June/July in photos

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

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

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.

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!

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:

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.

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!