Tom and Laura Sin Fronteras

So even though we have 7 and a half months left here, I’m already dreading going home and hearing this question.  The problem is there’s no answer to it really.  I’d like to give an example of one of my mornings last week.

I didn’t get up and workout with Tom this morning because I had diarrhea all day yesterday and wasn’t feeling well.  When I did get out of bed about 8:30 my sore throat reminded me of this cold I’ve had for going on a month now that won’t go away.  The sun was out and it was already heating up so I put on my lightest, breathable clothes.  I needed to clean the house today.  Yesterday I had started but was thrown through a loop when I encountered a brown widow living under one of our tables.  Once the extraction/identification was finished I had run out of cleaning time.

So this morning, I put my clothes on quickly and decided resolutely I will get this house cleaned.  Just then I look up and see the trail on the wall.  I know that trail.  Termites.  I start investigating and find them eating one of my t-shirts.  I take the t-shirt out to the burn bin and alert Tom.  We clear out the closet and see that the damage is contained but they’re clearly coming from the wall.  I go and eat some plain bread for breakfast and de-spider the kitchen while we wait for Madre Clara to pass by so we can ask her if she has any pesticide.  She looks at it and blames it on our room being too humid, which it is, but we keep the windows shut during the day to keep the heat out/cool in.

Madre Clara says, “Oh yeah we have to fumigate in here.  I’ll have to go buy the chemicals, maybe tomorrow.  Laura can you bring the photos over now I want to develop them today.”  So our fumigation gets put off and I go over to the Kinder with Madre Clara to organize all her digital photos.  Madre Clara has a camera, laptop, fancy scanner but she doesn’t really excel at using any of them, so periodically I have to sit down and clean up the chaos left by haphazard usage.  Anyway I spend a good hour on that so that we can print the Kinder photos from “Children’s Day.”

On the way back to our house, I see a beautiful white and purple butterfly I’d never seen before.  I believe it was in the Papilio genus but I haven’t been able to identify it further than that. I also hear the band from the school next door playing “Sound of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel.  Madre Clara told me they were practicing to play for the funeral today.  One of their third graders just died from dengue.

I get back to our house after 11am in time to talk to Madre Inez about the Children’s Day party I’m supposed to be help with the next day but have no information about.

Then all of a sudden it’s noon and I’m exhausted and still haven’t gotten the cleaning done.  We pickup some non-appetizing rice and undercooked eggs from the Guarderia to eat for lunch.

Bolivia is………. challenging, fun, frustrating, sad, inspiring, scary, different, exhausting, exhilarating, and yes sometimes even just fine.  Life here just is what it is.  You take it as it comes and try to keep smiling.  Isn’t that what we’re all just doing really?

Easter was exhausting this year.  Actually I think I’m still exhausted from Easter.  After Easter Vigil Mass there was an all-night lock in for all the youth.  I opted to stay for it to hang out with my youth group.  It was actually was more fun than I had expected.  There was very little talking, it was mostly just singing and dancing.  Plus a guest artist came named Jose Luis Melgar and his band was WAY better than our regular music.  It was awesome to hear well-played music.

So we sung and danced the night away until 4am when the youth groups went out to greet the Risen Lord.  The march was pushed an hour earlier this year because of the lock-in but otherwise it was the same as last year.  We marched through the streets saying “Everyone wake up, Jesus is risen!”  I was on a different route this year; I did the St. John route.   Tom was on the Jesus route again and we all met up in the plaza in front of the church.

My route was a little late for the 5am rendezvous because we had a long way to go.  So we didn’t all march into the church until 5:15am, which turned out to be fine because the priest didn’t show up until 5:45am!  That half hour waiting was killer.  I hadn’t slept, I’d barely eaten anything all night and I’d just walked a mile and a half singing.  Luckily the Holy Spirit was with us and we persevered.  We got out of mass at 6:30am and by 6:45 I was eating breakfast at home.

Tom and I crashed in our beds at 7am but got up again at noon in order to have Easter dinner with the Hogar girls.  They had nice food as usual followed by some games and dancing.  Then after the party, I opened my store “Venta de Valores” for the girls to buy things with tickets they had earned and Tom helped Aubrey with the egg hunts.  The afternoon had ups and downs.  Tom taught Ophelia (age 8 ) how to use a fork and knife.  It was so adorable!  The girls are usually only given spoons to eat with.  And I found out that our God-daughter, Carmen, is failing second grade.  But her mom showed up to visit and I sat down and had a nice chat with her and we talked a little about how important education was for the girls.  I think their mom is basically illiterate and she told me she’s suffered because of “not studying.”

We got home from the Hogar around 6pm and made dinner and called family.  Monday morning was rough but gotta be happy because:  Cristo ha resucitado Alleuya Alleuya.  Verdaderamente ha resucitado Alleuya Alleuya

It has been a crazy holy week here in Bolivia…here’s what we’ve been up to.

