The Story of Ben

Marshmallows Roasting on an Open Volcano...Live Turkeys Nipping at My Nose...

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:11:00 +0000

Greetings constant reader. This update comes not from my fingers, but from my long-lost 2nd cousin twice removed and once under the table Brett, who is coincidentally working down here in Honduras as well. I believe you will enjoy his witty banter and sarcastic voice. This is really just a ripped-off update email he is sending out to his "fans." But since I am lazy and he's actually a professional righter, I suspect you will enjoy. Here goes...

This one will be a long one, so settle in…or just hit the delete key now!

Sitting here in Copan Ruinas at the tail end of a weeklong vacation in Antigua, Guatemala. Lots of good food, coffee, bunsburying around, reading Steinbeck, and relaxation. Also lots of talking like ridiculous German tourists (“Vass?Fire sale on short pants!?”). All in all a wonderful trip, and a much needed break. It only took us just 16 short hours of riding on various buses to get to Guatemala. I have now increased my PR in the “holding pee in” event to 4.5 straight hours. In related news, I am now most likely sterile.

Lots of stories to tell, but I think I’ll start with the one where we roasted marshmallows with lava on the side of an active volcano. Yes, you read that right…that’s marshmallows cooked with MOLTEN ROCK FROM THE CENTER OF THE EARTH.

It goes a little like this:

We were told to take the “sunset tour” of the volcano, called Pacaya – one of 37 in Guatemala. Left on a “buscito” at 2:00 in the afternoon. Got to the volcano and bought walking sticks from waiting mob of stick-wielding children. Child salesgirl (Claudia) sold me a total lemon of a stick, weighing in at approximately sixteen pounds bone dry. Ben got “walking stick lite” and was much better off in that department. When I tried to speak to Claudia about my stick at the end of the trip, the customer service part of her brain must have been closed for the day, because she just looked at me like I was speaking jibberish. Perhaps I was.

We were headed to the top of this volcano

To make a long story short, the hike up the volcano got a bit difficult at the end, especially with the crazy 30+ mph winds that started up. I had tied my borrowed sweatshirt around my neck country-club style, which meant that I spent a large portion of the hike climbing blind while the sweatshirt repeatedly wrapped itself around my head.

By the time I got to the top, I was exhausted and a little encachimbado (grumpy) but the minute I saw the lava that all disappeared. Or, I should say, “the minute I felt my feet burning through my shoes and realized I was standing on the crust of semi-molten rock, things got a little more exciting. Also, remember the gale-force wind, constantly threatening to blow us all into the glowing red rocks of scalding, scalding, limb-melting pain and/or certain death in the river of flowing lava.

But before we get to the lava…a little context:

Our cast of characters for this little sojourn included an Italian-born racing-boat builder currently riding his motorcycle from Washington state to the southern tip of Chile, Norwegian girl named Mira (or “Look!” in Spanish) Taiwanese tourist/volunteer and “man-boy”-extraordinaire (looked 18, claimed he was 28) who was traveling around Latin America, one tourist who I will call “Frumpy McGirl” because I never caught her name and she was, two European tourists, possibly German/Austrian, and old goofy dentist man (with straw hat, which blew off and disappeared down the mountain but was recovered by a small child sometime later). Also our guide, who spoke so painfully slow in Spanish for the benefit of non Spanish-speaking tourists that it became difficult to understand her after the initial welcome.

Ikke fal ned fra vulkanen!

So we get to the top of our hike. Not the top of the volcano (remember, it’s active), just part of the way up. At this point, we are definitely standing on a volcano. The “path” that we are walking on is kind of like the Guatemalan Volcano version of those “Choose your own adventure” books: you choose to step on that piece of lava rock to your right and risk certain death, turn to page 122…you choose to follow the dog that has miraculously appeared at your side and hope for the best, turn to page 134. True story, a small dog followed us all the way up. We have the video to prove it. A few of the crusty parts of said “path” broke a bit when I stepped on them, causing a moment of sheer terror. This might seem fortunate, but it meant that my leg-meat survived long enough to become a happy home for a roving band of scabies. More on that later…

So then there was the REAL lava. About twenty yards past where we first started seeing (read: narrowly avoiding) glowing lava rocks is a river of lava. We stood about six feet from it, or as close as we could stand because of the intense heat. I kept my hood up so my hair wouldn’t catch fire. You’ll see from the photo.

Photos of REAL Lava

For the main event, we found a hole down to some glowing hot lava rocks underneath where we were standing and roasted marshmallows. Delicious. Best damn marshmallow I’ve ever had. Hands down.

Marshmallavariffic!

One thing that was not said by anyone in our group (but should have been) was, “Now I know what God feels like when he roasts marshmallows.” That’s how it felt to me. (also, name that quote for all you Simpson’s fans.)

Then we “skied” down the side of the volcano by jumping at the top and then using the deep lava rock sand to ski.

So to summarize, I can now add to my life-resume that I have roasted marshmallows on lava and “skied” down a portion of a volcano. When we got to a restaurant to have nachos and beers afterwards, Asian Man-boy asked, “Did anyone else realize that was INCREDIBLY, INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS?” Touché, Man-boy. Touché.

Part II:

Lots of bus riding, a night in Copan, then met up with the Wyoming nursing student brigade in San Pedro and caught a ride with them to Concepcion. On the way, Alex and I got to spend a short time riding on top of the brigade bus. That’s definitely the way to travel around here, especially on the bad roads – laying up top in the sun, plenty of space, luggage for a pillow. Alex and I both fell asleep until a large bunch of tree leaves hit Alex in the head and made a bunch of noise. Some power lines came a little too close for comfort to my face, but other than that it seemed perfectly safe. Or at least as safe as lying on the top of a bus is, even with bars to keep you from falling off the side.

The brigade from Wyoming was a really fun group, and we ended the trip at Zona 504 karaoke bar in El Progreso. It only took 3 songs before they took the mic away from us. They never gave it back to us, though they sarcastically promised they would. The bus ride in to San Pedro to see the brigade off and then return here to Santa Lucia puts the total bus riding that I’ve done recently at 45 hours in two weeks. Bus riding after multiple tequila shots = bad, bad, vomit-inducing idea.

I spent most of the brigade translating for doctors doing patient consults, including an adorable 10 year-old girl named Paola with a severe heart murmur (I’m told it was a 6/6 intensity/loudness by the docs). The mother, when we got her into the clinic, said her child had been placed on a World Vision waiting list but was not sure if she was still on it, as they had not contacted her for some time and had told her there were worse cases that would get preference. Her daughter had apparently stolen and then burned the results of her tests in La Esperanza after she found out they meant she’d need surgery, so the specifics of what she has I do not know. I am not sure what we can – or should – do, but am currently trying to figure that out. If you have any ideas, or know a good cardiothoracic surgeon, let me know and I’ll keep you posted on progress…

Other brigade highlights include: 1) thinking we had lost one brigade member for two hours or so in Colomarigua 2) getting the truck stuck – I thought the axle had bent enough that we wouldn’t drive out of it – in a ditch for 45 minutes (we were finally wedged out by a group of Honduran men, women and children wielding fence-posts), and 3) bedbug infestation of various mattresses. When I say “highlights” here I mean, “potential disasters.”

Also, I may or may not have scabies. Really, I may or may not have had scabies. I hope that whatever I had they’re gone now, after 3 permethrin treatments and one night of doing laundry with boiling water in an industrial sized garbage can, which I called “Sopa de Ropa” (clothes soup) stirred with a mop handle. See below.

If anyone out there has had scabies or the like, I feel your pain…your itchy, itchy burning pain. If not, imagine the itchiest thing that you can, then multiply it by a thousand millions. Luckily mine were only below the knee. And luckily we have pictures of the laundry process. Maria the cook thinks that the fact that I had scabies is endlessly funny…especially since my nickname “Bobicho” (we finally figured out this was from Selena trying to say “Vos, Bicho” – “you, boy”) includes a slang word for “parasite” in it.

Today, Maria, Ben, and I are going to buy our Thanksgiving Turkey. When we asked Maria if she could help us find one, her response was: “Sure, but Bobicho’s catching it.” We’ll see how that goes. Then you’ll see how that goes, because we’re going to film it.

The Moment of Death

Aftermath

Don't play with your food!

I’m sure there are a thousand more things I wanted to put in here, since it’s been a while since my last update…which I end up saying every time. But I’ll try to remember for next time!

Hope all is well! Enjoy the cold weather, suckers! It’s a balmy 90 degrees and sunny here!!! But come to think of it, my legs are starting to itch again, so I guess it all balances out…

Love,

Brett

"Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!!!!!"

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 05:58:00 +0000

A few weeks back, a group of us around the clinic organized a trip to head into San Pedro Sula, one of the big cities here in Honduras. The occasion? World Cup qualifier, Honduras vs. USA. The stakes were high, with the winner guaranteeing themselves a coveted spot in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. The US has been in the last 5 World Cup tournaments, but Honduras has only been in 1, back in 1982. So this was a big deal. The US Embassy travel warnings were posted, Peace Corps volunteers were officially prohibited from attending the game, and there we were...a truckload of gringos heading into the lion's den...none of us knew what to expect...

First of all, the car ride there was a barrel of fun, spawning mountains of inside jokes including "round eye, round fruit" and "quieres la buburin?" which I won't take the time to explain here. I will only tell you that there was a lot of laughing going on in the car. It was about a 6 hour ride from Santa Lucía to San Pedro, with yours truly behind the wheel following a carload of our Honduran co-workers. It was to be my first time driving in the city and I was a little nervous but despite a few close calls, everything was fine. (That sentence could have been used to describe pretty much any car ride I've ever participated in while in Latin America). We made it to our hotel and rested for a bit before heading out into the madness. Our honduran friends decided on Burger King for lunch. Not my first choice for a "cultural experience" but it's not like the place was empty...plenty of Hondurans were having it their way before the soccer game, so I didn't feel like such a foreigner. We hopped back in the pick-up (we all squeezed into one truck to help with parking) and before we knew it, it was pouring down rain. The tropical afternoon rainstorm had struck again. They tossed us a blue tarp from the cab so we stayed relatively dry and the rain only lasted about a half hour. We found a parking spot and started walking towards the stadium.

This was approximately 2pm. The game was scheduled to start at 8pm. Our Honduran friends had told us we had to get there very early in order to ensure that we got into the game. "But we have tickets, why will it be a problem?" we responded. Marvin (our main tour guide for the day) shook his head a smiled with a "silly gringos" look on his face. He informed us that black-market tickets were a huge deal here and that there were probably 15-20 THOUSAND bogus tickets floating around. So in order to get in, we needed to be there early and get in "line." I put that in quotes because the lines were really just huge twisted masses of people all sort-of aiming for the entrance. The stadium only held about 30,000 people and I marveled at how at an Ohio State game we still managed some kind of order with over 100,000 people trying to get in. There were no gates or ropes differentiating one line from another, just a few police officers sitting around "keeping order." We stood there for 3 hours advancing about 60 feet and I was ready to pull my hair out. My patience went out the window and I was ready to just leave, especially when it looked like we were not going to make it in. At one point a large group of gringos walked through the crowd completely obnoxiously decked out in American garb...soccer scarves, big uncle sam hats, american flag capes...the whole nine yards. They came traipsing through this crowd of thousands of angry Hondurans and were just getting harassed. Not in an unsafe kind of way, but in a sporting-event kind of way. My first thought was "those HAVE to be Peace Corps volunteers." I could just see James, Bryan, Andy, Joe and Yamasaki leading a group of us Bolivian volunteers through this madness and soaking up every minute of it. My friends and I had kept a low profile, at least trying to where neutral colors. These people were unabashedly being obnoxious Americans. And while usually I'm not a huge fan of that kind of behavior, a large part of me wanted to throw my lot in with them. The only thing that prevented me from doing that was the fact that I knew they had arrived to late to get into the game, the crowds and lines were now far too large for any hope to remain for them.

Once we started moving at a decent rate and we realized we were going to make it in, the frustrations lifted and we started getting pumped up. We got into the game at about 5:30 or so and found some seats down in the second row...which sounds good, but there was a huge roll of razor wire obscuring our view. Personally I didn't really care, I don't really like watching soccer. The place was a madhouse. No one was unfriendly, they could all tell we were there to have a good time. I am 100% confident there is more scorn for Michigan fans at your standard OSU game than we felt as Americans in a foreign land. The speakers were booming, the announcer was firing people up and people were screaming. We all thought the same thing..."they can't keep this up for 2.5 hours," but we were wrong. They even had some army paratroopers jump out of a circling helicopter and land on the field...it was a pretty amazing sight.

By the time the game actually started, I had already felt like I had been partying like college again for hours. I've never really liked watching soccer, but it was a pretty unique experience to be there in the thick of all of it. The first half was scoreless, but when the second half started, the U.S jumped out to a 3-0 lead fairly quickly. I actually missed a couple of the goals because they were on the other end of the field and no one seemed to make a big deal out of it. This, however, was not the case when Honduras finally scored. The entire stadium erupted into pandemonium, noise makers blaring, people screaming and throwing beers, hugging, crying, high-fiving...it was pretty amazing.

Celebrating with Juan

Hanging with my buds

The game ended anti-climatically, with the U.S hanging on to win 3-2. Hondurans would have to wait until the following Wednesday to finally determine their World Cup fate.

The ride back to Santa Lucía the next day was just as fun as the ride in, only with the added benefit of having picked up Jody in the city, who is another one of the gringos that works in Santa Lucía. She had been visiting friends and also went to the game, but it had been a few weeks since we'd seen her. We laughed even more on the way back than we had on the way in, only stopping for a delicious fish lunch near at the pretty lake Yojoa.

It was a very good trip, although pretty quick. Here is a shot of the great sunset on the ride back..

Epilogue: The following Wednesday a Honduran victory over neighboring El Salvador coupled with a US tie with Costa Rica opened up a berth for Honduras in the World Cup for the first time since 1982. They fought like Hondurans, and won their freedom.

And then a national holiday was declared for the following day.

Stories Through Photos

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 20:35:00 +0000

So far life is good. I'll leave it at that and continue with some pictures and commentary...

The building in the front is the clinic and the building in the back is our apartment.

A view of the front of the clinic. In the mornings this is where the patients wait to be attended.

The first floor of the dorms/apartment buildings is where we eat...kind of like training tables.

An average street in Santa Lucía. Narrow and steep. These are just the "urban" roads. Once you get out of town the roads are much more...interesting...

My office/desk. Pretty nice huh?

The outlying clinic in Santa Rita...about a 25 minute drive from Santa Lucía

This girl and her baby sister were waiting on their mom who was being seen at our clinic in Santa Rita

No better way to secure things to a truck than duct tape...I haven't found any goma yet in this country, sadly.

Alex and I are in charge of any and all reparations here at the clinic. Here you see the dental suction machine after we got our hands on it. It's nice to not have any official rules or codes, we can do whatever we want and it's a success. As you can tell, things like duct tape and wire ties are pretty key.

After a long day's work hanging electrical boxes and messing around with a generator, Alex and I ventured into town to find some dinner but could only turn up this box of frozen chicken wings. Without a microwave, we improvised and just cooked them in a frying pan. Delicious.

Sundays at the clinic, our cook doesn't come so we have to fend for ourselves. Alex is quite the gourmet and whipped up some vegetable lasagna, and here Leslie and I are working on brownies for dessert. It's always a collaborative effort.

Another one of Alex's amazing creations in the kitchen...barbeque chicken pizza from scratch! Seriously, if you come to visit make sure to be here on a Sunday...

