The 6th of August is Independence day here in Bolivia which of  course is celebrated with much pomp and circumstance but oddly very few fireworks….?  Apparently fireworks are just a Christmas and New Year’s thing.  There’s nothing Bolivians love more than getting a band and parading around the streets, so that’s what was done Thursday, Friday and Saturday.  The Kinders weren’t invited to the city-wide march on Friday, so on Thursday we had our own celebration.  Children dressed up in all the different traditional dresses of Bolivia and we took all the children for a march through the market.  Despite the fact that this was absolutely spur of the moment by Madre Clara and it was the middle of the day, people are amazingly undisturbed by having to stop their cars and wait for a mass of 250 Kindergarteners waving flags and shouting “Viva Bolivia” to pass by.   Once I got over my nervousness about someone plowing into us, I actually really enjoyed it.

On Friday, Tom and I stopped by Montero’s parade to see what it was all about.  There seemed to be endless groups of people.  Every school in town had to march with banners, flags, a band, baton twirlers, and their graduating class dressed up (men in suits, women in suits or way too tight skirt/shirt combos).  Then there was the public college and the nursing school and a bunch of groups of adults that must have been government employees but I don’t know where from.  Then there were all the military groups and at the very end a bunch of tractors with different plows on them.

Most of the bands were just drums, trumpets and xylophones (playing either “The Ants Go Marching” or “The Halls of Montezuma” – apparently this melody‘s actually from an old French opera so I’m sure they don’t mean any connection to the US Marines). One band however had recorders and a traditional pan flute called zampoña.

There seemed to be only two military groups: those dressed in black with their faces painted black and those dressed in camos with their faces painted camoflauge.  Also the camo guys were all carrying what looked like bazookas?  So I guess all I really know about their military is that one of their strategies is covert bazooka attacks.  Only their Army equivalent was represented.  Apparently they do have some “air force” based out of La Paz and a “navy” on Lake Titicaca.

If you can’t make it out, the side of the boat says “Policia Militar Navy.”

In other excitement, on Sunday we had lunch with our new friend Padre Mateo (Fr. Matthew).  He’s a diocesan priest from California here on a 6 month sabbatical.  He’s living and working with the Missionaries of Padre Kolbe here in Montero who run the Virgen de Cotoca parish and a medical center.  He found us via our blog and contacted us a week ago to make connections and have someone to speak English with.  I think he was also looking for some male presence as he lives with 9 women but unfortunately for him we’re a package deal so I tagged along too.  It was really fun to meet the Missionaries who are a consecrated group of women living in community but not technically a “religious order” (they take vows of poverty, obedience and chastity but are considered by the Vatican a secular institute) and learn about their work.  We also had a good time swapping stories with Padre Mateo about life in Montero and hearing his unique experiences being a priest here.

And if all that excitement wasn’t enough, we also finally spotted the elusive Montero sloth!  And turns out there are two!  They live in the trees on the main Plaza and I was lucky enough to catch this one climbing up a tree on Saturday afternoon.  Soooo cute!

Okinawa is a town one hour to the east of us where another group of Salesian volunteers works in a Salesian high school and parish center.  Okinawa was founded 50 years ago by Japanese immigrants looking for a fresh-start after leaving post-WWII Japan.   They arrived first in Brazil (still the site of the largest Japanese community outside of Japan) and then made their way to Bolivia and Peru.  They were ‘gifted’ chunks of rainforest (possibly previously inhabited by indigenous Bolivians?) from the government which they cleared and transformed into an agricultural empire.

Their empire includes factories that process milk, grains, and make pasta and sweets, a Japanese high school, a Japanese hospital, a cultural center, a sports complex, a swimming pool and a museum.  Still it is a very small, rural town with just one main road going through and a small, dusty plaza.  There is a distinct ‘Japanese side’ and ‘Bolivian side’ of town, most notably differentiated by how nice the homes are.  Also in general Bolivians are kept out of the other Japanese offerings like their high school or sports complex by high entry fees.

