Quite A Week (2006.10.21)

Wow…where to begin? That is the question. A week ago today, I was prepping to head back up to Pueblos Unidos with the rest of the Norte Cruceña well drilling crew (Andy & Bryan) to make another attempt at getting some people water who needed it badly. Joining us this time on our adventure was another American volunteer (not Peace Corps…she’s on a Fulbright Scholarship doing research here) who I met randomly the week before and said she wanted to see how we drilled wells. I told her she was more than welcome to come along, although it was guaranteed to be less than a vacation. That didn’t phase her, and along she came. Her name is Khalial, and she was a welcome addition to our team of gringos. Aldo (of earlier blog entry fame) did not accompany us this time with his truck, so we were banished to ride the slow “micro” (bus) that would take us on our trip north into the wild. However, our friend Isac Bedia (also of earlier blog entry fame) was certainly along for the ride. The micro pulled into Hardeman and we piled our rig, bag of tools, bag of bentonite, food, and 4 huge backpacks into it and we were on our way. About 5 hours later (about 10pm) we arrived at the river we would have to cross to get into “town.” Isac gave a yell and someone brought a canoe over. Using my spanking new headlamp (thanks mom & dad) we managed to load everything onto the canoes and get it safely across the river and up the hill, but the light unfortunately drew unwelcomed mosquitoes to us, so we lit up cigarettes to keep them away, the patented Joe Ranz method. Here is a shot of Andy and I in front of the river we had to cross. (Andy is also a part of the beard competition)


It was about a 200 yard walk to where we had to put everything, and in the dark with the bugs and heaviness it was kind of a pain, but all part of the experience. We got to the “plaza” of town and set up our mosquito nets to sleep in. The plaza was a nice big covered area that would keep us dry if it rained, but only offered dirt for sleeping. I had brought a sleeping pad, but the others weren’t so lucky. We brushed our teeth, talked a little bit amongst ourselves about the plan for tomorrow and were off to sleep by about midnight.

The next day we learned a few interesting facts. First, there was to be a big sha-bang at the end of the week, the official founding of the town, with official papers and all. But this was no average run-of-the-mill town founding. This specific town was the result of a lot of hard work of a group of people called MST or “Movimiento Sin Tierra” (Movement Without Land), which had been working with the Bolivian national government on a redistribution of land that was not being used. They had started back in 1994 I think and had been working hard to get land for people who had none so they could farm it and make money. Well, Pueblos Unidos was the fruit of all that labor, the first fruit of all their labor. This holds huge symbolic meaning, especially for the current government, which fights for the poor and represents the little guy. Pueblos Unidos is to be just the beginning. The government had given people land (300 families) and they all came to this place (a field, more or less), put up houses and started working the land. They live in sort of a communal fashion, sharing all the work and everything. The whole time we spent there, everyone was preparing for the huge shin-dig that was going to go down that weekend. There were groups dedicated to organizing all the food, getting transportation arranged for people to come in from out of town, some to build a health post, and some to help us with our well. There was also another group of people responsible for building a huge stage for the ceremony. Why was there such a big ceremony and people coming from all over to see the founding of this town? Well, the word on the street was that President Evo Morales was flying in on his Venezuelan helicopter to christen the new town himself. It was said that he was coming on Friday. We were all a bit skeptical, after all Bolivians haven’t proven to be the most trustworthy of the world’s citizens. All the same, we were pretty pumped at the opportunity to possibly see Evo. So, there we were, already a little anxious about getting this community water that needed it badly, knowing we had already biffed once. The town was just about to be founded, and having a well there would make the town founding all the more sweet. And if that wasn’t enough, the president of the whole stinking country was coming to check out how the town was coming along. Pressure? Yes.

Fortunately, we were much better prepared this time. We had brought bentonite, which would help to keep the well from collapsing again. We had learned a lot from our mistakes last time and, being proud males, were not about to let the ground beat us again. Also, the townspeople were much more organized this time, and there were about 5 groups of 4 people who would be pulling the rope for us as we drilled. “The gruntwork,” if you will. With 5 groups, there was little chance they would get tired. We dug a big hole behind where we were going to drill, got a hold of a tarp to make a little pool, and even more townspeople (mostly women) trudged up the riverbank with buckets and bottles and whatever they could find to fill it with water. Having a lot of water on hand is very important for the success of the drilling. We got going without incident. We constantly took samples of what came up from the bottom so we knew what we were drilling through. What we were looking for was a nice layer of clay, followed by a few meters of good sand (not too fine, not too coarse) and then another layer of clay. The clay layers seal off the sand, so that the water that comes from the sand is clean. We progressed fairly quickly, being extra careful around 18 meters, where we had lost the rig the week before. By about 2pm, we had hit what we wanted around 33 meters. We pulled out the drill rig, changed bits to widen the hole, widened the well and cased it all by 3:30 pm. A short downpour of rain made the casing a bit tricky, but it all worked out well (no pun intended). It felt good to have our rig out of the ground and the casing in. Now it was time to see if it would give good clean water.
The Drilling Process – You can see the Bolivians pulling the rope in the foreground and me guiding the rig into the well.

