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