The cultural center has air conditioning (!) couches to sit on and really nice bathrooms- they had toilet paper AND hand soap.  I took this picture (below) in the bathroom, I think it says ‘don’t flush toilet paper’ in Japanese.  It was just kind of surreal to see everything written in Japanese all of a sudden, you walk through a door and it’s like  you’re not in Bolivia anymore.

Also while visiting Okinawa we went with the volunteers out to the surrounding rural Bolivian communities.  They go out there three days a week to do religious education/ mentoring with the kids which generally involves playing soccer, face painting, or watching movies on laptops.  It was a really awesome experience.  The people live in very humble dwellings with mud-adobe walls, dirt floors, and a thatched roof.  Each little community has a one-room school house where all the kids from Kindergarten to eighth grade go to school in the mornings (assuming they have a teacher).  When we came in the afternoon, the kids seemed to be doing a lot of just ‘hanging out’ and were very happy for the diversion.  They probably spend all their other time helping their parents prepare or grow food.  Below, is an example of their homes.

What struck me most leaving Okinawa was the dichotomy between the Japanese and Bolivians.  I just kept asking myself, why?  The Bolivians had already been there for hundreds of years.  How did the Japanese come in and surpass them so quickly?  The only conclusion I could come to was: expectations.  The Japanese came in with great expectations of how they wanted their settlement to be (based on experiences in Japan) and they worked to make that happen.  In 50 years a small group of Japanese immigrants have built up industry, schools, hospitals almost to 1st world standards and yet the Bolivians who were living there 50 years ago in poverty are still doing so. You might say, well surely the Japanese had an influx of capital that the Bolivians didn’t.  They also had their strong Japanese work ethic, organizational standards, good education, and lack of corruption.  It would be inflammatory though to say that you couldn’t find a Bolivian with these same qualities, albeit they’re not as valued culturally as in Japan.  Why then, if the Bolivians had been given the same amount of money, the same amount of land 50 years ago would the results not have been the same?  Expectations.

As the second semester of classes here get into full swing, we’ve seen the need to start another computer fund raising project to be realized for the end of this school year or the start of the next.

Tom’s classroom is still doing great. However, the basic-level computer course, “Basics of Computer Usage,” which is a pre-req for Tom’s class and is the most popular class at the Institute with nearly 60 graduates each semester, is in need of some computer updates. In addition, the Kinder computer lab (which certainly is at the bottom of the totem pole as far as ‘crucial’ upgrades) has had multiple deaths since May and mice chronically going on the fritz. So the plan is to make a purchase of as many new computers as we can manage (note we’re just buying computers not monitors, we still get by ok on the old CRTs) for the basic-level computer lab and then their older computers can be inherited by the Kinder lab. In addition, we’d purchase 20 small, optical mice for the Kinder lab. Sometimes the kids have to move the mouse with one hand and click with the other because the mice are so big and the aged, roller-ball mice can be difficult to move. This gets the newer technology where it’s really needed (Institute) but also improves my ability to educate, versus frustrate, students at the Kinder.

The Institute and Kinder classes which teach basic computer skills are aimed toward students who do not have access to computers at home or at libraries and so are at a disadvantage. Computers are taught in some grade schools but not all. By high school, students are expected to come in with certain basic skills and if they don’t have them they just fail instead of being ‘caught up’ by the teacher (another product of huge class sizes). The same thing happens in Universities, students are expected to use Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint but no classes are offered to teach them these skills. So students have to take extra classes at an Institute in order to be able to pass their university classes. For many students the Institute works to supplement where their high school education was deficient. And though Bolivia is technologically behind developed countries, the reality already is that you can’t get into any professional position without basic computer skills.

Two generous donations have already been pledged from our family members and we’d like to invite you to join with them so that this computer purchase can make the biggest impact. It’s always better to buy ‘in bulk’ as far as prices and to have as many of the same computers as possible which makes lab maintenance easier.