The next step is to backwash the well. This is done by using a primitive hand pump, which pretty much looks like a bicycle pump. One end is put into water and that water is pumped down into the well, which has been sealed off with a plastic bag and strips of rubber. This forces the water out through the filter we made, “developing” it so that the water can enter it. We backwashed for two more hours that day and a few hours the next day. After backwashing, we remove the rubber seal from the well, and pump water out of it to see if we can pump it dry. If we do pump it dry, we need to wait to see if it recharges (if water comes in fast enough through the filter). We pumped for about an hour and never pumped the thing dry, which means that a lot of water was coming through the filter, which was a good sign. One thing that worried us though was that the water had a sulfur smell to it. We had no idea what that meant, but kept on pumping. Around noon, we were ready to move onto the next step. We took a lunch break, and then got to work on the pump. All of the parts we use in our pump can be found in any local hardware store, which makes it easy to fix. We instructed a few Bolivians how to make the pump and watched to make sure they did it right and then installed it. The water progressively got clearer, but never came out 100% crystal clear, and it still had the smell. But as far as we know, those are things that are out of our control…we haven’t done it enough to know if they will improve or not. The fact of the matter is, the well water is 100% cleaner and clearer than the brown mucky river water everyone had been drinking before the well was there. Two days of hard work and the town had water. Almost immediately, a line formed as people showed up with their buckets, pots and bottles to be filled up with water. We just sat there and watched with smiles on our faces, proud of a job well done. Some kiddies putting our well to use.

Our nights in Pueblos Unidos were a lot like camping. Except they brought us food instead of us cooking it. Usually a bowl of rice with some type of meat, sometimes with lettuce and tomatoes, other times with potatoes, other times with eggs. The food was pretty good in general, much better than the bread and bananas we had brought and planned on eating all week. Andy and Bryan had also used some of the mashed up bananas to make some excellent banana bread, which lasted all week and was delicious. At night, it got dark around 6:30 and we made a little campfire and just shot the bull until we got tired, which usually happened no later than 8:30. We slept a lot this week, even though we were usually up by 6am with the sun. Every morning we awoke to one of the main guys in town yelling for all of the town representatives to come to the planning meeting, which usually got underway at about 6am. So there were groups of people from each of the little towns along the road to Pueblos Unidos, and each of these groups sent their representatives to the meeting each morning and then they went back to their own groups and gave them the low down. There was even a group from Hardeman, denoted by this cool sign I got my picture with:

Each morning they doled out responsibilities for the day in order to prep for the big party. Our well was for all intents and purposes, done on Monday evening. Tuesday morning we got up and decided to try and drill down next to our old rig that was stuck in the ground to try and loosen up the collapse around it and perhaps salvage the rig. We were pretty sure this had never been tried before, and we were a little wary to try, but the townspeople jumped into action and were all about helping us. Unfortunately, we weren’t successful. We unscrewed the one pipe we could get off that was sticking out of the ground, then buried the thing with dirt, never to be seen again. Sayonara. We were a little bummed we had to lose the rig, but they say it happens to the best of them. We decided to drown our sorrows by cooling off in the river for a swim…it was excellent and felt great. Here is Bryan taking a jump into the river (this is also the river they drank out of before their well arrived)

After our afternoon dip in the river, Isac and a few other guys from town took us on a bit of a jungle hike into uncharted territory…it was really awesome. First we walked through some soyfields, then into sort of a prairie looking area, and then into the thicket of the jungle. We even saw some monkeys swinging from the trees at a distance! It was sweet. We finally arrived to another branch of the river and did some fishing. Fishing has never really been my bag (sorry, E.Busch) so I just kind of relaxed on the river bank. But Khalial (our Fulbright scholarship friend) caught 2 big piranhas and Andy nabbed one, which they promptly fried up for dinner for us. It was actually pretty good fish to eat, I was impressed. I was also a little worried that the river we were swimming in was also full of piranhas. Here’s me in the Prairie area

Tuesday evening was the clearest night we’d had yet, and we all sat out looking at the zillions of stars that were visible. It was really incredible. I mean, the closest town was 15K away, and there were probably only 2 or 3 electric lights in the whole place…so light pollution was not a problem. We sat there for a good two or three hours pointing out shooting stars and discussing our Top 5 recording artists and movies. It had been a good day.

Wednesday and Thursday were even more furiously dedicated to prepping for the party. They had cut down enormous trees and were cutting planks out of them using chainsaws, it was pretty amazing. We helped them haul the planks out to the field where they were building the stage for Evo to speak and also helped them make the palm roof that would keep Evo dry if it decided to rain while he was in town. The townspeople were happy to have us help and we were glad to contribute. We started to feel like we were a part of the town…I mean we had been there for almost a week and had gotten to know almost everyone. We worked alongside them during the day and played soccer with them at dusk. We were lucky to be sharing this cool experience with them. We also spent a good part of those two days swimming in the river still, which kept us nice and cool. On Wednesday they had found us our own little hut to inhabit, as opposed to camping out in the town plaza with no real privacy. A lot of people were going to be coming, and they thought it would be better if we had our own little place to ourselves instead of being right in the middle of everything. It was good because Thursday morning, they hauled in this huge tree trunk and started carving a new canoe out of it to assist the huge amount of people that were going to need the cross the river. Before that, they had only had two little canoes that held 4 people each. This new longboat could hold about 10 people or so, and the guy who was making it was a real badass. He was from the Beni, which is one of the regions in Bolivia that has the most jungle. He had a lot of great stories to tell…he had been along with us when we were fishing a couple days earlier. His name was Belfeo, and here is a shot of him, Bryan & Khalial.
We also took a hike on our own later that day, back near the same area where we had gone fishing. We were sure to capture a moment in the jungle:
Aviators, beards, jungle, bandannas…you can almost taste the testosterone.

