Declaración de Compromiso

Before swearing in, each trainee has to write a commitment statement and present it before the group and the Country Director. Thought I would include what I wrote, in case you´re wondering what in the world I´m doing down here...

Ama Suwa, Ama Qhella, Ama Llulla
These are the prohibitions of Quechuan law, which in English are translated, ¨Do not steal, do not lie, do not be lazy.¨ At first glance, these commandments don´t seem hard to follow; neither do they appear to be a comprehensive guide for right behavior. Unlike English, however, Quechua is a language of few words: Saying little, one expresses a great deal. Such is the case with the above laws: For many of us, myself included, to truly follow them would demand of us radical life changes.
Ama suwa: ¨Do not steal.¨ To follow this commandment, not only must we refrain from active theft, but also we must pay our debts. Incidentally, Plato in his Republic defines justice as giving to each what is owed. One reason I joined the Peace Corps is that I believe that the poor of the non-industrialized world are owed the opportunity to lead a fulfilling life – they are entitled not only to food and shelter, but also medicine, education, the opportunity to develop their natural gifts, and respect. Though all human beings share these rights, many in Bolivia and throughout the Southern Hemisphere do not have them. They are owed. And as someone who has had more than his fair share of these opportunities, I feel that it is I who owe: As a person of privilege, I owe it to the Bolivian people to share. To refuse, I believe, would be tantamount to stealing.
Ama qhella: ¨Do not lie.¨ Which is another way of saying, ¨always tell the truth.¨ But in both the First and Third Worlds, there persist many pernicious and oppressive lies. To remain silent while another is lying is to be complicit in the lie: Thus, if we wish to follow Quechuan law, we must actively tell the truth. In Bolivia, as many of my fellow Trainees are aware, some people hold to the lie which says, ¨all gringos are greedy, selfish, unfeeling imperialists.¨ As Peace Corps Volunteers, we have the opportunity to show the people of our communities that this statement is false. At PCV Daniel´s despedida in [my site], farmer and beekeeper Don Tomas spoke of this common perception of North Americans, and he sternly insisted, ¨es mentira.¨ By fighting the lies that foster division and hatred, we have the opportunity, on an individual level, to promote world peace.
In our homeland, there exists a parallel and even more dangerous falsehood: ¨All people have an equal opportunity for success, and the poor, because of their ignorance and laziness, deserve their lot. Poverty is someone else´s problem, not my responsibility.¨ It is my hope that I can return to the United States after my two years in Bolivia as a messenger for the poor, who I feel certain would take strong exception to the above statement. I want to serve as a PCV in Bolivia because I want to tell the truth. (Incidentally, the eradication of the above two lies coincides with the second and third goals of the Peace Corps.)
Ama llulla: ¨Do not be lazy.¨ And why else are we here? We are willing to work hard. We want to do our best. We are chronic overachievers. Personally, I spent 14 months waiting to receive my invitation to Bolivia, during seven of which I worked as a farmer´s apprentice. I took that job because, as a philosophy major and lifelong suburbanite, I was deemed unqualified for Peace Corps. At the farm, I learned how to grow potatoes (a vital skill to have here in Bolivia!), and I also learned how to truly work hard. By accident, I also learned while working at the farm that I happen to love farming.
Strangely, something similar has happened to me during these three months of training. I applied for Peace Corps for many idealistic reasons, partially out of a sense of duty. During training, however, I have happily discovered that I actually enjoy development work, and that I am going to love living in Bolivia. It has been an amazing growth process: What was an abstract and naive idea of ¨fighting poverty¨ is now a set of feasible goals and strategies for development in [my pueblo]. What was a lofty notion of ¨serving the poor¨ has now been realized by a fervent desire to help the Beekeeping Association there succeed, so that Don Valerio can send his children to college. I come to my site with ganas to work hard, to do my very best. I believe that anything less would be a violation of the third law.
So, to the directors of Peace Corps / Bolivia, I submit that:
Because I believe in my ability to work with the women and men of [my site] to make real, sustainable progress;
Because I can already feel myself falling in love with my job and with this place;
Because I believe deeply in the mission of the Peace Corps; and
Because, most of all, I wish neither to be a thief, nor a liar, nor lazy, but rather a friend and compañero to the people of Bolivia,
I therefore ask that I be further considered to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer.
Finally, to my fellow B-47 trainees, my friends, I say to you, ¨Ama suwa, ama qhella, ama llulla.¨ To which, according to the Quechuan custom, you should respond, ¨Qanpis kikillanta.¨ In English: ¨You either!¨

