Poverty and hunger

Hello everyone,

I thought I would talk a little about poverty and hunger in rural Bolivia in this post. We have spent a lot of space and time on this blog discussing our experiences here in Bolivia, but there are some things that are hard to talk about here. Bolivia's standard of living has visibly improved tremendously since we were here in 2001. However, that does not mean that poverty and hunger have been eradicated. There is still a long ways to go. There are still beggars and homeless people throughout the streets of La Paz (the mothers with small children are particularly heartbreaking when they cover themselves and the children up with a thin piece of fabric for the night and huddle in a closed doorway to sleep). There are still many poor and hungry people in the Yungas as well. They are far from invisible, in fact, many work the transportation network selling food or other items to passersby all day and well into the evening. Many live in rickety shacks clinging to the lip of a hill or along the dusty roads. There is power and water available, but one must be able to afford it. There are homes along the road to Coroico and in Carmen Pampa where there is no power. Clean water is still a concern, although here on the upper campus our water is mildly chlorinated now.

Most people here live without common items we take for granted, such as a washing machine, an oven, a hot water tap, TV, heat, the list goes on. Many people, even the poor, have cell phones, largely because they are ridiculously cheap and easy to get. It seems like every house has a sign up advertising that they sell the recharge cards, as most cells are pre-paid. I would guess you can make enough selling cards to pay for your own, they are so ubiquitous. 

The food here is simple and cheap, but there are plenty of people eating only lunch still (this is considered the main meal of the day). The cooperative here on campus feeds students, who must contribute financially and help out in order to eat there. This is in addition to their mandatory community service and the extra hours of service that scholarship students must work. The good news is that this program does feed students who otherwise could not afford to eat and pay for school, so it is no longer necessary to eat behind closed doors. The loss of fifty scholarships when USAID was ejected from the country in June means 50 fewer students to feed and house, but it is also 50 fewer students attending classes.

That all being said, I want to tell you about my students' first set of projects, which they completed this week. If you stopped any student on campus here and asked them why they are here, they would all say either that they are here to help their family/village or that they are here to improve Bolivia. This can sound like a pat answer sometimes, but it is very true. My assignment to them was to think about themselves, the UAC and Bolivia 20 years from now, in the context of the approaching 20th anniversary celebration of the UAC in October. What would change? What would be the same? Then they were to condense their thoughts into a Six Word Memoir in English and turn it in. The variety of dreams represented by what they turned in is truly astonishing. Some of the dreams are very big, some are very personal. Some could never have been condensed into only six words!! (This doesn't count against them in my grading process.)

The English Department will be sharing these both here at the UAC and on Facebook as part of the anniversary celebration in the coming weeks, so you will get to see them all, including those from the other classes. Please watch for them, as they are all worth reading!

Ciao!

Susan

Our home away from home

     If you would like to receive an email whenever we have a new post, please click the FOLLOW button and there will be directions. ALSO: I am labeling our photos and adding more today and tomorrow, so I will comment at the bottom of this post with a new direct link to the album when they are ready. Please check back!! 

     So, many of you have been asking about our living situation. In this post, I will tell you a bit about that. In the pictures we posted, you can see a three-story brick and concrete building with an exterior stairway going up one corner. That is where we live. The rest of the building is a boys’ dorm, but there are three staff apartments on the end closest to the road. We live on the second floor, so we have a nice little balcony of sorts where the stairs landing meets our door. When you enter, there is a main room with the bathroom off to the left, then at the back are two bedrooms side-by-side. Jeff and I share the outer one, Delaney uses the inner one. The main room has three areas: the entryway, the dining/living area, and the kitchen. The entryway is sort of defined by the bathroom Wall, then the kitchen is around the corner. We have defined that space by pushing our two long skinny tables together and making them into the central work/life area of the household. The kitchen side of the table is more used like a countertop, where food prep, baking and serving happen (unless we have guests, no one usually sits here unless they are sitting while chopping veggies). There is a vinyl table cloth over the tables so they are easier to keep clean. We have one of the ubiquitous Bolivian frazadas to throw over it when we have company, as it is in pretty tough shape in places. Our frazada is purple, with red, green and blue veins woven into it. The dining/living room side of the table is where non-cooking action happens. I work here where I can spread out, because my desk in my office space is very small and the office is shared with two others who both see a lot of students so it’s not a very good place to concentrate during the school day. Jeff does his various projects here, and this is also where we play cards, listen to music, etc. There are little wooden chairs to sit here. There is one cushion, but we are going to look in La Paz this weekend to see if we can find more so that we can all have a more comfortable seat.

