Fotos: La primera mes

Cochabamba Airport. We were met by a group of raucous PCVs, holding signs and cheering for us. Later, I overheard one PCV say to another, ¨Ah, I remember the day we arrived, smelling like fear and soap.¨

Nuestra casa. Donde viven los Omonte, my middle-class host family.

Hermanito. Me and Ronaldo, my little brother. He has enough energy to power a spaceship. It was very difficult to get him to hold still for five seconds so I could take this photo.

Arco iris. Somewhere over the rainbow, way down in Bolivia...

P-dub. Fellow Field Day Family Farmers will surely recognize this planta mala: Amaranth, in the U.S. commonly known as pigweed. Yes, to my delight, it grows here in Bolivia too.

Vacas y montañas. Bolivia is insanely gorgeous.

A bunch of PCTs jumping. I don´t know why we jumped. It just felt right.

El huerto. With fellow gardeners Lebo and Marlise. We made a fence out of corn stalks. Its purpose is purely symbolic.

Tipitop. We learned how to make soap holders out of two-liter bottles, which involves making rope out of the plastic label. Not exactly the most useful skill, but at least I can make rope.

Me and a parrot kissing. My options for romantic interest are limited here in Bolivia. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Beekeepers. That´s me on the left with the orange gloves. I´m holding a ¨smoker,¨which (as you might guess) sends out puffs of smoke. The smoke calms the bees down. Cool.

¡Por fin, Domingo!

A moment to breathe. Whew! Another week of intensive training has come and gone. The furious pace of training (not to mention the altitude) makes it necessary to stop and catch one´s breath.


First, a political update: Umm, I have nothing new to report, really. The tension seems to have relaxed a bit, as spying suspicions have yielded to concern over the horrific floods in Beni (although this morning, during a taxi ride to the internet café, I heard a man on the radio blaming the flooding on the imperialist USA, since we are the primary impetus behind global climate change, which in turn sparks severe weather events. The guy had a point, but I had to laugh... everything, it seems, is our fault.) It is unclear whether there will be any further political implications from the ¨spying incident,¨ but I am not too worried about that. Rather, I think the biggest challenge will be overcoming suspicion in the campo, suspicion which certainly was already present but will likely be compounded by these events. I suppose I ought to just consider it a healthy challenge!


Honestly, however, we have been so busy that there has been little time to worry about politics. The host of activities includes, for Ag. volunteers, planting gardens: I have been working with two other trainees this week, preparing the soil for our huerto. Our instructors informed us that finding tools and fertilizer would be our responsibility; so, armed with an empty wheelbarrow and our trademark gringo optimism, we tried three different houses before finding someone who could spare us some caca de vaca. We added the manure, and some sand, to the soil and broke up a 30 square meter plot with shovels (A lot more difficult than it sounds, especially for someone used to a handy roto-tiller!). Yesterday, we transplanted some sorry-looking seedlings provided us by PC staff: Beets, onions, broccoli and lettuce (the latter looked particularly pathetic). I felt like Charlie Brown (it´s not such a bad tree, after all)... keep your fingers crossed!


In other news, I am now doing my laundry by hand. Wendell Berry writes with nostalgia about the pre-washing machine era, in which housewives had more dignity because of the honor inherent in washing clothes by hand. I don´t know if I totally subscribe to that theory, but I must say that I have a healthy respect for Bolivian women, who in many ways are the leaders of the household.


I am trying, so far without success, to post a few pictures on this blog. Unfortunately the service at these internet cafés is very slow. Oh well, I didn´t come to Bolivia for its cutting-edge technology! I will keep trying -- until then, you´ll just have to use your imaginations.

Sorry if the last post seemed a little negative. A friend and former PCV once counseled me never to send a letter the day I write it -- rather, I ought to give myself time to cool down, and reflect on what was written the next day. I was upset about what happened, but there is not much I can do about it. Sometimes it´s important to keep the Serenity Prayer in mind.

I´m still having a great time. More soon.

No Somos Espias

So you may have heard about the recent scandal with PC Bolivia. If not, I´ll fill you in quickly: A Fulbright Scholar studying in Bolivia reported to the press that an official at the American Embassy had instructed him to report information about Cuban and Venezuelan doctors and their activities in Bolivia (asked him to spy, more or less). It was then revealed that this same official had instructed 30 Peace Corps Volunteers to do likewise at their swearing-in ceremony -- a Peace Corps director was present, and interrupted the official to contradict what he had said. Peace Corps is supposed to be apolitical and PCVs are never supposed to be associated with this kind of work. Word is that the embassy guy is going to lose his job. Nonetheless, Evo Morales, Bolivia´s president, gave a speech yesterday in which he condemned the official and seemed to suggest that Americans in Bolivia were spies.

First, I just want to assure everyone that I am safe.

