Market Big Picture

So I took a panoramic photo of the market from on top of the Institute:Click on the picture to see the full resolution version. You can look into the market stalls and see what is going on.  You may also notice a car that is only half there (it was moving when I took one picture, and not in the next).

This is actually just part of a larger picture, which you can get here.  It includes our house and our neighbors across the street (see if you can find the chickens in their yard).

You can also get the full pre-cropped image here.

For those interested I stitched it together with the (largely automated) Hugin software, I highly recommend it.

More Bad News on Food Prices

For the last week or so Bolivia has been rocked by massive strikes from groups as diverse as teachers, doctors, and miners. Because of the skyrocketing costs of food, everyone is trying to get paid more in their job to make up the difference. There’s all sorts of crazy Bolivian economic policies that I could talk (and/or vent) about that are based on shaky economics, they don’t really have much to do with the unrest…they just pile on to the problems.
Even if Bolivia had the best possible economic policies (I’m not going to say I or anybody else knows what those would be), it still would be having a lot of the same issues, just because of the huge increase in food prices. The World Bank just released numbers saying the the food prices have risen 36% over this time last year! When you’re already working 10hrs/day, and spending up to half your money on food (the rest probably on housing), there’s simply no room in the budget for food prices changing like that. Thus you need more money to just get by. So, you go on strike to try to get that. When you have lots of different groups all on strike at the same time, then it starts to get crazy. There have been road blocks on all the major roads, miners exploding dynamite in La Paz, and doctors shutting down the clinics and hospitals.

The price increases aren’t just affecting the people of Bolivia either, but these prices are going to affect anyone who really has to watch the price of the food that they eat. I know that when I was living in St. Louis, this didn’t include us…we were blessed enough that we didn’t have to think about if we could afford the stuff on our shopping list, but I know there were people even living in our old neighborhood that did have to think about things like that.

So what can you do to help?
1) Eat less meat. Raising livestock (like cattle) takes a lot of food to feed the animals (more than 50 times what we get out of them), if there wasn’t the demand for so many animals to eat, more of that feed could go to feeding people. I’m not suggesting being a vegetarian, I don’t think I could do that unless I was forced to…but if everyone cut down their meat consumption by half, that would make a huge difference. Try to start thinking of meat as more of a reward or food for celebrations than something you eat on a daily basis.
2) Drive Less. (or get a more efficient car) A huge part of food prices is the transportation of the food. Thus the price of gasoline is making an impact on the current food price crisis. If we can start being more efficient with our driving habits, we can reduce some of this pressure on food prices (and do a whole bunch of other good things too).

Bolivian Market

As I’ve been meaning to do for months, I finally got the chance to go out and take a video while walking through the market.  Here it is for your viewing pleasure.

Some things you may notice are the chickens sitting under the netting, and the large quantities of potatoes and pasta sitting in bags.

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World Water Day

Today being World Water Day, I’ve been thinking about our water here in Montero and wanted to share my thoughts with you, our lovely blog reader.

First, we usually don’t drink the water from the tap here.  For the (fairly large amount of) water that we drink here, we have one of those blue 5-gallon water dispensers…like the office water cooler, except there is no cooling function :-(   However, for cooking, showers, and laundry we’re using the tap water here.  Usually that seems to work out fine, but a few times (less than 10 since we’ve been here) our water will turn brown and dirty!  That’s no good when you’re trying to boil a pot of spaghetti, and would be worrisome if I were in the shower when it happens.  Luckily this has never lasted more than an hour or two, and then everything is back to normal.  Some of the people here said it was because they had been cleaning build-up out of the water tower, but I’m not sure if I believe that.

Everyone we talked to here says that the tap water is safe for drinking, and I haven’t really seen anything that would make me believe otherwise.  After all we do live in a sizeable city, and they do have water treatment facilities at work.   Since we’ve been down here, and our bodies have gotten more adjusted to everything, we’ve been a bit less careful about only drinking the bottled water.  Now for some stuff, like brushing our teeth, we’ll use the tap water, and it’s been working out fine.

