What´s my role?

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!

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...

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?

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

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.

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

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!