this is twenty-seven months.

not the end i was anticipating to this story.

2008-10-08T16:50:00.000-04:00

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.

2008-09-27T16:32:00.008-04:00

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

2008-09-24T18:37:00.000-04:00

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

2008-09-17T12:49:00.001-04:00

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!

2008-09-10T09:51:00.000-04:00

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

2008-09-07T15:31:00.002-04:00

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

2008-09-07T14:57:00.005-04:00

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

2008-09-04T16:14:00.001-04:00

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

2008-08-04T10:27:00.008-04:00

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!

2008-07-11T09:19:00.002-04:00

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.

Pentirenda.

2008-07-01T16:44:00.002-04:00

Human beings of all walks have a desire to learn more about the lives of their ancestors. We preserve our grandmothers diary and our great-grandmother’s hairpiece to feel more connected to our past. We make pilgrimages and we look up maiden names on geneology.com. We go so far as to call these connections our roots, as if without them we could not live.

Even living as an adopted daughter in a surrogate land, I have felt the pull to learn more about what Chimeo and its people “were”. I hear a great deal about what life was like before the assistance of an indigenous, socialist president, before the paved road to Santa Cruz: the houses were made of simple adobe and thatch, the only water was gotten from the river, and people only ate the maize they grew. Somehow, though, this was never enough. I wanted to record their stories and life histories and learn to make the foods only the grandmothers remember how to prepare. I wanted to speak Guarani fluently, even if it would only permit me to speak more freely with older women. Although most of Bolivia’s population that claims indigenous lineage, Spanish is the language of commerce. School kids learn both Spanish and the local indigenous language in school, be it Quechua or Guarani or Chiquitano or Weenhayek, but like most young people, they prefer modernity, and few really master the language of their grandmothers. I am just the same. Instead of studying Polish, the language of my grandmother, I chose the study Spanish, Portuguese, and the other languages of the Americas. Perhaps that’s where I saw my future.

Fittingly, when offered the opportunity to visit an isolated Guarani community where I was told the people still live like Chimeo’s great-grandmothers did, I jumped at the chance. This past month I spent a week in a community of twelve families called Pentirenda (Literally: “place of tobacco”.) I went with another volunteer, Connor, who is working with his local radio station and his Peace Corps-founded library to produce a documentary about the life of Guarani peoples today. The streets of his community, Muyupampa, are at the center of the Bolivian melting pot. On the cross roads between Sucre, Santa Cruz, and Yacuiba, women in Guarani tipoys and Quechua polleras buy their milk from the same university milk monger, while gas plant workers in orange jump suits share their vin-up and cola with ranchers, and waxing philosophically on their Chaqueno lifestyle. The community is also at the center of the land reform debate (Connor knows the controversial American rancher from the NYT article I sent out with my last update), and Guarani and mestizos in town have been known to come to blows on the issue. One of the purposes of their documentary, therefore, would be not only to record a rapidly disappearing lifestyle, but also to promote further intercultural understanding between community members.

On Tuesday we set off in the pick up of NorSud, one of the few organizations that works in the isolated communities we would visit. Three hours out on dirt roads, the engineers with NorSud stopped to inaugurate a new centro de acopio for the corn cooperative formed by some 50 Guarani families from the area. From there our team, being Connor, the head of the local radio station, and our translator, set off for Pentirenda on foot. Some twelve rivers and thirteen kilometers later, we arrived. The community is perched upon a dry, scraggly cliff, high above the thirteenth river. Upon arriving, visitors are welcomed to the genta guazu, or big house, which looks over the side of the cliff. We were well received, probably due to the instant credit our translator, who is also the towns only professor, provided us. Dona Olga, whom one might call the concierge of Pentirenda, seemed unfazed by us, which was surprising considering our size and whiteness. (Connor stands a gangly 6’8” tall. The kids in his site engage in fierce debate as to whether his species is actually gringo or giant.) We were immediately served chicha and we shared with them some bread we had brought. We put down our things and set to getting to know the community.

The genta guazu was much larger than the other houses, having about six rooms, and is the only one with a porch, cement floors and walls, and a tile roof. Our room was meagerly furnished with beds of bamboo, wood, and goat hide. From the front one can see the dry rolling cordillera, and from the back the adobe houses of Pentirenda’s twelve families. The genta guazu is much larger as it is the former home of the patron of Pentirenda, from whom the community purchased their land back about a decade ago. It seems to have been a pretty simple hand over. We were told that the patron disapproved of the amount of time some of the older boys were spending playing soccer, so he told them to leave. Once in town, they signed up for their obligatory year of military service called Cuartel, where they made all sorts of friends who were not born under the auspices of a patron. They informed the boys that if they could unite the community to buy their land from the patron, he would have to leave. So they did. They went home and convinced the leaders that this would be the best thing to do. Soon thereafter the patron and his family left for the greener pastures of Bolivia’s cities and rumor has it, the US. We didn’t really learn much about him aside from his first name. The community members were in agreement that he was “maldito,” a bad guy, but they also assured us that he never physically abused the men or women of the town. He spoke fluent Guarani, decided the hours of work as well as the names of all of the townspeople. One older woman, we were told, was somehow forgotten, and never given a name. In her 60s she was forced to choose a name in order to receive her social security benefits. She decided upon Mariana.

People said their lives are better now because of the increased freedom they experience, denoted by a single word in Guarani: Iyambae. They choose what they will sow, where they will sow it, and when they will reap. Their children can now study-within one year of the departure of their patron, the federal government built the community a one-room schoolhouse with the only bathroom in town and a salary for a professor. Although there are only two grades- third and fifth- students can choose to continue on to high school in a nearby town. Most do. The community is now visited twice each year by the “vinchuqueros”, a team of men who spray the adobe houses with pesticides to kill the cockroach-like bug that live inside adobe walls and carry a deadly disease called Chagas. The effects of the disease take decades to appear, so many do not know they are living with it until they are gravely ill and have already passed the congenital disease onto their children. Rates of incidence in some communities runs as high as 80%- I wouldn’t be surprised if Pentirenda were one of these communities. The best way to inhibit the entrance of vinchucas and the disease some of them carry into a community is to revoke adobe houses with cement and replace thatch roofs with tin or tile, or to sleep in a mosquito net. One of the largest public health pushes in Bolivia over the past decade is to install such healthy housing, but its isolation and years under a patron have left Pentirenda far behind. While today not a single home has seen these changes, community members are hopefully awaiting such a project, which should arrive in the next year or two.

While increased levels of education have been shown to increase quality of life indicators, it can have its drawbacks for communities such as Pentirenda. Children go off to learn more about the world, and many discover that they don’t want to spend their lives loading and unloading corn by the mule-load. No matter how dear the way the light hits the river below Pentirenda at that certain hour of the afternoon, the curiosity inherent in their youth will draw them to the cities and larger towns. Some will return, but many will stay, and their children may never learn their grandmother’s language.

On Friday we set off again for Muyupampa. As we made our way back across the twelve rivers, a cold southern wind ruddied our cheeks. We spoke about what we had learned that week, the people we had met, and the questions we still had about life in the community. In Iguembe, we borrowed an ax from one family and started a bonfire on the side of the road to pass the hours while we waited in hope of a passing automobile. At dusk we finally had some luck and were picked up by a friend of Connor’s from town. The men told jokes on the way home, but I was silent, contemplative. I couldn’t help but feel foolish and ethnocentric for my fixation upon Guarani life as it once was in Chimeo and as it still is in Pentirenda. Yes, there is a great deal to be learned from people who still live so close to the earth, but only keeping in mind that they, like the rest of us, only want to provide a better life for their children. In today’s world, this likely doesn’t involve sowing corn and peanuts by hand, but rather machinery and education, fertilizers and migration. I suppose that in the best of all worlds, a generation from now Pentirenda will be a lot like Chimeo. Most people will probably communicate in Spanish. There will be greater connectivity between the community and larger towns nearby. There will exist a water system and they will have electricity. More of their children will have high school degrees. They will still value their culture and a unique skill set of traditional medicine and survival in a harsh climate. As to what the future truly holds for Pentirenda, so often my only resolution here in Bolivia, is that only time will tell.

Change.

2008-07-01T16:43:00.000-04:00

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.

The blorious gycicle

2008-07-01T16:42:00.001-04:00

Water poured down from the tin roofs into tiny pools in the mud and dirt, combining with the rest of the surrounding drizzle to make a sort of white, melodious noise. Balancing on my bike, one foot on the ground and the other on a raised pedal, I looked out onto the traffic circle. Automobiles of all sorts spun around it, each one making a quarter, half, or sometimes even full homage to the ten meter metal fish that marked its epicenter. An older, squat woman climbed down from a minivan, transformed with curtains and makeshift red velour seating from a family vehicle into profitable privatized public transit. It looked unsafe. I followed the minivan, known here as a micro, with my eyes, watching the exhaust and vapor rise from the vehicles and bodies. Behind me, a girl stood over a rickety metal cart-cum-kitchen, frying up potatoes and hamburgers for a few Bs each. It also looked unsafe. The dim lightbulbs above her swung in the cold wind, and the steam from her stove followed their same trajectory. Dogs sniffed at plastic wrappers on the side of the road, unhindered by the weather. The walls, now brown at the base but certainly once a pristine eggshell-white, mentioned something about a bus that must have once stopped here. I learned nothing about its schedule, but I do know that it went to Sucre. A moto splashed through a muddy rut, turning my attention back to the street.

I should be really freaked out, I thought. Night is coming on. It will probably freeze. I have nothing but my keys and 50 centavos in my pocket, and the only volunteer who lives here, in Villa Montes, is at a meeting in La Paz. I am not freaked out, though, not even in the slightest. How did this happen? How did I even get here?

This afternoon I cowered in my room, looking forward to crafting some summer birthday gifts and generally avoiding the cold. Yakeleeeeen called a voice from outside my door. Ug. Yakeleeeeeen it called again. Here begins the debate that rages in my head anytime I escape for a bit of alone time, for selfish hours spent reading, sewing, drawing, and generally neglecting my duties as a community member. Yakeleeeeen. Do I pretend I am not here, or sleeping, or do I open the door? Did it hear my music? Its cold out there. Its going to make me go out in the cold. It could be important. Ug. I open the door.

Its Bartolome, his shy, holey smile and receding hairline as endearing as ever. He informs me that our bike ride up into Aguarague to visit Dona Vicenta has been rescheduled for today. For right now. Could I please come over with my bike and my “machine”, which could normally be any number of apparati, but in this case means camera. I agree. After one last longing glance into my (relatively) toasty room, I roll up my pant leg and head for the street.

We make our way through the wide dirt roads of Chimeo, soon turning up, away from the houses and towards the forest. Bartolome is recounting a tale of one of the many cycling tournaments he has won. It is his favorite subject. I am feigning comprehension. We are going to visit Dona Vicenta, who for thirty years ago or so decided she wanted to live up, up, up in the mountain and raise her family there. Now her husband is gone, and most of her children live in Villa Montes, save the youngest, Julian, and one of her grandchildren, aged 4. We are on a quest to take her photo for the poster for Chimeo’s town anniversary and fair on July 18th as well as to invite her to participate. It is a quest which would be no more than a few clicks in the US, while here it will take all afternoon.

The road goes from two lanes to one, to a footpath, to scarcely a path at all. We are carrying our bikes down the muddy mountain now. I am doubting his internal compass. I am focused on not falling. He is focused on retelling the tale of his victory. Finally we climb up out of a sandy gully and I recognize the river that runs past Dona Vicentas property. Bartolome is still talking and my bike is on my shoulder as we cross stepping-stones towards her citrus orchard.

Vicenta greets us and has us take a seat by the fire with her grandson. Bartolome explains the purpose of our visit, and she’s excited by the prospect of participation. She runs to bring her traditional mortadero, being a tree stump with a large divet in the center hollowed out for grinding corn. This is achieved by picking up a large stick and smashing it down on the corn bowl over and over again. Its charming and steeped in tradition, nonetheless Chimeo’s housewives are very happy to now have the option of purchasing bagged flour. As we wait, her grandson sits by the fire, squeezing and stretching a grey puppy in a dangerously loving way. Vicenta returns, we snap a few fotos of her and the mortadero, and that’s it.

Twenty minutes after arriving at our destination, we are on our way again. This time we are following a more direct route out, made for trucks from the gas company. Its almost entirely downhill and slippery. Disaster is repeatedly narrowly averted. Bartolome is done with his story and we are both laughing and breathing hard. I feel something entirely different. I feel…. eleven years old. Something about riding bicycles with a buddy, even if he is a 50 yr old Guarani man with a sparsely populated mouth and head, harkons back to those first few times I was allowed to explore on my bike. Despite his flat rear tire, we keep on barrowing down towards Villa Montes. We make a quick stop at the bicicleteria to patch Bartolome’s tire and head back for Chimeo. The ride, uphill this time, will take an hour, and it is already nearly dark. I am dreading the rain and pretty sure that his is a bad idea, but I agree to it. Maybe because my life here can feel so dry, especially these, the cold long nights of the southern winter. Or maybe because I don’t have taxi fare. But I agree.

Bartolome goes to run one last errand and leaves me there, on the rotunda by the giant fish statue. Just after the moto passes in a splash of muddy water, a familiar teal truck comes to a stop in front of me. It belongs to Rogelio, another community member, and hes agreed to take us home. We lift my bike into the back and the three of us climb into the cab. Closing the passenger side door is a two man job, and the windshield is fogging up. Rogelio says he has had the truck for about a decade, and Im pretty sure someone else owned it for quite a while before him. I would estimate that the aquamarine monster was born during the Eisenhower administration.

In another life, the monster was probably seen as a safety hazard and sold or donated. Here, its an asset. A prize. A reason for covetousness. The same goes for the girl with the rickety hamburger stand. And the micro. All these things which to me, a year ago, might have brought on apprehension, especially beneath the veil of a winter rain, are now just…life. Not negative, or even positive, but rather just accepted.

I suppose the reason Im writing this is because it became one of those great moments of realization: there are so many different ways to live. This lesson has come at me in the past from books and mouths of others, but tonight I really accepted it, processed it, slathered it in Heinz ketchup and washed it down with lemonade.

Since our adventure, Bartolome, myself, and the rest of the fair’s organizing committee have kept on with our preparations. There is a constant scratching of sandpaper in the houses of the male palo santo artisans, while the women spend the cold nights by the fire weaving. I recently passed a workshop with the female weavers, where I taught them to make string out of recycled plastic bags. This has a two-fold benefit. First, they can now continue to create even when there is no money to buy string. Second, they will burn fewer plastic bags (the only method of trash disposal in Chimeo), thereby decreasing exposure to dioxins and other carcinogens. I am also working with Chimeo’s nurse and doctor to present on diabetes, natal health, and domestic violence during the feria. Diabetes was my idea, while the doc pushed the domestic violence presentation. We are actually doing a SKIT. Were doing our best to give it a somewhat humorous tone, but I am still a bit apprehensive to present on the subject where general concepts of gender roles are a WHOOOOOLE LOT more traditional than my own. After seeing a few too many gals with black eyes, though, Im doing it. If our skit enlightens one man, woman, or kid, it will have been worth it.

This fair will be my main focus during July, and in August Im planning a trip into the Amazon for my birthday. If you were planning on sending flowers, chocolates, or a scarf woven by Tibetan monks, don’t do it. The only birthday gift that Im looking for this year is golden, sticky, and regurgitated by apis mellifera. That’s right: the bee project. Thanks so much to all of you who have donated- we are already 1/3 of the way to our goal. This still leaves a good amount to go, however, so if you were planning on donating, please do so as soon as possible. We really hope to have our financing go through before September as a result of the agricultural calendar here. August and September are the only months for capturing wild hives, so if we don’t have the financing by then, we will have to wait until January. If that happens then the project will still be in medio camino when my service is up in April, so Ill probably have to extend to see through its implementation. Thus, I am holding myself as ransom until our beekeepers have bee suits. So spread the word: support Chimeo’s bee keeps! Also, I am preparing bee-themed tee-shirts as a thank you for those who donate. If you are a contributor and are interested, just let me know and Ill add you to the list. To donate, just go to the following site:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=511-096

Happy Independence Day,
Jac

Remedies.

2008-05-29T11:07:00.000-04:00

When I had the good fortune to stay home sick from school as a wee lass, the day was spent curled up on a worn in brown leather couch watching reruns of television shows whose time ended decades before I was even a twinkle in my Daddy’s eye. Gomer Pyle was a staple, M.A.S.H. always creeped me out, and Bonanza! was the most anticipated thirty minutes of the morning. For all the rugged frontier wisdom of Billy Joe, Hos, and the other members of Bonanza’s cast, I do remember doubting their knowledge in the realm of health care. Every so often Hos would encounter a raven-haired damsel in a good deal of distress, having been caught out in a chilly spring rain. Hos and his comrades would invite said damsel into the lodge and warm her up with blankets and tea, fending off the possible onset of pneumonia. I remember thinking them naïve, dated, uneducated, because Hos, darling, we all know illness comes as a result of bacteria, viruses, and general genetic unluckiness.

Many years later, Im learning that Hos may have been right. I have been coughing for nearly a month. It seems that sleeping out in the cold and rain with the corn, while one of my better ideas socially, has left me physically depleted. As we warmed ourselves by the fire during our chilly vigil, the women remarked that we would all certainly be knocked down with colds and flus as a result of the elements. So much of what I had learned over the years, both through experience and in the classroom, had taught me that getting stuck in the rain wouldn’t lead to illness. Rainstorms with and without indoor heating, however, are very different creatures. As the women predicted, soon a cough set in, each day sinking deeper and deeper into my chest. With no way to escape the cold, it quickly morphed into something ugly.

Despite the PCs complete health care coverage, I remained reluctant to see a doctor. Not for its cost or any fear of the doc herself, but for avoidance of travel. Because of the indeterminate nature of Bolivian hospitals, the Peace Corps insists that any potentially serious illness be treated by one of their physicians in a regional city. Therefore, while a doc at the municipal hospital discovered bronchial-pneumonia for 10 Bs ($1.25), I was sent to Santa Cruz for finer treatment. Seven hours and 204 Bs ($28) later, a private doctor in a fancier office agreed. He prescribed the usual: antibiotics, cough syrup, lots of liquids, and for kicks, a shot in the butt. So much of Bolivian culture seems to have stepped out of the US in the 1950s, but nothing beats the strong belief in the healing power of shots in the butt. Usually the shot is purely vitamins, but due to my history of asthma, this doctor decided that only hydrocortisone would do the trick. For those of you who have never had a shot of hydrocortisone in the butt, let me put it into perspective. The previous day I had gotten a wax and a particularly enthusiastic pedicure: all smiles. This shot, however, led to screams and left me immobilized on the doctor’s table for half of an hour. I don’t know why Bolivians are so fond of the vitamin shot (“ampollo”), but be glad that it is no longer customary procedure in the US.

Partly out of fear of another ampollo and partly out of distaste for Santa Cruz, I escaped the doc and returned to Chimeo four days before he was prepared to release me. Therefore, I arrived coughing and hacking worse than I had been upon departure. Noticing my wheezing and my absence, everyone in town had a home remedy to offer. Don Mariano enthusiastically prescribed a glass of warm rubbing alcohol and lemon juice, which had to be drunk under covers and layers of sweaters so that I might sweat the illness out. Ana reported once having healed herself of a similar cough by drinking spoonfuls of warm vegetable oil. Enrique regularly treats himself with a drop of diesel fuel on the tongue.

Silvia came down with the same illness from the same week with the corn, however she did not have the ability to see a doctor. Chimeo has a health post, however we share our doctor with three other communities. After repeated failed attempts at a consultation, she went to a curandero, or doctor of traditional medicine. He prescribed spoonfuls of cod-liver oil and inhalation of the vapor of chamomile tea. This is entirely typical of health care in Chimeo. There is universal free healthcare for everyone in town, but the doctor and nurse that serve our post are frequently absent. Even when they are present, community members have little faith in their modern medicine. Some believe that the treatments are expired ones sent as a sop by the government, while others simply have more faith in traditional medicines. Like agnostics at Easter mass, Chimenos prefer to cover their bases. Most people visit the post (free) and then go to the curandero in the market (usually about 100Bs) for serious illnesses. If it is not seen as serious, an illness like a rash or a cold will be treated by a local curandero (usually Dona Josefa). Most remedies involve medicinal leaves, tobacco, massages, and alcohol. While I doubt the AMA would approve, these treatments seem to work-eventually.

While some of the home remedies and beliefs of the causes of illness (Best example: Sitting on hot rocks will give you diareah.) can be good for a laugh, the disconnect between modern and traditional medicine in Chimeo (and likely the rest of the Bolivian campo) is a serious issue. There is a great deal of useful traditional knowledge, as well as a legion of well-trained physicians backed by a government that wants to pay for them. Perhaps due to the strong support of both camps, it seems that both types of health care providers want to sell their “goods”. PCVs are literally prohibited by our modern doctors from letting our friends practice traditional medicine on us. On two occasions, however, traditional medicine has served me well. First were white grape leaves applied to my back, which stopped (or at least seemed to stop) the spread of my shingles outbreak in 2007. Second, when my gas stove exploded in my face, a neighbor quickly applied sabila, an aloe-like plant, to my burns. Everywhere she applied the cool gel healed quickly; anywhere she missed blistered terribly. If it weren’t for the sabila, today half of my face might be scarred.

This does not mean that Ill be packing away my cipro. What I would like to see is greater dialogue between providers of western and traditional medicines to take great advantage of Bolivia’s diverse resources. I have heard of some towns compiling booklets of traditional remedies, and many Chimenos have expressed interest in doing the same. This may go hand in hand with our cultural recuperation project in the future. but it will have to wait. Tomorrow I am back in Santa Cruz, waiting to see if the 1000 Bs worth of visits and treatments get my failed respiratory system back on track.

This month we will be preparing the apiaries and collecting seeds and seedlings of meliferous trees for the tree nursery. We are also preparing for a cultural fair to commemorate the anniversary of Chimeo on July 18th. On July 10th over 50 volunteers and their counterparts from Bolivia and Paraguay will converge upon Villa Montes for the 4th Encuentro Chaqueno. Over the course of three days, we will discuss what has and has not been working for volunteers in their sites throughout the chaco. It will be an opportunity to discuss new technologies and strategies, and in the end we will develop a regional strategy. Finally, thanks to all of you who have been able to donate to our apiculture project online. We are hoping to receive all the necessary funding by August, in order to have our equipment installed when the season for capturing wild hives begins. I will be getting some fotos up of our training sessions and workshops up within the next few months so that donors can see where their funds are going.

New and improved and updated podcast

2008-05-22T15:28:00.002-04:00

After reviewing and translating the Storytelling podcast with Bartolome and Silvia, Ive made a few changes to the translations of their stories. We also recorded and updated the first of what will be many traditional songs in Guarani. You can check out the corrections as well as the new stuff on the podcast, whose link can be found above.

Peacecorps Partnership: Support our Bee keeps

2008-05-16T10:49:00.000-04:00

The time has come. After months of organizing, planing, writing, and revising, Chimeo´s Partnership is up on the web. As I have explained throughout my year in the community, when I arrived there was a great deal of interest in bee keeping, however no one to train them or help them look for funding to bee suits, smokers, boxes and other much needed equipment. Our group today consists of ten diverse families. Our oldest member is 68, while the youngest is 19. Half are new and half are experienced, and we are split evenly between men and women.

Group members have demonstrated their commitment by passing bee biology and hive maintenance classes with me about once a month, and they will continue to do so for the rest of my service. Each family will also provide a counterpart of 40 Bs to purchase the materials to make their own homemade bee mask and gloves. The thinking behind this is that bee keeping is a family affair. It is not safe nor easy to revise a hive of africanized bees alone. Therefore, each family receives one complete bee suit and they make another, for the spouse or older children. In addition, group members will work in the community tree nursery to promote environmental conservation as well as to raise mellifluous trees for their apiaries. The bees themselves will be captured from the plethora of feral colonies in the community and in the Parque Aguarague. The project will also provide each family with tools, smokers, three boxes, and one nucleus hive. The group will receive the one piece of wax transforming equipment that we lacked as well as a workshop on genetic selection to learn to breed less aggressive colonies.

