Change.

Rarely are we faced with the question “How will the next two years change? How will I change in the next two years?” In joining the Peace Corps, however, a bit of reflection on this unanswerable question is inevitable. I think all volunteers must have asked themselves this before boarding that plane in Miami, DC, or Philly. Some predictions were easy. There would be a new president, probably a democrat. Prices would change, probably in an upward direction. Wars in Africa and the Middle East would burn on. New flavors of Frappachinos would be unveiled. Some things seemed bound to stay the same. Politicians would still be full of hot air. Fridges in US households would still brim with milk, fruits, beef, and Snapple. Articles would be written and conventions organized to stop wars in far off places. Frappachinos would still be tremendously bad for you.

As imperfect fortune telling machines, however, we are bound to make some mistakes and omissions when predicting just how the world will remake itself over the course of some 750 days and nights. While contemplating how the homeland might evolve during my two years, I failed to anticipate just how much change would take place within the town to which I was destined. I suppose I imagined that the town would be a sleepy hamlet, untouched by time, with paths leading into the woods and on into eternity. Granted, many things are perennial. Women still spend hours chatting over yerba mate. Boys are still reprimanded for spending too much time shooting marbles. Politicians are still maddeningly unscrupulous.

Much, however, has not remained as it was upon my arrival. Every home now has electricity. Many families have saved to purchase televisions and DVD players to watch and re-watch the antics of Van Damme and his friend Bruce Lee. The number of classrooms has doubled. As a result of the global food shortage, prices of the few staple goods one can buy in Chimeo-sugar, pasta, rice, and flour-have doubled. The lens of my camera has recorded the childhoods of many families, mostly new mothers, enthusiastic to record every moment of the evolution of their babes.

Just as the families grow, so must the infrastructure of the community. It may seem a peculiar correlation, but a government gift of barbed wire has resulted in the raising of about a dozen homes. To understand this effect, one must understand how animals are raised in our region. While in the US, cows and pigs are fenced in as farmers try to keep a close eye in their investment, raising livestock in the Chaco works in reverse. Owners let their cattle and pigs graze throughout the community, leaving the homeowner with the task of keeping the animals out. My dad learned this lesson on his first night in Chimeo. We were awoken at 2 am to the yells of my tremendously helpful and, at the time, tremendously drunk neighbors and their dogs herding and oosh! oosh!ing about a dozen cows out of my yard. This being so, a gift of barbed wire has afforded many families the ability to raise their own homes, as the rest of the inputs for a home are easier to find, just wood for fence posts and adobe for walls. This has drastically changed the view from my porch. Formerly surrounded by forest, my house is now encircled by homes in various stages of completion. It may be winter, but Marlene, Marina and the rest so badly want their own homes that they make do with improvised walls and ceiling of tarp, plywood, and tin held together by string, twine, and logs. They may not have proper walls or roofs, but at very least they’re not sharing lunch with the pigs.

Part of me is saddened to see trees felled, to see footpaths now cleared by tire tracks. I fear the disappearance of tiny cultural aspects with the arrival of modernity. That with radios and tvs, teenage boys will stop teaching themselves to play Chaqueno tunes on timeworn guitars and violins. That the next generation of girls wont speak a word of their mother’s language. This, however, must be what they mean by development. This must be the meeting of one of our objectives in the Peace Corps: work yourself out of a job. Its also a source of optimism that this rural community is growing, advancing, and accumulating while in so many part of the developing world young laborers leave their ancestral lands for already overcrowded cities. The seemingly careless felling of trees has led me to realize that any development needs to be managed. Therefore, with the hopeful end of harmonizing growth and nature, I and many other volunteers in similar communities have begun to focus on environmental education. I draw a lot of ideas from other volunteers from the environmental education program. Upon introducing ourselves fifteen months ago, I remember thinking their program too fluffy to be of real use in Bolivia. Yet another unexpected change.

So it goes each month, a lot of the same but always with tiny advancements. Life is slow, but it is definitely not paralyzed. I wonder just what sorts of similar miniscule changes must be going on inside of me. When I finish here, I will be 10% older than I was when I left the US. That is a lot of percentage points. It will be something to be analyzed later, though, when Im far from this place an able to compare and contrast myself and, well, myself.