Early in the Week
We had classes as normal Monday-Wednesday, however, Tuesday night I got really nauseous during class (I think it was something I ate) and was sick on my back all day Wednesday.  Luckily I was feeling pretty much better by Wednesday night (24hrs) and except for being a bit tired was back to normal Thursday.

Holy Thursday
While I was resting up Thursday afternoon, Laura went to help decorate the church for mass that night.  She was the one in charge of getting Mary dressed up:

Mass went well, the feet-washing was a performance of the last supper.  They dressed the priest in simple clothes and had 12 young men, dressed up as apostles whose feet he washed.

Finally, we cleared the alter and moved to a side chapel that we built for the evening.  Here we had an exposition and people prayed long into the night.   Here’s Laura reenacting afterwards:

Good Friday
Good Friday’s service in Bolivia is a long event (even longer than the Vigil), mostly because towards the end of the service (which includes a reenactment play of the passion) we all get up and go outside for a couple mile long stations of the cross.  After this we all return into the church to finish the service by seeing Jesus inside a tomb built into a 15ft. tall (permanent) mountain.

During the stations of the cross, we (about 2000 people) walk from station to station saying prayers and singing hymns.  At each station, we stop and and the same group that acted out the passion in the church acts out that station on the back of a flat-bed truck.  As we walk we are lead by the Mary statue (that Laura dressed up the day before) and a statue of Jesus which is kept in a glass coffin:

One of the stations, setup by the girls at the orphanage:

Holy Saturday
What can I say, a HUGE bonfire (~10ft tall) to start it off.  Fireworks during the gloria.  Everybody bringing their own water to be blessed (to have holy water in their homes).  Lots of praying, now off to bed…our Easter Sunday starts with a march at 4AM!

Palm Sunday is a huge deal in Bolivia.  My Palm Sunday celebration was a marathon that started on Friday when Jesus riding a ‘donkey’ paraded through the Kinder.

Then on Saturday at my 5pm youth group, we were reminded that we had to decorate the church for Palm Sunday.  AND we had to bring all the materials to do so.  Well, in classic Bolivian style, we had nothing but we started looking. For starters we needed 10 huge palm fronds from a palm tree called Motacu.

Luckily, one of the girls showed up and said that her family had a Motacu and had just cut a bunch of fronds so we all went over to her house to see how many we could use.   There were some mutterings about using a taxi or a motorcycle but Sister Inez said, “No, you can’t drag them, you have to carry them!”  Not knowing what exactly we were getting into, I went happily to her house with the five other girls from our group.  But when we arrived I was a little shocked, the palms were easily 14 feet long and not light.  Plus, we needed to carry 10 of them and we were now 6 blocks away from the church.   We decided quickly we had to carry them between two people to avoid dragging and Celia says, “Ok well each pair has to take three then.”  Another girl and I attempt to pick up three but I can’t and drop them all.  So, we decide to take two.  I’ve got the leafy side and so I’m completely buried in palm, not able to see anything but my feet, as we walk the six blocks to the church.  I had many doubts along the way but amazingly we arrived as did the other two teams.  When we went back for the second round, a few more people showed up including two guys so the work was much lighter.

We spent the next two hours tying the palms up and I finally got back to our house exhausted about 8pm.  But no rest for the weary, Sunday morning I had to be up at 6:30am to cook my contribution for lunch and be ready to march at 7:30 as we paraded to a local high school for the annual World Youth Day celebration. This is a full-day event with a very long mass, dancing, break-out sessions and unending singing.  After helping with cleanup, we finally starting walking home at 4:30pm.  Thankfully, when I got home my wonderful husband was already cooking dinner, so I rested until 6pm when we had dinner with the other volunteers.  Then at 7pm I headed to church for evening mass.  My youth group was also in charge of the evening mass for Palm Sunday and I had volunteered to read the first reading.  This was really exciting for me since it’s the first time I’ve done a reading in Bolivia!  I really tried hard on my accent so that people would understand me and afterwards Sister Inez said it sounded good.  (Positive praise is so rare from the Sisters, especially Sister Inez so I just want you to appreciate how amazing I felt).  In addition, after going to two 2-hour masses in one day, I felt my spot in heaven was assured and it was nice to see everyone enjoying all our hard work decorating.  The finished product looked great but it did seem a bit overboard, to me anyway.

And since it’s a celebration, I also splurged for the biggest palm I could find from the vendors outside the church.  This one set me back 5 bolivianos.  The herbs in it, once blessed, are supposed to ward off bad spirits.

Blessed Holy Week to you all, stay tuned for more stories.