Everybody pitching in to clean up after the big meal...even doctors can do dishes!

View from the top: Early Sunday morning we decided to hike up to the cell towers high above town. It was about an hour walk but straight up, kind of like walking up school section road for about an hour. It was worth it though, to see the morning fog clearing out above town.

Santa Lucía from afar...the clinic is at the very top of town, the long red roof.

The mountains around here are really amazing, every time I'm out I add another one to the list that I need to get to the top of.

The hiking crew: Alex, Edgar, Alan, Yaniré, me...and Yuki the dog!

We've started playing basketball a few times a week, it's good fun and good exercise. This is me celebrating probably after hitting a 3 in Alex's face to finish off the game

This huge frog hopped it's way into our room as we were cooking dinner in Concepción. Wildlife is sweet.

Out for a Sunday swim at the river...not the clearest water around but refreshing just the same.

The view from our balcony in our apartment/office. The only thing missing from this shot is me in the hammock.

The rainy season here brings some pretty awesome night-time thunderstorms. It's nice to sit out on the balcony listening to the rain fall and watching the lightning brilliantly light up the sky with some chill music playing in the background...

Settling In

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 23:35:00 +0000

Today is my first Sunday in Honduras. I am bit-by-bit adjusting to life here, no big surprises so far. I find myself often comparing to Bolivia and the Peace Corps, which I expected. The main differences are that I have a lot clearer view of my purpose here than I did when I first arrived in Bolivia and lot more direction. Part of the Peace Corps process was finding your own way, your own path, your own way of doing things. There was support where you needed it, but we were certainly not coddled once training was over. I got dumped into a town where I was the only American with maybe a few ideas for projects but nothing officially set up for work. It took me months to meet people, earn their trust, get into the swing of it all and finally drilled my first well about 9 months into my service. By the end of my time in Hardeman, however, new people were knocking on my door every day asking if we could drill them a well. It went from one extreme to the other.

Here, my set-up is quite different. I am a new employee at a health clinic that has been in this small, rural town for about 20 years now. I'm no longer the local gringo celebrity, gringos are a dime-a-dozen in this town. Many have come and gone along the years, and large groups of them invade on our brigades. I don't think I will necessarily get lost in the shuffle, but it's far cry from Peace Corps where I was the only gringo to ever spend a significant amount of time in my little town. And there are benefits to both. It is pretty nice having all these resources here, for example wireless internet all the time, access to trucks and some other Americans around who can get excited about Ohio State football for example. I try to imagine all the work I could have gotten done in Hardeman with just a fraction of these resources. But as strange as it sounds to say it, Peace Corps wasn't just about getting a bunch of work done. It was just as much about spreading goodwill to my fellow man and hopefully showing the folks in my town a good example of an American, as well as learning about them and sharing what I learned with other Americans. So that time spent getting to know things was a very important part of my service. It is not like that as much here. Townspeople have an idea of what Americans are like and may assume that I am the same. And perhaps I am, depending on their ideas. It's just a whole different experience from arriving to Hardeman. But I definitely find it much easier to adjust to this life having been through my Peace Corps experience in Bolivia.

As far as my day-to-day goes, I share a room with my friend Alex, who is a nurse here in the clinic but dabbles in just about everything. In our "apartment" right now are Leslie & Mark, a married couple who have been here for a little over a year. Also in another room is Yanire, a researcher working on a nutrition study. We have some common space as well, a big living room and a kitchen, but all that doubles as offices for all of us, which really consist of lunchroom tables mostly. There is another apartment up here as well that houses the majority of the Honduran medical staff...doctors and nurses. We are on the second floor, downstairs is the main kitchen and eating area where we eat most of our meals. There are some more employees living in rooms down there, and people are always coming and going, for a few months, weeks, or days at a time. It's a little strange living with the same people I work with and working in same place I live. But for now it's all there is. I am settling in very nicely and have felt pretty useful up until now. More to come soon.

"is nothing sacred?"**

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:07:00 +0000

7:13 am, Columbus airport. I had no idea they had free wifi here at the airport, so this is quite the pleasant surprise. So the next stage of my life begins today. It's been a hectic week of traveling, packing, saying goodbyes (as well as hello to my new nephew Conrad!) and all the other things you do before a grand journey.

I feel calm and ready. It was nice to be able to get through the hard part yesterday in Cincy before traveling today. I got to Columbus in the afternoon and shared a great last night in America with two of my very best friends David and Kreiner, which included a nice cigar on the steps of Orton Hall, watching the oval drink in the rain. It was extremely calming.

Breakfast this morning was mom's home-made chocolate chip cookies...talk about a lucky morning. With any luck, I'll have a few left for tomorrow morning.

Well, they're calling my number. Bon voyage, see you in Honduras!

**quote spoken by me while in Columbus, upon realizing the storied bar JR Miggs had been torn down so the hair salon next door could expand...

American Summer

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:34:00 +0000

Allow me to lay out the scene here: Sitting on a deck overlooking the placid Lake Washington, soaking up the sun, which is just enough to make 75 degrees seem hot. I've got some quality tunes playing in the background (a recent playlist entitled "19 Hours In Brunswick") and have spent the day relaxing, taking stock of where this past year spent here in the US has taken me. I done more than my share of traveling and have been fortunate enough to spend lots of quality time with my family in Ohio and seen friends quite literally all across the country. I have hiked up the highest mountain in New Hampshire, spent a night in an igloo, went rally-car racing in Mexico, climbed up various rock formations in Alabama & Kentucky, looked on as a best friend and a cousin got married (not to each other), rode on the back of a scooter through the streets of San Francisco, slept in the woods and on the beach in Maine, entertained my amazing little niece Riley Jo and even got a haircut (just the split ends of course!). I've spent countless nights with countless friends (and cousins, and parents, and sisters & brothers-in-law) enjoying countless adult beverages and countless hours of conversation.

I can safely say I have made the most out of what will be just under a year in the good ol' U.S. of A. No regrets for sure. In less than two weeks I will be all packed up and moved to Honduras (it's this whole other country), having taken a job with a non-profit organization called Shoulder to Shoulder. Check out the website for more info on that, or just buy some delicious coffee through the link on the right.

So as my time in America draws again to a close, I'd like to share a few photos of how I've been occupying my time in the past year. Please be sure to check back for more regular updates from Honduras.

Máncora, Peru – South 04deg06’18.5” West 081deg03’21.8”

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 02:25:00 +0000

“Allo, mai friend, where you from? United States? Oh, I live there, 3 years, in Alaska. Where you live?”

As far as broken English conversations go, this one was pretty normal. A skinny Colombian man named Kenny had approached us on the sandy beach of northern Perú trying to get us to come into his “delicious Colombian restaurant.” I did my best not to commit to conversation…we continued walking, avoided eye contact, etc. But his last question stopped my mind in its tracks. In his less than perfect English, he had asked me “where do you live?” and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t have a response for him. I haven’t lived in Ohio for 2-plus years, and my home in Bolivia has recently been snatched away and I am now actually, for the first time in my life, homeless. Of course I know I always have a place in Cincy, but I am currently without any place to call my own. And that is an incredibly liberating feeling. Writing about it here brings the huge smile back to my face.

The hair in all its glory. Please note similarities with Jesus mural on the bus behind me

This is our fourth night on the beach in Máncora, Peru. And when I say on the beach, I really mean on the beach. We found a hostel whose foyer is made of sand. From the front “door,” one can spit in the ocean at high tide. No lie. The constant crashing of the waves is incredibly soothing, especially at night and in the mornings. Our days have consisted mainly of getting up early, having some coffee on the beach, walking on the beach, napping on the beach, playing in the thundering waves, eating delicious seafood on the beach, napping again on the beach (this time in a hammock), maybe reading a little on the beach, heading a few blocks inland to find some dinner, then back out here to the beach for hookah smoking, beer consumption, great music and excellent people. It’s true, one of my fellow ex-volunteers has brought an entire hookah along with him and we are all very thankful for that, it’s a fantastic way to share the evening with a big group of folks. We are eleven people from all different places and from all different groups in Bolivia. My friend Naya and I were in our third years as volunteers, others had been in a year or so, and one of us had only been in country for about 8 months. It’s a great mix of PCV personalities.

Beach jogging with Anna & Emily

Tom and I catching some waves

Hitting the Hookah

Currently as I type this we are seated around the hookah and a few people have expressed interest in being contributing writers to The Story of Ben…so here are some thoughts from a few friends:

Hey Ranza Ganzas and friends, I’m a friend of Joseph Ben Ranz, name is Anna. I’m a big fan of Ben and his company for the following reasons: Ben has great hair. Better than it’s ever been in all his life, I’m sure. Ben makes super, very good French toast. Ben bathes more than the average peace corps volunteer, but he doesn’t mind when we smell. Ben asks good questions. Ben is a good man. I’m glad he’s my friend. –Anna from Charlottesville, Virginia (see "Fun With Tom & Anna" link on the left)

Hi everybody! I’m a friendly Hoosier and fellow ex-volunteer with li’l Ben. If it weren’t for the beach, the transition back to the US of A would be even more difficult. But here we are, enjoying each other’s company, the wonderful Peruvian sun, and the freedom of short-term unemployment! –Emily from Goshen, Indiana

So long and thanks for all the hard work. Good luck deciding what your life will consist of during the next two days. You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here… So where else would we go to figure out the rest of lives, or at least the next step, than to the best beach on the Pacific side of the lovely South American continent. Here we are soaking up the sun like Sheryl Crow and relaxing in a hammock and listening to waves crash on shore to clear our minds. One step closer to the answer and much less worried about what that may eventually be. Chowabunga dudes! –George from Gary, Indiana

Hello Ohio!!!!!! This is Naya aka The Little Mexican (as Ben likes to call me). Just wanted to give a shout out to the state that the Mr. Ranz comes from. Cute lil’ story about Ben and I, he is the first ever mid-westerner I have met. Yes, it was 2.5 years ago that we met in that fateful Miami hotel as we started our adventure to Bolivia. He was the first volunteer as well that I had met and oh what a ride it has been. We now part ways on this oh so sweet beach town finally going our separate ways. A quick shout out to Coleman, it was a pleasure meeting you and hopefully I’ll see the Bens again live and in action in Ohio one day. Good night and good luck! -Naya from Ventura, California

That was just a small sampling of the excellent crew of people with whom I have crossed paths over the past 2.5 years or so. It truly has been a pleasure to share this Peace Corps experience with such excellent folks. I look forward to staying in touch and going to visit them at their homes of record as well as enjoying their company in Cincy for perhaps a Christmas tree bonfire or a Harvest Home Parade. You are always welcome.

Jump Photos!

I truly can’t remember the last time I swam in the ocean. The last few times I’ve been on the beach it’s been in Oregon or without a bathing suit…not very suited for swimming. I honestly think the last time was when I was in Ecuador back in summer 2002. Well, whenever it was, suffice to say that it has been far too long and I don’t intend on going that long again. We came this far north to escape the cold and cloudy beaches of southern Peru and it was well worth the 16 hour bus ride. It’s hot and sunny during the day, perfect for swimming and cool at night, just enough that you want a sweatshirt but you’re not shivering. The ocean is incredibly refreshing…I almost forgot that it was going to be salty. We’ve spent hours battling the waves and mostly losing. It’s a good workout and wears you out so that afternoon nap is all the more satisfying, especially with the ocean spray falling over you. We’ve also managed to get a few beach runs in. Jogging is something else that I haven’t managed to do in a long time. So it’s been a trip of relaxing, tanning and enjoying. Needless to say, I am super contento.

It is with a bit of sadness that I report that we will probably be shoving on tomorrow, along to the next adventure in what will probably become a long string of them. We are looking to head south to a town called Huaraz, which lies high in the mountains of central Peru. There is excellent trekking and beautiful views of snowcapped mountains all around. So that’s what we’ll probably do. But the beauty of all of this (as my friends alluded to above) is that there are no real decisions to make or deadlines to worry about. We are free in every sense of the word, free to do whatever we please, to travel wherever we please, answer to no one but ourselves. Cheers.

Group shot

Some beach shots:

Some random shots:
Tiny shadows...we are near the equator

Some lovely ladies...

Raw fish anyone? This is a Peruvian delicacy called ceviche...uncooked fish soaked in lime juice...delicious!

And that's that.

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 19:50:00 +0000

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.

The Great Ben Reunion

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:30:00 +0000

Howdy bloggers. Recently my good pal from OSU Ben Coleman came to visit and we had a helluva good time. He meticulously blogged about it, which you can read about here: Coleman's Bolivia Blog

Enjoy!

“Allí andamos, de pelotas en la selva, debajo de los ojos del escorpión...”

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:02:00 +0000

**The following entry actually happened almost eight months ago. After I returned from the trip, blogging about it went to the top of my to-do list. I am just now getting around to it. Some things never change.**

PROLOGUE…
It’s hard to actually determine at what point the adventure begins. Some might argue that in Bolivia, the adventure never ends. But as far as this particular story goes, I suppose it begins with the ride out to the jungle. Carlos and I had arrived the night before to Hardeman, after missing what I thought was the last bus and then surviving a tiny collision on the way home while we were on the actual last bus. I set my alarm for 6am, knowing we had some last minute details to get together before we made the trip to Jenecherú.

The first time I made the trip to Jenecherú (an indigenous word that means “indistinguishable flame”) was a couple of weeks prior to attend a meeting and talk about drilling wells in the area. It is a fairly new community, just getting off the ground. It is made of groups of people called “sindicatos” who are settling this land to farm it. Currently, it is mostly jungle with a few narrow dirt paths serving as the major byways. Each sindicato contains between 30-50 familes who are usually from the same town and are familiar with each other. It is like a group of neighbors who have gotten together to go out and stake their claim in what is essentially the Bolivian frontier. When you hear horror stories of thousands of acres of rainforest being chopped down each day, this is exactly the place you are hearing about. I will get to the ethical implications of this later on.

The meeting I attended was leaders of all 12 sindicatos in Jenecherú and immediately afterwards, a jovial fellow named Don Máximo approached me about wanting a well for his group. I gave him the usual rundown and told him as soon as he got me $150, we could set a date to drill. He showed up in Hárdeman with the cash about a week later and we decided to start drilling the following week on September 11th.

My cell phone alarm tore me out of sleep early that Tuesday morning, but I didn’t mind, it was drilling day! I hurried up and made Carlos some coffee, the Colombian part of him won’t get going until he’s had some. After the average breakfast of fresh bread and coffee, we started packing up for a few days in the jungle. Don Máximo showed up in Hárdeman around 9am but the pickup truck he had arranged for transport needed some work done, so we were at the mercy of the auto mechanic. I was a little peeved that I got up early in vain, but it’s really my fault for still not learning that things never happen on time in Bolivia. The truck and driver showed up around 4pm, with the animated Don Tiko behind the wheel. Don Tiko lives in Hardeman but this was the first time I had met him. We spent the next hour or so loading up the tiny pick-up with well materials, camping gear, extra water and Don Máximo’s bicycle went on top. Two more sindicatos had paid me for wells, so we had materials for 3 wells going up with us. To save room I suggested we lose one of the 2 spare tires, an idea which everyone else shot down. This would prove to be the gods smiling down on us. Joe Ranz would be quite proud of this packing/tying job…
This photo does not include the two people and one bike that topped off the entire Beverly Hillbillies-esque entourage in the back. Carlos, Don Tiko and myself would be squeezing into the two bucket-seats in the front cab. It was going to be a long ride.