Everything here is different outside of town though.  We haven’t had a lot of direct experiences, but we’ve heard some stories about people in the countryside having to get by with some pretty bad surface water (streams, ponds, etc).  We just talked to a person last weekend who was working in one of the communities to install a well for them, so that they could have a source of water that wasn’t completely contaminated.

From a broader perspective, I think we might be starting to turn the corner on clean water access.  Ten years ago, this was a huge issue that wasn’t really on anyone’s radar.  Now there have been tens or even hundreds of thousands of wells drilled in all sorts of communities around the world.  That combined with the fact that 2010 saw the point where we went from more people living in the country to more people living in urban environments, where is is at least feasible to setup clean water distribution systems if they aren’t there already, means that if we keep pressing this is a problem that we might get close to solving in the next several years.  There’s still a ton to do, but I think there’s at last reason to be positive about the situation.

God-daughter’s Birthday

Last Saturday, our god-daughter from the hogar, Maria del Carmen (usually just goes by Carmen as everyone is a Maria around here), turned 7 (we think, she wasn’t sure).  To celebrate we took her out for ice cream to a spot in town, and told her to pick two friends that she wanted to bring with her.  We met them around dinner time and took a taxi to the main plaza.  Luckily for us things weren’t too crazy (it was Carnival weekend after all), we did get sprayed with a bit of foam inside the taxi as we were driving down one of the side streets though, but we arrived at the restaurant without incident.

Once we grabbed a table and sat down, we had to decide what to order.  None of us had eaten, so we decided to get a bit of food for an appetizer before our main course of ice cream.  We settled on a plate of salchi-papas (which is french fries with pieces of hotdog cut up over it) and a couple plates of plain fries.  While we were waiting for the food to come, we told the girls they could go play in the play area.  The play area was a typical child-proofed contraption, like you’ll find in the kids area at McDonalds.  However the girls were a bit afraid of it and didn’t really want to go, as they’d never been to anything like that before.  It took a bit of convincing to get them in, but about ten seconds after they entered it that was all forgotten and they were running around having a great time.

It took a while for the fries to arrive, and they seemed to have tired themselves out by then, or they were just excited and didn’t want to miss the food…I’m not sure.   When they got their plates of fries, they thought it was a great treat, but it was a common example of the eyes being bigger than the stomach, and none of them could finish so Laura and I had to help out ;-)   Three of the most exciting parts for them were the ketchup, mayonnaise and napkins.  They weren’t familiar with any of them and didn’t know how to use the squirt bottles to get the condiments out.  They also didn’t know what a napkin was used for (there aren’t any at the Hogar).  After we caught one girl using her shirt to clean up a spill on the table we had a discussion about how to use a napkin.  By the end of the night we had gone though all the napkins at the table!  Possibly more out of novelty than need.

Ordering ice cream was also a bit of a trick.  They were all super excited for ice cream, but none of them had any idea what form it should take.  They weren’t familiar with concepts such as a “sundae” or any of the fancier ice cream creations that were available. And ordering was further complicated by the fact that any time chocolate ice cream was mentioned they all shouted “Chocolate! Chocolate!”  In the end we just ordered the first three things on the menu for them, so they could try a couple different ones.

When the ice cream came, it was another instance of the eyes being bigger than the stomach.  Once again Laura and I had to make the great sacrifice and help them out with theirs ;-)

But finally all the cups of ice cream were cleaned out.

Once we were finished with the ice cream, it was time to open the presents.  The main present Laura and I got her was a barbie-like doll along with some stickers, seen immediately after opening here:

The doll was somewhat of an adventure.  Laura had figured out a couple months ago that Carmen would be interested in having a doll for her birthday (like any 7yr old girl).  Laura then came up with a grand plan of finding a culturally sensitive doll, that actually depicts someone with dark skin and hair (unlike the tall, white, blond dolls that are most common here).  The idea was to build up good self image, and counter the idea around here that having light skin and hair was the best.  Unfortunately when Laura discreetly asked Carmen what she would like in a doll it was clear that she really wanted one with light skin/hair…thus it became a decision of giving her what she wanted vs. going with the ideals.  Since it was her birthday, we decided to go with what she was wanting (but did go with a brunette instead of a blond)….and she seemed to like it.

After the presents, we took the girls back to the hogar in a taxi and that was the night.  Lots of fun for all!

