I HAVE NOT QUIT WRITING-

CHECK BACK AFTER THE 10th of January, I'll be with famiy and traveling until then.

BUT I PROMISE TO COMEBACK AND POST MORE THAN EVER

LOVE

andy

It's finals week, the semester is basically done and I want to reflect on what I think about the school.

I'm done teaching, the semester wasen't easy for me but I made it through and will start summer classes very soon. I have learned a lot from the expirience, I speak better in front of groups (thank god), and I can now empathasize with the teachersI took forgranted my entire education. I continue however to write ilegibly on the blackboard and when I don't break the chalk I make a lot of squeks.



A couple weeks ago I helped interview a student named Monica. She comes from a pretty large campesino family and is the first to attend college, even though she has brothers. Remember this is still a pretty male dominated place. She is studying “rural tourism” which focuses on bringing both national and international tourists away from the big cities and traditional attractions so they can see the campo. They focus on how people live away from metropolitan areas, and on natural beauty that might have been ignored by all but the most adventurous travellers in the past.



THIS IS WHERE HER PHOTO WILL GO ONCE I GET ONE...

Another friend, Fatima who has crept into my posts before before was raised mostly by her brother who is only 2 years her senior. He mother had left the family and her father worked away from home in the mines. Her most prominent adult influences were nuns and missionaries. Today her family has reunited but she hasn’t received any financial support from them to attend college. In a country where the federal govt doesn't asist in student loans this could be a serious problem. She receives scholarships directly from the UAC which cover 100% of her education. She is currently ranked the #1 student here.

I don’t know how many people grasp what these girls really stand for. They are an example of a lot of the fundamental changes taking place in the country today, economic, social, and political ones. Before the 1960’s the campesinos here lived like slaves, in a few months these women will have college degrees and opportunities that were unthinkable in the very recent past. Also they both rose through substantial obstacles to get where they are, hundreds more students here have very similar stories. The UAC-CP isn’t the only place things like this are happening but as far as campesinos are concerned it is a leader. Even though everyone may not see it now I’m sure things like this will be looked back on with great pride by coming generations.

Before I came here I knew the UAC was a place that focused on giving opportunities to those who had been passed up. But after being here this first semester I'm really grasping just how great of an opportunity it is for those Americans who are involved. I have seen a fair number of short term volunteers come and go, and I have spent a lot of time with long term ones. Lives have been changed. Spending time with locals or students is often a profound experience if you eyes are open to it. And it goes way beyond appreciating what you have or feeling guilty about it and wanting to change things - though this is really important too. I don't have anything ground breaking to say, because so many of the beautiful things I have experienced are stereotypes of poor countries. But really, everyone is more personable and inviting and welcoming and usually understanding. The pace of life is slow, often refreshingly, sometimes it goes too far. But no one ever hurts my feelings by saying something harsh (their passiveness might be a big flaw too).

I don't know a lot about development theory but this school obviously creates a lot of good.

A few weeks ago I posted about a clock I bought. I paid 30 B´s or a little under a days wage picking in the fields. I worte about how the cost of some things I would consider necisities is incredible while the value of human labor is low beyond belief. Today I have to recant. My friend was looking at my pics on my blog (she doesn't read English well) and got really excited when the saw HER CLOCK! She asked why it was online and I said I was writing about how I couldn't believe something so important could cost so much. After I told her what I paid she said hers was about 10 B'S. Lately I have been seeing that same clock everywhere like in peoples homes ad street vendors kiosks. Always MUCH cheaper than I paid.

I call it the Gringo Discount. Although it doesn't happen all the time I'm positive it exists. They say wearing a missionaries cross helps. Instead I wear blond hair, a fleece jacket, and a tourist's backback.

