B-44 Blogs

Looks like this blog thing is pretty popular. It turns out a lot of others from our group have their own blogs. Really well done too. I going to have to start picking up the slack over here. So check them out to get a better perspective because while there are similarities between our stories no one Peace Corps experience is like another.

Summer Project

The Gran Chaco

So the whole reason I was on that horrific road was to get to Camiri to attend a taller (workshop) on environmental ed. and how to use this ¨maletín didactico¨(didactic briefcase). The maletín is a box of five educational text books all about Environmental Ed. related to the Chaco. They´re really well done and I think would make a great resource for the teachers over here in Bermejo. From the books I found out that Bermejo is actually part of the Chaco (just barely, but we definitely are). I knew that the vegetation and climate was similar, but didn´t know exactly where the boundary lie. So that was pretty exciting to find out. Not only are the materials directly relevant to Bermejo, but now when all the Chaco volunteers brag about how bad ass they are I can join in ;) I think I will be a really valuable asset to the Chaco team. For instance, when challenging the Altiplano gang to drinking competitions...ha! The Chaco is the second largest forested area in South America (the first being of course the Amazon). There is a distinct rainy and dry season. Whereas in the Amazon it´s wet all the time. It extends through parts of Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina.

The idea was to attend the taller to see how it was run, get the materials and then organize general environmental ed. tallers for the teachers here in Bermejo and hopefully give away copies of the same materials. The taller was less than amazing (definitely an eye opening experience into the way things are run in Bolivia vs. the states), but it was good to see what elements I liked from it and can incorporate into my own taller and what I did not and can cut out. Part of it was training on how to give tallers in general so since I completed the training GTZ (a German organization, based in the Chaco) will now give me the maletins´ for my own tallers in Bermejo! So now I don´t have to make copies of anything and all the teachers will have their own maletín which is great. A couple of volunteers that attended the taller as well are going to help me give the tallers here in Bermejo in Jan/Feb. Where going to plan the best taller B-jo has ever seen! So I´m pretty excited to have this project in the works. Many of the teachers I´ve worked with have told me they want envir. ed. materials (any materials really) and now I have found really good ones. So I feel like this will be a really worthwhile project. Something that will definitely benefit the schools down here.

World´s Scariest Road!

This is actually a picture of The World´s Most Dangerous Road (also found in Bolivia) but you pretty much get the idea..

The road from Tarija toVilla Montes is by far the most terrifying road I have ever been on. I´ve heard it was a horrible road, but I didn´t realize quite how bad. I think the majority of people try to sleep through it so they don´t really know how bad it is or maybe they´re just a lot more badass than me and don´t whine about it so much. But I had the pleasure of being awake most of the time and a window seat with a nice view of the potential for disaster. The nine hour trip snakes through a huge sub- Andean mountain range. The road is unpaved and the majority of it is one way. Barely big enough for a car let alone a monstrous flota (bus). And did I mention this was a night trip? Which I think may actually be an advantage because you can see the headlights of oncoming vehicles from far away. I have never been so freaked by a road in my life! The first three or so hours was scary, but the road seemed to be wide enough with at least a few feet between the flota tires and the edge of the cliff with sporadic turnouts to let oncoming trucks squeeze by. I got car sick with all the turns and whatnot and I´m pretty sure I heard someone puke somewhere in the bus through my earphones. But that´s about as bad as it got. My friend actually got puked on by some kid on this same road, but that´s another story... Sometime after Entre Rios (which they are sending a new volunteer... poor thing. I don´t think I´d ever leave my site for fear of the road if I was her!) I open my eyes and catch the image of a camion(truck) a couple hundred of feet in front of us going around a bend. The lights from the truck illuminate the profile of the mountain. And then I realize just how bad this road is. We´re not talking about a gentle 45 degree slope, it´s more like 80. With a drop of who know´s how many hundreds of feet. All I know is it´s so far down you can not see the bottom. It looks like a cliff with a tiny road cut into it and a miniature truck driving by. It looks fake. It´s so steep there aren´t even trees growing on it. It´s just rock. That´s when I start to freak out. Are we really doing this!?! Then I look out the window to see how close to the edge we are and, no joke, I can´t even see the ground underneath us. Just a black abyss... That´s how close to the edge we are. Then I look to the other side of the bus. We are right up against the rocks on the other side of the road. Nope...no room there. And then every nightmare scenario passes through my head. What if another truck comes up the road!?! There´s no way a truck could pass us. If we try to back up... we´ll back up right over the cliff! And then I notice all the crosses along the road which up until that point I had been trying to ignore... two here, three there... a disturbingly common sight. At one point on the road there are so many I think it´s a cemetery for a second. Then I realize we´re still in the middle of nowhere and again they´re by the side of the cliff... oh that must have been a flota... great. This guy in front of me turned around and he must have seen in my face how freaked out I was because he tried to reassure me that there wasn´t much left to go. It was one of those rare times when you think to yourself wow... Í really could die...There´s probably a significant probability of death driving this road. The only reassurances were that the driver did not appear to be drunk (which believe it or not is a really big problem here, they recently started random breathalyzer tests for flota drivers) and he probably drives this road every night... so at least he knows it well. Well... all in all I lived to tell the tale and I will never take that road again!! They should really make it easier for people to travel through northern Argentina to the other side of the Tarija department. There is a new Trans- Chaco road in the process of construction that should make travel a lot safer, but who knows when that will be completed. Bolivia is kind of notorious for it´s roads. It actually has the distinction of having The World´s Most Dangerous Road. Sorry... this entry is kind of morbid I know. But hey thats´s part of living in Bolivia - the treacherous roads! I´ll do my best to avoid them from here on out.

