La Vida Tranquilla

 

Well I must be becoming a Bolivian without even knowing it because I promised a entry in the “near future” and it has been close to a month. The integration process must be working. Really I have just be busy and maybe a bit lazy. I don’t know how much Bolivian news makes it to the mainstream media without actually searching for it but on May 4th was the vote for “autonomia” in the Santa Cruz department. Autonomia means basically that the departments want to have there own type of government that would give a little more power over their own resources. Basically, it would be equivalent to the state rights that we have in the United States. Right now a majority of the money made in natural gas and oil goes to the federal government. It is not that they want to separate and start their own country (though there are extremists). The problem with all of this is that a lot of it is fueled by racism. I don’t know if I talked about this but there are Collas and Cambas. The collas have more  indeginious and are usually poorer and live in the “altiplano” and “valle” regions. Here in Santa Cruz it is the heart of the “camba nation”. They tend to have more money and lighter skin but these of course are not always true. The people who live in the campo of Santa Cruz are just as poor as people in other departments. On May 4th Santa Cruz had a vote for automonia. Peace Corps anticipated problems in my site which is pretty politically active, and where both Collas and Cambas live so something was bound to happen. A couple blocks from house in a school there were voting boths set up. I live in a “barrio” where mostly Collas live. So the Collas being against automonia went to the school and tried to close it down. I guess it worked my host-parents could not vote because of this. The Cambas caught wind of this and sent people to open the school up. Well naturally they started fighting… throwing rocks and dynamite as the paper here called it. They were really just big firecrackers but of course the paper always has to spice things up. During all of this I went on a non-formal tech exchange to another volunteers site (whose host family has three little kids) near Yacuiba in the the Department of Tarija about five minutes from the boarder Argentina. 

This is one of the kids.  The picture is blurry but I still like it, read her shirt… we had to translate it for it but it is fitting being in the Peace Corps.

Yacuiba is in the region they call the “Gran Chaco” which is basically a big flat dry sort of dessert like. With that I will just say that it is hard to explain. The Chaco spreads down into Argentina, Paraguay and I like a small part of Brazil. The Chaco people are pretty awesome, they are the horse riding, big hat wearing (not a cowboy hat like you are thinking dad), mate (there should be an accent of the e so it is pronounced ma-tay) drinking culture. During my time there I did all those sans the big hat wearing. With the mate they just have one glass, which is made out of a gorde and a special metal straw. They just fill it up with mate, water and a spoonful of sugar. There usually one person who is in charge of serving everyone by adding the water and spoonful of sugar each time and a bit more mate when necessary. Also they “clean” it, this is basically just pouring water on the tip of the straw hoping that it is hot enough to disinfect. We went horseback riding, something which I have not done it about five years so it took a bit of getting used to. We went riding through what they call the “monte” (add the accent on the e). Which is basically a super dense forest. It was interesting seeing all the different types of vegetation there and we also spotted some cool birds including a toucan. On my last day in the Chaco we had a “churrasco” which is basically a type BBQ. Here they don’t have the Matchlight coals like in the states they just use straight up raw natural coal. They don’t go all crazy with seasonings and spices here only salt and lemon, but wow is the meat amazing. That churrasco ranked in the top three of all the meat I have ever had. Since it was a tech exchange I actually did do some work too but that is as interesting. So I guess that this is the upside when there are political problems in Bolivia. I did not really talk much about Dengue Fever experience. I started to get sick when I got back to Cochabamba and had just basic cold symptoms. I did not go to the doctor because I figured it was just something that work pass. My host parents in Coch asked me if I drank cold lemonade in Santa Cruz. Of course, I did. They told me that was reason I got sick, because I drank cold lemonade on a hot day more specifically as I found out later drinking anything cold on a hot day will make you sick. I just sort of shook my head in agreement. If that was the case I think more then half the worlds population would be sick at one time. It is hard to talk about and explain these things to them and basically tell they are wrong. Throughout the whole Dengue experience I could not really sleep or eat anything (I lost 15 pounds) besides Aleve every 2-3 hours. That was about the only way I could really function and by function I mean just sit in class and think about how much this sucks. I had to take my all my “final exams” in this state…not fun. You have to pass all of these tests the be a volunteer. After my technical exam I got dropped off and had about 10 minutes walk to my house and just about pucked the whole way home. Through all of this I did not know I had Dengue, they kept testing for stomach worms and/or bacteria but they never found anything. I finally developed a body rash and had a blood sample sent to Santa Cruz (they don’t test for it in Cochabamba because you can’t get it there). There is really nothing they can do about it anyways so I guess it really didn’t matter if I knew or not. This have been going pretty well in my site, I have just been putting in the time to get to know everyone and understand them. That has been the hardest part. Here in the Santa Cruz they speak Spanish like everywhere in Latin America but it is what I like to call “sock-in-the-mouth” Spanish. It may not be politically correct but it is true. They don’t pronounce the letter S especially at the end of words. The s usually gives the words and sharp sound but when they not use it, it leads to a sock in the mouth sound. An easy example is “mas o menos” it is pronounced phonetically in English “maws o manos”. Now take off the s in each word and you have the Santa Cruz accent. Poco a poco…little by little. My Bolivian work partner thinks and I should get a Bolivian girlfriend. He says I will learn faster with a “Spanish tongue”.  Everytime he introduces me to someone new he will say this is Brandon and he is looking for a Bolivian girlfriend. He does even though he knows that I already have a girlfriend.  For all of those who are curious, here she is.