Group members will not simply harvest honey for sale. As a community that puts more emphasis on natural medicine than western medicine, the many products of the bee hive- propolis, wax, pollen, royal jelly, and honey- are already highly valued. Group members will also learn to transform these products for auto-consumption as well as for sale.

This project, nonetheless, cannot be completed without the support of friends and family from the US and the world at large. The idea behind a partnership is that the community puts a counterpart- bees, money, wood, etc. in our case- while we ask contacts within the US for further funding. I feel that one of the most positive aspects of donating to a Partnership project is in its accountability. Whatever project it may be, in whatever country on whichever continent, donors can be assured that there is a volunteer there, making sure that every cent of the funds is properly allocated (and often putting in a few cents from their own pocket.) Donors should know that even small donations go a long way in Bolivianos. $7 will buy Don Justino his bee smoker, which tames the bees and renders the hive workable. $40 will buy Dona Marina a bee box that will harvest up to 100 kilos of honey each year to provide for her six children. $100 would pay for our entire genetic selection workshop.

If you are interested in donating to this partnership or other partnerships currently listed on the web, they can be accessed via www.peacecorps.gov. From there look to the left hand side of the screen and click Donate Now. From there you can select where you would like to donate by country, region, or volunteer´s home state*. My country would be Bolivia, and as of this writing it is the first Partnership listed. Chimeo´s partnership can also be accessed directly at https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=511-096. A good friend of mine, Britta, will also soon be posting a Partnership which is nearly identical to mine. While Britta and her community are equally deserving, please read the project briefing before you donate.

As I said before, I believe that Partnerships are an excellent, highly accountable way to donate to those who may not be so economically fortunate as those of us in the US. Even if you do not have the ability to donate this spring, please keep Partnerships from PC Worldwide in mind when you do donate in the future. Please feel free to send this email, my blog link (jbrysacz.blogspot.com), or the project link on to friends and family who may be interested. If you would like more details on our project, just ask. This email and the breif on the PC website are minuscule compared to the entire written project. I would be happy to send the details on.

Thanks in advance for your interest and support.

*My home state is listed as Florida because that is where I currently hold residency. Dont be fooled, I was raised in Ohio and am very much a Midwestern gal. Go Bucks!

Maize Harvest

2008-05-16T10:47:00.000-04:00

It's the first week of May, and while the northern hemisphere is dusting off its summer dresses and picnic baskets, in the Chaco we gather around the fire to warm our tootsies. Clouds crawl up from the south, bringing with them a snowy perfume. Temperatures right now are mild-60s by day and 40s by dark-but with no heating and an outdoor shower, it feels colder. My sisters and I used to don bathing suits and lay out by the pond when it hit 60 in the Great Lakes spring, but somehow 60s here draw me down into my mattress, under three blankets and a myriad of sweaters. Last winter was nasty, and the prognosticos are calling for this one to be even uglier.

Despite its goosebumps, winter does have its redeeming qualities. The sweet tangy gift of our region's citrus trees plump up for the picking by the wheelbarrow full. Any visit I make to a friends house ends with an armload of mandarin oranges or grapefruits. Winter is also the only time of year one can dine on fish in land locked Bolivia, and the only place to get them is from the Rio Pilcomayo in Villa Montes. The most exciting winter prospect for me, however, is camping. The cold lulls the snakes and bugs into dormancy, making a night in the woods more enjoyable and a heck of a lot less terrifying.

This past week I spent my first night out in the monte. Chimeo's womens' group had spent the week harvesting four hectares of corn that they planted as part of a chicken project implemented by the departmental government. While the project began with nearly 50 women, months of sowing, hoeing, and harvesting had reduced participation to 22 women. Throughout the fall we watched as thieves-possibly members of our own group- stole ears of corn while we waited for it to dry on the stalk in order to properly store it. To deter more theft, the women agreed to spend the night in the corn field once it had been picked and piled. The first night a truck pulled into the field to fill with maize, and without a man present, they said, the women were too scared to approach the thieves. Instead, they said, they sent their dogs after the men in the truck. The dogs apparently shared the women's sentiment and turned right back around. Due to this fear, the second and third nights the women enlisted a few husbands to help hold their corn vigil. The fourth night Don Euardo had a birthday party, leaving the men indisposed, so the women brought the next best thing: the gringa.

I arrived at the corn field at dusk, backpack brimming with coffee, layers, and my sleeping bag. The first objective of the evening was to take fotos of the proud women with their piles of maize. The four hectares had been consolidated into three enormous piles of gingery nourishment. For the first foto, the women climbed up the mountain of maize and posed, legs together and knees bent, in the style of a JC Penny catalog. Dona Josefa, who speaks the least Spanish of anyone in town and bears an uncanny resemblance to my grandmother, sat at the summit of the mountain, and we crowned her Miss Avati (corn) 2008. We took more fotos of Miss Avati, this time with a crown of the largest anko (squash) that had been harvested this year.

We returned to the camping site on the side of the field to make some dinner and warm ourselves as night fell. We used machetes to split some golden buttery anko and set it to boil in an enormous recycled manteca vegetal (Bolivian Crisco) can. Conversation slipped into exclusive Guarani, which to me sounds something like this:

One woman xxxxxxxxxx you come xxxx we talk xxxx tiger xxxxxxxxxx big fire xxxxx lots and lots xxxxxx work xxxxxxxxxx nothing but a liar xxxxxxxxx woman xxxxx husband xxxxxxxx delicious xxxxxx two x no no no never xxxxxxx fox xxxxxx delicious xxxxx work.

Not that I mind. Seldom do I have the opportunity to sit and listen to Guarani, as Spanish is the language of business and commerce in Chimeo and Villa Montes. The only Spanish spoken was to me, usually to let me in on a joke being told at my expense. At some point we slept, nothing but blankets and the open air. They curled up between wool blankets and their children while I, as they put it, "bagged myself" in my sleeping bag. Dona Elva told stories for a while and we slept at some point, but judging by the puffy eyes in the morning it must have been late. At dawn, the women with children in school returned home. I stayed behind with the older women and we had a breakfast of sugary mate and their delicious anko, with sugar sprinkled on top as the sun rose in the sky.

This would be the last night that the women were in such jovial spirits. The truck from the mayor´s office that was due to arrive on Monday morning never arrived. We waited. Tuesday. We waited. And Wednesday. After a week of sleeping outdoors in the cold and with rain threatening, the women ran out of patience. They sent me to ask Don Perez, one of the non-Guarani living in the community, if we could contract his dump truck for the afternoon. He agreed, but for a hefty fee of 100 Bs per truckload. The four hectares had rendered three truckloads, and I was looked to to front the money. The group will pay me back in short order, but I am loathe to lend. I constantly fear that community members will start to see me as a bank, not as a source of knowledge or technical assistance. I paid the man, and together the fifty of us-women, husbands, children- lifted the corn by the sackful into the truck. A cold rain started to fall, but luckily not so hard that it soaked through the husks and ruined the corn. In high spirits we finished after dark, and now our jokes had turned to the representative from the mayor´s office, deemed Inginiero Yapusiki (Mister Big Liar).

Although Im glad its over, something changed in my relationship with Chimeo´s women this week. As a result of shared hardship or maybe my rapidly improving Guarani, we are all closer now. Those who speak Guarani fluently no longer address me in Spanish but rather their mother tongue. This, to me, is huge. There is a painful stigma of backwardsness attached to Guarani people in this country, and it has been drawn into the spotlight in recent months with the government´s attempts at land reform. I don't feel that I know enough about the legislation or its implementation to write on it, but there is an article on it that came out in the NYT today (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/09/world/americas/09bolivia.html?ref=world).

In addition to the corn harvest, our projects are humming right along. The 8th graders recently painted the tree nursery´s tank and will present their work along with information on photosynthesis and the importance of ecosystems at an environmental fair in a nearby town. We should break ground on the nursery itself this month. We have planted onions, tomato, carrots, lettuce, parsley, cauliflower and broccoli (the last two at my insistence) in the gardens at the elementary and nursery schools. Last, but certainly not least, our beekeeping partnership project is up! A link to the project can be found at the top of this blog.

Blockades, hindrances, and belly aches in general

2008-04-16T12:52:00.003-04:00

No matter how open the arms of the people, or how good my Spanish, I never forget that I am a foreigner in a foreign land. There are the jokes that I still never catch, a cordiality that to me seems superfluous, and spoonfulls of sugar without which any drink is considered kaima, tasteless. One of the least avoidable Bolivianisms that I still struggle to understand is the road blockade, or bloqueo.

It goes something like this:

An interest group wants to draw attention to their cause, demand, or dissatisfaction with the government, they block the road way with spiny branches, themselves, burning tires, machetes, automobiles, and so on. While in a country with interstates, turnpikes, and country roads, this would not pose a problem, it can bring transport to a standstill in a country as mountainous and poorly connected as Bolivia. Blockades may last a morning or a fortnight, and the government usually has no choice but to meet the demands of the strikers. Until this agreement is made, trucks full of bananas and lettuce rot while their frustrated chofers do their best to pass the hours.

A passerby can tell just how long a bloqueo has been carrying on by the levels of comfort and entrepeneurship the drivers have developed. Two weeks ago I crossed two bloqueos, in their ninth day, on my way to Santa Cruz. In the first crossing, we were duped into paying three Bolivianos a piece to be carried 200 m between two blockades of mora branches in a station wagon. At the second crossing, vendors had begun to sell empanadas and lemonade, while truck drivers had strung up wash lines to dry the clothing that had been scrubbed clean in nearby rivers. Young boys with wheelbarrows offered to carry the bags of men and women alike for a few pesitos. After 100 bs, a succession of taxis, a number of new friends, we made it across the second bloqueo at 530 pm.

At 7 pm, the blockades were lifted.

This is not to say that the entire country returned to hunky-dory harmony at 7 pm that day. At the same time, blockades were bubbling up in Oruro and the post office had been on strike for two weeks. During my stay in Cochabamba traffic was moving freely, but my blockade borne shigella kept me in bed, unable to do some much needed price checking for Chimeo's bee project. This same shigella kept me in Cochabamba under "observation" for two extra days, which fortunately gave me time to do my bee work. Unfortunately, it delayed my return to Santa Cruz, giving time for new blockades on the road to Villa Montes time to relight. Two weeks ago folks were supporting Camiri in its demand for the "presedency of the petroleum industry. Today (and likely tomorrow and the day after tomorrow) there is a great deal of unrest concerning a new land redistribution law.

Meanwhile, this new burst of blockades has me stuck in Santa Cruz. Thoroughly tired of the city, Im anxious to return to Chimeo after two weeks away and even more anxious to get the heck out of Santa Cruz. If Im lucky, you wont be hearing much from me and the international press wont hear much of Bolivia until then.

Keep your fingers crossed.

April 2008 Update

2008-04-13T11:22:00.002-04:00

Having fallen ill in Cochabamba with a shigellosis* it has taken me longer than expected to crank out my project update. With a week’s worth of antibiotics under my belt, though, here it is. Enjoy!

The beekeeping group, “Grupo de Apicultores Chimeo,” has recently signed contracts and the project has been turned in to my bosses here at PC to check over. The group consists of ten families, some of who are experienced beekeepers, others are beginners. Project participants will all supply a counterpart- class and workshop attendance, 40 Bs, one homemade set of bee mask and gloves, preparation of apiaries, capture of three feral colonies, tree nursery work, and the planting of 10 meliferous (nectar giving) trees near their apiaries. In return, they will receive what they need to become productive beekeepers- protective gear, tools, three hives, and a nucleus hive for captures. The entire group will share equipment for the processing of wax- which mush be melted down, filtered, and re-stamped every year or two- and bottling materials to sell their harvest. They have agreed that some of their profits after the first harvest will then be reinvested to purchase more bottling materials. If all goes according to plan, this will transform Chimeo’s current stalled-out honey industry into a productive, sustainable source of income for participants.

The funding for the project will be drawn from what is called a Peace Corps Partnership. Partnerships can have any monetary value- sometimes as little as $500 and as much as $10,000, but they all demand at least a 25% counterpart on the part of recipients. Our project is asking for approximately $3000. Each of the 10 participating families will receive 3 boxes, one bee suit, the gear they need to work with bees like smokers and hive tools, and the community will receive equipment to melt, filter, and restamp old wax for their hives. In return for these goods, participants will attend classes on hive management (given by me), prepare their apiaries, capture feral colonies, sew one protective suit and pair of gloves, and attend a workshop on genetic selection given by a technician. Once the project receives the final signatures by my bosses at the PC, a profile will be uploaded onto the internet. There, interested contributors can donate directly to the project. Once we reach our goal of $3000, I personally will receive a check from the PC to go about buying all of the goods. When everything is purchased I am responsible to turn in receipts to cover every last Bs to the PC. So, the project (as well as other ones like it made by other volunteers and listed on the same website) has 0% overhead and 100% accountability-a philanthropist’s dream. When I have the web address Ill send it out to those of you on my listserv, but don’t be shy- feel free to send it to any friends or family who might be interested in helping out. Thanks in advance for your support.

In March I met with the 48 women who raise chickens and sow corn as part of Chimeo’s womens’ group to discuss the possibility of a family gardens project. The women were interested, and we are contemplating just how we will go about the garden project. I am interested in utilizing grey-water systems, where simple filters are installed to reuse water from kitchen and laundry to water vegetable gardens. The problem right now is that most of these systems are for deeper roots than vegetables would have, so we’ll have to tinker with the model a bit, or look for a different kind of technology for our family veggie gardens. The project itself is still in its developing stages and nothing will likely be planted until December.

I’m still passing Guarani classes every Tuesday night, and as of now we have recorded about a dozen traditional stories. Bartolome and Silvia, the storytellers, are interested in making CDs for sale. I would like to include with the CDs a booklet of written English and Spanish translations, but it will ultimately be up to the storytellers. We will hopefully get started burning CDs this (Bolivian) winter when the agricultural work comes to a standstill.

The tree nursery has its 10,000 L tank but not much else has been done with it as of this writing. Various community cleaning dates have been foiled due to an extended rainy season. We will somehow eventually clear out the grass and paint the tank itself before installing the beds for the saplings themselves. The funding is already there (its funded by the mayor’s office) so it will si o si be happening this winter. The bee keepers will also be lending a hand in the nursery, having committed to planting at least 10 melliferous trees around their apiaries-to-be.

*Shigellosis.

Chimeo and Senoritas

2008-03-06T10:26:00.001-04:00

ah. the rainy season.

senorita honey and polen.

if you look closely you can see the tiny yellow bees.

Tank images

2008-03-06T09:55:00.001-04:00

arming the skeleton.

working hard.

hardly working.

thin board atp bricks atop rotting metal drum. very bolivian.

Tank raising, bee hunting, and other productive activities

2008-03-06T08:52:00.001-04:00

It is Sunday night, at the tail end of the most productive week yet of my time here in Bolivia. It began last Sunday with the group of bee keepers, now down to a solid 10 families, in their first training session. I prepared a theory lesson on the general basics of beekeeping and an introduction into bee biology. Worried that I wouldn’t be able to hold the group’s attention with a pure theory class, I organized the lesson into a series of answers to questions they’ve likely had about bees- why does smoke calm bees? How long do they live? How do they reproduce? To my delight, the approach worked well. All ten members were attentive, taking notes, and I even caught a few of them smiling. Afterwards they asked questions and to my own surprise, I was able to answer all of them. I am constantly amazed by the bee and plant knowledge Ive accumulated over the past year, and it felt wonderful to be able to share it.

I could have been satisfied for the entire week with the victory of the first successful bee class, but the community had chosen the following Monday to begin work on a 10,000 L water tank that will serve as the first step towards our community tree nursery. In the afternoon I went into Villa Montes to pick up the five other volunteers from the basic sanitation and environmental education programs who had signed up to help with the build. We caught up over fruit salad and lasagna as heavy rains began to fall, turning the streets into rivers and mud pits. That night we caught an express taxi up to Chimeo, paying the driver an extra 5 bolivianos for putting up with Chimeo’s muddy entrance. Five white pods, known in the PC as travel tents, popped up on my porch and we stayed up later than we should have, chatting and enjoying the company of fellow English speakers.

On Saturday I had been a bit skeptical that the build would actually take place this week; upon arriving at the site I found grasses taller than me and no semblance of a path to the “tree nursery.” That day though, Enrique had rounded up six men and together we machete-ed down the grasses and axed down the trees that stood in our way. We had chosen to put the tank on the highest possible ground, which was incidentally home to five small trees. When asked how we could put the tank there amongst the trees, they responded with a most typical Bolivian can-do attitude. Its simple, they said-move the trees. Three hours later the trees were gone and we had enough space cleared to let the dump truck and materials through to begin on Monday.

Having built an identical tank a few weeks ago in Villa Montes, the steps have become familiar. First, form the wire and iron skeleton, then pour the base, next slap on the cement walls, clamp on the roof, finally cover that with cement, and voila. It is always interesting working in a group of mixed linguistic backgrounds on projects such as this. Most of the time I find myself at the losing end, stumbling and pretending to keep up with rapid Bolivian speak. This week, however, we were split 50/50 gringos to Bolivians, and we often split into task forces according to ones mother tongue. The groups were nonetheless forced to cooperate on the second day, when the 10 foot iron skeleton of the tank had to be lined with ply-wood before cement can be applied to form the outer layer. Then holes must be punched from the outside so that the people on the inside can tighten wires around the irons placed inside the tank to the irons on the outside that are attached to the base, which also lies on the outside. The wood must be pushed on from the inside in order to permit the hole-puncher from the outside to reach his goal. You furthermore want to complete the task as soon as possible to get out of the tank, which in the late morning sun quickly becomes a cement and ply-wood oven. Participants cannot see each other, have a language barrier, and have a sort of heat-induced time limit. This week it was gringa Beth, myself, and Bolivian Juan on the inside, being directed by gringo Jeff and the Bolivian masons from the outside world. After a few unintentionally stabbed palms and a lot of confusion, we each ended up with a specialty on the inside, directed by one of our compatriots on the outside. All of the gringo participants have been in Bolivia for at least a year and speak pretty good Spanish, nonetheless we had to turn to our native language to get the job done quickly. I myself am nearing a decade of what I long considered Spanish fluency, and I still couldn’t keep up. In all the experience gave me an even more profound respect for immigrants to our (or any) country who must struggle daily to keep up with the chit chat of the the Joneses, or the Patels, or the Van Dammes.

After five days the tank was finished, and two fellows from Chimeo were half-way towards being certified in ferro-cement tank construction. The rest of our volunteer help headed out, while Beth stayed an extra two nights to come up the mountain to capture a colony of senorita bees. The senoritas are tiny, yellow, with legs that hang down like a wasp, and they don’t bite or sting. They make a honey that is lighter and more liquid than normal honey, and people around here swear that its medicinal qualities are greater than apis mellifera honey. Most hives are found in tree trunks near the ground, where the delicate things can retain a cooler temperature and hide more readily from predators. We went with Cecilio, armed with nothing but an ax, machete, and a specialized home-made cedar bee-box. The trained eye could see the tiny bees dancing around the entrance like dandelion fluff, making their way to the opening, a wax trumpet no more than 8 cm long and 1 cm in diameter. Cecilio cautiously set to hacking open the base of the trunk, making sure not to damage the tiny colony. As we got closer to the heart of the tree and the hive, he switched to his machete and began to peel away slices of tree to reveal the hive. First were half-inch balls of pollen, wrapped in the same papery wax and separated according to color. Apis mellifera bee pollen is packed with vitamins and proteins, but few would call it delicious. This senorita pollen, however, had a rich, sweet odor, and its flavor like eating the most delicious Odyssian lotus petal. Further up the trunk was stored the honey, packaged in the same wax sacs, so delicate that a light human squeeze breaks it open and sends the honey dribbling down your wrist. Whats even more impressive is that these balls are much larger than the senoritas themselves- I would estimate that over a dozen senoritas could fit into one of their storage balls. Finally towards the bottom of the colony we found the brood, whose honey comb was like a miniature apis mellifera colony. We placed the brood in the box with a good store of honey to get them started, and headed back to Cecilio’s puesto with our pollen and honey winnings.

Upon arrival we set the plate of trappings down on his home-made table. The honey we took would measure no more than a liter, as tiny bees also produce tiny bits of honey. A good number of senoritas had stayed with their honey, and I set my chin down on the wood to watch them. Half of them had begun to drown in their own unleashed honey, while the other half wandered aimlessly about the place, seemingly bound for the same fate as their brethren. Harvesting from an apis mellifera have is always a thrill that makes my hair stand on end and the honey taste even sweeter, while taking from senoritas almost felt immoral. They are fragile and unique creatures with no way of defending themselves against a big groping human (or other intruder for that matter). Granted, we placed the hive itself in a box next to its original home to hopefully grow and prosper, but these pixies are just so defenseless. The handling and raising of senorita hives will be one of the focuses of bee keepers in Chimeo this year, as the local bee keepers association ADACHACO will execute a project focused on them.

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After this whirlwind of a week, Im currently in Santa Cruz awaiting the arrival of a big Polish man I like to call Daddio. He will be in Bolivia, seeing the sights, meeting the people, and learning to drink chicha. While he is here we will celebrate Bolivian father’s day (March 19th) as well as his own 66th anniversary of life. Ill be sure to post fotos and stories of the trouble we get into.

Throwing out Carnavales

2008-03-06T08:23:00.001-04:00

I came late to the party. I wasn’t sure what to expect but the hosts, Bartolome and Silvia, told me it would get going in the afternoon, so I spent the morning cleaning and paying other owed visits. The sun was hot and high when I finally arrived, and my belly was purposefully empty in anticipation of a possible meal invitation. I took a seat between Cecilio and an out of town guest from Tucuman, on a wooden plank held up by a few precariously placed bricks. Chimeno by birth, the fellow who lives in Tucuman was visibly uncomfortable; after twenty years in the city, he says, he finds country celebrations a hard adjustment. Cecilio, on the other hand, was in his element: draped in a red and white poncho, a goat hide drum in hand, an endless, and puro-induced smile illuminating his leathery face. In front of us I also notice a man, either dead or drunk, passed out at the base of the Guyava tree that gives us all shade. He is missing one shoe, his shirt is half-way up his belly, but thankfully his pants are belted tightly around his thin waist. The Tucuman focused his attention on me, as a white-skinned compatriot in what he sees as backwards country madness. He asks me how many days Ive been here. I tell him about three-hundred. As he begins a lecture on never forgetting the people of the countryside, a tiny, aged hand rescues me, drawing me into the dancing in the center of the party.

The dancing here in Chimeo is distinct from the elaborate costumes and steps I saw two weeks ago in Oruro. Here it is a species of glorified ring-around-the-rosie, as we shuffle together to the left, break, and to the right. Behind, or maybe in front of us, half a dozen men beat drums while Bartolome sounds out sweet, discordant notes on his wooden flute. Our steps mimic the music, step shuffle shuffle, step shuffle shuffle. After a while, the music falls apart and we, the dancers, take our seats. I move to the corner by Dona Juana, and some younger fellows begin to pass around a pitcher of cold red wine and cola. We go around, inviting each other to two ounce sips at a time, swallowing it down and then picking the next victim to be invited.

The sun is still high and I can feel the wine robbing my brain of oxygen, when from the corn stalks bursts the cuchi. Dripping in mud and leaves, this naked beast calls “cuchi cuchi!,” smearing the revelers with his filth. The look on his face falls somewhere between ecstasy and confusion as he makes his way around dance arena, giggling, smearing, tripping, drinking, and smearing. I am laughing wildly. One moment later, the cuchi disappears back into the corn, on his last step tripping and nearly losing his underwear. The party focus quickly turns back to the music and dancing; no one seems to be all that affected. I am still laughing wildly.

Through the rest of the afternoon we sit, some of us chatting and sharing chicha, some of us fighting off sleep in this last stretch of a fortnight-long party. As the heat wears off and the sun heads for the tree line, the cuchi returns. This time, however, he has multiplied, trailed by three meter-tall, mud sodden cuchicitos. Cuchi evading chaos erupts as the beast and its babes hunt down the last of the clean shirts and the newly bathed. Curtains are torn, windows are entered, and laughter abounds. The cuchis dissolve into the corn stalks as quickly as they came, but their place is taken by the bull, the tiger, and the devil. The tiger and bull have the faces of beasts but the bodies of men, leathern, lean and strong, the kind that is only earned by years in the fields. The beasts writhe on the floor, engaged in a battle of bellows, while the devil makes his way about the crowd, making dancers of the spectators with his spiky, cellulose-encrusted whip. The circle grows and grows, turning faster as the battle escalates at its center. The bull and the tiger each defeat and throw out a ghost of carnaval in his white cloth mask, slinging the slim bodies of the losers over their shoulders. The bodies are left among the corn, their pale faces with long slender noses and horns protruding from the russet leaves. Finally the beasts engage in their final fray, writhing and bellowing until the bull emerges the victor of their slow-motion battle.

