Bolivian Vivian in Kenya

NEW NURU WEBSITE LAUNCHED!!!

2009-10-28T12:16:00.000-07:00

www.NuruInternational.org
Please check out the new site! I have weekly blog and video updates on my program page:
http://www.nuruinternational.org/hownuruworks/ced.html

Also, go watch the new videos.. Our media team is seriously amazing. Other organizations have been asking if they can hire them:
http://www.nuruinternational.org/videophoto/

Hongera!

2009-08-16T04:29:00.000-07:00

This is a hongera light:

We have one on every wall of our living room. We’re pretty sure the house plans only included the one normal light bulb hanging from a cord in the middle of the ceiling, but somehow we also ended up with the hongera lights. When turned on, they alternately flash lavender, turquoise, purple, yellow, red, and green. At night our living room looks like an empty discotheque.

Mind you, the cabinet doors don’t close, the bathroom light switch turns on the light in the room next to it, and the back door was installed with a 4-inch gap at the bottom – but the hongera lights work perfectly. Priorities, priorities.

Mid-July marked the 12th week of our Savings Clubs. Members can now apply for loans from their group’s savings. The groups whose members have met their savings goal every week during the 12 weeks qualify to have Nuru match their loan amount, doubling the principal they have to loan from. This is Mkombozi, one of our best groups, signing their loan contracts.

I’m realizing how much infrastructure I took for granted when I was working with Pro Mujer. All of the paperwork, accounting, and information management systems were in place. Now I am building all those elements from scratch, trying to figure out what applies or is necessary. Thus far, Savings Club deposits are issued a receipt which is then recorded in a journal. The addition used in said journal is questionable, as is the accuracy of the group name under which the transaction was recorded (does the deposit recorded under “Vision Group” belong to Vision Farming or Nyaihungurumo Vision Group??). Apparently, receipts weren’t issued for withdrawals so we have no formal record of these, just notes scribbled in the margins of the Office Manager’s notebook. The loan contracts we’re using were written the night before we issued the loans.

The beauty of Savings Clubs is that many of the management tasks (such as how much each member contributes and when) are the responsibility of the group representatives. But we are going to need to establish more formal and detailed procedures for the program. It feels inappropriate to push for electronic record keeping when the Nuru office in Nyametaburo is operating off a solar panel and gets invaded periodically by chickens or goats, but we’re growing so quickly that the volume and complexity of transactions is going to require it soon. Besides, Nuru is responsible for this money and we take that seriously. A lot of our members have never saved before, and we owe it to them to have every detail in place to keep it safe. So I can be as OCD as I want! Perfect.

Never Drop a Muzungu

2009-08-02T03:02:00.000-07:00

Week 3, starting to settle into a routine. We spend most days in the field, then come back in the evening to do computer work, depending on if the electricity is working.

We live in a town about 7 km from the villages we work in, and take piki piki (motorcycle) taxis to work. It has to be the best morning commute in the world: good Kenyan coffee and zipping to work on a motorcycle down a dirt road surrounded by rolling green hills, golden maize fields, giant boulders, bright banana trees and thatched huts. Children near the roadside wave enthusiastically, screaming “muzungu!!” (it means white man, but works for all foreigners). The first few minutes after I get off a piki piki my face always tickles. I think it’s from my hair whipping around during the drive; I call it the motorcycle fuzzies.

It’s the last week of our transition with Foundation Team 2. Jesse, our imported media guru, arrived to tape episode 6, which focuses on the CDC (Community Development Committee, the Kenyan counterparts of the Foundation Teams). Their official titles are field managers and they are amazing, selfless community leaders. Philip Mohochi, the Chairman, is technically the field manager of my program but we are searching for a replacement because Philip is quickly becoming too busy to be both chairman and field manager.

My program is Community Economic Development (CED), started last season by Aerie. During our transition we’ve been working on a 5-year plan for the program, focusing on a ground-up, community-driven approach to economic development. This is what we’d like to do:

* Train Nuru members to save, budget, and plan.
* Provide skills training and small business development programs.
* Start a community development fund which will be the basis for a village savings and loan program, as well as make sure all Nuru program operations are able to sustain themselves.

I’m lucky to be here at a time when we start implementing a lot of the ideas that have been developed. It’s exciting and intimidating; we have ideas but I don’t want to assume anything. So far, the communities we work with have been incredibly welcoming, so I want to deserve that trust.

My Swahili is pretty pitiful because most of my co-workers speak English and I’m using that as a crutch. I have some stock phrases I’m using for now, which usually makes the Kenyans laugh. It’s like when the kids greet me yelling ‘Bye! Bye!’ (I’m not exactly sure why they know ‘bye’ but not ‘hello’) and I laugh and greet them back with ‘Bye! Bye!’. Not correct, but for now we understand each other.

“Never drop a muzungu! They are very fragile!” – shouted at Aerie and his piki piki driver by a passing motorcyclist

Hyperphagia

2009-07-24T02:37:00.000-07:00

In the summer, black bears begin hyperphagia, a period of excessive eating and drinking to fatten for hibernation later in the fall. Their bellies will literally drag the ground from over-eating. This is how I feel in the weeks before I leave for Kenya. I am gorging on cheese, burritos, pad kee mao, bagels, Chinese food, ice cream, pretending that if I eat enough of my favorite foods now, I won’t miss them in the next 6 months. As my food baby grows I feel guilty; I am going to Kuria, where there is a hunger season. Families habitually run out of money and go hungry in the months before the harvest, and I am shoveling 3,000 calories-worth of smoked gouda into my mouth.

I’m both excited and terrified to go to Kenya. When I first read about Nuru’s work and applied, I didn’t actually think I would get the job. There are people that belong in development. They are smart, they discuss history and international politics, they know a lot of world capitals. I, on the other hand, am easily distracted by shiny things. But I know what changes I’d like to see happen, and I want to do my part. I feel Nuru is in a special position to mobilize a lot of people to make their individual contributions where they can, and I have a lot of faith in that.