No not the one with the crustache and goatee, that is me. She is the blond one on the right.  Her name is Catherine and yes dad she is a Peace Corps ¨gal¨ (sorry Bolivian beauties). She grew up in California near the boarder so she needless to say her Spanish is way better than mine. She went to Berkeley where she majored in Economics, her concentration was the ¨Political Economy of Industrial Societies¨.  Sorry for the wait in between updates and hope everyone is enjoying the $4.00 per gallon gas prices and the sunny weather that summer brings.

Address Update

Click on the B in Bolivia tab and my new address is there. I have been very busy moving my stuff from Cbba to Santa Cruz. You have to ship everything by bus and then hire a taxi to move it out. I have it pretty easy since I am taking over for a volunteer and he is giving me all his stuff but other people have to get a bed, mattress and other big stuff like that. It is a still a royal pain but life goes on. I promise a real update in the near future. B

So it is offical

Today we have our swear in where we are officially volunteers in Peace Corps. I have finally be feeling better since my site visit. My site visit went well except for the fact when I return I came down with Dengue Fever. Read up on Dengue it sucks…  but I guess that is one of the downsides of living in a sub-tropical region. Needless to say it lasted through my birthday so it was not the most pleasant birthday that I have ever had. Not much to report but I have finally added some pictures so I hope you all enjoy.

An update finally…

We got back for tech week just in time for Good Friday and Easter. Since a huge population of South AmericaS are Catholics they take their religious holidays pretty seriously. A majority of people say that they are Catholics but they never go to church or do anything remotely religious except those all important holidays. At one resturtant we ate at, there was a picture of the last supper and directly under it was a topless women posing for a tool advertisment… ironic? On Good Friday I was eating breakfast and and talking to my host sister about Good Friday meant to them and she was explaining how they eat 12 plates of food, one for each of Jesus’ disiples. As I was enjoying my meat (a rarity for breakfast)and bread she then she told me that they don’t eat meat (except fish) on this day.I then asked her why was I eating meat, she then told me that I was not Bolivian… I think she meant to say Catholic. Now the funny part about all this is that I have had meat probably three times for breakfast since I have been here, and they happen to feed it to me on a day when they don’t eat meat. Well, their loss is my gain… meat for breakfast!

For tech week we went to the department of Santa Cruz and it was absolutely beautiful. Just in the trip to Santa Cruz the diversity of Bolivia is stunning. From mountian tops to jungles, you can’t ask for much more… expect better roads. Only about five percent of the roads in Bolivia are paved so it makes for a long bumpy ride. We returned Thursday at 10 at night and we left at 8 in the morning. The kicker is the trip was only about 200 miles.