Don Tiko offered to let Carlos drive the first leg and ride in the back to make it a little more comfortable, which was nice. He then reached in, switched the key to “on” and then dug out two wires from behind the dashboard and struck them together to spark, straight out of MacGyver. The truck roared to life and Carlos and I exchanged somewhat worried glances. Tiko gave us a big ‘ol reassuring smile and added “oh yeah, the brakes are out, so don’t go too fast, ok?” At this Carlos and I let out a roar of laughter…we knew we were in for a treat. I know it sounds kind of insane to agree to stay in this truck without brakes, but you need to remember that not only are there absolutely no inclines or declines where I live, the road and truck are in such horrible condition that it is impossible to go very fast at all. We did have to stop at one point when Don Máximo dropped something out of the back, which means Carlos just down-shifted as hard as he could and I stuck my foot out Fred Flintstone style to bring us to a stop.

Our first point of interest was a river crossing, about an hour into the ride. There was a log bridge we rolled across and waiting for us on the other side was this huge fig tree. Check it out:

To give you some perspective of the size, here is the tree with me in the shot:

Our next point of interest was when we got a flat tire. Those two spares didn’t seem so silly now. Don Máximo and Don Tiko quickly fixed the tire and we were back on the road after being eaten up by mosquitoes during our stop. It was a slow ride, but Tiko turned out to be very friendly and very interested in what we were doing, so we basically spent the whole ride talking shop. It was nice having Carlos there to do some talking as well. We stopped in a tiny little town without electric for a quick dinner and some refreshments. On the way out of town we saw a huge crowd of people gathered around the one television in town running on a generator. They were watching Bloodsport with Jean-Claude Van Damme, one of my all time favorites and I was a little disappointed we weren’t staying. Another hour or so down the road we came upon some big fires burning. Tiko explained to us that this was how people cleared the land to farm and that it really was a shame that there was no one controlling it, they were just allowed to run free and burn whatever they want. The worst part of it is that we were right on the border of a national forest, but the borders were not clearly drawn or maintained, so it was very possible that national forest was being burnt down. Here is a shot of the flames:

Our next bump in the road came when we got another flat tire. That’s right, two on the same trip! Good thing we had both spares with us…antsy to get there, Carlos and I took charge on changing this one and got it done in a jiffy.

Nothing like changing a tire in the middle of the jungle in the middle of the night.

Throughout all of this, Carlos and I were constantly saying “this story just keeps getting better and better.” We had no way of knowing that it wouldn’t stop getting better until it was completed.

After 7 hours or so of bouncing around in Don Tiko’s cab, we finally made it to our destination around 1:30am. We set up camp and shared a nice midnight snack of crackers and cheese on a stump for a table.

Never have crackers and cheese tasted so good. We fell asleep with our heads still bouncing around the cab of Tiko’s pickup.

MIERCOLES EL 12 de SEPTIEMBRE

06:30 – Carlos and I are awoken by the sunlight. There are various men meandering around the area where we have been sleeping. A family of huge bright blue macaws flies over, announcing the beginning of another day. The men see that we are awake and encourage us to come over to the fire for the coffee. We delightfully agree and enjoy a nice cup of campo coffee and get to know our drilling crew. During breakfast we realize we are in a small man-made clearing and that we are surrounded by pure jungle. This truly is the Bolivian frontier.

The Colombian with his café, enjoying the first rays of sun.
Campo coffee is my name for what we get out in the middle of nowhere. Coffee grounds (perhaps from yesterday, perhaps from a week ago) are boiled over a fire in a pot for about five minutes. Once removed from the fire, approximately a pound of sugar is added. This is very important. I once went to drink some without sugar (because I had had enough sugar) and they screamed and stopped me as if I were Indiana Jones drinking the poisoned blood of Mola Ram, claiming that it didn’t have sugar yet. Anyway, the piping hot sugary coffee is poured into your cup (grounds and all), which is made of tin and therefore conducts the heat directly to your hands. Sounds like a bad experience, but it is surprisingly enjoyable.

07:30 – Carlos and I start giving instructions for the first steps the group needs to take. A few begin digging the hole that will be our water holding pool

some others begin building the drilling tower,

and another crew goes with Tiko to bring back water in barrels for drilling.
The water they bring back is so green it looks like antifreeze. But it will have to do. Oh, and the barrels were recently used to house diesel fuel, so the smell lingers…at least we know the water will be disinfected…

10:15 – During prep Carlos reviews my tool bag and asks if I have an emergency hook for fishing out the pipe if it breaks, just in case. I say no and tell him he sounds like my old man saying “just in case.” He replies by asking if he can whip me with his belt like my old man if we need the hook. We both laugh but he is still worried about the lack of hook. This whole paragraph has been foreshadowing…

11:00 – All the prep work is done, we all know each other, we have explained how the process works and we begin pulling. Don Máximo is a good leader of his people and ensures they listen to us. His energy and animation go a long way to make the whole job go a lot easier. Again, it helps that Carlos is here to quickly respond to Don Máximo’s dirty jokes with jokes of his own. I understand the jokes, but I have yet to learn any of my own dirty jokes in Spanish. The beginning of the drilling is a little sticky and the pipe gets clogged fairly often. Once we make it past the first 5 meters or so, the ground is fine and we progress without issues until…

15:27 – Disaster strikes! The pipe breaks 15 meters down. This can be fatal depending on the situation and time is of the essence. The rig needs to be pulled out as quickly as possible because there is the chance of a cave-in. If the borehole collapses while the rig is dropped down in there, it is next to impossible to rescue. We learned this the hard way by losing our rig on the first well we drilled on our own. There have been miracle stories of digging down by hand to pull it out and also hooking up a tractor and pulling it out once it was stuck, but none of those are very appealing. It is much better to pull it out as quick as possible before it caves in. The good news was that we had not drilled through very much sand, which greatly reduces the chance of a collapse. We had seen mostly clay, which was good news for us. Still, we needed to get the rig out.

This is the part where Carlos saves the day. Like an over confident rookie, I donot have a fishing hook to assist in pulling out the rig. Carlos explains what he needs with concern and haste in his voice and within five minutes someone has brought him a small length of thin re-bar. Using his bear hands and a monkey wrench, Carlos bends the steel rod into the shape of an “S” and sharpens one end with a hacksaw and a file. He then beats on it a little with a hammer, using a log as his anvil. Meanwhile, I am cutting up some pipe to make the other part of the hook. I’d say within 10 minutes, we have our fishing tool ready. Here are couple of shots of the master at work:

Once we get the hook made, we connect some of the plastic pipes to it and stick it down in the borehole. The trick is to either get the hook to grab on one of the couplings or to stick the hook inside the pipe and have it dig in enough to be able to pull the whole thing out. This is a very tricky process, since you have to do it completely by touch. The borehole is only 2 inches wide, so you can’t see anything you are doing. I liken it to a surgeon using one of those fiber optic deals and working off of a tv screen, only we didn’t have a screen. Also, the only thing we stood to lose were some pipes and a lot of hard work, not someone’s life. So I guess it’s a little different.

“Fishing” is a fine art that one masters only with practice and patience. We both tried, but Carlos finally came up with the rig after about 10 more minutes of trying. We get it out, fix the broken pipe, applaud everyone’s ingenuity, and go on working.

18:30 – The sun is going down and we decide to stop for the day at 20 meters of depth. Not a bad day’s work considering we did all the prep work this morning and had to fish out a broken rig.

19:00 – After a modest dinner, Don Máximo accompanies us to a water pump about 1.5 kilometers away, where we can pump a bucket of water and wash all the mud off our filthy bodies. Carlos and I enjoy the cool showers but soon realize we haven’t brought any clean clothes to put back on. We start back in nothing but our wet underwear, along the jungly path with nothing but the stars and a bit of moonlight as companions. I can’t really explain it, but for some reason I get the urge to continue on naked. I imagine it was just being in such a secluded, natural place that made me want to be “one with nature.” I suppress the desire, sure that Carlos would think me a bit unstable. Not 30 seconds later, Carlos stops and says, “bueno ya me dió las ganas de andar desnudo. No me mires.” Much to my surprise, he has had the same urge and is pulling off his underwear. I quickly follow suit, and there walk two jungle adventurers in nothing but our birthday suits. To add to the effect, Carlos has a shotgun slung around his shoulder and I am carrying a machete. I am pretty bummed I don’t have a picture because as lame as it sounds, it was a pretty beautiful moment. We get back to camp and hopp back into our shorts before anybody else sees us. Lord knows we wouldn’t have heard the end of that for the rest of the week.

20:30 – Lights out. A long day of work ahead of us tomorrow. (This is actually an incorrect phrase to use, since the lights technically went out two hours earlier when the sun went down.)

JUEVES EL 13 de SEPTIEMBRE

06:42 – Awakened to the quiet sounds of the jungle. I crawl out of my tent, overcoming the morning soreness that always awaits you after a day of drilling. A few of the fellows are up and sitting around a pot of campo coffee and they invite me over. A few of the more industrious of the group had gone out hunting during the night and were eager to show us the booty, a rodent of an animal called Jochi Pintado which means “Painted Jochi.” I’m not sure if there is an English word for a Jochi, but it sure is good eatin’.
We would meet again over lunch…

08:00 – Work on the well begins again. To avoid clogging of the rig, we do not start immediately at the 20m mark we left yesterday. We start at about 12 meters, re-circulating the water and mud that is in the hole, slowly advancing down to 20 meters. We are back to 20 within a half hour.

08:30-18:00 – We advance at a regular pace, hitting one small layer of sand (where the water is) at 30m but decide to continue, hoping for a larger layer a little deeper. Throughout the day I began working on building the filter and Carlos worked on building the home-made pump. Everything we use can be bought cheaply at any hardware store, and is therefore easy to construct and repair. Our filter made of slotted pipe wrapped in a plastic rice bag and sealed at the bottom with electrical tape.

The key part of our home-made pump, made of small coupling and nipple with a leather seal and then hacked up a bit with a hacksaw.

That afternoon it had been decided amongst the workers that if weren’t done by that evening, we’d continue working throughout the night. While I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of not sleeping, it’s always fun staying up late out in the middle of the jungle. We had another modest dinner of rice and left-over bites of jochi (taking turns while the work continued of course) and a few of the fellas put together a big fire nearby the drilling site to keep things lit throughout the night.

22:00 – Bad luck again, the pipe breaks. Only this time much deeper and we had passed a sand layer. This means there was more of a chance of collapse than before, and also that it was going to be much heavier to pull out. After about 15 or 20 minutes of “fishin’ in the dark” we got our prize. This didn’t deter anyone and we kept on truckin’. Here’s a shot of me manning the spout by firelight:

VIERNES EL 14 de SEPTIEMBRE
00:06 – I am spending my 20-30 minute breaks sleeping in the “Y” of a big fallen tree next to the fire. If it’s one thing I’ve learned to do in Bolivia, it’s sleep anywhere. Who am I kidding…I did this long before I came to Bolivia. Like father, like son.

It is a surreal feeling around the work-site. Carlos and I, usually fairly animated are fairly silenced by weariness. The workers plow on, ignoring the pain in their shoulders and backs, enjoying their 30 minute naps when they get them. Our friend Don Máximo talks quietly with one of them. The sounds dominating the landscape are the crackle of the fire and the constant spit of the drilling spout into the catch pit. Around us is nothing but pitch-black jungle, no doubt with all kinds of interesting critters wondering what on earth we are doing, aside from damaging their homes.

02:00 – We call it quits for the night at 47m. Don Máximo says he can go on, but the rest welcome a respite. Carlos and I are worried that a tired person (most likely one of us) is going to drop a tool down the well, possibly rendering the whole thing useless and mandating us to start again from the beginning. So stopping is a good idea.

02:04 – We do our best to wipe off the majority of the mud caked on our bodies, but most of it just ends up in our sleeping bags with us. There are no worries when you’re this tired.

07:00 – It’s impossible to sleep past 7am when you’re camping and the sun is up almost two hours beforehand. No matter how much your shoulders scream for more rest or how loud your joints crack when you move, it’s time to get up. Everyone else is already awake, as if it were no big deal that we busted our asses for 18 hours straight yesterday.

08:30 – We are off and going again. Again, within about 30 minutes we are back to last night’s stopping point of 47 meters. Since Carlos and I are the only ones who have drilled wells before, he and I have been taking turns working the “spout” end while the rest of the workers are pulling the rope in teams of four. The spout end is important because you have to be able to feel what type of ground we are going through and have to be ready to take samples to find out exactly what is coming out. This takes a little experience, and by the end of the drilling, we can trust one or two of the workers to do it right with a little supervision. Here is a shot of me working the spout with the pulling team in the background:

09:45 – Sand! Finally! We are at 51 meters and were getting worried we weren’t going to hit anything before 60 meters, which is as deep as we can go. We keep drilling through the sand layer and find out it’s about 2 meters long, which isn’t ideal but it will have to do. Usually we want AT LEAST 3 meters of sand. But after all we’ve been through, we’re going to make this work.

10:15 – We pull the rig up to change bits. Up until this point, we have been drilling with a 1 ¼ inch bit and now we need to widen our borehole to 2 inches so the casing tubes will fit. This is a much less arduous process, but still takes a few hours, especially on a deep well like this. It represents a lot of work, but also means that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that the end is in sight. We all breathe a brief sigh of relief.

13:38 – The sigh of relief is over, because now the pulley has broken! This I did not foresee in my wildest dreams. Carlos scolds me again for not always having two pulleys (if it were up to him, we’d have 5 of EVERYTHING in our toolbag and need a semi to carry it all around) but I can honestly say I have never heard of this happening. Carlos immediately begins to try and fashion a new pin for the pulley out of I don’t even know what when one of the workers shows up out of nowhere with a pulley. I have no idea from whence it came but we hook it up and forge ahead. Good thing too, because Carlos wasn’t getting very far with his “new” design.

16:00 – We’ve finished widening out the borehole and we finally case the well without issue. This brings on an even bigger sigh of relief, but the work is not completely done yet. The vast majority of the manual labor is done though, and we can all relax a little. However, the water could come up salty still, which is no one’s fault but always a risk. Also, if the filter was poorly made there might be sand coming in through it. Only Carlos and I really know this though, so he and I are the only apprehensive ones.

16:25 – They have brought more water and we begin developing a well, a process that involves pumping water down the well and forcing it out through the screen to “develop” the aquifer around it. After we pump water down, we pump all the water out of the well, and then more down. This helps to create an additional filter out of the sand in the aquifer, bringing the largest grains of sand closest to our screen and keeps the finest grains furthest away. We pump down a barrel or two of water, during which Carlos and I decide to take baths in the less-than-clean water:

Better than nothing. Or is it?

18:30 – We break for a quick dinner and rest. We will develop a little more after dinner, but we will most likely finish everything tomorrow. The rest is much appreciated.

19:15 – Back at the drilling site (just across the way from our “mess hall”) and we continue with development and good news! The water begins clearing up! This is our sign to pump it dry and see how quickly it recharges a few times.

20:30 – Success! The well is charging at a good rate and the water coming up is clear and salt-free! It’s time to install the pump, the details of which we have finished up during the development process. A kind soul gets our fire going again so we can see better and keeps us warm. Carlos and I have our own little celebration by the fire, roasting some marshmallows I’ve smuggled into the jungle. By this time, all the workers and other members of the community have crowded around to see what their blood, sweat and tears has earned them. Don Máximo is pumping the well and Carlos is splashing everyone, letting out yells of “¡Agua para todo el mundo!” At which everyone laughs and enjoys the fresh, cool water.

Don Máximo checking out our handywork.

One of our workers cleaning off his hands for the first time in his pueblo.