In Nairobi, the acrid smell of burning plastic reminds me of Bolivia, and it’s strangely comforting. The back of the bus in front of us has ‘Gangsta for Life’ painted in giant letters. The scenery between the capital and Nyanza province is a sweeping landscape dotted by acacia trees before it opens dramatically into the Great Rift Valley. Sadly I miss much of this, sleeping/blacked out in the back of the bus, my arms and legs pinned down by boxes and bags. But whenever the bus hits a rough patch of road and slams my head into the window (about every 15 minutes), I wake up long enough to admire the view. Our long trip, timed by David at 51 hours, finally ends and Foundation Team 3 stumbles off the dusty bus in Isibania. I am sticky and have dirt in my teeth from the dust that billowed in the bus windows. Feels like home.

It is week 1, and now it’s like mental hyperphagia. I am on information overload. Nuru’s model is built on collaboration between program areas, basic sanitation affects health affects income generation, and so on. So our transition begins by shadowing all other programs before we dive into our respective areas next week.

“At least you don’t THINK you’re cool…” - Chelsea, to David

The End

2008-10-08T09:41:00.000-07:00

This is not how it was supposed to happen, but asi es la vida. In the midst of domestic conflict topped by more than a dozen deaths in the department of Pando, President Morales accused the U.S. Ambassador of destabilizing his administration and declared him persona non grata. With the ambassador's departure, Peace Corps volunteers were also evacuated from Bolivia. The decision to close the program came a day later, when we were quarantined outside Lima, Peru, still shellshocked. I was 1 month from finishing service.

In the last months of my service, I spent July working with Pro Mujer in the largest department of Bolivia, Santa Cruz. Their rural credit program is based out of 2 intermediary centers in Ascencion de Guarayos and San Ignacio, 6 and 12 hours outside Santa Cruz city, respectively. I worked with the staff on training and ran a diagnostic on community priorities for business and health services. We went to tiny, beautiful towns reached only by motorcycle and sometimes cramped public minibuses, where the women delightedly shared their chicha de mani and let me swing in their hammocks while we talked. I wish I had more time to work with them and be in those towns.

My runs were on coppery sand roads through flat grassy estancias and thick patches of palm trees, with squawking parrots and reproachful cattle. Even in the early morning the heat and humidity were strong. I ate a lot of yucca and discovered fried cunape (as if cunape could get any better!).

In August I resumed working with the Centro Solidario, a state home for juvenile delinquents. Our last project was to paint a world map mural, which is what we were doing when I got the call from Peace Corps to evacuate. Like most volunteers I disappeared overnight, without time to say goodbye or explain to my friends, family, co-workers. In Lima I waded through the necessary reports, paperwork, and medical tests to finish my service. At the first modern mall I have seen for years, I found out I can eat half a Pizza Hut pie and 7 Dunkin Donut holes in about 12 minutes.

On September 22 I officially closed service. There is quite a migration back to Bolivia. There are 6 of us in the first group to go back; 4 buses in 30 hours straight and sunset on Lake Titicaca is Bolivia's welcome home to us. Today we finished our World Map Project. I have said my goodbyes and packed my things. Next week I go to Tarija where I will leave Bolivia for Argentina, then home. I can't wait to see everyone, who sent the e-mails, mail, thoughts & support that meant so much to me these last 2 years. Thanks & happy travels.

The Crater of Maragua

2008-05-19T05:37:00.000-07:00

Maragua used to be a Peace Corps site, the kind now extinct because they realized if they ever need to evacuate the country it is not very convenient to have a volunteer in a place that requires a 4-hour hike and crossing a river nicknamed "the Killer of Maraguans" before hitchiking into the city on a cattle truck. The trip there isn´t quite as bad, except when we ask to be let off on the road to Maragua the driver asks, "Which Maragua?" There are 3. Ohh, good.

You cross the river at Chaunaca (of which there is only 1, luckily). It´s dry season, and the river is only knee-deep. Next you hike 4 or 5 hours rolling upward until the lush green patches over red rock fade away on the rim of the crater of Maragua. The town sits on the bottom of the huge bowl; only the cementery is high on a small plateau rising from the floor of the crater, where the dead of Maragua have an enviable view. Inside the crater the rock and wheatfields are dramatic burgundy and gold, dotted with stone and dust houses. It is deserted, silent except for the wind. As instructed by Mike, the last volunteer that lived here, we look for the house with an Entel sign in the window and ask for Don Basilio, who can guide us to the dinosaur footprints. He is a small man with a sharpish face dominated by a huge bola of coca in his cheek. The next day he leads us briskly up the crater, like most campesinos 1/2 our size but faster than the wind as we clamber awkwardly after him.

It is almost 3 hours up the crater walls, winding through the surrounding mountains and cutting across fields, where Don Basilio stops to chat with whoever´s land we´re on. At the edge of a field, rising abruptly up from a ravine is a large slab of smooth gray stone. I climb onto it looking for strange looking obscure little marks and trip into a large, 3-toed dino track. The different tracks criss-cross the slab everywhere with incredible clarity. I am sure we are not supposed to be walking all over them like this but as Chris points out cheerfully, this is why we´re in Bolivia. A cholita herding sheep appears with a little guest book to sign and collects 10 Bs. from each of us as we stretch out on the warm stone in the sun next to the tracks and doze. It's unreal and incredible. I love Bolivia, that I get to do things like this. We spend the rest of of the day hiking to a waterfall next to a fanged cave called the Devil's Mouth, then up to the cementery. Russ has his binoculars and sees a woman baking bread in her domed earthen oven otuside. He hikes down to buy some for dinner, still steaming hot. Water gets collected from a "spring", a tiny burbling hole at the side of the muddy trickle of water that passes for a stream, liberally sprinkled with goat poop. We boil it a long time and tell ourselves the floaty things are dead.

