not the end i was anticipating to this story.

Hey there from inside of the United States!

I have been getting a number of emails from friends and family sharing their encouragement and excitement for my adventures-to-be in The Gambia. Unfortunately, I have to tell you all that they wont be happening. In previous emails I had mentioned some back pain that had been going on since mid-August. Before clearing me for the Gambia, the Peace Corps took an MRI to rule out any serious back problems. To my chagrin, last week I found out that the pain wasnt purely muscular, but rather a herniated disc. The good news is that it wont require surgery. The bad news is that people with herniated discs do not fare well as PC volunteers, so I will be staying in the States, going through physical therapy and working on getting better. Now more than ever I dont know what the next few months will bring, but Id like to thank you all for your encouragement over the past two years. Thanks so much, and hopefully sometime in the future Ill be sending on emails from new adventures in the developing world.

Much love,
Jacqueline

The exodus.

Once all the volunteers were together after evacuation, I realized that my exit from Bolivia was the longest of all. Four days, three countries, eight blockades, one pair of flip flops, bikes, a boat, a plane, and many taxis later, heres the story in pictures.

Check it out at http://picasaweb.google.com/j.brysacz.

this is thirty-six months

In designing my blog for my Peace Corps experience, I struggled with its title. How could I give one name to something so unknown, so big, so exciting. In the end, I decided that the only thing I knew for sure was that it would last for twenty-seven months. This past week, even that certainty burned up like a tire at a Bolivian blockade.

About ten days ago and long before they reached that magic number twenty-seven, 113 volunteers stepped off of a military plane and onto Peruvian soil. Since then, they have been buried by a blizzard of paperwork and life decisions, all while trying to collect themselves emotionally. Our turned out to be a particularly chaotic evacuation, squashed between the speedy turn of events in the country and the end of the fiscal year on October 5. We spent the first two days talking about what we left behind. I left my bee group and my godson. Gina left behind her earthworm fertilizer project. Mike his tree nursery. Ellen her elderly friend whom no one else visits. 113 people doing good work with 113 deserving communities, thousands of friendships ended with just a few hours notice.

On the third day, the Washington delegation arrived. It was tme to move on. We were given four options. We could close our service and travel South America or go straight home. We could re-enroll in another two years in another country. We could hope that Bolivia would settle down and wait to re-instate. Finally, we could transfer to another program. When a Peace Corps country is suspended or closed, headquarters sends an email to each country director asking if they could receive volunteers like us, Peace Corps Refugees. Volunteers are then given a list of what countries would accept how many volunteers in which projects, and for how long. The transfer option is especially attractive as many of the positions are available for just one year.

I was not ready to go back to the US. I have unfinished business with the developing world. With its logical chaos and its closeness to nature. I replayed in my head the day I met with the PC recruiter and I chose a Latin American assignment over an African one. This could be my opportunity to get the best of both world, to slip on my Africa shoes and see how they fit. I was hoping to find something for a year, preferably with bees. It felt like a long shot- only 6% of PCVs are agriculture volunteers, and I don’t speak the language in a number of the countries with ag programs.

When the list of possible transfer countries was unveiled, I flipped to the agriculture section. Seven countries had openings. Not interested in staying in Latin America, I looked to the Africa section. “Mali, two years, French required.” No. “Burkina Faso, one year, French required.” No. Finally, at the end of the alphabet, the only other option on the continent: The Gambia. One year. No French. I looked into their programs, and they focus on beekeeping and reforestation, which were my two main projects in Chimeo. Some of the Washington people sent my resume on to them and they enthusiastically ACCEPTED! I will be heading home this weekend for almost a month of home leave until my departure on October 20. I have been told that I will be working on the southern half of the country near the coast and learning a language called Mandinka. I will be about an hour from the capital city of Banjul and will work with the Gambian National Beekeepers’ Association. Tammy, the only other Bolivia PCV headed to the Gambia will join me then, and starting November 6 we will begin a Pre-Service training, mainly to learn the languages of The Gambia.