When Sam and I went with tourisim students to the nature preserve where they had internships. I found the darndest little card in the kitchen. It was a list of prices for commonly purchased suppliments to the lunch menu, things like designer beer, sodas, and coffee. Every item had three numbers written next to it. Prices for employees, Bolivians, and EXTRANJEROS. The increase wasen't quite geometric, but I have since rethought my wardrobe. Is it really suprising that this practice is so institutionalized? no but I had always just hoped I was imagining things like that.

LOVE

andy

Four of Bolivia's largest western cities, five breathtaking days, and the tale of how one young man learns that nothing good comes without pain. WOAH! that sounds like an epic story. Like the adventure of a lifetime! Like it belongs in a file cabinet in Hollywood labeled "coming of age heartbeakers!" it sounds like the beginning of a mediocre bolg entry with more than a little forced drama.


But it's all true, and if you don't believe me I DARE YOU to read on.



Day 1: At about 3 PM a few dozen college tourisim students, administrators, and teachers board minibuses headed for La Paz. It's a hot day, summer is coming to the valley and when it isn't raining the sun shines like it has ground to make up.


Everyone is loaded down. Most of the crowd aren't expirienced travelers and sit under bulging backpacks with sleeping bags tied to them. The back of the bus is an ocean of baggage with 14 humans treading water. Faces and sometimes shoulders poke up for air but bodies are lost all together.


When they arrive in La Paz it is dark, and the temperature had dropped drastically. Sweaty t-shirts have been covered with winter jackets and llama fur scarves. They wait patiently in the covered bus station eating fried chicken and cold french fries. Tickets are bought and seats are planned on the Flota to Cochabamba. A flota is a two-story coachbus fitted with sealed windows and the ability warp the laws of physics and slow time beyond comprehension. The byproducts of the process are heat, humidity, and odorous clouds - vented directly into the passengers cabin.


They wait a few hours talking and watching muted TVs, their shoulders ache from hunching and their collars moisten from being breathed into. The temperature is around 40º but might aswell be -40º because as it turns these normally sturdy people are only comfortable at exactly 78º anything below that is HACE FRIO.







DAY: 2 At 6:00 AM the next day they climb off the bus to the welcome freshness of early morning. Cochabamba is home to the worlds largest image of christ (40.44 meters tall). Which they visit, after the fortunate discovery of coffee, and climb up from the inside. The Cristo stands on a hill in the center of the city of 1.5 million. From his chest they can see it all opened below them. Cars and people are lost in a wash of adobe colored blocks spattered with glass office buildings.


This city is the home of Chicharone, the fattier parts of a pig fried in oil and served with major league sized (no smaller than human knuckles) corn kernals and potatoes.











They eat sinful quantities. They get as much nutrition as they would from packing peanuts, they REALLY like it.





They spend the rest of the day sleepily enjoying other tourist attractions like an aquarium and BMX biking track. By 10:00 PM they are aboard another Flota heading toward the countries judicial Capital Sucre.

Day 3: At sunrise they awake to their bus stuck in TRAFFIC, a line of Flotas and trucks with a few cars mixed in. BUT WAIT, there is no traffic in Bolivia, most people don't have cars, most don't travel, outside of downtown areas cars just don't spend much time together. They have come to a substantial obstacle on their journey, and one that isn't terribly uncommon DESRUMBE.

There was a road here and it didn't run gently uphill.

The dirt in the western part of the country is sort of rocky, and actually isn't that dirty. It's sort of like XXL gravel mixed with sand. When it rains here the steep hillsides become "geologically unstable" and have the vexatious habit of sliding into lower ground.

Typical of Bolivia the hundreds of trapped travellers are now responsible for getting things cleaned up, at least to the point of usability. But don't fear - they had tools, two pic-axes and a shovel. They didn't clear everything, but over a couple hours and through trial and error (I'll leave the errors to your imagination) they were able to make a path to drive the mostly enormous vehicles over.

