Back in Bolivia: Photos

Gringo in Bolivia. I took this same photo a year ago when my hair was much shorter and I was a whole lot more naive. Good to be back in Sopachuy, I love that town.

Andrew.

Cloud Forest, Samaipata.
What the difference is between a cloud forest and a rain forest I don´t know but I could probably come up with a dumbass answer real quick. Or you could check Wikipedia. Go ahead, do it.
If not it will bug you all day.

Dan.

Dan at campfire.

Incan ruins at Samaipata.

Mi ahijado (godson) Antonio in Sucre. (Sucre, by the way, was a general in Bolivia´s war of independence, and his name was also Antonio.)

Dan and my comadre (mother of my godson) Roxana sippin´ juice.

Imitating the Rio de Janeiro Jesus statue.
It was Dan´s idea.

Don Tomas and his kid in Sopachuy.

Very dusty and therefore hazy, eerie day atop the mountain in Sopachuy.

Me, Elena, Jose Luis, lil Daniela, Valentina, and Dan.

Uyuni Salt Flats for a 3 day tour. They harvest it and it keeps coming back.

Tour guide decided to take a shortcut through the mud field.
Hey, good idea, tour guide.

...Stuck in the middle of the f------ desert, where it gets down to about zero farenheit at night,
no radio.
Driver went to get help, we stayed put cursing his dumb ass out.
And, naturally, hoping we would live to see another day.

Luckily another tour guide came to our rescue, and he immediately got stuck too. We hiked back to a nearby hotel (45 minute walk, after dark, freezing winds, about 15 farenheit) while the drivers stayed working on getting the SUVs out all night long (much more hardcore than us). They succeeded at about 4 a.m. the next morning.

Tour Day 2. Stuck again. In the sand this time, more easily fixed, 20 minutes.
I swear it must have been this guy´s first time leading a tour.
I think I could have done a better job myself and I can´t even drive a stick.

Me and mountain.

Untouched country except for the SUV tracks. And you might think, ¨oh, well, what a shame to have messed up the beauty of nature with those SUV tracks.¨ But of course the other option is having all of this beauty go to waste by not being shared with human beings.

Dan is eating.

At Uyuni it is very easy to be a good photographer.

Dan at the Laguna Colorada. If you go during the daytime it looks all red because of the algae that swim on the surface. ¨But don´t take my word for it! It´s in a book, on Reading Rainbow...¨

Sunset. But you already knew that just from looking at the picture. How? How did you know it wasn´t a sunrise? Why do they look different from one another? Can I get a scientist up in here?

Me, far away, in a big white salt desert.

...Corps.

Sunrise. But, you knew that, didn´t you?
Or did you?

Alpacas.

Very hot water. Smells like rotten eggs (sulfur).

3 days without a shower and then I bathed in my underwear in the thermal pool. It felt great but my underwear was frozen 10 minutes after getting out.

The Takesi Trail, part of the Inca Trail. Translated in Quechua, takesi apparently means ¨suffering.¨ We suffered a bit on the trail for sure.

Yours. Truly. Admit it, you didn´t know that was a sunrise in the other photo. I´m just crazy. Oh well, I guess that´s what spending two years in solitude trying to be a hero keeping bees in the third world will do to you. Cheers!

I mean it´s not Everest but it´s some pretty sweet sh%t.

Lots of reflective lakes around these parts.

I promise not to make any baaaaad jokes about this photo.

We were much higher up than that dam, as you can see.

Dan and I weren´t exactly in our right minds but this seemed at the time to be the best lunch we had ever had.

...And the next day you´re in the jungle, having descended some 2,000 meters. That reminds me, did you check and find out what the difference between a cloud forest and a rain forest is?
Can you e-mail me and let me know? I don´t like Wikipedia.

My poor foot after all that hiking. Dan had waterproof shoes.

Lake Titicaca.

That is a dumb name for a boat.
Whoever gave that boat that name is asking for trouble.

Dan in front of Lake Titicaca.

La Paz, 3,600 meters. I don´t know how many feet that is but it´s a lot.

Back in the P-guay, my winter garden. Lots of lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, beets, cabbage, and kale

Might just look like grass to you, but this is the latest in organic agriculture! A field of black oats for soil coverage (see explanation in post below).

Mom´s resting after the first two came out. Two more were left to go.