The Gambia will certainly be a much more challenging experience than my twenty months in Bolivia. I will have to learn the indigenous languages to communicate. I probably wont have electricity. I wont have a shower. Before my original departure I felt uncertain and a bit scared, but this time around its pure excitement. So, after a tremendously trying week, I’m looking forward. I feel terrible for having disappeared from Chimeo so quickly, for being swept up from a conflict that my dear friends will continue to deal with. I have been able to relay the message to the folks there that I will be back. I plan to send all sorts of letters to Chimeo from The Gambia and I will be back to visit and for a proper going away party after I finish my service in the end of 2009, after thirty-six months as a volunteer. I suppose now I ought to change the title of my blog.

Greetings from Peru

As some of you may have read in the papers over the past few weeks, Bolivia has been suffering from serious social unrest. Almost a month ago it all started where I lived, in Villa Montes. The prefects and mayors got together and decided to go to battle with Evo over his redistribution of the hydrocarbons export tax. He wanted to take a small percentage of the funds and use it for projects in his side of the country, the poorer west. The political leaders of the Chaco, home to 45% of Bolivia's hydrocarbons, wanted to make sure the revenues from these taxes stayed in the land from which they were removed. Some claim that their real goal was to destabilize the Morales administation a la Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, where the leftist government was toppled after blockades and strikes destabilizes the government and ushered in Pinochet. Anyone who worked for the mayors office, prefecture, hospital, or schools were told to go and blockade the roads or they would lose their jobs. So they did. The campesinos, who had truckloads of tomatoes and papayas rotting in their fields, grew unhappy with the blockades and tried to break them down by force in Villa Montes. Four were injured (with sling shots) and as a result the comite civico worked to bring the campesinos on line by telling them that the objective of the fight for the hydrocarbons tax, the IDH, was to preserve some of the social programs they rely upon, such as the Juancito Pinto which give cash to school kids to buy their books. So the campesinos calmed down and the blockades continued.

After three weeks, more and more communities in the media luna, the easten half of the country, began to strike and blockade. The Cruceno Youth, a sort of university student run militia, began to take any office that was run by the federal government or those that had been recently nationalized, such as the national phone company Entel. With battering rams and stones and some stolen guns and tear gas, they held off the military police and began to loot and demolish their own city. The scenes on television were quite chaotic and an air of fear and uncertainty began floated over the country. Evo, unable to suppress the uprisings in a country with a history of military dictatorships, began to blame the United States for the social unrest. He cited meeting between the ambassador and the leaders of the media luna and declared Ambassador Goldberg a persona non grata. Tit for tat Ambassador expulsions began between Bolivia, the US, and Venezuela and its bellicose president.

Meanwhile, 113 peace corps volunteers listened closely to fuzzy radio signals and watch bleary eyed as their country was accused of trying to dismantle the same country they had spent a year or two trying to build up. I was in Camiri, a town 150 km north of me, visiting the doctor when the violence in Santa Cruz began to unfurl. I was told to stay there to wait out the violence, but when the Ambassador was dismissed I was told to cross the three blockades to get back to Chimeo and get my passport. The blockades which had been so easy to cross on the way up to the doctor a few days before had changed drastically. After three weeks of strikes gas had begun to run out and disgruntled locals had begun to puncture the tires of the taxis ferrying travelers through the Chaco. I made it most of the way with no problem, but north of Machareti the tire pinchers arrived. Our driver ordered us to bajense bajense bajense! about 15 km away from the next blockade when a tire pincher on a moto approached. Travellers had to walk this 15 km then another 15 km to Tiguipa, where taxi drivers felt far enough away from the blockade to ensure the health of their tires. Being a light skinned lass I was able to catch rides most of the way, and when I got to Tiguipa there was a taxi driver helping a farmer squeeze cane juice as payment for letting him hide his car in the farmers yard. Happy to be on the last leg of the journey, I bought a liter of jugo de cana for 5 Bs to take back to my friends in Chimeo. We weary travellers happily occupied every inch of the old toyota, and we were on our way. For a while. About half way to Chimeo, the car ran out of gas. We pushed it for a while, but when met by a particularly steep hill we gave up. Knowing that I was now a mere 15 km from Chimeo, I started walking with another girl from the taxi whom I knew. As she turned off to her house, a friend of my site mates picked me up and took me all the way into Chimeo. I thanked him and walked to my house to prepare for what would turn out to be my final twelve hours in Chimeo.

I spent the night and morning visiting, trying not to cry, and deciding what belongings would earn a place in the one bag I was approved to take with me. I visited with my four closest families and fielded a 0.750 not crying percentage. I told everyone that I may never be back, but I wasnt sure, that they had kicked out the ambassador and people were blaming my country for the problems in Santa Cruz. They assured me that everything would be resolved and that I would be back in a few days.