The tiger is left beside the ghosts as the dancing shifts to a procession. The devil takes up the cross of yellow carnaval flowers and beams from the center of the dancing, and two older women hoist the man asleep at its base. The party joins hands and heads into the street, lead by this devil and the body of the drunk. Fingers grab for a piece of the yellow flowers adorning the cross and we weave and twirl our way down the road. Heads peak out of doorways, and anyone who wasn’t earlier part of the party joins in. Over the rise, down again, and around the corner, a kilometer later we arrive at our destination. The body of carnaval is thrown into the bushes, followed by the flowers, followed by hugs for some, kisses for those who are now a few more sheets to the wind. I am one of the last to go, and I can see that beneath the flowers the drunk retains his toothless, cloth smile.

We make our way in silence, back to town, to the house, to the bed. Carnaval, the time of plenty and rain and drink, is over. Soon winter will work its brutal way up from Argentina. The trees will once again go brown, the bees will huddle in a thousand-buzz mass inside their hives, and the tap will run dry. For today though, we are drunk, we are merry, and life is good.

Caraval at 12,000 feet

2008-02-08T11:51:00.000-04:00

It’s the tail end of a long trip and the first week of carnaval, and I don’t know where to start. A week ago I set out from Chimeo to Santa Cruz, went straight onto Cochabamba and then onto Oruro. 28 hours later and 12,000 feet higher, I arrived along with a couple members from my training group for the biggest party in Bolivia: Carnaval in Oruro. The streets were filled with Quechua speaking ladies selling their wares: squirt guns, confetti, candies, fruit, and flowers. Oruro is a world apart from the cities I know in the low eastern half of the country; it is the land of dry, thin air, llama herders, and the checkered flag of the indigenous. It’s a culture I came to know and love three years ago in highland Peru, but since arriving in Chimeo my familiarity with it has been crowded out by the Guarani. I cant remember the names for pieces of clothing unique to the zone, and my attempts at speaking the tiny bit of Quechua I remember from Qosqo are not understood by their Bolivian ears. Just as Ive forgotten these bits of cherished knowledge, the city itself seems forgotten by the rapid progress Ive grown accustomed to on the tropical, oil rich eastern half of Bolivia. Stores and houses in the city center are still made of adobe, and the terminal floor is dotted by tiny Andean women squatting, enveloped in their colorful polleras. It is shocking to see such a dramatic difference between the two halves of the country, but it does make their animosity easier to understand.

The dancing begins early Saturday morning, and we, the twenty-some volunteers and their friends who have come to Oruro this year, take our place in one corner of the plaza. Each of us wears a 2 Boliviano plastic poncho to shield us from flying shaving cream and water balloons. During Carnaval throughout much of Latin America “water wars” engulf the streets as kids and teenagers hide in doorways and second floor windows with buckets and balloons of water, waiting for the unsuspecting passerby or, if fortune smiles, gringa. The hostility increases as Carnaval approaches. On these, the biggest days of carnaval, the streets become all out warfare and armor a must, especially for fair-complected females. Our corner of the plaza becomes a favorite target, with shaving cream and water balloons flying back and forth, as sellers swarm like sharks, offering us ammunition at inflated prices. In the baccanal we buy, buy, buy, happily dropping a blue 10 Boliviano bill for the chance to get back at that guy in the blue poncho. Morenitas, Coporales, Diabladas, and Tobases make their way through the plaza, each with their own band and their own spin on these traditional dances. The balloon launching pauses each time one of these groups passes, out of respect for their elaborate costumes and well-rehersed steps.

At dusk the battles subside with the hot Andean sun as temperatures fall to near zero. We will be waiting until dawn for our friends, part of the 150-dancer strong Tinku group Las Llajwas, to make their way through the plaza. As the temperatures drop and the crowds thin, we are able to get closer to the dancers and the bands who are likewise drooping with sleep and alcohol. Slowly the crowds and the dancers become one, with dancers and musicians offering the chance to don their masks and instruments for a beer or a handshake. At 430 the Llajwas enter the plaza, amazingly jovial and alert for this hour of the morning. We dance behind them up to the Plaza Civica to catch a glimpse of their dance from the bleachers. As the pale morning sun peaks through the clouds, we are treated to a unique view of the dance they have been practicing for months. Even in their fifth hour of dancing, the group retains their unity, spinning, stomping, singing, and swinging their hondas in ever shifting rows and columns. The sun goes from pale blue to white above their heads, and they pass onto Oruros biggest cathedral. This morning its twelve foot wooden doors are closed to the public, but each dancer will be admitted, making her way on her knees to the Virgin at its front, asking her blessing for the coming year. Dancers and we the non-dancers reunite at dawn, making our way past the steaming breakfast stalls and drunken couples to the hotel to sleep for a few hours. The dancers will do this all again tomorrow, completing the two full days Carnaval.

After the festivities in the city had wound down, a few members of my group and I make our way to the site of our friend Tiffany. It lies two hours outside of the city, and today Tiffany has been invited to dance in her town’s festival. We start the morning off with a hike up the mountains on the edge of town for a picnic lunch of apples and peanut butter and honey sandwiches. We are followed by a shaggy stray dog with an ancient limp. Even this unanticipated companion is a reminder of the differences between the two halves of the country. In Chimeo all of our dogs are small and skinny, their ribs poking through their short haired coats, while the street pups in Oruro are large, shaggy, and hearty. The view from our picnc spot is spectacular, with the high plains and Lake Poopo stretching out to eternity with an unreal flatness. It is reminiscent of a small towns in the plains of the US, the tiny houses and Huari beer factory surrounded by verdant squares of quinoa and corn.

As soon as we return to town, we are swept up again by Tiffany’s host family, which has arrived with costumes in hand to dress us up as Pepinos (Cucumbers) and Cholitas and dance around the plaza. We are braided and buried beneath blue and yellow layers, and our now empty bellies are filled with Huari beer. There is no refusing- we are told we will need the beer for strength during the dance. Four glass liters later we are swallowed up by the train of dancers and we swirl back and forth around the plaza. Every minute or so the band strikes a minor chord and every cholita in the crowd is spun by her pepino, and polleras fly up, exposing the layers of white slips that lie beneath to make her hips more plentiful. Amidst the twirling, winding steps shaving cream ad water flies at the facers of the dancers, and water flies from braided tresses. After an exhausting hour, the dancing and drunken haze wear off, and we escape the plaza to warm up indoors. We are soaked to the bone and exhausted, now in our fourth day of celebration. Carnaval itself will officially continue for another fifteen days, but tomorrow we will go our separate ways, back to work in our own distinct corners of the country.

Fotos from dancing as cucumbers and cholitas

2008-02-08T10:03:00.001-04:00

They dressed us up, got us drunk, made us dance, and covered us in shaving cream.

Fotos from Tiff's site in the altiplano

2008-02-08T09:47:00.001-04:00

Fotos from Carnaval

2008-02-08T09:28:00.001-04:00

Elections

2008-02-08T09:19:00.000-04:00

Tonight its cold Kohlberg wine and a few handfuls of beans, left over from last weeks Kunhaguazu. It doesn’t sound like much, but to me, tonight, it feels like a celebration after a true arakavi, a good day. The morning began with a long session of mate with Monica and her parents, ancianos with what might be the lowest level of Spanish comprehension in the community. They nod as we converse in Spanish, but their language of choice remains ñeenande, the language of our people, and I wonder how much of what I say they really understand. Despite the language barriers, we are still able to laugh, and I consider them in my circle of friends in Chimeo. About an after its official start, Don Vidal and I head to the general assembly together, right at the tap of the gavel. Its probably the most important general assembly Ive attended thus far- today Cecilio will leave his post as capitán, and a new leader will be chosen.

The first order of business was to decide upon a language. 80% of Chimeo considers itself of Guarani origin, the rest being composed of criollo campesinos, referred to in ñeenande as karai. The vast majority of community members prefer to communicate in Spanish, but there remains a portion of the community that cannot converse easily in the tongue. Spanish speakers worry that they are being taken advantage of when meetings are conducted in Guarani, and Guarani speakers want to exert their newly arrived independence and pride after decades of oppression. After a brief bilingual shouting match, it is decided that each person will speak in whatever language they find most accommodating, and elders and teachers will be called on to translate if any point needs clarifying.

Every meeting Ive attended until now has been directed by Cecilio, who has served as capitan for three years. The post is exhausting, time consuming, and brings no pay. He is a rail of a man, the symmetry of his high cheekbones thrown off by a bola of coca filling one cheek. Today he stands outside the meeting hall, observing from afar as neutral parties take nominations for the new capitan. Three men are named- two Guarani and one karai, all probicious men. The idea of a secret ballot is momentarily considered and shot down in the interest of time- the meeting is already in its third hour. Instead Don Justino, the corrigedor of the community (think Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) goes from seat to seat, placing his hand on the shoulder to prompt each person’s vote. In his sure, bola-slurred voice, Don Justino repeats each vote to be tallied. Enrique! Eduardo! Enrique! Enrique! Enrique! Eugenio! rings out, another name for each step he takes. Enrique! Enrique! echoes off of the cement walls with increasing frequency, and there is little speculation as to who the victor will be. The corrigedor finishes his rounds, and announces that he’ll be voting for Eduardo, by now the obvious third place finisher, and the room explodes with laughter and applause. In the end, it is Enrique with 50, Eugenio with 21, and Eduardo with 10. Each man accepts his new post, as first capitan, second capitan, or capitan’s secretary, with words of dedication to their community. More posts are given throughout the morning, each one unpaid and time consuming, each one a sacrifice accepted for the good of the community. The sede is filled with an air of coming together, erasing the differences between black and white, karai and indigeno, in the name of the community. The show makes my heart swell with pride to have had a vote count in this election, to be a part of the entire scene.

Four more hours worth of business is concluded, and finally the new occupants of Chimeo’s posts are called to the front. Each one gives a variation of a thumbs up as the corrigedor stands in front of them, making signs and mumbling in a mix of Guarani and Spanish that Ive no hope of understanding. Enrique is called upon to give a speech concerning his new post. Yasurupai, yasurupai, thank you thank you is all he can say as his eyes fill with tears. It is reminiscent of every great moment of victory Ive witnessed in my life, which up until this point have been televised: Miss America meets Superbowl touchdown meets Truman defeats Dewey. He pounds his chest a few times, gathers himself, and thanks the community for trusting enough in him to name him capitan of the place he has lived his entire life. He promises to fight for the community, and unlike most politicians, I whole-heartedly believe him. This community is everything to so many of these people, and it is constantly threatened by outside companies, lumber extraction, and the general corrupt nature of politics in the Chaco. It feels good to be part of something worth fighting for, and I think to myself: if only every man and woman had something so worthy of preservation. I read once that Muhammad Ali used to say that a man hasn’t lived until he has something he’s willing to die for- here, for the first time, I see the truth in his statement. Seven hours after it started the meeting concludes. I don’t feel tired, but rather high, rejuvenated, euphoric.

The drummers from Don Sexto’s novena are still going tonight, but now they’ve moved to Enrique’s house to celebrate. Conversation and coplas are swept up into the darkness, punctuated by laughter and frog songs coming from the other houses on the block. Chimeo is alive tonight, and Im proud to be a tiny part of it.

La novena

2008-02-08T09:18:00.001-04:00

I stood on tip-toe, trying to see past two rows of black hair into the room. Heat escaped from inside the chapel, a cement oven topped with rough boards and tin, filled with so many bodies. Despite my height advantage, my view was restricted to the tops of heads, the altar, and a gecko carelessly making his way up the bright blue wall. Further stretching reveals pairs of large hands and heads are bowed, while tinier duplicates fidget, looking for cues on when to kneel, sit, stand. Communion is taken, and the ceremony is closed. Afterwards, the priest tells us to go in peace, and one by one we make our way to the Virgin at the front of the chapel. We touch fingertips to her shiny teal fabric, make the sign of the cross, and exit into the night.

This is the second mass for Don Sexto Inti, who passed nine days ago. Despite his age, this was unexpected- he took a bad fall while the rest of the town was in a meeting on Wednesday morning. As far as I can tell, must have broken some ribs and died of complications. The cause of his death remains a mystery to me because it remains a mystery to his family. People here often still trust the advice of a local curandero, or practicioner of traditional medicine, over that of a doctor in Villa Montes. His cause of death will go down in family record as simply a bad fall, a stroke of bad luck.

Tonight after the mass, shadows file silently down Chimeo’s main stretch of dirt road. A few hundred meters from the church lay Don Inti’s house, where he and his wife seemed to forever be seated together, taking their mate, chicha, or aguardiente. Although Sunday afternoons will no longer be accompanied by the sound of his copleando, Don Inti hasn’t gone far: he now rests in the cemetery across the street, beneath a fresh mound of red earth. He has had company there all week; friends lighting candles, leaving flowers, or joining him for one last round of aguardiente. Seats have been placed in a semi-circle around the family’s dirt yard, and Don Inti’s wife, Adela, sits at its head. The scene is illuminated by two 60-watt bulbs, newly installed, hanging over her head. Zancudos and escarabajos follow a parabolic loop around the light. Adela sits next to a wooden bed, bare but for candles at its corners and His clothing, neatly folded in the line where he once slept. This is tradition - nine days after a loved one has departed, his clothes are laid out, surrounded by candles, as a way to see him off into the next life. It is said that if this ceremony is not preformed, the deceased may come back for their belongings, bringing with them back luck or ill wishes. I try to imagine what Dona Adela could be thinking- is she letting Him go? Is she thinking about their lives together? If so, is she thinking about their youth, or their more recent years spent taking care of Him, in his near invalid state? What was their love like- did she always love Him, or did she grow to live Him with time, habit, and children? Sadness sits deep in her large brown eyes. Her mouth reveals nothing though, and she sits silently, attending to Him for the last time.

In the shadows His daughter, discernable by the black they will wear for the next year, ladle a soup of pasta and boiled beef into plastic plates, serving the guests one by one. Two whole racks of beef remain hanging from a tree near the kitchen, and their fragrance in the air tells me they’ve been there since the early morning. Spoons go from plates to mouths reluctantly- not that it isn’t appreciated, but its late, and this is a heavy meal. Each takes down her own hefty portion valiantly, out of respect for the dead and his family. Plastic buckets of chicha are filled from a 50-gallon drum, to be passed around the circle and taken, cup by cup. After the third round it begins to rain and I take my cue to exit, avoiding the heavy drinking that’s sure to come.

Back in my kitchen, the town is silent but for thunder and rain in the distance. Despite the intermittent heavy rain, the sound of drums and pim pim continue on until the early morning. The family will keep vigil by His bed all night, and in the morning bury His clothes with Him as a final goodbye.

Its been nine months in Chimeo, and Ive now tasted a bit of all parts of life in our tiny tin roofed chapel: birth, marriage, baptism, winter, summer, and as if to finally finish the circle, a death.

Project update

2008-01-24T09:14:00.000-04:00

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.

tanking

2008-01-19T09:46:00.000-04:00

views from the roof during our tank construction

Back to the silence

2008-01-19T09:25:00.000-04:00

All week I had been bracing myself. After 10 days in the States with all the comfort a gal could want- family, NPR, big comfy couches, hot water, store bought hummus-I wasn’t sure how I would feel upon returning to Chimeo. I got into Villa Montes at night and slept at the house of a Bolivian friend who was kind enough to offer to drive me to Chimeo in the morning.

As we made our way up the dirt road that next day, I felt my blood pressure drop a few points. There was a breeze again. Silence was back. Butterflies the color of Easter eggs floated around on all sides, the only break from the deep green of the fields and burnt amber of the road. I was greeted by enthusiastic children in the street and a house with weeds up to my waist. It rains about every day now, so any seed takes heartily to the soil. I set my things down, gave the house a quick sweep, and without missing a beat set to clearing out the meter tall bush. The start was overwhelming- I knew I needed to clear all this grass fast to keep out the snakes. This is nearly impossible to keep up with as just one gal working between downpours. The neighborhood kids came to look at books, but upon seeing me working alone, they all brought machetes and hoes to help in whatever way they could. I didn’t even have to ask-they just set to work. We slashed and chopped at weeds all afternoon, and as payment I doled out Cremosita cookies.

There were some unanticipated rewards to my unkempt yard- among the weeds we found two thriving watermelon plants and one giant squash, which must have grown from discarded seeds. Despite the its weedless state when I left, the garden was likewise covered in knee high intruders. After hacking my way to its fence, I could see that the carrots and onions are nonetheless thriving. That these tiny seeds, with a tiny bit of work on my part, will provide delicious carrot cakes and crunchy salads, never ceases to amaze me. I can hardly wait to make a meal out of something that I planted, something I (inadvertently or not) made happen. As soon as I get the weeds cleared out, Ill be expanding the garden to make way for a spinach and cabbage patch- these are my favorite foods and it will save me many a trip to Villa Montes if I can just grow my own. Ah, agriculture. Its miraculous.

In the evening some neighborhood kids stuck around to play with some of the new gadgets my Uncle Carl and his lovely wife Ann have donated. I finally got to sit down and enjoy the silence and simplicity of Chimeo. It felt wonderful to have spent the day working towards one simple goal- clear the yard- after feeling so overwhelmed by the world while home. I took my coffee and gave each kid a piece of dark chocolate that my mom sent with me. I’ve never seen a square of chocolate so thoroughly enjoyed- they must have lasted 25 or 30 minutes. Despite the care they took in preserving their pieces, however, when I turned on the porch light to guide them home, each one of their faces were smeared with sugary brown. It was a pleasant surprise to see how easily pleased the kids are here- just one piece of chocolate and one simple new game and they were set. In much of the US, we raise our kids with a thousand distractions, never giving them a chance to really enjoy one thing or to entertain themselves. We retain this need for distraction and background noise as adults- a tv going in each room, plus the CD player and a couple of computers as back up. While home I felt as though I were caught inside of a Picasso painting- tons of complicated and beautiful stuff. So much though that I couldn’t see or enjoy or understand a single thing. Being back in Bolivia is like stepping back into a minimalist work- maybe Black on Black No. 7, a favorite at CMFA. Its just one color, one idea, and you can really focus on just that blackness and see it in a million different ways. Granted, sometimes I may get sick of the monotony, but even that monotony can lead to new ideas, new thoughts, new projects. I know that eventually Ill have to go back to my Picasso life Stateside, and eventually Ill remember how to step back and see the whole confusing work for all its beauty. For now though, Im taking this empty fullness for all its worth.

Id like to take a moment to thank all the people who have given to Chimeo over the past year (that’s right- Jan 23rd will be my one-year anniversary of arriving in Bolivia). To Kate Pugsley, Dr. and Mrs. Pugsley, Mary Cozine, mom, dad, and my sister Kate for the toothbrushes and toothpaste. To Uncle Carl and Aunt Ann Janovich, Aunt Ellie Brysacz, Maryann Wood, Marilyn and Jessica McCoy, mom, dad, and sisters Kate and Gail for stocking our fledgling library with books and brain teasers. Many others have sent me wonderful packages and letters that have helped me to feel connected to life in the US. I don’t know where Id be without Steve’s Economists, NYT, and music, Mary’s US weekly, Kate’s cookies, mom’s everything, Kaity’s t-shirt, and dad’s kilbasa (moldy upon arrival, but certainly wins in the originality category.) Thanks to all of you, package sender or not, and may you have the fullest of 2008s.

Some recent fotos

2007-12-20T10:18:00.000-04:00

my glasses are awfully big on silvia.

the cows. my yard. my laundry.

latest pasttime: braiding jacqueline's hair.

new favorite strange bolivian fruit.

Ruby red tangerine mango.

2007-12-20T09:55:00.002-04:00

I knew they were there-I could hear them. Furthermore, with the tangerine sneaking in under the door, it would be a sure thing. Its chilly this morning, and on my chilly mornings I like to take advantage of my blankets and pillow and sleep until at least six thirty. I can tell, since theyre still there, that it couldn’t be more than five, or five thirty.
Five thirty, must be. At five its still ruby red, not quite tangerine. I then realize that this will be my last morning in Chimeo for some time, so I should give into them. Due to the limited nature of my time here in Bolivia, any watermark gets me all nostalgic for a two years that still has more than half to go. Have I made the most of every day here? Did I appreciate everything it had to offer? I look down at my Bolivian made, fuzzy peacock blanket. Alas, the ones outside win, with their innate aleatoric tangerine seduction.

Slide open the mosquito net zipper, a few steps on the cold concrete, yank open the dark slab of Algorrobo and there it is- bam. Not Bam! But bam. Its obscured, but vibrant. Out past the adobe wall, the young citrus trees, the uncontrolled grasses around the bee box, and the proud trees where the forest starts again, the sun, by now more flesh of a less than ripe mango, comes through for the first time in many days. We’re in the heart of what the younger generation knows as Diciembre, the older as Araenti, the time of sowing seed, and to the rest of the Chaco as the rainy season. Its ara ikavi one of the few we’ll see in December, where the earth gets a moment to breathe and dry out. Ive learned to decipher the hour by the color and strength of the sun- ruby red, tangerine, mango, onto unripe lemon and finally the blazing heart of a chirimoya. The bird song is strongest from ruby red until tangerine, and by chirimoya has gone from constant to an intermittent chirp. More learned ornithologists of Chimeo can tell the hour and forecast the weather by this song, a skill, like hearing snakes, that I would love to acquire but doubt I ever will.

Be it an ingenuous attention, the birds have mine this morning. For eight months Ive been listening to this melody, and for all of 2007 minus its first 24 days, the birds in my ear have been entirely natives to Bolivia. Just as the slowly passing morning is marked by their differing songs, so each month of my service has been divided into epochs, novellas, usually with trips to Santa Cruz for book ends. 2007 has been full of the harder chapters- shock, adjustment, shock again, adjust one more time, adoration, disenchantment, and finally, this last month, reconciliation. It is in my nature to throw myself whole-heartedly into whatever work I may be focusing on. I have loved the hood in the chemistry department, doted on term papers, rendez-vous-ed with Lorca, and lost sleep over my English students. This work in Chimeo, however, is distinct from the others- its more than my job, its my life. For that reason, I have to remain a bit detached from it. Its precisely when I become a little too integrated, find myself listening to the chisme and fretting a bit too much about the weather, that I know its time to go. The deep connection one forms as a PCV with their small community is one of the most unique and rewarding aspects of service. This doesn’t mean the sword doesn’t have a second edge. Its also vital to retain a separation, an aspect of professionalism that will propel your projects past all the social muck and through their many phases.

Im in Santa Cruz preparing to head back to the US for Christmas and New Years. 2007 has been a year for adjusting to this new rhythm, while I feel that I know what to expect from 2008. It will see the completion of the bee project, conversational Guarani, bucket showers, jam packed taxis. In many ways it promises to be one of the more predictable years Ive lived, albeit a unique wild Bolivian unpredictability will be one of its innate qualities. I wish for all of you the same tranquil holidays I plan to spend with my family and a delightfully anticipated unpredictable 2008.

Tree bust.

2007-12-20T09:55:00.001-04:00

We bumped our way down the red earthen road, half sliding in the ditches where the path turned to mud after three consecutive days of rain. I was in the back with Enrique and Cesar, while the policeman and Inginiero Miguel rode up front. They had offered to let the lady ride up front, but given the opportunity I always choose to ride in the beds of trucks and trunks of station wagons- they offer the best view. Enrique looked ahead, undaunted, and Cesar absent-mindedly examined the mud on his shoes that reached up to his stonewashed jeans. As I watched the tangled, familiar forest go by, my heart beat in my throat. We were going on an illegal logging bust. It wasn’t my first time, and I didn’t fear men with chainsaws, but rather the social implications of the excursion. This bust, unlike the others, was in Chimeo.