Exchanging gratitude…

Carlos and I with our faithful driver Don Tiko, and our wonderful cook Doña Etna. These were definitely two of the key players in our adventure.

22:15 – The excitement has died down, but Carlos and I are in a rush to get our things together. Tiko tells us he’d rather leave right away and since he is the man with the keys (and the wires) to the truck, we comply. We make sure we say goodbye and thank you to everyone, making sure they know how to fix everything if breaks and also give them the details on how to put the finishing touches on the pump tomorrow. We quickly break camp and load up our stuff into Tiko’s truck, not quite sure what to expect of the likely all-night ride back to Hárdeman.

23:00 – And we’re off! We’ve assured Don Tiko that we will do our best to stay awake during our journey, to keep him company. At least we’ll take turns. Also, it won’t hurt to puff on a few cigarettes. In return Don Tiko tells us that his battery is dying and is pretty sure it won’t last all night with the headlights. So whenever we can, we’ll drive without the headlights. Something like this any other time may seem strange, but after the week we’ve had, Carlos and I just shrug our shoulders and say ok. The three of us are up front again, and our hardest worker, young Alberto, is in the back. He has to get back to Montero, where he is studying. He has spent his vacation with us, learning how to drill wells. We’d love to teach him some more if we get the chance.

SABADO EL 15 de SEPTIEMBRE

02:30 – We have come to the first major obstacle in the road. Literally. Remember those guys that were burning down the forest on the way in? Well, they made it all the way down next to our road and managed to burn a tree down so it fell directly in our path!

Low on options, we have to find a way around the tree. Surprisingly enough, in a vehicle also carrying two Bolivians and one “always prepared” Colombian, I happen to be the only one with a machete. Alberto gets to quick work hacking through the woods, making a tiny path around the tree stump for Tiko to drive around. Tiko helps him out all he can with a shovel, which really isn’t much. After about an hour of hacking, they have cut a sufficient path through the woods, and Tiko blazes on through, going around the stump whilst it still burns! Of course I don’t think you’ll believe me, so here’s a photo:

03:45 – Literally on the other side of the tree we come to a bridge, on the other side of which is parked a huge truck, who decided to camp there for the night when he saw the fallen tree on the other side. There is no other way around the truck, the brush is too thick to hack through on that side. At this point, Tiko turns off the truck for some reason. I am not sure why, since we have next to no battery power. He heads over to the driver of the other truck, trying to convince him to cross the bridge so we could get by. But before he does this, we need him to wait a bit so we can get our truck started again. This proves to be trickier than Tiko thought. The battery is all but dead, so here we are in the middle of the night in the middle of the jungle pushing this pick-up back and forth, trying to kick-start it with no luck. So Tiko has the driver come across the bridge and in the process nearly demolish our truck. The other truck also has almost no battery power, and has to kick-start itself coming down the small incline onto the bridge. Quite a gamble I’d say. Tiko then spends the next hour switching the batteries out, trying to charge one in a way that I don’t find very efficient. Meanwhile, Carlos is cashed out in the back, finally giving into his weariness.

¡Pobrecito!

05:15 – We are back on “the road,” only needing the headlights for a little while longer since the sun is on its way to shining again. Our last stop before Hárdeman is the bridge by the big tree we crossed on the way here. To our surprise, Tiko turns off the truck when we arrive and says “come on, I want you to meet someone.” The gate to the bridge is locked, and the keymaster is an ancient old man named Don Manuel, who turns out to be a friend of Tiko’s. One might consider this a Bolivian toll booth. Don Manuel is of course up with the sun every day and when we find him he is performing his morning ritual of milking the cows. We chat it up with Don Manuel and grin as he throws insults left and right to the immigrants from the west, the kollas. I grin not because he’s a racist, but because the things he says are so far-fetched and ridiculous, they can only be received with jest. He likes that we laugh and offers up some fresh milk. As fresh as it gets. I have managed to save some bread and we share that with him and we have a nice breakfast along the riverbank. Even though we are essentially without sleep, the crisp morning and the warm milk refresh us for the new day. As I write about it now, some months later, I am reminded of a scene from The Grapes of Wrath when the Joads are staying at the government camp. Tom goes out looking for work and comes across a small family cooking breakfast on a similarly crisp morning. Tom pulls up a spot around the stove and they gladly share what they have with him, pleased to have his company. I will take this moment to claim that John Steinbeck is a genius.

Does a body good!

We thank Don Manuel and our on our way, finally on the very last leg of our trip.

07:25 – Back in Hárdeman once again. Our 8.5 hour return trip is even longer than the trip there, something we thought to be impossible. Carlos has things to attend to back home and hops directly on the 8am bus, even skipping his morning coffee. I see Carlos off and stay out to chat for a while with a few neighbors who are just starting their day. Eventually I make my way back to my room. I’m asleep before I hit the mattress. The adventure has ended.

Epilogue…
That afternoon, I made my way to the plaza to write a letter to a friend and mentor of mine. I was feeling a little conflicted and wanted to get some things down on paper. Don Máximo had said something to me that truthfully rattled me a little. He said with all gratitude and thanks, “Because of this well, this area is going to grow a lot faster. Many people will want to come here to this spot because there is clean water. Thank you.” I cringed at the thought of more people immigrating to that area, cutting down more trees, destroying more land so it can be farmed. I thought of the burning down of the forest that we saw on the way there and back, picturing it on a grand scale. It’s an ugly thing. But then I think that I cannot prevent people from going out there, claiming land, and farming it. They are going to do it regardless of whether or not I am here. They are going to go, so helping them at least have clean water and staying healthy is not so bad. But then again, it IS so bad. Better that they go, see that there is no clean water, get deathly ill from some contaminated water they drink, and never ever want to go back. The more people we turn away from domesticating the jungle, the better. Perhaps the blame should go to the government? For not protecting their beautiful landscape better? I don’t know about this…in America we are very used to the government laying down rules and regulations and people following them. This is a strategy that simply does not work in Bolivia. Sure there are laws, but nobody follows them, and as a result nobody gets in trouble either.

So is what I am doing wrong? Perhaps. I am certainly not helping the global-warming cause. I am helping some people live better, healthier lives. But in this case, considering that these people are doing pretty bad things (albeit unknown to them), I am not sure that is such a worthy cause. Perhaps every person working in development has a similar internal argument. That we should just leave these cultures alone to fend for themselves and if they survive, they are selected and if they don’t…well it’s survival of the fittest, right?

Here is what I really believe. If we abandon these people, we abandon them to the bad things. We leave them to be dominated by Van Damme movies, Michael Jackson music videos and Coca Cola. To be controlled by the oil companies and governments on the other side of the world. These huge, overarching organizations and businesses are precisely what make it to the developing world. I have been to some far corners of some far places, but there is always coke available relatively nearby and there is always someone asking if I know Bill Clinton or am related to Bruce Lee. So, if we abandon these people, all of those groups win. Coca cola will run the world. So the truth is, I find solace in representing the “developed” world and America in this fashion. These people do not deserve to be thrown to the dogs, which is precisely what will happen if we let these groups continuing their essential domination of the earth.

I believe it is true that we are consuming the earth at an alarming rate, but the solution is not to abandon the little guy. They are in the position they are in because of the first world's irresponsible actions. I am not sure we can save everything, but we can make it easier for a few people along the way. I will now step down from my soapbox.

Sittin' On The Dock Of The Lake (2008.04.10)

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:48:00 +0000

As I type this entry, this is my view:

No lie.

The water is lake Titicaca (the highest lake in the world) and the mountains are the Bolivian Cordillera. There are a few in there over 20,000 feet. They are on the list of things to do. I am sitting on the “Isla del Sol” right smack in the middle of this enormous lake. Unfortunately the beautiful view is the only thing I can share with you. The smell of being on the water that is somehow stale mixed with fresh pervades my nostrils and the water lapping up against the bank entertains my ears, as the plunging and stroking of a boatman’s oars plays backup. Despite the onslaught of tourism that is prevalent on this island, it is the most serene place I have been in Bolivia. Night time is incomparable. A zillion stars, no noises except for an ocasional donkey braying. No rotten dogs chasing you or barking, no roosters doodling at all hours of the night…complete campo silence. If for no other reason, that rare bolivian silence made the trip out here worth it.

I am sure my picture does not do the mountain-view justice. I simply can’t get enough of it. On our hike across the island yesterday, they were mostly obscured by clouds…but this morning we looked out our window at the purple sky, turned so by the sun coming up from the behind the range. The view alone was worth way more than the $2 per night charge we were paying for the room.

This is Coleman’s fifth day visiting and it has been an excellent trip so far. Very relaxing, lots of hiking, we are both still healthy. Here on the island we have been eating some delicous fresh trout and home made pizzas. We even randomly ran into a couple volunteer friends of mine and spent the day yesterday hiking with them.

This is by far the shortest entry on this blog, but I simple felt it necessary to share this moment. The view, the sounds, the smells, the feel…people talk about once-in-a-lifetime experiences…well I’m pretty sure this is one of them. Cheers.

Reunion Trip

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:06:00 +0000

George and Joe have been visiting for the past week here in Bolivia and it has been awesome. Read about their misadventures here: Joe and George's Bolivia Blog

Tons of good stuff from through the slanty eyed perspective of a chinamen and the surely corrupted eyes of a legislative assistant.

...on being out of site and hit with foam...

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 14:30:00 +0000

Ahhhh, Hárdeman sweet Hárdeman…it’s been way too long since I’ve been able to say that. You see, I’ve just returned from a three-week hiatus from the charming dusty little stop on this dirt road I call home. Was I off doing very important things? Planning out the rest of my service? Searching for communities in need of water? Flying through the air with the greatest of ease? Well, to answer all of that in a word…no. I was stuck for two weeks and on vacation for one. Not nearly as productive.

By now most of you know how unpredictable the road I live on can be. I have regaled you (either in this blog or over the phone or via email) with stories of trudging on foot for kilometers through the mud and rain, pushing busses through that same mud and rain, hitching rides with anything and anyone who will pick up a poor looking gringo and his overpriced North Face backpack and many other tragic tales. A select few have actually participated in some of those stories. Well, about three weeks ago (January 18th for those of you keeping score at home) I left my site with every intention of returning that very same day. My host brother was driving my host-parents into the city for the day to run some errands and I wanted to take advantage of the non-bus transportation to get to the city. Carlos had called me the night before to see if I could make it in to help him on a well…he had designed and built a machine that pulled the rope and was going to give it a trial run. All these factors contributed to my wanting to go to the city, but just for the day. Well, my commitment to staying just for the day was about as steadfast as my commitment to getting up to do my homework after a “10 minute nap” at 11pm when I was in college. Just ask any of my roommates…that never ever worked but I kept trying it, thinking that it would.

We ended up not finishing the well with Carlos because of a huge rock we couldn’t pass…and that coupled with a big volunteer farewell party that night gave me reason to stay the night in the city. But I had every intention of returning the next day. This is the point when it got out of my hands. The next morning I woke up to a rainstorm. And thus it continued like that for two weeks…I felt like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day…the rain was relentless. Thus rendering the road back to Hárdeman passable only with scuba gear. The sun came out for a little while every day just enough to tease me into thinking that I may be able to make it back the following day. After the first week of water, I got word from people in my site that the only way to make it to or from Hárdeman was riding in the back of a trailer towed behind a tractor…and even that wasn’t guaranteed. I knew carnival was coming up and going back to my site only to leave again a day or two later is not appealing at all when getting there in the first place was probably going to be a two day affair. So I hung around Carlos’ house (about a half hour outside Santa Cruz), heading into the city every now and again to try and get some things done.

It was fun staying with Carlos and living the bachelor life. We ate meagerly and enjoyed each other’s company. It was a pretty lazy time in general, but the wheels are always turning when I’m with Carlos…we are constantly bouncing ideas off of one another about work as well as talking about the days in the future when we get to visit each other’s home countries. My friendship with Carlos has truly been on of the saving graces of my service. One of those things that keeps me sane when the whole world seems to be crumbling down around me. He’s that person I can always count on and who can always count on me, regardless of the situation. He loved meeting my family when they came and was sorry he couldn’t communicate more directly with them…I am always telling him stories about my dad’s sayings at work and what some might consider unique habits and we laugh together because Carlos has a lot of similarly unique habits (saving dirt samples because “someday we might need them” or instead of killing the baby tarantula or scorpion running around his house, he put a cup over it because “he has a friend who runs a zoo and would want them”) and has even started using some Joe phrases translated in Spanish like “crooked-er than a ram’s ass” or “if it was a snake it woulda bit ya” which I find hilarious. While it was a pretty big hassle being stuck out of my site, I was thankful I got to spend some quality time with my Colombian friend.

After a week and a half of being gone from Hárdeman, fellow volunteers began arriving into Santa Cruz to begin traveling for the carnival holidays. For those of you unfamiliar with carnival is, I will do my best to explain it. Although I will be the first person to tell you that mine is a biased viewpoint and I will probably glaze over the positive parts of it. Alas, I continue. From what I have learned from listening to other people talk, Carnival has its roots as far back as anything, at least here in Bolivia. I could almost liken it to Halloween in that people dress up in costumes (the elaborate pretty kind as opposed to the vampire and werewolf kind) and back in the day used to pay respects to the gods or spirits or demons in the mountains before they entered to mine there. My understanding is that when Catholicism arrived to Bolivia (and most of South America), they wanted to accommodate carnival but make it less pagan-esque I suppose and stuck it right before lent. I am not sure when Carnival was traditionally celebrated, but these days as far back as anyone can remember, it was around this time. A good comparison is Mardi Gras, which I suppose is essentially American carnival. Wherever people are celebrating carnival (at least in Bolivia) there is always dancing involved. Or at least they call it dancing. The dancing takes place in groups called “conjuntos” or “comparzas.” The groups have similar outfits and depending on the stage, they can be fairly simple or quite elaborate. For example, last year in Hárdeman I participated in a comparza and they gave us all yellow shirts with the group name on them and we just hopped around in circles. Pretty basic. Where carnival is a bigger deal (in the big cities), the groups are bigger and the costumes are extremely involved…usually with feathers and sequence and bells and masks and bright colors. There is usually a parade of all the groups and usually a competition judging on the dancing and the costumes.

The other big part of carnival is water. Usually in balloon form but also in buckets. You see, this is the hottest time of the year and so getting drenched with water is usually refreshing. And last year in Hárdeman as we were dancing around town, there were always kids following us throwing the occasional balloon or someone chasing someone down with a bucket of water. And it was fun for a day to partake in the silliness. But, in true Bolivian style, it gets overdone to the point of really pissing you off. In the cities, in addition to balloons and water, people are endlessly chasing each other with paint, motor oil and cans of pressurized “foam” which looks like shaving cream but is under more pressure and stings when it gets in your eyes. It is also sold in aerosol cans containing heaps of CFCs. It can be fired a pretty good distance (6-8 feet so) but the preferred Bolivian method is to find a gringo (usually, but not limited to, cute blonde girls) and to empty the entire can at point blank range, normally directly into the eyes and face area, causing stinging pain and temporary blindness. This is also a tactic often used to rob people. Seriously. After all, if your face is completely covered in foam, you’re not going to be able to identify the punk who just lifted your camera from your jacket pocket.