The Price of Sugar

So you may have read in a couple of Laura’s previous posts that the price of sugar is at an all-time high here in Bolivia.  In fact it isn’t just sugar (which is the worst), but the price of food in general is skyrocketing.  This is causing rather wide-spread unrest here.  Last week there were reports of citizens of various communities setting up roadblocks around the country (not terribly out of the normal here), and there were several very large protests, most significantly in La Paz and Oruro. (Before I go any further, I want to make clear that we don’t feel in any danger whatsoever, so don’t worry mom&dad….funny side note though, the protests in Oruro involved some miners throwing sticks of dynamite.)  Montero hasn’t had any protests or other disruptions, but that doesn’t mean that the drastic rise of food prices hasn’t affected people here.

In Bolivia, like many 3rd world or developing nations, for most people a huge percentage of their earnings goes towards food.  This can be up in the 30-50% range, just for comparison when we were living in St. Louis, we spent somewhere below 5% of our earnings on food…which included all sorts of great things like pizza (frozen, dominos and Pi/Deweys…did I mention I miss pizza?) and going out to eat every now and then at nice restaurants.  Here those people who are spending up to half their income on food are buying the basics…bread, rice, potatoes, beans, and maybe a small number of vegetables to spice things up.

Just to give an idea…a roll (they don’t really have loaves) of bread here costs 1 Boliviano (7Bs = 1US$)…for breakfast I eat three or four of these, usually with margarine (15Bs for a tub good for a week) and jelly (20Bs for a jar good for 2 weeks) then I have a glass of juice to wash it down (10Bs for a bottle good for a week).  So doing the math…that’s about 9Bs for breakfast each day…or 279Bs for a month…just for breakfast.  Now, granted living with the sisters, I’m quite a bit better off than most of the people we work with, so for a more typical person lets divide that in half and say 140Bs per month.  The typical Guarderia (Daycare) worker here only makes about 700Bs a month, so that breakfast (defiantly less than a third of what they eat in a day) is costing them 2o% of their pay!  Luckily for them, they get a pretty generous lunch provided by the government through their work at the school.  They don’t eat huge dinners here, so I imagine that is probably similar to the breakfast expense for them (or they just go hungry for the night).  And this is just for one person, some of these people are single mothers with a couple of kids to feed.  On the bright side, most of the people at this level don’t have to get their own housing, they either live with a man (married or un-married) or with extended family, which is good because renting a room here would also account for a large percentage of their monthly pay.

That’s just one example, there are many more like that, some even more on the edge.  I haven’t had a lot of direct experience with it, but I’m sure there are many people around who go hungry from time to time.

So hopefully that gives you a bit of background.  Once I figured all that out, it made sense why people were protesting a hike in the price of food staples by 15%.

It isn’t only Bolivia that is strongly affected by this either.  You may have heard that there were governments being overthrown and such in the middle east.  There’s a lot of reasons for these protests, but usually buried half way through one of the articles describing why people are angry comes a few sentences about rising food prices.  However I can imagine that in these countries (mostly desert countries that have to import a lot of food and are especially susceptible to price fluctuations) it was a major factor to why people were unhappy to start with right now (like the straw that broke the back of the 30-year old regime).

There’s a great story on food prices and unrest from NPR that I’d really recommend, it explains some of the linkages between food and some of the events around the world.  If you’re interested in more on this, this google news search for food prices has new articles every day about how people all over the world are being impacted by this rise.

Around Montero

A few people have asked me about the town, and what its like.  I’m hoping to get a day to go out and take some pictures and videos, but for now, I’ve got a really great map view of it, with satellite imagery that has just been released by microsoft.

Check it out here.  (You can also click the “In Montero” link above any time.)

Class In Action

So here we are, teaching our first week of class in the new school year.  Its exciting, and more than a bit scary.  I am teaching a class for the first time in my life, and though it is on a topic I know very well (Introduction to Multimedia), its in Spanish, which I don’t know as well as I would like.  Also, I’m teaching from a text that I’ve spent the last three months writing myself (again in Spanish…with more than a little help from family/friends and google translate).  Finally, I’m teaching in a brand-new computer lab that one of the more computer savvy people at the institute and I had to put together from the ground up (and I’m still working the kinks out of)…financed by generous donations from so many awesome people!  So needless to say, there’s a lot going into this.