¡Viva Paraguay! The annual festival in Altos, my neighboring town. Lots of flags and drums.




Cool! Hope everyone is doing well. Peace...

Back to Bolivia and Life in the Campo

Almost a year after our sudden evacuation from Bolivia, I returned to visit my highland home in July with Dan, a fellow Paraguayan PCV. Beginning with a 23-hour bus ride from Asuncion to Santa Cruz (we whiled away the hours reading, sleeping and watching a showing of "The Jackal" in Spanish), we spent three weeks making our way northwest by bus. We spent a few days in my ex-site Sopachuy, of course, and I explained to many of my old pals what I couldn't in the two hours I had on September 11, 2008 to pack my things and bounce: That Peace Corps had been evacuated from Bolivia, I had been living for the past 10 months in Paraguay, and yes, it is very hot there. We were furnished beds and blankets at the Cooperativa San Jose Obrero, ate meals with my friend Valentina and made a bonfire with my old buddies Jorge and Marcelino. I had been nervous about visiting Sopachuy again, because of the sudden way things went down last year, but I found my pueblo and its people as inviting and generous as ever. The beekeeping group, unfortunately, is in rather dire straits because of the departure of its leadership, myself and the Association's president and best beekeeper, Don Valerio, who left to work in Argentina. The group, whose development spanned the service of 3 volunteers over almost 4 years, was relatively strong during my time there, and the goal during my two years had been to leave the group in a state of self-sufficiency (not in need of a PCV's services for training, organization and marketing). In 4 1/2 months, I did not get this done. But the hives are still there in the apiary, the bees are working as diligently as ever, and despite the group's setbacks I still feel that more good than harm was done by Peace Corps in Sopachuy. So that's enough, I guess. I left Sopachuy promising I'd be back again after I finish my service next April. (! Can you believe that?)

It was all tourism from there: We visited the gorgeous Salaar Uyuni, a 12,000 square kilometer salt flat, a seemingly endless white desert, so bright that you must wear sunglasses during the day so as not to scorch your eyes. Then we bussed up to La Paz, hiked through the Takesi Trail (part of the pre-Colombian Inca Trail which curves fearlessly through the Andes), and visited the famous Lake Titicaca. By the end of the three weeks we had spanned the diagonal length of Bolivia, which is the size of Texas and California combined. We left tired, content and with our spirits filled by that beautiful place. (Dan also left with giardia, in retrospect we probably ought not to have drunk that river water when we were camping, but no pain, no gain...)

Now it's back to Paraguay, and back to work. The youth group I'm working with will hopefully soon receive classes in carpentry and ironworking from the Nacional Professional Promotion Service; our modest beekeeping association continues to press ahead; and with my host brother Fernando and an agricultural engineer from the Ministry we are currently planning a series of workshops on sustainable agriculture: In Paraguay that means not burning your fields, when possible not using chemicals, applying natural pesticides, diversification, contour planting, and green manures. When my folks visited in June they helped Don Valerio and me to plant about 1/4 hectare of black oats (for coverage) and lupino (for nitrogen), and when the weather heats up we'll plant another green manure called mucuna. The basic idea: you plant beneficial crops (legumes which add nitrogen to the soil, fast-growing grasses for soil coverage to prevent erosion and maintain moisture and add organic matter) to naturally and permanently improve the quality of your soil, rather than the common practice of heavy tillage, burning, monoculture and purchasing lots of expensive chemicals which must be applied year after year. We are planning the workshops for the end of October, and my personal goal is an audience of 15-20 farmers and as much local leadership as possible. Since I am neither an agricultural engineer nor Paraguayan, my words will have less impact than a local farmer's: I just want to set up the workshops and when the time comes, step aside and let the Paraguayans take over. I'll let you know how it works!

And the pictures?????

Soon, I promise, I brought my camera with me to town but stupidly left the USB card reader in site.

Enjoy the last heat of August and best of luck to all in the back-to-school craziness. And GO ROCKS!

A few new photos from the Paraguayan countryside

"Fishing" with my friends Hugo and Fernando. We armed our bamboo sticks with fishing line and hooks, and walked for two hours to a supposed prime fishing spot. Turns out the stream had dried up and there was virtually no water, let alone fish. Paraguay is also in the middle of a devastating drought, and in my community no one can plant anything now.