I should point out that these are not people who know each other who are battling it out. It is every person for themselves and these people are completely ruthless. Random human beings running up and breaking balloons over your head, drenching all of your clothes and then running away. And not just children or even teen-agers. Grown men and women throwing water on and foaming complete strangers under the guise of the phrase “well, it’s carnival” and thus making this type of behavior acceptable. And other Bolivians do not get upset when they get drenched, they simply accept it and move on…some even relish it as flirting. This craziness is not simply limited to the two designated carnival days (the Monday and Tuesday before Ash Wednesday)…again in true Bolivian style, it is drug out for entirely too long. Sometimes for the entire month beforehand you can expect to be bombarded with water balloons flung from passing cars and trucks or buckets of water dumped off of balconies. Let me repeat that none of this behavior is considered unacceptable or even rude. After all…”it’s carnival.”

Now most of you know me well enough to know that water balloon battles are something I relish and enjoy participating in, especially if I can attack from above. But, like most normal human beings, a few minutes or even as much as an hour is plenty to satisfy my needs. Walking around a city for a month under the constant threat of getting hit with an anonymous water balloon punctuated by a weeklong onslaught of balloons and foam is ENTIRELY too much. Throw in about a zillion gallons of beer and liquor and you have downright mayhem. That is the word I kept repeating throughout carnival weekend. Pure, unharnessed, unchecked and actually encouraged MAYHEM.

The biggest party as far as Bolivian Carnival is concerned always happens in a city called Oruro. Oruro is located on the other side of the country in the “altiplano” or “high planes” area of the country. Due to the altitude (something like 13,000 feet), it’s always chillier up there regardless of the season. I think carnival is biggest up there because back in the day it was a big mining town and it goes back to what I was saying about miners asking for blessings. Oruro is not a very big town by any means and it is definitely not set up to accept the onslaught of onlookers that come to check out carnival each year. There is really no other reason to ever go to Oruro any other time of the year, so there are actually clubs and hotels that are only open for carnival. Regardless of who you are, all the prices are through the roof. All that being said, I had no real desire to go to Oruro for carnival. I had already seen the city (not that great) and the thought of returning for a huge drunken festival with hundreds of thousands of other people did not appeal to me in the least. So I tried to organize a group of people to go to a city in southern Bolivia called Tarija for carnival. Tarija has beautiful mountain views all around, a nice climate, is a nice size and is very close to Argentina…all things that made it extremely appealing in my book. Also, I have never been there and wanted a chance to see what all the hype was about. Carnival was supposed to be cool there as well, and little lower-key than the craziness of Oruro. We had a nice small group of good folks all ready to go to Tarija and enjoy the fruits of Argentine wine and steak as well as the carnival partay. But, due to various uncontrollable variables, plans for Tarija fell through. We thought hard about options and despite a lack of enthusiasm for Oruro, we decided that would be our destination.

A few perks to the trip were that we would get to see a whole bunch of our friends we hadn’t seen in a while, we would get to pass through Cochabamba and eat at some delicious restaurants and that after Oruro we would be close enough to La Paz (an extremely awesome city) to spend a few days there as well. And so we went.

We arrived Friday afternoon and promptly paid too much for a cab ride to our hostel. We found it, checked in and once we got to our rooms realized we were paying way too much for them as well. But it was ok…”it’s carnival.” We headed up to a fellow volunteer’s house (one of the Oruro city volunteers) for a little cookout and fiesta. On the way there we walked up through part of the parade route, which was scheduled to start the following morning. People were still constructing and painting bleachers, frantically trying to be ready for the big she-bang the next day. It vaguely reminded me of Cheviot residents chaining lawn chairs to parking signs in order to reserve spots for the Harvest Home parade, only times about 27,000. Things seemed fairly calm, but there was a feeling in the air that the whole city was a raw egg wavering on a pinhead, poised to fall and crack open any second…getting egg yolk all over the gringos. The cookout was a good time…it gave us all an opportunity to catch up with the volunteers that live far far away. Around midnight we made our way back to the hostel, waiting for the egg to fall.

The plan for Saturday morning was to make it back over to the house for a quick breakfast and then head to the plaza to find our seats to watch the dancers in the parade. Much easier said than done. As soon as we walked out of the hostel it was evident that we needed to buy ponchos if we wanted to stay dry. We promptly paid too much for them and put them on and bought some water balloons in order to deter any major offensives. My plan was never to pick a fight, but to use the balloons like Tae-Kwan-Do…simply to defend myself. The majority of attackers were younger kids and teen-agers and we found that they only know to fight dirty. Hit people from behind without them knowing it…that’s their philosophy. So by far the best defense is simply staring them down. They would never throw a balloon or fire foam at someone who is looking at them…it would give them away as the culprit. We managed to stay out of any huge skirmishes most of the day with this method as we walked the streets. My friend Tom (from Nebraska) and I took to being vigilantes, in fact…waiting for little punk kids to wail on some defenseless and unknowing passerby (almost always a woman) and then promptly nail the kid from all sides with balloons. One thing we as Americans had on our side was a lifetime of baseball. You see, most South Americans grow up playing nothing but soccer. As a matter of fact, the words “soccer” and “sports” are pretty much interchangeable here in my site. People ask me if I play sports, and I come to learn that what they really mean is do I play soccer. My host sister says she is going to watch sports tonight, but she is simply going to watch soccer. They are definitely a little heavy on soccer. And baseball is virtually non-existent here. Hence, NOBODY is any good at throwing. More than once I let groups of people throw balloons at me from about 20 or 30 feet away without moving…just daring them on…and I never got hit. These people couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. Which is another reason they resort to the “sucker punch” approach…running up behind you and breaking a balloon over your neck, so the water runs down your back and soaks your underwear and makes you really pissed off for the rest of the day. The sucker punch approach is the only way they would ever hit anyone. It’s even worse with the foam…you are walking down the street minding your own business when a hand sticks out of a car window or shop door and douses your face with foam. I don’t think I have ever come closer to punching people I didn’t know (mostly children) than I did during carnival weekend.

Once we finally made it to the plaza and to our seats, we got to seem some pretty cool stuff. Huge groups of dancers one followed by the other came gallivanting through the streets, all dressed in immensely elaborate outfits. Some had masks that were supposed to demons, some had noisemakers, others had gigantic headpieces. Here are a few pics of some of the groups with their costumes:

This is a picture of the foam battle taking place across from where we are sitting:

Here I am with a couple of friends (Emily from Indiana and Naya from California) in our ponchos sitting with our gringo friends:

And here's me at the beginning of the foam fight...before I had my fill:

Each group came with its own marching band as well, playing their specific type of traditional music to go with their dancing. It’s a four or five hour parade route up and down the hilly streets of Oruro, so it can be quite a workout. Now I need to take a moment to talk about this “dancing.” That’s what everyone says it is…no one calls it by any other name. But in all honesty, I think it’s quite a stretch to call it dancing. There are no actual “steps” or real “moves.” If you ask me, they are really just doing a glorified movement that to me looks far less challenging than the hokey-pokey. I think the main focus for the groups is making sure their costumes look good. And they certainly do. But calling what they do “dancing” is simply a misnomer in my book. However, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the group our Oruro-volunteer friends were participating in did not fit that description. Our friends did not pass by our seats until about 4am that night, but when they did, it was awesome. They were all members of a conjunto dancing to a style called “Tinku” which is a traditional dance that comes from a part of the country called Potosí that has its history in basically a huge fight that occurred between two neighboring towns. Yeah I don’t really understand it either, but the point is, their group was sweet. They actually did cool moves in-sync and it looked really freaking awesome. It was really great to watch them…we could all tell they had worked hard preparing and that they were pretty worn out by the time they got to us. We hopped out of our seats and followed them up to the final presentation area, where we squeezed into more bleacher seats along with thousands of other people. It was about 5am by then but the party was still going strong (including way too many people falling over drunk and passing out and almost falling out of the bleachers). The Tinkus came up, cleared the presentation area, shot off some fireworks to announce their arrival, and then did their thing. It was really incredible to watch and definitely made putting up with all the drunken idiots and foam-sucker punches and crappy hostel way worth it. We weaved our way through the drunken mass back to our hostel and snuck in a few hours of sleep before escaping on a bus up to La Paz on Sunday afternoon.

The La Paz leg of the trip was superb. It’s a much bigger city than Oruro, so avoiding the ridiculous mayhem of carnival was much easier. We stayed in a nice hostel, ate yummy delicious La Paz food (including a “would-have-sworn-I-was-in-America” cheeseburger from Mongo’s), and even got to spend a day ice climbing. That’s right, ice climbing. You see, La Paz city is at about 14,000 feet, which is higher than the summits of most of the mountains in America. That’s just the city. It lies in the shadow of some enormous peaks that are really not that far away. We stumbled into a trekking company and found out they had a one day trip available and promptly signed up for it. They drove us up to this beautiful lodge in the middle of the snowy mountains and we spent the rest of the day climbing all over a glacier. It was an awesome day, despite a few headaches due to altitude and dehydration by the end. They prepared some yummy dinner for us and we spent the evening chatting in front of a not-so-roaring fire with our new Canadian friends Nat and Phil, who were also along for the trip. I felt like it was just what I needed and realized that I don’t do things like that enough anymore. It made me miss the climbing gym with Jed back home. Hopefully I will get a chance to do some more before I ship out of here.

We made it safely out of the mountains and eventually back to Santa Cruz. The rain had let up for a while by then, so getting back to my site wasn’t too much of an issue. It was a really great vacation…nice to get out of Santa Cruz for a little while, despite having a limited wardrobe since I had only planned on being there for a day when I first came in so long ago. I have mixed feelings about Oruro…I was glad I went to see the parade and the costumes and the dancers and especially our friends dancing; I can see why it is such a point of pride for Bolivians, but at the same time there are some really ugly parts of the whole thing that I really think they should be ashamed of. I think it’s ridiculous that it is considered tradition to soak strangers with water and foam…it seems to be simply an excuse to be completely obliterated on alcohol for a few days and that is not something to be proud of at all. I don’t want to seem like a self-righteous soap-boxer, but I truly was abhorred by the behavior I saw by everyone. And nowhere did you see anyone condemning it. That may be the most upsetting part of it. Living in Bolivia is definitely a challenge, if only because I see things that are purely a part of Bolivian culture that just seem ridiculous. And I know they only seem that way to me because my culture is a certain way and theirs is a certain way. While I still maintain that there are certainly parts of Bolivian culture that are ludicrous, there are just as many (actually undoubtedly more) parts of American culture that are equally ludicrous. And that’s alright…the differences are what make this an enriching experience. I just hope I don’t get back to America and feel constantly in threat of dogs, use way too many plastic bags or force any household kids into servitude simply because they are younger. Those are examples of things I hope stay here…along with carnival.

Don't Cry For Me, I'm In Argentina

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 14:33:00 +0000

Saludos and Feliz Año Nuevo! I hope you all survived the holidays and are looking forward to getting back to "real life" if you haven't yet already. 2007 is done and 2008 is upon us whether we like it or not. It shall be interesting to see what 2008 holds for us.

In the spirit of taking a much-needed vacation, I have traveled with some Volunteer friends down to Salta, Argentina. Salta is about 7 hours (on a bus) from the border of Argentina and Bolivia, which really isn't that far. There were three main legs of the trip to get here...from my site to Santa Cruz, from Santa Cruz to the border, and then from the border to Salta. Although it's by far the shortest leg distance, the trip from my site to Santa Cruz took the longest and involved sitting on buses that weren't moving, walking barefoot in the mud and rain, digging out and pushing pick-up trucks filled to the brim with campesinos and tractors hauling those pick-up trucks through ridiculously deep mud-holes. The truth is, I could write an entire blog entry about that little 40 km jaunt, but I think I'll stick with the positive on this.

First of all, let's get some profiles on the characters of this particular story...my travel buddies that is:

First comes Dan Wright from Michigan (Ann Arbor no less!)...Dan is one of my best pals from my training group but due to what some may consider an over-zealous dedication to his work and the availability of things in his site (items like cheddar cheese, ice cream, etc) he rarely leaves and it had been about 6 months since our paths crossed. Here's a photo of Dan and I at one of the many ice cream joints we tested in Salta.
Next we have Ross Pike hailing from Maine...Ross is a third year volunteer who has stayed in his site to keep up the good work for an extra year. He was a fine arts major at the University of Florida so he has a good eye for photos. He and Dan share the same site, although Ross finds his way out of it a little more often than Dan.

Our Chinese friend Karen hails from Murphysboro, Tennessee and is just about the nicest person you'll ever meet. She is dating Ross and made the trip all the way from Cochabamba to keep us guys honest during this trip. Also, Karen seems to have a tapeworm, like most Chinese Americans I know. The girl is always hungry. Here she is chomping down a sausage sandwich on the ride up the gondola. We love you Karen!

Abe Mooney is from Eugene, Oregon and has a wizard for a father. Abe is also from my training group so we have known each other as long as anyone in Bolivia. Abe traveled down a few days earlier to Salta with his Bolivian wife-to-be Carla and we met up with him when we arrived later.

Joe Stevens from Somewhere Other than Ann Arbor, Michigan arrived in country a few months after me and luckily for him got placed in Santa Cruz and therefore gets to hang out with us. Joe likes to remind everyone he went to Butler University in Indiana and can speak at length on many topics...ranging from any sports event in the last 20 years you can name, blackjack or the economic state of South America. Because we are not interesting enough for Joe, he brought along his Spanish girlfriend Consuelo, who put up with us speaking English and surprised everyone when she spouted off pretty good english herself.

With nothing concrete planned for New Year's, Dan and I had been in touch about figuring out plans to hang out. We kicked around going to La Paz or perhaps Samaipata but eventually decided that getting out of Bolivia would be a real vacation and a much-needed break from our beloved home away from home. We met up in Santa Cruz city and the fun began with an 8 hour overnight bus ride to the Bolivian border town of Yacuiba. We then headed down to the border and began the border crossing process…filling out forms and waiting in lines. We had heard that it was a bit of a hassle, but we were not prepared for what turned out to be a five hour wait in a line that was not very long at all. It was like they were doing thorough background checks on everyone trying to cross the border or something…it was pretty ridiculous. We stayed sane by working on some crossword puzzles that I think Ellen and Dan sent me like a year ago. I feel like the frustration would have mounted and we may have hurt someone had we not had the crossword puzzles. Here's us in line drinking coke FROM A CAN!

Once finally across and a little grumpy, we headed to the bus station to see when we could catch a bus to Salta. There was one leaving within the hour, so we bought tickets. This was our first introduction to the smooth running country of Argentina. We walked up to the first window we saw, said we wanted four tickets and the guy punched it up (on a COMPUTER no less!), printed them off and handed them to us. No names, no ID’s, nothing. In Bolivia, the average bus ticket experience includes running around to six different lines looking for tickets, shoving people to get to the desk, firing a road flare past the face of the worker to get him or her to attend to you, haggle the price for a few minutes to make sure they aren’t ripping you off, them writing your name on a piece of paper that has the bus seat numbers on it, then writing out a receipt by hand. Then you shove your way back through the crowd of people and try to avoid getting robbed on the way out of the terminal. Ok, ok, I am exaggerating. But ask any other volunteer…I am not GROSSLY exaggerating.

Our next “Welcome to Argentina” experience was the purchase and consumption of Budweiser beer. Here is Ross celebrating our arrival:
I think I have expressed before that Bolivian beer leaves much to be desired and the presence of the King of Beers in South America brought a smile to all of our faces and tummies.

