Project update

One year ago today, I touched down in La Paz airport. To commemorate this anniversary, Id like to outline the projects in which we are ankle deep, knee deep, and fully immersed here in Chimeo.

Ankle deep

The bees. Currently the bee group has more than 20 persons interested, but we expect this number to drop to a more manageable number (10-12) as we begin to truly work. We have cleaned the old Apiculture room, which was filled semi-functional bee equipment, all covered in the same fragrant, ancient black honey comb and general bee residue. We will use this room to harvest honey and store any new materials we may acquire. I will be teaching a few training sessions about basic bee anatomy and hive management, and we will bring in local tecnicos to lead workshops on making bee suits and bee boxes. Im waiting to see how many truly dedicated community members will take part in the project to write a grant proposal, called a Peace Corp Partnership. When its finished you will all be sure to know, as Partnerships are largely funded with the assistance of friends and family of the volunteer. There is another grant type, called a Small Project Assistance (SPA) project funded by USAID. Few SPA grants are awarded however, and they generally take longer to process than Partnership projects, so Ive decided to seek funds through Partnership.

School gardens. Part of the curriculum in Chimeo’s primary school is agriculture, where the kids sow and reap from their own garden. I will be helping out with this class, talking about organic pest management and nutrition. Hopefully, the kids will tell their parents about these ideas and practice them once they have their own terrain. There is interest in a grey water project, where we plant family gardens and water them using discarded kitchen and laundry water. It would be a great project, but it all depends on how much time and financial resources we have to work with.


Knee deep

Tree nursery. This is largely the brain child of Chachi and his counterpart Juan Pablo. Juan Pablo would like to start a tree nursery in each of the small indigenous communities in the foothills of Parque Aguarague to train the community members to protect it. Chimeo would be the pilot community, due largely to the fact that I am here and can facilitate its implementation. This nursery couldn’t come at a more important time in the history of Chimeo. More and more trees will certainly be cut down as electricity has recently been installed, allowing community members to take advantage of a donated carpinteria that has been sitting idle for seven years. This tree nursery will also enble the bee group to reforest any trees that may be cut down in the capture of colonies or in the making of the bee boxes-truly sustainable bee keeping. As of today, the area has been cleared, fenced in, and the supplies and man power are waiting for the end of the rainy season to build it. This project is funded by the mayors office of Villa Montes and if it is successful, we will surely see more community nurseries popping up in the area.

Radio show. This Friday Beth, a nearby basic sanitation volunteer, and I will give our first twenty minute radio broadcast. Each week we deliver a spot about health, sanitation, nutrition during the radio show “Class in your home.” This week it will be the difference and importance of differentiating between organic and inorganic trash; next week it will be how to make healthier, safer, organic pesticides. “Class in your home” is led by three men, expert speakers of Guarani, Tapiete, and Weenhayek, who give small lessons in each of Villa Montes’s major indigenous languages. This program reaches our target audience, the campo, so hopefully our messages will reach the right ears.

Kunaguazu. Thus far Chimeo’s cooking club has learned to make peanut butter, bean burgers, pizza, quinua cakes, and many other treats. The objective is to make people more conscious of their food choices, aka more veggies and protein, less rice and sugar. In reality, everyone just wants me to teach them to make chocolate cake.

Computer class. We have one ancient, working computer, no internet, and a lot of interest. We do our best.

Cultural recuperation. I have a laptop with a built in microfone. They have dozens of stories, fiction and non, in a slowly disappearing language. We hope to put these together with the ends of a website or CD to sell. As soon as I can figure out how to do it, I will be posting some of the stories we have already recorded on my blog.

When not engaged in these noble pursuits, we like to spend our time not attending meetings, serving delicious mate, making chicha, letting usapuka imbed themselves in our skin, riding bikes with machetes, reading and not reading books, killing snakes, avoiding snakes, talking about snakes, dancing chacarera, and talking about the weather. So there you have it-if all of these projects take place in 2008, it will have been a great service.