The sunsets in Pueblos Unidos were all pretty breathtaking too:
You can see our well there on the left.

Thursday evening, one of the town “dirigentes” came up to our little hut and informed us that the well had stopped pumping water…so we went to check it out. It turns out that they had pumped it so much that they broke part of the pump! No worries, it’s reasons like this why we make the pump easy to fix. We pulled it out, cut off the broken piece, wrapped some more wire around the iron part and heated the tube again and slid it back over the iron part. A picture would explain this better, but I don’t have one. The moral of the story is that after about 10 minutes they were pumping water again. Phwew. That night was also when all the outsiders started arriving from other towns. Busloads of people started crossing the river and didn’t stop until the next morning. When I woke up (around 5:30 am), the whole town was hustle and bustle. There was a big group of women that had started preparing the food…peeling huge piles of potatoes and yucca and prepping the meat for cooking. Check it out.
There were so many people visiting, and it was strange to see so many unknown faces. We felt kind of cool because when we woke up, the townspeople started talking with us, instead of the other Bolivians that had arrived. We had somewhat become part of their town, which felt pretty special. I ran into a couple of guys who had come in from Hardeman and when they saw me there, they were quite surprised. “¡Puta madre, carajo! Qué haces aquí?” was the response I got. I won’t translate word for word what that means in order to keep this family friendly material, but needless to say they were surprised to see me. (For more on cusswords in Spanish, email Steph at swoody@indiana.edu ) I explained to them that we had been there to drill a well and had been there a week. I even ran into my good pal from Hardeman, Aldo, who had driven us the last time we came to Pueblos Unidos. It was nice to see him and he even offered to give me a ride back later that afternoon, which worked out well for me. My friends would be staying for the fiesta that night, but I had something I needed to get back to my site for. So I packed up all my stuff, then we headed out to the stage area where Evo would supposedly be arriving.
Evo’s stage…and we helped!

It was a blazing hot day, and we definitely all sunscreened up once we got out to the field. We were all still a little skeptical he would make it, but after about a half hour of waiting, he came zooming in on his helicopter, a gift from the President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez. Why is Evo spending his time speaking to a small crowd (no more than 2500 or so) in the middle of nowhere? Well, Evo is the country’s first indigenous president in Bolivian history and likes the symbolism of coming out to see the little guy. Every president before him had been of white/European descent, but now Bolivia has a president that actually looks like 85% of the population…he is someone that can really relate to the working man, since he was one for a long time. Evo, addressing the people

He asked that they make an example of this town, to show the rest of the world that this idea can work. He related to them stories of working on his farm…of how after half a day of working with an axe or machete, your fingers don’t want to open because they are so tired…to which everyone around agreed. It was pretty cool to see him relating to his people. We also managed to snap a sweet shot of me with Evo in the background.Evo is the one in the hat.

After his speech, they fed him a quick lunch and he was back on the helicopter, taking off.
I went and grabbed my backpack and headed to the river to cross in order to meet up with Aldo to roll out. On the way out, I saw a bunch of people from town, who had asked me if I was leaving. I told them I was, and they all shook my hand and repeatedly thanked me for coming and for the well. It was a really awesome feeling. After much hand shaking, I made my way down to the river. The problem was, about 1500 other people had the same idea, so it was going to take a while with only a few boats. They were piling people on these boats like you wouldn’t believe.
One of the boats loaded to the brim.

There was absolutely no order to the process, and whenever a boat got close, people just grabbed it and jumped in, almost tipping them every single time. I was at the edge of the water, but people just kept hopping in front of me, then no boats came near me for a while. Worried that Aldo was getting antsy and was going to leave without me (I wasn’t sure if he’d crossed yet), I finally flagged down a boat being driven by someone who had helped us drill the well. People tried to hop in front of me but this time the guy was like “no, THAT guy is coming” and pointed to me…it’s nice knowing important people, I felt pretty cool. But I ended up just giving him my backpack with my videocamera and stuff that needed to stay dry. I gave up my seat to someone else and swam across, which was a welcomed refresher from the hot day. My pal gave me my stuff on the other side, shook my hand and wished me well. It felt good to cool off. I found Aldo’s truck in the parking lot, with no one in sight…good, they haven’t crossed yet, I thought. I sat on the tailgate and wrote a little about the week in my journal, until finally about an hour later Aldo and some other folks from Hardeman showed up and we made the long trek back to our home. It was without a doubt the dustiest ride I’ve been on yet, since I was riding in the very back of the truck. By the end of the trip, the dust had darkened my skin so much that my family kept laughing at me and telling me I looked like an Arab. I took my first shower in over a week and man did it feel good. I slept well that night, knowing we’d done some good work and ready for the next one.
The water from our well. Not 100% clear, but a ton better than the river.
And here are the four of us, standing proudly in front of the brand new Pueblos Unidos sign.