It wasnt until we boarded the plane in Bermejo that we were told: we were being evacuated to Lima, Peru. Now, a few days, hours of taxis, two rides in C130s, and much sadness later, I am in Lima, Peru. We are all in Lima, Peru. The program in Bolivia has been suspended and representatives from Washington will be arriving in the next few days to help us sort through what we will all do next. Some will go straight home, others will stay and travel South America, others will put in another year or two with PC in another country. I am still sorting out my feelings on leaving my very close friends and being forced to desert some really great projects that were a year and a half in the making. I will likely be here for another week before anything is figured out. I do not think that I am ready to go back to the US, but I dont know if I can give my heart to another community the way I did to Chimeo. Ill be sending an update in the coming days as my future becomes more clear.

Cuidense,
Jacqueline

Salud!

One would be hard-pressed to think of a developing nation where the poor have better access to health care than Bolivia. Perhaps Cuba. Financed by its own national resouces as well aid from countries like Venezuela, Bolivia provides its citizens with free universal health care. Pregnant women and infants are guaranteed free medical assistance under the SUMI. Small communities like Chimeo have their own health posts, complete with a doctor, nurse, and dentist, to provide basic services to denziens. As a good friend of the doctor and nurse in Chimeo, I am constantly turning down assistance and medications for whatever might ail me. I am obligated to exclusively see Peace Corps’s fancy, Georgetown-educated doctor in Santa Cruz. Furthermore, I dont feel right taking the ibuprofin that could potentially benefit another commuity member who doesnt have the outside resources that I do.

The blockades and civil strike of the past month, however, had me turning to Maribel, my dear friend and Chimeo’s resident nurse. A year of long bus rides, terrible matresses, and copious hoeing knocked something loose in my back. Unble to do the things I need to, like hike through the monte, carry heavy boxes of honey, and clear my yard, I asked Maribel what I could do to heal myself. She diagnosed my problem as likely sciatic nerve pain, explained how the over-worked muscles, nerves, and tendons had left me in bed for days. She did conclude, however, that I needed to see a doctor.

This time I accepted her ibuprofin and vitamin B and went back to bed to contemplate my options. The roads to Santa Cruz were heavily blockaded, so getting there would involve walking many kilometers and spending at least 200 Bs (a 500% increase in the normal price as a result of gas scarcity and general Bolivian entrepeneurism.) I had 70 Bs and an inability to walk. For the first time, I was truly adversely affected by Bolivia’s uniquely turbulent politics.

In the end, the PC medical office set me up with an “approved” doctor in a town just two hours north of Chimeo. I sold some homemade beeswax chapsticks to Maribel to raise money for my passage and set out. The kind doctor, who matches every word with gesture and ends every appointment with an awkward hug, perscribed for me all sorts of pills and, of course, what Bolivian illness would be complete a few shots of vitamins in the butt. To make sure it was merely muscular and not my kidneys, a jocular ecografista checked out my insides with an ancient sonogram machine while he practiced his broken English on me. A large lady with drawn on eyebrows unfazedly handled my bodily fluids to rule out any abnormalities. I refused, however, to have my entire trunk, where my baby making apparati reside, peered into by an x-ray machine that may have been built by Madame Curie.

Thoroughly prodded and reassured, I then spent 600 Bs on medications. Include consultation fees and transportation, and the trip cost me about 1000 Bs, about $125. Such medical extravagance would be out of reach of the typical Bolivian. This one illness would suck the entire monthly pay of a school teacher with ten years of experience. Earning 30 Bs for eight hours of work, a day laborer could not afford it even if he worked all day everyday for a month. Sure, campesinos have basic uiversal health care, but this is basic. Vaccines and antibiotics. No ecographs. No x-rays. No surgery. Awakened by my brief inability to access theattention that I needed, I began to wonder what it really means to lack access to modern medicine. We hear a great deal about providing areas ravaged by AIDS with retrovirals, but that is just the big stuff. What about the uiversal small stuff? The ladies with sciatic nerve pain? The strange rashes? The hearing problems? Truly tiny, elisive stuff that can keep people home from work for months. Throw in a lack of understanding of germ theory and a dash of literay, and ones health becomes a fey, ephemeral, inscrutable animal.