So this weekend was actually really good for a lot of reasons. We had two different retreats, one Saturday with the Professors of Kinder, Institute and Guarderia, and Sunday with the Secular Order of Franciscans we’ve joined. There was lots of reflection time and listening to talks. For me it was a nice affirmation of the faith that the people I work with everyday have; as well as a testament to how many people in the Santa Cruz region are dedicated to living a Franciscan lifestyle. It left me feeling good about the people of Bolivia and the outlook for the future.

Sometimes it’s easy to get comfortable like that and forget: This is Bolivia. No sooner had we finished the retreat than we got robbed. At 6, we went out for dinner with the other volunteers. There’s a new restaurant that looks decent and is only one house down from the convent. So we walk over and sit down. We’re the first ones there because it’s still early for dinner here. And the food’s not ready yet (it’s a set menu) so we get some drinks and wait. A guy walks in and asks about food, but when the server walks back to the kitchen, the guy walks over, grabs Ramona’s purse off the back of her chair and runs! Tom moved the fastest and starts chasing him, but the guy had his friend outside with a motorcycle so once he hopped on that the chase was mostly lost. I ran after Tom, desperately trying to remember Spanish and I finally I get some “Ayuda, Ayuda” screams out while the motorcycle was still in view. The only hope was that a car would block the road so they couldn’t escape. But unfortunately the car that came thought Tom was the robber, since he was running, and didn’t try to stop the guys on the motorcycle. No doubt the motorcycle already had the escape route planned so there was no point in following on a motorcycle. After that things were just confusing, and I wasn’t sure who to trust. A bunch of people came out of their houses and crowded around and said they saw the guy or that they tried to help. Some kid walked up and said he knew the guy but didn’t know his name. I questioned the server, wondering if he wasn’t complicit with the whole thing. We’ll never know. I ran back over to the convent to ask the Sisters if there was anything we could do to report it and they said that even if you gave a description, because I got a really good look at the guy, the police wouldn’t do anything to catch him.

The most frustrating part is that I’m almost certain it’s the same two men that have been causing trouble in our neighborhood for the last few weeks. Another volunteer, Fionn got robbed in the market, right in front of the Kinder in broad daylight. And the night before, Hermana (Sister) Manuela was walking home from her classes at the University and got her bag and head veil stolen right off of her! I don’t know how many other people have been hit, sounds like most people don’t even report it because they think the police are useless. It’s just insane, three robberies on the same block in two weeks time, most likely by the same guys, and no one’s going to do anything about it? Anyway, for now since they certainly know to target volunteers, we’ve instituted a “no bags rule” meaning that we don’t go out in the street with anything except money stuffed in our underwear or hidden pockets. Last night I was thinking about, what can you do when the police in your city don’t fight crime? Oh that’s right, call Batman.

March has just been flying by and so I wanted to take a minute to tell you about all the great things that have been happening here.

March 4th we celebrated the 8th birthday of our goddaughter, Carmen.  We took her and two other girls out for a nice lunch and some ice cream.  She was super excited about her new shampoo; Head and Shoulders is their favorite in the Hogar.

Then the next weekend I went on a three day retreat with another young woman from the parish center.   Most of the young people at the retreat were 15-19 years old but somehow I still had an awesome time and made new friends.  We learned lots of songs and games to do with our youth groups which is going to help me out immensely with my ‘Infancia Misionera’ group on Saturdays.  The best part of the retreat was that it was totally focused on how to be a missionary.  It was like an affirmation of the work I’m doing and a great spiritual check-in.  All in all a great time.

Finally I’m an officially certified missionary!

We also has the celebration of Dia del Padre, or Father’s Day, this past Monday.  It’s celebrated on the feast of St. Joseph.  Makes sense right?  Our god-daughter made this really sweet card for Tom.

There are too many things that happen here to possibly recount them all, but a few really touch my heart, here’s a sampling:

An Hogar (girls’ home) little girl that comes to the Kinder always seeks me out during recess to hold my hand and wants to be picked up.  I told her she needed to act like a big girl and go make friends and play with the other kids.  She said, “I don’t want friends, I want my mom.”  She’s been at the Hogar since Christmas.  I don’t know what her situation is or if she’ll ever be able to live with her mom again but she doesn’t stop talking about her mom and her house.  Just the other night she was telling me about how any day now she’d be going back to her house.  For her sake, I want it to be true.

On the playground today at the Kinder a little girl who knew me from last year because she did pre-kinder with us walked over and so I said, “Hi, how are you?”  She pauses for a minute and says “My mom doesn’t recognize me.  She’s in Spain.”  After the shock settled, I said “Well of course it’s because you’ve grown so much this summer.”   I know it’s a reality in many parts of the world where one or both parents goes to another country to work while the children stay behind with an aunt or grandma.  It’s an accepted part of society here and I can understand the desire to have a better life.  However when I see the effects in the children, I’m convinced it’s not worth it.

