About 10 minutes later a truck arrived and the other guy and I hopped in back and hit the mud. It was about 2 hours of muck through which we had to push a few times (so much for the toe not getting infected) but we made it. What was even less exciting was that I had to leave Hárdeman the next day to go down to my friend Rudy’s site to help him with a latrine project for flood victims. I got back to my site, said hi to my family, picked up my clean laundry from my laundry lady, unpacked and packed up again for the next day. I did take some time to climb the water tower and take some photos of the flooding. Check it out.
On the left is the road heading south out of town. If you look closely you can see that right at the edge of town it dives under water and stays there for about 25 kilometers.
This is my host brother Pepe on top of the tank. Behind him you can see the high water. Usually there is no water there.Well, sure enough, it was raining when I woke up. Usually rain in the morning means no transportation for a while, and this held true. I went a found a guy that was leaving (with about 20 people in the back of his truck) and around 3pm we took off. We got about 200 yards out of town (going the back way) and got stuck…unable to get out. Most of these people just wanted to leave because they didn’t want to stay in town, but since I was going to help flood victims I felt like I really needed to get out of town. I thought about going on foot or on bike, but then the ambulance came by. I know the ambulance driver Julio and told him what I was up to and he agreed to take me with him. With four-wheel drive and a lighter load we made it through with only having to push and get my toe infected once.
I got to Rudy’s site at about 8pm that night and we spent the week heading out to a community about 40 minutes outside of town where there were about 200 families living in tents on the road. They were flood refugees and the local mayor’s office had commissioned Rudy to do something about the lack of sanitation and bathrooms where they were staying. So he came up with a quick and dirty (quite literally) latrine that could be built easily and cheaply that involved burying a barrel and leaving a hole for the poo to go into and burying a bottle next to the barrel for the pee to go into. Rudy has a lot of experience building latrines so it wasn’t that tough for him. But he needed us to help since there were about 25 latrines to be built in a week.
The tents where the families were living. Most tents were 3 or 4 families and made of cloth so they leaked water. Leave it to the Bolivian government to give flood refugee tents that don’t keep out rain during the rainy season.
Andy unloading the barrels that would be the latrines.
There was hardly enough food for the people, so this dog wasn’t getting his share of table scraps…yuck.We had our hands full, organizing the people and distributing materials. The goal was not to build the latrines for the people, but to show them how to build them. This goes back to the idea of sustainability. If the people are just given the latrines, chances are they won’t take care of them. But if it is something that they’ve built themselves they are much more likely to use it properly and take care of it. They feel ownership. This is much trickier, especially getting the people motivated. It was a bit frustrating because the four of us could have built all the latrines ourselves without a problem in about 2 days. This is where the Peace Corps patience we learned about in training comes in. It was tough because it didn’t seem to make sense to us…there we were trying to help them live healthier and safer and they didn’t want to work…they’d rather sit in their tents and complain about everything they’ve lost. We tried to stay positive though and in the end we did an alright job. Here is Rudy having a little fun with a latrine-to-be.
And here’s Rudy educating the folks on how to use the new latrines
The rainy season lived up to its name and it continued raining all week, which did not help to motivate the people. I thought of how much David Krause hates working in the rain even if he’s getting paid, so it was hard to blame them for not wanting to work when they weren’t getting paid. But they were getting a nice new bathroom…but this didn’t seem to matter to them. But there we all were, getting wet and sick trying to help them out. Oh well. The sun did come out one evening on our ride home, which made us happy. Here’s a shot of Rudy and Bryan heading home on top of the water tanker truck the mayor’s office sent out to get us.
One bright spot of the week was the food. Rudy’s site is called Okinawa because it was actually founded by Japanese refugees in the forties trying to escape the war. The Bolivian government gave them this plot of land and there they stayed. There is still a huge Japanese presence there, and people who speak nothing but Japanese. Few have intermixed with the Bolivians and they stay pretty separate, but they live in peace nonetheless. Anyway, because of the Japanese roots, there is a Japanese restaurant in town that was so good we ate there three times. After eating rice cooked in oil with mystery meat cooked in oil topped with onions and peppers cooked in oil and boiled potatoes for 6 months in Hárdeman, some steamed rice with fresh uncooked veggies and amazing beef and chicken with delicious Japanese seasonings was enough to make me order two plates every time. I figure I need to take advantage of healthy food when I can get it.
On the fourth day the rain continued ALL DAY long and no one even paid attention to us when we went to their tents to talk about bathrooms, so we finally just said enough and stopped working. Here’s a shot of me after we “gave up.” Please note the toe protection on my left foot.
Friday was the fifth day and it was raining as hard as ever. Bryan and Andy had already left and Rudy and I woke up with nasty colds, so we decided not to go out to the communities. We nursed our colds by eating some Ramen noodles and playing Monopoly with some other volunteers in town who are missionaries. It was a happy end to a long week for me, because I headed back to my site the next morning.The rain all week had not helped the flooding, except this time when I got as far as the bus could go, there was a canoe to take people back to Hárdeman. It was about an hour and a half canoe ride, but we made it safe and sound. Check it out.
This used to be the road.I was glad to be back to my site, since I had in effect been gone for three weeks. I got back just in time for carnavál to begin, but that will have to wait until the next entry.
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