Sadly, it is starting off a little more slowly than I would have liked.  The vocational schools in Bolivia all start on Feb. 1, however, for the first two weeks of class, there are still students signing up!  My first day, I only had two students, but it has been growing steadily.  The problem is, however, that each time a new group of students starts the class, I have to go back and go over all the material I already covered…while trying to keep the students who were there on the first day engaged with other work.  Not the best scenario for a rookie teacher.

All in all, it has been a good experience.  The students seem interested in the material, and hungry to learn more about it, so that’s a good sign.

I’ve taken a few pictures with students using the lab, and have a short movie below.

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And while I’m teaching this class, I also still need to finish up the last couple sections of the text…that we’ll be using in a few short months.

So that’s what’s been happening with me…now let’s hear from Laura:

After spending January preparing my materials to teach English at the Kinder, Madre Clara approached me and asked if I’d be willing to teach Computer class instead as their computer teach had not yet shown up.   Embracing the flexibility that Bolivia has taught me, I said no problem with a smile, put aside all my prepared materials and started over from scratch.  I spent that first week doing diagnostics of my computer lab- full of the best equipment 1995-1999 had to offer, which would be fine if they worked.  Tom taught me some basic computer disassembly and what wires to wiggle.  Who would have thought I’d come to Bolivia to learn how to repair computers? Of the 31 computers in there, so far 24 are functioning, which should be interesting when I have a class of 36 come in.   Basically my lesson plans involve teaching the parts of the computer, how to properly turn the computers on and off, and how to use the mouse.  They have a bunch of educational games they can play also and I’m going to show some movies and teach a little English too.  In a few weeks, I’ll start having two classes a day in there.

For now, I’m helping out in the classroom with 37 pre-Kinder kids, ages 4-5, as they have the hardest time adjusting to school.  Most of the time I’m chasing down kids trying to escape or calming kids having a melt-down.   One funny tidbit from the week:  Tom came over on Friday to help me film some students in the computer lab.  During the beginning of the day when all the students line up and sing songs, there was one boy having a particularly bad melt-down.  He had gotten himself so worked up he was throwing up his lunch all over the place and when a female teacher approached him, he looked spooked and ran.  He ran right to Tom, and clung.  Tom tried to take him to his professor and leave him there but he kept running back to him.  So after taking the kid to bathroom to clean him up, Tom had a shadow for about an hour.   Everybody was cracking up about it.  I guess the kid was a daddy’s-boy.

P.S. This is our 50th blog post! We hope you’ve enjoyed reading them :-)

Quick Pig Story

So this last weekend Laura and I decided to make a short getaway before school gets going this week. (first students come tomorrow!)  We headed about an hour west of Montero to the scenic town of Buena Vista to spend a night at the Amboro Eco Resort (so called because during the non-rainy season they have tours that go into Amboro national park).  The big draw for us was that this place has a pretty good swimming pool, and we haven’t been swimming since last August, despite the fact that we’ve been living in perpetual summer.

So we got there at about 8:15, and saw (to our somewhat suprise) that the pool was lit up, so why wait…after quickly changing in our room we jumped right in!  It was great, very refreshing, and actually a pretty nice resort pool.  There was a small bar on an island in the middle of it, and a waterway stretching around that we could swim through. But mostly we sat around and were enjoying the stars.

After about an hour, we were thinking it might be time to get up and go, when we look up to see a peccary (a type of wild pig) has walked right up to the edge of the pool, in the middle of the resort!  We got set to quickly get out of the opposite edge if it decided to jump in, but it didn’t.  We were able to watch it for a few more minutes as it moseyed around on the pool deck, at one point digging through a purse that had been there, and apparently not finding any food in it.  Then after a few minutes, it just wandered away.

Sadly, we didn’t have a camera with us, I know a picture of this would have been a great addition to this story.  Needless to say, it was quite surprising, but hey, this is bolivia, you never know what you’re going to run into.

In lieu of a picture of the pig, here’s a picture of some horses by the pool the next morning.