On the Monday of Carnaval, the happiest, smiling 5-year-old at the Hogar got her finger smashed in a door.  Apparently the cuts were pretty deep so they took her to the medical clinic.  Unfortunately with it being Carnaval there was no doctor there and the doctor on call either couldn’t or wouldn’t come in.  They went around to the few other free/low cost hospitals in town and none of them had any doctors/surgeons working either apparently.   So they finally end up back to the first clinic with her at which point a doctor does show up and says that the wound is too old and can’t be stitched up because they hadn’t put ice on it.  Therefore, he amputates the whole first digit of her middle finger.  And for what? Because no one involved, not even the nurses at that clinic, had the wherewithal to give the poor 5-year-old some ice?   Because the doctor took his sweet time arriving at the clinic?   I have no word for the mixture of anger/sadness/frustration I felt.

To end, another Kinder story.  I was sitting after class talking to a little girl about the noisy boys at her table.  I said “Oh those boys are so bothersome, they like to hit each other right?”  She says “yeah,” and I say “They’re bad.” She says, “My mom’s bad.”   I’m confused and say “I’m sure your mom’s not bad, why do you say she’s bad?”  She replies, “Yes she’s bad.  My dad hits her because she’s bad.”  I said, “Does he hit you?”  She said, “No but he’s doesn’t hit her now.”  I said, “Ok good, hitting is bad.”  She says “yeah….” looking thoughtful and our conversation trails off.

Several times a year here, a group that is angry at the government for something it did or didn’t do will block all the major roads in a region until the government promises change.  Though there have been many blockades since we arrived, this week we were actually stuck in a road blockade for the first time.  In this case, the motorcycle taxi drivers (our primary way of getting around in Montero) were protesting a new government regulation that would have required: license plates for all motorcycles (about $50/vehicle), paying annual property tax on the motorcycle, and paying the back property tax on the motorcycle.

On Monday (Feb. 13), we drove down to Santa Cruz in one of the Sisters’ trucks, with the nephew of Sister Clara as our driver.  We had to work on some visa stuff (an ongoing process since September, they still have our passports!) in Santa Cruz and were just going down for a few hours.  When we drove down at about 8:30 in the morning, we didn’t notice anything special along the road, it seemed like an ordinary day.  After conducting our business and grabbing some lunch, we started to head back up the road to Montero.

View Larger Map

After going about ten minutes up the road from Santa Cruz to Montero (just past the airport on the map) we hit a line of stopped cars.  We got out to see what was up, and heard about the blockade.  Like I mentioned above, these are fairly frequent in Bolivia, and usually only last for a few hours, so we decided to go back to Santa Cruz for the afternoon.  We went shopping for some building materials and went out to get ice cream. Around 6pm we were hoping that the blockade had lifted, so we went back up the road to Montero to see if it was any better.  Unfortunately it wasn’t, but we were hopeful that it would be lifted any minute, so we decided to wait in the line there.  After about an hour, the line started to move and we saw traffic coming from the other direction, so we were excited that it had been lifted.  However, that turned out not to be the case.  We only made it about a mile up the road before we stopped again.  We later learned that this was because the people who had setup the blockade had moved it to a different spot along the road.

After waiting an hour or so at this new spot, we gave up and decided to return to Santa Cruz.  Thankfully, one of the Sisters we work with has a family member in Santa Cruz that agreed to put us up for the night. However, getting back to Santa Cruz wasn’t as easy as it should have been.  We had a 4×4 vehicle, so it wasn’t too hard for us to cross the median into the lanes going the other direction (which should have been empty because all that traffic was stopped on the other side of the blockade).  However, now these lanes were full of taxis and buses that had brought people up to the blockade, so that they could walk across.  There were so many people trying to get across at this time of night (I’d estimate >5,000) that the taxis that dropped people off couldn’t leave again before more taxis arrived, so they got trapped in a huge traffic jam, and the people who came in later taxis ended up having to walk much further (almost a mile to the blockade).

Here’s a short video I took of us in the traffic jam going *away* from the blockade.

Get it in 720p.
Also on Youtube

We finally made it out of the traffic, got some dinner, and went to bed around 11pm.  The next day (my birthday) we got up and hung around Santa Cruz for a while, had a nice breakfast, and did some errands. There still didn’t seem to be any hope of the blockade lifting (the paper reported negotiations the night before had gone south), so we decided that we would try to walk through it.  We took a taxi up to the blockade and thankfully the terrible traffic from the previous night had cleared out.  We only had to walk about a quarter mile to actually get to the blockade, which wasn’t too bad.

