Mana Kanchu Camara (2006.09.18)

Well, it’s been two weeks since I’ve sat down at my computer to blog, and man has it been an eventful two weeks. The day after the last post, I went with two other volunteers to a Baptist Mission in a place called San Julian. It was a 4 hour journey into Santa Cruz city like usual, and then a 2.5 hour shared taxi ride out to San Julian. It was all on paved roads though, which was nice. We were there to learn more about well drilling because this was the place that this type of well technology got started, at least here in Bolivia. The mission is run by a Texas minister named Terry Waller, who has been in Bolivia for about 15 years. Until recently, he lived here with his family, but they have since moved back to Texas to put their three adopted Bolivian daughters through school. And Terry has been in Africa for the past couple of months trying to get wells going there as well. We didn’t even actually get to meet Terry because he wasn’t back, so our training was pretty much run by a younger guy named Joe, who is from Evansville, Indiana. Joe has been coming to Bolivia for about 6 years but has spent the last full year working exclusively for Terry in San Julian. In addition to drilling wells, Terry’s group also has a shop where they make all kinds of random things. Most recently they have been working on extremely low cost farming equipment. They make tractors, planters and sprayers for farmers who can’t afford the big Massy Ferguson tractors. “The poor man’s tractor” they call it. It’s just a simple design, all welded together in their shop and run with a little 5 HP motor. All of their equipment is set up for no-till agriculture, which I learned a lot about and could write an entire blog about, but I will refrain. For more on no-till agriculture, email Joe Shultz at jshultz@farmland.org. He will be glad to tell you about it.

In their shop they also make all the bits we use for our drilling rigs. They are made simply using couplings, bolts and random pieces of steel. Extremely cheap and easy to make from materials that are pretty accessible all over the third world. I know what you’re thinking right now, you’re thinking that a picture of one of these bits would be pretty helpful right now to give you an idea of what I’m talking about. Well, I’m sad to report that while we were in San Julian, my camera got stolen. Stolen from a church of all places! Joe was quick to remind me though, that “church is full of sinners,” which made me laugh but didn’t bring my camera back. Also in the bag that was stolen was my shiny new leatherman, my awesome hockey-puck watch with an altimeter (an altimeter!!) and my Air Force One Zippo lighter. Lame! After the bag was stolen, the minister at the church and a few of the guys that work in Terry’s shop started asking around and they have a few suspects and they have been pressuring them to talk for like a week now and they are still confident that it might turn up. So that was a little frustrating, mainly because I had a lot of good photos still on the camera of well drilling. I had this sweet blog entry planned of explaining all of it with photos and everything. Well, keep your fingers crossed, it might turn up.

Anyway, we arrived at the mission around 10 pm Monday night (Sept. 4th). We were going to be sleeping in a bunk house about 200 yards down the road from the mission. There to greet us was a long-haired, extremely friendly Colombian fellow named Carlos. It turns out Carlos is the kind of South American dude I’ve been waiting to meet since I arrived here. He’s been in Bolivia for 4 years kind of wandering around and has been working in the shop at Terry’s place since April. He’s learned how to drill wells and has also become a pretty accomplished welder. Carlos is really really funny, full of stories from Colombia and wherever and is just genuinely a good guy. More on Carlos later.

Our days at the mission consisted mostly of getting up and eating by about 8am and then heading out to the drilling site, about a 10 minute drive from the mission on some land the mission is leasing to do farming experiments. The first morning we were enthralled to learn that the mission has a full time cook who would be making us eggs every morning to go with our hot chocolate/coffee and that we used bread to make sandwiches out of. Since Terry lived here with his life for so long, they have an actual real-life kitchen with actual real-life condiments and things like Peanut Butter, spices, butter, Tobasco Sauce and ICE CUBES. All of these (and a plethora of others) are essentially unheard of in your average Bolivian kitchen. Not to mention an actual real-life sink with an actual real-life drain! Needless to say, us gringos were in heaven. The kitchen I usually eat in is far from what any of us would consider clean or sanitary by American standards. We then realized that we’d be eating three meals a day in that kitchen for two weeks…holy crap! Another awesome bonus was that there was a nice hot shower there too. We were really living it up. Two weeks in the Peace Corps all of the sudden became two weeks in the Posh Corps. They even had a actual real-life American dog there! It was this huge black Great Dane named Sam. The perfect husband for Bailey out in Seattle. Sam would always walk back with us to our bunk house at night and scare off all the other little wimpy (but nasty) dogs that would bark and threaten to bite us. It was nice having a bodyguard. I had some great photos of him but, ah crap.