Epilogue: That night before the party began, Bryan and Andy talked to a few more people in town and Isac, and they decided that they would be needing another well…so the plan is to head back up there in a couple more weeks and do it all over again. Sweet!

“Swing And A Miss.” (2006.10.09)

Greetings bloggers. When we last left our hero (that’s me), he was prepping to drill his first well and work was starting to pick up around Hardeman as well. I have been working with the hospital on planning a health fair for the town that is supposed to take place on Tuesday, which has been quite a bit of time organizing and trying to get funding. I told them I would look into a source I had and now it seems like they are counting on it, and I’m not sure if it’s going to come through or not…I think that it will but if it doesn’t, that is not the way I wanted to start things off in Hardeman. I’ll keep my fingers crossed. Also, my boss Tim came to visit my site last Tuesday. He makes trips to everyone’s site to talk things over with our work partners and check up on how we are doing. He seemed pretty satisfied with what was going on here in Hardeman and gave my work partners some new ideas for things I can be working on. All in all, it was a good visit. He left Wednesday, and that same day the rest of the Santa Cruz well drilling crew, fellow volunteers Andy and Bryan, showed up so we could head out early the next morning to go and do some drilling.

We piled into a small 4-door pick up with Aldo behind the wheel and our friend Isac Bedia riding shotgun. For more on these people, see the previous post. We set out around 4am with a load of 3 meter plastic tubes and one 6 meter long pipe tied down to the top of the truck, jutting out of the back and towering over the front. It was quite a site to see.

We drove north. Way north. I am 4 hours from the city, in a pretty small town, and the towns just keep getting smaller and less populated the further north you go. The road also gets nastier, which I hadn’t imagined was possible. We bumped along as the sun came up, illuminating huge fields of soybeans with backdrops of palm trees and jungle. It struck me that we were smack dab in the middle of what used to be pure jungle. When people talk about rainforests getting chopped down in the states, this is what they meant. I am right here, watching farmers take over land with the only farming method they can afford, slash and burn. Something that is about as bad for the earth as possible. But we all do what we need to survive, and for them it’s slash and burn farming. I’m not about to tell them to stop trying to survive. We ended up at a river about 4 hours north of Hardeman. We got out, loaded all of our equipment and tools into canoes, and crossed the river. We then carried it all a few hundred meters to this tiny village called Pueblos Unidos. My first impression of this place was that it was straight out of a National Geographic magazine. It was almost exactly what you think of when you think of someone in the Peace Corps. The people had moved there no more than a month ago, and all the houses were made of sticks with palms for roofs. The Big Bad Wolf wouldn’t even need to huff and puff in order to blow these houses down. There were about 60 or 70 little huts, and people were all our working in the surrounding fields. They had come from all of the towns we had passed through on our way there, some even from Hardeman. As far as I understand it, this was just state owned property that hadn’t been settled on yet, and they all came up to start anew and stake their claim. I was in the middle of the Bolivian frontier. I wished I had a coon-skin hat, but it would have been a little hot.

We got to the center of “town” where we would drill. We sent out a few Bolivians to cut down some trees to use to build our derrick and also put some people to work carrying water from the nearby river to fill up barrels so we could drill. In order to drill we usually need about 2000 liters of water. They had two 100 liter containers, so after they were full, they would have to continue bringing water throughout the drilling process as we used it up. The river was about 100 meters away and down a steep embankment, but those women worked hard bringing water in tiny buckets to fill the barrels. They knew that if they put the effort in now, they might have clean water to use as soon as the next day. Up until then, they had been drinking out of the same river…brown as can be and most likely contaminated with farming fertilizers and pesticides. But they had no choice. That’s why we were there. We were there to bring them clean water.

It took a little time to get people organized and explain the process…apparently our buddy Isac Bedia had not done as much prep work as he had claimed. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I’m still at the point where I am too trusting of some of the things Bolivians say. I’m sure after a few more instances like this I’ll get where I need to be as far as not believing a word they say. We got moving and were advancing nicely, moving along pretty quickly. Usually when we drill, we use a clay substance called bentonite, which we mix with water and pour down the well. Bentonite seals off the walls of the well as well as makes the mixture we are drilling with a thicker consistency so it brings up all of the tiny particles. In the zone we are drilling in, bentonite is key because it is so sandy, and if there isn’t enough bentonite, the well can collapse and all the work is in vain. However, Isac Bedia had told us instead of using bentonite that we could use the clay that was along the river. I was a bit skeptical, but he said he had drilled wells with it before and it wasn’t a problem. I felt better when the clay got there and it looked pretty legitimate. We mixed it up with water and got it to a good consistency and started dumping it down the well. It started pouring down rain in the middle of drilling, which was actually kind of nice because it had been incredibly hot and sunny before that…the rain was a welcomed guest at the drilling site. But then we started having problems. It should have been a red flag when after we changed pipes it was hard to get the rig going again. This means that at the bottom of the well, some of it is collapsing and holding onto the rig. But we always managed to pull it out and drill through the part that had collapsed. Then we hit 18 meters.