We get up early the third day to hike out to the road because buses and trucks only pass by for a few hours in the morning. There is not much traffic at all, we get passed by 2 buses and a truck, jammed full. Finally another cattle truck, also full of people and animals and cargo, pulls up and looks at us doubtfully. Before they change their minds we scramble into the back. Everyone is able to climb up the inside sides of the truck bed and get some fresh air, but Kate and I are stuck in the human soup in the back bottom. She is between a fat boy and an old man sitting on rice bags who keeps kicking her legs, I am between some sheep and a cholita seated on flour sacks using me as her back rest. I think I have the better situation until the ram at my knees starts biting. I squeal and try to move but it's impossible. Ram bites. I squeal. The campesinos find this hilarious but trust me, it is not. I decide to fight the sheep. The next time he bites, I manage to land a kick. The sheep pauses, then begins to head butt at my knees. Hard. I kick. Sheep butts. This is stupid. I make a roaring noise and punch him. Sheep is stunned. I win! Sheep pees on me. Sheep wins. I hate Bolivia. Thus pass another 3 hours rattling down a dusty road drowning in odors of unwashed bodies and livestock feces. This is the price you pay for walking in dinosaur tracks.

Team Reetz

2008-04-15T07:47:00.000-07:00

It’s 2ish a.m. and I am in a 70s-tastic karaoke bar in Santa Cruz watching my new friend, Carlos the American Airlines steward, belt out R.E.M. The man in the video has chest hair so thick you could hide Hot Wheels in it, possibly a lucky troll pencil topper. 3 hours before, I welcomed Carolyn and Nichole to Bolivia, attentively waiting right in front of the arrivals door sandwiched between some bonneted Mennonite women. I’ve waited for this for over half a year (the visit, not the Mennonite sandwich), and it does not disappoint.

The next day, we are in the Biocentro Güembe, a butterfly reserve encased in a little bubble of well-tended tropical greenery, luxurious pools and waterfalls, and the ubiquitous but prettier-than-usual boys from Israel. It always feels like vacation in Santa Cruz; chic restaurants, expensive wine, wearing sundresses in humidity that stifles any movement other than drinking beer by the pool.

We continue on to my anxiously-planned Tour de Sucre. Sucre graciously humors me with the impossibly blue, blue skies and dazzling sunshine I had hoped to present the White City in. Saturday is Día de los Niños y Niñas so we go to the party at my orphanage. I am “madrina” of the cake, which involves balancing a drum-sized cake on my knees while at the mercy of the driving of a Bolivian taxista. Absolutely terrifying. Bolivians always march around carrying entire cakes from the market on a skinny piece of styrofoam. They make it look so easy. We use Toñito Tours for our Salar de Uyuni trip, a private jeep for our group of 5½ (Elliot counts as 1½) and we customize the tour route. Bolivia is a consistent if not gracious hostess; she dishes out some gnarly GI infection to both Carolyn and Nichole within a day of starting the tour. It isn’t the most pampered place to be sick, but the Salar de Uyuni and southwest circuit of the Eduardo Avaroa Reserve is one of the most amazing places I have ever been. Mineral lagoons tinted blood red, slate, or teal and sprinkled with pale pink flocks of flamingos, geyser fields, luminescent deserts crowned with bizarre rock structures, and sunrise on the world’s largest salt flat. The legends explain it as a dried sea of tears shed by the Mother Mountain, after her love child with another mountain is stolen by her jealous lover.

It is blinding and immense, not soft like the snow it appears to be, and etched into an eccentric patchwork quilt by the ridges left behind by water that rises to the surface. It doesn’t crumble easily; there are no footprints. The salt burns my chin where I’ve been resting my head on the ground to take perspective pictures of us popping out of wine bottles and hugging giant iPods. The trip ends in the train graveyard, an unlikely (read: only in Bolivia) tourist attraction of silent giants, after 3 days of car games and an unhealthy number of lollipops.

FUN FACT / QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Is there a Ritz in Bolivia?" “Ahahaha!…black people.” “Ok, but God made Israel for me.” “Hostile colon!” “Your Mom´s from Chile.”

Back Post

2008-03-15T13:22:00.000-07:00

It was not a good week, so instead I will back post something happy. This is a trip I took in the Cordillera Real last October, the Andean range northeast of Lake Titicaca in La Paz:

We leave from the town of Sorata, a few hours from La Paz and lush at barely 2700m. It is a well-established base camp for mountain expeditions, developed and traveler-friendly. We have a topo and Chris can navigate but the trails out of town cross and fade, so we hire a local guide to take us as far as a mountain pass before our first night’s campsite.

This is our guide, Don Octavio, and his burro Chato who Chris and I rename Bill-the-pony.

The first day is a brutal 5600-foot climb to where we plan to camp for the night, the abandoned mines at Titisani, 4400m. It takes less than two hours of ascent for me to pledge my lifelong love for the burro, who is carrying our packs.

The hiking group looks something like this: Don Octavio, of Andean superior lungpower, and Chris, whose leg:vertical being ratio is abnormally high and hikes like he is racing……here’s the burro………………………………here’s me.

Not visual enough? Ok, here’s me with the group at 9000ft:

Here’s me “with the group” at 11000ft:

Humbled, I concentrate on how amazing it is to be here; the spring of moist pasture under my boots, tiny Sorata in the valley below, the welcome bite of primitive wind across my flushed face and the thud of my heartbeat in my ears as we gain altitude and lose air. It is barely noon when the fog moves in, ghostly beautiful over ponds lying like mirrors in grass and crumbled shale, but I have to strain to keep sight of Chris and Don Octavio.

At 5.5 hrs, we have reached 14300 ft at a corte, a pass in the mountain that descends steeply to the mines. We are in the center of a drizzling cloud as we bid adieu to Don Octavio and Chato and shoulder our packs. The rain becomes definitive as we scramble/slide down the black, flaky scree on the other side of the pass. It is steep and past where we stand the bottom disappears promptly from view, covered by fog, but I don’t need a visual to cling to the mountain side. If the fog were sulphuric steam, this would be Mordor.