Working with us were a few Bolivian guys who had drilled wells before and were helping us learn. We spent 3 days actually drilling the well and then another 3 o 4 preparing and conditioning the wel l and filter, getting it ready for use. This consists of pumping clean water and air down into the well for various reasons. I’ll get into the details of well drilling and how it all fits together in a later post…hopefully after my camera turns up. It was nice to finally get outside and get some work done (don’t worry Goz, I wore sunscreen). Despite it being kind of hard work, it was pretty laid back, just like everything else here in Bolivia. We always stopped for about 2 hours for lunch and were never there past 6pm. Most of our nights were spent watching projected movies at Terry’s house. We set up a power point projector in his “living room” and plugged in the DVD player and were off to the races. They had quite a good selection of pirated DVDs, one of the definite bonuses to living in Bolivia is the black market. Woo! We watched Les Miserables, Man On Fire, The Professional, American Visa, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Return of the King. Good times.

After about a week of being there, I had to go back to my site for a day for a presentation on water systems and water treatment. I’m working with a health post in a bigger city about 3 hours from my town, and they come in with a bunch of materials and I help them facilitate the discussion and activities. It’s a good way for people to get to know my face around town, and then at the end we discuss (with the whole group) what everyone can do to put into effect some of the new habits we’ve discussed. This was the second “charla” in the series of 3, and combining everything from the first one that we talked about at the end, it definitely means a lot of work for me. It is going to be up to me to bring together about 4 different groups to really get a campaign going in town dealing with improving hygiene habits, water treatment, trash collection and general betterment of health standards in general, so I’ve got my work cut out for me. It’s kind of overwhelming, but since it’s really the only thing I have going on, it should be ok. Baby steps.

After the charla I went back to Santa Cruz to stay for the night so I could get back to San Julian the next day. There were randomly a couple of other volunteers in town, so it was fun to see some people, plus it’s cheaper to stay at the hostal when you don’t have to get a room by yourself. I called Joe back in San Julian to see when good time to get back would be, and he informed me that they were all planning on coming to the city themselves the next day to go around and get everything they needed for building a whole well drilling rig…a big part of the learning process. So, as opposed to going back to San Julian only to have to come back to the city the next day, I just stayed another night in town. I used some internet, did some journaling and people watching on the plaza, and kind of just bummed around…it was pretty nice. I did go to the Peace Corps office, where a mountain of mail was waiting for me! It was awesome! This deserves it’s own section:

-I got a package from Dr. George J Wang including a new memory stick (with Counting Crows mp3s included) and big ol’ Mrs. Fields cookie, which was kind of smashed but I devoured anyway. With my new memory stick, I won’t have to bring my computer to town every time I come, I can just carry all my info on it. Well done GW.
-From the recently married Ben Coleman, I received not 1 but 2 pieces of mail (and he claims there is more on the way…sweet!). I got a postcard from his honeymoon destination, Fiji, as well as the DVD from Mia’s wedding shower that we filmed before I left. Hilarious. Cole, you’re…amazing, dude.
-From my old USG pal Alice Brown I got an awesome postcard from Hawaii…rock and roll, thanks Ali.
-From the Ohio Staters, Inc. Alumni SOCIETY (that’s for you, Felix) I got an invitation to buy tickets for the football game that happened 2 weeks before. Yeah, mail moves slow here.
-My friends from my job right before I came here at NPI sent me a HUGE package filled with TONS of goodies…candy, beef jerky, easy mac, nice new t-shirts and socks, playing cards, poker chips, bandannas, it would take too long to list it all, but it was incredible. But probably my favorite part was that they mailed it in an E-meter box, which gave me a good laugh.
-Last but not least, I got an awesome package of great stuff from my New England friends with 614 phone numbers, Dan & Ellen. More yummy candy, a sweet copy of Rolling Stone’s 1000th issue, little candles, placemats (not sure what those will be used for), awesome Clif Bars and the crown jewel of the package was a sweet mixed CD from Dan. Really incredible work. I’m listening to it right now. If you see him, you should ask him for a copy. Definitely BRME worthy in my humble opinion. You guys rock, thanks so much.

The word on the street is that there are more packages in the mail for me, which I can’t wait to get. It really is awesome to get so much love from home. This is the kind of stuff that keeps me going when times get rough…eating tons of candy and easy mac! I have a really awesome support system back home and I can’t thank you guys enough. I can’t tell you how jealous all of my fellow Peace Corps buddies were as I was sorting through my mountain of candy and food. I shared a little, don’t worry.