To make a tax-deductible donation, you may send a check to:
Sister Servants of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
attn: Bolivia Mission – Montero Computers
866 Cambria St.
Cresson, PA 16630-1713
USA

Federal ID # : 75-236-912

Or if you’d like to send the money directly to us (arrives faster) you may send a check made out to Thomas Kent to Tom’s parents:
Thomas Kent
Bolivia Operations
10342 Colorado Rd.
Bloomington, MN 55438

Thirdly, you can click our Paypal button:

Thank you helping us to continue to improve the educational offerings here, which is a key step in ending cycles of poverty. This is one of the few ways that we can make ‘lasting’ change in the community, and leave something behind that will continue to help.

This is the conversation I had today with one of my Kindergarten students. It was precious.

Oliver: Profesora Laura why is your face pink?
Me: When I’m out in the sun, the sun makes my skin pink.
Oliver: No…when I go out in the sun I only get brown.

::putting our hands side-by-side::

Me: Well look, our skin is different.
Oliver: No that’s just what happens when you scrub the dirt off really hard.
Me: ::trying to understand:: So maybe my face is pink because I scrubbed it really hard? Maybe, Oliver, maybe.
I love that kid.

Sometimes the children at the Guarderia stroke my arm and say “How did you get so clean?”

Oliver Addendum from Aug. 10th:  He’s playing with his toy airplane at Kinder and comes and sits down next to me.

Oliver: Profesora Laura what are these?  ::pointing to the freckles on my arm::

Me: Those come from the sun, when I’m out in the sun they appear.  (I can never remember the word for freckle here)

Oliver: Well you probably just need to wash yourself with a brush and scrub really hard.  Sometimes you even have to use a plate scrubber (referring to the sponges with brillo pads).  That’s what my mom says to do.

Me:  Ok, Oliver maybe I’ll do that.

Last Saturday, July 23rd, was National Friendship Day here in Bolivia. I don’t why it’s on July 23rd particularly but it’s celebrated very similarly to Valentine’s Day in the US. The market stalls were overflowing with pink, white and red teddy bears and things saying ‘Love’ sell at a premium. It is also common to do a “Secret Friend” gift exchange. So amongst my youth group and amongst my co-workers at the Guarderia, I drew a secret friend’s name out of a hat. Not knowing exactly what was a customary gift, but trying to give something useful, I bought some eye shadow for the college student and put together a bowl of cooking supplies and a cookie recipe for Madre Inez (my secret friend from the Guarderia). She had complimented me previously on my oatmeal raisin cookies and in general Bolivians do not know how to make American cookies so I thought she might appreciate it.

On Saturday we had a party with all the youth groups from the center to eat, dance and exchange presents.

I gifted the eye shadow and received a white teddy bear that played a song that I didn’t recognize. In one of my classic cultural blunders, the college student who opened the eye shadow said, “oh I’ve never worn makeup, I don’t even know how to put it on.” Despite the fact that she wears nice clothes and always has on jewelry, I guess I hadn’t adequately taken into account what a luxury item makeup is and that most young people don’t have expendable income to that level. Oh well, I hope she enjoys learning how to use it.

Also some people gave out Valentines at the party.

The next day at the Hogar I passed my teddy bear along to our god-daughter, Carmen, along with a head band and some pictures I’d printed out for her. She had been worrying that she was invited to a birthday party that day and didn’t have a present to bring so I told her she should pick one thing from her present to re-gift. She decided to re-gift the head band. I was happy to have an opportunity to teach about sharing and generosity.

Despite what the picture would suggest, she was actually very excited about the bear. It’s kind of a cultural thing here to look serious in photos. I think she learned it from her mom, anyway that’s why she’s rarely smiling. (I think it’s because people have such bad teeth, just like in the US 100 years ago when no one would smile. They’re still in that practice here. With adults, it’s understandable since many have golden crowns or are missing teeth.)

In other events, I also got pooped on by a pigeon, which the Italian volunteer, Georgia, insisted was good luck.

And we handed out lollipops to all the girls for Friendship Day. This is Carmen and her older sister Ana Paola. We in general have a no-sweets policy for the Hogar girls since they have such bad teeth and we don’t want to be part of the problem, but I said, well just this once.