It is truly unfathomable. No matter how long one remains within another country or another culture, she remains concious of her other-ness, the parts of herself that are not as those that surround her. As a citizen of any wealth, western nation, perhaps moreso as a US citizen, one holds certain impregnable priveledges that can present unparrallelled opportuities. Freedom to travel. Access to education. Protection under the hegemon. Nonetheless, this same ushakable priveledge can prevent one from truly understanding, truly experiencing life in a poorer nation. Empathy a plenty with a scarcity of sympathy.

Despite the kind doctor’s embrace, the pain remains today, and I am in my fourth week of understanding that animal that Chiminenas know so well. The pills didnt seem to work. The expensive machines revealed nothing. My body keeps me from my thrilling fascinating work, while the worsening blockades keep my here in this large town. Bit by bit, I am starting to understand so much about life, about my own priveledge, about the back pain that seems to afflict most women on this planet, and about the harsh reality of healthcare that, if you crunch the numbers, afflicts most of the human beings on this planet.

All this in a very social democracy with universal health care. Imagine what could be.

Capture fotos

Here are a few fotos from our first group capture. More can be found on my picasa account at-


http://picasaweb.google.com/j.brysacz

Capture videos

Below are some videos of our first group capture using the suits provided by the support of all of you through our Peacecorps Partnership. Since the boxes and suits arrived on the 15th every spare moment has bee spent looking for feral hives and capturing them. The last video is of Cecilio, my compadre and the leader of the capture, picking up the queen and putting her in the box. Once the queen enters the new home, the rest of the bees will follow her.

Feral bees, feral gringas

There are thousands of them. Thousands. All with a specific job, all decided by one corpulent lass with tremendous olfactory powers. Her belly too dilated with eggs to do any other work outside of processing progeny, the queen relies upon her many many daughters to keep house. She is a woman trapped in her eigth month of pregnancy, but for somewhere between two and eight years. This is not to say that she exales WATER! or FLOWERS! and the entire colony rushes after the same goal. Its more nuanced than that. Each worker bee’s role in the colony changes throughout her lifetime. The young, inexperienced bees are relagated to the poop deck, cleaning cells and feeding the brood, for their first week or two of life. As they become more adroit , the bees are promoted through the ranks, hopefully to one day reach the rank of field bee, directing their search for pollen, water, and tree resin by the position of the sun and sense of smell.

Despite their fey social structure, apis mellifera does have one weakness: nighttime. While their five eyes are able to adjust to the dark interior of the hive, outside of the hive they lose their way without the light of the sun. Try it: any bee caught outside of its hive at night will dauntlessly fly at a flame or flashlight. Awareness of this aspect of bee biology is indispensible to bee keepers. Hives are only moved at night when, after blocking the entrance with some wax, bee keepers can rest assured that all of the thousands of its denizens are tucked away inside. Enervated by the darkness, especially pugnacious hives can be more easily harvested.

In Chimeo this week, we took advantage of this in the first honey harvest using our newly arrived suits. About half of our group already has a hive or two, which they had previously managed with improvised or ancient equipment and protective gear. Combined with the end of a mild winter that smacks of a strong harvest, established bee keeps were thrilled to try out their new equipment on the spring harvest. On Wednesday, Freddy and his son Benito harvested thirty kilos from Freddy’s tremendously bravo hives, only sustaining three stings as opposed to the usual dozens. Freddy will sell his honey to an invalid Frenchman named Enrique who lives near the Paraguayan border at 30 Bs per kilogram. To put this in perspective, that’s as much as a Bolivian day laborer earns for eight-hours of work, and it will buy you almost two kilos of meat or four kilograms of flour.

I had the opportunity to try the suits out for myself on Thursday with my comadre and main homegirl Ana when we harvested one of the two hives behind her house. Her husband Cecilio was in the fields for the day, and Ana was proud to be completing the first all-female harvest. In the late afternoon we began the easy part: removing the mature honey panels from the honey super. All of them were fat and ripe, capped with perfect white wax, and where one wooden panel was missing, the bees had constructed their own complete white wax panel which I had the pleasure of removing by hand. We hustled the panels in a covered dish into her kitchen, where we decapped the mature comb and spun it in a centrifuge provided by a previous PC volunteer. When all nine panels had been sucked dry, it was time for the hard part: putting the panels back. When a bee keep arrives to take honey, the bees are startled. A man at gunpoint. A kindergartener on her first day of school. In a desperate attempt to save some of their riches, they gorge themselves on their honey and are rendered as drunk and incompetent as a gringo on Thanksgiving. The dry panels must be returned as soon as possible after they are harvested, however, to keep the bees from swarming in search of a bigger home. Upon returning, the bees have regained their equanimous wrath.