They arrive in Sucre in the early afternoon, and head directly to in incredible archaeological site disguised as a theme park PARQUE CREATICO. Greeted by giant colorful dinosaur heads mounted on a stonewall flanking ticket booths, the travellers argue prices for what seems like an excessive amount of time and eventually enter. It's a full 45 min following a tour guide through models of eggs, speakers approximating calls, and life sized statues before the group comes to what looks at first to be the meticulously cut wall of a quarry. The park's closest neighbor is a cement factory, and for years they dug here for their raw materials until someone realized that they were actually uncovering the worlds largest collection of preserved dinosaur tracks. Pressed into what is now nearly a vertical surface there are dozens of complete lines ranging in size from four legged, long necked giants to two legged running things that don't look much different than seriously overgrown leathery chickens.

Next on the agenda was a trip to the city's cemetery. The disparity in housing quality for the dead was about as serious as the disparity in housing that exists for the living here. The rich rest in family tombs built with fine stone stained and glass, like temples of of self worship. The poor are placed in veritable tenements. Single occupancy slots line the four walls of concrete buildings built in tight expansive clusters. Tenements in a beautiful surrounding, but crowded nonetheless.

Day 4: The house was bigger than they expected but let's be serious, it was sort of dubious to think that the whole group could sleep comfortably like that. There is a bed in the boys room, there are also busted up cardboard boxes and some blankets. There were like 12 of them and the fact that no one suffocated is probably eough to be thankful for this holiday season. At an altitude of 13,420 ft Potosí claims to be the highest city on Earth, closing the windows to recycle the air just wasen't that good of an idea.

The city is built at the foot of a mountain named Cerro Rico (rich mountain) that once held enormous amounts of silver. Today after taking 45,000 tons of the precious metal they have to call it Cerro Pobre (poor mountain). Mining is still the most common job here, despite how terribly demanding it is, and how low the pay is. Wikipedia claims 8,000,000 million have died in the mine since it was opened in the 1500's. The workers still make less than 10 Dollars a day.

The group climbs the mountain in a bus. They meet gritty miners their own age. They see real dynamite and smoke powerful hand rolled cigarettes. A few hours later they descend the mountain in a bus, past the miner's houses, past trucks hauling busted up rocks and down toward the plaza. In Latin America the rich live in city centers down low, and the higher you climb above the cities in the outskirts the poorer the people are. Here the miners live the highest where its coldest at night and where they never get out of the sight of the mine entrances that functions like second homes and just maybe as graves as well.

Day 5: at 5 AM the bus pulls into the La Paz bus terminal. Everyone makes their own way home less happy about the trip than they will be in 5 years.

So there it is, despite all the sarcasm it was fun. It was essential for the students, many of whom hadn't been more than a few hundred km from their homes in their lives and will soon work in tourism. For Sam and I it was gruelling but I really connected with some kids on a new level. We ate some new foods, saw beautiful things, and met interesting people. There is just one loose end- the moral, the part where I learn that nothing good comes without pain. Well, let me put it subtly. We ate street vendor food for five days, the bacteria was new, and the bathrooms were rare and crowded. Sitting there in the dark bus crawling across the open countryside one thought more than any other stayed in my head. The Hoover Dam cracking open in slow motion and letting millions of gallons of muddy water flood a picturesque countryside.

I bought a new clock a few days ago at a shop in La Paz. It is a trusty AKITAS model so I didn't mind paying 30 B's for it... By that I mean it is a bottom shelf forgery of an ADIDAS clock and 30B's was the minimum I could get away with paying. At Target (which I hate to admit missing) I would pay about $6 for something like this and I would expect it to break on the drive home. But here it costs around a working class days wage. (I could have spent less on the street but in my experience stuff sold there makes carnival game prizes seem high quality.) It 's interesting what things fall into the ESSENTIALS and the LUXURIES categories here. I suppose it is a function of the value of human labor here, which is low...