On Monday, we had a dinner with all the Guarderia staff and exchanged our secret presents, but we never got to find out who actually gave us the present which disappointed me. Anyway I think Madre Inez liked her present. I put in a few already-baked cookies as an example and the other workers joked that if her cookies didn’t turn out the same she should ‘return it.’ I received a fluffy pink ‘Love’ pillow which made me quite glad I had already passed along the teddy bear, otherwise our living room might be in cute overload. I guess what I learned from both gift exchanges is that Dia de Amistad is generally celebrated with fluffy, pink, useless gifts.

I apologize for the ‘radio silence,’ we’ve been getting used to new schedules here since the end of winter break. So to catch you up:

Thursday June 23 was the feast of Corpus Christi and we were off school and had a big mass in the stadium with a cold and long procession afterwards back to the parish church. This was more or less the first COLD day!

The night after Corpus Christi mass everyone has a San Juan (St. John) dinner which involves eating barbecue at midnight, dancing and doing silly things like taking cold showers and walking on hot coals. We just had some barbecue with the Sisters and went to bed. Of course there were fireworks though!

July 1-2: Feast of the Sacred Heart
We had two really nice masses followed by dance presentations Friday and Saturday night. I (Laura) danced in both. Friday night was the youth groups of the parish center so I danced with my “Followers of Christ” group and then Saturday night was at the Hogar and we danced with all the other volunteers to Boot Scoot Boogie! Everyone loved it. At this point there were six of us: Tom and I, Paris and Annamarie (UK), Georgia (Italy) and Melia (US).

Happy Feast Day Sisters! Left to right, back: Sr. Christina, Sr. Dorotea, Sr. Anita, Sr. Fatima, Sr. Paola, Sr. Andrea, Sr. Clara, front: Sr. Rosario, Fr. ?, novice, Sr. Angela.

July 3: We leave for Peru!
Tom took a week off from the Institute and I had two weeks off from Kinder so we did a quick tour of Southern Peru. Our friend, Bob Zager, from St. Louis flew down to join us and we spent 7 days touring through Cuzco, Macchu Picchu, Arequipa, Puno, Lake Titicaca and finally La Paz, Bolivia. We also had the great fortune to meet up with two other great friends, Caty Hughes and Emily Fifield in Arequipa. It was great to see so many familiar faces! Some of the highlights from the trip were petting llamas, eating Guinea pig, seeing huge viscachas at Macchu Picchu (and the ruins too), reaching 14,905 feet on a bus, seeing flamingos at 14,000 feet, eating at McDonald’s (for Tom), eating Twix bars, eating trout from Lake Titicaca, and visiting the group of knitters that Emily F. works with in Arequipa. They’re economically-disadvantaged women providing for their family by knitting sweaters, gloves, finger puppets and selling them to local tourist shops but Emily is helping them improve their products for the U.S. fair trade market- in stores now in Des Moines, Iowa and hopefully someday St. Louis too.

Group in Arequipa

Me and my new best friend. We were told later it was actually a vicuña not a llama.
Lake Titicaca

July 10: We returned from Peru and winter had ended . It basically was only two coldish weeks. We’re still expecting a few days in the 60′s here and there before September but nothing that will stay. This was a hard reality at first for me to accept but we do indeed live in a tropical climate. ::sigh::

July 11: Tom graduates his first 6 students from Intro to Multimedia at St. Sebastian Pelczar Institute.

July 12: New semester starts and I’m officially an English professor! Madre Clara even went to Santa Cruz and bought me top-notch English textbooks and I have 9 adult students that I’m teaching English to three nights a week! I really enjoy it so far even though it makes for some long days for me. Tom’s classes are doing well also he now has two sections with 5 in the first and 12 in the second.

I just turned in my grades for my first semester as a teacher! Over-all it went well, the fact that I was teaching in Spanish was definitely the most challenging aspect. It was a great experience to be able to put together a course that many can benefit from (you can too) and to work with the students, getting them to understand it all.