There are several reasons why most of the roads are not paved reason one… there are a ton of landslides that are constantly taking out the road, and then it can take days for them to fix it. Tip number one to help fix the Bolivian economy… improve the infrastructure. The is a problem because the goverment does not have a lot of money mainly because no one regulates the collection of taxes. Basically there is no type of IRS. I am not sure about business taxes but for personal taxes there is no way to record your purchases anywhere especially the local market. The only place where they have any sort of recording is at somewhere advanced like a supermarket where they have computers, but the problem here is only the rich people can afford to go there. The goverment gives everyone a number and then they type it in when you buy something at the supermarket. Then you are supposed to pay your taxes every year like a good citizen. How many of you would pay your taxes if no one was there to regulate it? As you can see there is a huge problem with the tax system in Bolivia and therefore I have to endure 14 hour bus rides that should take 3-4 hours. On the bright side this gives me more time to enjoy the scenery. On Monday I will find out where I am going to be living for the next two years. I have been reading the site descriptions for the last week but it is sort of hard to judge a site based on a page of information. We vistied some of our sites over tech week and even though they were all in the same department they were all so very different. Our trainers and the head agriculture boss make the final decision based on a variety of factors but one thing I do know where ever I go it will be hot. I just hope it does not get too hot, my gringo skin can only take so much. Since I only have about a month left I should probably tell you a bit about my host family. My host mom Bertha is a traditional Bolivian woman also known as a “cholita”. She is a housewife but she does a lot of work in the fields and she is pretty much in charge of the household like most women in Bolivia. My host dad is gone about 90% of the time. He works in Santa Cruz where he can earn a lot more as a driver. He only comes home for holidays and the kid’s birthdays. He has also spent a year in Spain so they could build their house. The family owes one car an old school Toyota Corrola hatchback… a real beater. It has been modified from a right hand driver to a left hand driver. All the guages are on the passenger side but it really does not matter because they don’t work anyway. Then on the drivers side you have the steering wheel and pedals… it is a real beauty. The Toyota Corrola hatchback is probably the most popular car on the road in Bolivia. Since Bolivia is a natural gas rich country many of the cars and trucks run on natural gas. Since my family has quite a bit of land by this I mean about 3 acres they have people help them work the fields. Now these people are extremely poor. They have about three people that help them at different times and all there them are interesting to say the least. One of the guys only has one eye and a couple teeth and I can barely understand a word he says when he talks to me. The other guy is pretty friendly but has some sort of jaw problem so he jaw is way off to the other side. The last is a Chinese guy that they call “Chino”. Basically that is like using the persons nationality as his name. So if you had a Mexican working for you you would call him Mexican instead of his real name… a tad racist don’t you think. The interesting part about this is the guy will not ever talk to me or look at me. If he sees me in the street he will either cross the road or he will stop and turn his head in the other direction when I get close. It is pretty bizarre. Grab your map of Bolivia (just use map quest or google earth) and get ready to see where I will be headed for the next two years.

Last Monday we had our site anoucements. I got my first choice but there were others who were upset to say the least. Yours truly is headed to a little community called Muyurina in the department of Santa Cruz. It is not a typical Peace Corps site. When most people think of Peace Corps, they think of little huts or adobe buildings with thatched roofs. I definitly think that I am cut out for that but I think this site has a lot to offer me. The reason that it is an atypical Peace Corps site is because it is a fairly urban site. The community itself is only 1,000 people but it is 500 kilometers from a city of 85,000 people called Montero. I will actually be living in Montero. A city of 85,000 people in Bolivia is extermely different then in the states. It is so spread out and three story buildings are pretty rare to see. There are several cool things about it. One you can see sloths in the main plaza… Bolivia is big on plazas. Also it is only 45 minutes from the city of Santa Cruz, one of Bolivia’s largest city with over a million people. I don’t think this will take away from my experience, but only enrich it. After all I am still doing development work in a third world country, I will just have a more comfortable living then most volunteers. Not to mention an internet cafe is only five minutes away, now it is just a matter of writing a blog entry in a timely manner. I left Sunday to spend a week a my site to get a feel for what I will be doing and to meet my Bolivian counterpart. I will mainly be working with the “Instituto Superior Agropecuario” which is an agriculture university. Right now I am in the middle of my site visit. The current volunteer named Jeffery and I visted the university on my first day on Tuesday and met a majority of the important people there. He will be leaving about a week before I get here. He introduced me to my new host family that I will have and showed me around Montero. He did some great work at Muyurina I can hope to continue and expand on what he did. The university is not like American universities, for one it is a technical school and there are only 100 or so students but along with the university there is also a high school and grade school so there are quite a few people running around all the time. The students at the university spend the first part of the day in the classroom and then after lunch there do their hands on work. The philosophy at Muyurina is “Aprendemos Haciendo” We learn doing. There achieve this on 400 hectors with all kinds of projects ranging from worm production to goats and everything inbetween. The cool thing about it too is they make money from all this stuff. The students have the oppurtunity to learn about the various animals and then when they are raised they sell them. With the milk that the dairy cows produce they transform it into various products such as ice cream and yogurt at their lab and then sell it. Muyurina is a good fit for me because there are plenty of oppurtunities to expand as well as the improve the management and collaberation between the different entities at the university. On an ending note one thing about Santa Cruz is that it is flipping hot and humid down here. They say that you get used to it after a while…I sure hope so.

