactus forest (back the way we came), and a place up the valley where you could rent a cabin for the night.

“Cabins?” I asked. “How do we get there?” She described the trip: two more hours up into the woods, and you have to go to the mayor’s office to ask for the key.

“Key? Key for what?”

“For the cabin, of course.”

“Oh, so there’s not a person there that runs the place?”

“No, no,” she replied, smiling. “It’s just an empty cabin, but you can take your own blankets and food and cooking pots and stuff. It’s really nice! Oh, and while you’re at the mayor’s office, ask them for the tourist pamphlet. It has pictures and information about all this stuff.” Thanking her, I went to report my findings to Andy.

“So you can rent boats!” he exclaimed. “I knew I had heard that somewhere!”

We checked into the nice hotel. “Nice!” Andy agreed. “You know what the trick is,” he declared. “You have to have an actual conversation with someone, and then ask them for directions and information. Maybe if you don’t actually have a conversation with someone, they don’t feel obliged to answer your questions.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “She really unloaded some information on me, and look! She was right about the hotel.”

We headed for the hospital, jabbering about how nice and relaxing it would be to paddle out to the middle of the lake and just float all day. We found the hospital. Asking around to anyone who would talk to us, we received the same response from all: “Boats? What kind of boats? No, no, there’s never been any kind of boat rental place here.”

Dejected, we headed for the mayor’s office, deciding we may as well check out the cabin thing and the pamphlet thing. The mayor’s secretary seemed busy, so we looked around a bit, hoping we might see a stack of pamphlets for the taking. “Can I help you?” she finally asked. We asked her about the cabins. “Yeah, that place is really run-down. You don’t want to go there.” And the pamphlets...? “…” Blank stare.

“You see,” I explained, “we heard that there was a pamphlet describing all the tourist attractions in the area.” Nothing. She directed us to the office of FDF, an institution that we have experience with and that works in tourism development. We found the FDF office. No pamphlets. We stood in the street outside the office. “Well….” Andy said, “what now?” It was late afternoon, too early to eat dinner, give up, call it quits, and just go to bed. We had seen an internet café near the mayor’s office, so we headed there. I googled “turismo Comarapa.” When the spotty connection finally spat out the search results, I was not surprised: cabin rentals, beautiful man-made lake, boat rentals, pamphlets available in the mayor’s office, all of it almost word-for-word what the pharmacist had told me. I began to wonder if the people doing research for tourism websites had also stopped and consulted the pharmacist. An hour into our internet time, Andy’s computer still hadn’t accomplished so much as opening one email, so we called that quits, too.

We weren’t hungry yet, but the one thing we were sure of finding was food, so we ate dinner and bought some snacks, planning to spend the rest of the evening in the hotel with our books. We flipped on the 15-inch TV to find that English-speaking HBO came through on the hotel’s cable. We were so pleasantly-surprised that (I kid you not) one of us declared, “This is awesome!!” A new movie was just starting: the one where that wrestler/actor plays a soldier who returns home to find his town being controlled by an evil casino owner, and the wrestler/actor/soldier gets together a rag-tag bunch of high school drop-outs and takes down the bad guy’s mob and becomes sheriff and makes all his drop-out buddies deputies and whisks the small-town beauty (who had given up on love) off her feet. You know? That one. Great show.

The next day (Saturday, day 2 of our planned 3-day weekend), we ate breakfast and could think of nothing to do but head home. We stopped at the cactus forest on the way. It was worth the trouble. It was a steamy day, and about half-way home we found a quiet little spot along a river to eat our picnic lunch and go for a swim. All in all, a pretty nice trip.

Crossing the bridge over the river (where we finally got to swim)

Summer Eats

2011-03-07T09:21:00.000-08:00

Well we’re deep into the rainy season. We’ve had 5 straight days of rain, keep us largely in the house. Even if the roads weren’t in terrible shape, and we could get out to the communities, it would be too muddy and wet to do anything. People are brewing their Chica (fermented corn drink) for Carnaval next week, and to visit folks, we'd just end up drinking a bunch of that. About the only thing we accomplished this week was a couple meetings and to press 15 gallons of apple cider with a friend.

We had decided early in the week to escape the cabin fever and to travel to a nearby town and see the tourist sights there. Well, the rain didn’t quit, and the forecast says rain for the weekend. After so much rain we just can;t stomach the idea of getting on the bus - the first 2 hours are clay-dirt roads and a lot of guided sliding is involved in getting down the mountain.

So we stayed at home and got caught up on reading, studied Spanish, fixed up our room, and cooked!

Here’s Saturday lunch with all the local produce available in late summer.
Fried lacoyote squash
Nathan’s quick whey sauerkraut
Vallegrande cheese
Apple cider
Api (ground corn hot drink) with fresh peaches
Ají sauce (spicy salsa of fresh ground hot locoto pepper)
The centerpiece is of Broccoli flowers.

Life is good.

Stories

2011-02-10T16:19:00.000-08:00

We continue to thoroughly neglect our picture-taking duties, so I will give you the next best thing: stories! Here are a couple that have stuck with us from the last couple months.

Bringing Home My Baby Bumblebee...
Andy has recently ventured into bee-keeping. He bought a bee box, got a little advice and an already-thriving bee family from a neighbor and expert beekeeper, and set the box up on another neighbor's land. A couple months later, the bees seemed to be doing well, and it was time to add on the box they will hopefully use for honey storage. Pressed for time, Andy decided to do this task with less-than-ideal equipment: a pillowcase with a mesh window hurriedly sewn into it for a bee mask, no smoker (which helps to calm the bees down), and whatever clothes he happened to be wearing (instead of light-colored clothes, which supposedly anger them less). When he arrived and set to work, it quickly became obvious that the bees were feeling protective. They swarmed him within the first minute, barely giving him time to place the box before he started feeling them stinging through several layers of clothes and crawling up inside his mask (pillowcase). As soon as he could, he took off running for his motorcycle, hoping that getting away from the hive would end the attack. The presence of a couple bees in his mask (pillowcase) became unbearable, so he ripped it off as he mounted the motorcycle. That's when he realized that the swarm had followed him. As soon as the mask came off, they charged, attacking his face and head. He hit the throttle on the motorcycle, holding on with one hand while desperately swatting away the mob with the other.

When he arrived home, I noticed he looked kind of...puffy. He walked in the house just shaking his head, then told the whole story. An hour or so later, he started complaining that his head still hurt in several places where they had stung him. I had him sit down so I could take a look. I gasped with my first glance. There among the stubble of his nearly-shaved head were half a dozen smashed bee rear ends, embedded with their stingers into his poor swollen scalp and neck. I pulled them out with tweezers, leaving a little bee butt collection on our kitchen table. The swelling didn't get much worse, although he did walk around for a week with one eye half shut. The happy ending came when he told the story to our neighbor and several other experienced bee-keepers. They laughed harder with each rookie mistake he revealed, and kindly advised him how to avoid another painful encounter.

The Princess and the Potato

Our most recent trip to Santa Cruz was begun about 12 hours earlier than expected when, the night before we planned to get on the bus, we caught wind of a truck about to pass through town hauling potatoes to the city. We had always wanted to experience the ride on a potato truck to the city at least once, so we decided to hop on. The advantage of making the trip this way is that you don't have to spend the entire day on a bus, which leaves at 9 a.m. and arrives at 6 p.m. - a whole day lost. Instead, you board the potato truck late in the evening, and then by the next morning you arrive at your destination. But first let me describe what I mean by "ride on a potato truck."

The kind of truck used to haul potatoes here is not very common in the United States. I don't have a picture of an actual Moro Moro potato truck, but imagine something like this:
In this particular case, you will need to imagine it a little more run-down and generally non-confidence-inspiring, and that the slatted boards making up the side walls of the bed (which tend to bow out with time) are supported by rubber straps made of used tires. Imagine climbing up the back (there are no stairs, mind you, so you have to make the first step up onto the bumper-like platform in one bound), and dropping down under the tarp into darkness. You feel around beneath you and realize you are crouching on top of potatoes: enormous blue bags full of them. The bags are tossed in willy nilly, so that you have to crawl around in the dusty darkness while the truck sways back and forth, looking for a place where the sacks fell in a way that makes a more-or-less flat surface that you can stretch out on.

In our case, we found acceptable positions with the help of an elderly woman who was also making the trip. She gave helpful advice like, "put that box over there," and, "make sure your neck's not too bent. That hurts." We found ourselves with two traveling companions: the woman, and an older man. He was on his way to visit his wife, and she was going to spend time with her daughter. Since it was nearly pitch dark, we had to ask eachother about 10 times who we were. Once we established that, the man perked up and said, "Now we're going to have a good chat!" And then he and the woman spoke nonstop for 10 minutes about why you can't have a good chat really between only two people, but as soon as there are three or four, well, then you can. This specific good chat covered the usual topics: rain, mud, siblings, potatoes, peaches, city-versus-campo living (the city life is undesirable, of course), bus-versus-potato truck travel, etc. At one point, I retold half-jokingly that Andy and I had been concerned that the tarp over the truck wouldn't allow for much air flow inside. The woman responded with some very helpful information: "Well, no, you see, the air gets in through the open spaces and makes kind of a wind in here, so you don't have to worry about that." (I often find people telling me things that are completely obvious, which makes me wonder if I walk around looking lost and out of place most of the time.)

After the good chat died down, we settled into our places. Sleeping on a bag of potatoes is pretty comfortable at first. Then after half an hour or so, that one tiny tuber that sticks out farther than the rest starts to feel like a tiny fist punching you in the ribs or thigh, and you have to squirm around for a while to find an acceptable new position. At first, too, the swaying of the truck lulled me into sleepiness, but then I started picturing the cliffs and crumbly roads and the possible sleepiness of the driver, and every time I felt the truck breaking or swerving slightly, my heart skipped a beat. Heart skipping is not conducive to sleeping any more than being punched by tiny potatoes. Then, of course, the inevitable need for a bathroom crept up. On the bus, bathroom availability is predictable: there will be one stop in the middle of the trip where there is time to go to the bathroom; that's it. In the back of the potato truck, however, not only did I not have any idea what the driver's plans were, but he was in such a hurry that he never stopped for more than two minutes at a time (long enough for him and his male helpers to jump out of the cab, do their business, and jump back in). By the time I would realize we were stopped, crawl over the potatoes and sleeping old man to the back of the truck, heave myself over the back wall, and identify some tiny bush on the side of the road behind which I could do my thing, the driver's helper would be waving me back into the truck, telling me that the driver was running late and in a big hurry. This happened three times before I resigned myself to the fact that I would just be holding it for the entirety of the 10-hour trip. Have you ever had to go in the middle of the night, but you were feeling lazy and thinking to yourself, "I can just hold it 'til morning, right?" It never works. The longer you lay there trying to convince yourself of this, the more awake you become with the fear that you really will fall asleep and possibly not hold it until morning. You know? I hardly slept at all. Andy, meanwhile, could not be bothered with my complaints about tiny potatoes, imaginary near-collisions, or bathroom issues, because he was out cold almost the entire trip. The next day I inwardly breathed a sigh of relief when our boss told us that, for safety reasons, she prefers we just stick to bus travel.

A season of changes

2011-02-02T12:45:00.000-08:00

Hi Friends and family!

It´s been quite a while since we got anything new up here. As many of you know of you´ve been on a road trip with me, I hate that time of the trip when you´re ALMOST half-way. Say hour 5 of a 10 hour trip – that little bit of suffering until half-way always seems too long. Well, its seems what is true of road trips can be true of longer-term commitments too. Feb 25 marks 17 months for us in Bolivia, and half-way in our contract. We have struggled a bit in the last couple months to keep our chins up as some projects drug to a halt and we were asked to write plans for the third time because we might need to change the source of funding for our work.

I assume plenty of you will be reading this right away as you´re all snowed in and hoping the heater stays on! Here we´re enjoying the peach harvest with the apples son to come! Jeremy and I are working on an Apple cider press to get some more value out of the non-marketworthy apples, more value for them and for us!

Cassie and I are back in Moro Moro after taking a little time away to sort ourselves out, we´re working hard but in a new direction. No one knows at this point if we´ll be replaced after our term is up, so our real job for the next 18 months is to work ourselves out of a job by training local technicians to do our jobs – then with the resources of the mayor and perhaps continuing with MCC, they can maintain and expand the water systems without direct involvement from outsiders. We´re enjoying the task, but progress in the work of training can leave you with a lot fewer signposts to know how far you´ve gone, and how far you have to go.