I especially want to thank all those who donated towards building the computer lab that I worked in, I couldn’t have done any of this without you!

In case you didn’t see it before, here’s a picture of my first graduating class!

I’d like to give you a little inside look of how I spend my mornings Monday-Friday at the Guarderia. Guarderia San Antonio was started by the Sisters about six years ago to meet a need for childcare for all the workers in the market. Many children would just be hanging around their parents’ stalls all day, relatively unsupervised. So, for 1.50 bs/day (25 cents) the kids can instead come learn and play at the Guarderia. The government pays the salaries of all the workers and provides some basic food stuffs such as rice, pasta, milk but the Sisters have to cover other food expenses, building upkeep, and supplies. The children also have to bring some art supplies, toilet paper, shampoo, soap and some fruit.

The Guarderia is open 7:30am-5:00pm and we feed the kids breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack and bathe them after lunch. I believe this is all the food and bathing most of them get, at least through the week. Some families eat a light dinner around 8pm but not everybody. I arrive at 8:30am and help with breakfast and then go into one of the classrooms to assist the workers. Unlike at the Kinder, I’m not assigned a specific role so I’m kind of free-agent for whoever needs help that day. Sometimes the workers need to go run errands so I cover for them or if they have an extra-large amount of children I come in and help manage the chaos. Most mornings though I start out with the babies aged 6 months to a year and a half.

We have 5 cribs and a bed in the room, some rarely-washed squeaky toys, balloons, and some wooden shapes. Most of the children are just content being spoken to and getting to practice standing up and sitting down all day. It’s really not too bad since they are happy to be put to sleep or drink a bottle when they get fussy. Things only get more hectic when we have more than 7 babies and one’s crying wakes the others up and then everyone’s cranky. We’ve had up to 13 babies in there at once (5 in cribs, 3 on bed, 2 on floor, 2 in strollers, 1 walking), but that wasn’t a great day. When I’m not in there, there’s just one worker and so generally 6 or under is a lot more manageable. Most of the mothers use cloth diapers (in that they just tie a piece of cloth around their bum) which are a little gross to change because you have to sack up the dirty diaper to send home with them. Also, multiple of the children who come regularly have issues. One is 9 months old and can’t sit up yet. One is 14 months old and is just now able to pull herself up to standing. Some of them are malnourished, or were malnourished and most of them are ill frequently with diarrhea, colds, coughs. A nurse from the government comes regularly to weigh them however and pass out vitamins so they are really trying to combat the malnourishment. The 14 month old’s mother admitted to not having money to buy formula, I don’t know if she was breast feeding or not.

Then there’s the older baby room, kids from walking to 3 years old. This is one of my favorite rooms because the kids are always happy to see me and they actually listen pretty well to what you say to them. Most of them haven’t developed that ‘no’ response to everything yet. In here are usually 12-17 kids with two workers.

The workers leave something to be desired in that they never talk to the kids except to scold them, they don’t read to them, sometimes they don’t even give them any toys, and they don’t watch the kids much. I like to go in and read books to them and play games like ring around the rosie and sing to them. That’s why the kids like me. I’m often in here for the bathing as well which can be quite a marathon. All we have is a shallow sink to bathe the kids in so while one worker strips them down, the other lifts each kid into the sink, makes them sit down and lathers them up. Some kids are more resistant and have to be held down so they don’t fling themselves out of the sink. You can imagine how slippery a soaped-up squirmy two-year can be. Once clean the kid is carried over and laid on a towel (the same towel for every kid) while the 1st worker redresses them and the next kid gets put in the sink. After doing this 15 times you really work up a sweat! When the temperature is below 70F or it’s raining, we don’t bathe the kids because it’s ‘bad’ for them. This room is also where most of the biting takes place and they implement an interesting Hammurabian punishment where the bitten child gets to bite the biter’s fingers as hard as they want until the biter cries. My other favorite is when they smack the kids and tell them that hitting is bad. The workers never hit the kids hard, but corporal punishment is certainly used. A good ear tug goes a long way.