hum…

So last week I have my blog prepared and ready to update… with pictures this time. But of course something bad had to happen. For one for some odd reason I could not get the blog to copy online and then I left my flashdrive and the internet cafe. When I returned less than five minutes later it was gone. That is the second one that I have lost since leaving home but it is alright I am saving up my meager wages to buy another one. I will borrow someones and update as soon as I can. In the meantime I added some other people´s blogs. John and Sarah are a couple from Seattle and John takes some amazing photos as well. If you go to their site and click on ¨PHOTO LINKS¨ near the bottom of the page there are some great pics of Bolivia. There are two others, Andrew and Lebo who are in the agriculture program and they can give you a more indepth look at what I am actually doing in Bolivia besides modifying my sandals. I know my site but you will all have to wait for my next blog (it should be soon) so I can explain it in depth. Also if you look under B in Bolivia you will find my address but don´t send stuff to that one because I am going to be moving soon. Hope all is well. Brandon or as my host family calls me Brando.

Life goes on in Bolivia.

We are about half way through our training and next week we start our technical week trip. The agriculture group is going to several towns in the Santa Cruz department. This is one of the departments or states in Bolivia that have jungles, so it should be an interesting change from the “eternal spring” of Cochabamba. Cochabamba is a huge valley so the city is extremely but still I am living in the Andes at about 8,000 ft. You can take a four hour non-technical trek to the top of the highest peak surrounding Cochabamba and be standing at a little higher than 15,000 ft. It is hard to fathom that you can be higher than anywhere in the continental United States in a fairly simple four hour hike. A couple people in group plan on doing it before training is over, we just have to get some spare time. About a week or so ago the agriculture group went to a place called Tortora, an old Spanish colonial city, for a couple of days to do some work with the production of bees. I won’t go into detail but bees are pretty amazing. The interesting thing about these bees is that they are all killer bees. It sounds pretty intimidating but they remain calm unless they are provoked. There were some bees at the training center before our group arrived and some kids threw balloons over the wall and aggravated the hive and they attacked and killed a couple full grown sheep. We wear all the protective gear so no need to worry, it just adds to how amazing these bees are, not to mention that honey straight from the comb is simply amazing.

I know tax season is rolling around and some of you will end up paying the government which in turn is paying for me to be here. I just want to thank all the U.S. taxpayers who have allowed me to be down here. All joking aside it is not that much at all. I get a whopping 17 Bolivanos aka B’s a day which is equivalent to $2.26 for miscellaneous stuff and my family gets 31 Bolivanos ($ 4.13) a day which includes three meals a day and a place to stay. That is actually good pay too. That comes out to about $2,372 a year, so I hope being down here is it worth your tax dollars. That should give you some idea to how much things cost down here. When we go out to eat most people spend about 2 dollars and get more then enough to eat. It can be easy to get carried away when buying stuff because it is so cheap but you have to remember that you are getting paid in B’s not dollars. I bought a pair of sandals that and all the campesinos (people who live in the countryside) wear for 3 dollars. These sandals are made out of tires and put together with nails (literally) so they last forever. I upgraded to the leather ones for about fifty cents more. Needless to say, with the tire bottoms they are not “bouncing soles“ like Doc’s so I decided to modify mine so they would be more comfortable. I separated the leather from the tire bottom, dug out the inside of it and cut a Dr. Scholl’s insole that I brought from the States to fit. A little glue and a few nails latter and I have a sandal that looks exactly the same as the campesinos but with the comfort of a modern day sandal. How the campesinos wear those things day after day year after year is beyond me, but it is just like eating potatoes every single day with lunch and dinner… it is a cultural thing. One cultural thing with my family is that bathroom situation. We actually have a flushing toilet but I am the only one that uses the thing. The rest of the family goes out back and uses a hole in the ground. They have the option to use a flushing toilet and they use a hole in the ground?

This last Thursday two other volunteers and I had to go to a Bolivian school and set up an appointment to do a non-formal presentation of something in the agriculture sector. We got there and it was their recess time. It was pretty crazy, kids where runnings around everywhere, then we had to go into the director’s office to talk with him and there were all trying to catch a glimpse of the gringos. We had the oppurtunity the talk with a group of 8th graders. We introtuced ourselfs and then asked them what they wanted to learn about agriculture. The first kid raised his hand and said “la gente” (the people) and the next one wanted to learn English. How someone is supposed to learn English in an hour is beyond me, but they sure were excited that Americanos were in their class. After some redirecting and voting the class decieded unonimosly on agri-business. I definitly would have picked that one over composting and worms anyday of the week. There is so much to cover I am only covering a little bit of it but over a two year span I think everyone should get a basic idea of what it is like here. If you don´t you could always come visit. I just wanted to say thanks for all the comments that are definitly are a moral booster. Chao.

