The Fighting 43rd

The second day of staging ends with a red-eye flight from MIA to La Paz. PC medical officers met us at 6:30 a.m. with water, meds, and oxygen tanks in case anyone couldn’t handle the 12,000 feet. The connection to Cochabamba, where Peace Corps Bolivia is headquartered, is only an hour. There was a group of current volunteers to cheer for us when we stumbled off the plane, looking really cute without coffee.

Cochabamba is fourth largest city in Bolivia, the geographic heart of the country at 8,500 feet. It’s the “city of eternal spring”, which is an exaggeration of temperate until you think about your alternatives: freezing Andes and Altiplano plateau, humid Yungas tropics. We will spend the first week in the city for orientation. Our hotel rooms are decorated with reminders to drink water, not to drink the tap water, and not to flush the t.p. There are also 6 liters of bottled water in case you missed the first sign. We get a safety briefing with points like:
· When traveling at night, take a taxi instead of walking
· It is best not to take taxis at night
· It is best not to go out at night after 19:00
· The following “red zones” should be avoided (followed by a list of everywhere in Cochabamba except the 2 blocks around our hotel and an area farther north – which is separated from the hotel by a red zone)

The streets and sidewalks are narrow; at every other corner are cholitas that break your heart with their tiny, dirty children. Houses are surrounded by walls, the tops of which are embedded with pieces of broken glass bottles. It looks scarier than I think the city is, but then again I don’t know anything. We were warned about cleferas, gangs of street kids addicted to glue, which I thought was kind of funny until someone told me last year’s group got attacked by them near the giant 130-foot Christ of the Concord statue. Super. It’s not even safe under the BIGGEST JESUS IN THE WORLD.

We’re in welcome/safety/cultural sessions each day up until dinner. At a decent restaurant, it will run you about $2-4 USD, plus a few bucks for beer. After dinner we end up at bars earlier than future AA talking about important things like if mace or Elmer’s rubber cement is better against cleferas, and designing tattoos that say “The Fighting 43rd”. Every training group ends up super close, which is scary/comforting. Comforting because I really like B43 and scary because we were told you end up knowing intimate details of everyone’s poop.

FUN FACT/QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Everyone has a little Giardia.”

MIA

Peace Corps service begins with two days of staging, or 48-hours of icebreakers and policy.

It’s actually not that bad, after spending the entire application period on a need to know basis. Staging for our group is in Miami, where the humidity right now is like breathing underwater. My group is B43. We’re on the smaller side, 17 total in agricultural business, community tourism, and micro-enterprise development. Most of the group is right out of college, five of us have been out of school for 1-5 years, and two are late thirties +. Everyone’s pretty young and motivated with interesting backgrounds. Think TCG, but with big ass backpacks.

In terms of safety and health the Peace Corps is NOT kidding. You should see the medical kits they gave us. It’s been said you will never be in as good health as during your service, which is interesting, because you’re also expected to be projectile vomiting/shitting within your first month in country. They’ve even managed to one up my mother on safety. We have a curfew while in training, stay with a host family during training and service, and have to clear any leave from project site with the main office in Cochabamba. Violation of these or any of 5 million other policies and you’re sent home ("administrative separation"). A lot of this is because of Walter Poirier, who has been missing since 2001 and was serving in Bolivia at the time. In the history of the Peace Corps, a lot of volunteers have been hurt or killed, but Wally is the only one to have gone MIA completely. It’s still under investigation and now Peace Corps isn’t taking any chances. If you so much as get caught riding your bike without a helmet, you’re out (seriously).

This will be week –12. Assuming I keep my helmet on and don’t chew coca leaves my two years officially starts when B43 is sworn in, three months of training away.

FUN FACT/QUOTE OF THE DAY: During training, volunteers get room/board and a living stipend the equivalent of $16 USD per week. Yes!