Get it in 720p.
Also on Youtube

When we got there, it was just a lot of guys standing around across the road. We looked down and tried not to make eye contact with them. We followed three Bolivian women through, trying to look like we were with them…hoping that would help them ignore the two (very out of place) white people walking through. That nearly backfired on us when one of those three started saying stuff to one of the guys as we were leaving the blockade, but nothing came of it, and we made it through safely.  Since it was just a lot of guys standing around, you might wonder why didn’t the police just come out and clear them out? Word was they paid off the police to stay out of it.

After we were a ways away, I hid behind a car and caught a picture of it (click on it to see the full-size version):

The actual blockade is where all the people are standing, just in front of where all the trucks are stopped.

We were able to grab another taxi from right there, but we weren’t out of the woods quite yet. There was *another* blockade on the same road, within site of Montero. So we had to do the same drill there, walk a ways, go through the blockade without making eye contact, then grab another taxi to continue into Montero. Now that we were seasoned pros at walking through blockades, this one wasn’t a problem. We made it through and into Montero in time for lunch  

Political note: The reason blockades are successful is because of Bolivia’s lack of infrastructure.  There is literally only one paved road going north out of Santa Cruz.  This is Santa Cruz’s connection to the rest of the region and is hugely vital economically.  Due to the heavy rains this week no other unpaved route was viable.  It’s sad that this is the only way that people feel they can have their voices heard by the government.   The 3-day road block affected hundreds of thousands of people and caused businesses to lose thousands of dollars.  The whole country gets hurt when roads are blockaded.

So I’ve been meaning to put together a post about “Only in Bolivia: The things Tom and Laura say that are ridiculous outside of this context.”  Unfortunately I always forget them by the time I get to my computer.  But I caught one tonight to share with you:

::The conversation is about a bag full of 20 centavo coins the Sisters gave us because we bring them to mass to teach the Hogar girls to put money in the collection.  But we didn’t need more because we already had a big bag.  Also, 20 centavos is basically as worthless as a penny.::

Tom: What are we going to go do with all these 20 centavo coins?

Laura:  Give them to the Hogar volunteers to use.

Tom: Why don’t we just give them back to the Sisters?

Laura: What are they going to do with them?

Tom (exasperated): Why don’t they just take them to bank or something?  Or buy a chicken?

lol and then I was just imagining someone carrying a bag of pennies off to buy a chicken, since that’s obviously what you do with bags of pennies.   Tom insists it was a joke, a sarcastic remark about how much they eat chicken here.  Either way, only in Bolivia.

On Tuesday, Kindergarten sign-ups began and it has been CRA-zy!   Last year I was really proud to be able to help as my language skills were weak, but I could only do simple things.  However this year, despite hoping to take a backseat role, I ended up in the forefront when Madre Clara asked me to help her hand out numbers to people Tuesday morning.  That turned into me being the only one who knew what was going on Tuesday afternoon and so I became all of sudden in charge of who got accepted and who got rejected.  People got desperate and pushy very quickly as we filled all 250 places in ONE DAY.  Meaning I talked to 250 different people, and looked at that much paperwork in one day also.  Unfortunately that was just step one as now we have to have each parent come back and do all the government paperwork with us.  I thought, well I’ve done my hard day, I’ll take a backseat on Wednesday but instead I ended up doing the hardest part which is filling out this from called a RUDE.  It’s basically a census of the child, asking about where they live, do they work, how many times they went to the doctor last year, does their house have water, electricity, what level of school their parents completed, etc, etc.  I went from last year, only having to say “Sign here please” to now having to use all the vocabulary I know, and some I don’t know.   Some of the questions ask what kind of water the family has and options include:  household tap, village tap, personal well, village well, lake, river.   It then asks what type of sewage system they have, options being: sewer system, septic tank, cesspit, in the street, in a ditch, in a river.

There’s a whole form also about illiteracy, where you have to point blank ask people: are you illiterate, were your parents illiterate?  Also there’s a big focus this year on what language they grew up speaking because Bolivia made it mandatory for everyone to be fluent in an ‘indigenous’ language besides Spanish and there’s fighting over what languages should be required for which regions.   Imagine I have to ask with a straight face, “How do you get rid of your sewage?  Do you have pipes or do you dump it in a ditch?”  “Are you illiterate?”   “Did you complete grade school?”

But as scary as the questions are, the answers are scarier.  Though I haven’t encountered someone this year yet, last year I had a grandmother come in to sign up her granddaughter and she was illiterate to the point she could not even sign her name.  (In talking to the other Professors at the Institute, the sewing professor said she’s had students arrive, ages 30-40, not being able to recognize numbers.)   This afternoon I had a mother come in with her baby-in-arm who was born in 1990.  She was signing up her 6 year old for Kindergarten.  Do the math.  She dropped out after 7th grade, her husband finished school up through 9th grade.  Another mother who seemed especially overwhelmed by the whole process, had finished up through fourth grade.