We got on our bus and were greeted by a clean cut driver wearing a tie, air conditioning and super comfortable seats and windows that didn’t rattle. We knew this was going to be a good trip. After about 7 hours on the fancy bus, we made it to Salta and found a hostel to set up camp. With a hankerin’ for some Argentine food, we took some awesome hot showers and made our way to the main plaza which was beautiful. It was here we were introduced to part of the culture in Argentina for which we were not prepared. First of all, unlike Bolivia, there were restaurants open past 10pm. Also, there were whole families eating dinner around midnight…families with kids and everything. It seems like Argentina is a “night” culture and that is normal. This was a change for us volunteers who live in the campo and are up and down more or less with the sun. But coincidentally, that night was Argentine daylight savings and they moved ahead another hour in addition to the hour they were ahead after we crossed the border. So that put them two hours ahead of Bolivia, which lies directly north. Imagine being in Cincinnati at 8pm but having to check movie times at Newport on the Levee in Kentucky for 10pm…kind of wild. But it’s all to accommodate the night culture. The sun wasn’t really up until about 8am and stayed out until 10pm…it was kind of nice! After we had some food and yummy beer (Guinness….mmmmmm) we walked around a little bit and headed back to the hostel for bedtime.

The next day we slept off our trip until about 11am. Abe showed up at our hostel and moved his stuff in and we headed to the plaza again to find some breakfast/lunch. By coincidence we ran into Joe and Consuelo there and we all sat down at a nice outdoor place for some pretty good food. Without a doubt though the best part of the meal was the guy who was walking around selling BING CHERRIES. They looked like they were straight from Washington state…incredible. I honestly thought I was in heaven. Just add it to the list of things that would never happen in Bolivia. Here I am enjoying the fruits of Argentina...literally!

Before I continue, I would like to address something. So far in this little story of mine I have alluded to things in Argentina that were nicer or “better” than in Bolivia. And there will probably be more instances of that as you continue reading. I do not want to give you the idea that Bolivia is just a hole of a country that we all despise. This is not entirely true. Sure, there are those days, but it’s not Bolivia’s fault. And Argentina was really just a breath of fresh air that we all needed to remind ourselves that not all of South America is characterized by the things we don’t like about Bolivia. And also why Bolivia needs help from us volunteers. Despite all this, at times it was hard not to knock Bolivia while on our trip. That being said, please bear with what may at times seem like loathing for the country and people of Bolivia.

Argentina felt very welcoming to us foreigners for many reasons. In general, people seem to be much more educated than they are in Bolivia…so we didn’t get questions like “did you come here on a bus” or “how close is America to Spain?” or “how long are the roads closed in America when it rains?” which was a nice break. Argentinians are more accustomed to having people from other countries around because it is a much bigger tourism country than Bolivia. That and there is a much larger European influence there. A lot of Italians went to Argentina to get away from the fascism during World War II. So as opposed to having a huge indigenous population at odds with a European-descended aristocratic-like upper class like you have in Bolivia, it seems to be much more of a level playing field. Granted, we were really only exposed to the city life in one of the cities, but that was certainly the feel we got. We also didn’t feel quite as out of place because we really didn’t stand out as gringos as much as we do in Bolivia. Because of the increased European influence, people were in general lighter-skinned and more “American looking.” Again, I don’t necessarily mean that was a good thing, but it made us feel much less conspicuous which I think subconsciously made us feel like we were more welcome. A lot of people seemed to speak English, even if it was the basics only. In Bolivia, “the basics” of English consist of poorly pronounced swear words and every once in a while a “mai freynd” or “teecher.” The people in Argentina could actually communicate with their English. Not that speaking English makes a person educated, but you could just tell that they had more of a capacity for learning that most of the Bolivians we are exposed to in the campo. The low capacity for learning here in Bolivia is something I think would be hard for someone who does not live here to understand…

Back to our trip. That first evening we were in Salta we took a Gondola ride up to a lookout over the city, which was really cool to see it all from above. We walked around and took some photos and then walked back down to get a little exercise. Here is a shot of all of us at the top (left to right - Dan, Abe, Karen, Ross):

We met up with Joe and Consuelo that night for dinner at a “parillada” place which is where you basically order this big grill thing that they bring out to you still cooking and it’s all these different parts of the cow. There is regular meat and sausage, but there is also heart, kidney, intestines, liver, udder and few other unidentified parts. We pretty much killed the whole thing and it was a good experience trying all the food and stuff, but it left me wondering what all the talk was about concerning the meat in Argentina. We headed out to the “strip” and found a few places to have some drinks and some good conversation. This is what I’d been looking for…good times spent with good friends. It was just that.

The next day was New Year’s Eve. New Year’s has never been a huge deal for me…usually just another party. That’s what it turned to be this year as well, but it wasn’t without its own nuances. For one, I was celebrating in my third country in as many years and it crossed my mind that it would be cool to keep that tradition up. But that would probably mean giving up chopping wood at Bunker Hill Farm with the Shultzs around New Year’s, which I can’t say I’m ready to do quite yet. Anyway, we slept until 11am, which seemed ridiculously late until we remembered that our bodies thought it was 9am. We headed to the plaza for some food which was pretty good but what was even better was the ice cream afterwards. There are ice cream shops all over in Salta and every single one of them was delicious. I think I sampled five different places while we were there and was not once anything less than 100% satisfied. Way better than anything you can find in Bolivia and definitely better than the stuff they scoop out of a Styrofoam cooler in my site that leaves me wondering how they can get cardboard to change colors and freeze like that. Being the ice cream connoisseur I am, this put a ton more points in Argentina’s column.

We did a little more exploring, bought our bus tickets back to the border (which, amazingly, you can do two days ahead of time without worrying about losing your seat) and headed back to the hostel. We bummed around there for a while and then decided to split up. Dan, Abe and I were headed to another hostel owned by the same people where there was going to be a little gathering with some food. There were some English girls we had met that were staying at our hostel and we had a good time chatting with them and I enjoyed annoying them with my attempted English accent, which reminded me of the time Coleman and I did that for a whole night once out at JR Miggs. Anyway, we got there and the food was way less desirable than I had hoped. They served chicken, which again left me hankering for this amazing Argentine meat that the whole world talks about. It was fun talking with some other travelers (the English girls as well as some people from Argentina) but we realized this wasn’t going to be an all night event for us. We bailed about 11:30 to head back and get cleaned up before we met back up with Ross, Karen, Joe and Consuelo.

Abe had bought some fireworks and was looking for a place to shoot them off…so we headed out to the street to see what was going on. Fireworks were going off everywhere, it sounded like a militarized zone or something. Abe, Dan and I found a family that was celebrating New Years out in front of their house and they were extremely friendly and let us share in their gala. They gave us fireworks to shoot off, offered us some wine and we stayed there for about an hour and a half shooting the bull, talking about our respective countries and giving hugs and handshakes to welcome the new year. It was probably the most genuine interaction we had with people from that country…people who weren’t selling us bus tickets or giving us directions. Just normal people. I was really glad we got that because it confirmed what we already suspected…that Argentines are extremely welcoming and friendly. Apparently everyone spends the actual “ball drop” of New Year’s with their family and then heads out later to have a good time. We said good-bye to our surrogate family and headed out to the strip around 2am. I mentioned before about the “night-culture” they have there…well we certainly got a taste of that because when we got there, the place was still dead. We were amazed. There was no one there. Places were just starting to open up and wipe off their tables. We found a place to sit and have a drink, and by chance Joe and Consuelo walked by and joined us. I liked the feel of the whole place…I think I’ve only been “out” like that in the states on New Year’s one time…and I think we paid $80 a head to get into this bar in DC…which was fun but seemed pretty expensive. We paid about $3 to get into this little hole in the wall place (and they even gave us a beer with that cover) where we sat and chatted for a while. We then headed to another place that was playing some thumpitty-thump music to do a little dancing. This place was about $6 cover and with that came a huge bottle of Heineken beer. By this point it was just Abe, Dan and myself and we made our way to the dance floor and did some grooving. I have never been to a rave but that is kind of what I imagined with what was going on…dancing with random people to ridiculously loud thumping music, jumping around and just making a fool out of yourself. We danced for about two hours and had had enough. We found some greasy food and walked to the main plaza to watch the sun come up. It was an old-fashioned Josh Harraman Sunrise Challenge.

On the way back to the hostel we actually ran into the only two people we knew in the whole city…a guy named Sebastián that worked at the hostel and waiter that befriended us at a bar the night before. The second guy was all leathered out on his motorcycle and we mobbed him and gave him high fives and exchanged happy new years…it was a fun little run-in. We were back at the hostel by about 8am…drank some water and crashed hard. 2008 had arrived.

We slept until about midday again, found some food, then Dan and Karen and I did some more exploring and found something great: a McDonalds! Now, none of us are huge fans of McDonalds, but it just made us smile to see something that so loudly screamed “America” like those golden arches. The place was closed, but we vowed to come back the next morning in hopes of gobbling down some Egg McMuffins. We kept on exploring and got some ice cream to keep our energy up. We got back to the hostel and cleaned up and headed out for dinner, our last dinner as a big group since Joe, Consuelo and Abe were all on buses to head back that night. After stuffing ourselves at the buffet dinner, we got some last minute blackjack tips from Joe (the resident gambler in the group) and headed to the casino. After being to Vegas this place seemed pretty sorry. There were two roulette tables, four or five blackjack tables and about 11 million slot machines. I strained to remember the Blackjack basics I had picked up from my one weekend in Vegas and then strained to translate them to Spanish. Once I started playing though, I remembered that you can do it mostly with hand signals. Ross and I found seats at the table first…Ross had been itching to gamble since we’d arrived and I figured why not? Dan was a little more reserved and it took a little pushing and watching us before he joined in. We mostly bet the minimum and went off of what Joe had advised us and what I remembered…about splitting and when to hit and stuff. I determined that 50 pesos (about $16 US) would be all I used and I managed to stick to it despite wanting to throw down another 50 after the first 50 evaporated. Ross lasted a little longer than me, although he lost more too. Abe was making bigger bets and I think only ended up losing 30 pesos. Karen got in on the action and also lost 50 pesos. Dan got down to his last bet twice and came back to almost even but then ended up losing it all. We were rooting for him since he didn’t even want to play in the first place, but it was to no avail. We may have done better had I remembered more, but it was a fun time. Ross contemplated putting 100 down on one bet to try and win it all back but Karen slapped him into shape and we went for ice cream instead. Not abiding by Argentine culture, we were in bed by 1am that night.

Our last day in Salta was January 2nd…as well as my childhood friend Barney Thompson’s 27th birthday. It was by far my favorite day we had in Argentina. We were up around 8am, showered and checked out of the hostel. We walked down to McDonalds in search of our Egg McMuffins but were shot down. No such thing. There was some sort of wannabe imitation McMuffin, but I just got some croissants. BUT there was delicious McDonald’s orange juice and coffee, which was exactly the same as it is in the states…we were in heaven. Here are Ross and myself enjoying said OJ and coffee. It was an excellent start to an excellent day. We grabbed a bus that took us out of the city to a smaller pueblo about 20 minutes away called San Lorenzo. We had no firm plans but heard that their was lots of cool stuff to do around there. We got off the bus and found a place that rented bikes and decided to do that. There were no paths or anything, we just rode on the streets but it was through some incredibly beautiful country. I have never been to wine country but I imagine it looks a lot like what we saw on our ride. Huge rolling green hills with beautiful estates tucked into them here and there. Every place we saw made us say “yeah I’ll take that one.” We rode for about two hours and it was great to get out…I haven’t done any decent biking since I’ve been down here and it made me remember how much I miss it back home. Here is a pic of what some of the countryside looked like:
On the ride back we stopped a little babbling brook and had a little refresher…splashing around a bit and getting our feet wet…very nice. When we got back we snacked on some delicious Argentine-style empanadas which were, again, way better than anything you can find in Bolivia. We grabbed a bus back to Salta to clean up a bit and finish out our trip.

Next to the McDonalds was a movie theater, which we decided to hit up. That day “I Am Legend” with Will Smith was opening up, so we decided on that. It was nothing like I expected but I enjoyed it. It dealt with a virus that wiped out pretty much all of civilization except Will Smith and his dog. It made me think that something like that may be the gods’ way of pushing the “restart” button on us humans to keep us from destroying the earth and ourselves, which I think in the long run would be a good thing I believe. As long as I’m not one of the ones that dies that is…haha. Anyway, I recommend the movie. Afterwards I headed to the internet café and started writing this very blog entry (which I am finishing here in Bolivia two weeks later) while the others went to another movie. Once the second movie ended, we headed out to eat…Argentine style this time…it was about 10pm. We headed to a place that had looked nice each time we walked by it in hopes of finally getting some of the this fabled argentine steak. I had about $25 of Argentine pesos left in my wallet and was ready to spend all of them as opposed to changing them back into Bolivianos or dollars. Well, we finally got what we had been in search of the whole time. Delicious wine, incredible salad WITH DRESSING and hands down, not exaggerating, the single greatest steaks that have ever crossed my lips. I say “steaks” because we all sampled each others’ meals. Each one was to-die-for. That restaurant alone sold me on coming back to Argentina. It’s called “La Leñita” and is located on Calle Balcarce for those of you who want to take note. After the steaks we had more delicious wine and, of course, ice cream for dessert. My bill ended up being just under what I had in my wallet and I left the rest for the tip. Hands down in the Top 5 meals I’ve had since I’ve left the states…perhaps even Top 5 of my life. It certainly helped that I shared it with some excellent folks…but that food was damn good.

We took a taxi (with a METER…no haggling involved!) to the bus terminal and awaited our doom…the 1am bus back to the border…essentially back to Bolivia. We reminisced about our trip and tried our best not to be depressed we had to leave, but it was a little tough. We made a pact to come back as soon as possible and I tell you as I write this, there are tentative plans for the return trip soon. Here are the boys complaining about being back in Bolivia right after crossing the border.
We made it back to the border, crossed without any issues and found a bus back to Santa Cruz. The reality of Bolivia set in when our taxi almost hit a kid in the border town of Yacuiba and then we got on the hottest bus ride in the world…with children getting on and peddling soda and yucky empanadas every 15 minutes and an unexplained scalding hot pipe running along the floor of the bus battling with Dan’s poor ankles.

I leave you with a shot of the heavens shining down on Salta. Coincidence? I think not.

So, the long and short of it is…you should visit Argentina. I know I’m going back. See ya there!

“So This Is Christmas…”

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 21:55:00 +0000

Well, it’s safe to say this is going to be one of the more memorable Christmases…mainly due to its lack of memories. I suppose I shouldn’t say that…now that I think about it, this may be one of the most memorable Christmases since it is unlike any other I’ve had before. For one, the fan is on. Why, you ask? Well, it’s really stinking hot here. That may be the most glaring difference. Heat is not something I associate with Christmas unless it’s being emitted from an enormous pile of burning Christmas trees.

It’s Christmas morning…and so far it hasn’t been much unlike the majority of the other mornings here. Someone trying to get a hold of my host brother called my cell phone and got me out of bed earlier than I would have liked, combined with the incessant squawking of our adorable little parrots, the latest addition to the ongoing Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Ridiculous House of Pointless Pets and Noisemaking Things…aka my house. I must say, birds have got to be the silliest pet ever (sorry, Mia!). Seriously, all they do is make noise and poop. If you want me to sit around squawking and pooping all over the place I live, I will, I’ve got spare time. I cursed the birds, put some water on to boil, brushed my hair and sat down with a cup of hot chocolate and some delicious bread over a book (ALIVE by Piers Paul Read...read it!). Pretty standard.