     Our little bathroom is compact, but nice. The floor is tiled, and that continues about halfway up the walls. This makes it easier to keep clean, and serves another practical purpose because the floor is wet much of the time and a rubber scraper (sort of like the blade on a squeegee) is used on the floor to push the water into a central floor drain so that it has some chance of being clean and dry. The shower is in one corner, with a wrapround shower curtain covering the two sides that are not walls. It has a lip about three inches high that helps keep the water from just running onto the floor, and the showerhead is an electric on-demand water heater. This is a wonderful thing when you live where there is no heated water – the only downside is that the temperature of the water is controlled by the water flow rate, so the harder you turn the water on, the colder it gets. It can be quite the balancing act to get the water hot and have decent pressure to take your shower at the same time, but it is SO much better than the cold showers one took before these were installed! In Bolivia, you toss your used toilet paper in a little trash can when you’re done with it, because the plumbing can’t really handle flushing it, so every bathroom, no matter how primitive or fancy, has a little trash can for this purpose. There is also a little pedestal sink and Cookie’s sandbox.

     In the kitchen, there is a small stove with three burners and an oven, all powered by a propane tank. We have two tanks, that way hopefully you always have one in reserve, although when we got here one was empty, which is why we ran out of cooking gas last week when the truck was late. The propane truck is definitely a QBE (quintessentially Bolivian experience)… the truck comes lumbering down the gravel road to the campus driveway right outside our door and stops. Everyone grabs their empty tanks and stands in line to exchange them right off the truck – it’s a panel-sided truck like you see farmers emptying the hopper on the combine into during the harvest at home. You pay your 27 Bs (about $4) and get a full tank. This was at 5:30 am last Saturday, so it was dark and kind of surreal. J

     There is a sink/drainboard combo in the kitchen (cold water faucets only since there are no water heaters), then a small counter and a small fridge that is about 20% larger than a regular dorm fridge. It has a little freezer in the top, so Delaney’s new experience here has been her first ice cube trays! We have had the ice-and-water in the door her whole life, so this is a new thing for her, although she has used them a few times at Nana’s house before, she has never lived with one. She is a bit obsessive about making sure there is enough ice, although she has discovered that the cubes all melt together in her little bowl and then refreeze in a mess whenever the power is out. LOL!

     There are two sliding windows in the main room that face up the mountain (Uchumachi), and one in each of our bedrooms that face the yard alongside the classroom building that stretches that direction from the boys’ dorm. They have screens, although a couple of them are in bad shape. Jeff sewed one up a little, but the fabric is old and brittle, so he had to stop. We hope to get these replaced soon, we just need to find where to get the fabric.

     The floor of our apartment is concrete that must have been painted a soft baby blue at some point, although it is pretty spotty now. I have some throw rugs picked out in La Paz, one each for the bedrooms and the main room behind the table, but I have to save up because they are a little pricey. The walls are plain white with a maroon trim around the bottom. We have been busy hanging things on the walls wherever possible, both to get stuff off the floor (we don’t have many shelves to put things away, and there are no cupboards or chests) and to brighten the place up a little. There are curtains at the windows, yellow in the main room and blue in the bedrooms. It is nice to have some privacy after dark. Since we are in the tropics, it gets dark here by 6:30 or so, and the sun comes up about the same time in the morning, although we don’t actually see the sun at sunrise and sunset because of the mountains.

     One of our great joys here is getting up early and listening to the birds. By midday, they are much quieter, but in the morning there is the most wonder cacophony outside! It is often punctuated by the group cawing event of the Andean Guans, who sound a bit like crows but look a bit like quail or pheasant who perch in trees. Some of our favorite birds are the ones with the yellow bellies that you can see in our pictures. We haven’t figured out what they are yet, but with their color pattern and size, we wonder if they aren’t some kind of oriole. There are also red canaries nesting nearby, swallows, and some little wren-like birds with mohawks who have the most beautiful song. The trees out front are always full of birds in the morning, and the hummingbirds are a special treat with their bright emerald or sapphire bodies suspended by their nearly invisible wings.

     You will see many pictures of Uchumachi from our “balcony” because it is often the first thing we see when we go out the door in the morning. It is such an incredible view up the mountain, and it is constantly changing. We enjoy observing the many moods of our mountain.

     I will work on titling our photos this weekend while we have the high-speed connection in La Paz, so please enjoy and share with your friends!