Second, I am furious about all this. The possibility of the government having ulterior motives with PC was something I thought seriously about before deciding to join. Obviously, I have no interest in participating in any intelligence-gathering activities, directly or indirectly.

I have gotten to know many of Peace Corps/Bolivia´s employees, both North Americans and Bolivians, and I trust them. I trust Peace Corps, moreover, and believe that its motives and our work is positive and worthwhile. If I did not, I would not be here represting the organization and, for better or worse, the USA. But when we get this kind of publicity it reflects horribly on us in the minds of Bolivians, whose trust and friendship we must gain if anything positive is to be accomplished. So I´m pissed off, at the US Embassy official, and at his superiors for not firing his ass after the first incident.

Hopefully this will just blow over... that depends, of course, on whether the US government´s agents of foreign policy can still remember how to issue a sincere apology. One is certainly in order.

Other than that, it´s a beautiful day in Cochabamba.

More soon, after (hopefully) this embarrassing incident has been resolved. Peace.

Bienvenidos a Entrenamiento

Entonces...

We´re about two weeks into this thing, and a routine is gradually starting to materialize. On Saturday our group of 31 (32 originally, but one girl decided she wasn´t getting on the plane from D.C.) moved in with our host families, with whom we will live during these 11 weeks of training.

My family, los Omonte, has given quarter to many trainees in the past, so having a gringo around is old news for them. By our standards, it´s a pretty good size family: There´s the grandmother, Doña Cristina, who speaks only Quechua; Don Orlando y Doña Maria, the parents; and the four boys, Jhonny, Orlando, Denis y Ronaldo, ranging from age 11 to 22. The house is not exactly what I was expecting: The family has two cars, a relatively large house, nice furniture, flush toilets, semi-hot showers, a computer, and, alas, a TV. I had not been there five minutes when one of my brothers invited me in the house to watch tele. I was thinking, ¨I didn´t have to travel 5000 miles for this...¨But actually, the tele helps to break the occasional lull in conversation. The TV is filled with American shows. The brothers love ¨Los Simpson,¨¨Prison Break¨and, Anna´s favorite, ¨Smallville.¨ Oh well, at least there´s no Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

All of us gringos (rich Americans) live within a couple kilometers of one another, in a neighborhood the name of which I can´t divulge for security reasons (yeah, seriously, it´s a rule). We generally live in the nicer houses, but there is poverty here, too. The neighborhood is not far from Cochabamba, and there´s plenty of cheap public transportation to and from the city. I´m getting the hang of it; our general schedule is starting to fall into place, too, now that Carnaval is over. We have four hours of language classes, five days a week, plus plenty of technical training and, perhaps the most tiresome part, abstract job strategy. Yesterday we sat through 3 hours of extremely general volunteer theory. The only comparison I can think to make is with the movie Office Space: ¨Remember to ask yourself, with every decision you make, is this good for the company?¨ Plus the Peace Corps is as enamored with acronyms as they are with pamphlets. Here´s a brief, by no means comprehensive, sample:

PCT/V = peace corps trainee/volunteer
PDA = participatory diagnostic assessment
RVD = role of the volunteer in development
FREEHOP = Family, religion, economics, education, health, organizations, politics
NFE = non-formal education
PACA = participatory analysis for community action
SWOT = strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats
ET = early termination
COS = close of service


...and those are just the ones I can remember offhand. Although it can seem like repetition of common-sense stuff, I understand PC´s reasoning behind stressing the development strategies so heavily: A volunteer´s approach really is everything. If you adopt the wrong kind of attitude -- whether too authoritative or timid, condescending or acquiescent -- your community will not trust you, and thus nothing will get done. So, it seems, the Lumbergh approach has a point. And I really like the technical classes in agriculture, which began this afternoon. They were asking questions about transplanting seedlings today and asked us whether carrots ought to be transplanted or directly seeded. I raised my hand and confidently stated that they ought to be direct-seeded, along with most other root crops, because they don´t like to be disturbed. Ivor would have been so proud.

The experience has not been without its hiccups, of course. On tuesday, the last night of Carnaval, there was a fiesta at the house, with food and plenty of alcohol. Among the guests were a cousin of Don Orlando and his wife, both of whom were extremely drunk. The guy insisted, so I had a toast or two with them (the custom is to pour a little cerveza onto the ground for pachamama, or mother earth, before drinking). The guy, who turned out to be a police captain, began grilling me about why I was there, asking how much I was paid, and demonstrating his lack of trust in Americans and in Peace Corps. From what I could make out between my poor Spanish and his drunkenness, he suspects PC is a US government conspiracy designed somehow to subvert Bolivian interests and exploit Bolivians. The conversation was frustrating, not because I was offended (I had considered the same possibility before deciding to join) but because my understanding of the language wasn´t quite good enough to understand him and make the case on behalf of PC, and also because he was trashed and kept asking the same questions and calling me Alejandro. Just as he was really starting to heat up, by flat out telling me he didn´t trust me (less than 2 minutes after sharing a toast with me and saying I was like a son to him), my brother Jhonny came out and told me there was a phone call for me. I excused myself and went inside -- the brothers had invented the phone call as an excuse to help me escape. It was a simple thing, but a hell of a nice gesture.