I have seen a lot of comically tragic examples of this so far. First, they have carnival rides in some of the parks and tourist spots in urban areas. With rides like mini Ferris Wheels, mini Carousels, or mini Octupus. You might have already guessed why all these things are mini. Because they are moved by hand. Usually skinny high school girl in a baseball hat. It's sort of like the wheel on The Price is Right. She puts her whole body into giving the ride a big push and it does a few rotations before she gives it another. Second the students on campus are required to do a certain number of community service hours every month depending on what kinds of scholarships they get. Everyone has to do at least a few hours a week and with about 700 students it ends up being a lot of labor. The idea is that campus maintenance, new construction, and food production are done by students. But there is more labor than work, on a daily basis there are groups of students cutting open grassy areas with machetes. They usually sit in the sun and chop away at a small section for a few min before they move over several feet. The horses that roam the town chew the grass away with more efficiency but they have less reliable schedules. (In fairness I should say that the few times I have cut grass with a machete it was very exhausting and one can hardly blame the students for their apathy toward the work.) Last, I went bowling a few months ago. It might have been the only bowling alley in La Paz. There were two lanes, more balls than pins, and one happy little man whose job it was to remove and reset the pins and to send the balls back. Although the most important part of his job might have been to dodge the above as they scattered from hard throws.



Sam and I went camping with the tourism students. We went to a nature preserve/hotel that they all had to work at as part of their studies. The place is stocked with animals that are rescued either while being exported or kept illegally as pets in Bolivia. So they aren't all exactly natives to the region but they were still very exotic and very beautiful. Most of them roamed the grounds freely. We were woken up by squawking parrots flying in and out of our shelter and two completely classless monkeys climbing on us and going in our sleeping bags.

Some of the monkeys are known to bite and were tied into the kinds os play areas you see in the zoos but I still got really close to this one.

Here is a goat that isn't his home, it's an oven.

This is one of the monkeys who woke us up. It is doing what monkeys do when you want them to be photogenic, or right before they climb on your face. You shouldn't be suprised to know he pooped on someones sleeping bag.

Thats all I have to say about that.

The Carmen Pampa Fund is sending a shipping container from Wi to Bolivia. Amongst the many things they want is camping equipment. Anything, but especially tents and sleeping bags. If you have QUALITY* used stuff or would like to contribute new stuff please contact me @ andrew.j.engel@gmail.com for details. Or go to http://www.carmenpampafund.org/wish_list.htm

*In the past this container has been used a chance to get rid of junk, please be mindful as recieving garbage from the United States is insulting.

I miss everyone, thanks for your support.

LOVE

andy

This week we celebrated the return of the souls to their homes and to their graves. Like so many things here is was a drawn out event. My festivities went for three days, some people got more out of it. On Saturday I went with Sam and Fatima to her community, Trinidad Pampa. There we made what are called Tantawawas, which is Aymara for breadbabies. They are supposed to be offerings to returning souls. But mostly they end up being given away as gifts to friends relatives and people who come to pray.









We rolled out special dough and cut human shapes from it. We attached synthetic faces (shown on the table) to the bread bodies. The faces were good, some were of cholitas or negritos or even military police. Sam had a Cholita face, so naturally he had to give breasts to his tantawawa, I don't think it was disrespectful until he added nipples.


We went to the cemetery which had been cleaned recently. All the plant growth had been removed, but I think they missed some trash. The cemeteries are interesting. All the graves are in various stages of disintegration, some to the point where you can hardly find them anymore. I heard an interesting anecdote, the quality of the grave is related directly to how guilty the family feels about the loss. Children who were caring in their parents old age might leave a plastic bottle cut in half and fill it with colorful weeds, while a father who feels responsible for his child's death might build a fairly permanent cement tomb, cover it in pink bathroom tile and light a candle on Sundays.









Their idea a of cemetery isn't quit as revernet as I expected from people who wholeheartedly believe souls move amongst us. The group I went with was pretty unconcerned with stepping on buried bodies and even sat on the above ground tombs like they were park benches.