Paz,
Susan

Hey everybody! I’m gonna tell you about what I do every day! On a daily basis, there are so many things to do, but it’s not always the same. Getting up at 5:30 to go use the internet for school on Tuesdays-Fridays is probably the hardest thing I have to do. It may be hard, but it’s also a cool experience to see the sun coming over Uchumachi  (the mountain by us) and come down the valley in the sunrise. At that time of the morning, it’s always cold, and a lot of the time, we’re in the clouds. It’s a really beautiful sight to see. When the college computer opens at 8, I have to go home. As you can imagine, I’m pretty tired, so I usually sleep for an hour or so, and at nine or nine-thirty I get up and eat breakfast. On Tuesdays and Fridays I work at the Biblioteca Del Los Ninos, (the children’s library) from 12:30-2:30, so I usually find something to occupy myself with until a little before 12, when I head down to the lower campus. The children love the library, and are usually eagerly waiting for me when I get down there to open the library. When I go down at other times, I get kids asking, ”Biblioteca?” and their faces are so sad when I tell them no! On Thursdays, we have a story time for the children with a special narrator. The first one was last week, and my dad read. The kids seemed to really like it, and when the reading was over, I decided to let them play games and read books for another forty-five minutes or so. The library has been a real success, and the children are very enthusiastic about it. With this library schedule, my Wednesdays and Saturdays are pretty free. (Sundays and Mondays are the weekends) On these days I usually do some chores around the house (sweeping, washing dishes, taking out the trash, etc.) and then, when I'm done with what my parents want me to do, I do my thing. I watch a movie, dance around my room listening to music, read a book, or maybe write a little. I like to sometimes go out on our balcony to read or write, and just take my computer or a notebook and go sit on the step. It's a really fun way to spend my free time. Sometimes, on these days, we head into Coroico to do some grocery shopping, and that's usually a cool experience. I don't think that, even if I could drive down here, I would want to. The people drive crazy here! The streets uphill are sometimes so steep that I feel like we're on a roller coaster! It's an interesting experience. Another one is our upstairs neighbors, Carlos, Gladys, and their four-year-old daughter Nataly. Every two weeks, it seems, we've gotten into a sort of Bolivia-America food war. The first Monday that we did this,

More QBEs and a few new things... (Susan)

Hola to all!

Sorry to have been off the air for awhile! A power outage last weekend put a damper on our Internet activity, since we share the connection in the office with someone who is there usually the entire business day, leaving us to try to get over there after dinner or waiting until the weekends. Anyway, we are back now, and I have many things to tell you about.

First, a new QBE for you. Jeff and Delaney and I sometimes "eat out" for supper by heading to the kiosks on campus. It is 10 Bs (about $1.50) for a plate of rice, fritas, fried bananas or plantains, and whatever the meat of the day is (chicken, an egg, or a flattened piece of heavily seasoned "hamburger") laid on top. It is simple, local food fixed by campesinas who live right here on or near the campus. Many are relatives of staff and/or students. This week, many of the staff/faculty who live on campus (ourselves included) ran out of gas by Thursday or Friday (it had been more than two weeks since the truck came), so Friday night we all found ourselves eating at the kiosks, and there was a part-like atmosphere as we all sat there at our little tables in an oasis in the dark, chatting and eating and visiting. At the kiosk, the kitchen is inside, and a window opens out onto a covered porch that stretches the length of all four kiosks. A picnic table sits lengthwise under each window, plus chairs at the end. When you go, you step up to the window from the side (sometimes over the back of whoever is sitting at the table) and let Dona know how many plates you would like, then you find and take your seat. While you are waiting, others come and go, and most people who walk past greet you. Some stop to chat. It is a very pleasant, sociable experience, and so very Bolivian!

Next, some have asked about our daily schedule, and details about our home. Classes are held Tuesday - Saturday. I teach three classes, one Tues-Wed-Thurs, one Tues-Fri, and one on Thursday nights. All except one are one-hour classes. Weds morning is a two-hour class. I usually prep about an hour per class hour, including grading time and dictionary time (I use my S-E dictionary a LOT to make sure my students understand some of the concepts I don't have the vocabulary for in Spanish). Plus I have 5 hours of posted office hours each week, an English department meeting once a week, and various other meetings and commitments that keep me busy during the day and sometimes the evening as well. I usually get up about 8, and I generally go to bed about 11-11:30. My classes are during lunchtime, so I often find myself grabbing something after the lunch break is over -- sometimes I have leftovers from dinner at home, sometimes one of the kiosks has food left. I try to be home to fix supper every night, although sometimes Delaney or Jeff fixes it instead, which is nice. Everything is from scratch, so dinner prep can take an hour or more. We try to do baking on the weekends or if one of us has an afternoon off. So, my days are usually busy, but the bright spot is always my students, whom I love very much!