Right before the pipe change at 18 meters, I felt the rig advance really quickly, which meant we hit some sand. Bryan took a sample to make sure it was sand and we stopped to change the pipe. We took a little longer than usual because we had to oil the pulley and when we went to get moving again, the rig didn’t budge. We jiggled up and down, side to side, attached sticks and tried to pull it out Raiders of the Ark style but just ended up breaking off the plastic tubes. Our well had collapsed, with our rig in it. We were done for the day.

We tried a few wild ideas to get the rig back out, but to no avail. I stuck a piece of tube down the hole to see where the bottom of the well was. The tube stuck into some mud at 7 or 8 meters. Since we were at about 18 meters, this meant that our rig was buried under 10 or 11 meters of crud. There was no hope. It was gone. What does it mean when you lose a rig? Well, first of all it means that we screwed up. We should have taken it more seriously when it was hard to pull the rig back up so many times. We should have dumped a ton more clay down the hole and stopped advancing but just pumped the clay mixture up and down to seal the sides of the well more. We shouldn’t have taken so long to change the pipes, especially after it had advanced so quickly there at the end. It also means that we are out some money. The custom made 6 meter tube and drilling bit probably cost close to $100, which is a small fortune in the Baptist Well Drilling Business. That can be a whole well if you work it right. At this point, our money is coming from a sort of slush fund of money that was left over from Riley’s old project, and once it runs out, we have to find new sources of funding. So we’d like to make it last as long as we can. Losing a rig is certainly not the best way to save money.

Lucky for us, there are a few other rigs in the zone that we can use, so now it is just a matter of hauling another one up from the Montero area and getting back to Pueblos Unidos to give it another shot. We are also bringing a bag of bentonite this time to help prevent another crisis. It sucks, but this is just another part of well drilling. Most everyone loses a rig now and then, it’s just a little disheartening for it to happen on our first well. I think we were a little too gung-ho and didn’t do enough of the proper prepwork before we drilled. We learned the hard way, but it was quite an effective lesson.

We got back to Hardeman late that night, after driving through an incredibly treacherous rainstorm on a mud filled “road,” during which there were at least 3 times I was sure we would be seriously injured and about 4 other times when I thought we were stuck and would spend the night cold and wet in the truck. But I have to hand it to Aldo, he kept his cool and masterfully made it through all of the rain, mud, muck, ditches, stopped trucks, road blocks, and even a locked gate. Definitely one of the more interesting car rides of my life.

The next day we slept in a little bit, which I figured we’d earned. We called our boss and gave him the bad news. He wasn’t that upset, but scolded us big time for not using bentonite. We then developed a new plan of attack to get back up there and get those people some water. I packed for San Julian, the veritable Mecca of Baptist well drilling, where my friend Carlos and I would work on some new bits to make up for the one buried in the ground. Andy and Bryan are in the city today buying bentonite and getting the other rig situated to get moved up here to Hardeman. Depending on a few things, we will hopefully be back up in Pueblos Unidos this Thursday to give it another shot. We must press on. Hopefully my next entry will include pictures of smiling people drinking clean water. Dedos cruzados.

“A Day In The Life” (2006.09.26)

So let me tell you about my day today. I am going to spare no details, in order to give you a full and accurate impression of what it’s like to work in Bolivia. I’m only going to do this for this entry, and you can assume that every other time I write about work, this sort of stuff is going on, it’s just a hassle to keep writing about it every time. While this was a pretty different day from what I’ve had so far, the tiny nuances of how it went are exactly what happens in Bolivia constantly. It’s part of why working here is such a challenge and why it’s such a big task to actually get something done. This is the stuff that I’ll skip from here on out, because if I wrote about all the little things that went wrong every time I tried to do something, there would be no time to write about actually doing things. There will be times when you wonder to yourself, “Why is that the case?” or, “Why didn’t they just do this or that?” or, “Who thinks like that?” or, “Who thought that was a good idea?” and my only answer is that this is Bolivia. And I really do not mean to knock Bolivian culture. I’m not. It’s just a different world down here. Believe me, these are all things I wonder every single day.

First, an introduction to a few of the characters and settings of today’s story.

Montero – a small city which is three hours south of Hardeman. There is a really big market in Montero, some decent restaurants, plenty of internet access and pretty much everything else I might need to get without taking the extra hour taxi ride into Santa Cruz city. It is often a lot easier to make a day trip to Montero for internet use or to get supplies. I don’t need to stay the night and I can get pretty much everything I need.

San Pedro – a much bigger and much more urban town than Hardeman, San Pedro is located one hour south of Hardeman, on the same road to Montero. San Pedro is where the municipal government is located for the area, and so they are the ones from whom we will be asking for money. It’s might be similar to the “county” government, but it’s hard to make a really good comparison.

Jeff – Jeff is a Peace Corps agriculture volunteer who works in Montero (that’s his site). He is in the group that arrived right before us, so he has only been in his site since April, so he is relatively new as well. Jeff was born in Ohio but raised in Maryland. Nice fella.