There are two things that are omnipresent in the ambiance of Chimeo. One, Parque Aguarague, looming high, deep, and verdant over your shoulder. The other is the sound of chainsaws. The rugged lawlessness found throughout Bolivia has preserved pristine areas like Aguarague; at the same time, new roads, better transportation, and freer communications has opened these virgin areas to exploitation, by Bolivians and foreigners alike. Nowhere is this more true than Chimeo. Traditionally, the folks in Chimeo have lived in unison with Aguarague. Nonetheless, the price of lumber and ease of extraction, if one can get his hands on a chainsaw, has become irresistible for some community members. Chimeo is a vein into the arboral artery of Aguarague, mere kilometers from the market in Villa Montes and conveniently on the paved road to Santa Cruz. While the price they get for the lumber the sell is comparatively high, its dirt cheap to what it could fetch once processed and sold abroad. Sadly, like so many other things in this country, we lack the industry to best take advantage of our resources. At night you can hear the trucks, heavy with wood and failing at their attempt as a clandestine escape, work their way out of Chimeo and into the market.

Everyone knows that this illegal extraction is going on, and rampantly. One would ask herself, then, why don’t we do anything to stop it? One reason could be resignation- how do we stop people from extracting from a place so vast and uncontrolled as Aguarague? Another could be acceptance- in a place as densely wooded as Chimeo, its hard to imagine an end to it. I had asked myself the same questions, tip toeing over the stumps and shavings of Cedar and Palo Blanco on my way to see bee hives. Maybe people are right- how can we enforce preservation in a country that seems to cherish its anarchy?

Today’s inspection was more than anarchy though; it was a massacre. The forest Ive come to know and love, deep green with vines twisting and cascading from the canopy to the floor, was missing. Right off of the main road, over a dozen cedar, mora, and palo blanco trees has been carelessly felled, some taking their innocent, young neighbors with them. The holes in the green veil were blatant; the light shone down on the forest floor like an open wound, ripping open what had until then been timeless and immaculate. I couldn’t believe the damage that had been wrought since I last passed down this stretch of road a week ago.

Enrique had brought Cesar and Miguel, representatives of the forestry unit of the mayor’s office, to check for an extraction permit and record the illegal extraction with fotos and GPS. I had been through this routine before with Chachi, that time on a palo santo bust on the other side of the river. This time felt so different though- this was Chimeo, MY Chimeo, my neighbors, my woody slice of heaven. Also, on the previous adventure everything was in black and white- how dare those men! Strip them of their chainsaws like they stripped the land! The culprits in this case are not those men. They are P., who selflessly helps harvest honey without a bee suit; F., who has a wonderful wife, a million kids to feed, and a drinking problem. They are also C., the capitan of the community, Enrique’s brother, and the father of my godson. I haven’t seen C. or his family for almost a month, as they’ve transferred everything to their little hut on the mountain to make things easier for C. and his sons while they work. C. is also the small man in this picture- he is extracting the wood for his boss,, a well connected man in town. Where and to whom this fellow will sell the wood, I don’t know. I cant help but feel like C. is just a pawn in a bigger game. He is doing all the hard work, and furthermore, a few weeks ago his eldest son, Ivan, was pickpocketed of his pay for three months of lumber extraction. Ivan is a great kid who would, and has, helped me in any he could. Nonetheless, the family should know better. They’ve attended workshops put on by GTZ and others about environmental conservation. They’ve nodded as Chachi, myself, and certainly previous PCVs have spoken about conservation. So who here is to blame? C.? His boss? The blind eye of the community?

I too am a pawn in this whole matter. I don’t wield any political sway in town, but in Chimeo my social power is unrivaled. A number of jealous souls would love to see my friendship with Cecilio and his family tarnished- I refuse to let this happen. Lucky for me, today we only saw one lumber site, P.'s. We couldn’t make it up higher into the mountain, where C. is working, due to the condition of the roads. My social ties were spared, but certainly Aguarague wasn’t, as the chainsaws continue to echo through the hills after we had finished the inspection. After seeing the logging site today though, I have decided to stand for the forest, even if it makes things between C’s family and myself difficult. This is bigger than us- this on (one of the many) the front lines in the battle for the environment. I have to trust that C and A’s respect for my opinion, as both Licenciada and Comadre, will keep our friendship in tact, and perhaps keep their chainsaw in the house. Ill likely spend the next two days, my last in Chimeo before I go home for the holidays, crusading with Enrique for the trees. C. and A. will keep on working up in the mountain, and the Aguarague will undoubtedly keep looking over our shoulders.

affection.

2007-12-20T09:54:00.003-04:00

Im fortunate to be a PC volunteer in a place, the eastern half of Bolivia, where people are generally affectionate and affable. Before coming to Bolivia, I didnt I realize just how much affection I receive on a daily basis and how much the slightest human contact can influence my mood. Here in Bolivia, despite the openness and warmth of the people, I am constantly desirous of the smallest bit of human contact- a pat on the back, someone to play with my hair, anything.

Today I hit the affection jackpot, however far from the sorts of affection I was accustomed to while in the US. First was this morning, when I took advantage of a free few hours to visit with Eugenia and Laydee, my neighbors. Eugenia’s sons had all gone to see about the family cows, leaving Eugenia, her three daughters, and myself to chat. Laydee noticed a bug bite on my shoulder that had been vexing me for a day or so. Without a word, Eugenia started scratching at the bite with her forefinger, hard, and pulled out a tiny little red bug, an usapuka, a bug no larger than a grain of sand. I had thought I was just having a strong reaction to a mosquito bite, but apparently these little bugs only appear in the rainy season in tall grasses- likely that they crawled up my legs and arms while I was macheteing down the overgrown grasses in my yard earlier this week. “Do you have any more?” she asked, and I showed her one bite on my belly. Meanwhile Laydee went about checking my back and head for the little things, inspecting every inch, scrutinizing every bite with an expert eye. When I was cleared of usapuka, we turned to check Eugenia’s younger daughters, passing the poro and pointing out possible bites.

It felt great. Every day I see mothers and daughters, husbands and wives giving each other a thorough de-bugging, hairline to lifeline, and finally, I found myself part of the ritual. Its just another way in which folks in Chimeo rely upon each other to deal with their harsh environs, instead of say, fumigating.

That evening after KunhaGuasi, I shared some mate and our freshly baked rollo de queso with Marina and her mom, Dona Josefa. If Chimeo has a big mamma, it must be Dona Josefa. She is everything a grandmother should be: her hair is always in perfect silver plait, down to the small of her back, accented by a pair of dangling earings. Her skin tanned, and the deep, taught wrinkles cross her face with certainty. The lines around her eyes represent all shes seen. She has the high cheekbones of a supermodel, and below those the lines around her mouth remind you that when she speaks, you listen. Her gait has a distinct sureness, the kind that can only come with years, of seeing the transformation of her world from a few adobe homes in the forst to a town of 500 people. On the other side of the table, her daughter Marina is serving mate. She has her mother’s high cheekbones and wide, dainty nose. The wrinkles have yet appear, but Josefa’s certainty and clearness of thought are seen in Marina’s every movement- speaking, serving tea, kneading bread. They chat in Guarani with a fluidity that is increasingly rare, and I pick out what words I can. These are my two favorite women to spend time with of late. They are always ready to try any new project, and where many other women in Chimeo trade their opinions for a web of chisme, they simply speak their minds.

Dona Josefa noticed my big toe, still wrapped up from its Thanksgiving Day fracture. She told me I needed to adjust it, otherwise it would hurt forever. I had heard that she was one of those more skilled in traditional medicine, nonetheless I did not want anyone yanking or twisting my already sensitive bone. Before I could contemplate a response though, she was at my feet, using her strong, wise coffee-colored hands to feel the position of the bones in my feet. As she went from toe to talon, I could tell that these bones, be they from a different genetic line, were familiar to her. Shes seen her ten children, their children, their children’s children, and recently, their children’s children’s children sprain and fracture their many parts many times over her eighty years of life. There was no first aid or encyclopedia to teach her about bones and ligaments, just the wisdom of age and experience. Just like Don Feliciano’s tobacco smoke and aguardiente jarara bite cure, I believe in it. Im not sure if it was her adjustment or just the relaxation of a foot massage, but my foot and my entire self felt better after her treatment.

Back with Eugenia and Laydee, I am told how to look out for these bugs in the future and how I should take care of the bites afterwards. I ask Eugenia and Laydee if there are any other bugs I should look out for during this season or the next, and they said they couldn’t think of anything. This is completely untrue, but it isn’t a lie either. Im sure they cant think of anything, because garrapatas and usapukas are regarded as innate- it would be like warning me about the sunrise before I go to sleep. There is always another bug, another bit of common sense that I seem to keep learning the hard way, through kitchen explosions (tie a wet rag around the mouth of the garrafa), dog bites (it’s the silent dogs that bite), and countless others. This hard way though seems to bring me closer and closer to Chimeo, its big mammas, its valiant husbands. 2008 will certainly bring more of this adversity, but hopefully also a few lessons applied.

December 9th!

2007-12-20T09:54:00.001-04:00

May December 9, 2007 go down as the day it finally happened. Since I arrived in Chimeo in late April, Ive been talking and talking about levantando de nuevo (raising anew) the bee keepers association in Chimeo. It sounds simple enough, but somehow its taken me over seven months. Three months for getting to know people, two for getting to know bee keepers, seeing their hives, and generally building my street-bee-cred, one month to do background project development work, one month simply waiting for a general assembly to come around so that I could announce the meeting to the entire population- there are no CCs on email so passing any news is done door to door or in general assembly.

The general assembly on Saturday the 8th was luckily a short one- we had arrived at the seventh item on the agenda, “various”, in a mere four hours, a feat that usually takes about six or seven. The men in charge- Carlos, Cecilio, Enrique, and Don Justino- called me up to say my piece. For the first time I was looking upon the community as the encargados see it, and I understood how frustrating it must be for community leaders- 95% of the women, seated at center, stared at the ground. The men, thinner than their wives and with bolas of coca where the women suck lollipops, look straight at me, but from the side, on a hill by the meeting hall. As I speak, faces don’t change. I mention the need to meet, sooner rather than later, and ask the apiculturists I know what time tomorrow would be good to meet. No response. “Erm, so we need to meet, but I need you all to tell me what time is best on a Sunday. Morning? Afternoon?”

Carlos whispers in my ear, “It would be prudent to just pick anytime, Jacqueline.”

Don Justino pipes up, “Two oclock! Two oclock tomorrow!”

Finally with Don Justino’s voice, the expressions change from indifference to agreement. Yes! We will come at two oclock!

Although it seems like a somewhat meaningless encounter, I keep on replaying the meeting in my head Sunday morning. I realize how much grabbing the people’s attention relied upon the authorities of Chimeo, who all happen to be my closest friends. This has two implications- one, if I learned anything from studying development in college, its that I need to become closer friends with the less involved in Chimeos politics, Chimeo’s “marginalized” population. The leaders know how to get help, improve their lives, network- it’s the people off to the side that would see a greater marginal benefit from a veggie garden or some more honey in their diet. Second, I have to change. Any leadership position Ive ever held in the past has been based upon leading by consensus, demanding input and building from there. That is not what works in Chimeo. Don Justino, Carlos and the rest speak with a certainty and authority that Chimenos are looking for- they seem to want someone to tell them when, where, and how. This to me feels uncomfortable and paternalistic, but if it’s the way the thing needs to be done, I’ll have to change a bit.

I arrive at two oclock, well aware that no one else will arrive until three oclock, a la tradicion Boliviana. I pass the hour letting some girls I know braid my hair (one of Chimeo’s most popular past times of late), and finally at three, five men show up. We keep waiting, assured that others will appear. We wait until 3:30, when I begin the meeting.

“So, I’d like to talk about this group. What would we like to accomplish?”

Blank stares.

A few more stragglers arrive, this time a group of women, and I start again.

“So, lets talk about some of the advantages Chimeo has in bee keeping. Ive listed a few. More ideas?”

Blank stares.

Finally, at four, another group arrives. I start again.

“Alright. We are making rules. If we are going to have a group, its going to be well organized or it will fall apart, just like so many other projects. Rule number one: arrive on time. Agreed?”

Enthusiastic agreement! Folks discuss why these rules concerning attendance and tardiness, are important, and offer suggestions on how to improve some rules. In the end, we have a set or regulations that to me seems almost juvenile, but Ive been told by other volunteers that this is what works in Bolivia. There are fines for not attending (5 Bs) or arriving late (song and dance in front of the group). We have elected a president, treasurer, and secretary (all women-the group universally decides that women are more trustworthy). This week I will go to Villa Montes to get a formal Libro de Actas to record meeting minutes and, if Im feeling fancy, an official stamp- nothing in Bolivia is official until it is stamped by all interested parties.

Today we are 18, and we have agreed to meet each Sunday at 8 AM. Next Sunday we will clean the much neglected apiculture sede. It was apparently once in such nice shape that the PCV here in the mid-ninties live there- this is hard to believe today. Full of panels and boxes and used wax, it seems to have not been cleaned since the last honey harvest it saw, which was probably while I was still in high school. We’ll see how many of our 18 show up to clean, and then how many show up to begin bee classes after the New Year. If we are even a group of 5 in the end Ill be happy, so long as it’s a good five members.

No matter what the coming Sundays bring, today there has been success in Chimeo- there is a bee group!

Arta plata.

2007-12-20T09:53:00.001-04:00

Sonia’s baby is due in February. Shes not sure if it’s a girl or a boy- she likes surprises. She and her husband Antonio, who stands at an easy six feet, a full head above Chimeo’s other men, live next to me and across from Sonia’s sister, Estella. Right now they are living in a one room adobe house that Antonio is raising himself. Surely when theres money the walls will be reinforced with concrete and painted white, a concrete floor will be poured, a bathroom will be built. In the afternoons Sonia and her belly sit with a contentment known only to pregnant women, knitting or drinking tea, while Antonio and his trademark brown cowboy hat work in the midday heat. On hotter days, they siesta on a sheet laid out in the shade of the trees in their yard.

This evening they are taking afternoon mate on the table outside their sweet and humble home. Ive come to share some fotos Ive taken, in particular one of Antonio when he was helping to build the stands of Chimeo’s cancha. I sell the fotos at 2 bolivianos a piece, which is just under what I need in order to break even. They appreciate the fotos, laughing at some, noting who would love to have others. As Sonia flips through the fotos, theres probably about 60 or so, she does the math. Arta plata tiene la Jacky entonces. Arta plata arta plata. Jackys got a lotta money. A lot lot of money.

She was just remarking, and meant nothing hurtful by the statement. To Chimenos it would be the same as me remarking on Antonio’s height, or the heat of midday: its obvious, inarguable truth. For someone in Chimeo, my salary is a lot of plata. Chimeo’s tininess lands me in the lowest pay bracket among volunteers, about $200 a month. As far as I know, the highest paid men in Chimeo, the few who have company jobs, make about $150. And they have kids. I do what I can to live like my neighbors, we drink the same cheap mate and refined sugar, but there are some things that I cant hide. The fridge. The computer. The Nescafe.

Arta plata. I know it shouldn’t bother me, especially because theres nothing I can do about the idea of gringos having arta plata. Anytime someone utters the phrase though, I feel a need to defend myself. I know what it means to work! I have slept in living rooms! I have Perkins Loans!

Its such a different world though. We do not have the same barriers toward advancement. Granted, I did work hard in high school and scholarships carried me through college. All the while though, I had government help and the knowledge that if I did these things, there would be opportunities at the end of the line. Estella, for example, is bachiller, meaning she graduated from HS. To be bachiller is about the social equivalent of a BA in the US, leading one to a much better chance at employment, the kind that involves a desk instead of a machete. Unfortunately, she graduated under Goni, not Evo, meaning that a $100 fee on receiving ones diploma was still in effect. Evo has since abolished this fee, but its not retroactive, meaning that our Estella still cant afford to buy her evidence of achievement some five years after the fact. Once she can save up for her diploma, she dreams of a job as a secretary or teacher.

My $200 a month is arta plata. I could do a lot of damage with one months salary- I could get Estella her diploma. I could personally buy a fone booth for Chimeo. Lots of damage. I cant though- its not sustainable. A diploma for Estella would turn into a bike for Leodan and on and on. I do use a large part of my salary on Chimeo in ways less easy to detect- cooking club, microloans to neighbors, and the like. It’s an inescapable balance that will be sure to follow me for the remainder of my time here.

Chisme.

2007-12-20T09:47:00.001-04:00

This week, as to be expected, was full of the unexpected. Riots in Sucre put all of PC Bolivia on alert with our EAP, or emergency action plan. This did not affect my life on the other side of the country, except for a daily call that I had to place to PC Headquartrs letting them know that yes, Im still alive. As to be expected, Sucre has since settled down, but who knows what the coming weeks will bring in Bolivian politics. We are currently down to the wire on the new constitution, to be decided by the end of 2007, and so very much is at stake. Im hoping that the conflict will stay west and north and leave me to chase bees and make carrot cakes with the folks here in Chimeo. It probably wont.

Also as to be expected, I spent the majority of my time this week visiting with the folks I hadn’t seen in a while, as Ive been traveling to and from tallers and Thanksgiving celebrations. A lot of my conversations, especially those around the need to better organize Chimeo’s interest groups, focused on a thing called chisme, or general rumors and bad-mouthing. The Guarani don’t trust the criollos, and the criollos think the Guarani are lazy. The ladies in barrio central think the ladies in barrio petrolero are lazy, and in petrolero the centrales are exclusive. Its Chimeo’s own brand of the sort of polarization that currently splits the country in its race to the constitution. The collas, from the high, western half of the country, criticize our tranquil, laid back nature as flojera, or laziness. We cambas, however, simply recognize the importance of taking it easy.

I had hoped to avoid this chisme as much as possible, to be an example of how to rise above and beyond such wastes of time. More and more though, they exert a force on my life and my goals here in Chimeo. In order to talk about starting a bee group, Chimenos find it first necessary to have a firm grasp on past attempts at bee groups, who won out, who lost, and who stole all the equipment. The same idea is true for other projects: weaving, chickens, pigs, wood working, citrus plants, just about anything that grows in the Chaco. As soon as a group unites, it seems to dissolve itself for nothing more than jealousy and suspicion. Chimeo is a dozen families, 500 people with a generation or two of interlocking genes, wrongs, and rights. Tolstoy would love it.

This tendency is certainly frustrating, but I remained faithful that Chimeo would unite in the name of productivity, of more opportunities, or delicious honey and fresh vegetables. This week, however, Ive had my perceptions of various friends flipped. One was for the better- I had the opportunity to visit with an old man whom before I had only interacted with while he was drunk (this happens a lot.) It turns out that when he’s sober, aka before 5 PM, he is hard working, motivated to work with bees, and one of the most knowledgeable curanderos, or doctors of traditional medicine (read: witch doctor) in town.

Does it have to play a role in my life? What are the chances that anything organized tip-toeing around these social lines will, shortly after my departure, fall apart? With my understanding of Chimeono politics, its entirely possible. I suppose this means that my service will have to focus on capacitation of individuals in order to be sustainable, which is as it should be anyway. It makes any great, tangible example of “what Ive done here” less probable. It is the only way, however, to retain my sanity over my remaining 17 months.

This is the nature of two years working in, although I loathe to use the word, development. I suppose this week’s chisme has been a reality check- Chimeo is not paradise. Certainly it has paradisial qualities (Silence! Generous neighbors! Big lush mountains! Fruit trees!), but it also has exhausting barriers to productivity. These two years are looking more and more like a hodge-podge of learning what I can, teaching what they’ll listen to, being my credulous self and just enjoying the ride.

Bee box.

2007-12-20T09:44:00.001-04:00

Monica gave me a kiss on my cheek and handed over the flashlight.

Pituma, goodnight I said, cringing a bit from the pain but not letting it show.

Yasorupai, thanks for your help, she replied.

Yasorupai a nde I responded, mixing Chimeos two languages to make both of us laugh.

While I feigned this nonchalance on the outside, inside I was thinking one thing: thank gosh that’s over. I had just faced my biggest and only real fear in Chimeo- the forest at night. We had to take a bee box from its spot in my yard to a new home about a half of a mile into the woods. I don’t even like walking to the bathroom at night for fear of snakes, and now I had to trudge through the woods on a moonless night. I had dreaded the chore, but it was absolutely necessary to move the box for my safety and that of the neighbors and their many, many kids. Due to the boxes, I couldn’t clear the area around it of tall grasses without being stung. Due to the tall grass, cows constantly enter my yard. These cows could, in a worst-case scenario, topple the bee boxes and send thousands of angry bees stinging up and down the barrio. It had to go.

Before heading into the woods, I had prepared myself. Flashlight. Bee suit. High boots. Smoker. Most importantly, Enrique and Monica to lead the way. Check check check. 30 minutes later, I hobbled out of the woods and bid Pituma to Enrique and Monica. Our mission had been completed, and without a single bee sting or snake bite. The pressure from my heavy boots, however, had brought the injury to my attention- I was pretty sure my big toe was broken or fractured. I peeled off the boot and sock to reveal a fat big toe with a tell-tale purple line running across it. Was I trampled by a cow? Had a full bee box fallen on my foot? Worse: I had danced.

Flashback to three days earlier. Forty of Santa Cruz’s volunteers gathered at a casa del campo with a pool and a view to celebrate Thanksgiving. We swam, played Frisbee and soccer, and finally got around to cooking at about 6 pm. Dinner was followed by an all-nighter of cards, music and, for some more than others, dancing. True to form, I was part of the some. Around 3 am, during a particularly rousing tune by Os Tribalistas, I took a bad landing on the uneven concrete and tumbled to the ground. Luckily, only one person saw. Unluckily, I couldn’t hide my bloody toe and gimpy stride for long. By sun up my wrist and foot were fatter than they had been at sun down, and my knee was purple and scraped.

Fast forward to tonight, Sunday. I ask myself how this can be- I can carry a box of killer bees through a forest with venomous snakes, at night, unscathed. I cannot, however, dance safely. I realize that all of the injuries and illnesses Ive suffered since arriving in Bolivia 10 months ago are along the same vein. Dog bite? By a fluffy black one named “Doll”, while buying toilet paper after computer class. Second degree facial burns? While steaming broccoli. Heat exhaustion? While weeding in the yard. Exotic diseases? Not malaria or dengue, but Shingles.

Perhaps my constant preoccupation with real dangers (Snakes! Scorpions! Spiders! Wiiiild Cat! Killer Bees! Tropical diseases!) distracts me, rendering me accident prone in the Bolivian context? Perhaps this is my true nature showing through? A stroke of bad luck? Either way, Ive learned that its silly to fear those BIG Peace Corps fears- illness, accidents, etc. The PC trains us well to mitigate the possibility of these biggies. It’s the little things, the broccoli fires and the careless dancing that grab you when you least expect it. Nor does this mean Im going to stop eating broccoli or dancing or using the bathroom at night. One thing that important to recognize when observing the PC experience from the outside is this: its just life. It is just as much doing laundry as it is building libraries. Its dangers, let downs, and successes fall into line with the more mediocre aspects of service.

Rice, sweat, dirt, other things.

2007-12-20T09:41:00.001-04:00

Another startling realization that occurred during this afternoon’s yoga. I returned from sowing corn in the morning and having lunch with the group of women with time to do yoga before evening. During safsyvanhjama pose, I found my nose touching my shins experiencing something new, but familiar. I had smelled this on countless micros and mercados in Bolivia, but never before in my room. I inhaled. There it was. Dirt, salt, perspiration of rice and yerba mate. It was the smell of a campesina, and it was coming from my legs.

It is a day of great pride: I smell like a campesina!

Araenti.

2007-12-20T09:40:00.000-04:00

I can see them from across the field. There’s thirty of them. Some are in colorful knee length skirts, others in pants rolled up to the knees. Step step pause, they make their way across the earth, brown this time instead of its typical sandy red, step step pause, half with long heavy sticks, step pause, and the rest with plastic bags. The sky is low and grey step pause and droplets from last nights rain lie undisturbed on blades of grass step pause.