The mines would probably make a good camp if it weren’t suddenly a hundred simultaneous mountain streams. This was the chance we took coming so late in the season. Every flat spot that is not a little pond is piled with cow paddies. We find a tiny niche in the rocks just big enough for my Northface Tadpole. I devour an entire bag of M&Ms before we even start cooking dinner. I love backpacking. In the morning, it is still and the light illuminating the rain fly is inconclusive, bright but not sunny. We pile out of the tent; sun!!

Well, brief sun, a glimpse of the amazing view below that should be haunting each step of this trip, then the fog moves back in.
Up, up, up. Step, breathe, step, breeeathe. Last 2000 ft of climb but in the fog and water running all down the mountain we lose the trail to the Laguna Glacier. A myriad of rock cairns lead us up over a moraine. We reach the top – GLACIER! But not the right one. It’s unidentified on the map so Chris names it Tortila and I name it Baby Llama and we call it a day.
We’re at 5000m, no altitude sickness but I can’t sleep. It’s snowing, which caps the tent like saran wrap and the condensation drips on my face all night while the thunderous sound of glacial ice calving sounds a lot spookier and closer now that I’m trapped in a tent.

The morning is brilliant in blue and white. Breakfast, the worst muesli in the world, freezes to my hand. I settle for my mountain mocha (Nescafe+Swiss Miss) and my glacier view. We spend the morning hiking over the next moraine but still no Laguna Glacier. The unwelcome fog drifts back in and we enjoy our last view of Lake Titicaca from 16000 ft.

The descent is interchanging vistas and fog. We pound down 1000m over boulder fields until we reach Laguna Chillata, where the fog lifts for a final view of the cordilleras.

The Cordillera Real is 100 miles, from Illimani overlooking La Paz in the southern end at 21125ft to the northern view before me, in the shadow of Illampu (20892ft) and Ancohuma (21086ft).
Back down to sub-9000ft. Fin!

Thanksgiving and La República

2007-11-26T07:07:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving morning is sunny, after a rainy night trying to figure out where our friends coming in from the campo are. Our Peace Corps security coordinator calls to say they are still stuck in a blockade a few hours outside Sucre, sounding as cheerful at 8 a.m. as he did at 3 a.m. when we called to report them missing. It’s another protest in the wannabe Capitalia Plena - routine marches, blockades, boycott of session by opposition members of the Constituent Assembly, etc.

Then the majority party of MAS locked out the boycotting asambleistas and voted to approve the framework of the constitution, details to be worked out for the December 14 deadline. The new constitution addresses everything from abolishing the term limit on the presidency to whether private property goes to the state. Sucre exploded. Even my neighbor, a tranquila mother of 4, was out in the streets rioting.

In record time the roads and airport were blocked and the air black with smoke from burning blockades of tires and trash on every corner within a 10-block radius of the town center. The city itself was fairly quiet, since the Constituent Assembly had been moved outside town to the military base. The volunteers who could get out of town left and the rest of us ventured out for food. Then came the calls from Peace Corps, people boarding up store fronts, rumors of the first deaths, and trucks full of flag-bearing young men tearing out of the city. The marches continued the entire night, even passing by my neighborhood where it’s usually always calm.

A few of us spent Sunday holed up in my apartment or sitting on my roof watching the progress of smoke across the sky while trying to filter information from the storm of “news”. 3 confirmed dead, over 100 injured, 100 prisoners escaped from the San Roque jail, and the police in Sucre fled to Potosí. Meanwhile, 3 of the national news channels cut their feed and a 4^th had “live” coverage showing everything as peaceful in Sucre. It was actually footage from earlier in the week; volunteers that already left Sucre for Cochabamba were on the tape sitting in the plaza!

Today the sun is out, buses are running, and people are out walking like we didn’t have a massive breakout at the jail and still have no police in the city. This will always bewilder me. Bolivia can be like T.V. magic, where all hell breaks loose and then is wrapped up before the hour spot is over. Except here the situation isn’t necessarily resolved, but gets shelved for the next blowout. I went to work today but the office shut down in the afternoon for the burial of Gonzalo Durán, the first death in the weekend siege. The plaza crowd is angry, chanting “Evo asesino”, but otherwise peaceful out of respect for the mass taking place before the burial. The prefectura building is scrawled in graffiti of varying political wit, but it shows a change of mood against the current administration and the influence of Venezuela. Instead of putting up Christmas decorations I pack a few boxes with my most important belongings here, in case of evacuation. But with the holidays coming up it´s more likely we will be waiting until 2008 for this to be pulled back off the shelf.

FUN FACT / QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Chavez manda, Evo cumple” – graffiti on the walls of Sucre´s prefectura
[Hugo (Chavez) commands, Evo fulfills - a play on Morales campaign slogan]

Burnt tires, burnt out

2007-10-15T14:25:00.000-07:00

It is the August meeting of one of our groups in the town of Yotala. Something tells me I won’t get to my class today (which, ironically, is about communication and conflict resolution). Señora 1 wants to guarantee Señora 2, but no one else. The credit assistant and I explain that participants in a solidarity group loan must guarantee every other member of the group. Señora 2, ignoring what we just said, thinks Señora 3 shouldn’t even be allowed to take out a loan. Señora 1 says that most in the group are being irresponsible. Señora 4 says Señora 5 insults her when she’s drunk. Señora 5 says now is not the time to talk about that. Señora 4 says well, it’s true. Señora 6 is sleeping and Señoras 7-12 have not attended the meeting, as usual. I’ve finished counting the bricks in the courtyard archways. There are 256.

It’s not always this way. And when it is, I’m usually more resilient. But almost a year of slow, frustrating work plus losing a string of volunteers in my region, including my best friend in the Peace Corps, is really getting to me. I have no buffer here, nothing to control swinging from wild optimism to crushing disillusionment. I don’t want to sound like a discouraged idealist who wanted to save the world, or a pampered suit expecting to be admired and obeyed. I am honestly neither; I am just tired.