Milestone

So it´s been six months in site (a fourth of my two years in site already over) and nine months total (a third of my total service)! It is absolutely crazy how the time has flown by these last three months. Having actual work and a schedule really helps the time go by. I am thankful to be in a site where there is plenty of work. I know it´s been tougher for other people. Although, I could easily be doing twice as much work as I am... I feel that I´ve gotten off to a pretty good start. It´s a good mix of working in the schools, but still having plenty of time to prepare charlas and crack open the ol´spanish book.

Yes... spanish still torments me. It has definately been the hardest thing for me over here. The only thing that´s made me cry :( It just gets really frustrating sometimes. I´ll have a good conversation with someone feeling like I understood everything and could get all my points across and then the next minute not understanding a word someone else says and then they say ¨Oh you don´t speak spanish very well?¨ And you feel like a complete idiot saying that you´ve been here for 9 months and actually work here, but you still can not understand them. Ofcourse I could always learn more, but more than anything, I´ve come to the conclusion that it all depends on who you talk to. Some poeple just don´t understand the whole talking clearly and simply thing. What can you do? But I have been told by several people recently that my Spanish has gotten a lot better... so that´s nice to hear.

I just sent in my QPR (Quarterly Progress Report) that we´re required to send in to Washington to prove that were actually doing work and that the Peace Corps is a worthwhile endevor. And I figured out that I´ve worked with about 575 people these past few months. The vast majority being kids from first to seventh grade and their teachers. Although I feel guilty everyday I don´t work and that number could be larger if only I had planned more charlas. I also feel like it´s important not to jump into too much too fast and get burned out. Working just four hours with little kids can be pretty exhausting. So all in all I feel pretty good about that number. It´s a nice start. The number is actuall people I´ve ¨trainined¨ in Environmental Ed concepts. While it´s good to have a significant number... a number doesn´t include all the other experiences that in my mind are equally important. Like going back to the same class and doing an art project with the recycled paper you made the time before, showing the kids pictures of California during recess and trying to explain life in the states (thanks for sending me that book Mom, the kids all want to come to California now), or participating in the madness of class parties. Which are actually the best moments for me.

There is a really friendly, motivated teacher in one of the schools that I work at in the nearby campo. She actually came up with her own topic that she wanted me to present to the class! Which is a rarity. After I ended the charla she insisted that I stay the rest of the day with the class because ¨no one interesting ever comes to the school¨. So I ended up doing anyhting that randomly pops into my head... talking to the kids about the geography of the United States, playing hangman, teaching numbers in English and somehow I got talked into singing the national anthem. This has actually happened on at least three seperate occassions. I try to explain that I sing horribly, but their so insistant and they look as if they would be crushed if you didn´t do it... so you can´t say no. And it´s so funny... they absolutely love it! They all clap and tell you how pretty it was. Even though you know you´ve totally butchered it... you didn´t even sing the lyrics correctly. So all in all I ended up spending the entire day with the class. The teacher ends up copying all of my notes and having us both formally sign it with stamps an everything (Bolivians are a big fan of formality). Which I thought was kind of odd at the time, but she will probably teach the lesson again which is great. This Wednesday I go back to her class and follow up on the original charla and talk about Endangered Species of Bolivia (which I am supposed to be researching now). So I´ve got to run but other random anecdotes to follow...

Wild Fires

This is definitley a country of extremes. Last rainy season (while we were in Cochabamba training) I was watching horrible scenes of flooding throughout the Santa Cruz, Beni and Pando regions...people being rescued from flooded villages, thousands of floating cow carcasses. Now there are a ton of wildfires burning in the same areas. Though the worst seem to be in the nearby Chaco. There is a volunteer in Villamontes right now helping in the fire fighting effort in over 100 degree heat! (Cha Chi your my hero!) Most of the fires have been started by people burning land to clear for their crops. A practice that is still very alive and well in Bolivia. The sky has been really hazy for the past couple of weeks sending many people to the hospitals with respiratory infections and forcing the closuer of many airports. I even heard the airport in La Paz was shut down for a couple of days. They are predicting that the fires will continue for the next month and a half!! I certainly hope they can get the situation under control a little sooner. I was talking to my friend about the fires saying ¨I can´t imagine how Bolivian firefighters could get control of a situation this bad¨. And she jokingly said ¨Yeah don´t you need hoses to put out f¡res?¨ While her comment was kind of funny...she´s also has a point. And becuase of this fire fighters from Paraguay, Peru and Argentina have already been sent in to help.

Here´s an article I found to give you a better idea-

Some 12,000 forest fires are raging in Bolivia, forcing the closure of all but the biggest airports and threatening the country's natural gas fields and fuel pipelines, authorities said Wednesday. The head of Bolivia's armed forces, Gen. Wilfredo Vargas, said that the army "is on emergency (alert)" to help extinguish the fires. The burning of forest is an ancient - though now illegal - practice at this time of year to clear more land on which to plant crops.

The director of Civil Aviation, Javier Garcia, confirmed Wednesday at a press conference that 30 of the country's 37 airports are closed due to the density of smoke from the fires. The press reported the danger posed by the fires in areas traversed by gas and fuel pipelines, like the Bolivian Chaco region, where more than 7,000 hectares (17,500 acres) have already been burned. The mayor of the southern town of Villamontes, Ruban Vaca, said that state energy company YPFB should be concerned because the fire is about to arrive at several gas wells. The director of land management, Cliver Rocha, said that the courts should "send to jail" anyone who burns their land to expand their cultivation area because they are putting at risk the health of the public as well as the environment. Meanwhile, President Evo Morales met with his Cabinet to analyze the situation and the emergency measures being taken to deal with the fires.