So things are really starting to pick up here, and I´m feeling a bit overwhelmed by all of the projects they are assigning to us during training... but again, the plan is just to relax and do my best, and hopefuly all will fall into place. I´m being heckled by the owner of the internet cafe that my time has expired, so that´s all for now. More soon.

Go Cards, go Obama.

La Primera Semana

Amigos y familia,

Greetings from the Southern hemisphere.
Nearly a week has gone by since I left Louisville, and the first days have basically been training for training. We spent three days in Washington, basically getting to know one another -- the activities were a bit tortuous, but it was great to meet my fellow trainees, who are amazing. They are all intelligent, motivated, well-traveled, experienced, and genuine. It was truly a relief to finally meet people who are going through the same crazy emotions and experiences.
We flew on Tuesday to Miami, then took a 6-hour flight to La Paz. (Ratatouille was playing on the plane, but I slept through it.) At 13,000 feet, the air in La Paz is almost nonexistent. My head immediately started pounding, I felt dizzy, I was seeing purple spots; meanwhile, since our plane had arrived late, the PC official who met us in La Paz was emphatically trying to herd us onto the next flight, a short trip to Cochabamba, our training site.
Still dazed, I exited the plane in Cochabamba, at a more manageable 8,000 feet. It was a beautiful day (like every day here): Warm, sunny, like the best spring days in Louisville. To our surprise, our group was met with a chorus of raucous cheers and handmade ¨Peace Corps¨ signs -- about 20 current PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) had come to the Cochabamba airport to welcome us to Bolivia. It was the best welcome I can remember, and the best start to these next two years I could have asked for. Spending time with current PCVs is really exciting and encouraging: They all seem confident, knowledgeable, and at home here in Bolivia. (For those who went to Guatemala with me, they remind me of Mateo.) I want to be just like them.
We have been staying at a very nice hotel in Cochabamba: Here, and all over Latin America, the Carnaval festival is beginning. It´s a pre-Lenten weeklong fiesta, much like Mardi Gras. Apparently, one of the traditions during Carnaval is to throw water balloons at passersby: As you might guess, gringos are prime targets. We must constantly be on guard when we go out for dinner -- especially because some of the balloons are rumored to be filled with piss and/or ink (miracle elixir, indeed).
We spend our days at the PC training center nearby. There, as in Washington, we have to sit through interminable orientation sessions -- and they refuse to desist from giving us pamphlets. Peace Corps is obsessed with pamphlets. I must have fifty of them. Pamphlets aside, the training center is excellent. I was expecting a sterile office building, but it´s actually an authentic compound: Adobe, plenty of grass, vegetable gardens, fish ponds -- and, of course, an intimidating line of glass shards protruding from the top of the outside walls to keep out intruders.
So far, I have received three shots (yellow fever, hep A and B), with several more to come; begun classes for Spanish and job training; and learned to use a latrine. Amazing things, these latrines! You should all try it. I´m going to build one in my parents´ back yard when I come home.
Tomorrow each Trainee moves in with his/her host family: The families will house and feed us during the 3 months of training, before we are assigned to our sites and new families. Since my Spanish is conversational but not fluent, I´m a bit nervous about this transition; but I´m really excited, too. For the next three months, we take Spanish classes 4 hours a day, 5 days a week; we will also be receiving training for our agriculture projects, and culture, health and safety training. The nature of my project is still ambiguous, and depends greatly on the location to which I am assigned. I´ll keep you posted.
It´s a lot to take in at one time. But my intuition tells me everything will be fine. Let´s hope my gastrointestinal system agrees.
I want to share one more thing with you before I wrap things up. As I mentioned, I slept during most of the flight to La Paz. When I woke up, about a half-hour before we landed, the sun had begun to rise amid the sea of clouds. In my delirious half-awake state, I fumbled around for my journal and wrote this, the first of what I hope will be many entries:

January 30, 2008
30,000 feet, just before 6 a.m.:

I shake myself from a restive, turbulent sleep, open my eyes. My contact lenses have dried, and so I have to blink continuously until the moisture returns.
Looking out the window, the plane´s wing is pointing toward the future: Out across the turbid yellow-gray horizon, the sun is rising over South America, my home for the next two years.
It is a good welcome. Quiet, hopeful.

Love you guys. More soon.

Paz,
Andrew