I think my poor city is tired too. In August, Sucre began a movement to be reinstated as the capitalia plena, the sole capital of Bolivia. There were protests, blockades, and paro cívicos (complete shut down of the city, including businesses, schools, and all air and land transportation) almost weekly. The pretty white buildings are now marred with political graffiti and after each protest the streets are littered with the ashes of burnt tires. In September the protests were bad enough to make the Peace Corps nervous and those of us in Sucre were evacuated to Santa Cruz for a week. Sucre even had to postpone the parade for Virgen de Guadalupe for a month.

The Virgen de Guadalupe Entrada is our biggest town festival. There are more than half a dozen traditional dances, performed by numerous dance groups in beautiful, elaborate costumes from 8 a.m. until 2 in the morning. I joined a group to dance chacarera, an Argentine dance from the Chaco region. 6 practices a week and the delays from protests weren’t so terrific, but the parade itself was one of my favorite days in Bolivia. I didn’t fall on my face even once (powered by obscene amounts of caffeine and fabulous volunteer friends and Mama Lu, bearing water and snacks) during 6 hours of dancing in a long skirt. This is a huge accomplishment; next, I’m going to try learning to walk in a straight line.

FUN FACT / QUOTE OF THE DAY: Next week is our mid-service conference! 1 year down, 1 to go..

Habits I´ve picked up in Bolivia

2007-08-08T08:08:00.000-07:00

1. Accepting anything.

Example 1
Neighbor: “There is a protest today. You’re going to have to take a taxi to where they’re blockading the plaza, walk past it, take another taxi to where they’re blockading the market, and walk the last ten blocks to work.”
Me: “Oh really? That sucks. Okay.”

Example 2
Other volunteer: “They just revoked the 22nd amendment.
Me: “Oh really? That sucks. Okay.”
Other volunteer: “I was kidding.”
Me: “Oh really? Okay.”

2. Giving long, formal opening statements at meetings that involve individually thanking every person for their attendance. Sitting through said statements of everyone else at meeting.

3. Dealing with fleas. It’s no longer appalling when I get fleas from the campo (or a bus ride, or another volunteer…). Nor is scratching the fleabites until they bleed. I’ve thought about using the cheese grater, but I’m not quite there yet.

4. Being able to sleep through horrific, long bus rides over broken rocks and rubble with a spanish-dubbed Steven Seagal movie blaring in the background.

5. Eating cream cheese. By itself. With a spoon.

Things I will never get used to in Bolivia:

1. Listening to static.

2. Yapsss, or Ya pueeees…

3. My Bolivian work partners hiding from me. HOW OLD ARE WE??

4. Walking reeeally slow while blocking the entire sidewalk.

5. Kicking starving dogs, games that involve burying live chickens in the ground, etc.

FUN FACT / QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Como es...en Gringolandia?” (What´s it like...in Gringoland?) -My Bolivian work partner

Cambaland

2007-07-07T11:26:00.000-07:00

I went to the campo of Santa Cruz this week to help my friend start a community bank. San Jose de Chiquitos is a town of red dirt roads and spring greens even in the dead of winter. There are bulging trees that are said to hide duende, leprauchan-like creatures that play tricks on people. The Bolivian town is dotted with pocket communities of fierce indigenous nomads and Mennonites, tall Europeans related to the Amish that speak low-German and mostly farm (think Children of the Corn, in dark denim overalls, light blue dress shirts, and straw hats). In the hills you can hike to a great rock formation called Valley of the Moon and collect a fruit that tastes like dates and looks like smooth brown rocks on the ground, but you have to watch out for the crazy three-fingered man that lives there looking for gold. It feels like a fairytale land, or maybe a Hayao Miyazaki film.

The students are on winter vacation, and it´s quieter and cooler than the last time we were here in the stifling spring heat. Cooler meaning, you still don´t have to sleep with a blanket and cold bucket baths feel great in the afternoon. Jenny´s counterpart is a priest named Brother Melchor. He is like a jolly little elf and claps and shouts “Ánimo!” after each of our ideas. He lives with two other priests in a cozy little house in the ghettos of San Jose and they are all teachers at the Catholic Marista high school. The hermanos Melchor, Nacho, and Francisco are wonderful. They feed us lunch and tell us animated stories with exaggerated facial expressions like cartoon characters. I miss the fireworks and BBQ´s of a real 4th of July, but we bake a lemon pie for the brothers and spend the evening playing basketball with the orphanage kids Jenny works with. “Basketball” is any number of kids grabbing the ball and running halfway across the court before dribbling it twice and throwing a wild pot shot. There are 2 full-court basketball games and a soccer match taking place on the same court, miraculously without any casualties.

It is a nice break from malingering in my office, trying to track down people who don´t want to work with me. But it´s a short break; the blockade rumors begin in the afternoon. A paro near the border of Brasil, which will block the train from arriving in San Jose. Then, protestors demanding “autonomia indigena” close in on all roads to Santa Cruz. By the time we catch the last spots on a 2 a.m. train back to the city the miners have locked down the altiplano and the students are blockading Sucre roads. It´s an all-star week of civil unrest. Back in Santa Cruz I gorge myself on all the food and shopping I don´t have in Sucre. The city is decked out in green and white; the departmental colors of Santa Cruz and the autonomia movement in general. July 2 was the anniversary of the movement and everywhere banners and t-shirts scream “100% Camba” and “¡Autonomia, Carajo!” I assume that´s what the demonstraters on the street are saying too; the cambas drop their s´s and slur and I cannot understand a damn word they say.

Somehow, the only road not blockaded is the old, unpaved road between Santa Cruz and Sucre, so I am able to get back home via a 14-hour rattling wreck of a bus ride. When I left Sucre last week, police were lining the streets to protect the Constituent Assembly from torch-bearing students protesting state control of the university. In typical Bolivian fashion, it flared up and died down within the week. Now the new constitution, originally due August 6, has been postponed to December. So we can look forward to another half year of come-and-go blockades until the constitutional blowout. Ánimo!

FUN FACT / QUOTE OF THE DAY: “This would be SO much better if we had, like, a 40% chance of getting kidnapped.”

Dear Diary

2007-06-27T06:18:00.000-07:00

Cold. Undercaffeinated. Irritated. Bolivian work partners ignoring me. Feel like I´ve accomplished nothing. Insert new date and repeat.