I often get frustrated at the Kinder because the children come in knowing so little, as if there had been no instruction at home.  I mean, how hard is it to teach numbers and letters to a child?  And I tell you, when I get a book out to read to these children, they are so excited you’d think I was giving away barbies and hot wheels.  They are so hungry for learning.  But when I get a chance like a today to learn a little about their home lives, their parents, it does give me pause.  So many of the parents are young, under-educated, working long hours.  How could they understand the importance of early-childhood education?  To understand the importance of reading to child?  To have the money for books?   To take the time to do it?  These people don’t just need parenting classes, they need education period.  Think of what you learned after fifth grade, critical thinking skills comes to mind as a biggie, not to mention biology, chemistry, algebra, now imagine living without ever having learned any of those things.  So many things I count as basic knowledge in US culture: germs cause disease, education is valuable, the ability to read is essential in life, things in nature are made up of atoms and molecules, the five food groups, how a vaccine works, I could go on.  I interact with people, almost daily, that do not know these things, because they were just never taught them.  And the resulting reality a culture that I define as “illogical” and “ridiculously ineffective” or sometimes just plain “wrong.”  But what I have to wrap my head around is that you can’t ask of someone what they can’t give.  People are a product of their own lives and situations and you have to work with them from where they are, not from where they should be.  I have no right to judge these people’s life choices or dismiss them when they can’t function at the same level that I can.  I was afforded the privilege of education, they were not.  What is my responsibility then to the uneducated masses, as a member of the 5% of the world’s population with an advanced degree?  I’m finally starting to understand what Reading Rainbow was on about, “Knowledge is Power.”  Scientia potentia est.

After Potosi, we took a 6-hour bus drive to the city of Uyuni which is on the edge of the Salar de Uyuni, the biggest salt flat in the world, over 10,000 km². We lined up a tour as soon as we got into town, spent the night as a hostel with great hot water (Piedra Blanca) and then started our tour the next morning.  The first day of the tour we visited the train cemetery where all the trains from Bolivia’s past have been left to die.  They were fun to climb on.

Then we headed to the salt flats (salar).  However in Colchani, the city just before the salt flats (whose major economy is extracting and selling salt), the left back wheel fell off our Toyota Land Cruiser and we came to a screeching halt.  A few other drivers stopped to help, or possibly jeer, it was hard to tell.  Anyway, finally we got the wheel back on, moved some lug nuts around and were on our way.  Here we are on the edge of the salar with the truck that we all grew to hate.

Since it’s the rainy season, the salt flats are slightly flooded and so it gives the whole place a ‘mirror’ effect.  Also it’s easy to take pictures which trick your depth perception.  So we had some fun.

These were our travelling companions:  me, Tom, Gal (Israel), Chris (UK), Aneta (Norway/UK), Katie.  And below, you can see the mirror effect well.

Anyway, the salt flats were really neat but we had to leave eventually (and most people were pretty sunburnt by then) so we headed back to Uyuni.  We were supposed to go on to a another small village 2 hours down to the road to sleep but the truck had to get fixed that night so we slept in Uyuni.  The next morning we got on the road and though we didn’t see any more salt flats, we saw volcanoes, lakes, rock formations and beautiful high-altitude deserts, very reminiscent of Mars.

And in all the fresh-water lakes, there were flamingos!!!  Hundreds of them.  Three different species:  Chilean Flamingo, Andean Flamingo and James/Puna Flamingo all of which only exist is this area of the world!  As you can imagine I was on biologist-overdrive with all this excitement.

Above: a James/Puna Flamingo, and below, me studiously annotating the species we’d seen.

We even saw an Andean fox that seemed to be hanging around the road looking for generous tour-goers with food to share. 

We ended the second day at Laguna Colorada which is a beautiful red lake (due to its algal inhabitants) filled with all three species of flamingos.  It was breath-taking.  We spent the night at a rustic ‘campamento’ that had dorm-type beds in a basic building and despite warnings of extreme cold, it didn’t get much below freezing so we were fine.   The next morning we woke up at 4am in order to get to the geysers and hot water springs by sunrise, which is supposedly the best time for them.  Well we were all up and ready to go, our driver was up, but guess what wasn’t up, the truck.  For 2.5 hours the truck would not start.  Finally they soldered some wires together which made the fuel-pump work and it started.  Tired and frustrated but happy to be on the road, we piled in and made it to the geysers.

We took a quick dip in the hot springs and then ended up at Laguna Verde near the Chilean border.   Although I was assured only 5 hours, from here it was a 7.5 hour death march back to Uyuni.  Our driver kept the coca leaves coming and we all bounced along in the back seat.  The only ray of light on the drive was that we finally reached 5000m.  We had had a celebration the day before at 15,000 ft and were holding out for the elusive 5000m (~16,400ft).  Well we made it, and even jogged a few more meters up for good measure.