Riley (or “Miguel”) – Riley was a PCV in the group that just left Bolivia. His site was also Montero, and he was the one responsible for developing the three sites north of Montero for my group mates and myself. He was the “well drilling expert” that worked all throughout where we are all placed now, drilling wells as well as laying a lot of the groundwork for what we are supposed to be doing. Riley is from Florida but went to school at Notre Dame and is big into the Irish. A hell of a nice guy, Riley was extremely helpful before he left about a month ago and has been very supportive answering questions via email since he’s been back in the States.

Aldo – Aldo is a Bolivian in his mid 40s or so and works for a development organization called Bibosi. He is working exclusively in Hardeman building dry latrines, and he and I are collaborating with a lot of health and hygiene education work in town. Aldo is very friendly and an enormous help in Hardeman. He has been working here for a few months now and has gotten to know a lot of people as well as what the community needs. He also speaks nice and clearly, which is a huge bonus in my book.

Andy – Andy is a fellow PCV who is working one hour south of Hardeman in San Pedro. Along with another PCV, Bryan, who works an hour south of San Pedro in Chané, the three of us make up the Santa Cruz well drilling team, all replacing Riley who was in Montero. Andy has a hard site to deal with because his work partner has not been very cooperative. Also, Andy is not the world’s greatest Spanish speaker by any means, which is another reason why it’s tough. He was originally partnered with a guy from the alcaldía (mayor’s office), but that guy quit to go and work on his farm. His name is Adrian and he is also a player in today’s game.

Adrian – Andy’s ex-work partner. He lives in San Pedro and drilled a bunch of wells with Riley while he was here and is perfectly capable of drilling a well on his own. He was supposed to work with Andy to find people around San Pedro who needed wells and help them drill. But, the alcaldía didn’t want to pay him more for being their well drilling guy, so he quit, leaving Andy stranded with no one to work with.

Julio – Julio also works for Bibosi. I had never actually met him before today. Julio is Andy’s new work partner, although he doesn’t live in San Pedro. He comes there fairly often though. Julio has worked with Peace Corps volunteers before and is a very helpful guy, although since he hadn’t planned on working directly with Andy, it has taken some time to figure out what their work relationship is going to be.

Isac Bedia – I do not actually know this person. But he lives in Hardeman and somehow got in contact with Julio from Bibosi and told him that they needed a well where his farm was, way up north. Most people that live in Hardeman have farms that are a couple of hours up the road. They men often go to the farm and work during the week and come home on the weekends or just whenever. Julio then told Andy about this guy who needed a well and who was willing to pay. So Andy and I have been trying to organize this drilling as best we can. We were originally supposed to drill tomorrow. That’s not going to happen.

Some quick background:

One of my first jobs has been to do an inventory of the well drilling rigs in the area. I know right now all of you NPI folks are laughing…there are no Emeters down here but I still can’t get away from doing inventory! According to Riley, there are four rigs in the area, one for each of us well drillers and another to lend out to communities. He gave me rough locations for all of them…mostly places where they drilled last. The rigs are kind of a hassle to move around because they are made up of a 6 meter long metal tube (for you non-math majors, that’s about 20 feet), a 3 meter metal tube, and about 20 PVC pipes, each 3 meters long. No big deal to move this stuff around if you’ve got a F-250 or something to cruise around the treacherous dirt roads of the Norte Cruceña, but most folks around here have nothing but a bicycle. So you have to lug the rig to the closest bus stop and load it all on top of the bus…plus pay for the transportation. So “moving the rig” is much easier said than done. That being said, last week I set out to find our rigs and the tools that accompany them. Last week I took a bus ride an hour north to a town called Colonia Pirai, where Riley had drilled two wells and told me that my rig was there. However, when I got there, all I found was the remnants of a hand pump, one of the tools we use. I dug up the mayor of the town (a tiny little man of about 4’ 8”) who proceeded to tell me that there was no rig in Pirai, it just disappeared one day. He said that a guy named Adrian should know where it is. I was a little bummed I wasn’t taking a rig back with me to Hardeman, but I called Andy in San Pedro to get him to ask Adrian where the rig was. Adrian had told Andy there was a rig at his house but that there were no tools. The tools had been left in Villa Rosario, a tiny little speck of a town where Riley had drilled a well with Adrian. Adrian also told Andy that he had no idea where the rig from Colonia Pirai was, and that “Miguel” should have all that information. So before today, here was the information I considered to be true: Bryan’s tools were at Riley’s house in Montero, his rig was MIA. Andy’s rig was in Adrian’s house in San Pedro, but his tools were in Villa Rosario. And my rig and my tools were nowhere to be found. Now back to today.