Here´s a recent photo of our Moro Moro team. From right to left…

Jeremy Good – one year volunteer from Pennsylvania – working in letrines and erosion barriers

Fernando – local student who just graducated wtih an agronomy degree, and is finishing his practical component with MCC´s sponsorship – working in field trials of organic fertilizers

Nathan Harder – volunteer who´s been here 4 years now, working in organic agricultura and an irrigation project

Patrocinio Garvizu – our buen jefe (good boss) – Officially the rural programs coordinator, lives in Santa Cruz and does a lot of leg work to get us materials and keep us sane when our culture clashes with that of the Moromoreñans

Cassie – Busy as always on executing water systems, leading the church women´s group in a fertilizer course, and most recently, working her tail off translating plans and getting proposals ready and re-ready as we switch sources of funding (internal to MCC switch – no worries)

ME! – Working as always in water systems and latrines, but now that we have a truck and a larger team, I spend a good bit of time fixing motorcycles and coordinating materials, the truck Schedule, and helping Jeremy on erosion barriers.

Come see Moro Moro - Virtually

2010-10-30T06:12:00.000-07:00

If you`ve ever wondered exactly where we live, check out this link...

We have the ambiguously whitish roof (actually metal) that is indicated on the map. A block SW is the catholic church (yellow). The dark line next to our house is the main drainage ditch for the town. Follow the roads SW and NW of town and you can see our daily commutes. Enjoy!

Google Maps Link to Andy and Cassie's House in Moro Moro

Ver Moro Moro, Bolivia en un mapa más grande

Cuss words

2010-08-28T13:07:00.000-07:00

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately with folks from the Evangelical church. We’re remodeling the sanctuary--what once was literally a one car garage that thanks to an oddly shaped lot, was wide wider at one end. The only entrance was the swinging garage door was a garage door that was either completely open or completely closed. In winter, it was a tough decision to go to church – you needed your stocking cap, long underwear and several sweaters. The decision was even tougher knowing you didn’t have a nice warm house to come home to. So the plan was to take over a chunk of the parsonage and make a 40’ x 15’ room with a real ceiling and closeable small doors.

The thing that has given me the most laughs is the almost cuss words that gt used at church. You know, like we say darn or shoot. Well, to avoid saying the mierda (poop-word), they draw out the syllables of mie-e-e-rcoles (Wednesday). This can be incredibly confusing when they say: Wednesday, we’ve got a lot of work to do. And I respond: But I thought we were working Tuesday!

Bolivia´s Climate Crusade

2010-08-28T13:01:00.000-07:00

So you, like me, may have associated Aljazeera only with releasing the latest Taliban announcements. It appears they do some decent journalism as well, and in English! Here’s a great video on climate change´s impact on Bolivia, the role of the “Global South”, and some good thinking on how to move forward with solutions instead of just bickering about punitive damages.

Original link on Al Jazeera:
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/faultlines/2010/05/2010518121127315453.html

Youtube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWjHrVJPb-g

Here´s a photo of dad and I exploring some of the same terrain seen in the video. It is quite dramatic seeing up close how the landscape has changed.

A couple excerpts:
“Bolivia is on the receiving end of a crisis they did not create. It’s also a crisis they can’t solve, at least not on their own, and that’s where the climate debt movement comes in. As the U.S. confronts ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, its government is demanding that BP, the polluter, should pay. Bolivia is trying to apply that principal on a global scale.”

“In countries like Bolivia, the climate crisis is impossible to deny. In countries like the U.S., denial is everywhere. Not just the denial of climate skeptics, but the daily denial of millions of people who know the crisis is real, yet somehow can’t summon the urgency to act.”

“How do we find a way for impoverished people and impoverished countries to economically develop in a way that is not at the expense of the environment and that recognized their right to develop, just as the countries in the North had a right to develop?”

“Climate debt: the basic principle is polluter pays. There is finite space for atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions, and the rich world has already used up more than its fair share. For poor countries to develop, they need help to leapfrog the dirty technologies that created our modern world and created the climate crisis.”

June/July in photos

2010-08-06T12:56:00.000-07:00

Of course, words often don't do justice to the sights/sounds/smells that we live every day. Here's a few pictures to approach sharing of the sights. We haven't quite figured it out, but we'll keep working on how to share the smells.

I'm in bed with a cold - we were planning to head out of Moro Moro anyway to visit fellow workers in Charagua, near the Chaco desert, and I had the though... I can lay in bed in Moro Moro, or lay in bed in Santa Cruz, and have INTERNET! So here's some pictures to pass your and my time!

A couple of young ladies and their fine harvest of ”morado” (purple) corn – especially good for making api - the famous sweetened ground corn drink. You should have seen them grin and giggle when they told me it wasn't even their corn.

Our front room full of eager readers digging into the bilingual Bible story books sent down by Andy’s mom.

Potato harvest in progress, as viewed from our work site. Each blue bag hold 250 pounds of potatoes and are awaiting horses and burros to haul them out of the field and a strong back to load them on the truck.

Cassie showing off her stained hands after a day of tying re-bar together to create the shell of a ferrocement water tank.

Our friend Adan, working on his new rainwater capturing tank. His metal roof will capture ~30,000 liters of water (7900 gallons) per year, 11,000 liters of which can be stored in the tank for the dry season. If, as planned, the dry season lasts 5 months, his family can use 70 liters (18.5 gallons) per day.

After a 2 hour hike to make measurements on his spring and talk about possibilities for making a water system, Ermenahildo, spry for his 84 years, and his faithful companion weren't going to let me make any errors. They're checking my math.

Money

2010-07-27T09:46:00.000-07:00

While hosting the visitors from Fresno Pacific University, we got to chatting about money, and I had the thought that I have never put anything about money here. Here’s just a quick view of incomes and expenses here in Bolivia.

The exchange rate for the Bolivian currency, Bolivianos (Bs.), hovers around Bs. 7:$1. Very often, incomes in the US and Bolivia are comparable in their respective currencies – consider the wage for a security guard at Bs. 19,200 – not far from what that job might pay in the US, but in dollars. Now put yourself in his shoes earning $19,200, or even a manager, at $30,000--here is a list of the prices you would face. Consider how your consumption might change…How often would you spend $1.50 per minute talking on your cell phone, or how would your driving habits change if you were paying over $14 for a gallon of gas. It is very interesting the pattern of prices that emerge as you shop. Those things that can be exported, or have to be imported, you pay a world price – say infrastructure and natural gas to make electricity, or Toyota Corollas. If ingredients in its production are exportable, say corn and soy for producing eggs/meat, you pay world prices for that portion, and a poor-country price for the labor. Things that are mostly labor, say daily wages for a mason or eating at a family restaurant, you pay much less.

You can see the paradox – things seem expensive to the average person, but still cheap on the world scale. So while $8.50 shoes that might last 3 years as your only shoes may seem like a bargain, Bs. 60 isn’t too easy to come by, and even after multiple repairs, we see folks working in those shoes until they’ve worn through the soles and hardly any leather keeps them attached.

We list our incomes here, but from these numbers, it’s difficult to equalize them. MCC provides us with a long list of perks that are uncommon here. They provide furniture, life insurance, a computer, motorcycles/gas, and when we’re traveling other than on vacation, MCC pays. Plus we have wonderful families back in the states (as the U.S. is called here) that gift us things out of reach of the average Bolivian. We can also buy things cheap on Ebay and have them brought down by friends—services quite unavailable in a country with undeveloped infrastructure (1 post office in each principal cities). All that to say, even though we have the goal of at least moderate voluntary poverty, we live well comparatively here in Bolivia.

Annual Income:	Bolivianos	$ U.S. (7:1)
Security guard or driver	19,200	2,743
Teacher (national schools are only 8:30-12:30)	21,000	3,000
Low-level manager	30,000	4,286
MCC foreign worker (summed allowances for food, housing, etc., plus readjustment allowance)	24,500	3,500
Daily wage for a mason (semi-skilled day laborer)	80	11
Food:
Gallon of gasoline (subsidized)	14.21	2.03
Whole frozen chicken (dead, feathered, and gutted)	28.00	4.00
Pound of sugar	1.59	0.23
Pound of whole wheat flour	1.04	0.15
Gallon of milk (processed)	20.90	2.99
Gallon of milk (fresh from the cow)	11.40	1.63
Cheapest candy in the store	0.20	0.03
Soup and entreé (family restaurant)	13.00	1.86
Clothes:
Used pants	25.00	3.57
Locally produced sandals (leather & tire tread)	60.00	8.57
Other:
City bus fare (no transfers)	1.50	0.21
Dentist visit for cleaning	140.00	20.00
Electricity per kWh	1.00	0.14
Cheapest cell phone	300.00	42.86
Cell phone call per minute	1.50	0.21
Used Toyota Corolla (6-10 yrs old, without title, steering wheel on the wrong side)	31,500	4,500
Used Ford Explorer (8 years old, with papers)	63,000	9,000
Social Services:
Visit to government health post in rural areas	Free
Birth of a child (medical care)	Free
Attending a prenatal/infant's checkup	+25	3.57
A child completes a year of school	+200	28.57
Senior citizen monthly social security payment	+200	28.57

Healthcare has been a government priority and it shows. Healthcare is free from birth until 21yrs for all residents (including MCC workers). If the person is in school/college, this coverage extends to 24yrs. Free healthcare is also given to the elderly after 60yrs. In the rural areas that have organized and put health as a priority, there is free basic medical care for everyone. We have an excellent “posta” in Moro Moro, and have 4 doctors for a population of ~3,500 in our municipality. I’ve never waited more than 10 minutes to see the doctor, and the pharmacy is across the hall. National taxes amount to ~15% of income if you work for a registered business, and a sales tax of 13% is charged at large businesses, and at smaller places if you ask for an official receipt, a “factura.” Being an institution, we’re in trouble if we don’t insist on factura receipts.

According the the U.S. State Dept., "The United States forgave almost all of Bolivia’s bilateral debt between 1999 and 2002." Much debt remains however from international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and International Development Bank. Bolivia qualifies as a "Highly Indebted Poor Country", and debt, equaling 44% of GDP, much lower in real terms, and percentage terms than the U.S.

We have lived in Bolivia 6 weeks shy of a year, and daily discoveries continue in how our lifestyles differ, but our humanity is the same. The subtleties of prices, rural self-sufficiency, shape our context and how we relate to people around us.

June and July

2010-07-27T08:05:00.001-07:00

Hi friends and family!

Since we last wrote, we’ve taken our 2 weeks vacation –

My (Andy) dad came down to do the manliest things we could find to do in Bolivia. This is a pretty extreme country, with plenty of “est”s in the guide book. We biked the World’s Most Dangerous Road, visited the world’s highest ski slope (17,500 ft), toured a still-working mine that dates back to the 1500’s, held lit dynamite in our hands, and boated on Lake Titicaca.

Cassie headed to the U.S. to celebrate to surprise her dad for his 50^th birthday. Continuing the surprise, they all headed on a family vacation to Breckenridge, where they golfed, rafted the river, and relaxed. She got to visit a good chunk of her extended family, and even said hi to the in-laws.

Last week, we were honored to host a group of visitors here in Moro Moro from Fresno Pacific University, a Mennonite affiliated school in California. This charming group of students is part of a Peace-building Institute put on during the summer, in which students take a couple weeks of intensive classes, and then go out and learned a bit about the world through service. They brought us a gallon Ziploc bag (the real thing), and prized as that may be, it gets better—it was full of almonds and cashews from California. The nuts didn’t last a week.

Just this last weekend we celebrated the annual July 25 fiesta in Moro Moro, honoring our patron saint Santiago (that’s him on the horse). We enjoyed watching the town go into a fury to ready everything. About half of the houses have received new paint or whitewash, and other improvements were hurried – getting electricity or a bathroom, new sidewalks. The whitewashing was pretty funny because only at a couple places did we see the sidewalk protected. You get a nicer looking house, but a terrible looking splashed-white sidewalk. Vendors come in from all over Bolivia to sell their wares, and for those without cars, it’s the time of year to buy new mattresses, pots, electronics, whatever you could need.

Cassie was sick in bed the day before the fiesta, and I was selfishly praying that she’s get better because we had to run a booth at the fair. The day before the fiesta I particularly enjoyed going out to breakfast in Moro Moro–the marketplace had little tarp-covered booths where you could sit and enjoy api (ground purple corn, cinnamon, cloves, sugar, and lemon served hot) and fry breads. At 8pm, mass was held for standing-room only crowd, and the priest knew when to shut it down when the brass band stood on the steps outside blasting their horns into the church. The fiesta went into the night with people eating potatoes fried over a dozen open fires and multiple mariachi bands in the plaza, and vendors selling every variety of wine, spirit and warm spirits with milk. I really enjoyed the tradition of the monstrous fireworks creations that were lit off at one corner of the plaza – the more sparks, spinning, and bangs, the louder the cheers.