In an attempt to avoid their bee anger, Ana and I decided to replace the panels after dark, hoping to find thousands of benign and quiescent workers patiently awaiting the return of their wax. We were in part correct. So many clung to the inside of the top of the box that I could hardly lift it. Heavy and sticky with buzzy life. I strained and eventually lifted the box and placed it face-up on the ground. There they all were, lining the sides and floor of the honey super, lost without wax to mold or cells to inspect. They were impotent and impetuous, and using a flashlight and a brush, we had to find a way to politely move them to make way for the panels. It’s a strange feeling, to gently arrange these tiny creatures, which given the opportunity would end their lives in an attempt to end mine. Part of you just want to slam down the marks and run away, while the more vengeful ventricles of your heart want to squash them all for that time they entered your mask and stung you four ties on the nose. And then run away.

But you don’t. You have to watch out for every one of your thousands of money makers. With some fancy flashlight work we eventually fitted the panels back into the honey super, however the roof of the hive was another story. I recently hurt my back and simply couldn’t lift it. I had to shake off thousands of lives onto the leafy ground and hope that theyd viscerally follow their noses back into the hive. Despite our efforts, I found myself awake at four a.m., unable to sleep with worry about Ana’s bees. What if they remained there, cold, blind, freezing on the forest floor, a heap of formerly productive stripes? What if I had harmed their lovely productive colony? How did this strange relationship even evolve- they tried to kill me while I robbed them. And now I am losing sleep over them. Its is a sweet and viscous disfuntional love affair.

Since the harvest with Ana, Chimeo has seen the beginning of dozens of tumultuous relationships as we run up and down the mountain capturing wild colonies to fill our boxes. A few times each week I head out with a few fellas and ladies to chop down whatever tree has been found to have a colony tucked warmly inside its hollow trunk. Then, with the buzzing woody innards splayed out before you and tthousands of engry bees knocking at your mask, you must select some bee babies, some honey, and put it in the bee box, their new bee home. Finally, the hard part: finding the queen. She is distinct, but she is one of thousands. You have to learn to read the movement of the bees to find her, to follow their movements and reactions to know where to look. Under which mess of legs and thoraxes to dig. Once she is found and jailed inside of the box, the rest of the colony will follow her inside. The entrance to the box is then closed off with wax until the colony gets used to its new home.

This is my favorite part of bee keeping for its adventure, its uncertainty, and the knowledge that I will never, ever capture a feral colony when I return home. While in Bolivia and especially the chaco wild swarms regularly fly overhead and the forest is littered with colonies, Ive been told that wild bees are all but nonexistant in the US. Considering the importance of their polination practices, their absence to me seems strange. Worrisome. Until I return to that odd and contradictory and beloved place called home, however, I can be found gleefully ambling about the forest with an axe over my shoulder and a fearful insect love in my heart.


My half of Bolivia is currently in day eleven of a civil strike, holding my captive in Villa Montes, but as soon as I can get back to Santa Cruz I will be uploading some sweeeeeeeeet capture fotos. I know you can hardly wait, but try!

Love,
Jacqueline

2nd Annual Fair and Anniversary of Chimeo

I am an agriculture extension volunteer. Technically. In reality, while I make agricultural pursuits a priority, I am a whatever-I-can-do volunteer. Yes, we have our on-going agro-forestry and bee keeping projects, but those are not full time jobs. I have spent the last year or so making myself useful around town as a sort of Jill of all trades. I am an agriculture extension volunteer, but I am also a calculator, a bank, a technology specialist, a phone booth, a library, a cook book, and generally better than television.