In my next post, I will talk some about our apartment, our neighbors, and what life is like for us here.

Abrazos to all ~
Susan

We have been having several more QBEs. For those of you new to our blog, a QBE is a "Quintessentially Bolivian Experience."

First, we have been placed into the rotation for locking the dorms at 11 each night, and then unlocking them at 6 in the morning. I got my first experience with this a week ago Friday. We had been having a fairly quiet evening at home, punctuated with minivan "bus" horns letting us know when people were coming and going, and when there were seats left on the bus. Around 8ish, there started a fairly loud commotion on the other side of the wall, which is one of the guys dorms. We aren't supposed to interfere unless we think someone is hurt, or smell smoke. :) When 11 finally came around, I went on my rounds. When I got to the 3rd floor, I checked each room, saving the loud room for last. When I knocked, the door opened to reveal about 20 young men playing a bodily game of Uno. (or maybe they call it "One" here?) Each time someone would lay down a card, everyone would cheer like a soccer (futbol) goal had just been scored. Some would be happy, other would boo and attempt to tackle some of those cheering. When  I told them that they needed to quiet down, you would have thought I had just whipped a puppy in front of them. I explained that families lived on the other side of that wall, and they finally, begrudgingly, went off to their bunks and went to bed. Susan's first experience only showed her a bunch of young ladies studying for a test. Not nearly as fun as mine!

Some people have asked for daily schedules, apartment details, and of course more stories! I will post my schedule first and then let Susan and Delaney post their own with a story or 2 thrown in.

I get up around 6 each morning, and report for work at 7. I have coffee (of course) before, to lift the fog from my mind, if not the clouds from around our apartment. I work until around 8:30, when we take a break. At 9, we continue work until 12. We take a 2 hour lunch, then back at it again until 6 pm. It makes for a long day when I get distracted with a project and miss the break, sometimes even working straight thru lunch. I try not to do that too often, as the food here is incredible! I do this usually Monday thru Friday, with an occasional Saturday thrown in. I have been a continual source of discussion among the others. I continue to amaze them when I construct things like our clothes line. My first attempt failed, due to a deterioration in one of my bamboo pieces, it failed, end of that story. My 2nd attempt has so far been a BIG success. We now have 70 feet of clothes drying pleasure! I did reuse some of the original attempt, but only after thoroughly inspecting each piece. I believe that Susan is posting pictures, and I think there is one of my apparatus. I will turn the computer over to Susan now, but don't worry. Many more stories of QBEs will be coming!

La paz y amor,

Jeff

English students

Just a quick update for now during school hours, then I will post something bigger tomorrow or Monday with some other news from the week, plus continue uploading and labeling pictures...

Last night a couple came from the US Embassy in La Paz and held a workshop about learning English using music, and I was pleasantly surprised at how many of my students showed up and participated. We all had a great time singing along -- the SDSU Engineers Without Borders are here finishing up the water project (we have clean drinking water -- yay!) and they came too. It was a blast!! Songs included Country Roads by John Denver, Summertime by Billie Holliday, We Ain't Gonna Take It by Twisted Sister and Fireworks by Katy Perry. Students were given lyric sheets with some of the words missing, and we all sang the songs for them to figure out the missing words, then everyone joined in singing once they guessed the missing words. Students who answered questions in complete sentences got a chocolate!

This week my students will begin their project for the UAC's 20th Anniversary celebration coming up in early October. They are writing Six Word Memoirs (in English) about the UAC, themselves or Bolivia 20 years from now. Google Six Word Memoirs -- there are some very cool and interesting examples out there in Internet-land. This has really caught the students' imagination and I am very much looking forward to seeing what they come up with. I will post a link to the final version on our blog in October. 

More later!

Susan

My list of quintessentially Bolivian experiences

This week was a busy one here at the UAC, as classes are now in full swing and Jeff has been helping to prep the sleeping space for the Engineers Without Borders from South Dakota State Univ. (go Jacks!), who will arrive on Tuesday. Despite all the busy-ness. we found ourselves in the middle of a few quintessentially Bolivian experiences (QBEs) that we have to share with all of you!