FUN FACT/QUOTE OF THE DAY: The plaza was tear-gassed last week while students were protesting for university autonomy. Oski would be proud!

Haikus for Bolivia

2007-05-25T07:16:00.000-07:00

Got hit by a bus
Because in Bolivia
They don´t share sidewalks

Ahorita means
In 5 hours or a month
But never right now

Que lástima que
no traduzca en inglés
“capacitación”

FUN FACT/QUOTE OF THE DAY: Today is the anniversary of the revolution for independence, or the “first cry for liberty”

From Santa Cruz

2007-03-31T21:25:00.000-07:00

This is from my friend Jenny, another volunteer. Note that 1) snacks come before medical attention, and 2) no one is surprised.
Ahh, Bolivia:

..I got on my normal train at 2am from San Jose to Santa Cruz. I fell somewhat asleep until I was woken up by the intense bumping and terrible train sounds. Then I woke up to see all my stuff from the right side of the train fall and smash into all the people sitting on the left side of the train. Then we were stopped. No one seemed to be getting upset or freaked out at all which I was more in shock about than this train problem. Well the people in charge started yelling not to move or we would tip the train over. This is when I started to wake up enough to notice that out car was almost completely sideways. People slowly starting getting out of the train one by one with the help of the guys who were pulling us out of the train. Of course my pants got stuck and I was sort of hanging from the train there for a second but the some nice guy caught me. The car behind mine was even worse and was completely sideways and the people were climbing out the windows. Somehow during all of this no one was hurt, no one seemed to express anger or fright, or even annoyance. The Bolivians just seemed to take it as oh damn our train crashed time to hang out and wait. I was thinking holy shit I was just in a train wreck this is so cool and crazy.

When the sun came up after an hour of our crash at 5 it started getting hot. So the Bolivians started making fires which I thought was weird since it was so hot already and who packed for food for the BBQ but then I noticed we didn't have any food for that and someone informed me it was to keep away the killer mosquitoes who were eating us alive. Then the Bolivians started picking these huge leaves from the brush and wearing them on their heads like hats to keep cool. After about 6 or 7 hours I was getting annoyed and the novelty of the crash had worn off but I still didn't seem to see any Bolivians complaining. We finally were given some water and a piece of bread about 7 hours in and finally after 9 and a half hours of waiting a train from the other direction came and picked us up. They handed out fried chicken and rice to us and now after 9 and a half hours sent around doctors to check and see if we were all right. We endured the next 5 and a half hours on the train to the bridge near Santa Cruz where they then transferred us to buses to take us the rest of the way. Meanwhile feeling pretty nasty and tried a camera crew and news woman ran up to me and started interviewing me about the crash. I felt so gross and tired I pretended not to speak Spanish and they went away eventually. So at 7 p.m. we finally arrived in Santa Cruz only 11 hours later than expected.

FUN FACT/QUOTE OF THE DAY: "My host mom gave me a gun to shoot the donkey that keeps coming into my courtyard."

Campo Envy

2007-01-27T10:41:00.000-08:00

It is the December meeting of a group of our socias (clients) in the community of Ravelo, a two-hour drive via a feo road of dust and rocks clattering over steep, crumbling edges. Our tin box jeep is a Suzuki Samurai with the shocks of a tricycle and the back door held together with a clever knot of the only seat belt and part of the tire jack. I feel like I’m in a pinball machine. And the sensation of dirt between my teeth and my telescoping spine gets old after, oh, 15 minutes. But the town is beautiful, sparsely tucked under an expanse of purple mountains and washed out sky. It looks like the pueblo I imagined living in before site assignments.

The meeting is underway. Having stuttered out my part, I am examining the mud and straw-thatched roof of the room we are in thinking, this is where Chagas disease comes from. The socias are signing their guarantee of the women in their solidarity group, surrounded by children who shuffle restlessly and drift in and out of the room with the dust particles. One child stays the whole time. He constantly has a smile on his face but amuses himself by covering his ears and screaming every ten minutes. It’s unnerving. “Smiles” steals a 1 Bs. coin during the loan disbursement, which no one notices until he swallows it and promptly vomits. I start to panic because I don’t know if you can perform the Heimlich on a two-year old, but just then he swallows the pesito completely and starts bawling. I go home and Google `toddler heimlich maneuver´. This is my “analysis” for the diagnostic report we´re assigned our first 3 months; tagging along with the folks of Pro Mujer and talking to every socia in the campo that will humor me. In 20 dusty courtyards or adobe rooms I have conversations that usually go as follows -

Me: Do you keep any record of the potatoes and corn you sell? Socia: Where are you from, Japan?
M: I am from the U.S., but my parents were born in China. How far do you have to travel to sell your vegetables?
S: Depends, sometimes far. Japan is pretty far, isn´t it?

Sometimes the women even give us fruit, pastries of fried goodness, or refrescos (warmish corn porridge drink with little black specks of suspiciousness, or a neon soda that tastes like carbonated liquid jello). I miss these long days of travel to and from the communities, getting stuck in storms, daydreaming in each town about where I would live if it were my site. The last month I’ve been office-bound, turning my surveys into something measurable. Outside my non-ergonomic holding cell, December passed with another B43 volunteer resignation and a temporary evacuation of our Santa Cruz volunteers when the military took over a few towns to keep rioters from burning the houses of MASistas (political party of Evo Morales). The protest is over the November approval of an article that allows constitutional reform by simple majority of the Constituent Assembly (MAS is 54% of the CA).

Not to be outdone by the cambas, last week Cochabamba marched in a few thousand cocaleros and informally ousted its Autonomía-friendly governor, Manfred Reyes Villa, when he tried to force a revote on the referendum for autonomy. This week marked the Morales administration´s 1-year anniversary, B43’s 5th month, and the arrival of the new bottom rung, B44, in Cochabamba.

FUN FACT/QUOTE OF THE DAY: Bringing large amounts of toilet paper on the bus can be considered cocaine paraphernalia during drug check stops.