In the morning, women cooked traditional Moromoreñian food on rocks over open fires. Flat breads of fermented wheat and cheese (Ichaska), wheat soup (Lagua), and sweet charque (dried beef) empanadas were the fare. We hosted a booth at the fair, held in the new coliseum. We had soil and compost samples from various fields, and were highlighting the connections between organic matter in the fields, reducing chemical use, water quality, and latrines. The highlight was getting people to look at the composted human manure and imagine the value and possibilities of using it to fertilize crops while at the same time protecting human health with latrines. We let them weight themselves to determine how much fertilizer they could produce in a year. FUN!

The revelry continued into the night, but Cassie and I called it quits about 9pm. Something about screaming in Spanish over the music in Spanish really wears the brain out.

Farmers are the same the world round.

2010-05-13T10:07:00.000-07:00

So it seems that old farmers are the same the world round. A new friend was showing me his old truck, the first and only one he’s ever owned. He’s over 60 now and told me how he bought it when he was 18, and still single mind you. Of course he added: “They just don’t make them like they used to.” He showed me where he broke the frame hauling too many rocks, but luckily he had just learned to weld, and had it fixed it short order. He said all he’s ever had to do was add grease and replace tires. 100% true – it went just like that – but wait, we were talking about his WHEELBARROW!

Another video!

2010-05-02T19:46:00.000-07:00

We also celebrated the near-finishing of another water project in another community. The family we were with this day had just seen their faucet running for the first time, and their very cute five-year-old was so ecstatic that she was putting on all kinds of shows for us, including the one in the video. Later she insisted on washing everyone's dinner plate, which she marched proudly to the faucet and washed while making goofy faces and laughing.

Here's two of the kids of the household and their house. They're holding Flat Stanley, a paper doll thingy that we were taking along as part of my nephew's 2nd-grade class project.

The kids again (the 5-year-old's name is Leidi, pronounced "Lady"). Very cute. They're standing behind a fondo, a big cast-iron pot used to make chicha.

Mother and baby trying out the water at the new faucet.

Andy and his dinner (also featuring Flat Stanley).

And while we've got him with us (and because we couldn't share this one with the 8-year-olds in my nephew's class), here is Flat Stanley obediently NOT urinating right here.

That's all for now! Good night!

Video! Andy getting down with his bad self:

2010-05-02T18:21:00.000-07:00

Yay! We recently completed a project in which we worked with two families to pipe water from a spring to their houses. So, of course, we had to party, which led to Andy dancing, or something like it. His partner is the woman of the house, who later in the evening laughingly told me that she probably should be worried about becoming lazy now that she doesn't have to carry her family's water from far away (doubt it, since other work she has during the day includes carrying wood so she can cook three meals for her family and whoever is working with her family, doing all the washing, and, oh yeah, also doing almost all the same work that her husband does in their potato fields and markets). The guy at the end of the video had decided the world needed to know his name, so he's shouting it at me and the camera.

Here are some other fotos of the celebration:

Lest you think I wasn't getting in on the fun.

The parents of the families and us at the spring. About 10 seconds later we were shaking out beer bottles and spraying foaming beer all over the place.

I didn't know this girl's name five minutes before, but her parents had left the party for a minute and she somehow decided I was the safest one to latch onto. Perhaps, compared to the rest of the partiers, I just looked pretty tame and cozy in my tan sweater and brown shawl (it was cold).

Other than dancing, this is what the party involved...a lot of people sitting around talking and pouring eachother beer or chicha (fermented drink homemade from corn).

April: celebrating, saying goodbye, and seeing cool stuff.

2010-04-07T10:29:00.000-07:00

Hello friends and family,
The first week of April has been so jam-packed with work and play and other things that we feel like it should already be May.

First, we finally reached a point in a project where we can say, "Done!" This is a first for us, even after 7 months in our assignments. In spite of what seem like huge accomplishments in getting water, latrine, and agriculture projects off the ground, only one of them has been taken to completion, and it was one that was half-finished when we got here! We mentioned in a previous post about the 100-or-so latrines in the area that were built a few years ago by a business but that are completely useless, due to missing and poorly-made parts. Well, two community groups are now well on their way to finishing the job, and our first finished product was the latrine for a school in one of those communities. Here is the bathroom the kids were using (or not using, because they were too scared to go in it):

And here is what they have now!

The kids enthusiastically report that it is "very easy!" which I think means they like it.

We also got to help celebrate the completion of another MCC project in the area. Our boss and our boss´s bosses came up to visit us and celebrate as well. We all trucked down to Pampa Negra, a small community in our county where our co-worker Juan has worked for two years to help build systems to capture water from roofs of the 16 homes in the community. The area is basically a desert, with some "rainy seasons" only bringing two or three showers. The people used to use water from the river, which is often turbid and salty. Here is Juan showing a before and after sample:

And our boss's bosses cutting the ribbon:

And Juan's son José toasting to a job well done:

And of course there was food! This is a wheelbarrow full of raw goat meat. Oh yum! (Actually yes, it was very yum after it was cooked.)

The party to celebrate the finished project was, sadly, also to say goodbye to Juan and his family. After 10 years of MCC service, they are moving back to his wife's hometown to raise vegetables and, I imagine, enjoy a slightly more hospitable climate. Best wishes - the newly small and childless Moro Moro team will miss you!

After our visitors left, we enjoyed approximately 3 hours of rest before we went back to work, and we feel like we have been working our tails off since. Thankfully there seems to be a reward for all this work around every corner. Yesterday we were laying pipe (me) and building a filter (Andy) for one of our new projects. Last night, after what seemed like an entire day of lugging heavy things up and down muddy hills, we came back to one family's home to find the women of the house hovering around their outdoor mud oven. We hadn't stood there two minutes when Sélida, the mother of the group, pulled dozens of steaming hot, delicious cheese-corn tamales out of the oven. THEN, her husband, son, and daughters started loading huge pans (metal hammered into a pannish shape by herself, of course) of bread out of the kitchen to be baked. Because it was getting reaaaaally chilly, her 5-year old grandson then started stoking a fire using the ashes they had pulled out of the oven, so we all stood around eating fresh bread and tamales and warming our dirty feet by his little fire (wish we had pictures of this!).

To finish up, here are some other cool things about April so far:

Hammock time (not much yet, but quality):

This frog we found on our patio table:

(We think it used to live off the bugs that hung around the light that Andy moved from its former position near our lemon tree to light our table.)

The discovery that oat fields viewed from a certain angle sort of look like green water:

A link to the MCC website featuring an Easter article written by our co-worker, with a podcast of The Old Rugged Cross sung in Spanish by Andy's former Spanish teacher:
http://mcc.org/stories/podcasts/easter-song-bolivia

Thanks for joining us!

The yapa - more pictures!

2010-03-15T10:05:00.000-07:00

The two guys on the left are the leaders of two new water systems. They have been so pro-active about getting things done that we love working with them. Here they are talking with Andy and a woman that built a system last year with our predecessors. She is explaining how things work so that they have a better idea of what they're building before we start.

Here's Andy working on a latrine in a different community. A big group of kids came to watch and ended up helping a lot. The project started a couple years ago, when the municipal government hired a business to build a latrine for each family in this community and five others (something like 100 latrines all together). However, the business left the project only partially finished. Some of the beneficiaries didn't get anything, but almost all of those that did receive something were left with a latrine whose floor looks like this....
when you really need a hole more like this...

Needless to say, trying to get bathroom products through a hole the size of your fist is just going to result in a huge mess, so we're trying to figure out how to make 100 poorly-made latrines work.

As usual, I was doing all the heavy lifting (just kidding!!). But I am looking pretty tough digging this hole, which will be used to filtrate the liquidy stuff.

And my favorite...

(signs in funny English are one of my absolute favorite things about living in a foreign country...is that insensitive of me? Also, why is the golfer standing on a lizard?)

That's all for now! Peace.

Long Weekend

2010-03-15T09:11:00.000-07:00

March 8 marks 6 months in Bolivia for us, and many things that should be mundane are starting to feel normal. Shopping for groceries happens on Sunday and at times involves a visit to the grain mill. We’ve gone clothes shopping (including trying things on) in a tent on a busy street, and generally done lots of things that seem ho-hum but would have blown us away 6 months ago.

We celebrated the occasion with a long weekend in Samaipata, a touristy town about half-way to Santa Cruz (5 hours by bus). It’s the closest place to get really good ice cream and we enjoyed a few days of just being gringos instead of “the gringos.” There really is quite a difference. We stayed in a 10-room hotel and were amazed to meet people there from Israel, Chile, Argentina, Germany, and Canada.

On the way there we paused for a moment of reflection and awe – the bus leaving Moro Moro the day before us fell off a bit of a cliff.

The rains have been so strong that the roads are in rough shape, and as this bus allowed a larger truck to pass, it pulled a little too far to the side of the road. We had a quite a few friends on the bus, but what a miracle – no one on the bus received life-threatening injuries. We were a bit amused as the other passengers on our bus, for lack of anything else to say at the time, kept murmuring “pobrecitos duraznos!” or “poor little peaches!” The top of the bus is usually loaded with fruit going to market, and this one was no exception. The police officer you see investigating the scene enjoyed a few peaches while we gawked.

We made it to Samaipata safe and sound and set about being tourists. We signed up for a hike in the nearby Amboro National Park. The parks here are just a bit different than parks in the states. This National Park has a private sponsor - this one happens to be supported by Shell Oil company. There are international laws that if a company is involved with on-going environmental damage, they must pay reparations in some form that supports nature preservation. Shell chose to create a national park in Bolivia. It’s absolutely beautiful, though there are lingering questions about the methods used to create the park (kicking people off land that may have been used by them for generations in order to make a people-less space). The lease is up in a couple years, so we’re in the awkward position of hoping that Shell continues to pollute at least a little so that support continues for the park….hmm...

We had a nice 4-hour hike with a pair of Germans, led by a Dutchman, and conducted in English: truly an international experience. We started at a golf course and descended into a river valley.

We saw a lot of unique plants and got to be surrounded by the iridescent “blue morphus” butterfly. We hoped to, but didn’t really expect to see, the very rare Grey-spectacled Bear that is at home in the park. Here is the before and after of a “mimosa” plant. When you touch the plant, the leaves immediately retract in defense - very cool:

You can see me here trying my hand at being George of the Jungle on the vines.

The vine is unique because, when its bark is cut, it emits a liquid that looks and acts exactly like Elmer’s glue. Here’s me after 15 minutes of drying – pretty well stuck.

Just before the end of the hike we came to a swimming hole where water rushes into a pool, which we could ride just like a water slide.

We enjoyed the rest of our time in Samaipata just relaxing, chatting with interesting strangers, and eating good food. I got introduced to “pique macho” – an amazing blend of steak, sausage, french fries, and sautéed veggies and hot peppers all drowned in a salty sauce. Cassie found a Snickers bar and was pretty excited. She even shared some with me, but then lamented about not having bought two of them. All in all it was an excellent get-away!

Blogs of friends

2010-03-07T09:38:00.000-08:00

Good news. If we can´t quite meet your fix for news of adventurous young couples, we want to introduce you to a few of our that headed out on MCC assignments near the same time that we did. There is a new list of blogs at the right side of our blog page that will link you to their writings. Often I find reading their blogs that we´re experiencing many of the same feelings and experiences even though our contexts are quite different. Enjoy!

Friends are like peaches. (I haven´t figure out the punchy ending to that one, but I know I like them both.) Surely I could relate this to canning, as in storing up the love for when friends are

Andy

(Almost) All pictures!

2010-03-07T09:27:00.000-08:00

Hello all. We've been accused of being a little too wordy in our blogs, so here's one that's almost all pictures (with some pretty wordy captions, but that's it!). Enjoy some photos of our most recent work and miscellaneous.

Andy is very proud of his new look. Check out the Vallegrandino hat. I think it looks pretty good, but am not too fond of its smell, which is something like sheep manure.

Here I am, in a very pretty field of oats.

This and the following few pics are of work in Lagunitas, one of the communities we're working with to make a water system this year. This is Andy, two of the beneficiaries, and their nephew, "preparing to work," which involves stuffing coca leaves into their mouths until they have a nice little ball, and apparently for these guys, also taking swigs of very strong sugar cane alcohol.

And even the fact that I was wielding an azodón (giant hoe) and digging around to prepare the work site did not dissuade them from their special obligatory man-time. This is what our feet looked like after just a few minutes of work. Mmmmmud!.