Santa did not make a stop by our house…rather I was forced to climb over the wall since they decided to bolt the door. There are those days where I just want to smack my host family…but I guess that’s what makes them like your real family, right? It seemed like the majority of the Christmas celebrating went on last night. I got a phone call from my family back in Ohio celebrating my mom’s 50th birthday and the phone got passed around…it was great chatting with everyone and catching up…I’m going to call it the most Christmasy moment of the season so far. The highlight had to be my first grader cousin Bobby asking me indignantly “Where are you?” like my absence was merely because I was busy and had other things to do. The Von Allmens all wished me well and told me Merry Christmas and it was nice to be part of Christmas, even if it was just for a little bit. After I got off the phone my host brother came in with a bottle of champagne and a beer and the two of us along with his friend celebrated Christmas the campesino way by trying to inebriate ourselves. I have strong suspicions whether or not the champagne was real or not but regardless it was nice of them to stop by. It was about ten o’clock by then and I had gotten a text message (praise baby jesus for cell phone service in my site) from my friends down the road that I should come over and hang out there. On the way over I got stopped by my next door neighbors who invited me in for a bite to eat…I was thankful because I did not want to have to resort to fried chicken for dinner, which is what I eat most nights when I decide to do dinner. We talked a bit and they asked me about Christmas in America and I told them the biggest difference is that it’s really cold there. “Oh, like 50 degrees or so?” they ask me…and I just laugh.

I finished up my food and headed across the street to my other friends’ house. More of the same was going on there…sitting around chatting, some food, etc. I walked with my friend Maritza over to the church where there was supposed to be mass and a nativity re-enactment (thankfully, they did not ask me to play Jesus this time) After waiting for a half hour for the priest to show up, we decided to abandon that idea. We went and sat on the plaza for a bit and watched the much-too-young children throw firecrackers and fire roman candles at each other. Fireworks are apparently big here on Christmas. I couldn’t tell if these kids really were ridiculously young to be playing unsupervised with fireworks or if it was just my over-sensitive American-ness…of course this would never happen in America but we all need a reminder every once in a while that that is not necessarily a good thing. It’s true that you can never been too safe but these kids were having fun and I think we as Americans are sometimes a little too over-controlling. I can’t say I condone it letting tiny kids throw firecrackers at each other, but I will say after a few minutes of watching them I was feeling the pyromaniac itch and almost went and bought some of my own. Maritza and I decided against this and headed back to her house for a midnight dinner. Food at midnight seems to be the big tradition for Christmas here. It was kind of like New Years because right around midnight all the firecracker noise increased for a few minutes. I can’t say I liked it very much…for me Christmas is not a crazy free for all, but a more tranquil time. And you all know that’s tough for a self-proclaimed firework junkie like myself to say.

After midnight my friends began passing out their gifts to their little nieces and nephews, who all got one and were pretty darn excited about it. That, along with hugs and kisses were the only gifts exchanged that night. There was no talk of Santa Claus or reindeer or anything like that. It was a simple Christmas for simple people. It was a nice reminder that Christmas would still be incredibly special if you take away the presents. My good pal Carlos called me around 1am and we exchanged Feliz Navidads, which was nice. I sat around with the family and talked some more for a bit and then I headed home. I was surprised to find my host nephew Cristian (12 years old) standing on the porch outside of our house. “It’s locked,” he said. Usually this means with a key but for some reason tonight my host sister had bolted it, leaving us few options. I called Lidia my host sister inside the house (again, cell phone service is amazing) but her phone was turned off. I made an attempt to get on the roof but ended up just snapping off one of the big tiles…a commotion that caused my drunken neighbor Pasqual to come stumbling out from the back of his house. It was then I remembered that he had a ladder…I asked him if I could go into his yard and use his ladder to climb over the wall. He insisted that I stay for a few drinks first but I kindly turned him down. I climbed up the ladder and saw the pile of rusty-nail filled wood on the other side…jumping in the dark did not sound too appealing…so I sat up on the wall (the width of one brick) and precariously hauled the ladder up while trying to keep my balance, all the while with Pasqual laughing at the chance that I might fall and telling me that my strategy will never work. I would like to remind the reader that this is not some nice little lightweight fiberglass ladder one would get at say Home Depot…this thing was made of tree branches nailed and wired together and was pretty heavy. Thankfully I made it down ok and went and let Cristian in. Today I plan on removing the bolt from the door since we all have keys. I flossed and brushed and went to bed with the fan blowing on me…definitely another Christmas first.

Aside from the cold, the most striking difference I feel is the lack of a Christmas spirit. Albeit sometimes a little fake, people are usually more courteous and friendly around the holidays in the states…I do not really get that feel here and it kind of bums me out. I guess Christmas is special to everyone for different reasons and here it’s not much different than any other day off of work. I can’t blame anyone for not acting like I think they should just because it’s Christmas but it does make me miss my family. Regardless, I am feeling exceptionally cheery today, perhaps propped up by the cds of Christmas music my family sent me. I think it’s safe to say that it’s going to take a lot for me not to spend my next Christmas on School Section Road. ¡Feliz Navidad!

Sweatpants, West Wing and Uno

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 20:48:00 +0000

It’s raining. It’s Wednesday afternoon and it’s raining. It started raining Monday morning and has pretty much been raining since. So, any plans I may have had to leave seemed to have been soiled. But, luckily, I didn’t or don’t have any plans to leave. And by the way this rain looks, I probably won’t be leaving until February. Which is troublesome because I’m not sure I have enough Ramen Noodles to last me that long. I may start eating frogs, since they seem to flourish in abundance here in my house. Mostly in the bathroom. So maybe eating them isn’t such a good idea. Seriously though, there’s nothing to worry about on the food front, plenty of rice and potatoes to keep me plump enough for the Big Bad Lobo. And plenty of hair on my chinny chin chin too for that matter.

I’m turning a bit Bolivian. How can I tell this? Because I no longer go out when it rains. Not just out of my house, I hardly leave my room. If I do leave my room, it’s to fill up my water bottle and empty my bladder, a process which I then reverse once returning to my room. I also muster up the courage to run up to the kitchen in the rain to get food every 5 or 6 hours and a cup of hot chocolate mixed with coffee. About a half hour ago I was forced to leave my pajamas for the first time in two days to head out because we were out of coffee and milk. Don’t worry, once I got back to my room, my pajamas found there way back on. Speaking of pajamas, I would like to take this time to personally thank my parents for making a special trip just to bring me my Ohio State sweatpants, quite possibly the most comfortable lower-extremity cover in the history of the world. And the best part is, they still smell like good ‘ol Cincinnati Tide. I am leary of wearing them too much so they don’t lose the smell, I’ll let you know how that goes. Talk about living in the third world making you appreciate the little things…the smell of Tide is definitely one of those. Since they were down here already bringing the sweatpants, I decided it might be a good idea to show my parents around Bolivia a little bit, which was great…but that’s a story for another day. Because today it’s raining.

I’m not going to lie, it’s been a relaxing couple of days. My parents also brought down a pack of Uno cards, which my host family has fallen in love with. Since I taught them how to play, it has become all we do. Here’s how it usually goes when I come in from the office at lunchtime.

Me: Good afternoon family
Them: Good afternoon Benjamín. How about some Uno?
Me: Sounds good. After lunch?
Them: We’ll worry about lunch later, sit down and start shuffling.

Because they don’t know how to shuffle. Or at least do the bridge. (Totally random side story: I remember the day I taught myself how to do the bridge. I was probably 8 or 9 and I had seen someone, most likely Uncle Ron or Aunt Bea shuffling cards and asked them how I could learn that and they just said “you just have to keep practicing.” So a few days later…I think it was a Saturday, I went to work with my dad…we went to Burgundy Court to pour part of the pool deck…Bill Tepe was helping that day, which was a little weird. Anyway, I had brought a deck of cards and instead of working that hard I just practiced and practiced until I got it. Ok, back to Bolivia.) So we play Uno, and they love it, especially when someone has to keep picking cards until they get one they can play. They hoard the Wild cards until the end too, which is endlessly obnoxious…like not moving your back row in checkers. But it’s fun, I like watching them laugh…and when people come over, they teach them too. So we’ve been playing a lot of Uno during these rainy days as well.

I have not been completely unproductive. I finished one book (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey) and started another (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins), I’ve done a lot of work on spreadsheets (my whole life is a spreadsheet) and drawings of well drilling parts that I have needed to catch up on for a long time now. It’s amazing what I can get done with some chocolate coffee, a white patio chair and some music. Well, and having an Apple iBook G4 certainly helps as well. A friend of mine has lent me some West Wing DVD’s as well. I am currently in possession of all of Seasons 3, 4, and 5. I told myself I was only going to watch one episode a day, which I was never capable of even in college, when there was many other things I should have been doing. Jody and I would spend a whole Sunday on Doug’s sister’s horridly ugly but extremely comfortable couch at our apartment on Highland watching episode after episode. Around 6pm or so we would decide that getting food and perhaps starting our homework was a good idea. Anyway, when I had Seasons 1 and 2, I stuck to the one episode a day rule and was quite proud of myself. But, since it has started raining, I’ve plowed through about 10 episodes in the last two days. If the rain keeps up, I’ll probably finish season 5 by the end of the week. But God Bless the West Wing. This is going to sound extremely corny, but it seriously inspires me to work harder…well, at least when I can find time between episodes. No joke though, watching this show makes me want to find a job that will make me want to work as hard as they do in the show. Something that is worth working that hard for, you know? Something where going back to the office after midnight is a fun thing and not a pain in the butt. Yeah I know I’m young and idealistic and it’s just a TV show and I’ve never really had a real job, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with thinking like that.

Well, it hasn’t stopped raining since I started writing this. However, if you are reading this, it means that it DID stop raining, at least long enough for me to get out of my site and get to the internet to post this blog entry. It has probably started up again since then. I’m going to reward myself for writing this by watching another West Wing episode. Will Bailey just came on board and things are getting interesting…

Send a helicopter and instructions, I’ve always wanted to learn. Then again, maybe don’t…I could handle a few more days of this…

Ben

(untitled)

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 20:43:00 +0000

Another Sunday morning in Hardeman. For the first time in a long time, this is my second consecutive Sunday morning here in my pueblito. It has been a pretty wild last few months. I think the last time you heard from our hero, the craziness was about to begin. At some point I hope to catch all of you faithful readers up on all that has transpired since then, but for now I will recount little of it. Because while there are certainly days that are more interesting than others, my life is not one adventure after the next. For the past ten days or so I have been tranquilo here in Hardeman, sipping my instant coffee/hot chocolate mix in the mornings, munching on delicious home-made bread in the afternoons (quite literally, hot & fresh out the kitchen), sitting and chatting with my fellow Hardemeños about the heat, the likelihood of rain, as well as the weather. It has been quite a productive week in the office, catching up on documents I have been neglecting and making plans for future projects.

Hardeman is anxiously awaiting the rainy season…more anxiously than in years past due to the current construction they are doing on our road. In order for them to be able to lay asphalt in the future, they have been digging on the road since may, carving out large ditches on either side and piling and packing the earth onto what will be the new road. In order to allow vehicles to pass, there is currently a one-lane “detour” right next to the high flat road-to-be that is by all means passable in dry weather. But when it rains, this byway fills with water and goes from being a temporary road to being a permanent river. They then close the road until there is sufficient draining of the road to at least allow lightweight vehicles to pass. This system has been serving us more or less sufficiently for the past few months. But during those months it has rained for only a few hours at a time. I shudder to think what it’s going to be like once it rains for a week or so on end. It will be another week before the road dries out…and even then it will be so packed with enormous semi trucks hauling soybeans which without fail will get stuck that it will become doubly-impassable. What does this mean for me? It means I should stock up on Ramen Noodles and West Wing DVDs to last me until February. Yes, I am being a little overdramatic, but literally just a little. I will be able to get out of my site but it will probably end up taking me a day or two. And truth be told, I am looking forward to it. It has been way too long since I have spent an extended period of time in my site and with the realization that time is winding down, right here in Hardeman is where I want to be the most.

It’s quite comforting to be content here. I guess one could say I’m living a “simple” life but for some reason it doesn’t seem all that different some days, although that may be a little hard for you to believe. I think the most striking difference for me is my lack of a car. But perhaps even more striking is the lack of NEED of a car. If I want to go visit friends and chat, they are a mere 2 minute walk away. If I need food to cook, the store is just as close. My office is two doors down. I don’t consider it a hard life, but I would definitely call it a simple life…one without excess. Except for an excess of dust or perhaps rice.

The latest bit of good news around here is that cell phone service has finally arrived. It is a whole new world, just like I imagined. I am proud to announce my first phone call from the states was from none other than my good pal Steph (Woody) Goetz. It was incredible. Just an average Wednesday afternoon turned into a fantastic day after talking with her for about 45 minutes. I can only hope I get a call like that every couple of weeks to keep me in a perpetual good mood. Muchas gracias mi querida amiga. So, anyone with a calling card and a little patience can give me a ring, anytime you feel the need. The number is 591-77871737. Those first three numbers are the country code and the numbers after that pertain to my cell phone. If the phone rings and I don’t answer, try back again in a couple of minutes. If the phone doesn’t ring at all and goes right to the nice lady speaking Spanish, it means I am out of range (out in the jungle drilling or something) and you can leave a message. Messages are always welcome. Like I said, a nice lady will start talking to you in Spanish, then it will beep. Then she will say a couple more things and then it will beep again. It is after this second beep that you should leave a message. I should get the message and can either give you a call when I get it to let you know I’m free or whatever. The point is, if you want to talk to me, it’s not that tough. George Wang figured it out and he’s only a Stanford PhD student.

So yeah life is good. Christmas plans are still a bit up in the air and everything depends on the road of course. The adventure continues.

“It’s Been A Long, Long Time…”

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 23:26:00 +0000

Warmest Saludos to you blog readers. I know it has been quite a while since you have heard much about the Story of Ben, but I assure you I am alive and kickin’ down here in Bolivia. Since the last major update, a lot has happened. I’ve walked on hot coals, my niece was born, I’ve drilled another well, I’ve traveled to a higher elevation than ever before, I’ve discovered a hidden love for John Hartford and Bluegrass music in general, I re-acquainted myself with not-so-hidden loves for The Lord of The Rings movies and the The West Wing television show, I’ve attended a Japanese festival and bought a rug made of reeds there, I’ve often times worn my hair in a ponytail (my dad was happy about the bluegrass music, my bet is he is not so thrilled about the ponytail) and I’ve said goodbye to some excellent friends whose time is up in Bolivia. I was lucky enough to be able to put on a fireworks show on the fourth of July, I had a two person R&D meeting in Spanish and outside, I celebrated the 39th anniversary of Hárdeman by dancing all night long four days in a row, I met a sweet musical group when they came here to play, I started writing a letter a week to people back home but have since slacked off, I judged a beauty contest, walked in a parade, jumped on a trampoline and scored a perfect 100 at Japanese Karaoke. Oh yeah, and I snuck in a little trip to a place called The United States of America. Perhaps you saw me there. I did most of the usual things I do in Ohio, including eating at Skyline, hiking in Hocking Hills, playing softball with the Yidiots, visiting Ohio State and mooching off of my parents. So, I will repeat, a lot has happened. I’ll get on with some photos here in a second, but allow this long-winded traveler a bit of reflection time. About two weeks ago, I passed the one-year in-site mark. It’s pretty much 100% unbelievable that I have been here in Hárdeman for a year because it has gone by so incredibly fast, just like they said it would. But then there are days where it totally makes sense I have been here for a year. I know everyone when I walk down the street, there are tons of people to greet, I don’t mind the repetitiveness of repeatedly getting served the same food over and over again (that sentence courtesy of the Department of Redundancy Department), and I can sleep through a blaring television, crying children, rooster-ing roosters, cats fighting and insanely loud buses honking all at the same time. If you don’t believe me, ask anyone who has stayed over in my far-from Chateau Hárdeman. I no longer am self-conscious about speaking Spanish (even to girls!) and actually enjoy dancing to Bolivian music.