So Thursday rolled around and Joe came back into the city with the two other volunteers that were still at the mission, Andy and Bryan. We drove around to a bunch of different hardware stores getting all the tools and things you need for a complete drilling rig. This is a little trickier than it sounds, just because there is never one store that has everything you need. Unfortunately, the closest Home Depot is about 3,000 miles away. We also had to find the right kind of pipe and had to go to a special place to find it. There is only one brand of pipe here that doesn’t break really easily and it can be tricky to get your hands on. So after a day of driving around the city, we headed out to where we would be crashing for the night. Joe had arranged for all of us to stay with some friends of his who lived about 10K outside of town. They were fellow missionaries from Virginia who lived in this amazing compound of a house that had this whole separate bunkhouse which they used for seminars when they brought people in. The mother is a vet who is associated with the Christian Veterinary Mission and the father is working on small microcredit loans. I guess he used to work for the World Bank doing lones for 10s of millions of dollars, and now he’s doing loans for more like $150. They have two teenage kids who are going to school here and everything. They were extremely hospitable and super friendly. Definitely doing good things down here in Bolivia. Their house was incredible too, I would have taken photos if my camera was still in my possession. Huge mango trees, a swimming pool, the works. Good stuff.

The next day I went back to San Julian alone. Our “training” was over, but my things were still there, and I wanted to go back to see if my camera had turned up. I got to spend a quality 4 days with Carlos, talking about all kinds of random things. He told me a lot about his family and hometown, and how Colombia is so messed up. He showed me a little about welding and I even got to do some on one of the tractors they were making. He said I did pretty good for my first time, so I was satisfied with that. We had a great time watching movies, shooting the bull and laughing about random stuff. Saturday morning we went up and had Bull Penis Soup, which he claimed was really good, but I would say was extremely mediocre, like most soups here. Essentially flavorless chicken broth, a little rice, potatoes and mystery meat. Just like every other soup in Boliva except Sopa de Mani. Only this time the mystery meat wasn’t a mystery, it was bull penis. A funky texture, no real taste. I don’t get it why they eat hot soup in the morning…it’s supposed to cure hangovers but 1) it’s not very good and 2) we weren’t hung over. It’s kind of fun to say I ate bull penis soup though. Carlos also took me to a lady’s house that makes really cool bags and stuff on a loom. She was making him a bag and I had her make me one too. It’s like a little man-purse, and it’s really cool looking. Definitely going to go back to get some Christmas presents or something.

Carlos did some more looking around for my camera and stuff, but to no avail. It was really great to finally just hang out with someone who was cool and who I got along with really well. He has done a lot of traveling around Bolivia and he and I are definitely going to take some trips as soon as I get some vacation time. I would definitely say he’s the first real friend I’ve made since coming to my site. He loves the Rolling Stones and we had some good conversations about music too. All in all, it was a great two weeks.

I came back to the city yesterday and have a few things to pick up today (including a huge back to put all the stuff I got in packages from people) and then I am headed back to Hardeman to really get back to work. It’s been a nice break, I learned a lot about well drilling and made some new friends. Bolivia just keeps getting better and better. Until next time, thanks for reading.

Ben

Sunday: Dia de dominguear (2006.09.03)

I’ve always liked Sundays. Ever since I was a kid they have been excellent days. When I was really young, my dad would always take me out doing whatever it is he did on Sundays…looking at jobs or moving stuff around or whatever. We usually ended up at the old White Castle in Westwood with a Sunday paper and hot chocolate. As I got older, we spent a lot of Sundays working on the Shack in the mornings and then ride bikes with the family or go for a hike or something. Sundays have always been the day of family gatherings or fiestas. Even in college, Sundays were usually my favorite days. Staying up stupid late Saturday night made it easy to sleep in, some greasy Jack and Benny’s breakfast was all but mandatory and it was everyone’s biggest opportunity to procrastinate. After all, you had the whole day to get your homework done, which usually meant I started it at 11 at night after watching 6 or 7 West Wing episodes, eating pizza and/or ice cream, maybe going to a Sphinx meeting and talking on the phone for a bit. Man college was great.

Equally, Sundays here in Bolivia have proven to be good days. Sleeping in really isn’t an option here (sidenote: anyone who has access to some rooster poison could really help me out), but it’s usually ok because I don’t really stay up very late. I was up until 2am the other night journaling and that was by FAR the latest I’ve stayed up since I’ve been in site. Anyway, I don’t have to worry about getting into the office at all and everyone is usually pretty mellow. This particular Sunday, however, has been pretty awesome so far, and it’s only 1pm. First of all, I woke up and made breakfast, which I had been touting all week. I don’t think they really thought I was going to do it. They also didn’t realize how easy it is to make French Toast. Well, we don’t have sliced bread here (you can only get it in the city and it’s really really stale), so we used the bread we usually eat for breakfast, which I can best describe merely as little round rolls, kind of like tiny hamburger buns. I cut each roll in half and made little French Toast biscuits. Only it was like cooking it with a bunch of heels of bread, which everyone knows isn’t as good. The milk was also a little sketchy, but it worked out. The biggest thing we were falta was syrup. And the worst part was I didn’t know how to explain it to them. The closest thing I could say was that it was kind of like honey, only brown and sweeter. They suggested “dulce de leche” which is essentially caramel, which they had on hand. I’d never tried caramel on French toast, but it was pretty good. I mean, this was no homemade copper kettle caramel, but it did ok. I’m going to get some syrup next time I’m in the city, and start making this every Sunday. My family liked it a lot, or at least they said they did. I told them it was better with different bread and syrup.