Getting ready to pour cement to build the wall that will eventually retain water from the spring, which is that kinda hole in the ground type thing there to the left.

Pouring cement.

After a few days, the wall had dried, and we came back and covered the area with rocks and cement to keep dirt, leaves, and dirty surface water out.

In another community, a woman and her three kids planting pasture grass that will (hopefully, and after some time) grow, collect eroding soil, and form a terrace to protect the field from further erosion.

And just for fun...a truck occasionally comes and sells chicken (the live ones, with feathers and beaks and stuff). I guess the best method of transporting them is to tie them upside-down from the bars in the bed of the truck. Unnecessarily cruel? I thought so, but it's apparently normal to everyone else. Interestingly, a live chicken costs about the same as one that you don't have to kill and feather. I guess freshness drives a premium?

That's it! More next time.

Peace.

What´s my role?

2010-02-27T05:27:00.000-08:00

The Mennonite Central Comitte has sent us here to ¨demonstrate God´s love by working among people suffering from poverty, conflict, oppression, and natural disasters." We are charged to create "mutually transformative relationships" That sounds great on paper, but when we're all covered in cement and the beneficiary of the system comes up with an idea completely contrary to where I was going.... What do I do? What’s my role?

We’re constantly referred to as tecnicos, which means I should have some technical knowledge of what we´re doing, and comparatively I usually do. I have read the books on building latrines, pouring cement, and design of water systems. I’m even building a dry latrine and roof-capture water system in my patio so that I can daily interact with the technologies that we’re advocating. However, the way they get things done here often gets the best of me. What’s my role?

As foreigners coming in with our light skin, resources, and college degrees (masters is finished now!!), we by default get to make a lot of decisions. To initiate a water system, the people come to us seeking resources and guidance. What should be my role in the water system? To make sure every part is up to code as the book would have us do it, or to give them ownership in what we’re putting together so that years down the road when something breaks, they have the confidence, the knowhow to fix it themselves?

I hate doing more in one step that might lead to even more work for me or someone else in a future step. I would often rather sit back and think about how to solve the problem than try something that might not work – when I was building my electric car you could often find me on a Saturday afternoon sitting in the truck, pondering where that 18th battery was going to fit… But when the cement is drying or people are supporting a heavy weight and the work has to be done, what's my role? Do I spend time trying to get my ideas across to save them labor or do I accept their ideas, and use my imagination to understand how everything will be just fine with their idea – it almost always is.

An example – We were putting the roof on a latrine – 3 sheets of fiber-cement and the owner had the idea to drill all the holes before we put the sheet of fiber atop the rafters. While I’m no carpenter, I can usually hold my own with handtools, but as I looked at the materials we were working with, I knew it couldn’t be done – with warped tree branches for rafters, we just couldn’t be exact enough for all 6 holes in the rafters to line up with all 6 holes in the fiber board. So I protested, but with a quick look from Cassie, held my tongue from saying anything further. And I was right, we had to redrill 2 holes. What would my further protest have gained? Maybe saved 5 minutes of pleasant work, and the educated guy with the resources got to force his decision. As it was, the owner saw that we had to re-drill, and made the decision on the next one to wait until the sheet was up to drill the holes exactly through the material into the rafter.
I could go on, there are plenty of examples where I’ve assumed I knew best, but luckily held my tongue at the right moment to both give the person ownership in the project, and often learning something myself.

The one additional complicating factor is that there is a pervasive mentality that no project will succeed without resources from outside the comunity. I often observe problems with simple solutions using the resources that are already in place, like simple maintenance, but the people would like a grand solution with bricks, cement, more technical thinking. We try to combat this tendency with more capacitation to fix the problem with the reources available - but that sometimes takes a lot of time and depends on the community all pulling in the same direction - not always easy.

So I´m learning that at times I do need to speak up and protect the resources entrusted to me and aid in the capacitation of the community to fix problems themselves long after we´re gone. But if it's just a matter of a little more work to give them the chance to steer the resources, the fruit of which they’ll be living with, sometimes I need to just be quiet, work and learn.

Carnaval!

2010-02-27T05:04:00.000-08:00

Hi all, we are finally rested up after Carnaval. It´s of course the holiday to celebrate the day before Ash Wednesday and lent – and in general Latin America knows how to party on Mardi Gras like New Orleans only wishes it could. For the holiday our sleepy little town swelled to triple its normal size – 3 visitors came up from Santa Cruz to add to the fun for us and to escape the city where Carnaval can get a little out of hand.

On Sunday afternoon, there was a parade of 8 floats that went around and around the town plaza for over an hour. Parades for Carnaval include an element I´ve never seen in a parade before - the people in the parade and the crowd are involved in a waterbaloon and spray-foam fight the entire time. Each group of 30-50 folks decorated a truck, and danced behind it to the tune of their own mariachi band. A couple groups had horse riders running about and attempting tricks. One guy had a guitar that he would play intermittently when he wasn’t making his horse rear up on its hind legs. Other riders were trying to get their horses to do the same with the only effect of really scaring us that were sitting on the curb. There were prizes for the best float, best dancing, and best music. We got invited to share in one group’s prize of 50lbs of potatoes and 5 lbs of cheese.

On the second day, the drinking really got going, and each group that was in the parade danced around town as people sitting at their houses offered them drinks for a little performance. It was a little crazy for us, so we headed out to Nathan´s place – the other worker in the Moro Moro that lives about 8km away. You see us here on the way out of town stopping at the basketball court with probably the best view in the world - looking out to the West over the Andes. We enjoyed a nice hike and some quiet before heading back to the ruckus. You canLater in the day a band of 30 folks mounted on horseback were running through and then out of town, only to come swarming back through. It really felt like an old Western town for a while – cars were cleared out of the parade route and the smell of hot horses and leather would drift through now and then.

On the third day, things were quieting down, so we walked out of town to enjoy a ch’alla (party to bless the purchase or achievement of something) for a cow barn that MCC helped build. The chicas from Santa Cruz were getting all the attention and could hardly rest between songs, as the suitors lined up for the next dance. The mariachi played and the milk (with a little spike) flowed freely. The tradition of a chálla involves a couple hours of drinking and dancing followed by a blindfolded expert searching for the right spot to dig a sacrificial hole by walking around with a machete until the earth “draws it in”, and then digging a hole and adding food, coca and alcohol, for the PachaMama’s blessing (mother earth). The highlight of the party was the topping of this hole with a rock. As soon as it was time, people chanted “have the Macho do it.” So they put a leather rope around the neck of the guy who served as the expert earlier, and walked him over to a rock. The macho got down on his hands and knees, and with the help of another guy to hold the rock on his back, proceeded to buck his way across the field, with the owner jerking the leather rope. The mariachi started up again and we danced over the spot, avoiding the cow poop, and called it a day. Our visitors went home with a nice hat won with a kiss and a shirt from one of the dancing group earned with a shy “maybe” when he wrote his phone number on the pocket.

It’s quite a time to be alive in BO!

A week in the life...

2010-02-08T08:18:00.000-08:00

Hello friends and family, Cassie here.
After a few phone conversations with family in which I couldn't think of any news to report, and then looking at my calendar which already has most days this week filled up, I decided to write a post to give you all an idea of what it is that we do with ourselves all the time.

Sunday:

a.m. meeting in a community about an hour's walk from Moro Moro. My role will be to discuss how to advance on a project in which 27 families want to build dry latrines, and hopefully to plan a workshop on homemade fertilizer. Mostly, though, I will be trying my hardest to understand what on earth is going on, as these people know each other really well and seem to understand even when three people are talking at once.

Afternoon on the square helping with the church bake sale. Also, we're hoping to track down three or four different people who usually come into town for market day so we can plan different work project's throughout the week.

Monday:

Trip to Vallegrande (nearby larger town) to do the following: waste hours on the internet (first priority, of course); visit electric company to figure out options for running electricity to a water pump that will serve 7-8 families with water; visit local agricultural research organization; do some shopping at the hardware store.

On the way to Vallegrande, we hope to find the leader of one of our water projects so we can arrange sand delivery.

Tuesday:

Cassie to a community called T'arco, where we have funds to do a water project this year but have only begun planning, then on to another nearby community where we're trying to get to the pipe-laying stage of a water project. In the afternoon, I hope to meet with some local high school kids to talk about plans for an eco-challenge competition that they thought up and want to hold in April. I also need to talk to a guy from another institution that works in the area about finding chickens to buy so that some folks can cook for a workshop we're hosting together in two weeks. Andy will be doing some agri-stuff all day.

Wednesday:

Both us of are going to separate locations to help some folks with their latrines. I'll go from there to another community to try to gently explain to a guy why we cannot pretend his neighbors don't exist and exclude them from the water project we were planning to do for him. It will probably not be fun for me.

Afternoon meeting with some folks in town about the local library. We're also hoping to convince the school director to let us organize some field trips to take the kids to see various sources of water problems in the area.

Thursday:

We're crossing our fingers for this day. We have plans to cap a spring in a community where there's been some conflict between the future beneficiaries and people that own the land where the spring sits. The agreement is written and signed, and on multiple different occasions we've been told by the owners that they're all for it. Then, yesterday as we sat eating our lunch an old lady who is among the group of people who owns the land approached us and told us that she'd changed her mind and said over and over again "I'm not giving it to them. It's not to my advantage." Then, we talked to her son the very next day, and he said go for it. So....we're not really sure what to do with that yet. Considering that the lady's daughter and four small grandchildren are among those that stand to benefit, and that the community will probably use about 20% of the water that's available even in the dry season, we're having a hard time being understanding of her concerns. All I know is that we will probably leave the house that morning with knots in our stomachs, anticipating a struggle. We'll be praying that both our Spanish skills and persuasive skills hold out for this one.

Friday:

No fixed plans yet, but this evening a group of 4 young women will hopefully arrive from the city to spend the Carnaval holiday with us. They are MCC workers who volunteer for a year of service. They're about half-way through their terms and want to see Moro Moro and what we do here. Hopefully we can show them a good time.

Saturday:

Peach harvest! A farmer that Andy has become friends with invited us to help him and take home as many peaches as we can carry. Hopefully with our four visitors we can do some serious harvesting.

As we've already come to expect, maybe about 60% of these plans will actually come to pass. We'll let you know how it goes!

Where am I from?

2010-01-30T07:16:00.000-08:00

Andy here,

De donde es? Where are you from? We hear this question quite often, but I´ve yet to settle on a rote answer. It can be a disheartening question, as it reminds us that we truly come from worlds apart, or it can be a great entry point to find common ground between us. One bright note is that one time this question was followed "Spain?" I took this to mean my Spanish was improving... Whenever we´re together, Cassie and I always fight to answer first – her instinct is to say Oklahoma, mine, Iowa.

Iowa has so many vivid points in my mind, I can talk about the cold, the agriculture, the rural people there. The things I care about now came alive in me in Iowa. The people love hearing about U.S. agriculture and the huge machines – I love to bring up the Iowa special feature in the newspaper of the new 48 row corn planter that can put seeds in the ground at over 85 acres per hour. The people just laugh, imagining having 80 acres (average is about 10 here) and planting it in an hour. I usually try to bring the discussion full circle by talking about the downside – the price of machines, subsidies, and fighting wars to keep access to oil so we can eat.

The things I like to talk about, I just don´t know about Oklahoma. It’s not that I don’t love Oklahoma or the wonderful people there, it’s that when I lived there, I wasn’t paying attention at all to the things that are important to me now. I´ve called Oklahoma home for most of my life, but what I was seeing of the world was mostly from the windshield of a garbage truck or under the hood of a car. I might as well have called that home – wherever I happen to be with the hood up (which would be a lot of places with the cars I’ve owned).
It´s striking to me to think of this transformation, how 2 ½ years changed my identity. I sit back and wonder how I´ll see myself 3 years from now. I´ll never say I´m from Bolivia, but certainly the process is repeating itself and I´m awakening to new interests and I´m lookling at life differently after 4 months.

So, where am I going with this? I´m getting more and more ideas about the life I want to live for the future. I want to have what I see in some of these folks - attachment to the land that comes from time spent getting to know it and nurturing it to provide sustenance for generations to come. Industrial agriculture has been criticized as having the success of one farmer being dependant on his neighbors going out of business so that he can expand and keep his economy of scale improving. Agriculture here can have the same effect as lack of knowledge and resources on how to keep farmland thriving drives people from their homelands to live in the cities. We´re working to bridge that gap here in Bolivia and provide some technical assistance and motivation to make the effort needed to preserve the lands and a rural livelihood here.