The fair in Chimeo this week, commemorating its 90th anniversary, was a prime example of this reality. I made myself available to support the community in the fair’s organization, originally as its typist and official photographer. I originally stood back as far as I could to let the community put on its fair in its fashion, but as the fair approached, my resistance steadily eroded. First I agreed to change the date of a diabetes awareness workshop to coincide with the fair and a larger health fair at the same time. I agreed. The next week I was elected as the fair’s treasurer as a result of my own previous soliloquies on the need for transparency. The next day, I agreed to being in charge of trash and clean up, hoping to use it as a chance to promote recycling, separation of organic and inorganics, and general trash-can use. In the end, the organizing committee shrunk from 16 members to Enrique, Bartolome, and me.



Any town fair in Bolivia must have the following characteristics: it must present whatever product the community produces (I have attended Tomato fairs, Lime fairs, Algorrobo fairs), it must have a serenata (a closing night time talent show), and it must last for at least three days. Ours began on Friday with the groundbreaking ceremony for an expanded health post and a basketball game between health workers, in red, and the community authorities in blue. I sat furtively in the stands, but was eventually called down and given a blue jersey. Im not sure if Im now considered a town authority or if they just wanted me to play because they decided that gringos are good at basketball, but Im glad I was invited. See, I am a terrible basketball player. Somehow in the Bolivian campo, where basketball was discovered a few years ago and few people break 5’6”, I fit right in. There was not a single pair of basketball shoes on the court that day. Joining my blue flip flops were many sets of abarcas, the traditional campesino sandal made out of recycled tires, many bare feet, a couple pairs of soccer cleats, and some Chinese Chuck Taylor knock-offs. For the first time possibly ever, I had fun playing basketball. When I scored my first basket, the stands squealed, loving it almost as much as they loved 64 year-old Don Justino when he double dribbled.

After the game (we lost 32-30) I went with Gina, a PC friend visiting for the feria, to bake with Maribel, the town nurse. In addition to corn and honey, Chimeo is known for its anco, a hard shelled squash, sort of like a pumpkin but smaller, lighter, and much more delicious. Gina and I taught Maribel to make pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, and pumpkin cookies. Baking here in Chimeo is truly an art, not just because of the ignorance of recipes.com, but also due to the nature of wood fired ovens. The heating of the oven needs to be timed and its temperature manually estimated to tell if its nice and hot for bread making or maybe a bit cooler for cakes and cookies. Hand-laid using bricks and adobe, the tiny red embers inside seem to mimick the night sky of an alternate universe. We had success with the three pies and the cookies (the trick is a recipe using vegetable lard/Crisco), but somehow we botched the bread recipe when tripling it. While unfit for sale, our moist, cakey bread was well received by Gina, myself, and the neighborhood kids.

On exhibition alongside our pie de anco and galletas de anco were the Guarani foods women had spent the week preparing. The recipes consisted of traditional staples like kumanda (beans), andai (pumpkin/anco), and most of all, avati (corn). Avati is truly an amazing plant. In contrast to other staple crops around the world like wheat and millet, corn’s seeds are buried within its husk, thereby relying upon humans for its cultivation. When eaten in quanity alone it results in a sort of malnutrition called pellagra, but when mixed with beans it forms a complete protein. Furthermore, kumanda is what is called a nitrogen-fixer, replacing the nutrients that avati leaches from the soil. Throw in vitamin packed andai and maybe a wild animal for fats and you have a pretty complete diet. Im currently reading 1491, a book about the Americas before Cristobol Colon, which explains that this sort of sustainable agriculture was seen up and down the western hemisphere. So many years of surviving off of corn has resulted in a great deal of creativity. Below are some of the traditional corn dishes presented at the fair.


Achi: Soak it, grind it to dust with a man-sized wooden morter and pestle, Enjoy with a spoon for breakfast.
Pito: Toast it, grind with the mortal and pestle again, enjoy anytime with spoon. More delicious than achi.



Wintimomo: Soak it, grind it, place in colored layers in clay pot, cook over steam. Take with coffee or tea.



Tamal: Grind, mix with oil and sugar, wrap in husk, boil. Delectable.
Chicha: Grind, mix with sugar and ground peanut, boil for two days, let ferment for four days. Drink from clay pot.



Chirriada: Grind, mix with oil and salt. Heat flat rock. Make pancakes.

Dressed in their colorful traditional tipoys, the women set up their stands, adorning them with flowers, dried corn and beans. I distributed 50 kg feed bags provided by the corrigimiento for trash collected. Hoping to engender conciousness of recycling, each bag was labeled cans, plastic bottles, or inorganic trash. Somehow, in presenting our pumpkin pie, taking fotos of the participants, recording interviews for my radio show, and policing the recycling program, the morning disappeared without ever having reached my initial goal, the diabetes presentation.