As I come over the rise, I can see more clearly. They are working in two rows and many columns. The first row is comprised of younger more lissome gals, sweating and swinging their hoes in the full silence of hard work. They are trailed by grey haired versions of themselves, with thinner calves and rounder bellies, who dig yellow flashes from their bags in groups of three or four. They drop the seeds into divots, each one a darker brown than the surrounding earth, and cover them with one sweep of their back foot. Step step pause drop sweep like a sine curve, the closer I get the more intricate the pattern becomes, all the while retaining its original steady progression drop sweep.

Five minutes later Im one of them. The rows of raised earth and I compromise with each step: I sink in, the dirt rises between my toes. The corn between my fingers is cool and hard, and Ive soon found the rhythm behind the draw and drop of the seeds to their new homes. We, the women of Chimeo, are sowing 100 kg of corn given to us as a project with the prefectura on our communal plot. The project is going hand in hand with a chicken project which was poorly started early this year-the group was given chickens but no feed and no way to provide it.

Im lost in the beautiful motion of it all, the coffee colored skin peaking from beneath skirts of uniform style but every color working their way towards the trees, out there, just a few more meters. Ahead of me I see my sowing partner, Eugenia, slacken her shoulders and stop. She turns around, flushed and sweating, “Ya me canse, che.” Man am I tired, she says. I offer to switch places and she accepts. As I swing and step, I think of Eugenia’s week. Two days she spent harvesting tomatoes in neighboring Caigua for 30 Bs a day. The rest she has spent drinking mate between bouts of washing clothing, feeding her many babies, and hacking away the bush around her home that grows a meter a month during this, the rainy season. No wonder shes exhausted.

During the next break, I look around at the group members as they wipe their brows and share water from a bucket. This is not a novelty to them. This is just life. This is not an exciting project because its successful and communal; it is vital because it feeds their families. If it weren’t for the eggs provided by the project, I believe the already low protein consumption in Chimeo would be halved. The charming cadence of the corn is not born of choreography but rather custom; these women have been at it all their lives.

Maybe it’s the sleepy atmosphere encouraged by the low rainy sky, maybe its because Im approaching one year in country, but this transformation of my utopian Chimeo to a more pragmatic and monotonous one has become a recurring theme. Yes the ladies are hard working and sassy, but they also thrive on ridiculous gossip (a large part of it, annoyingly, about me). Yes it’s a proud Guarani community, but it is still plagued by the same racism (in our case, Guarani vs. “karai” or white man) that splits the rest of the country, immobilizing it in a cycle of blockades, rumors, and arguments. And yes, my routine is more fulfilling and surrounded by beauty than it was while living in Washington, but its still a predictable, becoming more and more of a job every day. I feel increasingly worn down by a lack of real contact with my family and friends, or real catching up and real HOW ARE YOU DOINGS that’s every day harder to fill with writing and reading and sowing (new hobby!)

This conversion, as ugly and bordering on depression as it might sound, is a necessary and, I think, beneficial part of PC service. Once the scenery and sugary yerba mate are no longer enough, you have to entertain yourself. You have to make your time worthwhile, dense, fulfilling. For myself and certainly other volunteers like me, the only way to do this is through projects with the community. New ones! Fun ones! Successful ones! As the cloud of this latest stage of adjustment settled in over the past month, Ive had to expand both my social circle within the community as well as the projects we engage in. Cooking club (or as Ive named it, Kunhaguazu, meaning “fat lady” in Guarani) has grown in size and participation. Ive found more interested parties for our bee-project-to-be. Im looking into starting a radio program on nutrition with a nearby volunteer, and my home garden is thriving.

This race between productivity and insanity has made my goals smaller and, hopefully, more practical. More than anything though, it has made me realize one thing I couldn’t have imagined two months ago: one day I will be ready to leave this place.

The news.

2007-12-20T09:34:00.001-04:00

Most of my time in Chimeo is spent happily removed from the turbulent daily news. All that I pick up about the world outside of this town of 500 is word of mouth- a strike that will take place the next week, a bus crash in Cochabamba, the high temperature (a couple of weeks ago it got to 48*C, which, if you do the math, equals really really hot.) Im told that I NEED a radio to keep up with the goings on in the country and the world, but I like this metamorphosis from habitual, almost addictive daily paper reader to blissful ignorance- it feels really good, really simple.

Alas, in the doctors office yesterday I found myself alone with a few recent copies of El Deber. They were a bit dated, so I felt a bit less guilty reading them. As I only read the news every two weeks (or less), more and more it seems like nothing is changing at all and makes me even less prone to shell out the 5 Bolivianos (50 cents) to not learn anything new. Is there or is there not inflation? The President of the EEUU and congress still disagree? Putin is breaking all the rules and no one has done anything about it?

I turned past the informational pages toward the op-eds, hoping for some salvation. On the way I bumped into a special section on Global warming and another one on SIDA (AIDS). I find it really exciting when I find things like this in the paper in Bolivia- global warming, domestic violence, alcoholism. In my experience, people are really thirsty for knowledge that we might consider common sense- can you get AIDS from a handshake? What do antibiotics do? This week for example, I found myself explaining the nature of the seas (salty water, full of life, you cant see the other side) to one of my favorite families in Chimeo.

The section on Global warming was truly well done- simple, clear language, great graphics that explained just how this phenomenon occurs. As it should, the article made me examine my life in Chimeo and my life in the States. Each one carries with it a different set of responsibilities in the environmental conservation realm. In the US it’s a need to cut back, resist- drive less (if at all- bikes have wheels too!), reuse containers, etc. In my Chimeno life, there isn’t really any room to cut back. No one in Chimeo has a car. When people in the area take car pooling to a whole new level- three to the front seat is standard, four to the back, and one or two lucky souls get to ride in the trunk of the station wagon for half price (why its cheaper I don’t understand- its really the most comfortable spot in the car). Electricity is only used for a lightbulb or two, maybe a small fridge (Chimeo has less than ten). Despite temperatures between 90-110*F, there are no air conditioners. To deal with the heat, people find other solutions- take it easy at midday, live in a small house that’s easy to cool, wet your head to cool off before you go to sleep, have lots of shady trees. Wouldn’t it be easier to employ some of these creative techniques in our lives in the States and other energy gulping countries? Environmental conservation does not take state of the art solar panels, rather open mindedness and a bit of improvisation.

Chimeo does have one large responsibility that we are not fulfilling- Aguarague. At the base of this unguarded national park, Chimeo has a unique opportunity to conserve something rare, beautiful, necessary, and THEIRS. Nonetheless, some community members extract lumber from this reserve and sell at terribly low prices. There needs to be a more proactive solution to this situation, starting with education, precisely the kind of thing El Deber presented. It will take more than movies or newspaper articles though, for a few reasons. First of all, the much of Chimeo’s adult population are not particularly adept readers. Second, how do you convince a family that struggles to feed itself to spend time on conservation? Sure, everyone recognizes there is less firewood than there used to be, and that the river is much lower than it used to be, but this doesn’t provide my family with any more or less rice and bread. Although it does not fall directly in my agriculture realm, Aguarague affects every part of life, especially the success of Chimeo’s bees. It’s a problem Ive been struggling with and will continue to struggle with throughout my service.

So perhaps this blissful tranquility of Chimeo cannot continue to be- the world knows about Chimeo’s cheap lumber, so likewise Chimeo must know about the situation of lumber in the world and the rights of their unique territory. My counterpart, Enrique, who worked for seven years as a park guide in the national park Noel Kempff, believe the key to conserving Aguargue is through Ecotourism. I believe it could work in Chimeo, but the difficult part will be educating, inciting, and training the rest of the folks in Chimeo on the subject. For now Enrique and I are going it alone, against an increasing tide of wood exiting Chimeo. Its such an enormous threat, and two years is such little time.

My neighbors, Gilmer and Alain, are very very cute.

2007-11-12T10:54:00.000-04:00

2007-11-12T10:33:00.000-04:00

Chau Chachi.

2007-11-12T10:29:00.000-04:00

We sat squished, hip-bone to hip bone as the rickety cad shuddered down the highway towards Villa Montes. Outside Aguarague rose high and powerful above the eastern plain; inside discordant Colla music blared and the stench of pigs in the back of the station wagon contaminated the air. It was a particularly unpleasant last taxi ride together, but somehow fitting. Id rather have a goodbye like this, rushed and almost routine, with the knowledge that life here will continue as usual after hes gone. I don’t want to focus on the possibility of never seeing someone who, by chance, has become a brother to me in a few short months.

I often wonder how it will feel when I someday have to leave this place. It was one thing to leave the States, knowing that at some fixed date, Id be back. But to leave Chimeo one day. Who knows when Ill be able to return, if ever. Its not something I like to seriously contemplate, yet I found myself doing so this week with the departure of my closest gringo companion and quasi-site mate, Chachi.

Chachi is a natural resources volunteer who arrived in my training group this January. In training he lived closer to me in our Cochabamba barrio than anyone else, and in April we were placed 10 km from each other. Furthermore, our projects have gone hand in hand, him trying to preserve the forest I need for the bees that thrive there. Neither of us had host families, so when one of us was sick or feeling particularly lonely, especially in those first few cold months in site, we learned to depend on each other. For the kids in Chimeo, a Chachi visit is equivalent to the icecream man- bringer of all things Frisbee and fun. Any fotograph with a gringo male in it becomes Chachi.

He’s a legend. And like all good legends, he has to go before his time. Chachi’s mom has been not well for some time, bravely and selflessly fighting cancer. In recent months things have become more serious, and now Chachi needs to head back to Wisconsin to be at her side. Im sad to see him go, but at the same time I wish he would have gone long ago to be with his family. The PC can be such a selfish, fleeting time, and I cant help but compare each day he’s here with another potential day with his family.

There is not a single gringo in Bolivia about whom Ive come to know more about or who knows more about me. Its strange to let it all go, but at the same time its fitting- my family in Bolivia is now wholly Chimeo. I find myself with less and less desire to leave the place- Chimeo has gone from my site to my community. It stands alone; its all I need here in Bolivia.

The most stressful part about his departure is the sustainability of the projects he was starting in Chimeo. We are a conservationist community, known by local companies and the mayor’s office for a willingness to kick out, sometimes by force, those who threaten the sanctity of our Aguarague. Chachi was helping initiate a community tree nursery, to replace trees taken for artisan work and firewood and lumber, as well as a forest management plan. Without him to lead the way, I fear these plans will fall through. Even if I knew the first thing about forestry, all of my time is already taken with my agriculture and nutrition work. I really don’t know how Ill balance my projects with keeping his alive in the coming months; only time will tell.

A bit of Chachi will always be part of Chimeo-on his last visit to Chimeo, he brought a box of saltenas, soda, and 14 trees to plant in the school. No matter what happens with the nursery of his forest management plan, a bit of Chachi will always be here in the mangos in December and flower-like ceder seeds that fall in September. If only all volunteers should all be so fortunate to leave such a reminder of ourselves behind.

I ask that all those who receive this email keep Chachi’s family in your thoughts and, if you swing that way, prayers.

proof that i have not been permanantly disfigured.

2007-11-12T09:48:00.000-04:00

me, alive, with a few blisters you cant see in this foto.

ana's sweet bread.

the window and the plastic screen it used to have.

the door to my kitchen was as close to the stove as i was, but it doesnt have legs.

the evil stove.

The garrafa.

2007-11-06T21:41:00.000-04:00

It was a wonderful morning. I woke up at about 530 after a sound, tranquil sleep. The sky was pink and I gathered a bit of firewood to boil water for breakfast. I normally cook over a gas stove but my stove had been acting strangely ever since I replaced the tank, so recently Ive stuck to wood. The men of what has become my surrogate family, Cecilio and Iban, arrived while I was finishing my Nescafe and soymilk to fix the stove. They jerry-rigged the stove’s hose so that it would work again, saving me a few Bolivianos. This ability to fix or recycle any seemingly broken item with mere scraps and determination has long been one of the traits I most admired in Bolivians. Honey is sold in used Nescafe jars and water bottles, and Ive never seen a taxi that wasn’t of hodge-podge of brands and parts. Nor do Bolivians ever forget the many uses of a good stick- they are put to use in making cradles, in construction, in baking, and for the obvious use of beating off bravo dogs.

I put myself to preparing the soil for my garden, which essentially meant a cow dung hunt. I took a bag and headed to the woods beside my house, where Don Jesus’s cows love to graze and startle me during the night. School just let out for the rainy season, and I ran into a group of boys hunting anything that moved with their home-made sling shot. They offered to help me in my poo-quest, bringing me enormous dried pies and delighting shouting out “Yakayyyyy!” when they found a particularly plentiful reserve. We filled one enormous bag with dung and another with black earth carved out from the decaying base of an algorrobo tree. Back in the garden we set to grinding the piles to a fine harina (flour) of cow feces with stones. Afterwards I sprung for a round of lollipops and MediaTarde crackers for all and we all sat reading on my porch.

Eventually I went inside to try out my newly-fixed kitchen, carving broccoli trees to branches and fat carrots to paper-thin slices. I struck the match to its box and PROOSH-the entire stove was aflame in my face. I reached to turn the gas off but the flame was in front of it and I couldn’t reach the knob without further burning myself. I knew I had burnt my face or hair a bit but wasn’t sure how extensive it was. I ran outside and the startled boys took one look at me, screamed in horror, and took off running. Convinced I had one less nose than I did before, I copied the boys and crossed the barbed wire to my neighbor’s house. I turned around, shaking, to see people running towards my house from every angle. The women and kids kept their distance, but the men ran straight away towards the flame. Don Eduardo came with a bucket for water, Cecilio filled my water basin and they went at the fire through the window. Rosi’s husband threw shovels full of dirt, and the muddy combination finally did the trick.

A minute later the porch and kitchen were overflowing with neighbors, each one offering condolences and not wasting a moment to start the clean up. Cecilia and Dona Marina cleared out the dirt and ash while the men debated the cause of the fire over charred remains of the stove. We had been lucky; the hose itself had burned half way through. If the fire has gotten to the gas in the hose it would have ignited the entire tank, sending the house and the men sky-high. The crowd cleared; Dona Marina stayed behind with a few kids to apply some freshly cut aloe to my face and neck. The burns were minor, and mostly I missed my hair, half of which had been singed off along with my eyelashes. At least I still had eyebrows, we joked.

I spent the rest of afternoon making sweet bread at my best friend Ana’s house, a favorite past-time I hadn’t been able to practice in months for lack of a free afternoon. We tended the adobe oven while we shared mate and fire horror stories. She had a lot of them- apparently there’s a correlation between accidents and this admirable Bolivian jerry-rigging. As usual, Ana sent me home feeling much better, with a belly full of mate and more sweet bread than Id ever be able to eat.

Tonight I am deeply reminded of my tremendous good fortune. Chance. I was the only one in the kitchen. The last time I had used the stove, the kitchen was full for Thursday night cooking club- all old ladies, little girls, and my very pregnant 14-year old neighbor (On Sunday she gave birth to a bouncing baby boy.) Time. The fire could have caught the full gas tank and taken my courageous male neighbors with it. Water. I only recently bought and filled the tank that held the water that put the fire out and we haven’t had water in the pipes for days. Without the tank, it would have taken too long to bring water from afar and the tank would have certainly exploded.

Most of all, my good fortune lies in the people whom I am currently find myself amongst. Today they risked their lives for a bumbling foreigner who six months ago was a stranger. All day Ive been dumbfounded by their alacrity and generosity and kindness. Asi son la gente. That’s just how the people are, Im told. When help is needed, they rise to the occasion. I ask myself if my countrymen or I would do the same. Would you? Would I? I would love to say I am morally on par with these men. I think that if there were a life immediately at risk, I would run that risk. But for another woman’s home? I doubt it. In fact, I know I wouldn’t have in the past. I know it. But now-would my answer be different? Can I blame this inferiority on being female? Can I blame it on different perspectives on material possessions? Is there blame to be placed?

Am I a terrible coward?

Can I ever sufficiently show my gratitude?

I have long known that I would learn more in the Bolivia than I would ever be able to teach anyone else, but I never anticipated such a profound lesson in selflessness. I can only hope some of this bravado will rub away a bit of this painful cowardice that I feel peeking through- Im on stage with my moral pants around my ankles.

I managed not to cry all afternoon, despite the shock and the burn and the relief of resolution. Tonight though, when no one can see, Im shedding a few of pure gratitude.

Quiet nights of quiet stars

2007-11-05T09:39:00.000-04:00

Quiet nights of quiet stars.
November 5, 2007

Theres a rhythm. It starts as soon as you step out of the taxi. The puh-swap of the door and the kinkchuh of the trunk, the clinkcaclink of three coins into the drivers open hand. Frhmcrrrrch, the sand and pebbles under your feet. As you head up the hill towards home, the mreeeee of the cars is a gentle hrummm. Fades and fades until a certain point where you walk in silence for a few meters.

Then the forest cues in. First it’s the chirping. Preee preee preee. Its starts slowly and picks up until that utter silence is just a memory and now youre walking with all the bichos up there in the trees, both feathers and chitin. Their song is familiar, but you’ve yet to match a face to a name to a tune. You keep walking until the crest of the hill when the human section is cued. Kids are laughing and playing; first it will be any combination of Sara’s three young boys in the sand in front of their house. Finally the inevitable Yakay! Yakay! and the rhythm gives way to interaction.

In every place Ive lived, Ive sought it out. In Ohio, it was a bridge by an old paper mill. In DC, I had to look up and head to the rooftop. In Florida, the pool at night. I used to think I was seeking a true silence, but in Chimeo Ive realized how deafening the true silence of the winter months can be. Rather Id call it an aleatoric rhythm, where the air is full of just enough sound to carry along the thoughts in your head without drowning nor depriving them.

There are many points in the day where I look around and realize how fortunate I am to be spending two years in such a charming place. When the mountains turn an especially vivacious deep green, when a townsperson invites me to a particularly delicious cup of mate, when the low afternoon sun bathes the town a still white-orange. Never do I find myself more in love with this place, however, than at night on the porch. After so many years of seeking out this aleatoric harmony, I am now lucky enough to have it right outside my door. The constant preepreepree in ¾ time with the kids bouncing and kicking the ball on the basketball court, punctuated with the bark of the neighbors dogs announcing the presence of Don Jesus’s cattle. And the frogs. A surprisingly pretty fweeeah fweeeah complimented by a whistled song and light footsteps on the path; Enrique must be on his way home.

Sometime during the night the pit pat of the ball on the cement court will fade out. With time even the dogs will follow their owners to bed and the cows will graze through the night unmolested, nothing but footprints on the path and the rustling of leaves nibbled from the branches. There will be a few hours of deep night, between the dogs and the roosters, where silence threatens but never comes. There is always a familiar wind in the trees or bugs on branches to remind you of where you are. The roosters give you fair warning of the approaching dawn, and soon the rhythm begins anew.

The moonless, starry nights like this one are the best; the electricity is out for one reason or another so Im free from the distant sounds of household radios and the lights of the soccer field. Something about a moonless night makes everyone a bit more reserved, stick a little bit closer to home. Maybe they are all like me, spending their evening with the night and the bugs in the trees and the frogs in the grass and the rhythm of the forest in Chimeo.

Todos Santos.

2007-11-04T09:38:00.000-04:00

God?
November 5, 2007

It starts at around dawn. Family by family the file towards the cemetery with all they’ll need for the day: fathers with hoes, sons with machetes, mothers and daughters with plastic wreaths and buckets of chicha. One can tell how long its been by the hour a family heads to the cemetery: Don Demetrio, who lost his wife to illness two years ago, is one of the first to arrive. Ana and Cecilio, who’s little boy was accidentally killed last Sempember, had everything prepared days ago. By nine o’clock, the houses are empty and the grave site is abuzz with voices and the hacking of metal against earth. Each plot is in a different state of preparation. Don Justino’s mother is seeing the bright sun for the first time in a while, as he scrapes away the weeds and tall grasses. The professor’s brother is smelling the fresh sweet dahlias atop of his headstone, by far the most magnanimous, all finished with white tiling. Papa Araray is looking sharp with a fresh blue coat and is double-fisting cups of chicha and wine; his family finished their cleaning last night and is currently passing around the tutumba in the shade. The ease with which the families mingle suggests a long history and a common lineage; the Ararays share their chicha with the Cuevases, the Arapinos visit with the Terceros clan. In a town of five-hundred people and some ten extended families, everyone is an aunt, uncle, god-parent, or cousin. Some plots are marked by tall crosses, others by a cement moseleum, others by two wordless branches, worn by the years. No matter their material, by 11 o’clock each one will be cleared and adorned with flowers, wreaths, tiny white candles and cups of alcohol. Its Todos Santos in Chimeo, a day to spend at the side of loved ones who have passed on.

Here it is a more humble holiday than that of larger towns. All week the streets of Villa Montes have been lined with sweet doll-shaped breads and colorful meringues. People fill the cemetery starting at dawn and its silence wont return until long after most have gone to bed and the red wine has run out. In Chimeo its merely a morning-long activity; at noon everyone will head to their mother’s or sister’s for a special lunch of rice and chicken. Lunch is washed down with a few glasses of vin-up, a boxed alcoholic beverage whose label proudly proclaims “Made of white grapes and vegetable extracts!”, and Pett Cola. (Note: This drink is called a Chola, and the act is known as “Choleando.” Literally, to woman in traditional Bolivian dress.) After the first few boxes the guitar comes out and the more musically talented begin strumming and singing traditional tunes. A few more boxes convince the more timid of the group to join in song and the lunch table is turned into a mélange of clapping, stomping, strumming, and an occasional Chaqueno “ayayayaayayayyy!”.

By dark the less serious drinkers have retired and the only ones left walking the street are doing so with a distinct stumble. The adults congregate in a few houses and the kids take this opportunity to stay out on the soccer field until midnight. This is when I return home- the guitar and clapping rising from neighboring houses are tempting and impossible to ignore, but I know the drinking Ill find there is not anything that I want a part of. Typically, one person walks around with a jug of chicha or vin-up and cola, “inviting” guests, one by one, to a glass. Its generally considered rude to turn down any sort of food or drink in Bolivia, and as the jug comes around and around, vegetable-extract drunkenness comes quick and hard. Everyone is better off the next day if I just stay home and admire the music from afar.

Because this year the second of November fell on a Friday, Todos Santos became a three-day event. Most spent these three days eating and drinking well with their families, and in Chimeo we celebrated the holy weekend by scheduling a baptism. Chimeo does not have its own priest, rather we share a couple priests and nuns with Villa Montes and other surrounding Guarani communities. Therefore, baptisms are never personal but rather common. This year seven babes were baptized on November, and those who did not do so on this date would have to wait until the next mass wedding and baptism, scheduled for Christmas time.

I have not been to mass since I arrived in Chimeo. Every Sunday at 630 I hear the bell calling worshippers to our charming teal chapel, and Im usually awake, but I never go. Im not terribly religious and prefer to spend my free mornings reading and generally taking it easy with my coffee or tea. So when my dearest friend Ana asked me to be the god-mother or Madrina of her new-born son a few months ago, I had to hesitate. Can I be a good madrina even if I have my doubts about Catholicism? Can I be a good madrina from another hemisphere? What if my Spanish begins to fade away with the years and I can no longer communicate as well with little Jhonny and his family? In the end, I put these worries aside and accepted- if Ana thinks me worthy as a madrina and role model for her son, then I should accept and do the best I can, no matter what the future brings. She knows Im baptized Catholic, and she also sees that I spend Sundays with the bobolinks instead of the Padre. There are no secrets here.

So on the Saturday after Todos Santos, I entered the Terceros family as madrina of Jhonny Terceros Cuevas. We spent the morning arming the multi-purpose chapel with white and colored balloons and white toilet paper. We laid out the benches and quietly awaited the father. In a meeting on Monday, the Father, a young Argentine, pleaded that we make sure to arrive early, avoiding the Bolivian tradition of starting everything an hour late. As the hour of the Padre’s arrival approached, however, three of the seven to-be-purified children were present. Ana wrung her hands in anticipation.

Oh the Father said to be on time. –she fretted.- Where are the people? Oh hes going to be angry with us.

This is something Ive noticed within my community, especially amongst women. Instead of fearing the implications of non-compliance like lower productivity or a lost opportunity, there seems to be a bigger fear of whatever authority figure’s disstisfaction or reprimand. I think about it constantly in trying to prganize my own projects in Chimeo. Do the day-care center ladies fear my wrath if they don’t water the communal veggie garden? Does my cooking club only come because I want them to, not because they particularly want to learn to make something new? I suppose their motives are not anything I can control; I can only hope that whatever project I introduce will be interesting and useful enough in the end to be carried after my departure.