Visita de Sitio y Otras Fotos

Thought I´d begin with some beautiful scenery: Denis´ toenail used to be there. One afternoon I was studying and my host brother approached me and said, "Andrés, un favor grande...¨ and I helped him rip his rotten, black toenail off of his foot. Such is the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer.

Sucre, the historical (¨actual,¨ according to the people there) capital of Bolivia. It is a rule that all buildings in the city center must be painted white! Beautiful town. Come see it.

The new Sucre crew. As my pueblo is 7 hours from the city, lamentablemente I probably won´t be seeing them much!

Dan, my pueblo´s current PCV, in front of the town.

Me in front of the Rio San Antonio near town. I promise to provide more eye-candy next time -- my pueblo is gorgeous, but it was raining all week.

Dan with Valerio, my work partner. Dan is holding various recuerdos given him by the Beekeepers´ Association at his going-away party.

Lebo watering our award-winning garden. The Ag trainees divided into 5 groups and each group has its own garden. Ours was judged the best. We won a cake. Gracias Ivor.

Spike is his name. He got in a fight with a street dog (they are bad!) and lost part of his ear. I came to the rescue with my Peace Corps medical kit and we sterilized the wound and wrapped it in gauze. But Spike chewed the gauze off. Tough mutt.

Me (in my sweet new sombrero) and Ronaldo (in a ch´ullu).

My host brothers Jhonny (not a misprint), Ronaldo and Denis. Orlando, the second oldest, left 3 weeks ago to look for work in England. Sadly, in a mass exodus thousands of young Bolivians are leaving to look for work, mostly in Spain. As a result, Bolivia is losing its young talent and the country will suffer even more. But Orlando says he´s enjoying England, and has already joined two soccer teams.

Listo

Just returned from an incredible week in my future site. I spent the week hanging out with Dan, the current PCV whom I will replace in two weeks. He is a great guy and an excellent volunteer, and I am truly excited about the possibilities before me.

Sucre is my regional city, to which I will travel occasionally to visit the PC office, pick up mail and take care of odds and ends. It´s a beautiful town, called the ¨Athens of South America¨ for its wealth of historical architecture and majestic feel. I much prefer Sucre to the mundane hustle and bustle (dust and diesel) that is Cochabamba.

My pueblo in southeast Chuquisaca is a small town of a few hundred people, a quiet little town set within some of the most gorgeous countryside I have yet seen. Dan´s place, soon to be mine, is sort of an apartment setup: A landlord owns the place and lives on the first floor, and a family lives in the complex too, but basically I am independent. The second-floor place has its own bedroom, bathroom and kitchen, and Dan is pretty much leaving behind all of the furniture and supplies I will need. There´s also a patio on the roof where Dan washes his clothes: It´s also a perfect place to sit and strum the guitar on quiet evenings. It´s a modest place, not too fancy, but with most of the comforts of home. I couldn´t ask for more.

Basically Dan and I spent the whole week 1) meeting Bolivians and 2) talking for hours and hours about Peace Corps. He has an amazing relationship with the people in town, and is actually padrino (godfather) to a couple of kids, including the son of my official counterpart, beekeeper and construction worker Don Valerio Moscoso. I really feel lucky to be replacing this guy: I feel confident in gaining people´s trust and making friends, thanks in large part to the fact that Dan is so well loved and trusted.

We spent much of our time discussing the pueblo, the people, and the trabajo: Dan´s successes, struggles and failures, and how they relate to the possibilities for the next two years. I am coming in following four years of PC Agriculture service in town, and inherit a beekeeping project at a critical stage. There´s a group of about 15 beekeepers who do basic colony management and honey harvesting, but Dan has also been working with three advanced beekeepers on more technical bee activities, such as royal jelly harvesting and queen rearing. These guys will need help developing those projects and then, most importantly, finding a market for their relatively obscure products. Beekeeping will be a main focus of my two years of service. There are other exciting opportunities, too: Dan and the volunteer before him worked to promote forage crops, which are not common in town but are essential as feed during the dry season. The farmers have tried it before with mixed results, but Dan and I think that if we can convince the local cooperative to give alfalfa another shot, we could see some really positive results for the local campesinos.