For the rest of the trip my theme song was “We gotta get out of this place” by The Animals.  We were supposed to get out of the truck and right onto a 9 hour bus to Sucre but (thankfully?) the bus was cancelled and so we had to beg our way onto a bus the next morning, agreeing to sit on the floor for 6 hours in order to get all the way to Sucre that day.  We spent the night in Sucre at the nicest place we’d been the whole trip, which we really needed since we hadn’t bathed in some days, only to find out that our flight was delayed multiple times, giving us another day in Sucre.  I took advantage of the nice bed and cable, Tom used the internet and Katie did some souvenir shopping.  Then finally(!) Monday night we got home.  We showed Katie around the compound and Hogar, arriving to lots of big hugs from the girls that missed us.  And then Tuesday at noon we saw her off at the airport as she ended her world travels.  Really we couldn’t have asked for a better travel companion than Katie because she was so easy-going and unperturbed about all the crazy things that happened.  Thanks for visiting Katie!  The trip was amazing, but it’s good to be home.

For New Year’s this year, we spent the first part of our evening having a nice bolivian dinner with the other volunteers, including three from other towns near us. We made a dish called salchipapa which sounds fancy  but is really just fried hot dogs on top of french fries…mighty tasty.

After that, we all went to mass at our nearby church, where we met up with all the girls from the Hogar (the girls home) and sat with them.  After mass all the volunteers went back to the Hogar for their big New Years party.

We got lots of time to hang out with the girls.

(above) Tom, Ophelia, Goelle.   (below) There was also quite a bit of dancing. Laura and Deisy.

For the occasion, the girls even got a fancy dinner. They all really enjoyed their big pieces of steak (decent meat is not very common for them).  Eat up Ophelia!

Just before midnight most of the volunteers left the Hogar for our own party, which we had on the roof of the institute where I teach. From up there we got a great view of the fireworks that were shot off all around town. There weren’t any particularly large displays, but every block in the city had their own, still quite substantial, display. However, from our vantage point on the roof, we could see all of these at once and it was amazing. I have never seen so many fireworks at once before. I shot a short video of it so you can see for yourself. The video starts facing downtown, then after everyone says “Happy New Years” it pans 360 degrees around.

Get it in 720p.
Also on Youtube

Because not all the volunteers could leave the Hogar for midnight, they joined us later, and we were able to celebrate new years for central time too

But it wasn’t over yet. The next day we had a party at the parish center put on by the young adult groups. Again, there was lots of dancing.

Currently, we’re looking forward to our second (almost) full year in Bolivia. We’re very busy getting set to begin the school year, which starts in just a couple weeks.

We hope that the new year, 2012, brings love and joy into your life. Please keep us and the people of Bolivia in your thoughts!

Merry Christmas!  We hope that you all are having a blessed and joy-filled Christmas!  We enjoyed our second Bolivian Christmas here in Montero.

Since Friday December 16th, I’ve been doing a Christmas Novena every afternoon with the kids from the neighborhood.  30-40 kids came daily to pray, sing, color, make nativity scenes and practice the nativity play.  Then on Christmas Eve they sang the Gloria dressed as angels to welcome Niño Jesus and on Christmas day they performed the nativity play at mass.   I really enjoy getting to know the kids and this leads Tom to call me a celebrity in the neighborhood because I can’t walk around without kids yelling out “Laurita!”  I made my first Nativity scene or “pesebre” also! (with the help of a coloring sheet)

On Christmas Eve, I got an emergency plea from Sister Inez to help her finish the angels’ wings for that night.  We had been working little by little on them all week but still had eight not-started nor a single finished.  So we worked all morning and afternoon (and I have the hot glue gun burns to prove it) and finally at 4:30pm finished, just in time for dinner at 5pm.  The Sisters shared their food with us so we had a nice Christmas dinner in our house with volunteer Marcos who came from Yapacani for Christmas.  Then it was off to mass at 7:30 to line up my angels.  Tom, the other volunteers, and I dressed up for mass although most people don’t.  It helps us feel more like Christmas though.

In front of the Nativity scene with Carmen (notice the angels in the background and Jesus in the hammock).

The angel performance went off well and so triumphantly we headed to the Hogar after mass for a little celebration.  The Sisters didn’t organize anything but we put some music on and danced with the younger girls until 11:00pm and then put them to bed.  It was really sweet, when I walked in to help put the 6-10 year olds to bed, all of them wanted big goodnight kisses and one even asked me to make the sign of the cross on her head.  It gave me heart pangs to think of all these little girls yearning for goodnight kisses that they rarely receive. It reminded me that despite how good the care may be at the Hogar, nothing can replace a loving mother in a child’s life.  I would have adopted all those little girls on the spot if I could have.