While agriculture here is far from perfect, we are seeing examples of people deeply devoted to their land and choosing to some extent the riches of community and a peaceful life over material wealth. I´m bringing what I´m learning into my dreams for the future. With some of what we´re learning, and more inner peace that doesn´t need material things to quench our thirst, I think we can be happier rooted in place some day. I don´t know if this is mutually exclusive to my desire for adventure - that will have to be worked out...

Thanks for reading my ramblings. We´re overwhelmed with new experiences almost daily, and this is my attempt to make sense of it all. With my thesis finished and approved, I can finally turn my thoughts to more important things...

Here´s a song from one of our favorite bands that gets me in a farmy mood...
Finders and Youngberg - Roots Run Deep

Sucre trip

2010-01-17T13:13:00.000-08:00

Last Monday I traveled with two teenage girls from Moro Moro to Santa Cruz. There we met up with a teacher and three students from a Santa Cruz high school, as well as two other MCC volunteers, and we all headed to Sucre together to attend the third International Congress of Young People in Defense of Water and the Environment. Our students had all prepared a brief presentation: the Moro Moro girls wrote a general description of sources of water contamination in the Moro Moro area and potential solutions, and the guys and girl from Santa Cruz prepared to talk about their experiences in raising awareness about various environmental issues across the city. I´m pretty sure none of us had ever been to Sucre before, and I know that the Moro Moro girls had rarely traveled out of the department of Santa Cruz, so we were all pretty excited about the trip.

Tuesday: boarded a bus in Santa Cruz at 4:30 p.m. Rode all night (with one eating break and one bathroom break)

Sorta cruddy picture of Sucre from a few kilometers off.

Wednesday: arrived in Sucre at 7:45 a.m. Organizers from the Congreso were there to herd us into taxis and get us to the Villa Norita, a nice bed and breakfasty type place with a meeting room big enough to fit the 70 people who attended. The Congreso started mid-morning Wednesday, so we were all pretty ragged and gross-feeling most of the day. The first events were an opening prayer session and talks on water as a human right, including some pretty powerful statements about the necessity to completely change our society´s way of being and thinking, especially the need to stop thinking about everything--especially water--in terms of economics. During the very first session (the prayer), they called for two members of each delegation to come talk about what water means where they live. Somehow I got chosen to represent our team, so I had to say something pretty profound in Spanish with about 3 minutes of prep time. I think I managed okay, and all the North Americans there told me later they were jealous of my Bolivian accent, which I didn´t really know I had.

After a heavy afternoon of lectures, we hung out over dinner and volleyball games with our group and with other people from the U.S., Peru, and various cities in Bolivia. I was a bit confused at first because very few of the people who were talking and running things were what I would call "youth." It turns out that, in Bolivia, youth can apply to anyone under the age of, say, 45, or older depending on the person.

Thursday: Presentation day. Each group gave 15-minute talks about their experiences and then answered questions. Both our groups were among the youngest that presented, and both did well. My girls were even more composed than they had been in any of our practice sessions, and they even ventured to answer some tough questions.

Friday: Feria in the plaza of Sucre.

All the groups presented graphic displays of their work. Here are Silvia and Judy, the Moro Moro girls, with their displays.

The fair also involved whatever schemes the different groups thought up to attract attention to their booth. One of our guys, Oliver, is really good at stilts, so he brought them along and walked around all day dancing with ladies and patting people on the head (see pictures).

Juggling was another favorite attention-getter, although less popular than the guy on stilts.

Also on Friday, we took a guided tour around Sucre and saw 500-year-old buildings, spectacular views, and a replica of the Eiffel Tower (which moved a lot when you climbed up it).

Our tour guide.

And then, because we hadn't quite had enough, we danced the night away. First a band composed purely of different sized drums and hand-made flutes played some tunes to get us going. Then, each group participating in the congress presented a dance from their region of the world, some of them including elaborate and beautiful costumes, and all of them well done. After that, they put on song after song of the kind of latin american music that you can't resist, and the dance floor stayed full until 1 a.m.

A group from Peru getting ready to dance.

Potosinos/as getting ready to do the miner´s dance (see previous post for video).

Saturday: Reluctantly, most of woke up early to close out the congreso with discussions about what conclusions we'd reached and how we could proceed from what we'd learned. Bolivian democracy, while to me still frustrating, is at least....well...seriously democratic. Therefore, it takes a long time. We missed our bus out of town by something like 3 minutes and had to pile into taxis to chase it down. Thankfully, we made it, but not without a lot of shouting and running and shoving money into taxi drivers' hands. The first stretch of the ride home passed fairly quickly. When we weren't sleeping, the younger members of our group were playing music on their cell phones and either singing (if the song was in Spanish) or begging me to sing or translate (if the song was in English). I finally gave in a thrilled them by singing along with Avril Lavigne's Complicated. They thought it was so great that they made me sing it twice.

At about 5 a.m., the bus stopped to let folks use the bathroom, which turned out to be wherever you could find one in the dark. I stumbled off the bus half asleep and apparently wandered pretty far looking for the perfect spot, because before I was done I heard the bus engine revving. I instantly became wide awake, realizing that all my companions sitting near me who might notice I was missing were dead asleep, and I hadn't said a word as I crawled over them to get out. With visions of a dark night spent wandering alone along that road with 50 Bs (6 dollars) in my pocket, still hours from anywhere where anyone knew me, I sprinted toward the bus while still trying to get my pants in order. I saw as I emerged from the bushes that, thankfully, the bus wasn't moving yet, although I was pretty sure that if it started to pull away before I got there, it would be too dark in the mirrors for them to see me. However, none of my fears came to pass. I bounded through the open bus door to find 5 or 6 Bolivian men waiting for me with laughing faces. Apparently they had known all along I was still out there and decided to have a little fun. One of my fellow travelers had noticed I was missing and was banging on the door to the driver's cabin, but (I assume as part of their prank) they pretended not to hear her. Thankfully, the rest of the trip went a little more smoothly.

2010-01-17T10:37:00.000-08:00

Hi all, Cassie here.

While Andy´s been slaving away back home in Moro Moro, I´ve been hanging out with really cool people and talking about water issues at a 4-day conference in Sucre, Bolivia. I´ll post pictures and stories from the trip in the following post. For now, I want to share a video I took during the cultural night held the last night of the conference, where members from several delegations shared a dance from their country or region. This dance was performed by some young men and women (most still in high school) from Potosí, Bolivia, a city famous for being the center of mining in Bolivia.

Due to a lack of memory on the camera, I only captured a little bit of the dance. Just after I stopped recording, all the men made some actions like they were falling down, then sat on the ground for a minute or so while the women danced slowly around them. Then, after they got up again, the music suddenly picked up, the guys threw down their tools and grabbed the girls, and starting dancing all happy and festive. I learned that some of the young men had already spent time working in the mines, and they said that, as you might expect, it´s very hard and dangerous work.

Mining was a commonly-talked about subject at the conference, mainly concerning its contribution to water contamination around Potosí and other cities in the Andes. In spite of the dependence of Potosí workers on the mines for employment, these guys spoke out strongly and passionately against some of the mining activities that are especially polluting. They also put a lot of effort into presenting this dance. I can´t claim to understand the whole message they´re trying to convey here, but I do know that the lyrics of the song they´re dancing to are pretty powerful. I´ll do my best to translate them:

The words that are sung in the video:

Para el minero no hay justicia
para el minero no hay perdón
para el minero no hay justicia
para el minero no hay perdón.

Antes tratan, de callarnos
con fusiles y metrallas
antes tratan de callarnos
con fusiles y metrallas.

For the miner there is no justice,

for the miner there is no pardon,

for the miner there is no justice,

for the miner there is no pardon.

Before they try to silence us

with guns and shrapnel,

before they try to silence us

with guns and shrapnel.

Words spoken (you can hear this at the beginning of the video):

Pobre de este minero
que ha fuerza de combo y cincel
va forjando el futuro de Bolivia.

Poor man this miner,

who by force of cask and chisel

is forging the future of Bolivia.

Y estos gringos del estado
que no quieren comprender
no valoran ni la vida
que se deja en esta mina.

And these white men of the state

who don´t want to understand

they will not even value the life

that is left in this mine.

Mucho tiempo
hemos mantenido ha Bolivia
ahora quieren desintegrarla
cual cambas y collas
Bolivia es una sola.

For a long time

we have held up Bolivia.

Now they want to disintegrate her.

Which cambas and collas? (names given to those of the east and west of Bolivia)

Bolivia is one.

Food

2010-01-08T07:21:00.000-08:00

Last night we received an unexpected visit from our local nun. She had heard we liked celery and brought us some from her garden, along with some beets with tops. This resulted in a late-night cooking event that inspired me to share with you all some food experiences from rural Bolivia.

If I´ve come to any conclusions about food in our short time here, one significant one is that I´m very disappointed in the nature of food laws in the U.S. They have kept me from experiencing so many types of food preparations, and from learning all sorts of ways of processing and enjoying food. As we sit enjoying the internet connection (which we trekked two hours on a motorcycle in the rain to get to), we are also sipping raw, room-temperature milk from the metal water bottle we carry with us. Women with 20-or-so-gallon jugs were selling it on the street for about 50 cents a liter. In other words, they milked their small herd this morning and brought the milk straight to town to sell, and so we have no fear that the milk is anything but safe (if you don´t believe me, read just about anything that talks about milk safety that´s not printed by the USDA, or ask your grandmother how they used to do it back in the day). The first few times I tried raw milk (all here in Bolivia), I had to adjust my expectations that milk should always be cold. Now I´m wishing there were more dairy cows around Moro Moro so that the good stuff could be a larger part of our diet. As it is, the only milk we consume regularly is either from powder or on a visit to the home of someone who happens to keep cows. Last week, for instance, we dropped in to talk to a family in the countryside, and got a bowl of curds and whey (the real thing!) in return.

We´ve also experienced ways of eating meat that are probably illegal in the U.S. We often see pork hanging on what look to us like clothes lines at people´s homes. The result of this drying process is called charque, and, when done right, is delicious. On the other hand, at times I appreciate that back home you can pretty much predict and understand what you´re eating. One day last week we were served a piping hot plate of fried egg (yum!), noodles and potatoes cooked in lard (also yum), and - "hey, what´s that?" - "ummm...is that skin?" Yes! It was pig skin, including a layer of fat and the little stubs of hairs that didn´t come out when they were butchering the animal. And guess what? I ate the whole thing!! Not bad, really, once I decided to ignore the hair.

In general, our food life is really not so adventurous. Several people in town make delicious bread (all the same kind more or less - flat rolls made by rolling a dough ball made of white flour inside a dough ball made from wheat flour), and we usually eat bread, fruit (so far usually papaya, plums, or watermelon whenever someone brings us one from the lowlands), and tea made by simply plopping a few mint leaves from our garden into a hot cup of water (thanks to whoever planted and cared for this extremely productive mint plant, by the way). If we´re at someone´s house in the campo around mid-morning, we are often fed then as well. Sometimes this is api (thick drink made from boiled purple corn), other times bread and plums, and sometimes people get really ambitious and serve us a whole plate of something (eggs, potatoes, noodles, perhaps). Lunch in the campo is often a similar type of plate or a soup of chicken and potatoes (noticed the potato theme yet?), always with a bowl of mote (boiled corn) on the side. If we eat at one of the restaurants in town, the plate always includes rice and "salad" (chopped tomatoes and onions), and the meat portion varies among pork, chicken, beef, and lentils cooked in various ways.

At home in the evenings we generally cook however we know how and with whatever we can find. A lot of things are the same as before. Onions, garlic, tomatoes, vegetable oil, margarine, flour, sugar, baking powder, and various other staples are readily available. Right now we have so much spinach in our garden that that has also become a staple. Cheese is available but quite different than what we´re used to. I love it, can´t resist cutting off a chunk and snacking every time I see it, and will probably miss it some day. Andy is undecided.

Most of the things we do without are treats. There´s no ice cream here (not enough milk production in the campo, and no refrigerated trucks to bring it in), and if we want a cookie or cake that tastes good to us, we usually have to make it ourselves. Other things that would have to be refrigerated are also unavailable, so no store-bought juice, sour cream, or yogurt that hasn´t been ultra ultra ultra pasteurized and mixed with equal parts sugar. There´s also no real butter, and a recent attempt to start using less vegetable oil and more of the real stuff (for various reasons that I will not explain here) has resulted in the purchase of a whole tub of pig lard. Mmmm. Considering the miles we walk in a week, I´m not too worried about vascular health either.