So pictured below is a typical grave during the festival. The families have decorated and brought offerings like coca, breadbabies, beer and bananas. I was invited to sit and pray with some of the people in this cemetary. I didn't know the protocol and made silly mistakes like kneeling down. Despite being awkward it was also a good cultural experience.




There were a lot of people in this cemetary. Including people selling beer and fried chicken. There were a few bands that I think had formed at the last second. But everyone was havng fun and in really good spirits. I haven't been to a lot of cemetaries in the states but I know we don't do anything nearly this cool or happy in them. It's refreshing to see people celebrate their dead like this (although I'm sure a lot of the reason for this fiesta is just to celebrate in general).




Here is a pic of me just outside the cemetary. The mountain behind me is the biggest in my immediate area, it is called Uchumacchi or something close to that. Carmen Pampa is the white stuff to me left in the valley.

Miss you all

LOVE

andy

My posts have been few and far between. I’ll work on that as long as there are a few of you reading them.

I worked a morning in the coffee plant this week. It was interesting but unproductive. Another volunteer Bill and I roasted coffee “the old fashioned way” not quite as old fashioned as I did in the campo but by American standards pretty archaically. Above I am pictured turning a hand crank that rotates a metal sphere filled with coffee beans. The silo has a propane burner inside and as far as I know nothing else. There is no timer or thermometer, and the only temperature control is valve on top of the propane tank. Regardless they still manage to roast some of the better coffee I have had.

The process is usually 45 min. The progress of the beans can be gauged by the color and smell of the smoke. Of which there isn’t any in the picture. In fact we never saw any, and after about 2 hrs of turning the unwilling crank we called it quits with a few pounds of half done beans. There had been a leak in the tank, you could call the flame we had hot but not in front of my poor left forearm.

They also process tea in the facility. They take new bright green leaves and lay them out for a little while. When they are soft you have to tear and mash them up with your hands until you can squeeze juice out of them, a handful takes a min or two. After that they stick them in a bag where I think they ferment for a while before they are dried and turn black. I didn’t do much with them but it was interesting.

There was a big fiesta in Coroico…if you are thinking “isn’t this like the 5th fiesta he has been to” you’re right and there are plenty more on the way. Celebration in Bolivia is completely different than in the US. First of all they party often, and second they have an endurance that leaves this recent college grad (Wisconsin college nonetheless) completely winded. This fiesta started Sunday and went through Wednesday. It entailed heavy dancing, hard drinking, and sleepless nights. Think of the smell, public bathrooms are a rarity and were closed. The most fragrant bodily fluids mixed and pooled between the cobblestones like chains of lakes in the Boundary Waters. I rolled up my pants, tucked in my shoelaces and two-stepped till dawn.

Here is a pic of one of my favorite dances, the Saya. Only afro-bolivianos do it (I mentioned it once before). Instead of the brass bands other groups use the Saya features only drumming. I like the women’s hats, normally Bowler hats like these are the uniform of conservative cholitas, but these women bent the front rim down and proved the rumours that black people are cooler anywhere they go. Some of them have white stuff in their hair. This is paper confetti and all the participants in celebrations and ceremonies from dances to baptisms get it.

One of my friends and students Viviana danced, she let me borrow her hat for this last pic.

Take care, vote early and vote often.

LOVE

andy

I have been gone a while, about three months. If I were studying abroad I would be packing for home soon. But I’m not really on a trip, I am here temporarily yes but not as a tourist. I’m settling into what is a privileged but in many ways normal life in Bolivia. In this blog entry I want to show you more of the things that are normal for me now, which I might have considered ROUGHING IT in that past. - again I’ll stress that I live a very good life here and don’t lack any essentials -


Alwaysd I have cooked on electric stoves, with microwaves, and in George Foreman grills. In Carmen Pampa we use gas and it’s good. It’s fast, it’s east and I get to light a match every time I want to cook something (if you dispute this as a skill try to light one backhand). We boil all the water we drink, and we filter most of it. Once after playing basketball I came into the house SO THIRSTY, and drank a big glass of tap water without thinking. I was ready to induce vomiting when Hugh told me to relax. As it turns out that is as close to throwing up the water has made me.