Afterwards we shared a little fermented apple cider (poor man’s champagne), which is the traditional drink here at Christmas, with the other volunteers and watched the fireworks until midnight.  We jokingly sang a rendition of the Star-Spangled banner at midnight, because fireworks just don’t mean Christmas for us.

Christmas morning the volunteers made scrambled eggs and french toast for the girls which Tom and Marcos headed over at 6:00am to help out with, while I was helping at the parish center to prepare the Christmas party for the neighborhood kids.  Then it was off to mass again at 8:00 where I helped the Nativity play actors get ready and dressed up some angels for the Gloria.  We had folded up the white angel robes from the night before and put them in a bag on the floor.  When I pulled the first robe out in the morning it had a big tarantula on it!!  I let out a yelp and jumped backwards throwing down the robe, only able to articulate, “spider, spider.”  All the kids tried to quelm my fears saying, oh spiders won’t hurt you, they’re not that bad.  But when I pulled all the other robes out and flushed out the tarantula from the bottom of the bag all the kids got excited too, “ahh, tarantula!”  Luckily as the tarantula started escaping its way towards the altar, a server boy came out with a broom and escorted it outside.  With that behind us, the angels and nativity actors all performed well and we headed to the parish center after mass for songs and games.  Kids won toys for participating and I gave out prizes to all the kids that had participated in the Novena.  There was also a competition of nativity scenes, and kids’ ones were way better than mine, so they all won toys also.   The party ended at about 12:30 when all the kids received hot chocolate, fried bread and treat bags and went home for lunch.

We headed over to the Hogar for lunch only to find they had eaten without us!  But we scavenged some leftover french toast and all was well.  We gave Carmen, our god-daughter a little present for Christmas and also gave one to Ophelia, an eight-year-old little girl that has latched on to Tom and just loves him.  She’s really sweet, and smart but she got bad parasites this past July-August and lost a lot of weight.  Now when you hug her you can feel all her bones.  They feed the girls enough at the Hogar in order to not be undernourished, but not enough to really gain any weight, so I had been worried about Ophelia for awhile.  And it’s not that we can’t buy her food here, but it is more difficult because how do you buy for one, when there are 100+ other hungry faces looking at you?  So while home in the US, we bought her some high-calorie Cliff bars hoping that at least an extra 100 calories a day and some protein might help.

Tom and Ophelia last Carnaval (before she lost weight)

I also opened my store at the Hogar for a little bit and made lots of sales including some of the biggest items that require 20 tickets to buy (the girls earn tickets by helping out the workers).   I enjoy pretending to be a Bolivian market worker and I hope the girls enjoy the chance to pick out their own things.  The store was so popular, the Sisters have even opened up a competing store that sells shoes and clothes.  At 3:00pm Marcos dressed up as Santa Claus and gave out presents to all the girls (backpack and a new pair of clothes) but we couldn’t stay because our OFS (Secular Order of Franciscans) group was going to Villa Virginia for another Christmas party.

Villa Virginia is full of bars called “chicherias” and is poorer than our neighborhood so the OFS bought a small lot there and started going three years ago for Christmas to give out toys and do some evangelization.   We showed up with treat bags and toys and started playing loud music, saying all the kids are invited to come celebrate Christmas with us.   It’s funny to me how common ‘impromptu’ events like this are, which only work because people are accustomed to coming out and investigating when it sounds like something new is going on in the neighborhood, that and word of mouth.  Anyway about 80 kids came, and we basically repeated the morning activities: songs, games, telling the Christmas story, and dances culminating in toys and treat bags being handed out at about 5:45pm.  Coincidentally, once the kids started leaving with toys a whole bunch more kids materialized, but we went ahead and gave to them also since we had planned for 200.

On the way home, the guys in the back of the pickup were yelling “ho ho ho” and throwing out toys and treat bags to any kids that we passed.  It might have worked better if most of the bags hadn’t landed in the street, but oh well.  They were having fun.

After that, we headed back over to the Hogar to check in with Marcos and see how everything went.  Finally at 7:00pm we headed back to our house, cooked some spaghetti and meatballs, called family, and crashed in our beds.

While back in the U.S., some people sounded surprised when we said we wanted to go back to Bolivia for Christmas.  I hope this long description has shed some light on why I felt so strongly about that decision.  Though it’s more a ‘work day’ than a holiday, it’s an opportunity to touch the lives of so many children and for me, embodies our goal of being here, which is to love others.  As God gave us the gift of his Son, I gave my Christmas as a gift to others.  And it was like I experienced a new kind of Christmas, instead of the kind where joy comes from the love of family, good food, and the thoughtful presents you receive; this Christmas we gave love and presents to others, and we kept giving until we were tired and hungry, and left with nothing but Christmas joy.