Back in the Chapel, we went through the same mass Ive known from birth. The readings. The liturgy. Communion. The prayers and creeds-I don’t know them in Spanish, but recited in my head in English. The liturgy was all very nice, about being the best examples for our children and god-children that we can be. Send them to school. Don’t hit them. Go to church and bring them with you. Everyone in agreed, si, si Padre. We understand Father. He is a holy man, a good man for certain who dedicates his life to serving his God and others. This is extremely admirable. Much of his message was to the point. Don’t hit your children, they learn more from words and example than from a minute of pain. I wanted to jump up and hug him for that one- the universality of hitting your kids in Chimeo really makes me uncomfortable. Kids ask me if my parents ever hit me, and when I reply Never. Never ever. We don’t do that in my family. They look at me with a measure of admiration and confusion. The worst is in the households I visit the most, parents like to threaten the kids for me. Take a bath or Jacqueline wont let you come to her house to read tonight. Stop crying or Jacqueline will go get the belt. Its so ridiculous that I almost laugh, and I wonder what kind of glorious demon figure I might be in the minds of these three-year-olds.

Towards the end of the ceremony, we lifted the kids one-by-one as the Padre poured holy water over their foreheads. The kids came in all sizes. Jhonny was the easiest- he weighs all of five kilograms and slept through the whole thing. It took four people to baptize Estella, who is a lanky nine-years-old. I took a foto of each child for their parents, who have few if any fotographs of their children and will surely cherish this one.

I felt proud to enter the community for good as a Comadre. It makes me feel a more permanent fixture now in Chimeo. Decades from now, his kids will ask him who is Madrina is and he will explain to them about this foreigner who spent two years in his tiny town. Its almost daunting. Ill need to send letters and fotographs of my life and the kids I may have one day to my aihado, as well as an occasional birthday or Christmas gift. He wont remember much if anything about life with his Madrina, how I used to pick him up when he cried or that I served mate while his mom nursed him. I hope to one day return with my own kids to know Chimeo, to know the family I now find myself part of.

The beetles.

2007-10-31T09:40:00.000-04:00

This email is brought to you by the beetles. Not the Brits with the good-looks, but rather the Bolivian ones that have wings. Right now they are crawling across the screen of my laptop. This entry was actually meant to go in my personal journal but of late I can only work by candle light- electric light is no longer an option. Within one minute of turning on my outdoor bulb, five bugs will be bouncing off of its glass. Five minutes later I have a good sixty bichos drawn to this irresistible light. If I leave it on for an hour, the patio is transformed from cement to a sea of tiny black baby beetles. One night I did leave my light on and hid inside my mosquito net, only to wake to find that the sea had turned into a mass grave- literally hundreds of dead bugs littered the ground. The neighbor’s chickens had a field day and have since come to wake me every morning at 430 in hopes of another feast. As bothersome they are in of themselves, I cant help but feel badly for them in their manic drive to head towards the light. One thing that you may or may not know about beetles is their unmistakable smell. One dead beetle leaves behind a kind of acrid scent, just enough to notice. Hundreds can make you choke. So in this man versus nature battle, Im letting nature take the prize and foregoing electric light. To be honest my nights are much nicer without electric light in Chimeo- I spend a lot more time really writing, really thinking, really hearing I mean hearing music than I do when I have light to distract me. Candlelit nights are really much more what Id imagined Id have in my PC service, and Im relishing them.

Its seems that the harsh Chaco climate always wins. An electric fan, while great in theory, really just pushes hot air around the room. No matter where I place it- in front of the window, the screen door, my bed, on the floor facing up- I wind up sleeping fitfully, sweaty in my skivvies. Life itself also revolves around avoiding the heat, as I imagine it must in most of the world. Wake up at dawn, while its still bearble. Work until it gets too hot to work. Rest. Lunch. Resume when its almost cool enough to work again. Take breaks. Never stop sweating. Ever.

Ive lived in undeniably humid and balmy places and have never really had a problem with the heat. So Saturday night when a friend told me she saw a dangerous snake in my yard, I set myself to clearing the joint. Sunday morning I went to work for a few hours, did my midday yoga, then returned to clear some more in the afternoon. It wasn’t until I went to bed that night with a tremendous headache, belly ache, and fever that I realized Id given myself insolacion, or heat exhaustion. If I got sun sick in the states, Id be sure to sit in an air-conditioned room or put some ice on my neck to feel better. In this case though, there was nothing to be done, just spend the night sweating it out with my pathetic fan. The next day I tried to go about my routine- running errands in Villa Montes in the sun, feeling like I had been hit by a truck and then downed a six pack to celebrate. My computer classes that night were more a lesson in autodidacticism, with the kids at the keyboard and me mumbling, laid-out on a nearby desk. Finally the next day I realized I needed to just stay home for a day and take it easy, because otherwise there would be no getting over it. I had heard a lot about insolacion and the many home remedies for how to cure it, including:

1. bathing in suero (also known as the whey from curds and whey)
2. Pouring grain alcohol on your face
3. Drinking vinegar
4. licking salt
5. putting one of an assortment of leaves on your forehead
6. getting wasted
They all seemed silly to me at first, but the next time insolation grabs me, and Im certain it will, theyre what Ill be trying (except the getting wasted one- I don’t think it works, but rather Chimeo just wants desperately to get me drunk.) They’ve learned how to live with the Chaco, because to fight it is futile. More adaptation and creativity than resignation or resistance.

In considering this symbiotic relationship with nature in Chimeo, its astonishing to think how much we have (or think we have) conquered nature in wealthier nations. I remember my grandmother’s stories of being a new wife in Key West during World War II while my grandfather was stationed there with the Navy. Despite the paradisial association the place now has, my grandmother really had nothing good to say. In the 40s it was a sweaty, desolate place, inhabited only a few Naval families and a some crazy fishermen. Often in the US one has to carry a sweater during summer heat to bear the over-air-conditioning in just about any building. Maybe I haven’t been here long enough, but I think I prefer the heat. Granted, its much less productive, but instead of air-conditioned isolation, people spend the midday chatting, complaining, and sharing ideas of how to deal with the heat. It seems much more like life to me. I think my grandma would disagree. We’ll see how I feel after these next few months, which Im told will be the hottest of the year.

So for now my nights are spent writing down home remedies by candle light, alongside the Guarani that Im always trying improve, and listening closely to the Chimeno night. I hope youre all well and tumpa ndive ekua.

Cleaning house

2007-10-29T09:50:00.001-04:00

Desmontar: To clear ones yard of shrubs, brush, tall grasses, and the like. Literally “to de-mountain.”

Porear: To share in the consumption of yerba mate from one communal wooden chalice or “poro.” Literally, “to wooden chalice.”

Coquear: To chew coca leaves as an aid in strenuous labor, to settle ones stomach, or to just pass the afternoon. Literally, “to coca leaf.”

These are just a few examples of the beauty that is Bolivian Spanish. There are so many activities unique to the region that Chaquenos nearly have their own dialect. They engage in all these activities “lindo” (literally: pretty. Chaqueno interpretation: nice-like) on a daily basis. Since arriving in country nine months ago my Spanish has gone from the scholarly type to a filthy, versatile, useful, colorful Guarani-Chaqueno hybrid. I was warned that my Spanish would change drastically but I had a hard time believing that 10 years of speaking formal Spanish could change so quickly.

I was thinking about this fluidity of language among other things as I was desmontar-ing lindo por che guazu (around my abode) yesterday afternoon. This week we had our first SERIOUS storm of the rainy season, all gusts of wind and sheets of rain. Never before have I felt so close to a thunderstorm. Im not sure if it was the silence of Chimeo or its positioning on the mountain above the bowl of Villa Montes, but each rumble of thunder rattled my ribcage and the lightning was a show meant for nothing more than to frighten me. The dry season had kept the trees and grasses a tame shade of brown, but with this first rain every inch of earth has spring to life: the mountain is turning green and lawns have sprouted on what was once dirt. My forager instincts leap with joy upon seeing my yard so seemingly alive, however there is an aspect to flora and fauna in the Chaco that was not present in the formulation of my sense of astetics: snakes. Yarara, cascabeles, amarillos, the list goes on. In order to clear my yard of the green stuff, I have to turn every bit of soil. Judging my this weeks growth, Ill be engaging in this labor once every two weeks.

When Im not hoe-ing, Ive been spending increasing amounts of time in the monte around Chimeo. I try to make it up into the monte a couple times a week, be it for bee boxes or, my personal favorite, swimming in Caiguami. Each Sunday of late the kids of my closest friend and I hike the two hours up to the river that feeds Chimeo and Villa Montes to munch on fruit, splash around, and generally take it easy. This apparently was also a pastime of previous Chimeo volunteers who were in Chimeo about a decade ago. (Through the magic of google, they’ve also found and read this blog-hi guys.) Ive been shown fotos of them swimming in the corros a bit further up the mountain. I can tell that the volunteers were hip to the midnineties by their round glasses and jeans that just aren’t quite right for 2007, but other than that nothing in the fotos seems to have changed. They hung with the same family of brothers that I hang with (albeit I kick it a bit more with their wives and, according to them, drink a lot less beer.) I have even noticed some of the same hats in these decade-old fotos being worn today. It’s a strange feeling. I know that I tell family and friends that this two years, while it may crawl by for them, is really a short period of time. Because it is. In the eternity of a town where everyone lives across the street from their mothers and brothers and the age of the eldest folk is always an estimate, two years is a flash.

So, that’s where Im caught right now. Time itself moves in slow motion while the foliage is stuck on fast forward. My projects are chugging along. Im likewise balancing the feeling that I should have something concrete by now with the tranquil pace of life, where drinking tea and making lunch takes precedence over all else.

Take care and happy haloween!

Jacqueline

some visual aids

2007-10-29T08:59:00.001-04:00

haircut!

poros!

Water.

2007-10-19T09:38:00.000-04:00

19 October 2007

The other morning, I woke late, around seven o’clock, a bit congested and still recovering from my latest resfrio. I opened my screen door, walked to the kitchen, only to see two little girls already walking over to the “library.” Jesus, I thought. I opened my door not thirty seconds ago, and you are already here. Yes, youre absolutely adorable (their mom has an affinity for dressing her daughters in frilly dresses and pigtails) and yes your curiosity is endearing, but its so early! And I know you cant even read yet and youre here for the pictures! Nonetheless, I told the two to take a seat on my porch and promptly served them up Huevos Verdes con Jamon. As they looked at the drawings, I went about what has become my morning routine in Chimeo. Wake up. Go to grifo. Check for water. If water is falling, fill the following: four bottles of water, one basin, tea pot, pot, and one small jug. Of late, water tends to fall plentifully in the mornings, only to run out sometime in the afternoon or midday, depending on the heat and wind. As the little girls followed me with their eyes, I became aware of how much one can tell about my life be reading into this routine.

The teapot: Probably the most vital vessel in this collection. Chimenos visit my house with increasing frequency, and when they do, its expected that one will serve up a few poros of sugary yerba mate. Even if no one comes to visit, Ive become accustomed to poreando solo. In front of me on the kitchen table right now one sees four poros of every shape and size: the first and leat favored one, a short one of palo santo that I purchased in Villa Montes; next the traditional one made of a gord that Dona Teresa gave me yesterday (I wonder if she has any idea how much the gift means to me?); the giant varnished beauty that I fell in love with months ago at a tourist shop in Santa Cruz; finally the gift made of cana from our trip to Salta. That one has long been my favorite; unfortunately, because Argentines take their yerba mate cold, this poro is cracking from the heat of my teapot and now leaks a green herby juice all over my guests. When Im alone though, I still use it.

In addition to the variety of poros, Ive recently discovered the other secrets of delicious yerba preparation. Ive been trying a new kind of yerba every time I buy a new package, a search for the most delicious yerba on earth. Despite these efforts, I realized yerba was always more delicious when served by other ladies. I thought this was attributable to the “chicken-soup-effect”- when I make chicken soup for myself, I find it revolting. If my mom serves up the same dehydrated and rehydrated package, however, it becomes finger-licking good. While this may be true to an extent, its much more than that- each lady in Chimeo has her sui generis yerba preparing secret. Dona Brigida puts a few anis seeds in each pot of water. Monica ties up a few stems of lemon grass and lets it boil with the water. For Dona Cristina its poleo leaves. Cinnimon, guyava tree leaves, orange peels, all these can be used to make ones own signature mate. I am lucky enough to have a yard full of citrus trees, which should give me plenty of fuel for experimentation. When I discover the perfect combination, Ill be sure to share the secret.

The basin: As I said earlier, water runs out in the afternoons. When it is 40*C and one spends the day gardening or chasing bees with a smoker, bathing in the morning is futile. Therefore, I fill up my big blue plastic basin every morning for my afternoon bucket showers. As unenticing a bucket shower likely sounds to those of you in the States, and as it was to me at first try, its really become a hilight of my day. I imagine Im having my hair washed in one of those painful porcelain sinks at the hair parlor, where the girl your friend dated in high school asks you Is this too cold? Too hot? as she delivers second degree burns/ frostbite with her totrture hose. All kidding aside, I enjoy showering from just one basin because I know exactly how much water Im using; at times with a running water shower, in all its glory, I cant help but feel wasteful as I watched the water swirl down the drain.

The small jug: This is filled with water and sliced garlic every morning, left to soak all day, then thrown around my yard or the paths I frequent every afternoon. Let it be known that Chimeo has lots of snakes. I hate snakes. Folks around here have told me that snakes, likewise, hate garlic. I want the snakes to hate my house and any other locale I frequent, especially by night. A garlic necklace has not been ruled out.

The pot: I cook for myself, and only myself, every afternoon. While in DC I used to visit make rounds visiting with friends on their lunch breaks, I relish the hour I take to be alone and eat a lunch that the typical Bolivian would find lacking: salad and a boiled egg. After six months of living with host families and their soups and rice and rice and yucca and potatoes and rice and yucca, I am filling myself with carrots and tomatoes and cucumbers and, when I can find it, BROCCOLI. Strangely, in the States I can hardly stand to smell boiled eggs, while I cant get enough of the eggs raised by families in Chimeo. Theyre smaller, the shell is harder and colored, the yolk is dark yellow and creamy, and they are delicious. Maybe its because they are raised in such a healthy and natural manner, or maybe Im protein deficient. Maybe a little bit of both.

The bottles: Ah. The bottles. My barrier. In order to “safely” drink water, I fill four plastic bottles and leave them in the sun all day to be disinfected by UV rays, an effect called SODIS. I have two problems with this, however. One, the water in Chimeo comes from a seemingly pristine mountain stream called Caiguami, and we consume it before it can be mucked up by the sprawling Villa Montes population. I know that along the way this stream could be contaminated by pigs or, worse, humans, so I continue to Sodis my water, even though the rest of Chimeos population consumes it straight from the grifo. The dilemma, however, arises from this Sodis effect. I remember as a cross-country runner being told not to save our water bottles for long, nor to subject them to light and heat, as they begin to decompose and release carcinogens into the water. Ive been assured by volunteers with scientist parents (they say) and members of Peace Corps staff that this process is safe, yet I cant help feeling like every liter of water is a choice between immediate gastric upset or more long term effects such as cancer. What do I do?

After my water has been Sodis-ed, I then put it through another plastic filter to remove sediment. Judging by the filth in my filter, this step is very necessary. Under the watching eyes of me neighbor’s daughters, however, the whole process feels obsessive and superfluous and silly. I feel like Im wathcing someone in a public bathroom apply anti-bacterial lotion after washing their hands and opening the door with a white cloth and crossing themselves before stepping into the hall. Just as the kitchen has its water filter, the bedroom is home to the mosquito net. It is a big green monster that fills up half of my bedroom and screams GRINGA! when guests peer in. I know what youre all thinking: at least your belly is free of bugs and your bloodstream free of chagas. And youre right. Once you’ve been living in a country for nine months and a town for six, however, there emerges a desire to just fit in. I suppose there will always be barriers to my fitting in here in Bolivia and I should just accept them. Right?

9 down, 18 to go.

2007-10-12T08:35:00.000-04:00

The 24th of each month has become one of reflection, excitement, and
relief for me, as it's the anniversary of both my touch-down in
Bolivia and my arrival in site. This month I will complete six months
in Chimeo and nine months in country. This means my service is
officially one-quarter of the way over. Although my projects for my
community are just now getting maybe a little bit off the ground, I
like to look back at some of the things Ive learned in the past six
months: crochet, beekeeping, organic gardening, some Guarani, yoga,
cooking on fire wood, bread-making, huminta-making, the list goes on.

Ive also finally become fluent in the language of Chimeo's trails;
when I first arrived I was mystified by the labyrinth of trails that
Chimenos led me down to seemingly get just about anywhere faster. I
now find myself deftly navigating these footpaths daily, and Ive
realized that, like most things, the locals are right; not only to
they get me where Im going more quickly, but theyre shady and cool,
making mid-day errands possible. Not only this, but the biodiversity
along these paths, on the rim of the national park Aguarague, is
spectacular. Lizards colored blue and gold dart past at each step,
and I see strange and colorful birds that I remember as the most
outlandish in a bird watching book my family and I used to study when
I was a young girl. Every time I walk down these trails I can only
think one thing: gosh Im lucky to be here.

The 14th of this month marks another important anniversary: my new
Bolivian god son will complete one month of life. A few months ago my
best friend in Chimeo asked me if I would be interested in becoming
the god mother of her unborn son, and I agreed. I spent the day in
the hospital with her and her family and helped cover some of the cost
of delivery, although they were relatively low*.

Since that day in the hospital, Ive been asking Ana and her family
what they were planning to name their little boy, who was stil going
by the name Conejito, or bunny rabbit. It finally took the family's
eldest daughter to confess that her parents were waiting for me to
name the kid. I suppose I should have figured it out earlier, as the
rest of their kids are named after foreigners who have touched their
lives: Iban, after Father Iban, who brough the first bees and a citrus
project to Chimeo; Serena, after her Italian god-mother; Jaime, after
a previous PC volunteer. My name alone wouldn't do for a number of
reasons. One, Im a girl. Two, I don't think people are even really
sure what my name is- Yaque ? Ch'aki (hangover)? Yakelin? Are those
all the same person? One neighbor even called me Karen this week-
where she got that one from I have no clue. Three, and most
importantly, my name is awfully close to the name of their 7-year-old
son, Jaco, who was accidentally killed by a friend playing with a gun
last September. My name, or any variation of it, is out.

So, I had to choose a name. For a split second I considered something
awesome and outlandish like Abraham or Einstein or Never Trust a
Woman, but I felt that would be cruel and difficult for the
townspeople to pronounce, so I decided against it. In the end I came
up with two options: David, which was my late-grandfather's name, kind
of**, or Jhonny, the Bolivian version of my Dad's name.

The next day while taking out daily yerba mate, I brought it up.

"Have you found a name for el papito conejito chiquitito?" I asked.

"Not yet. What do you think?" They replied.

"Well, have you ever considered, maybe, David, or Jhonny. Jhonny's a
nice name isn't it?"

"David Jhonny it is!" exclaimed Cecilio.

And so it was done. Who knows if the boy will use the name Jhonny for
anything other than his carnet de identidad- the whole family is still
referring to him as Conejito. It would be keeping with Bolivian
tradition to go by a nickname rather than a given name. Chimeo is
home to countless Chinos (China-man), Gordos (fatty), and Flacos
(skinny). We even have a Chunho (freeze-dried potato). Either way,
welcome to the world, Jhonny.

As for work, its seems to be the same old story- trying to organize
the beekeepers and start some family gardens. The bee keepers began
their trade with an organization called Eiturenda (place of the honey
in Guarani) under the previously mentioned Jaime and Father Iban.
While this project provided bee boxes, a few bee suits, and harvesting
equipment, the keeps are lacking in general technical training. I
plan to begin classes for new and established beekeepers and, if we
can secure financing, bee suits, boxes, and smokers for all. A good
beekeeping program could provide the folks of Chimeo with a great
source of nutrition (honey, especially when mixed with a 10:1 ratio of
pollen, is a good source of vitamins and protein) as well as a
supplement to their modest incomes. I have a lot of faith in bees as
a project in Chimeo, and I really cant wait to begin classes.

Well, that's all for now. Hopefully my next update will include
stories from bee classes taught and gardens grown.

*This is one of the best things, in by opinion, put in place by the
Morales administration: free health care for mothers and babies. My
friend, Ana, was able to go to the doctor to have an ultrasound of her
belly for the first time. While her six previous pregnancies went off
without a hitch, this one turned out to be breach. Without this
health coverage, she may very well have tried to deliver the baby at
home, without medical attention, and the results might have been
tragic. Way to go, Evo.

**My grandfather, an adventurous soul, spent the last quarter-century
of his life traveling the world. He did not sign up for tours with
English-speaking guides, but rather he usually hopped a military
aircraft (he was a WWII Navy vet) to wherever he was going and just,
went. His favorite desination for some time was Pondicherry, India, a
place that seems to have been his spiritual home. There he had a
spritual advisor who, some time ago, told him that in a past life his
name was David and he would live until his 101st birthday. Much to
the surprise of my mother and her siblings, upon arriving at his
gravesite, his pre-ordered head stone read David, with the year of
death being 2017. In the end, Grampy got his way.

Five days in the States

2007-10-03T12:30:00.000-04:00

After 21 hours in airports, on tarmacs, and scrunched up in window seats, Im back in Santa Cruz after returning to Ohio for about 5 days. I feel so fortunate to have been able to return to the US for family business, to reconnect with cousins and uncles, and to even go apple picking with the progeny of my sister. Every conversation, were it with strangers or my mom, seemed to go something like this- "Hi how are you?" "What are you doing in Bolivia" followed by "Must be wierd to be here when you are used to fighting of jarara and wild jackelopes in Bolivia." To be honest though, it really wasnt that wierd. I feel as though Ive lived here long enough now to just accept that life is different in different places. Some folks have more types of luxury shampoo for sale and more coffee shops. Other folks have more types of potato for sale. Some folks spend their time watching tv, while others spend it drinking yerba mate. Granted, I did have to stop myself from blurting out Gracias and Desculpe, and it felt strange to walk at night without fear of snakes, but aside from this the transition felt...easy. This may be just because I knew it was a temporary change, but really. Easy.

The only thing that really did shock me during my visit was this overwhelming sense of responsability of being a US citizen. There is just so much are our disposal as residents of the US- the airport alone has hundreds of books and magazines for learning, theres internet everywhere, theres just so much to be DONE, it seemed to me. When Im in Chimeo the things that need to be done are limited to Chimeo itself- maybe visit a beekeeper, maybe read with some kids, maybe start a garden. Not to mention the social norms- I felt this pressure to start blowdrying my hair and donning makeup and toenail polish that I had forgotten about for all of 2007 (not that I was ever really good about that stuff before Bolivia, but still.) In the end, it was really good to get back, see my family, and be there for my grandparents ceremonies. Nonetheless, I know that Im far from done with Bolivia. Im ready to get back to my sweaty days of bee stings and mariwie bites in Chimeo.

A new leaf

2007-09-25T07:31:00.000-04:00

Hello all,

September has finally hammered the last nail into the coffin of the Chaco Boliviano´s coffin, and I couldnt be happier. The return of the heat means that life returns to normal and folks come out from their winter hiding places next to the fire or under the covers, giving me lots of work to do. Each day starts at 6 AM, when the air is still cool, the sky is pink, and the smell of delicious Chaco flowers is around every corner.

Theres so much activity that at first I felt stressed- so much to do in such little time (I promise two years really is very little time.) The only way to make sense of it all was to just pick one project and set the others on the back burner. Therefore, Im really focusing on beekeeping and a couple other small side projects for the time bee-ing and putting the water catchment tanks-family gardens-cooking classes- cultural recuperation- artesanry projects on the back burner. The beekeeping is important to focus on for now because with the heat comes the first harvest of the year. A well-maintained bee hive in the Chaco can have up to four harvests a year, while hives in cooler climates are limited to two. Most of the beekeepers in Chimeo dont really know much about general upkeep to increase their harvests, or about how to keep diseases and pests away. So basically I spend my days visiting to beekeepers and trying to get them to come with me to see there often long-forgotten hives. There was another volunteer here named Jaime who Ive heard much about who apparently started formal beekeeping in town. He was here in the mid-nineties, when I was about 10 years old, so the beeboxes he left are all but disintegrated. Thus far the biggest hurdle is lack of time and lack of bee suits and smokers on the part of the other beekeeps, something that may end up beeing my main project in Chimeo.