A summer camp we planned with other PCVs around my area. It was an environment-themed camp with games and activities about reforestation and trash management. Fun.

Former Bolivia PCV Helen came to visit me in site, and brought along Kelley. I'm the ridiculous-looking hippie sitting next to the gorgeous brunette. Host brother Fernando is not as isolated as he seems in the picture, we were talking in Spanish all night, I promise. But his English is also pretty good, a rarity around here.

Making chipa, the famous Paraguayan cheesy cornmeal bread, with Don Valerio. A tradition during Holy Week. We made like 200 chipas, and ate virtually nothing else for 4 days. If that sounds rough, you haven't tried chipa. It's awesome.

First batch of the finished product cooked in the brick oven tatakua (Guarani, "fire hole.")

Killed my first chicken. This blog is slowly becoming filled with my various animal assassinations. I actually enjoyed it. I agree with Michael Pollan that, if you're gonna eat meat, participating in the killing of the animal is an essential part of the process. The dog, Cien, is hungry.

My pad. In Bolivia some PCVs were planning a "Peace Corps Cribs" video (for you geezers, Cribs is an MTV show which explores the gratuitous and disgusting wealth of pop culture icons. "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous"-esque). The PCV equivalent would be rather humorous -- if you can't tell in the photo, my house is itty-bitty, about the size of the "family room" in our house in Louisville. It's cozy. I store my bike right next to the toilet.

Peace!

Bees and Thinking Small

Happy Easter to all. It has been quite a while since I've updated this sucker, so let me fill you in on recent happenings in my corner of Paraguay.

Well, come to think of it, not a lot is happening now! We have just finished Holy Week, which is a time to rest and be with family. My host brother Fernando, who left site a few months ago to go work elsewhere, came to visit for the week, which was great. In my first few months in site here I really depended on him to help me get to know the community, introducing me to folks and showing me around, and it was tough for me when he left because he and I are not just work partners but close friends.

In terms of work, things continue to develop, (as always) slowly but surely. The tree project we were planning with Fernando has been put on hold for many reasons, and I am recently focusing more on beekeeping. I am working with a few local beekeepers, and also with a farmers' committee whose members recently collaborated to buy a new bee box. I have about a year left in service, which I hope will be enough time for us to learn the essentials of beekeeping by going through a full season, keeping the colonies healthy during the winter and (hopefully) harvesting around October/November. The group of 10-15 members currently has three colonies, which is obviously not much, but the idea is that, by dividing strong colonies and capturing other wild hives, and purchasing boxes with proceeds from future honey harvests, the group can build up a larger number of strong colonies over time. I suggested to the group the possibility of using Kenya Top Bar Hives, a low-cost technology that can be mostly constructed from local materials and an alternative to the expensive and complicated "modern hive," but the members are not, at least for the moment, interested.

Working with this beekeeping group is very different from the group I worked with in Bolivia, which had an 18-hive apiary, centrifuge, jars and labels, all purchased with Peace Corps funds. When I got to Sopachuy in Bolivia, that project was already 3 years old and there was still lots of work to do to make it sustainable (who knows if we might have succeeded). Here in my site in Paraguay we are starting small, with a small number of farmers who are collaborating their own money for the project. From my end I am working with the group just providing training, not (at least for now) money. Because of the unique nature of my service, I have very little time (only a year left in site) to work, and am not certain if I will be followed in site by another PCV. I therefore do not want to start any project that is so big that I will not be able to see it through to completion, or at least to a stage where it is relatively self-sustaining. So I am thinking small, a few farmers, a few colonies. It would be a shame to ask for and receive lots of money from PC, the government or an NGO for a big project when, in fact, there might not be enough time and/or genuine interest to make the project succeed. So we are just focusing on learning the basics of beekeeping with those who are interested.

Development work is complicated. As many Volunteers learn, you don't just go to the 3rd world and "help." Conversely, you can't just send money from the states to "help," without responsibly researching your charity of choice to find out exactly what kind of program you are supporting.

Okay, this post is getting a little long, so let me just say that I am doing well, have lots of friends in site and other PCV friends as well, and am smack in the middle of one hell of a journey. More on the personal aspects of PC life, and hopefully an update on a planned fish-farming project, next time. Sorry for taking so long to post this entry.

Peace.