The following picture speaks for itself. One flush is rarely enough. Even though I’m sure that all the street vendors hide stool softeners in their food.






We have warm showers. Thanks to that white thing which runs on 220v that is mostly contained within it’s plastic shell. If have touched it in the shower and felt what is less of a shock than a slow but certain transfer of energy from it to me. I wear rubber sandals in the shower these days.






We do all our own laundry. I have never worn such stiff socks in my life. No amount of scrubbing or soaking gets the sweaty dust (not fundamentally different from how adobe is made) out of my them. I’m used to it though. The rest of my cloths are okay. Sometimes drying is hard, it rains a lot these days. But never have I appreciated a laundry machine before. And also never have I gotten some much use out of what are and have always been clean cloths.

The next pick sums up the tech difference. Things in many respects are the same, but it still takes me about five min to get my documents double spaced.

LAST OF ALL is a rockin’ pic of us dressed in our morenada costumes, from left to right we are Sam, Bill (volunteer from Berkley Ca), andy, and Don Fico.



When you eat cereal tomorrow morning close your eyes and think about transmitting the taste south east. I read somewhere that if you try to hard if won’t work, so be casual. I’d even appreciate Grapenuts if you could make it happen.

LOVE

andy

Intercarreras was this week. We don't have an equivalent in the US, but we have some similar things. Think of the olympics with twice as many events and half as many competitors. Make the participants put on lip-syncing shows and pop concerts at night. Anytime anyone isn't playing they are expected to be part of a dancing, drumming, chanting, section of supporters. Don't let anyone work all week, and if they get tired give them 3rd world made fireworks to use irresponsibly.

Below is a picture of the carerra I work with the most, Rural Tourism. I think this was during the Group Dance event. They did Bye Bye Bye from N'sync, which isn't unpopular here. In the background of this picture is the word TOURISMO written in flaming rags.

There was a Basketball tournament that I had to ref, which I have never done before. It lasted about 12 hours. I worked with a German kid who lives with the priests in Coroico, that was pretty interesting. It turned out he spoke good English, but at first I thought it was cool to be talking to him when we were both using our second languages.

The closing event was big group dances, and it included one done by administrators. We danced the Morenada, which I don't have a picture of. The costume I had to wear was heavy but really ornate and cool. It rained all morning and we danced on the soccer field. It was all mud, it was deep, and it was cold. It was a blast, but I don't think many people besides me appreciated it.

Take care everyone,

LOVE

andy

I have been in La Paz, working on getting my visa. I am trying to get permission to stay for one year, it isn't terribly hard but there are a lot or small tasks I need to complete. Naturally everything is in Spanish. If I were a more optomistic person I would think of it as a good way to measure of how far I have come. I think it's bullshit.

A cute anecdote. Some of us volunteers go about 6 weeks ago to the immigration office to get our 30 day visas extended, to start the process of temporary residency. The man we are sent to gives a slick little 90 day stamp and says come back in three months no más. When we come back three months later they tell us the stamp actually means nothing and that we have been living illegally for the last 40ish days. But fear not, Bolivia doesn't punish people like us with prison time or exportation, we just get to pay a muelta that would starve the family of a coca picker, no ves.

Aside from this things are cool. Driving home from La Paz we pass through a beautiful part of the country that I think is called La Cumbre. I haven't yet posted pics of it so they follow.

This rugged terrain transitions into lush mountain forests as one descends in altitude. It is usually cloudy, which I think casts a fitting gloom over what I can't see as anything but a wasteland. I think people grow tubers here and raise Llamas aswell. I have seen Llamas a few times, they look like people who have been camping. People who don't like camping, who don't know much about it. They have sticks in their hair, they are dirty, they haven't slept. They need a strong cup of coffee and a hairbrush.

