And that's that.

Well, it has been quite the wild ride for the past few weeks. In just about one big long fell swoop, I arrived back to Bolivia from a relaxing three weeks of home-leave in the states, returned to Hardeman and the surrounding jungles to do some well drilling, left the jungle to collect a new volunteer that was coming to Hardeman, but never made it back. The day we were supposed to return to Hardeman from Santa Cruz city, poltically charged violent protests and demonstrations erupted in the city, motivating the Peace Corps to consolidate the few of us who were currently in the city. This was not an un-precedented move, and the small group of us made our way to a hotel thinking we'd have a few relaxing days by the pool and be back to our sites by the end of the week.

That was a week and a half ago. I sit here now in Perú, no longer a Peace Corps volunteer. Three days later they made the decision to evacuate all 113 volunteers to neighboring Perú. The situation remained tense in Santa Cruz while we were at the hotel, and grew increasingly violent in the usually-calm department of Pando, on the northern tip of Bolivia. A group of 30 campensinos were making their way towards the capital city of Cobija when they were supposedly slaughtered by opposition supporters. It was reported that machine guns were used. Here is a link to a blog that talks more about what has happened and what may happen. This guy is a little biased but generally pretty accurate. If you have time, read this entry and the few entries afterwards. In addition to the civil unrest within the country, the situation was not helped when Bolivian president Evo Morales expelled the American Ambassador from the country, claiming he supported and helped plan the violent protests and demonstrations. Trigger-happy Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez quickly followed suit and kicked out their ambassador as well. The violence combined with the political issues and the increasingly declining state of affairs in Bolivia made our evacuation not unbelieveable, but shocking nonetheless.

On Monday the 15th, we climbed aboard a US donated C-130 cargo plane to make our way to Lima, Perú. It was quite the interesting flight experience...needless to say there was no in-flight movie, but we did get to see the cockpit during the flight. Imagine my surprise when the pilot looked back at me and said in perfect english "Do you like movies about gladiators?"

Some shots of the plane:



Safe on the ground in Perú.



After a quick orientation and welcome by the Peace Corps Perú folks and the embassy, we made our way to our new digs. They were putting us up at a "resort" which was about 40 minutes inland from the coastal city of Lima. Before we boarded the plane, our Country Director informed us that Peace Corps Washington had temporarily suspended the program in Bolivia, meaning that it was extremely unlikely that any of us would be returning there as volunteers. So the mood of the group was pretty grim. Almost none of us had the chance to say goodbye to people in our towns and almost everyone left unfinished work and committments. The fact that we weren't going to be able to return was really bringing everyone down.

Over the next week, a group of folks from Washington came down to facilitate everyone's next steps. There were opportunities to transfer to other countries, wait out the situation in Bolivia, end your service with the chance of re-enrolling with preferred status, or simply ending your service. It was a very hectic and stressful few days for us, trying to make these decisions. When you join the Peace Corps, the selection and placement process usually takes months, for me it was over a year. Now people needed to decide where to go and what to do essentially in a matter of hours.

As for me, I had a pretty easy decision. Since I had just started my third year as a volunteer leader, I was lucky enough to be able to finish my service, say goodbye to people in my site and get some closure on things. I was definitely planning on going back, but I had a much better situation than most. Although there was an opportunity to stay on in Peru as a third year Basic Sanitation volunteer leader, I opted to finish my time with the Peace Corps and move on to the next big thing, although I am still working on figuring that out yet. I would really love for it to involve a couple months back home on the West Side living the Ohio life.

Needless to say, it has been a fairly shocking couple of weeks. We have been consolidated before and they always tell us to be ready for anything, but problems ALWAYS die down and life goes back to normal after a couple of days. Consolidations and the activation of our "emergency action plan" were always more of hassle than anything we worried about. No one ever thought that this would actually happen. But here we are, no longer volunteers and all headed in our different directions.

As for me, I am planning on doing a bit of traveling here around Perú, return to Bolivia to say a proper goodbye and leave as much of my work in capable hands as is possible, do some more traveling around Argentina and then try and make it home by early November to enjoy a little bit of what autumn in Ohio has to offer. I will do my best to keep the blog updated better with travel stories and awesome pictures. This afternoon we are getting on a bus bound for a beach town to get tan for a while and try my hand at surfing with a group of friends. Until next time, signing off.