Aside from the bees, Ive been spending a lot of time teaching computer classes and generally hanging out with kids who come to my new house to read the books that have ALL FINALLY arrived. The second I open my door in the afternoon or come riding into town on my bicicleta kids run up to ask is they can come and "look at" books. A lot of the time it really is kids who dont read so well just looking at the books and their pretty pictures, but some kids really do read and love the stories. One of the biggest hits has been copies of National Geographic En Español that Steve and I picked up in Salta. They are also big fans of Jorge Curioso, an Atlas, and Marry Poppins. Really the biggest of thank yous to all of you who sent books, they are really being cherished. As much as I love to read and love to see the kids reading, I have to admit that running a small library out of my house has become a bit exhausting. I never before realized how much I value my time alone. Ive decided that I need to make a schedule of library hours in order to maintain my sanity. I feel terrible putting a limit on their reading time, but nobody wants a crazy stressed psychotic gringa.

So Im feeling really comfy and cozy in Chimeo. Every day is filled with something new and exciting, and Ive really been getting to know more and more kind and silly families. This week alone Ive been given 1. a bag of radishes 2. a HUGE papaya 3. 6 fresh eggs 4. fresh honey 5. 6 tree-ripened bananas (they are still green and the banana just kind of burts out and they have a flavor totally different from the store bought kind that are picked green. i highly recommend planting a banana tree.) Im starting to feel like Im looking from the inside out when it comes to development. Over the past few weeks three organizations have come pushing their wares- environmental protection, beans, and the purchase of Chimeos beautiful artesanry work. Each time Ive been shocked by the rough manner in which folks arrive in town and not knowing any of these families seem to just start talking without listening. Granted Guarani folks are famous for being a little timid, but it just takes a little time invested to get better results with any project.

Id like to close by mentioning that this last week saw the passing of two wonderful and kind souls- Mindley Jack Morris and Anne Boykin Springer, my grandfather and grandmother. Oddly, they have been divorced for decades yet they passed three days apart from each other in different states. Grampy will be remembered as an adventurous and spiritual soul who made numerous trips to India and around the world and served as a mine sweeper in WWII. I will always remember his love of sunsets that he used to watch from our porch on the family farm in Ohio. Gram was the classiest of ladies whose love of family and sense of humor will live on with her many progeny. Ill be heading home to Cleveland for both of their funeral services at the end of this month, an unexpected but certainly welcome trip home.

Hope all is well and happy fall,
Jacqueline

PS: If youd like to see some more fotos of Chimeo, head to Steves foto website at
http://picasaweb.google.com/stephenawood .

Some fotos of my new pad in a very unfinished state

2007-08-31T20:37:00.000-04:00

Getting back to work

2007-08-18T10:33:00.000-04:00

Puama to all of my karai,

After nearly a month of traveling and visits, its finally time to get
back to work in Chimeo. Ive spent the last few weeks at an in-service
training in Cochabamba with the members of my training group, B44,
followed by over two weeks with my best best best Steve Wood. As
usual, so much has happened that it would be impossible to fill you
all in completely, so Ill stick to a few more memorable points.

tunari.

I arrived in Cochabamba a couple of days early to meet with the owner
of an NGO that makes solar ovens and more efficient wood burning
stoves (www.cedesol.org) that my community is super interested in.
This afforded me a free weekend before my 3 month reconnect began, so
12 of my favorite members of my training group and I decided to take a
day to scale Tunari, the highest mountain in central Bolivia. I had
never truly summited a mountain before and Ill tell you what, coming
from 500 m above sea level, it was no easy feat making it up to the
summit of 17,000 feet (5200 m). We each paid a driver 50 bolivianos
to leave us at 14,000 feet and we spent the rest of the day making it
up and down the mountain. Most of the kids had lunch at the top, but
Chachi and myself were in such not good shape that we just sat there,
pale and nauseous and quite pathetic, for about 3 minutes before
descending. Perhaps because we were all so disoriented, we ended up
taking a gravely, steep, roundabout way down the mountain, but we
finally made it back to the chofer at about 5 pm. even then i was
pretty sure i was going to blow chunks, but by the time we got to
9,000 ft and into the city limits of Coch I was feeling pretty good.
The week was followed by meetings at the training center in Coch,
where my group members and I all presented on our experiences and
projects thus far. 24 of the 29 original members of B44 remain, and
we all seem to be doing pretty well. I do feel fortunate to be on the
eastern side of the country, where the folks tend to be a bit more
open and friendly. The volunteers from the higher reaches of the
country expressed a lot of frustration in simply getting to know the
folks in their town, something that has not been of concern to me in
the Chaco.

salta.

After my three days of meetings in Coch, I headed back to Santa Cruz
with the 16 year old daughter of one of the families in Chimeo who was
coming home from a year as a maid for a wealthy Cochabambina family.
We parted ways at the nuevo terminal in Santa Cruz as she continued
onto Chimeo and I headed to the airport to await Steves arrival. It
was surreal at first to see a face from before this whole experience
began, but it felt great to be able to finally unite my two world of
life in the States and my life in Chimeo. We spent most of our time
in Chimeo, but we also took a brief trip to Salta, a city in northern
Argentina. We had planned to spend about 6 days there, but after
about 2 days we had seen about all there was to see so we headed back
to Chimeo to celebrate the Dia del Chaco. There we took fotos of the
folks from Chimeo who represented the Asociacion of Pueblos Guarani
with traditional dances during the parade the night before the Dia del
Chaco, and I felt proud to be associated with such a strong community.

Folks in Chimeo were so eager to hang out and invite us to meals and
such that we decided to head back to Santa Cruz to get some time to be
alone and relax before Steve headed back to the States. While at the
bus station, however, Steves entire wallet and passport somehow
disappeared. It couldnt have been pick pocketed, as it was under a
fleece in his shirt pocket, and we still cant figure out how it could
have just fallen out. But poof. It was gone. We spent the next day
on the bus fretting and talking to the Embassy, fearful that Steve
would miss his flight three days later or that we would have to go to
La Paz to get an entirely new passport. It all did work out, but he
ended up having to buy a new ticket home two days later, which was
expensive but honestly just fine by me. In the end we learned a whole
heck of a lot of lessons.

One. Dont lose your passport.
Two. If you dont have a passport or credit card or drivers licence in
a foreign country, you will not be able to access your dough. No
matter what Visa tells you.
Three. The Consulate is full of friendly, helpful people.
Four. Make a digital copy of your passport. Save it to your email.
Five. The consulate in SC closes at 1230.
Six. If you are planning to have your passport and all forms of ID
spontaneously combust, it is good to be traveling with someone who
lives in country and speaks ze language.

chimeo.

So Steve finally headed out this morning, on to NY then Boston and
then eventually to Senegal to begin his two years as a volunteer. I
have to admit that Im a bit jealous of his upcoming experience-Africa
Peace Corps promises to be a much different story from PC in Bolivia,
what with a capital city with espresso and tofu and a cell antenna on
my roof. Itll certainly be tough and exciting and beautiful and more
than anything, unforgettable. I am really ready to get back to Chimeo
and start what feels like a new era in my site. Im adjusted. I know
what we will be working on. Most of all, winters over and we can
finally come out of hiding and get some work done on the bees and the
gardens.

Take care,
Jacqueline

Postscript.

Lima.

Im sure you all have read of the recent tragedy in the south of Peru,
where I worked and studied for five months in spring of 2005. I
experienced my first and only earthquake there, a weak one on an early
morning alone in a hotel in Arequipa. I had seen the ruins of
previous earthquakes in the region and remember wondering just what I
would do with myself if a big one, like this one, ever struck. The
devastation in Ica and Pisco is terribly saddening, and I hope my
friends, mentors, former colleagues, and beloved Peru all are able to
recover quickly.

My site!

2007-07-26T14:56:00.000-04:00

some fotos of my site, my people, my counterpart, and myself with much longer hair.

Taking advantage of ze bees

2007-07-26T14:54:00.000-04:00

Good evening from Santa Cruz, the autonomista capital of Bolivia. Im here on my way to Cochabamba for my three month reconnect meeting, where Ill see all the kids from my group for the first time in, you guessed it, three months. Itll be a chance for the remaining members of Bolivia 44 (four of our original twenty-nine early terminated in their first few weeks) to present on their sites and generally decompress after what most consider the hardest period in ones service. I for one, am really looking forward to seeing all of the folks I grew close to during training, my Coch host family, as well as a STRAIGHT WEEK of cleanliness, hot showers, delicious restaurants and all those worldly desires.

As for Chimeo, Ive been really busy and really happy during the past month. The cold returned to such an extent that, for the first time that my friends in Chimeo could remember, there was snow on the peak of the mountain that overlooks our village. In the past couple of weeks, however, its been relatively mild, and the strong winds that are typical of August in the area have arrived. Im REALLY looking forward to the return of the heat and bee season. Ive been working more with a fellow named Juan, a beekeeping expert and counterpart of a volunteer from a nearby community(Taiguati). Hes extremely extremely motivated and I plan to spend about one day a week in his community learning the nuances of beekeeping in the Chaco. From there Ill be able to better train the folks in Chimeo, who generally have a strong tradition of beekeeping but lack some basic knowledge that will help them produce more, better quality honey and other bee products. A neat technique Juan taught me about last week, for example, is called ¨taking advantage¨ of the bees. When the spring floration comes with the heat in about a week, the bees will all head out, start to collect pollen and nectar to get their colonies going again. It takes 21 days for each generation of bees to hatch, so in order to build up the number of workers who will then be able to make more honey, a good beekeeper tricks the colony. You give them a ton of that sugar water mixture to make them think its spring and go on building up their colony about 40-50 days (2 generations) before the floration. This way you have a full colony and you dont lose 50 days of summer and have a bigger harvest! I really enjoy learning these tidbits about apiculture. It all makes so much sense but I wonder how long it would have taken me to put it together without Juans help. Hes a great guy to work with and I look forward to the bike rides to Taiguati where, as an added bonus, I get to bike through a river. MOST EXCELLENT.

Aside from the bees, I have been spending my time teaching computer classes and moving into my new house. Ill be living alone, but next to two families I know well. The new place will have a BIG porch and two rooms, one for sleepin and one for cookin. This will be a vast improvement. I feel like the family Im moving away from feels slightly insulted, but to be honest, theyre never around, I dont really like them, and I think theyre all crazy. So thats that. Everyone in town, it seems, feels the same way. Countless kids and old ladies have told me they are excited for me to live apart so that they can visit and drink yerba mate and read books (that have arrived thanks to the kind donations of a few of my you all-thank you all so very much) and watch movies at my place. Im also looking forward to having my own land to work. Ive already planned a veggie garden and some sugar cane crops and maybe even some grape vines. It feels really good to have a role in the construction of a home. I am building it with the help of my wonderful counterpart and dear friend, Enrique. Were making it out of adobe and cement, and Ive really come to admire how just about everyone in Chimeo has built there own home. To have the self-sufficiency of something so basic as building ones own home is really something to be admired I think, no matter what Adam Smith might say. Another perk is that my home has become a source of income for the few members of the community who are working on it. In Chimeo it seems it really does take a village to raise a child, and maybe even a village to raise a bathroom.

As for the gushy emotional stuff, Chimeo just feels like home now. No longer do I feel the need to fill every moment with an activity to keep away the lonliness. The once foreign faces in Chimeo have turned into friends, and it feels great. They know all about my family, friends, likes, dislikes, and all the rest. They know how many nieces I have and that my cortaje is going to Africa. It really is a bit like being a rockstar, and it can be exhausting. For example, last night as I cleaned my room, six kids sat outside my window, just WATCHING. I tried to use subtlety, but in the end they wouldnt leave until I told them it was late and they needed to leave and go home to their mothers. As I walk down the street, timy voices yell YAKELYYYYYYN! WHERE ARE YOU GOING? WHY ARE YOU GOING THERE? WHEN WILL YOU BE BACK!?!? every time I pass. I pass about 6 times a day. It never gets old, for them at least.

As usual, theres so much more to write about but my fingers are tired, so Ill hope to get to it all in the next entry. Tomorrow I will be in Coch for meetings, then Ill be back in Santa Cruz on the 2nd to pick up the one and only Steve Wood. Hell be here for two excellent weeks before he shoves off to work as an agriculture volunteer with the Peace Corps in Senegal (read his blog at www.stephenawood.wordpress.com) . I fear it might take some readjusting once he goes again, but so it goes. I hope you are all doing well and I certainly miss you all dearly.

the days are getting longer

2007-06-30T09:59:00.000-04:00

Good Saturday-

Its sunny and chilly here in Villa Montes. Last Saturday we celebrated the Night of San Juan, the longest night of the year, with a bonfire and the ladies soccer championship. In trying to bring a little bit of a June bonfire in the States, I brought a few bags of tri-color jumbo marshmallows (they didnt have plain white ones in Yacuiba) and showed the kids the many ways to toast a perfect marshmallow. To my delight, the vast majority came to the conclusion that marshmallows are much more delicious when set on fire and then blown out, as opposed to the slow roast, something that I have spent years trying to convince my nearest and dearest. Chimeo beat the pantalones off of Villa Montes in penalty kicks, and each member of the winning team went home with a 2 L bottle of cola. After the game, most of the ladies, kids, myself, and my quasi-site mate Chachi filtered out to our warm beds to escape the winter wind. The majority of the men remain unfazed, and continued to drink their Tigers Milk (powdered milk and hot pure alcohol-ick ick ick), raising a ruckus and swimming and doing all the crazy traditional San Juan things Chimeño men like to do that usually leaves them with a cold and a terrible hangover on San Juan proper.

On this same cold night, Chachi stayed the night for a sleep over and confirmed what I had long been feeling but dreaded to admit-my room is terribly depressing at night. Sure its big, new, clean, and is full of all of my awesome stuff, but it also has the lonely hum of my inherited refrigerator and the maddening glow of one terrible fluorescent lightbulb. Combine that with the face that Don Marcial, my one-time-grumpy-landlord-host-grandfather, had long since runn oft to La Paz to visit his ailing sis with the wife he hates, and I was also living alone, breaking a big Peace Corps Bolivia rule. So this week my lovely housing coordinator came down to help me set up a possible new place, the vacant house of my counterparts brother. First and foremost we had to check and see if I could get cell reception in the new house, so we sent the technician, a wonderful fella with an adorable belly named Carlos, and my agile counterpart with endless brio, Enrique, up a tree to try it out. Success! It worked! Miriam otherwise approved of the house, and even though I will still be living alone, Im about 100 meters from great families on either side, so I guess thats enough. Peace Corps will pay for the materials to make some changes, like installing water, light, and pouring cement for a front porch, and Enrique and his brother Cecilio, one of my best pals here, volunteered their time to help me. I am constantly amazed by the goodness and caring that they and the rest of the folks of Chimeo show. They are such busy men with big families and live off of the sweat of their brows, but they dont hesitate to offer their help. I am truly so fortunate to know them. I am also SO SO excited to make my own place. Im told that as of now, folks are shy to visit me because they fear Don Marcial will be around. I can plant my own sugar cane, sweet potatoes, and whatever else I want and really like of the fatta tha lan´, so to speak. I can paint the new, cozier, tinier room however I want, and the kitchen and the humming fridge will be in the other room. Most importantly, I will be more integrated into the community (the new house is right in the center of the small town) and my rent and additions to the house will benefit the Terceros family long after I go. Our rent negotiations were truly unforgettable. I told Enrique I am currently paying 150 Bolivianos a month (about 20 bucks) and Id like to pay the same. He said that wouldnt be necessary. I told him really, I want to pay rent. He said, ok, 50 Bolivianos. I said, how about 130. He said no, Ill only let you pay 100 Bolivianos (about 12 bucks) a month. I said deal, and we shook. What a wonderful wonderful wonderful man. Again, I am so fortunate.

As for work, Ive been teaching computer four nights a week for about a month now (minus the past week due to a TERRIBLE flu, but Ill get more into that later) and the kids and adults are progressing nicely. I hope to set up an email pen pal program with my almamater to help them practice their writing and composition which, as of now, needs work to say the least. This probably makes me angrier than anything else on a daily basis-the state of the school. There are other excellent schools in nearby small towns, Chimeos quality of education is just especially lacking. I dont know as of yet what it comes from, the teachers, lack of pressure from the parents, or what. I do know one thing, however-every every EVERY kid has the right to a good education that leaves the able to express themselves well. Its a right. Its fundamental. I should not see 7th graders who dont know what syllables and paragraphs are. But I do. And its enraging. So we shall see where this pen pal program goes. Either way, something has to change.

The flew. I was struck down Monday afternoon with a terrible bout of what I think was the flu, even though I was given an injection to prevent such things during training. I was in bed with a real ugly fever for three days in that depressing room in the house by myself. Save afternoon visits by the daughter of my best friend, Serena, to bring me fresh baked bread, I might have gone insane. It was this week that I realized, Peace Corps really is hard. I was hoping that maybe if I could be the right kind of person, easygoing, minimalist, close to nature, that it would somehow be easy. But no, its hard. Its wonderful and hard. I think the PC tag line, ¨The toughest job youll ever love¨will prove itself to be terribly true.

Im still doing good, despite the hard times. This month Ive got some great stuff lined up, like a workshop on solar ovens, 4th of July celebrations, furthering on our communal mothers garden, and starting a community tree garden. At the end of the month Ill be switching homes, attending a 3-month reconnect in Coch, and receiving a much much much anticipated visit from the States. Thats all for now and I appreciate thew over whelming response to my last email-Ive already received a couple of toothbrushes and books and am waiting for a response from Toms of Maine to send some paste for these kids.

Go roast some mallows til theyre flaming,
Yakelyn

1 down, 23 to go

2007-05-31T11:56:00.000-04:00

Ikavino from Santa Cruz!

Im in the big city for a couple of days to buy a few important things,
take a much needed hot shower and maybe even see a movie. Things in
Chimeo are lovely as ever, so Ill take this opportunity to update uds.
a bit on what Ive been up to. Ive decided to format this email in a
This American Life fashion, so this mailing will treat Things That
Have Gone By The Wayside

I. Hygiene. Yes, the Chaco does have a winter, and it just arrived.
Its kind of an on again off again winter- one week it will be in the
60s-70s and sunny, but the following it will be about 40 and sleeting.
I would consider 40s and sleeting in the States ugly, but not all
that grave. With no hot water, indoor heating, and cement walls
however, its roughhhhhh. Furthermore, they cut the water going to
Chimeo about 3 days out of every week. Therefore, the chances of
having water on a day where it is relatively warm are slim, making
bathing and clothes washing pretty tough. Im down to about a weekly,
maybe biweekly shower if Im lucky, and it usually comes out of a large
bucket (this way I can heat up the water.) I am very fortunate as far
as my housing is concerned. The PC has pretty high standards about
cracks in walls and having wood shutters on windows, so my room stays
warm by Chimeno standards.

The good news is that winter will be over in the end of July, and soon
thereafter the scorching heat will return. I never thought I would
miss the heat, but Im really looking forward to its return.

II.Vegetarianism. First I started eating fish again because the Villa
Montes area is very proud of its sabalo and surubi that comes from the
Rio Pilcomayo that runs through town. Its one of the few places in
this landlocked country where one can get fresh fish, so Ive had my
fair share of delicious grilled fish and yuca. Then for mothers day,
Carlos and his brothers killed a pig that we ate al horno. Since it
was a special occasion, I partook, and they partook in a delicious
chocolate cake that I whipped up. Then a yesterday Carlos's wife
prepared a delicious pig asado, and since I had already eaten some of
the same pig, I was convinced to eat a couple more pieces. It was
likewise delicious. After lunch I served tea while Mariana separated
the pig fat from the skin- the fat will go into some homemade bread,
and they have a million dishes planned for the skin. I have to say I
have no problem with this- they use every part of the animal, and the
pigs themselves serve as our garbage cans for anything organic. Its
each pig is truly appreciated, and its all part of the ecosystem of
life in the campo. I plan to help Mariana make bread on Monday, and
maybe Ill even have some more of her delicious asado.

III. Physical activities. Ok, physical activity in of itself has not
gone by the wayside, but Ive decided to take part in some things that
I would never really take part in Stateside. Ive taken to playing
volleyball at the school, and have accepted an offer to join a ladies
soccer team. Its not that I dont like team sports so much, but
rather I am not competitive and not at ALL coordinated, so I generally
steer clear of them to avoid embarrassment. The entire community,
however, rallies around these activities, so if I going to get down
with the Chimenos, Id better get down with team sports.

They say that part of the Peace Corps is losing yourself and then
finding it again as you adjust to the new culture, new friends, and
new customs, so I suppose this is just the first step in that process.
Hopefully in my next email Ill be able to tell you all about how I
have the entire town baking animal shaped cakes, singing too much and
writing left handed. We shall see, until then Id like to ask a couple
small favors of all of you. The previous volunteer left a big box
full of toothbrushes, but no toothpaste. I would like to start a
program where I get the kids in the habit of brushing their teeth by
giving out toothbrushes every three months and, if I can get it,
toothpaste. Most of them would not have the dough to buy toothpaste,
so as far as the sustainability of the project goes, my dad suggested
teaching them to use salt water or baking soda as an alternate. The
favor would be to ask you all if you have friends or relatives who are
dentists or other health workers to donate some of those cheap
toothbrushes or small toothpastes that seem to be in abundance every
time you go to have a cavity filled. Second, I would like to build up
the school library. Right now, the library consists of 3 Spanish
dictionaries. Im not sure if you all, the recipients of my mass
emails, live in areas that sell children's books in Spanish, but Im
asking that the next time you stop by a half price books store or the
Hispanic area of your communities, that you keep your eyes pealed for
something for the kids of Chimeo. Even one books would be of great
help. Thanks in advance to all of you.

Until next time, I will be capturing hives, planting roses, and trying
to get the school garden and computer classes off the ground. Keep in
touch and enjoy the heat!

Ayema,
Yakelyn

PS. Please suppost Kaity Scherbel in her fundaising for the Avon Walk
for Breast Cancer. Shes got fotos as well as some most excellent
shirts for sale, one of which I will soon sport en
Bolivia.-www.everybodylovesboobs.blogspot.com

Last night!

2007-04-24T00:50:00.000-04:00

Here I am in my last night of my hostel tour of Santa Cruz. Im ready to go. Im so ready to go and get started on my projects. But I am pointlessly nervous. Ug its so rough when your reason cant beat out your emotion. But here I go.

La Yakelyn no tiene teta

2007-04-23T11:55:00.000-04:00

Hellooooo from Yacuiba!

Well Ive been in Chimeo for nearly three weeks now, and things are coming along really really well. Ive made friends with some ladies and families in Chimeo, as well as some other folks in Villa Montes. Im living with Don Marcial who is, more or less, a grumpy, old, hard-working man with white hair and bushy black eyebrows. At first I was a bit apprehensive, but I realized that he sweetens up real easy if I just sweep the porch, pretend to like his midday soups, and accompany him for tea in the evenings. I plan to start baking him cookies and other such deliciousness as soon as I get my archaic Bolivan mini stove up and running. My days are a gallimaufry of activities, so Ill just pick a few more important events to share with you all.

Town meeting: A week ago I attended my first entire town meeting. It was to discuss a upcoming pipeline project to provide Chimeo with a more consistent water source (it often runs out, as happened this week for example.) To best write the project, the engineers needed exact data on families and their water consumption and probable future consumption. This involved the filling out of a simple questionairre about family size, education level, number of livestock, etc. They asked those who could write to raise their hands, and out of about 40 people, 4 could- myself, professor Bartolome, and the 2 engineers from Villa Montes. I was really shocked. I know I am supposed to anticipate things like this, but these women are sooooo skilled in so many things that I fail miserably at (cooking masterpieces from next to nothing, sewing, etc) that it was hard to imagine they couldnt do something thats so basic for me. This gave me the opportunity to go around and help them fill out the forms, however, which was also shocking. First and formost, because I realized I have learned how to tell jokes and have a sense of humor in spanish! When asking them about what livestock they have, I made sure to ask how many sharks, giraffes, and elephants they each had. They thought it was HILLARIOUS. I AM HILLARIOUS IN BOLIVIA!!! Second, I was surprised to see that most of them, even the younger women, have about a 5th grade education. Apparently its common to leave school early to go to work for your family. I suppose this is what the statistics tell me, but wow. Its for real.