This sign says that 43 people have died on this road this year, be careful and use your headlights. It is scary, narrow with a lot of blind turns. I haven't been in an accident but I could see how it would happen. We took "the worlds most dangerious road" (not associated with the above sign) back to Coroico today. Normally we take a newer, marginally safer road. It comes at the cost of the kind of beauty that makes a person believe in God. There are water falls we drove under, many times the bus was what felt like a foot from a verticle rock wall on one side and a cliff on the other.

Sam's birthday was this week, some of our students from tourism threw him a party. They cooked chicken in an outdoor oven, baked a cake, and sang. They had this thing where they carried Sam to a water faucet and soaked him, they dropped him once he got wet. Then they did the same to everyone in attendence, minus being dropped.

This is a picture of all of us. They will graduate at the end of the year, I'll be sad to see them go as many our close friends of ours.

The kid who threw the party, Gabriel, is pictured with me. He is good at English and funny. He always uses phrases he doesn't quite understand, "you are pulling my leg" is his favorite in all situations. We are in his chicken coop. He says he has 201, I might believe him. They will be ready for market in a month or two. I held one that was just big enough to be ugly.

I included this last pic for the sake of a good friend who I thought would get a kick out of it. Think of me driving it home. North all the way through the the Amazon and Bolivars through the Daryan Gap and up the west coast of Mexico. Then it would break down somewhere in Colorado and I would have to sell it to lucky hippies to get busfare home.

There are a lot of cool cars here. Many old ones, including basically original VW Beetles that were built through '03. The cars cost about the same here as in the states, so most people don't have them. Gas is cheaper, I don't remember exactly how much, maybe 1/2 the cost. Still expensive to most Bolivians.

Life is good here, I have been working hard and feeling alright about what I do. Take care, pass on my regards, say something negative about Sarah Palin at work.

LOVE

andy

When taking a new path with our friend Fatima to her home in nearby Trinidad Pampa we met the man pictured above. The path actually took us through his yard where he was working when we passed. As we approched he asked if we were Americans. I was kind of nervous because we were sort of far away from anything and I have been told that lone gringos have dissappeared in the past (realistically there wasen't anything to worry about). Anyway Sam says he saw him smiling, and when we answered yes we were Americans he got REALLY happy. He said, "you must have a camera" which I did, and he had me photograph him infront of his house. This was bizzare because usually campesinos of his age don't like cameras at all.


He was drying coffee when we arrived. He took us over to see it, and as it turns out he sells it to the processing facuility on campus.


He was barefoot and it looked like his feet were tougher than most of the shoes I brought down here. A lot of the campesinos and children go barefoot, when people do wear shoes they usually don't ammount to much. But they can play sports really well in whatever flimsy peice of discarded tire tred they are wearing.

We went to Coripata, where the big attraction is the artificial soccer turf. Fatima said that more professional soccer players come from this city than any other place in Bolivia.





Obviously they live in a soccer culture. This sign says it is prohibited to urinate, presumably in the streets.



My friend Tanya says that everytime you go to a new country one of the first things you should do is go to a cemetary. We went to one on Saturday and it was good. They let everything get overgrown all year and then around All Saints Day they clean everything and throw a big party amongst their departed family and friends.





I liked this mausoleum, there was like a little street lined with these. I felt sort of like I was shopping because there were so many brightly colored trinkets behind glass all around me.

One of the many tourist destinations near Coroico are the Vagantes which is a part of a river that forms pools to swim in and a little waterfall. We hiked there, 7k each way, coming back was all up. We passed this church along the way. I like the horse on the side, he looks like the other animals here, droopy and grey.

Most of the churches in small communities look like this. They are very simple, both inside and out, and they are in every town.