Like many PCVs, Dan has mixed feelings about his service: Some projects have succeeded, others have failed, and some are hanging in the balance. Like many PCVs, Dan had to learn to accept failure, and realize that he could not singlehandedly lift the campesinos out of poverty; in Dan´s words, he had to ¨make peace with his service.¨ We talked extensively during the week about the frustrations of Peace Corps service, and even got into a few deeper conversations about the ultimate goals of PC. Basically we just had a solid time. Dan´s a hell of a guy.

Okay, I´ll wrap up this discourse. En fin, it was just an amazing week: What was an abstract idea of PC service is now a set of concrete objectives; what was an idealistic dream of helping ¨the poor¨ is now a desire to see Don Tomas succeed with his alfalfa crop, and to help Valerio send his kids to college. Basically, I feel ready for Peace Corps service. Well, as ready as I´ll ever be, anyway.

Another week and change of training. I´m restless and excited: As a new volunteer, I have, in the words of local beekeeper Don Cirilo said, pilas cargadas (charged batteries).

Love you guys.

Fotos: Semana Tecnica

...Corps.

Armando, my PCV role model. Unfortunately, I currently lack the testosterone to grow such an amazing beard.

As promised, a picture of me eating a queen bee larva. A week later, I am growing strange hairs on my back and craving honey. Weird.

From this height I can almost see the U of L game...

Mountains, flowers. The usual.

PCT Brandon playing horsey with a Bolivian niña.

Me and my host-dad, Don Orlando. He´s holding a portrait of himself done by some guy whose house he painted in Spain. Apparently the guy was buena gente.

Honey harvesting in Villa.

Chuquisaca, Mi Hogar Nuevo

This afternoon, our training group´s site locations were announced. My new home is located in the department of Chuquisaca (choo-kee-sock-uh). Of the fifteen potential sites for agriculture trainees, this was my first choice. I´m psyched.

My pueblo, the name of which I have been instructed not to divulge for security reasons, is about a seven-hour bus ride from Sucre, the historical capital of Bolivia (La Paz is the governmental capital). There are a few hundred people living in the town, and around 2000 in the surrounding municipality. Current volunteers and training coordinators tell me it´s an excellent site, and a place of exceptional beauty.

I will be replacing Daniel, a PCV from B-41 (the forty-first group of Bolivian PCV´s -- we are B-47). Apparently, I have a lot to live up to. Daniel has done some exceptional work with beekeeping: the apicultores with whom he works are involved in advanced beekeeping activities, including harvesting royal jelly (bee milk, mas o menos). So I, who had no experience with apiculture prior to training, have much to learn in a short time. Bring it on, I say.
We leave on Saturday night for our site visits; I will travel 10 hours by bus to Sucre, and then it´s another 7 hours to my site. I´ll spend four days next week getting to know the place, and learning as much as possible from Dan, whose service ends in April. Then it´s back to Coch for the final two weeks of this head-spinning entrenamiento.

I couldn´t have asked for a better placement. I can´t wait to get started.

I´m scouring the city in search of a replacement part for my camera. Until then, use your imaginations!

Peace and love.

Semana Tecnica

We have just returned from an exhilarating tech week. The 15 Agriculture trainees and our coordinators visited several different PCV sites in the Cochabamba and Santa Cruz departments of Bolivia (Villa Esperanza, Chilon, Quirusillas, and Samaipata), getting a taste of what life is like as a Volunteer. We worked mostly with bees during the week, from queen rearing to colony division. One day we went in teams of three to capture wild beehives and transplant them into managed colonies... I got stung about six times, but supposedly bee venom is good for you, so that´s all to the good.

I took some killer pictures during the week, but unfortunately I seem to have misplaced my USB cable, so I´m not able to load them onto the computer. Hopefully it will turn up soon -- I have this great picture of me eating a queen bee larva.