Thursday: Yesterday was probably the best day Ive had so far in Chimeo. On Wednesday I was walking to the Centro Pan, kind of a kinder care for Chimeos kids, when I stumbled upon a group of ladies having tea in a circle in the woods. They invited me to share their poros of yerba mate ( a traditional DELICIOUS tea drank from little wooden cups with metal straws) and crackers and we chatted it up. They are helping build a basketball court in Chimeo with a bunch of men and women. I had seen them working before, but this gave me the opportunity to ask if I could work with them some morning. They said SURE, so I showed up the next chilly morning at 7 (its been chilly here) to work. It felt really nice to work as part of a group, and reminded me of working with Habitat in DC. We spend 6 hours carrying 10-40 pound stones and laying them down as the base of the court. Mid morning we took a mate break and shared poros and food the ladies had brought from home, like fresh bread and home roasted/boiled peanuts. We got to chat a whole heck of a lot, and they are comfotable enought to tell me I look like a fat, flat-chested Mennonite (not necessarily a bad thing in Bolivia). So hooray for honest friends! Im going to go back to work with them this coming week, and I can hardly wait.

In the afternoon, covered in rock dust, I went with Enrique to capture my first hive in Chimeo. They were pretty mean and I gotta say that Enrique did most of the work. But the honey was REEEAAAAL plentiiful and reddish orange. It was beautiful, and I trotted home with a bowlfull of my own harvest.

Weenhayek: Tuesday I spent the day with Prohabitat, a Habitat for Humanity like org in Viila Montes, working with the Weenhayek, a nomadic river people on the other side of Villa Montes from Chimeo. To the north of Villa Montes is Guarani communities, like Chimeo, and to the south are Weenhayek communities. Because they were traditionally nomadic, their housing is really really poor, hence the work of Prohabitat. I spent my time giving a couple chats with a dentist volunteer from Tarija city about Chagas, a heart disease spread by a bug called the Vinchuca. Most of the women in the town attended, but I found out afterwards it was just because of the spectacle (read: the creepy gringa with light hair and eyes.) We capped off the freezing cold day around a fire with the captain of the town, a very wise old man with 10 children. We talked about all sorts of things and had a great dialogue about differences between the marginalized Weenhayek, Bolivian criollos, and Americans. It was so open that the old man plainly asked us what "mataco" means, a derraugatory term used to refer to the Weenhayek. Apparently it doesnt have a specific meaning, it originiated due to a mix up between the Weenhayek and another tribe further north east, but it has a stigma attached, one of backwardness and poverty. We did not explain this to him, but it seemed that he can feel the sentiment behind the word. He was also happy to teach us a few words in his language , such as Néchewhalla (Goodmorning).

Ok well thats all. As usual Ive got a million more stories to tell but not enough time to share them. I hope you are all well and go jump in some spring mud or swim in a cold lake for me.

Absolutely stinking happy in Bolivie,
Jacqueline

The one week mark

2007-04-22T00:46:00.000-04:00

Felicidades!

Well I have officially been in Santa Cruz for a week, and have been
sleeping in hostels and hotels for 11 days. Man, oh man, is it
getting old. The Deber tells us that things in the Chaco have settled
down, the bloqueos from Santa Cruz have been lifted, the ones on the
Argentine border remain, and talks in La Paz will begin on Monday.
Gas exports to Argentina and Brazil have been cut by 20% to fulfil
national demand in the face of the shortages caused by the unrest.
Two men have died and dozens injured. Mateo, Michi, Chachi, Pablo,
Ellena, Pedro and I (the Chaco volunteers) plan to finally head to our
sites for the first time on Tuesday, so long as the chit chats on
Monday go well. We have been spending all of our time and money
entertaining ourselves with all that Santa Cruz, possibly the most
developed and wealthiest part of the nation, has to offer- go karts,
water parks, pedicures. It definitely doesn't feel like the Peace
Corps and its definitely driving me crazy, but it has been quite a
lesson in the economic and social inequality of Bolivia. In my site
there are no cars, televisions, telephones, but rather family,
tranquility, and sometimes malnutrition that you can see in the
discolored hair of some kids. There is so much I can be working on
there. In order to remind myself of all the exciting projects I will
be working on in my site, I'm going to list of 20 possible projects I
chatted with my friends in my site about:

1. family fish ponds
2. school garden
3. school greenhouse
4. school ecology club
5. secondary bee products
6. yogurt
7. honey mead
8. marmalade and other canned fruit products
9. English for guarani exchange
10. Guarani culture recuperation project
11. Revamping an existing chicken project
12. Nutrition classes
13. Working with the government provided school lunches
14. Computer classes
15. Improving computer equipment
16. Bringing a phone line to the town (and heck! maybe even internet
and TV if we can!)
17. Working with lady beekeepers in surrounding communities
18. Chacarera classes
19. Working with Winhayak, a fascinating indigenous group in Villa Montes
20. Learning how to cook with a wood stove, Chaco style

Im certain that all these things will take time, but time I have
certainly got. I hope all is well with each and everyone of you, and
Ill be in touch.

Love,
Jacqueline

Post script: In addition to the tragedies in the Chaco and a bus
crash outside Cochabamba, this week the world lost two incredible,
unforgettable, strong, honest, hard working, loving American fathers,
grandfathers, brothers, sons, uncles, great-grandfathers,
great-uncles, farmers and moreover true men: Robert Conway Sr. and
Donald Brysacz. They will both be missed.

Some fotosssssssssss

2007-04-18T10:21:00.000-04:00

The members of B44, all 29 of which swore in. This is at our superbowl party in the beginning of training, long before all the boys became skinny and bearded.

Chachi, my Villa Montes site mate, at the Crist in Cochabamba. He no longer sports the red fu man chu because its too hot in Villa Montes.

and im stuck in santa cruz

2007-04-18T09:16:00.000-04:00

Well Im writing from a wonderful wireless internet coffee slash food place in Santa Cruz, where I have been for a few days now. The other new Santa Cruz volunteers as well as some older volunteers spent a couple days buying things for our sites and generally getting to know the city. I have to admit, Im pretty excited to have Santa Cruz as my regional city. It has everything a homesick gringo could want- tofu, good coffee, go karts, and a waterpark. I dont plan to come here very often in my service, but its good to know that it is an option for when Im missing home. I think that when I go to a city Ill go to Yacuiba, which is smaller and closer and they sell everything a gal could want, like cheddar cheese.

In other news, some of you may have heard about the events going on in the Chaco. I feel pretty lucky right now to be in Santa Cruz because there is a lot going on in Villa Montes and Yacuiba. Heres the general story as far as I understand it from the Deber I picked up this morning. The Chaco is in a very unique position. It is part of the department of Tarija, but the roads leading from the capital of Tarija to the Chaco are very poor (so poor that PCVs are prohibited from traveling on them.) Just as the geographic connection between the region and its representative government is poor, so are the political relations. Chaquenos are very proud of their strong work ethic, indigenous Guarani communities, tradition of cattle raising, and awesome local song and dance. Many in the region feel as though the national and departmental governments ignore them, so on monday the cities of the Chaco declared a general strike because they feel that the aid they receive is not proportionate to the amount of income their gas reserves provide the rest of the country. Then yesterday groups of Chaquenos in Villa Montes and Yacuiba tried to take the gas plants to shut off the valves to Argentina and Tarija and further express their power and auntonomy. They were fought off by the Bolivian military and in all about 50 were injured and one man was killed in Villa Montes from a shot to the leg. They expect things to continue the same way today because the mayor of Villa Montes has cut off his dialogue with the national government. I hope that things will settle down there soon so I can get to my site and get to work. I believe it will because most Bolivians recognize that the best way to get things done is via democratic means. Furthermore, its just too stinkin hot in the Chaco to spend all that much time protesting in the hot sun-its a mild 90* F there today.

We peace corps volunteers have been fortunate because only one Chaco volunteer happens to be in his site right now. The rest are in other cities for meetings and doctors apointments, so theres not too much to worry about on that front. Im not worried about returning to my site when this all settles down because all of the violence was at the gas plants and therefore I would not be in any sort of danger. Just as the tragic events in January in Coch were very localized, so have been these events in the Chaco. Ill be sure to keep you all apprised of updates as they become available.

Cuidense,
Yak

last days in coch

2007-04-10T09:09:00.000-04:00

Feliz Pascua to one and all!

Well I am in my last few days in Cochabamba. Tuesday night will be my last with the Urena women in Sirpita, and the memebrs of Bolivia 44 will pass the remaining days in a hotel in the city. Saturday will be the swear in ceremony, where the PC will treat us to a fancy dinner and will give me an excuse to dress up real nice and maybe paint my toe nails. Yesterday we had our goodbye and thank you party for all of the host families. It started off a bit slow and disorganized due to some last minute changes, but we had all the family members laughing their bombachas off as soon as the gringos began to perform our renditions of traditional Bolivian dances. My fellow agriculture trainees and I rented Chacarera costumes and basically embarrassed ourselves in front of 100 Bolivians. It was wonderful. Many fotos were taken, and as soon as I get my hands on them Ill be sure to post them.

It will be quite sad to leave behind my host family. Ive grown very close to them, and I really prefer hanging out with them to hanging out with other gringos. But so it goes. Im sure that Ill build many a close relationship in my site. I'm so so so very excited to get there and settle in. I realized today that I have not lived in one place since I was about 15 years old. Its going to be wonderful to build my little room up and buy and make curtains and paint and all of that.

Ive been taking Guarani classes and am absolutely loving the language. The structure is really quite different, but Ive got some materials that should help me improve my skills bit by bit. I also have spoken to a number of people in my site who would love to exchange Guarani lessons for English lessons. Id rather give geography or nutrition classes instead of English, but I suppose I have to cater to my audience at first. One cool cool tidbit about about Guarani- the verb to be born ´(a)a´ is the same as the verb to fall. This comes from a piece of Guarani folklore that says that all men and women are children of the sun and moon, who were born of a lady who was impregnated by the wind of Tümpa, or God. Im sure hippies would love that story. I just think its a really neat linguistic tidbit. I cannot WAIT to add more tidbits.

One other piece of business-mail. If anyone feels inclined to send me marshmallow peeps or letters or copies of national geographic i can be found at the following-

Jacqueline Brysacz
Villa Montes, BOLIVIA
South America

Thats right. Just my name and the city. Villa Montes is 15 minutes from me and has about 20,000 people. The lady who works in the post office knows EVERYONE in town and refers to the 4 volunteers in the area by first name (Jacqueline and three other fellas.)

Ok well Im off to spend la pascua baking up a storm with my favorite ladies in Cochabamba. I hope you are all doing well and youre in my thoughts.

Tümpa ndive,
Jacqueline

voy a cantar Chacarera

2007-03-18T13:59:00.000-04:00

Oi a todos e boa tarde!

So after 10 days on the road I am finally back in Coch. It is very, very, very nice to be back.Santa Cruz and the Chaco, where we have been all this time for our Tech Week, are very very hot and being back in the coolness of Cochabamba is refreshing. All in all over the past ten days Ive accumulated a ton of stories, captured wild bee colonies, learned to wield a machete, crossed rivers in Moby Dick, gotten to know the rest of the ag kids so so so well (sometimes maybe to well), seen a ton of the country, and, most importantly VISITED AND CONFIRMED THE PLACE I WILL LIVE AND WORK FOR THE NEXT TWO YEARS! It is a town of about 300 people in a region called the Chaco, which lies in the south eastern corner of the country. To help yall understand a bit better Ill break down my site placement into a few catergories.

My house: I will live with the parents of Carlos, a bee keeping expert whom my program director knows very well, and whom I go to know over the past week. The previous volunteer left a fridge, stove, matress, bookshelf, books, AND a cell antennae on the roof! The backyard opens up to gorgeous rolling field and trees. I cannot WAIT to take fotos and send them out. Its absolutely spectacular.

My work: I will be working with a few groups of beekeepers from my site and the surrounding communities. Some are more organized than others, but there are a few expers with whom I will cerainly learn a lot from. One is Carlos, the other is Don Juan, one of the hardest working men Ive ever known. He lost one leg to a snake bit a few years ago but he still goes on on hive captures and shimmies up trees like the rest of the men. What Im most excited for are the women! Usually beekeepin is mans work, bu in his area the women have gotten involved, so I will work with them, improving the hives and selling honey products.

Other volunteers: There are two other volunteers very close by, which is a greaaaaaaaaat relief to me. Also, the Chaco volunteers are at least 9 hours from Sana Cruz, so they hang, when they hang, in Yacuiba, a border city about one hour from me. Its really good for me because I dont really care for big cities, all I really need from them is an occasional computer or veggie pizza.

The Chaco: This region is known for its distinct climate and REALLLY hard working people. Its super hot- in the summer its a high of 30 * C (about 80* F) and in summer i can get up o 50* C (about a million *F). Therefore, it has a tradition of rising early and then sleeping from 12-3pm, which jives REAL well with me. It is lush and green, but it doesn rain much. The earth is red. Some people speak Guarani, so I´ll get to learn it! There are snakes and bugs and the bees there are more calm than in other places, presumably because the hot weather keeps them happy. The machismo there is also worse than in the highlands. To quote a female volunteer whos there already, " Compared to the Chaco, I feel like I could walk naked through the streets of Cochabamba and not be bothered." This is the only thing about the Chaco Im not looking forward to. OH, and I may ride a horse for transportation!

Well thats about it for now. I hope you all are doing well and staying out of trouble.

Ayema,
Yakelyn

From Villa Montes

2007-03-17T17:49:00.000-04:00

HELLOOOOOOOOO EVERYONE!

I am writing you all from Villamontes, Bolivia, a town of 30,000, 2 hours north of the Argentine border. I am traveling on my semana tecnica, where we visit potential sites and practice talking about bees and such all around the country. Sorry I have been out of touch for so long, but I have some good excuses, which are as follows: baby chicks, herpes zoster, and my site.

1. baby chicks: The Sunday before Carnaval my friends and fellow trainees, Christian and Chelsea, were hanging out in front of Christians house at about 1 am. It was a Sunday, and carnaval, so a lot of people were drinking. This apparently includes chicken truck drivers, as a truck full of baby chickks drunkenly sped by and a box full of 100 chicks flew off. The driver didnt notice, so Christian and Chelsea came to the rescue and brought them all into cages at Christians house. Unfortunately,. Christian has no idea how to take care of baby chicks, so I adoped about 13 of them. Thereafter the rest of them passed away because of some cold nights and Christians lack of knowledge on chick raising, which is quie sad. Nonetheless, my 13 wawas (babies in Quechua) are still going strong.

2. Herpes Zoster:week after the baby chicks incident, I got a painful rash on my back. I told the PC doc the next day, and she started me on medicine right away. She gave me painkillers and told me to take care of myself and to do my best to control the pain. It didnt hurt all that bad at this point, and I had no idea what herpes zoster was, so I went about my day and night. Then came the next day. Oh man. This thing was quite quite painful. I was okay when at home, resting, but the bus rides and long walks brought me to tears each afternoon for a few days. Luckily on Friday, with research assistance from MR. Stephen Andrew Wood, I found out what herpes zoster is : SHINGLES! I guess it is a virus that lives in your spine and shows when one is stressed or has a comprimised immune system. Apparently moving to a new country is stressful, so it showed on me. I am lucky tpo have gotten it here though, and now, with excellent OC medical care and caring donas who applied white grape leaves to take the pain away and prevent scarring (who knew!) So this is one of the reasons I havent updated in a while, but I am doing much better now.

3.My site: Ah! Im out of internet time, but I think I visited my site today. Its a guarani community in the Chaco, about 2 hours from the Argentine border. Ill write more later but until then, take care!

Carnavowwwwwww

2007-03-17T17:47:00.000-04:00

Feliz carnaval a todos!

Well I just got back from a day spent visiting a real site outside of Cochabamba. It was really great to see what the volunteers life is like in the flesh, as opposed to the stories I´ve been compiling since I arrived. The PC picked all of us up around seven this morning and we set out in the brand new peace corps mini-van-thing which we dubbed Moby Dick. At first I was really pumped about the new auto, but we REALLY REALLY stick out. It is big, new, and white, quite different from the neon colored, refurbished and refurbished again busses that fill te streets here, donning names like Miguelito, Kevincito, and my personal favorite, I LOVE YOU. That is really something I admire about people in general here-everything is used and reused until it falls to pieces. The car bodies are all old and unique, while the trucks and other parts are all new. Its really quite a lesson in reduce-reuse-recycle. Furthermore, the busses (called micros) pick pèople up until they are busting at the seams. We, on the contrary, bump along the countryside, not stopping for even the little boys who ask for a lift, thinking we`re a micro. I know that this is alright and normal and I AM grateful and all, I just find it distasteful at times.

Ok well back to the story of the day. We went to this volunteers site, helped some kids he works with sow seeds in their gardens, and generally enjoyed ourselves. We climbed a fig tree and picked some real fresh ones, walked down overgrown railroad tracks lined with eucalyptus, and were chased through town by boys with super soakers. I also had the opportunity to buy three much needed things: gardening gloves, treezers, and a mirror. I have realized that having a mirror does not have to be a vanity thing, and furthermore for one Boliviano (about 12 cents) who could say no? Then when we came back in town I saw my first funeral procession. We were coming around a corner in Moby Dick and saw a huge group of people walking, dressed in black, after a hurse. It was breathtaking and somber and I felt priveñledged to even see it.

Ah there is a whole heck of a lot to write about so I´ll try to narrow it down to a few favorites. Number one: bees! We started working with bees this week in our tech training classes. I love it. We work with africanized bees (the so called killer ones, but ours are nice killer bees and forthermore the whole killer thing is largely sensationalized. Theyre just a little bit more defensive!) and I feel super cool pulling on my white keeping suit and orange work gloves. We use smoke to keep them calm, which makes me smell like smoke a whole heck of a lot, which makes me feel liek one of those temptresses from a Garcia Marquez novel. The smoke thing is really neat. It works be interrupting their attack desire when you open the lid of the colony by making them thing the hive is on fire. They then go back in the hive to suck up as much homey as possible to save the hive. THEN when they are all full of honey they cant sting you because their thoraxes cant really bend. Its genius! Gosh Iove learning about bees-they are magnificent and I REALLY hope they will be at my site, wherever it may be.

I should be getting on my way. My donas have made chicha for carnaval and killed two pigs to make chicharron, and I want to be part of the celebration. A lot of my fellow trainees families are going to buy from us too. They are such strong ladies with so many skills, I just have so much to learn.

Things will basically shut down for Carnaval from tomorow until Wednesday, so you won't be hearing from me for a bit. Until then, take care and keep in touch.

Yakelyn

Me gusta la chicha me gusta chicharron

2007-02-08T11:30:00.000-04:00

Buen dia!

Today is a lovely lovely day in Cochabamba. I have classes over 8 hours a day, half Spanish and half technical training or cultural training. Tech is all agricultural stuff that goes along with our two main objectives when we get to our sites. First is to get people using more efficient organic gardening techniques like companion planting and composting. Second is to work with beehives or fisheries and their secondary products, like shampoo or fish food respectively. Thus far we have made vegetable gardens at home, learned gardening techniques, and learned about soil composition. It is by far my favorite class. Soon we will begin to learn more about beekeeping and fisheries, which I am so very very excited for. Each site has either beekeeping or fish, and as a vegetarian, I am pretty sure they´ll put me in a beekeeping site-woohooo!

As for my day today, my spanish class lets us do an independent project one day a week, so I chose to familiarize myself with the local newspapers, comparing and contrasting them. It is really just an excuse to be more of my EEUU self- I get to spend four hours in the city, drinking cafe cortado at the only cafe I´ve seen thus far in Cochabamba and reading the papers. It is so nice being alone for the first time since the 22nd, using the bus system by myself and making my own schedule. I think that reading the papers will improve my vocabulary a whole heck of a lot as well as reminding me what correct spanish looks like, as opposed to the campo-speak, where verbs and adjectives can fall just about wherever you feel like. After I finish with this side project in a couple weeks, I will make a project of touring the local hospitals and clinics to see what the medical system is like. I originally wanted to work with public health with the PC, and fortunately I have a very nice doctor neighbor who may show me around a bit and tell me about the health care system.

Some of you may have read about the unrest going on in La Paz, and you need not worry about me here in Cochabamba. I honestly hadn´t heard a thing about it, as my days are occupied and I don´t have time for newspapers nor really do I usually have access. I have caught wind that the strife will likely escalate again after carnaval ends in a month or two. I really hope things stay calm and my time here is not compromised. I have already become attached to this project. I really want to work with women, agriculture, and maybe a little micro enterprise in this country. I would love to work with women here because I feel like I have a good start on understanding how to work here with my language ability and experience in Peru (although in one recent conversation I learned about some of the big stinking differences between Peruvian and Bolivian women.) In the meantime, I will continue loving life here, getting pegged by water balloons on Sundays (its a carnaval tradition), and helping my donas prepare chicha and chicharron for carnaval.

One lovely illustration I´d like to share before I go. Last night I came home after an evening in the city with some of the other kids in my group. My abuela and host sister were in the bedroom to let me in, and my donas Demetria and Sabina were outside of the kitchen in the moonlight, bundling roses and yerba buena they had gotten from the garden. The yerba buena smelled so good and we chatted briefly about what changes they think would best benefit the community. Dona Sabina told me she thinks the high school should offer night classes, especially ones for women like baking or haircutting, so women can better support themselves. They then proceeded to joke with me, as usual, about how every boy in my group is my boyfriend and how my nickname, Jacky, sounds a whole heck of a lot like the Quechua word for headache. The evening ended with a kiss on the cheek to Dona Sabina as she stirred the huge cauldron where the chicha was cooking. I slept well in my netted double bed, smelling the eucalyptus smoke coming in from the chicha fire.

Take care all of you, and until the proxima vez,
Yakelyn

ps: please excuse all typos-these spanish keyboardsa are taking so getting use to!

Safe in Coch!

2007-02-08T11:28:00.000-04:00

Heyyyyyyy there!

Well I am finally here and settled. Yesterday was a rough one- our overnight plane ride from Miami to La Paz, then 8 hours spent in a VIP room in La Paz, which is something like 12,000 feet above sea level. The VIP room was awash with twenty-something bodies passed out from exhaustion and soroche (altitude sickness). The airport was also great because you could go outside and stroll, no problem, and the park across the way was full of trees that looked like something out of Edward Scizzorhands. We took a plane that loaded from the back and looked like a revamped old military carrier to Cochabamba.

It was lovely landing. The mountains are green and lush. I immediately remembered what the Andes smell like : eucalyptus. I am staying in a hotel with the other volunteers, but today we spent our time at the PC compound about 20 mins outside of the city. It was like Eden. Its surrounded by adobe walls, quiet with lush grass and all sorts of crops: corn, bright red strawberries and blackberries and a homemade greenhouse. I got to meet my agro director and find out about all the individual sites. It was really exciting and definitely made me feel like I made the right decision in coming here. I just cant wait to get my hands dirty.

I will join my host family for training on Saturday, so my next update will probably come thereafter.

Cuidate mucho,
Yakelyn

Confirmed for Cochabamba

2007-02-08T11:26:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone,

I received word today that I am scheduled to arrive in Cochabamba, as planned, on Wednesday. It looks like things have settled down and the many sides of the conflict in Cochabamba and the nation are at the bargaining table. Lets hope that this comes to a resolution that will serve the betterment of all Bolivians.

As for me, I am just swimming a whole heck of a lot of laps and tying up the kinds of loose ends that need tying when one peaces out of the country for a couple of years. I have to admit that I am plain old pumped to get going on this adventure- the application process was so long that I feel like I have been saying goodbyes since October. I'm still not certain of my snail mail address, but I'll be sure to send it on as soon as I get it. I have started a blog, that I think will be updated more often than this mass emailing. You can find it at

jbrysacz.blogspot.com

Gracias de nuevo for all your support, and take care.

Jacqueline