White Christmas

2006-12-15T07:37:00.000-08:00

The Peace Corps publishes a book of volunteer stories to prep applicants for the challenges of service. Most of them involve overcoming campo living – rough conditions, unhurried pace of life, slow-to-change attitudes. I was ready. Then came site announcements.

For the next two years I will be living in Sucre developing the rural credit program of Pro Mujer, a NGO that micro-finances women´s enterprises. It is a great organization and I didn´t think I would get the opportunity to do something like this. But while I´ll be travelling out to our rural communities for work almost everyday, it will be a much more structured, fast-paced, and professional city environment than my campo expectations.

We took our tests and swore our service oaths the first week of November, a month after site announcements. I thought it would be hard to leave B43 but the first month has passed at warp speed. Travel to Sucre from Cochabamba is a 10-hour night bus via a sometimes paved road with less than pleasing accident statistics. It isn´t that bad besides the inconvenient angle of the seats that is constantly sifting its occupants down into the footwell, and the ridiculous heat blasting along the walls. As many Bolivians believe all sickness comes from cold air, opening windows have been known to start flota brawls.

Sucre is a beautiful city. Tiny, at 250,000, and clean by Bolivian standards. Some volunteers find Sucre too small and tranquil but I love the colonial architecture, which gives it its name of “The White City”, and the fact that unlike Cochabamba I have been able to break bills larger than 10 Bs without playing the change game. The pristine white buildings and internationals thronging the town center cover up a city that´s said to rest more on past reputation than present. Established by the old money of Potosí, Sucre is now one of Bolivia´s two official capitals in name only. I´ve also been told the University San Francisco Xavier, famous for its incubation of independence ideas, has been losing its edge to newer private universities. The current debate whether the new constitution should be approved by 2/3 vote or simple majority of the Constituent Assembly has brought in some activity, but aside from the older families and students Sucre has seen a lot of migration to more progressive departments like La Paz and Santa Cruz.

I love my project, as painful as it was to reacquaint myself with an office setting. Imagine deleting documents several times while relearning every keyboard shortcut in Spanish. But since that first week I´ve spent some happy, spine-wrecking (more on this later) weeks with our rural groups for my project diagnostics. To get along in the campo I am also learning Quechua, an aggregating language of the Andes that was never meant to be a written language. That means different regions of Bolivia have differing ways of writing Quechua, and by aggregating I mean you tack an increasing number of suffixes onto a base word to indicate adjectives, verbs, adverbs, etc. So killa, the word for month, becomes qhepankillakama for “until next month”.

There are Christmas lights up in the main plaza now, and I am homesick.

FUN FACT/QUOTE OF THE DAY: Jabba the Hutt speaks a language based on Quechua in Star Wars.

Falta

2006-10-15T14:33:00.000-07:00

Faltar is my new word, by virtue of its use to answer every other question I´ve asked recently (not quite as much as the use of pues though). It means to be lacking, as in:

Me: “Why is there a blockade today/do you serve rice and two types of potatoes in one meal/is that child pooping on the sidewalk?”
Bolivian: “Por falta de plata/educación/[insert any other element of infrastructure here], you jerk.*”
(* Bolivian does not actually say “you jerk”, but that is the feeling I get)

I use it more to tell how adjusted I’m feeling, since at any given moment I might be feeling falta my family or friends at home, pad kee mao (with tofu, spiciness level 7 on a scale of 1-10), water pressure, privacy, red velvet cake, etc. But it’s more a factual lacking than a terrible missing, so as B43 hits month 2 I think I’m settled in. I have stopped feeling a little sick after every meal and can brush my teeth without filtered water. Trips to the hospital are no longer a shock now that more than half the group has had amoebas or bacteria or giardia. We’ve also passed the milestones of getting out of robbery set-ups and the first resignation from our group last month.

Training winds down with a technical week running a business simulation, this year in the department of Santa Cruz. It was the first of the media luna, the half moon of departments that passed referendum on the Autonomia movement for political decentralization last summer. To get to Santa Cruz we drive through the Chapare, the dominating province of the department of Cochabamba. It is lush mountain valleys of green, wrapped in cloud and that great simultaneous smell/feel/sound of damp, breathing jungle. In the 80s cholitas would sell cocaine in piles by the roadside. Today, anti-U.S. hostility over coca eradication and DEA activity mean Peace Corps volunteers aren’t even allowed to travel here.

Santa Cruz city feels like another country. It is tropical, modern, sprawling. We arrive at 1 a.m. and I am hotter than I have been my entire time in Bolivia. The hostel shower shoots one stream of water at the ceiling, the other at the towel rack, and delivers a mild electric shock if you try to adjust the showerhead. Luckily, we leave the next morning for San Jose de Chiquitos, a small town on the Jesuit Mission circuit, via a hellish 10-hour rocky dirt road. It is so hot in Santa Cruz I take cold showers for sanity. On the bright side, cold showers give me the best water pressure I’ve had in Bolivia, since in our host community every shower in town (all three of them) gets hotter the lower you turn the water on.

Within Bolivia there is regional rivalry between the Cambas of the tropics and the Collas of the highlands. I’ve decided the Collas have got it on climate and this heat-humidity just destroyed my life goal of living in a rainforest. We ooze through the week teaching classes and understanding why nothing moves between the hours of noon and 4 except the hammocks strung up in every open shaded space.

If I had a project that could afford me lying in a tub of ice for 6 hours during the middle of the day, I would love to live in Santa Cruz. The humidity (or heat delirium) intensifies every color, there is constantly the sound of living things, and the weather is wild. Heat gives way to freezing surazo winds that roll in unchecked by the flatness of the Chaco to the south, or the humidity topples over into explosive tropical storms. It’s almost neat enough to make you overlook being hit in the head by careening, giant horned beetles every night.

FUN FACT/QUOTE OF THE DAY: In Bolivia, it’s good luck to pinch black people.