Less than a month remains in training. On Monday I will find out my site placement, where I will live for the next two years. Stay tuned!

Aprendiendo a la Velocidad de la Luz

Friends,



The pace of training continues to approach the speed of light.


How much can one possibly teach a human being in three months? Well, start with developing a understanding of Spanish and the intricacies of Bolivian culture (e.g. how to navigate the labyrinth of Bolivian public transportation without getting robbed or lost); then there´s compost making, pest and disease management, vermiculture (worm farming), apiculture (beekeeping), and product transformation (marmelades, peanut butter, dehydrated fruit and meat, yogurt and cheese); finally, there´s the enigma of effective development work (e.g. presenting formal presentations to a Bolivian audience, operating a community bank, conducting a ¨participatory diagnostic analysis¨ and forming a project proposal). You might say it´s the hippie equivalent of boot camp. And yes, I´m loving it.

In our agriculture group, we formed sub-groups of three to form mini-enterprises. Our group decided to make cheese -- which, of course, we had absolutely no idea how to do. So we received a loan of 90 Bolivianos to buy supplies and basically winged it (we did have a one-page summary of the cheese-making process). To our surprise and delight, the cheese turned out great! It had a perfect consistency, color and texture (admittedly, however, it could have used a bit more salt). We packaged our cheese rounds in plastic wrap and printed labels. The best part of the business was the name: In Spanish, ¨Peace Corps¨is Cuerpo de Paz; thus, we dubbed our product Queso de Paz (i.e., Peace Cheese. It´s funnier in Spanish). And, would you believe it, we actually made a profit... of just over a dollar.

We are about halfway through this training thing, and I am feeling pretty comfortable here. My host family and I are getting along really well. It´s still easiest to talk to my youngest brother, who´s just 11, because he speaks clearly and uses pretty simple language. We have gotten pretty close -- the other day we played soccer one-on-one. The 11 year-old won, 6-5. Yes, I was trying my hardest. But in fairness to myself, I was wearing Chaco´s, no match for his spikes. And he´s a Bolivian, he has been playing soccer all his life -- even his name, Ronaldo (Ronaldiño for short, like the Brazilian superstar) screams soccer skills. But then, I do have about 18 inches on him. He´s a really funny kid... when he´s angry, he screams ¨Shrek!¨ Apparently he thinks it´s a bad word in English. He tells me a former volunteer taught him that mala palablra: Los Omonte have had a dozen or more trainees in their home over the years, all of whom Ronaldiño refers to as ¨mis gringos¨(my white boys), as if we were pets or shoes or something. I get a kick out of it.

There are many moments of cultural miscommunication, and most often I am the one who ends up looking ridiculous: One night, for example, my host mother came home with a few huge sacks of potatoes and rice, and went inside to ask for my help. She said, ¨ven, ven¨(come here) but was making a hand motion that in the USA means ¨go away!¨ Confused, I stood up, sat down, stood up again, and finally went outside to help her. When I explained the source of my confusion, namely the difference in hand gestures, she almost died laughing. That was like three weeks ago, and they still tell the story several times a week. Very funny. Silly white boy.

On Wednesday, the Agriculture group (there are fifteen of us; the other 16 trainees of B47 are in Environmental Education or Natural Resources) leaves Cochabamba to embark on ¨Tech Week¨: We will travel by bus to several departments of Bolivia, visiting volunteers´sites and honing our technical skills. The main focus is beekeeping, which interests me more and more as I learn about it. Bees are truly fascinating creatures, and you can make a killing selling honey with very low production costs. I hope to be involved in apiculture when I get to my site.

Speaking of sites, in about two weeks I should know for certain where I´ll be living for the next two years. There are fifteen possible sites for Agriculture, and they are all located in warm to tropical areas of Bolivia. Thank God! It doesn´t matter much to me where I am placed, although there are a couple of sites in which I am particularly interested; so long as I am working outside, in the campo rather than the bustling, smelly city, I will be a happy gringo.

Much love to all of you, friends and family. I miss you all and keep you always in my thoughts. Keep the faith.