Summertime and the livin´easy… sort of

So when I was writing this last week the power went out when I was at the internet cafe so the first part of this was last week.

Well yesterday (last Saturday) was the last day of Carnaval. Most of the other trainees went into Cochabamba to watch the cursos de curso (a huge parade) and they were massacred with globos, espuma and others while I was bed ridden with food posioning all day. Today I definitly feel a lot better but man does that take a toll on your body. Anyways, I finally moved in with my host family. They are Don Augustin, Doña Bertha, Cezar 16, Lezet 15, and Maribel 12. They are definitly and good group of people to be living with. Bertha definitly was worried yesterday when I was sick. Bolivians in general are very giving people you never have an empty glass when you are at the table. They are constently filling my glass up and overfeeding me which in Bolivia is a sign of love. The food is pretty much always the same. For breakfast we have bread with either butter or jam and some warm drink. The classic is called abana with is basically oat water with a ton of sugar in it. For lunch and dinner we always eat a ton of potatoes and rice. Lunch is always some sort of soup with the usual and then dinner comes along with a nice slab of meat on the side. I think every piece of meat that I have ate has been fried… they love cooking everything in lots and lots of oil. My house that I live in is actually pretty nice. It has a flushing toliet and a shower. This sounds great but when the water only runs for about half the day it is not the handy, especially when you are consistanly running to the toliet with food poisioning. One interesting thing is, that our kitchen is separte from the rest of the house and we always eat outside. They have a huge super nice table inside the house that seats about 15 people but they never use it. Instead they opt for an old table on a dirt floor outside.

It is actually pretty nice because it has been hot here. It rained for the first couple of days here and then just sun and more sun. With the higher elevation people are getting burned pretty easy… but it is definitly a nice change from the snow back home. My family has cows, chickens, ducks, pigs, dogs, cats and a whole bunch of fruits including a polmogrante, peach, mandarine orange and lemon trees. They also have a ton of vegtables that they go into the city and sell. The other day we went out to cut some cabbage for the market and someone had stolen some of them. My host mom was definitly pissed to say the least. Training is going alright. I have classes from 8:30 to 6 at night with an hour and half lunch. Half of the day is all Spanish class and the other is technical training. Hope all is well with everyone.

Finally doing it…in Bolivia.

So I decided to start a blog…obviously. Well to start off I don’t know how much I will update my blog so don’t expect much but at least this is an attempt to stay in touch with people. Well for those of you who don’t know, I left for Washington D.C. on January 26th for the Peace Corps Bolivia staging event. Basically, this is just a way to get oriented with Peace Corps a little more and meet all the people who are part of B-47 (47th group in Bolivia). We are a pretty diverse group from all around the States. It is pretty talented group who all have amazing backgrounds. There was 32 people in the group to start but we already had one person leave before we left D.C., so now we are 31 strong. Of those people there are 15 in ag. extension and agribusiness and 16 in the natural resources and environmental education group. In the agriculture group there is only one other person doing agribusiness group. After D.C. we made our way to La Paz via Miami. La Paz is the worlds highest capital city in the world at 13,169 ft so altitude sickness can definitely be a problem. Our group was fine but you can definitely feel the effects of less oxygen at that level. For the last few days we have just been plugging way at training and doing various interviews for host family, job, language, and health. They pretty much have our day planned out for us throughout our three months of training. Our training consists safety, culture, language and technical garb to name a few. Tomorrow I will meet my host family for the first time… hijola! Some of you may wonder what I have been eating. The food here is actually pretty good. They love their soups and big lunches. Today for lunch we had a soup which consisted of a mushroom soup base with french fries floating around… definitely weird. Then the main meal of fried chicken, rice, carrot type salad and a slice of cake. Right now is the carnaval season (think Brazil and Mardi Gras). This is basically a time when people do a bunch of sinning before lent. This consists of big parties in the streets and throwing water balloons at people on the streets, some times these are filled with water and other times less desirable things like urine and ink. They also throw buckets of water on people and yesterday we saw people drop buckets of water from four stories up dousing the people on the sidewalks below. It was definitely funny to watch. I have been taking more mental pictures than anything else but I will try and attach a few that I have. If you guys have any questions feel free to ask them on here. If they are more personal, e-mail me I will try and answer them as quick as I can.