So, in other words, we really have nothing to complain about in terms of food. We are eating good stuff, and lots of it. We are also looking forward to learning how to do things like dry meat on our clothes line and somehow make pig skin edible, although we understand if none of you back home will ever be too excited about joining us for a meal of pig skin/hair and curds and whey. Blessings and peace to you all! For those of you in the frozen north, stay warm!

Christmas in Moro Moro

2009-12-27T08:03:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone, and Merry Christmas!
Well, it happened. Internet in Moro Moro is officially a thing of the past. The nearest working station is in Vallegrande (where we are now), a two-hour drive away. It´s amazing how strange it feels to not have the world at our fingertips just a short walk from the house. However, we´re not complaining, because this holiday season we´ve already received a half dozen calls from family to make sure we know that lots of people wish us a Merry Christmas. No doubt those calls were expensive, so we are extremely thankful to be in contact during the holidays.
Christmas in Moro Moro started Christmas Eve. Before that day, we had seen hardly any decorations, seen hardly any visitors in town, and heard hardly anyone talking about the holiday. There wasn´t even a tantalizing display of Christmas candy at the tienda! Due to this lack of external cues that we should be celebrating, we decided to get things started ourselves. We made a bunch of cookies, wrapped them in pretty paper and ribbon, and went to the homes of all the people we´ve met so far to deliver them. This process started the morning before Christmas Eve, and is still not completed. This is because every cookie delivery is accompanied by a 2-hour chat, which, if not adequate to boost our Christmas spirit, at least started to put us in a celebratory mood.
The first official festivity was a Christmas Eve mass at the Catholic church. The mass actually lasts from 9 to midnight, then most of the folks go home to a big family dinner after the service. We showed up at 9 (silly gringos), and the service started at about 9:30 with the singing of Christmas carols. Our favorite was Gloria en Excelsis Deo, which apparently has about 20 verses. It was our favorite because the chorus is the same everywhere, and we sang along all 20 times it came up as loudly as we could. I also noticed that most of the people didn´t know all the words to the songs and would kind of mumble the words they missed, so I started doing the same thing and was surprised to find myself not embarrased at all! We skipped out of the service early to attend a dinner in the house of a family that has been extra nice to us. That late at night, we were having trouble communicating in Spanish, so mostly what we enjoyed was the food and being around people who cared about us.
We woke up Christmas morning to booming and banging in the streets. Apparently all the kids spend their Christmas money on firecrackers, and the best place to shoot them off is in the ravine right by our house. We ate papaya for breakfast (a little too tropical to feel normal, but delicious nonetheless), then I opened my present from Andy. He got me a basketball so we can get some games going on the high school court. The only ball he could find with air in it has a giant picture of a nameless, angry-looking player dribbling on it. Kind of weird to put a basketball player on a basketball, but whatever. We had a big lunch, then hung out doing a puzzle with some of the neighborhood kids who kept wandering in our front door. More than twice I had to play the mean-lady and tell them to get out of my house with their lighters and bottle rockets, but it was fun anyway.
Christmas evening, one guy in town threw a huge party for about half the people in town (we haven´t figured out who gets invited and who doesn´t, but we were invited, so we went!). There was lots of loud music, food, dancing, and (too much) drinking. The host and a few friends kept coming around trying to pour us glasses, but we would just sip a little and offer the rest to the person next to us. I bet Andy said the word "poquito" ("just a little bit") about 30 times. He managed to drag me out onto the dance floor exactly one time, and I guess I can admit it was fun. We´re not sure what to do about drinking and dancing yet, so we didn´t want to overdo anything. It seems that about most of the people we meet think it´s great, and even culturally required, that we participate, but there are others that are against things of that sort, so we´re trying to balance that somehow.
All in all, it was a very festive day. However, I realized how tied to external factors (presence of family, favorite foods, certain decorations) that my feelings about Christmas are. I´m not sure what we´re learning from this experience yet, but it certainly has something to do with the realization that God --and the reasons that we celebrate things he´s done--should not be tied in our minds to places, people, customs, or culture (and certainly not to tiny Snickers bars with Christmas trees on them, which always put me in the Christmas spirit). We haven´t figured all these feelings out yet, but I guess you could say we´re thankful for the chance to do something different. Even so, I miss you all!! And I miss snow, and our family and friends, and everything!! Until next time - Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

2009-12-20T08:19:00.000-08:00

Hey Friends,

Well, it finally happened. The internet joint in Moro Moro closed it´s doors. It seems the advent of cell phones has dropped the traffic to the internet-based phone service, and there´s not enough traffic to keep the doors open for just the computer users. It´s now a 90 minute drive by moto (much more by truck or bus) to find internet. All this as I´m trying to finish up thesis work - I´ve got a Jan 11 deadline. I have submitted my final revision, we´ll see what they say...

But there´s good news! We´ve figured out how to call our cell ophone with Skype, so if you´d like to call us, it´s super simple, and only $.17 per minute. Donñt try calling from your phone at home without some sort of calling card - my brother and I had a nice conversation at over $2 per minute!

So, if you want to call and deliver a Christmas (or post-Chrismas, really, anytime) greeting, we´d love to hear from you!

If calling from skype (http://www.skype.com/) - make sure you ahve some $ on your account.
Click "call phones"
Use the drop-down box to find Bolivia (+591)
Enter our phone number - 73692060
Click "call"
Enjoy how much the world has shrunk with technology.

After a month of being on assignment, we actually accomplished some real work. We´ve certainly done lots of relationship building, learning, and talking, but boy does it feel good to have mixed and poured some cement and seen a physical object as our completed work. A big thanks to Brian and Krista, the previous workers for getting the ball rolling on this project. With the help of the owner and an albanil (is it the same word in English?? Bricklayer maybe) we poured a toma (water intake structure) and built a brick structure to hold sand as a filter. The location is at the Don Ephrain´s orchard, so his family and workers can enjoy water that doesn´t contain pesticide run-off, and doesn´t have dead rats floating and frogs swimming in the tank. They currently drink out of an irrigation pond - not good. Here´s pictures of constructing the toma.

As always, thank you all for your prayers, words of encouragement, and support. We´re definitely feeling the distance from family, friends, and all things familiar as we get into the Christmas spirit here. Until now, there has been a bigger focus on the high school graduation than Christmas. The graduation fiesta was last night, so now we can really get into the Spirit. I´m searching for Christmas videos here - tough to find.

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

Andy

Photos from Thanksgiving

2009-12-01T12:40:00.000-08:00

Marcinio - our Thanksgiving host.

We played too late chatting with family on Thanksgiving, and didn´t get the photos posted. Yes - Skype works here in our village - for now... We have learned the internet cafe is shutting down. We´re hoping to find a way to stay connected, but updates may be a bit less often for a while or from here on out.

A delicious and simple meal, enjoyed with a smile.

Cassie enjoying the relaxing day and ahard-boiled egg. It´s always a treat to meet the chicken who lent it´s offspring for your dinner.

Cassie rounding the las corner to the house after riding 20 minutes in a downpour wearing jeans and t-shirt.

Thanks for watching!

Andy

Thanksgiving in Bolivia

2009-11-27T17:40:00.000-08:00

It's the day after Thanksgiving. Normally we would be enjoying family, shopping, football, turkey sandwiches, and leftover pie. Most likely we would be feeling warm, cozy, loved, grateful, and of course full. Yesterday morning we woke up in Bolivia and realized that we would have none of those things this year. In fact, the fourth Thursday of November is just another Thursday in Bolivia, and for us, a day of work awaited us. An 83-year-old man named Marciano had stopped us on our ride home the day before and asked for help finishing his latrine that had been built by our organization, but wasn't quite ready for use. We had the next day (Thursday - Thanksgiving) free, so we said we could come then. As we've already come to expect, he told us he would make us lunch.

On Thursday morning, we left the house on two motorcycles (we were carrying a load of bricks for the latrine, and one moto couldn't handle all the weight). Partway through our ride, one of the motos refused to climb a hill, and we had to leave it and go together with only half our load of bricks. Like he said he would, the old man was waiting on us, and had already started preparing lunch in his one-room, dirt-floor house. By lunch time, we had worked up an appetite laying bricks and shoveling dirt. Marciano invited us in, laid a rug on one of the brick benches lining his room, and brought us our Thanksgiving lunch: one bowl of boiled, unpeeled potatoes, a bowl with boiled corn and four hard-boiled eggs, a pitcher of sugar water, and a bag of salt. Having no table, he laid all this on the floor, and we ate with our hands while he busied himself around the room, occasionally asking us questions about our home towns, and often saying "Eat! Drink! If you're still hungry, we'll make more!" Other than the conversation, the room was completely silent, and partway through the meal, when we had potato peels and egg shells under our fingernails, we both looked at each other and couldn't help but comment on just how peaceful, simple, and satisfying the meal and our surroundings were. Due to Marciano's persistent pleas that we eat and drink as much as we wanted, we both got full.

After lunch, Andy went back to work on the latrine, and I went with our one good moto to fetch more bricks from the broken one. It was a warm, sunny day, so I was wearing pants and a short-sleeve shirt. However, by the end of the 15 minutes it took me to get back to the other moto, it was cloudy and getting cooler. I hurried to load the bike, and ended up spending a good 15 minutes loading bricks, dropping the moto while trying to turn it around, unloading the bricks so I could pick the bike up again, and then reloading the bricks a final time. Just as I got on my way, I felt raindrops, and a few minutes later, it was pouring. Within minutes, my clothes were soaked, I started shivering, and my arms turned red from the raindrops stinging my bare skin. As time went by, the dirt road got more and more slippery, and by the end I was riding in first gear with my feet down, fish-tailing into town. I arrived back at Marciano's house to find both he and Andy peering out his front door, obviously anxious for me to make it there. Andy ran to help me inside, and when I came in dripping and shivering, Marciano came out of the corner with his coat and two old, torn-up blankets. Since I had basically no other option but to sit in my wet shoes and clothes, the guys piled the blankets on, and the three of us sat in the dark room listening to the rain. After a few minutes, Marciano stood up and said, "I'll make some food," as though this was the obvious thing to do when you're stuck inside anyway. I thought about my full stomach and started to protest, but he was already pulling out potatoes and peeling. Thirty minutess later, it was still raining, we were still cold, and my feet were freezing inside our backpack (Andy's idea to keep me from having to put them on the muddy floor while I tried to let my shoes and socks dry). Marciano poured us each a huge bowl of steaming soup made from ground corn and diced potatoes. The soup had sort of a brownish, gelatinous, and not very appetizing look to it. To our surprise, however, it tasted just like popcorn, and I felt warmer right away.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. The rain stopped, we finished our work on the latrine, said our goodbyes, and headed home on muddy but passable streets. As we laid in bed that night, we couldn't help but think about the simple things that made what could have been a miserable day into a day that was pleasant, memorable, and full of reasons to give thanks: new friends, work worth doing, basic food, old blankets, a leaky mud roof, and sunshine. Thanks to all of you for thinking of us and praying for us always, and especially during the holidays.

Santa Cruz in pictures

2009-11-10T12:05:00.000-08:00

Hello friends and family. It's been a while since we got serious about posting anything of real interest to you folks (that is, pictures). So, we devoted this weekend to a photo tour of Santa Cruz, the city that has been our home for the last month. We'll be leaving here soon to head back to Moro Moro, our little pueblo in the mountains. We've adjusted pretty well to city life, but are looking forward to more tranquil living. It's been very hot during our time here (summer is approaching, and Santa Cruz is in the lowlands), so we're also looking forward to chilling out a bit. Okay, here's a little taste of Santa Cruz:

Cassie hanging out on the yard of MCC's compound. When MCC arrived in Santa Cruz in the sixties, they built the buildings on this property, which is located just outside the first "ring" (Santa Cruz is organized in concentric rings - with the first ring being the smallest and nearest to the center. Each ring is maybe 1-2 kilometers outside the one before). At the time the compound was built, the road in front of it was unpaved, and the property was very close to the edge of town. Now, fifty years later, the radius of the city is 8 rings in some locations, and pavement is more or less constant from the center to just outside the fourth ring. Obviously, this geographic growth was accompanied by a major population boom that was (so we've heard) driven by migration from the then more densely-populated highlands of Bolivia to the lowlands, and particularly to the city of Santa Cruz. When MCC came fifty years ago, the city had a population of something like 50,000. We've heard current population estimates of over 1.5 million.

Andy and Cat, also hanging out on the MCC grounds. This is taken just in front of the Unit House, where most of our time is spent when we're on the grounds.

Cassie, suffering terribly.

The soccer field on MCC's grounds. In the background is the office of Centro Menno, the branch of MCC Bolivia that works with Low German speaking Colony Mennonites.