So I came into Montero last night and stayed with Jeff with his host family. Jeff lives in Riley’s old house, and Riley had left two sets of tools in his room, so I got those accounted for. I also got a much needed phone call from my good friend Steph Woody that night…it was superb chatting with Steph. After a restless rooster-filled sleep, Jeff and I got up and headed to the school where he works, called Muyurina. It’s really more of a compound and is very spread out…they do a lot of agricultural education, so they have a lot of land dedicated to different types of farming, etc. So, the campus is pretty spread out, much bigger than say, David Libscomb University in Nashville. This school is where we drilled 2 wells during our training, and the rigs got left there after that back in June. Jeff hadn’t seen the rigs since then, but hadn’t really been looking for them. We first found Don Armando, who told us to find Don Pablo, who supposedly had the keys to the place where the rigs supposedly were located. To find Don Pablo, we went to the office and asked the secretary Pilar where we could find Don Pablo. Pilar then sent her assistant María to find Don Pablo. We waited for about 20 minutes, when the friendly Don Pablo showed up. He walked us over to a closet, where we found all the plastic tubes for both rigs, and one of the 6 meter tubes. Not bad, but we were still missing two 3 meter tubes and another 6 meter tube. We went back to Pilar’s office to get the keys to the elementary school compound, where we had drilled one of the wells. Pilar assured us that there were absolutely no pipes there. “I went and looked,” she said, “definitely nothing there.” We went anyway and found a 6 meter tube and a 3 meter tube, directly contradicting what Pilar had said. We lugged them over to the closet and put them with the other tubes. No we were only missing one 3 meter tube. We went back to Pilar’s office and she miraculously remembered that she had brought over a pipe a while back and put it in the file room down the hall. So we grabbed the keys to the file room, and Pablo showed me into a tiny room that was a huge mess of papers and books. Sitting amongst all the mess was our 3 meter tube, who knows why on earth they put it there. I took it over to the closet and thanked Pablo for his help. So now, 2 rigs and 2 sets of tools were accounted for. Yee ha!

At this point, I left Muyurina to go use the internet to let the other well drillers know that I had located 2 of the 4 rigs. While I was at the internet café, Aldo called me and said he was in Saavedra and had a truck if I wanted to ride back to Hardeman with him. A faster, less bumpy, less smelly, less dusty, less crowded ride back was very appealing. I asked him how to get to Saavedra and told him I’d be there as soon as I could. For most of the small towns around Montero, there are express taxi services that do nothing but run taxis back and forth to each city. They just wait for the taxis to fill up and then are on their way. I haven’t spent enough time in Montero to know where all of them are yet, so I hailed a taxi and asked him to take me to the stop for Saavedra. He agreed, promptly drove around the block and pointed it out. He then charged me full price for the cab ride. As opposed to just telling me to walk a block that way, he thought he’d make a little money. And then he got all pissy when I didn’t have exact change to pay for his bullcorn cab ride, so I had to go the nearby juice stand to get it. I wasn’t too upset about this because I was pretty thirsty and the fresh squeezed Bolivian orange juice leaves nothing to be desired. Still a little miffed at the cab driver, I headed over to the taxi stop and bought a seat in the next cab. I had a little time, so I bought a nice juicy piece of watermelon to eat for lunch and sat on the curb for about 5 minutes before the cab filled up and we were ready to rock. Fifteen more minutes in the cab and we were in Saavedra. I followed Aldo’s directions and showed up at Bibosi’s headquarters. Aldo told me that he and Julio had been in touch with Isac Bedia about the well he wanted to drill and that this truck was to carry a rig to Hardeman that we would use to drill the well. Initially, this seemed like a good plan because we could just pick up Andy’s rig from Adrian’s house in San Pedro and swing by nearby Villa Rosario to get the tools. Provided all of that was true, we could take it all up to Hardeman to be used in the well drilling for Isac Bedia. Right.

We got to San Pedro and ran into a guy from Hardeman who had been there meeting with the mayor. His name is Don Martin…nice fella whom I had met before. We also called Andy to come and join the adventure. Andy told us that Adrian wasn’t in town, that he had left yesterday, so we couldn’t get any more info from him. We decided to figure out how to get to Villa Rosario to get Andy’s tools. We talked to a motorcycle taxi driver or “mototaxista” to get an idea of how to get there. He told us that it was a mere 20 minute trip, there and back, and that it was no big deal. We hired him to take us there, and we followed in our truck. We stopped when we got to the bridgeless river. He told us to just drive across and that Villa Rosario was on the other side. Some kids were crossing the river, and it didn’t look that deep, so Aldo hopped out and locked the wheel hubs and threw it into 4-Wheel Drive. We made it across the river without incident and kept going down the “road.” We had passed the mototaxista’s 10 minute mark about 20 minutes before this, and the “20 minute there and back easy ride” turned out to be more like 40 minutes one way and included fording a river. We got to a fork in the road and weren’t sure which way to turn, so we asked a local campo woman who was walking with some sheep where Villa Rosario was. She kept saying “no hay, no hay” and doing the little hand motion that goes along with “no hay,” which means “there isn’t any” or in this case, she was telling us that Villa Rosario didn’t exist. It was pretty evident she didn’t understand what we meant. So Don Martin hopped out and saved the day, speaking to the woman in Quechua and figuring out that we should go left. How this woman got to be her age, living in Bolivia, without ever learning how to understand something as basic as “Donde está Villa Rosario?” in Spanish is beyond me.

