Life in Santa Cruz

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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.