It´s Not Okay

2006-09-14T13:40:00.000-07:00

Someone wrote an article in the Peace Corps Bolivia newsletter about keeping perspective. As in, even though we are in Bolivia and getting sick happens, it is not okay to shit in your pants. Don’t judge us, this is easy to forget when you have amoebas, giardia, or salmonella. And honestly, there’s a lot that’s not okay here. No one uses trashcans. Ever. Some Bolivians’ besito greetings are really besito-not-so-ito. My host family’s dog plays fetch with rocks. There is a lynched dummy hanging in town to show what happens to thieves. It. Is. Not. O. K.

But it becomes ok pretty quickly. For example, transportation. At the local level it’s by taxi-trufi, trufi, or micro. These are cars, mini-vans, or small buses, respectively, that drive a set route and stop whenever someone yells “Pare/parada/la esquina por favor!”. All involve cramming three more people than is humanly possible into a torn up vehicle. But it’s easy to learn and cheap, < $0.25 a pop. Pretty soon you don’t even think about curling up on a spare tire in a taxi-trufi with 10 other people. When the micro is so full that the door doesn’t close, just make sure you have a good handhold. The two inches between your leg and the wall is DEFINITELY enough room to squeeze in someone’s cho bag, cake box, or child.

Trufis are a lot sturdier than they look. Dan’s host dad drives one and took us to Tunari National Park last weekend and that thing takes switchbacks and dirt/rock roads like a pro. Tunari is stark-beautiful. We’re at the end of the dry/winter season, so nothing is green. At 14,000 feet it’s steep faces of shale and scree, patches of dry yellow grass or lichen and no trails. You just climb as much as the falling rocks and your weak gringo lungs let you in whatever direction looks least sketchy. Llama and pony herds are scattered around shallow, minerally, mirrored lakes. Below the peaks are flats of yellow and dark red moss that sink down in patches to show the water below it. Walking over it feels like walking with moon shoes. Next time we go, maybe I won’t be wheezing like I collapsed a lung.

I think I’m slowly settling into a routine again. Training can be wear and tear, especially when we’re running over schedule and the word “Peet´s” makes me cry a little. What is the obsession with Nescafe on this continent?? Jenny and I found some good paths so I’ve started running again. The roads here are loose dust and rocks, not really zone-out material. After a few face plants I think my balance is getting better, and I’m working on the dog issue. I learned quickly dogs aren’t pets; they have a purpose like all the other animals. Apparently, the job of a dog is to guard the house, bark for ten minutes before/after anyone passes by, and chase Asian people. Ok, they chase Bolivians too because every dog knows to stop immediately when you bend down for a rock or pitch your arm back in a mime throw. I know you’re not supposed to let dogs sense your fear, but every time I get charged I think about how Bolivia has like 500 cases a year of rabies. We’re still not sure if the poor little puppy in the picture on my last post died of rabies or rotten eggs, but since he was chewing on everyone’s hands I hope Purell kills the rabies virus.

FUN FACT/QUOTE OF THE DAY: “That chick was mad indigenous.”

Paro

2006-09-01T15:58:00.000-07:00

On August 25 we left Cochabamba for our host community, a small pueblo outside of QuillaCollo. The Peace Corps emphasizes walking and frightening forms of public transportation like the rest of the community once volunteers are at project site, but for now we roll in Land Cruisers. A few are missing their side mirrors still, which get expertly swiped in the city and possibly sold back to you later.

Our host community is small and poor, but barely qualifies as “the campo” (in Bolivia, there are cities, the campo, the campo-campo, and the super-campo. It’s funny until you think about your project site odds). It’s mostly an agricultural town. There is one restaurant, a bunch of tiny stores (one room in someone’s house), and a few chicherías, indicated by a white flag outside the house. Chicha is alcohol made of fermented maize and apparently, feces, because a lot of volunteers get gnarly sick off it. Probably because it´s drunk out of a gourd shared by everyone and each batch tastes a little different. No internet, but enough street dogs to take every SPCA in the states.

The volunteers are staying with families scattered across a three-mile stretch. I really lucked out because not only does my host family have a flush toilet and electric shower, but also Mama Mary owns the town restaurant. It’s open on the weekends and serves pique, beef and chorizo fried with onions over papas fritas, chicharrón, slow-stewed and fried pork, and lambreado, shake ‘n baked guinea pig. So now I’m porking up on deep-fried meals doused in spicy llajua sauce everyday. Having three brothers and getting woken up every morning at 6 by the dogs (who bark for five minutes every time someone walks by the house) or Mama Mary banshee-yelling at one of the boys has taken some getting used to. But really, no complaints because at the other end of the scale, volunteers are getting latrines, bucket baths, and boiled potatoes and rice at every meal.

Training is super regimented. 4 hours of Spanish class until noon, then another 4 of technical training after lunch. Classes are always at someone’s house in the community except on Wednesdays, when we make the hour and a half trip to the Cuerpo de Paz training center. At the training center they add cultural, medical, and safety sessions to the day, plus an intense schedule of vaccinations.

It’s an interesting time to be in Bolivia. There is a lot of change happening in Bolivia right now with the Morales presidency, drafting of the constitution, and constant educational/social/political reforms. The anti-American bit of it isn’t really encouraging, but for the most part I’m just really fascinated to watch history happen.

A popular way of political expression is the paro, or blockade. Shovel dirt, rocks, cars, and/or children (just kidding) across the most heavily used roads and protest for your cause 1-3 days or until it rains, whichever comes first. There are usually 2-3 national paros a year, and more local issue bloqueos every month. The first paro we saw was August 29, a nationwide transportista protest of the administration’s proposal to re-issue every license plate in Bolivia (and collect the money for it). Depending on the issue and the place protests and blockades get dangerous, especially for outsiders, but QuillaCollo was pretty tranquilo. I spent the day playing soccer with my little brother, which means he plays soccer and I run around after him until I get tired.

FUN FACT/QUOTE OF THE DAY: You can buy pink toilet paper on every street corner!

The Fighting 43rd

2006-08-25T15:27:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-20T14:05:00.000-07:00

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!