Andy and a really bulbous tree that I can never remember the name of.

Intersection near the indoor/outdoor market closest to MCC headquarters. In the background is a Micro, one of the buses you can hop for around 20 cents to get you around town. Some of them are shorter than this one, so us tall folks (people over like 5'6") have to crouch down for our entire ride if we don't manage to get a seat. This street, as packed as it is with people browsing the many vendors, is one of the main routes through downtown for Micros, whose drivers are quite skilled at squeezing through micro-sized openings.

Jewelry shops. Businesses here cluster together with others of their kind. So, it's normal to find 8 jewelry shops in a row followed by 8 paper shops in a row, followed by 8 fruit stands all selling the same types of fruit. This system has a lot of advantages, especially for us as newcomers. If we think one vendor's price includes a gringo tax, we know (and she knows) that we can just walk three feet and get another price quote!

Used clothing for sale. We have been amazed at the number of entrepreneurs in Santa Cruz. There seems to be widespread knowledge of how to start a business without investing much capital.

A store composed solely of things "as seen on TV." From what we can tell, the mail system wouldn't really accommodate a lot of on-line, mail-order, or TV purchases. So, some brilliant person opened a store to provide the masses with special space-saving clothes hangers and the like.

If you want to sell your house, by far the most common way to advertise your intentions is with spray paint.

A cell phone tower that someone decorated to look like a tree. We've been walking by this corner for a month and only just noticed it!

Cool statue: Andy was especially fond of this statue, as it was built out of plow parts and the like.

Newly-renovated public park. Here you can ride paddle boats, rent a three-person bicycle, and enjoy the very wild-westish murals seen in the background here.

Fence and gate typical of houses in Santa Cruz. Notice the giant spikes on the section of fence on the right, and the broken glass keeping intruders off of the section of fence on the left. EEK!

Giant house!!

Andy and Other Cat, hard at work. Which of them do you think understands more Spanish?

And...not quite so hard at work. Notice the "look, I WAS studying" pile of books next to the hammock.

Coming up next....photos from our armadillo dinner. Don't miss it!

Laugh with us

2009-11-04T16:32:00.000-08:00

Hey friends,

We are nearing the end of our time of language study, and are feeling more confident every day. Andy has received a lot of compliments from his teacher and other spanish speakers. He knew hardly any when we arrived, and he's carrying on entire conversations now. As you can imagine, he generally jumps into a conversation without worrying much about speaking perfectly, where I'm a little too cautious at times. People really appreciate when you just put yourself out there, and he's way better at that than me. He's especially made people happy with some of the blunders he's made so far. I'm sure there will be many more to come. Here are just a few highlights:

What he meant: Mis orejas están rojas. My ears are red.

What he said: Mis ovejas están rojas. My sheep are red.

What he meant: ¿Cómo fue tu viaje? How was your journey? (to our boss)

What he said: ¿Cómo fue tu vieja? How was your (old) lady?

And my favorite.....

What he meant: El gato está sentiendo a mis piernas. The cat is sitting on my legs (lap). (to our 65-year-old host mother)

What he said: El gato está sentiendo a mis piedras. The cat is sitting on my stones.

Life in Santa Cruz

2009-10-23T11:04:00.000-07:00

Hello all!

Cassie and I are almost halfway through our language classes, and it shows. We’re continually hitting walls and struggling to find words, but every night, we have more complex and fulfilling conversations with our host family. We’re staying with a widow named Consuelo. We’re getting to see middle-class life in Bolivia - very different form Moro Moro. This family has a car and a computer, and even a washing machine. They have traveled to other countries and watch cable television. In the countryside surrounding Moro Moro, we’re often asked what it’s like to fly in an airplane, and how much did my prescription eyeglasses cost. The people are curious and know so much more than I have ever known about plant life and our immediate surroundings, but experiences of technology and life as usual in the developed world is fascinating to them.

We have settled into a routine of language classes 4 days/week in the mornings, and work on thesis, homework, or other projects in the afternoons. I am within a week of finishing edits on my thesis to turn back in. Cassie received word that her publication needs some revision, so she’s hitting the statistical software with gusto to complete that. We’re in and out of the phase of needing a LOT of sleep. At first it was 10 hours EVERY night. At times it’s in bed at 9 and groggy at 8 trying to get out of the house for class, other times I pop up at 6:30 with my head clear.

On the days we don’t have class, we’ve been doing various activities to orient us to Bolivian life. Whether a tour of the city by micro (the bus system here) or talking politics with an American expatriate who’s been living here for 40 years, we’re feeling like we’re getting to know this culture more every day.

A few experiences really throw us for a loop – such as the micros (bus system) here. Not bad, just different we remind ourselves… There are 114 micro routes in/though this city of 1.5 million, and there are 11 different ones that will take us from our house to the MCC office – about a 15 minute ride. The micros have ~20 seats, and are all privately owned, at times by a company, at times by the driver. There are no marked stops, so you just flag down a bus, and ask “PARE (stop) POR FAVOR” if you want off. At times you’re stuck in traffic, and you just have to ask “PUERTA (door) POR FAVOR” and he’ll let you off to fend for yourself in the traffic. I find the incentives built into the system quite interesting. The owner gets to keep the money brought in above and beyond costs – so his goal is to get as many people onto and off of the bus as possible. That means they drive as fast as they possibly can, but if someone flags them down, HOLD ON! And if there’s a few cubic feet of room left in the bus, he’s glad to stop and let you attempt to squish into the bus. Then if someone from the back wants out – that’s another process. It ends up being a fairly efficient system once you’re on a bus, because you get across town in a hurry, but it’s at times uncomfortable. Some of the busses were not meant for tall gringos (not a derogatory term in Bolivia). At 5’8”, I have to shorten myself a good 8” on some micros. If I have to stand for the 15 minutes – ouch.

We haven’t taken any pictures since we arrived in the city – we’ve seen fascinating things, but have been travelling as light as possible. We’re getting more comfortable now and will probably get some pictures of life here uploaded soon.

If you're wondering about homesickness, we're doing alright. A friend just shared her load of downloaded Office episodes, and though we couldn't watch it Thursday night, like so many of you at home, we'll get a few watched this weekend. We're lucky to have lived a fairly transient life since we've been married - staying in the same zipcode 18 months one time. I think it prepared us well to make yet another break from the familiar. As we said a few times before we left - we look back on the road that got us hear and realize how good God is too have prepared us for each next step. We never saw the next journey coming until it was time, and we had been prepared for it. Thanks everyone for your support and chats. Skype is working well - add us to your list and we can videophone online - our username is andyncassie.

Now, if you'd like to eat along with our journey, give Masaco a try:

Masaco

Need:

½lb beef cut – sliced thin, not ground

2lb bananas or plantains

Salt

Oil

Fry the meat – really, over-fry it just a little so it’s just a little dry.

Fry the bananas/plantains. Get them really well fried too – just a little dry is fine.

In Bolivia, every kitchen I’ve entered has a “tacu” a hollowed out stump for use as a mortar-pestle devise – mostly for making masaco. You’ll have to improvise. What you need to do is crush the fried meat so that it breaks apart into little slivers.

Remove the meat from the crushing devise, and do the same for the bananas. Add a bit of salt as you crush, and add the meat back to the bananas as you get them smooth. Keep mixing until it’s of even consistency. Now add some of the oil from frying the meat into the mixture – mix until blended.

A few more ideas and a pretty bad picture here: http://www.boliviabella.com/masaco-de-platano.html

Enjoy!

10 things that are different

2009-10-12T11:00:00.000-07:00

We came up with a list of just a few of the things that are different here than in the U.S. These are just the things that are easily explained in a few short phrases, so just imagine that this is the tip of the iceberg. Here goes:

1. For folks with flushing toilets, toilet paper goes in the trash can, not in the toilet (so that pipes can be smaller).

2. Where there are buses, there are no defined bus stops, and no pull cord in the bus. You just have to say (loud enough to be heard, but not so loud as to be perceived as shouting at the driver), "Pare, por favor!".

3. Meat is sold outside in the open, not from your grocer's freezer.

4. Hair color is not something people talk about (over 99% of the people here have black hair, after all).

5. In the campo, animals are fenced out, not in. We've heard of men being gone from home for two days in search of a cow.

6. There are fruit trees everywhere. Mmmm.

7. Often, the bigger the store, the more expensive things are. The equivalent to Wal-Mart in Santa Cruz is where you'll pay the most for just about everything.

8. Goods are transported to small stores in plastic grocery sacks, not in nicely packed boxes. We helped a woman unload at her tienda a few weeks ago, and she had 200 pilfruit (little single-serve bags of yogurt mixed with juice) tied up in plastic sacks.

9. Instead of dispersing themselves like in the states, stores of one variety are all concentrated in one area of the city. (For example, there's a street full of pharmacies followed by a street full of photographers).

10. In the campo, if you visit someone's house, instead of offering you a snack (or nothing at all) like at home, you will likely be offered a large meal.

More to come!

First month in Bolivia

2009-10-09T20:19:00.000-07:00

Here are a few photos taken along our journey in our first month in Bolivia. If you notice that my cheeks get a little rounder as we go along, that's because Bolivians are very hospitable and generous with their portions.

Day 2 in Bolivia (MCC Headquarters, Santa Cruz): making lemonade. In the city, fresh fruit of all varieties is abundant and delicious. In Moro Moro, there are few fruits during much of the year, but Sunday's market will shine a little light on our kitchen each week.

Day 3: Traveling to Moro Moro. We're getting ready to cross this river for the second time. This was the unofficial detour around what could have been an hours-long construction delay.

Here are just a few of many livestock we saw on the road to Moro Moro (and just about every other road we've traveled so far).

Day 4 in Bolivia, Day 1ish in Moro Moro: Hike to a nearby high point. Here we're overlooking our little pueblo, Moro Moro.

Tomato and cheese sandwich with a view:

Is he carrying a sack of potatoes? Oh, nope, just a sleeping 2-year-old.

Day 7 in Bolivia: first real day of work (actually, watching Brian work): pouring concrete for dry latrine parts.

Day 9: settling into our host-family room in Moro Moro. Those are two kid-sized beds filling up most of the room. We slept quite comfily though, I must say.

Day 11: Visit to Pampa Negra, a community about 40 km from our pueblo. Pampa Negra is home to another family in the MCC Moro Moro team, where there's a large project underway to help collect drinking water from roofs of homes. Pampa Negra was hot, dry, dusty, and windy, but the people there produce some spectacular crops of various fruits, vegetables, and herbs by channeling water from the river.

Visiting the river in Pampa Negra was a great relief from the heat. It is also a likely place to find one's pig if it goes missing.

Fishing in Pampa Negra. The guys are each holding down a portion of a long net with their toes. Can you find the gringo?

The spoils of the guys' fishing efforts. Tasty!

Day 12: Wrapping up Pampa Negra visit. These trucks (camiones) are common people-movers around Moro Moro. This one is hauling a group of weekend visitors from Pampa Negra back home to the Moro Moro pueblo.

Going for a walk in the black hills around Pampa Negra. Walking on this volcanic-rock stuff must be similar to walking on the moon.

Day 14: Dry latrine workshop in La Tranca, rural community just outside of Moro Moro. These women cooked lunch and dinner for all the folks at the workshop. When they were taking a break from their full day of cooking, some of them also carried loads of adobe bricks to help build the base of the latrine.

Day 15: Birthday fiesta in La Senda, rural community about a 45-minute moto ride from Moro Moro pueblo. The woman in the middle was celebrating her 87th (or 96th, not sure which) birthday, and we happened to be in the area to enjoy a chicken and potato soup with them. The two guys are her sons.

Day 18: Visiting ValleGrande, larger town about 2-hours by camion or car from Moro Moro pueblo. Brian and Krista showed us around as they bought supplies for our next water project.

Something like Day 21: Commencing spring capping in Duraznito, rural community about a one-hour moto ride from Moro Moro pueblo. It was cooooold this day, and Sylvia, whose house we were visiting, is a wonderful cook. We arrived at about 9 am, and about 15 minutes later she served us our second breakfast: fried eggs, tomatoes, boiled potatoes, and noodles cooked in some kind of oil that makes them taaaasty. This particular day we visited several families, and each fed us this much food.

Andrés, very proud to be hauling a large board on the back of the moto, made me take this picture before I climbed on. We made it all the way home without knocking over any burritos (baby donkeys).