We got to Villa Rosario and had two choices. Riley had told me in an email that the tools were at the church next to the school, and Adrian had told Andy that they were in the hospital. Well, all of these things were right in a line next to each other, so it didn’t matter. However, there was no one around at any of these institutions and they were locked. We asked around and someone directed us to Don Maximo’s house. Don Maximo was president of one of the neighborhood organizations and a very helpful fella. But since he was newly elected, he didn’t know anything about the wells that were drilled around there 6 months before. He was pretty sure the ex-president, Don Gregorio, would know more. Unfortunately, Don Gregorio wasn’t home because he was out working on his farm. We asked if there was anyone around from the hospital and Don Maximo told us they were on vacation. “So what do you do if someone gets sick?” we asked. Never got a really good answer to that question. According to Don Gregorio’s wife, he would be back later that day or sometime tomorrow or the next day. That’s a fairly specific answer down here in Bolivia. We asked a few more neighbors and they all agreed that Don Gregorio was the man to ask about the well drilling rig. We wrote down the phone number to the town’s calling center and gave them my phone number so we could hopefully get in touch at a later date. We asked Don Maximo about the whereabouts of the person that ran the hospital, and he told us that he lived in a town called Sagrado Corazón, which was back on the main road from Montero to Hardeman, we had driven through it to get to Villa Rosario. His name was Don Valentín. Don Maximo also informed us that there was a town meeting tonight and that he would make sure to ask around about the rig to see if anyone knew anything. We thanked Don Maximo for his help and headed back towards Sagrado Corazón. On our way out of town, someone flagged us down and asked for a ride to the same place to go to the hospital because their child was sick. Of course we agreed, and a young couple and a baby joined us in the truck. I guess this was the answer to our previous question of what they do when someone gets sick…they wait for gringos to drive into town and hitch a ride to the nearest hospital.

So at this point I was worried that we wouldn’t have any tools available to drill when we needed them, which was a little disheartening. I could always go back to Montero to pick up the tools that were at Riley’s house, but that would mean taking another whole day to go to Montero as well as splitting up the rigs, which I did not want to do. We got back to Sagrado and asked where Don Valentin lived and headed to his house. It’s nice being in small towns because everyone knows exactly where everyone else lives. But Don Valentin wasn’t around, he had gone into the city. His young daughter told us that he had a cell phone but that she didn’t know the number. But her mother did, but she wasn’t home either. She was at work at the high school. So we got some directions to the high school and headed over there. We pulled Doña Emiliana out of class to ask her if she knew how we could get a hold of her husband. He didn’t have his cell phone with him right now, and she didn’t have the number memorized. She remembered him talking about the gringos that came to drill the wells but didn’t know anything herself about our equipment. She wasn’t sure when her husband would be back, but assured us that she would give him my contact information. So, Aldo and I walked out of the school a little defeated, but sick of dealing with “oh he’s not here, he’ll be back I don’t know when, no I don’t remember any of that,” so we decided to kind of give up. We drove back to San Pedro to pick up the rig we were hoping was actually at Adrian’s house. Andy assured us that he had actually seen the rig there, so that gave us a little confidence. But we still didn’t have any tools. We were hoping that something with Don Valentin would work out and we’d be able to get back to Villa Rosario to get tools.

We got to Adrian’s house (who Andy had said was not in town, that he had left the day before) and asked for his wife, who knew Andy. Well, to go along with the theme of the day (bad information), Adrian walked out of the house and greeted us. This was the first time I actually felt some relief today. I had wanted to talk to Adrian myself because he supposedly had information about the Colonia Pirai rig as well. I told him we were going to take the rig out of his house so we could drill in Hardeman. When I asked him where the Pirai rig was, he told me Riley knew. I then told him that Riley said that he knew. And then he all of the sudden changed his story and started calling the Pirai rig “Miguel’s rig” and said that it was the one at his house…and that not only were there still tools in Villa Rosario, there was a whole rig too. “So then where are the tools that accompany Miguel’s rig?” I asked. Oh, they’re right here he said, and walked back into his house and pulled out a complete set of drilling tools. My jaw dropped…this was the last thing I expected. From all the information we had gathered from Andy, Riley, and the mayor from Pirai, the last place I expected the tools to be were sitting right under our noses in Adrian’s house. Aldo and I were ecstatic, because now was it not completely urgent to get the tools from Villa Rosario, but also because we were now ready to drill provided all of the tools were in the bag. We loaded up everything onto to Aldo’s little Ford-Ranger size truck, including tying the 6 meter metal tube to the undercarriage of the vehicle so it would fit, and headed back to Hardeman. The sun was going down by now, and we were exhausted. We unloaded the rig in the cooperative and said we would get in touch with each other tomorrow and figure out the details with Isac Bedia, the mystery man for whom we would be drilling.

I know this wasn’t the most exciting entry, but as my mom always said, not everything in life is exciting. But, I hope it illustrated a little bit of how things tend to work down here in Bolivia. It can be frustrating, but it’s just a part of the job. It’s a good indicator of why it is such a challenge to get things accomplished down here. And you can’t try to change it, you just have to dig in and take it, or else it will drive you crazy. Basically, many of the things that are easy to do back home or work well back in the states are non-existent here. People really can’t be trusted to give you accurate information, but since it’s all you have, it’s what you have to go on. Just keeps it interesting is all.

Update: Since writing this, I met Isac Bedia and we are planning on heading up to his town to drill this Thursday the 5th…this will be our first well on our own and I’m a little nervous because I would hesitate to call us “qualified” yet…but I guess this is what being in the Peace Corps is all about. Rock and roll.