So, our first QBE happened on Friday. Friday was the Dia Del Campesina Boliviana here. Campesinos/as are the rural and mountain people of Bolivia. In our area, they are mostly Aymara, and they are the group that the UAC was founded to serve. So, we got up early Friday morning and got dressed in our faculty/staff uniform -- beige button-up shirt, black pants, black shoes -- and rode down the mountain to the village. First, there was a mass, officiated by Padre Emilio, the Vice-Director of the UAC. It was beautiful, especially the music, which was led by a traditional band, complete with the pan pipes! Very cool. We were led to the front of the crowd to a couple of rows of chairs. I kind of felt bad about that at the time, because there were so many others standing, but that was before the parade. Plus, the chairs were in front, facing into the sun at the edge of the roof, so we got quite a bit of sun before mass was over.

After the mass, we all went to the Lower campus to wait for the parade to start, the students in their gray shirts milling about snacking and chatting and having a wonderful time. After a while, everyone began to line up for the parade. We had been waiting in the Guest House, so we didn't see everyone start to leave (note to self: next time, appoint a lookout!), so we had to run to catch up, but we were just in time to march into the covered sports area of the high school all in line, faculty/staff first, then students. There were many bands, schoolchildren decked out in costumes or in their school uniforms, the high school marching band, complete with flags and baton twirlers. It was a very noisy and colorful group! We all stood there for a while and listened to various speeches, plus schoolchildren did some very animated recitations. Fortunately there was abundant shade, due to the new roof over the area. Then, we all marched back out and over to the Lower campus. The bands and schoolchildren marched up to the edge of the village, then turned around and marched back down to the sports area again. Our students lined up by department this time. There was a protracted wait as each group marched proudly past the reviewing stand set up at the stage on one side of the roofed area. We marched through again to loud cheers from the crowd (every group got loud cheers, which was very cool), then we were done. By the time we got home, it was 1:30 or so. We needed cat food and lunch, so we were going to Coroico, but every bus that passed was full. By 3pm, we gave up and decided to feed the cat tuna. Jeff and Delaney had another QBE when they walked down to the village to get a few essentials to tide us over, as they had to visit 4 tiendas (shops) to get what we needed. Also, on the way back up, they stopped and visited Gladys at the coffee plant, where they got us some dried coffee berries to make tea from and helped process some coffee while they had a bit of a tour. In the meantime, a couple of the kioskas (these are little outdoor snack bars here on the Upper campus where you can get a homemade hot meal and sit at a table outside the cook's window to eat) were open by then, so we just ate there. It was a good thing we didn't go to Coroico, because Jeff and Delaney both started to feel a bit unwell and spent the rest of the evening lying down.

Saturday morning, Delaney was still unwell, but Jeff was feeling better, so he and I got up early to catch a bus to Coroico. (If you don't go early, all the buses are full from the village before they ever get to us.) Little did we know we were headed for another QBE. The first bus was full, then the second bus was full as well. The driver stopped and told us (and the 4 students waiting) that there were no more buses in Carmen Pampa. Jeff and I decided to walk up to the intersection with the road to Trinidad Pampa. Buses also run back and forth to TP, so we thought we could catch a bus there. It was a very pleasant 10-minute walk, and when we got there, a couple of campesinos were standing there waiting too. They asked us what we were doing, so we told them what the driver said and they nodded. It's amazing how much communicating you can do with broken Spanish when you have to! About 5 minutes later, an empty bus coming from Coroico and head to TP came by. The men flagged him and explained what was going on. He thought for a moment, then motioned us all to get on, then he turned around and went down the Carmen Pampa road to the UAC! When we got there, the group of students waiting for us had doubled in size. They all climbed aboard, we turned around, and off to Coroico we went with a full bus. I love these people! Can you imagine public transit like that anywhere in the US?

So, Jeff and I did our shopping and decided to take a taxi home. Another QBE!! The taxi costs a little more, but is quicker because they don't make all the stops to fill the seats. AND because the guy drove like a bat out of hell!! He was drifting around the corners, I swear. You have to understand the road to Coroico is like many in the Yungas. It's dirt/gravel, heavily rutted and full of potholes. Plus, it's one lane wide in many places, full of blind corners and crumbling edges that go off the cliff... you get the idea. I just held on and kept thinking that the guy does this every day, makes his living doing it, so he must know what he's doing.I was glad to get home, though. 

I am still uploading pictures, and I will add captions to them as soon as they are all uploaded. Take care all, and peace be with you.

Susan