Day 23: El Alto Veladero, rural community just a 15-minute moto ride from Moro Moro pueblo. These folks recently requested we visit them about a new water system project. The day we arrived, they were drying pork on their clothesline. Andy was so fascinated by this that he asked (in halting Spanish), "Can I take a picture of you and your meat? It's beautiful!" They not only allowed the picture, but also sent us home with sausage, some dried meat, and some skin (not really my thing, but supposedly it's good fried).

Thanks for looking! We just arrived in Santa Cruz today, and will live in the city for over 4 weeks studying Spanish. Our next month's photos will be something totally different!

Life in Moro Moro, Bolivia

2009-09-21T17:34:00.000-07:00

Moro Moro is both a town (pueblo) and a district. We live in the pueblo, which has a population of about 500 people (although we've heard drastically different numbers than that). In town there is a high school and an elementary school and a health clinic with a pharmacy, nurse station, doctor, and dentist. There are two churches: one Catholic church, which resembles small Catholic churches you might find in New Mexico, and a protestant church. Services in the protestant church are held in a room that fits about 10 8-foot benches and a little stage and pulpit. Like many buildings here, the church has a dirt floor and adobe walls. Roofs are variable - we have seen many people replacing their mud roofs with red clay tiles, while other folks have tin metal roofs. There are also multiple tiendas (small stores) in Moro Moro. In fact, there are two just on our block, two on the block where our hotel room is, and one down the block in the other direction. The tiendas are basically living rooms of people's homes that have been stocked with basic food items, bathroom and kitchen supplies, and a few toys and tools. We are told that the same supplier stocks all the tiendas, so you can walk up to any tienda and find basically the same items and brands. What's even more interesting is that you do not walk into these tiendas, but instead stand at the door and ask for the items you want. This is particularly a challenge for those of us with limited Spanish vocabulary, but so far we've been able to manage. For the next few weeks, the couple we're replacing is still living in the house we'll move into, so we're living in a hotel room. The owner of the hotel and her daughter serve us lunch and dinner every day. Moro Moro Bolivians eat more than we're used to eating: lunch is usually a large bowl of soup and another large plate piled with food. Yesterday the second plate had a mound of rice, a mound of lentils, and a small pile of tomatoes and onions, all topped with a plate-sized piece of breaded chicken. For most folks, dinner is very small--perhaps just bread and fruit--but until a few days ago our hosts fed us as much at dinner as at lunch. We finally realized that we couldn't keep eating so much, so I asked our hostess if we could just share a plate. I was worried that would be rude, but she just laughed and said that would be fine. She and her three children have been very patient with our Spanish. They speak no English, but each night we've managed to sit and talk with them for two hours or more. I'm afraid we're getting spoiled, because they all speak very clear Spanish, while many of the folks we'll work with speak less clearly and with many more Quechua (an indigenous language) words mixed in.

The district of Moro Moro has, I think, around 3000 people, many of whom live in "communities" of different names. These communities might only have 3 or 4 homes, and the homes might be fairly isolated from each other, but the area is given a name and called a community, I'm assuming so that people know how to describe where they live. Life in the campo, or the area outside the pueblo, is fascinating to us. Last Tuesday we drove to a home in the campo to start work on a latrine and finish up some work on a spring-fed water system. The house was 45 minutes from the pueblo on dirt roads that would be called 4X4 trails in the U.S. We got there in a small Toyota station wagon. Driving through the campo, we were surrounded by mountains on all sides, but instead of being places where only wild animals and trees live, the mountains here make up the homes, pastures, and farm fields of many people. It is a strange sight to look up the face of a steep, rugged mountain and see potato fields on the slightly less steep parts and fence rows running straight up even the nearly-vertical mountain faces. We often encounter cows, horses, and donkeys on the roads that we've traveled. Last Saturday we hiked to the top of a ridge that had spectacular views of the surrounding valleys. However, even the ridge top had a small wheat field and half a dozen cattle. I can't get over how weird it is to encounter farms on the tops of what to me are huge mountains.

People in Moro Moro are quite reserved. Most speak softly and don't go out of their way to introduce themselves or start up a conversation. However, no one ever passes you on the street without saying hello, good morning, or how are you. Andy and I and the couple who were here before us (who are leaving soon) are the only foreigners in Moro Moro, and so we attract a lot of stares. This has been pretty unnerving to me, but after just a few days the folks on the couple streets we walk down the most have already become much more friendly, and they smile and say good afternoon instead of staring. Kids stare the most, but as soon as one of us says hello or good afternoon, they immediately smile and say something back to us.

So far we've filled our days with work on latrines and water systems, spanish studies, conversations in spanish, and meeting the folks in town that we'll need to know to carry out our work. We usually finish dinner and chatting with our host family at about 8:30 at night, then we have a little time to read and talk to each other before we crash at 9:30 or so. Sleep comes easily when you have to concentrate intensely just to talk to people.

Andy got a good introduction to the motorcycles this weekend. One broke, and our boss drove another up from the city, just to have it also refuse to start the next day. There's a "mechanic" in town, but he appears to know maybe slightly less than Andy does about engines. Andy and Brian, our friend here, spent an entire day Sunday working on the moto, and finally got it working perfectly in time for a busy work schedule this week. They're awesome! We had our first ride together today. There are lots of hills so steep that we both have to lean forward to get up them (or, we could "use our feet" as Brian put it today). Tomorrow we'll help with a workshop on building and maintaining latrines, and the rest of the week will be full of water systems work. We're getting a great introduction to our work, and our Spanish is coming along nicely. We still feel pretty out of sorts physically and emotionally, but everyday it gets better. We miss lots of people and things already, and are already looking forward to family visits! Thanks for all who are thinking of us and praying for us. It's difficult to contact you all directly, but just know you're appreciated. Peace!

Here, safe, and only a little bit confused

2009-09-10T08:59:00.000-07:00

We're here! For now, we're in Santa Cruz, the big city where MCC has its Bolivian headquarters. We arrived yesterday morning after an exhausting flight, but very few troubles. We made it with all our luggage, my guitar and Andy's trumpet all in one piece, and having gotten at least some sleep on the overnight flight. Andy was delayed for a while in the immigration office. He paid his entrance fee too early, and the official didn't remember getting it and had to recount all the day's money to make sure he had enough money for the number of visas issued. It took a long time, but he finally made it through without having to pay another $135!

Our first impressions of Santa Cruz were that it's a very bustling (read hectic and confusing) place. There are no lines between lanes, but somehow all these thousands of cars manage to avoid bumping each other. The rule when merging or turning is "bumper first," meaning, if you can get your bumper in front of the guy next to you, you have the right-of-way. Supposedly this will make sense to us eventually.

We will only be here in Santa Cruz until tomorrow morning, when we'll be driven by other MCC workers up to Moro Moro, which is the small town (about 500 people) where we'll eventually settle for good. However, this time we'll only be there for about a month before returning here for language training. We are going there now to get some overlap time with the folks we are replacing, who will return to the states in early October. Apparently they have lots of interesting things planned for us, including a day of fishing in a river that's so muddy that you only have to hit the fish with sticks to catch them. Sounds like fun....I guess :).

We're not sure about our internet connection for the next month, but hopefully we can post pictures of our house and the town at some point after we arrive in Moro Moro.

We may have been overdoing the communication since we got here because we were so excited to have a reasonably fast wireless connection in the house where we're staying, but that might change soon!

Twas the night before departure...

2009-09-07T21:42:00.000-07:00

Cassie here:

Sleep? Nah. Let's update the blog instead.

Tomorrow is the big day. We depart from Tulsa at 9:50 a.m. We've said a lot of goodbyes already and have a few more to go. I've said goodbyes to all my family, and so the past 48 hours have felt like one punch in the stomach after another. It's amazing, though, what a major life event can bring to your attention. I always knew that my family was a ton of fun, full of love and support (along with a healthy dose of sarcasm, competitiveness, and constructive(ish) criticism), but our leaving has, of course, made all of those things seem so much more precious than ever before. And is it possible that, just in the last few days, all our nephews and nieces became about 2 ounces sweeter and cuter than just a few months ago, all our siblings more wonderful, and our parents wiser and kinder than ever before? Well, perhaps not, but I will say that I am grateful for the new insights into our relationships here that this move has brought.

Anyway, enough mooooshy. Here are the facts: we will (Lord willing) land in Santa Cruz, Bolivia around 8 a.m. on Wednesday. Some very competent people, who have planned our first days in Bolivia, will pick us up from the airport, and we'll spend two days in SC doing basic orientation, meeting folks, and getting used to being in a foreign country (during these few days we expect to have access to reliable internet, and should be able to post and inform you all that we're safe, sound, and not experiencing any culture shock, adjustment anxiety, or homesickness of any kind...right?). Then, we'll pack up and be driven to Moro Moro on Friday, where we'll meet Brian and Krista (the couple we're replacing), and possibly be placed with a host family. For the following few weeks, we'll be learning our trade from the folks who have been doing it for the last few years, as well as learning the basics of life in Moro Moro (where to find food, how to go to the bathroom, where's the bumpin' night life, etc. etc.). Oct. 7 is the beginning of a retreat for all MCC service workers in Bolivia. We'll attend that, then go back to Santa Cruz for intensive language study for some undefined period of time, before settling in Moro Moro for good.

Here's a photo to give you some idea of the cuteness we're leaving behind. This doesn't even include all the wee ones, and doesn't include our wonderful siblings and parents.

Thanks to all who have given us words of love and encouragement. We absolutely could not handle all this change without you.

Less than a fortnight

2009-08-27T08:17:00.000-07:00

Andy here:

So many updates! I spent the last two weeks working literally 18-22 hour days hammering out a master’s thesis, and got it turned in last Friday. I didn’t think I was on a trajectory to finish, but a lady I respected but had never met had the courage to lecture me for 10 minutes at our garage sale about how I WAS going to get it done, and lit the fire under me to make it happen. I owe her a debt of gratitude – truly a God thing!

We had a garage sale and got rid of most of the stuff in our lives. We packed up our remaining belongings, and besides our heirloom dining room table and chairs, everything fit on a palette four feet high. Part of this journey is letting go of some of our security, and this has certainly been a test, but we’re already a couple weeks on the other side – no bed, no dishes, no car, nothing to maintain and hold on to, we’re feeling very free to look outward.

All is set for leaving for Bolivia on Sept. 8. We are enjoying our last 2 weeks in the U.S. spending time with family and friends. We’re trying not to let our desire to spend as much time as possible with everyone stress us out and ruin the time we have left, but it’s not easy.

Palabras (Cassie speaking)

2009-07-17T15:40:00.000-07:00

Grateful...filled...blessed...ready...anxious...

These are a few of the words our group used to describe our feelings today, the last day of our orientation with MCC. We've been here two weeks, and I can't describe the blessings we've received from the people here. Many are in similar positions in life as us, and others have had more experience with overseas work, mission work, and/or life in general, which means we've had a lot to share with each other and a lot to learn from each other.

I've been on the verge of tears most of the day because I am constantly in awe of the love I feel radiating from all the people around me. It makes me think that just by sending these people out into the world, MCC is creating a better world. However, a dinner conversation brought me back to reality, and to the fact that, for most of us here, this may be the last time for a while that we're in a place that feels so safe, and we may be moving on to places where war, poverty, and oppression have stripped people of the luxury of loving openly and vulnerably. I am grateful for stories that describe people who, even in the midst of such circumstances, show great love to others, and I can only pray that I would have the strength to look outward in the midst of war, poverty, and oppression, rather than holing up to ensure my own survival.

On a more informative note, we're leaving Akron, PA tomorrow (Saturday) to go back to Iowa. Andy has a lot of work to do on his thesis. He's hoping to have a solid draft done by the time he leaves Iowa in late August. There's been so much fun to be had here that he hasn't gotten to do much here, but he's got a good 5 or 6 weeks to plug away at home. I've got to wrap up some last minute details on my thesis and turn it in next week. I'll be working on things for my professors until August 15th or so, then heading to Oklahoma for some family time. THEN, September 8, we go! Our plane tickets were purchased today. That means, my friends, that this is official.

Welcome

2009-07-14T14:01:00.000-07:00

Hello friends.

As many of you know, we'll soon set out for a three-year term of service with the Mennonite Central Committee in Moro Moro, Bolivia. The more we talk and think about what's to come, the more excited we become, and the more we look forward to experiencing whatever is about to come our way. That said, we're also growing more and more aware of the deep connections we have to family and friends in Iowa, Oklahoma, and other places where life has carried us/you, and we hope those connections do not get broken as we build the next phase of our lives in another hemisphere. Hopefully the stories we will share on this page will help us keep those connections strong. Thanks to our friends and family for the many ways they've encouraged us in the process so far. Much more to come...