Here is a bridge we crossed along the way. Typical of small footbridges, it is made of logs covered with dirt and rocks, naturally there is no hand rail.

Personal Safety is not quite a priority here. It shouldn't be suprising to know that the transportation doesn't have seatbelts.

Buildings, including our house, have exposed 220V wires, another vlunteer touched some because they were hanging right wher a light switch should be. She's okay.

Once the computer lab was locked and we didn't have a key. So a student climbed outside the building on the 2nd story and went in through an open window.

I raked my knuckles one of my frist days here when I was working wth the IT guy, tearing the grounds out of powerstrips by bashing them against the corner of a table.

I'm still happy, take care everyone.

LOVE

andy

Bolivia is an exciting place to live right now, probably in the worst sense of the word. Thirty people were killed in the perfecture of Pando when a goup of MAS supporters (current govt, "movement towards socialisim") traveling through the countryside toward a meeting met a road block with armed guards from the opposition supporters. Airports in major cities in the east have been shut down by road blocks and there have been riots in many urban areas including La Paz.

Explaining the roots of the tensions is both too immense a task and not the nature of this blog so I will just say that this is another chapter in a battle that has been going on in Bolivia for decades. Between the political and economic elites and the poor. Here the term "rich" or "elite" is synonomous with european blood and often localized in the east of the country. The poor are indians and a majority, they are generally leery about neoliberal economic policy and are currently pushing hard to nationalize the oil and gas industries (don't worry these are based in the east too). Carmen Pampa is far from the action, and amazingly unpolitical for a Latin American college. I'm not immediately concerned for my safety.



Aside from the above things have been nice here. I got some grades in for the first 3rd of our semester, and I still enjoy teaching. I went with a few students and Sam to a nearby community to see coffee production in the countryside. We walked on a mountain path which was sometimes rugged, as pictured below, but mostly low key. There were a lot of these really interesting plants called "corta cortas" (cut cuts) that have serrated leaves which grab hold of your cloths and can actually draw blood, trust me. Also we saw some orchids and a lot of ants. The kind of ants you think about as a cover story for National Geographic. The kind that cut big sections of leaves to carry home to their nests. They make tidy little lines across the footpath. Like dozens of little green flags that collapse into gridlock dissarray when you disrupt their flow. Some were really fast and bite hard. The students say they are angry because all they do is eat Coca all day. Also we saw a few trees that belong in a fantasy movie. Pictured above, they are covered in freocious spikes and seemed to be placed conviniently where one would need something to hold on to.



Speaking of Coca, we walked past a lot of fields with workers in them. We knew a couple of the pickers as students from the school, they let Sam and I try our dexterity and pull a few handfuls of leave off. The workers earn about 30B's a day, for 8 hours of work. That's a little over $4, this is the standard pay rate for manual labor. They were as hunched over as they look, after about five min I was ready for an asprine. VERY TOUGH PEOPLE.



We rested along the way in a "carpa" used by field workers during the heat of the day to have lunch in and relax out of the sun. Sitting there in the shade eating fresh oranges looking out on what would be national park quality mountains in the US, I felt as much at peace with my self as I can remember. The following is a crude picture of heaven captured with a 7 megapixle point and shoot camera. Think cool breezes, fresh air, and gracious company.


When we reached our destination there were already dired and husked beans waiting. Normally After picking coffee berries they need to be seperated from the "fruit", washed, and dried in the sun for a while. I get different drying times from everyone I talk to, somewhere between 2 days and a week depending on the weather. Anyway, we put the beans in simple clay pots and cooked them over an open fire. We stirred them frantically with palm branches. When they were close to being ready they made a fantastic ammount of smoke.


After they were roasted we crushed the beans on a flat rock with an oblong stone shaped for grinding. It wasen't easy, it would have deterred me from drinking coffee if it were part of the routine in the states.

I miss everyone back stateside but there is no cure for homesickness like heartbreaking natural beauty and a taste of a simpler life.

LOVE

andy