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