The next level is ‘Nidito’ which is 3-4 years old and here they actually start doing some preschool-type work. They start learning to color, to draw lines and occasionally a book or two will be gotten out for them. This classroom has one worker and 12-15 kids but a few bad ones can really poison it. When the two difficult ones aren’t there, they’re angels. At least in this instance though I can see that the difficult children are also possibly less well cared for at home and maybe don’t receive a lot of parental attention. They tend to come dirty, covered in scratches and skin infections and with raggedy clothing. With these kids I like to talk about counting, colors, shapes and animals. We have a game where we act out all the sounds and actions different animals make. It’s amazing how the bad kids shape up when there’s an activity to do.

Next is PreKinder, ages 4-5. This is the classroom I was in most of February when we had a shortage of workers because the government decided not to pay them and it’s a long story but I kind of avoid it now. They generally have 20-30 kids with two workers and are all fairly good kids but demand a lot of attention because they’re very verbal and crave individual praise, which I go out of my way to give to them but tires me out a lot. They’re fun to sing songs with and do some more advanced coloring, drawing and collaging. The teachers also begin teachers numbers, letters, and colors to them.

Finally there’s Kinder (5-6 years old)! The Kinder counts for Kindergarten as far as getting into first grade although it’s really not the same. Most of the kids go the Kinder next door in the afternoon but a few for financial reasons don’t. The teacher is supposed to teach all the numbers, letters, colors, simple addition and subtraction but it just doesn’t really get done too thoroughly. I like to come in and help them with their work. Also, I’ve taught them how to do the hokey-pokey in English and we can play more advanced games like musical chairs, duck duck goose and we’re working on kickball.


If you’re still reading this and added up all the numbers you’ll see we usually have 50-70 kids at the Guarderia which means lots of work for the cooks so occasionally I’ll hang out in the kitchen and help them. This is how I learned they don’t have any hand soap and so ‘wash’ their hands with water and a dirty towel. This shed some light on my chronic stomach issues here since we eat their food for breakfast and lunch everyday. I’m slowly working on introducing a few of my ideas at the Guarderia, like asking the workers to wash their hands. The Guarderia is certainly the hardest thing I do every week, and probably where I pick up all my illnesses, but it is great to see their smiles every day.

Welcome to winter in the tropical Southern Hemisphere! Yesterday was the Solstice and the Aymara people’s New Year. It’s celebrated as a national cultural holiday so we were all off of work. There aren’t, however, many Aymara people on this side of the country so there weren’t any parties. Today (being winter and all) was a brisk high of 84F and low of 60F. One of the little boys at the Kinder had on a sweater AND sweatshirt under his uniform shirt. It is winter afterall. It looks like the winds are changing however and we’ll have a low of 50F by Sunday. Brrr….. Everything feels and looks pretty much the same. I took this picture today of our palm tree which apparently fruits during the winter. Madre Clara said it will grow good, edible coconuts.

Word on the street is that winter break for the schools might start July 4th. But they don’t actually declare it winter break until the weather gets cold. I guess you can do that when you only have 2 cold weeks a year. The schools aren’t heated or insulated so the idea is to stay home and keep warm. People are quite sensitive to the cold here so although it might only be 40F, it could still be a health concern for them. Tom and I on the other hand will be in heaven. Not quite as exciting as all the holiday parties to look forward to in the Northern Hemisphere, but I’m looking forward to two weeks of running and exercising without worrying about heatstroke. This solstice also marks the 1-year of straight summer that Tom and I have lived through (beginning last June in St. Louis, arriving in ‘spring’ here in Sucre, 70′s & 80′s and then 80′s & 90′s in Montero from October until now). And I have to say, with lots of experience to back it up, we still don’t particularly like summer weather.

Update: Tom just got back from class and said he saw a student with a puffy down coat, stocking cap and scarf on. It’s currently….61F. Try not to get frostbitten on the way home buddy