That evening, after the pumpkin pie had been eaten and the recycling program long forgotten, I had another chance to make some sort of an impact: the play. I had been talked into it by the doctor and nurse of the health post, who wanted to present on domestic violence. They too wanted to do something about the problem, about the women who seemed to have bruises every time they brought their kids in for colds and rashes. The rest of the women in town are too timid to present on stage, so wouldn’t I play the part of the abused wife? I agreed, and we wrote a script that toed the line of Catholic family values and even would bring a few laughs.


The skit opened with my womanizing husband, the town dentist, drunk and professing his love and devotion to the only other non-timid lady in town, my octogenarian home girl Emilia. We put her in a wig and a short black skirt and set her prancing about the stage and insulting my husband in Guarani. They loved it. It was then my job to present the heavy stuff. I was nervous about stepping on cultural toes or ruining the festive mood, but the audience found the idea of a husband beating a blond-haired blue-eyed gringa wife even funnier than falling for an 80 year-old tart. We emphasized the need to denounce domestic violence and that if a woman is living in a cycle of violence that she can strike out on her own and find work. I imagine that it was receieved by at least a few women in the audience, as most of their husbands had been drunk since 4 pm. Below is a foto of 80 yr old Emilia joking around with her bbq "mountain pigeon" that she sold for 4 Bs a piece.



The events wound down around midnight, but a good number of community members stayed up until sunrise with the help of coca and alcohol, singing coplas and playing their guitars and flutes. Already people are talking about how to make next year's fair bigger and better, bitter sweet conversation for me, knowing that I will be long gone by the time it comes around.

Fully funded!

Im extremely pleased to announce that our beekeeping project is now fully funded. Within our small circle of friends and family, we raised $3,400 in just a few months. At then end of July I will be taking a trip to Cochabamba for a conference between all of the agriculture volunteers in-country, and while Im there Ill be able to pick up the boxes and suits from our provider there. The equipment should then arrive in Chimeo just in time for capture season, and our group can really get to work. Thanks so much to all of you who donated or passed the word on to friends and family members. Furthermore, through a serendipitous turn of events I am now the owner of a nice, newish digital camera. This means that I will now be able to take fotos of our activities to share with those of you at home. Im most looking forward to the video possibilities-Id like to tape a capture of a hive of feral africanized bees. So, theres much to look forward to.

Ive also been pretty busy in the mean time. I had, without a doubt, the best fourth of July celebration of my life at my friend Geoff´s site. We arrived in the wee hours of the morning of the 4th on a bus from Santa Cruz and crawled into the beds at Geoff´s house, which doubles as the only hotel in town. A couple of hours later we were woken by his family which, like most families in his town, raises cattle. We marched up the hill and out of town to their corral for a uniquely Chaqueno treat called "ambrosia". Essentially you take a shot of "puro", or watered down rubbing alcohol, a teaspoon of sugar, put them in a cup, and top it off with hot, foamy milk squeezed fresh from the udder. Like that it can be hard to down, but with a scoop of nescafe its as delicious as any Starbucks latte. Really. Many, many ambrosias later we stumbled back to the alojamiento and set about the days other wholesome activities. First we set to preparing dinner, which at 11 am was still walking around and oinking. Although by now we are all quite accustomed to taking part in the killing of our dinners, we all gathered around somewhat solemnly to watch Geoff´s host dad take care of our pig roast. He did the deed, but the rule was that "El que no pela, no come"- he who doesnt help clean the pig, doesnt eat. As a former ethically motivated vegetarian, this to me was the best way to eat meat. While Babe cooked in the oven, we engaged in wiffle ball and a game called nails, which involves a tree stump, a hammer, and one nail per person. Throughout the day, any time anyone won anything, the Star Spangled Banner was sung in tribute. The day was completed with more wiffle ball, a delicious dinner, an excellent fireworks show that woke up the whole town, and fire-side guitar playing until dawn. I think that Bolivias rugged, lawless nature lends itself to indulgence in our idealized, freedom loving American-ness. Even though, or maybe because, we are so far from home, it was an excellent patriotic celebration.

I hope you all had similarly joyous and fun-filled Fourths. Thanks again and keep in touch.