After breakfast I helped with all the dishes, which I haven’t done yet and I think really impressed Bilma. Doing dishes here is exactly like we do them when we’re camping, only we don’t heat the water. Hot water for cleaning (dishes or one’s body) is a concept that is extremely foreign here. We basically fill up one tub with soapy water and another tub with not soapy water…Bilma washed and I rinsed and “dried,” which really consisted of me shaking all the water off I could then putting the dishes back on the shelf. There are a couple of rags here, but they don’t really differentiate what they use them for, so I just avoid using them at all. I often see them just lying on the ground or whatever, so I steer clear. What cracks me up is that when they want to wipe something off to use, for example a knife that has butter or something on it, they grab one of these nasty rags and wipe it off and then proceed to use it. This probably makes it dirtier than before, but hey, it’s Bolivia. I’ve come to realize that I think people in the U.S. are in general a little too germ crazy. I mean, the kitchen we cook in and eat in every day is ridiculously filthy by our standards, but it works for them…no one is dying of weird food borne diseases. Although I do have kind of a nasty cold I think I caught from the little girl that lives here. I’m wondering what I will be like when I get home, though. Will I become some crazy germ freak, constantly wiping things off and such? Or will I become a little more Bolivian and not really worry at all about germs? Verémos.

After dishes, I was getting ready to go to Cristian’s soccer game when they told me that they found a nest of “petos” which are bigger than bees but smaller than wasps. One stung Cristian and his hand got pretty swollen. Since there is a little baby running around the house, Bilma determined that we needed to burn it. I was thinking “shouldn’t we wait until winter time?” but then I realized it is winter time here…and that it would probably mean petos flying all over the house stinging everyone like crazy. The nest was in a plant that was growing up the side of one of the wooden rooms in the house, so we were risking burning the whole thing down. To be honest, although the nest had these bugs all over it, it didn’t look that active…there were none flying around and they all looked like they were sleeping (yeah, I could see them emitting little cartoon “zzzz’s”), so maybe this wasn’t too terrible of an idea. So Cristian went and got a notebook to start a fire, but Bilma just kind of tossed a couple sheets sort of near where the nest was and wanted to light it. Being the pyromaniac I am, I suggested we get something to make it burn a little faster so there wasn’t enough time for the petos to kill us all. We dug up some diesel fuel and I got a stick about a meter long and wrapped a ton of paper around one end and soaked it in diesel fuel. I whipped out my handy dandy made-in-America Zippo lighter and lit my torch. As much as I wanted to go down into some tomb or something like Indiana Jones with my torch, I refocused on the task at hand. It was a pretty sweet torch though. Before lighting it, I had strategically placed some paper underneath the nest. So, after telling them how horrible of an idea this could turn out to be, I kind of shoved the torch into the plant, which caught pretty well, even though it was green. It started crackling a bit, and at first site of one of the petos flying around, I dropped the stick and got the hell out of there. I think I must have got the nest pretty good, cause it crackled pretty good for a few minutes, we saw something fall, and the petos never swarmed or anything. We carefully approached and saw that the whole thing was burned up, along with all the bugs I guess. I wanted to let it keep burning for a while just to be safe, but Bilma didn’t want the house to burn down, so she threw a bucket of water on it. And thus ended the Sunday morning fire adventure.

The crappy part was by the time we got to Cristian’s soccer game, his team had just about finished playing, so he didn’t get to play. Which was probably ok because he’s usually goalie and his swollen hand wasn’t up for it. But we sat around and watched a couple other games after his. Here in Bolivia (and probably most of South America), people don’t ask kids what sport they play, they ask them what fútbol team they play for. It’s pretty crazy. Lucky for me there are also a couple of basketball courts in town…and since a) I’m taller than anyone in town and b) they only know how to play soccer, I can dominate in basketball. All of the shoot like they’re throwing in a soccer ball from out of bounds and everyone once in a great while it hits the rim, but usually not. I do need to work on my soccer skills though.

I’ll probably spend the rest of this relaxing Sunday reading, maybe watch some more fútbol, pack up some things for a trip I’m taking tomorrow, eat some bread, you know the usual. Me encantan a los domingos.