So when one joins the Peace Corps, a lot of people ask “why?” or “what’s your goal?” or “aren’t you worried about rabies?” or (in the case of my mom at first) “why don’t you do something where you can earn some money?” And most people who become volunteers (myself included) give responses like they want to learn about a new culture, perhaps learn a new language, help people, see the world, help themselves grow, blahbbity-blah. After being here a year, I’ve been trying to reflect on some of those answers. I’ve definitely seriously improved my Spanish, but it’s kind of tough to tell how I’ve grown or changed or matured (or un-matured for that matter). And I don’t think it will be really easy to tell a lot of that stuff until I am done. Everything about my life is different down here, I think how I change is going to come down to what I end up taking back with me to the States. Habits, ideas, memories, goals, motivations. I think I have a much different outlook on life now, but it’s hard to gage while I am still down here…it will have to wait until it can be set against the contrast of life in America. But for those of you die-hards who want to know how I am different now, I guess I can tell you that I spend more time on my hair than I ever did in my life, I write dates starting with the day instead of the month and I am seriously losing my skills at speaking English. I guess that’s not bad for a year in a foreign country. Perhaps those of you with whom I keep in better touch would be better judges of how I may have changed.

Well, without further adieu, the following are a bunch of entries to catch you up on my life, those of you who are interested. There are a few photos missing, I will get them up soon.

Festival de San Juan

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 23:20:00 +0000

June 24 in Bolivia is the festival of San Juan and is in general considered the coldest day of the year, despite the winter solstice being on the 21st of June. Well first of all I can tell you that it was NOT the coldest day of the year, but that’s a whole other story. San Juan is celebrated in some parts of Bolivia, including Hárdeman, with campfires outside of everyone’s house and then at midnight the tradition is to walk across the hot coals of the fire. According to “legend” if you do it right at midnight, the coals will not burn you. Well, as you can imagine, I had my doubts. I was out pasear-ing around town that night and noticed my friend Ana María getting ready to start a fire outside of her house, so I stopped in to share since my family didn’t look like they were going to make a fire. Turns out Ana’s family was burning all their clothes they had worn out or grown out of that year…which I found kind of strange but whatever. There haven’t been too many times in Bolivia when I’ve had the chance to sit around a campfire just for the sake of sitting around a campfire, so I was certainly enjoying it. I tried to tell Ana some stories of the Ranzaganza, but I don’t think she really understood why I was so entertained by cardboard cut-outs or throwing a vortex football at the backsides of my cousins. Anyway, I was enjoying the fire but as midnight approached we headed over to the youth center where they were electing “Miss San Juan,” the queen of the festival. The pageant was already underway when we got in, which I was happy about because they usually “honor” me with asking me to be a judge, which would be ok if the contestants weren’t ranging from 6th to 11th grade. It was quite un-nerving to watch these young girls parade up and down a makeshift catwalk while their parents and hosts of other old men watched and whistled and hooted. But, at least the oldest girl won…I think she’s 16. Here is a picture of the her (she’s on the left, named Lucero) Ana and me:

Then we went outside to where a fire had been burning for a few hours to walk on the hot coals. Here is a shot of Ana making her way across:

It took a couple of minutes of deciding as well as Ana calling me a sissy before I decided to do it, but I finally did and did not in fact get burned. Since not everyone in the campo gets digital cameras that well, here’s how the picture turned out:

Yeah I know you can’t see me at all but I wanted to put it up to show the creepy flaming cross that came out instead…can you see it? I thought it was pretty cool. I showed it to some of the folks watching and even got a pretty big laugh out of one of our nuns Madre Gracia by telling her it came out that way because I played Jesus at Easter. You can imagine how proud I was to have made an Italian nun laugh in a language that was neither my first nor her first.

I don’t think I need to tell you that there is nothing magical going on here. Yeah, the coals were hot, but they spread them out over an area where the fire had not been burning, so they weren’t as hot as they could be. Plus the bottoms of your feet are pretty tough…well at least mine are from living in the campo for a year. They maintained that it was the magic of San Juan, even after I pointed out that it was like 12:10 when we did it, but what the heck, it was fun.

It’s a Vicious Cycle

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 23:19:00 +0000

One of the craziest things about Peace Corps is the constant cycle of volunteers arriving and leaving. Approximately every four months, a new group of 20-30 people arrive to begin training and right about the same time another group of 20-30 people leaves that has been here for two years. So, we are constantly meeting new friends and at the same time saying goodbye to some of the old ones. It’s interesting to meet all these different kinds of people, but it’s kind of sad that no matter what at some point in the next two years we will have to say goodbye. I especially have some great friends in the other Basic Sanitation group…easier to bond with since we have the same project and often have to attend the same activities. Well, just a couple weeks ago, the majority of that group left, including two of my good buds Travis from Idaho (on the left) and Clayton from California.

These guys along with Jacob from Texas have their own little triumvirate of well drillers up in the altiplano and I have gotten to be good friends with them, but their time is up. The three of them set off on a whirlwind tour of South America, hitting pretty much every other country in this continent, and Travis and Clayton are even planning on getting back to the states via land, that is traveling and busing with their lives on their backs, hoping to be back for Thanksgiving or Christmas. I’m gonna miss these guys but I’m definitely looking forward to meeting back up with them in the States and sharing a decent brand of beer while listening to some John Hartford (in Travis’ case) or Iron Maiden (in Clayton’s case). Nos vemos, chicos.

While I’m saying goodbye to folks, I would be remiss to leave out Khalial Withen. I randomly met Khalial last October when she came to Hárdeman for a health fair. A fellow gringo, she was here on a Fulbright Scholarship doing a research project. For some insane reason, she wanted to learn how to drill wells, so she became apart of our Norte Cruceño team. Right away her enthusiasm and idealistic mentality were things I admired. She made several trips to Hárdeman, getting along great with my family and others in town, so much even that to this day people ask me when she’s coming back. We had many an excellent conversation about life in Bolivia and life in general, and it was always a breath of fresh air to talk with and listen to Khalial. Unfortunately her time has run out here in Bolivia as well and she will be sorely missed. Khalial can be found starting the communist revolution in rural western Virginia (not to be confused with West Virginia). ¡Viva Evo!

“Oh I Wanna Go Back To Ohio State…” And So I Did

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 23:13:00 +0000

(sidenote, for those of you not familiar with things such as “Sphinx” or “Skyline Chili”, some of the following might not make sense…hopefully the photos will help)

Right around my one-year out of country mark (early May) I took my long awaited and much anticipated trip back home to Ohio. I literally began planning this trip in July 2005 when I first found out I’d be leaving the states in May 2006. I knew I wanted to make it to OSU for the 100th anniversary of Sphinx and I also figured that one year out of country would be a good time to make it back. And so it was, two weeks in the States that was a whirlwind of emotions and a heck of a good time. After reuniting with my parents at the Greater Cincinnati Northern Kentucky Airport, the same place I had left them teary eyed (me moreso than them) one year earlier, we wasted no time in getting my most important task accomplished…going to Skyline. Oh how I had missed my Skyline. Even though Clifton Skyline did not have my trademark chocolate milk, I think I can safely say it was the most delicious three-way I have ever eaten. Keri Marsh even showed up at the restaurant to hang out and took this sweet picture. I try not to look at this too often because it makes me hungry.

The next morning I promptly abandoned my loving parents for a crazy weekend in Columbus and Cleveland. I felt extremely lucky to be able to see pretty much everyone I wanted to in Columbus that weekend, minus a few key players of course. Since my Grandpa Ranz and his brother Norb were both in Sphinx too when they were at OSU, it was a bit of a family reunion for us as well. Here are the three Ranz tried-links on Browning Amphitheater after the ceremony. In perfect Norb and George style, they were dressed exactly alike without planning it, without a doubt with all clothes they had gotten for free from “The Facility” (spoken with deepened Grampal voice), right down to the skivvies, I’m sure:

And here’s a shot with 3 generations of Ranz males:

It was a nice relaxed day at OSU, just like the good ‘ol days. Here’s a shot of Nathan and Kirk on the oval, enjoying the shade of the 5 brothers:

Then that night the party got rolling and of course included a 97 reunion at Mama’s Pasta & Brew and some Cuban cigars. Here are the four of us Goonies enjoying a good smoke. From left to right: Mouth, Chunk, Data & Mikey. (Please note our choice of t-shirts included both Catfish Biff’s and Ohio Wheelchair Games)

The big event that weekend of course was the Sphinx 100th Anniversary Banquet. As opposed to hearing more cracks about looking like the cavemen from the Geico commercials or Bigfoot, I decided to lose the beard and maybe put the hair under a little more control. Here’s what it looked like at least for a little bit:

Since the 97th class is so awesome, 22 out of 24 of us showed up for the banquet, with the other two in town but with other plans. Check us out:

We made it out to a nice place afterwards called The Elevator and it was like we never left Columbus. Here’s a good one with Frank and Jammers enjoying a few drinks:

And god bless Katy (Poth) Endsley for not only making one of my favorite foods (her mom’s cheesy potatoes) but actually bringing the dish to the bar to be consumed there. It was glorious.

As my time in Columbus came to a close and I frenzied to say goodbye to everyone, I managed to lock my keys in my car in the Holiday Inn parking lot. Luckily, Frank Sasso and his Real Estate & Finance degree were there to help. At first Frank began to make a non-chalant Triple-A phone call, but after a couple of rings, hung up and said “forget Triple-A. We’ll get these out ourselves.” And so here is Frank saving the day with a bent up hanger he had in his car. Mr. Sasso, I am in your debt.

Unfortunately, I have no photos of the following few days, which is a shame. From Columbus I drove up to Cleveland, Ohio to spend the day and evening with Ben and Mia Coleman. Ben Coleman was my roommate for 3 of my 5 years of college and I generally consider him my hetero-lifemate since we are so alike. Ben and Mia got married last July, a wedding that I was unfortunately unable to attend. So this was my first time seeing them actually married, which was exciting for me. They have a nice little apartment outside of Cleveland, complete with a parakeet. Cole surprised me and invited Doug Gillespie (another college roommate) up to hang out as well and we had a grand old time tooling around in Doug’s shiny new BMW while Doug rattled off all of its characteristics and we compared it to his old blue Tercel, which I think is for sale if anyone is interested. We had some Starbucks, bought some yummy non-Bolivian beer from World Market and then went out for a delicious dinner of crablegs at a place that I can’t remember the name of but was really freaking good. We spent the rest of the evening drinking the yummy beer and watching old movies from college and talking about “the good ol days.” Cole took the next day off of work and we spent the day playing “Scene It” and watching Back To the Future. We took a walk out to the beach and light-house near their apartment to get some fresh air as well. It was nice to get to see where they live, since I have only heard about it in emails. We hugged a goodbye, not exactly sure when or where the next time we’d see each other would be. Turns out he might make it down to visit sometime next year, which would be incredible.

From Cleveland I drove back home to Cincy, re-reuniting with my parents and seeing my sister and brother-in-law. We headed off to Hocking Hills for a few days, our trademark vacation spot. It was an excellent and relaxing three days filled with good conversations, excellent hikes, yummy food, pipe smoking, and my very pregnant sister not complaining one bit about all the walking. She did really great and it was good to actually see she was doing well rather than just people telling me about it. That sentiment pretty much goes for everything I did while I was home. I really don’t know why I didn’t take any pictures but oh well.

We made it back to Cincy and I was lucky enough to get to hang out with one of my oldest friends, Steph Woody. Steph and I have been tight since we met many years ago at Mr. Anderson’s cross country practice and Mr. Maginn’s Pre-Algebra class…seventh grade. We went and got some delicious Indian Food at Ambar and tooled around Clifton a bit, including a stop up on Mt. Storm park on a lovely Cincinnati evening. Steph had gotten married since I’d seen her last so I guess I should refer to her as Steph Goetz but it’s hard to say goodbye to a name like Woody. Anyway I was lucky enough to see both Mr. and Mrs. Goetz a couple of days later when we had an open house at my parents’ house. They live in Bloomington, Indiana where Steph teaches Spanish to college students and Jack spends his days in a lab doing very important and dangerous things which I will not delve into here because they are government secrets and Kirk will get in trouble if his old boss finds out Kirk knows me.

Friday was a day I had been looking forward to for a while. You see, every Friday during the summer, the greatest slow-pitch softball team takes the field at TCYO park in Miamitown. I am of course talking about the Yidiots. If you are ever in the area on a Friday, I suggest you make a stop to catch a game. Most of these guys are friends of my dad from high school or sons of his friends, as the team has now become a family affair. With my dad, myself, cousins and uncles, we Ranz’s now count for six of the roster. A lot of the family came down to watch the game as well, so it was good that we won. I didn’t even screw up too bad…I caught everything that came to me, got a couple of hits and even fell flat on my ass getting tug out at home, of course provoking heckles of “Yidiot!” from both the bench and the crowd. Afterwards we headed back to my Uncle Scott’s backyard, which he has converted into a little pub of his own, affectionately referred to as “Scottie’s,” where there was plenty of golden nectar as well as more Skyline Chili. I don’t think everyone knows this, but Skyline actually does catering for parties, and here’s what it looks like:

It was great to catch up with my cousins and the rest of the Cincinnati crew, and really great to eat all the skyline. If you haven’t picked up on it yet, food was a big part of my trip home. Here’s a shot of my cousins and me enjoying each other’s company:

From left they are Seth, me, Leslie and Shane. Being the closest in age, the four of us always managed to raise hell at family Christmas parties and camping trips and even managed to renovate a place called The Shack all those years ago. I really miss these guys, but Seth is planning a trip down here to visit me in a couple of months here, so that’s going to be sweet.

Saturday was my last full day in Ohio. My cousin Seth took me skeet-shooting for the first time, I cut most of the grass at my parents’ house getting ready for the open house and then had a grand old time talking with the rest of people I wanted to see while I was in Cincy, and even some die-hard fans who made the trip down from Columbus. It was a lovely end to a great trip. My parents took me to the airport to the next day to start the next adventure, which turned out to be later that day. The plan was to fly to Dallas-Ft. Worth, then to Miami, and then to Bolivia. Well it turns out there was weather in Dallas so we had to make an emergency landing to save fuel in Texarkana, Texas; which unbeknownst to me, actually exists in real life and not just in that movie Smokey and The Bandit. If you don’t believe me, here is a picture:

They even have free wireless internet at the Texarkana airport, which impressed me to no end. Well, to make a long story a little longer, I got to Dallas too late to make the connection and had to spend the night there, but I got on a flight the next night and arrived to Bolivia a day later than planned, but that’s just about right on-time by Bolivian standards. There was even a package waiting for me in the Peace Corps office, sent by Steph about 5 months prior. A little damaged (see below) but it made it. Thanks Steph!

A Different Kind of Drilling

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 23:11:00 +0000

Back in June, I traveled up to Oruro department which is in the western part of Bolivia to help with the training of the newly arrived Basic Sanitation Volunteers. We have our crew of 3 well drillers down here in Santa Cruz, and there were four drillers being replaced up in the Altiplano. Since those guys were the guys leaving, they wanted to train the new group in the place where they would be going. But, in order for the new group to have a connection with us down in Santa Cruz, they let me come up and lend a hand with the drilling. The terrain up there is much different than down here. We usually drill anywhere to 30-60 meters into the ground (100-200ft), whereas up there they only drill wells between about 6-18 meters. But, they run into a lot more rocks and harder stuff to get through, while we usually just deal with clay and sand. To build our tower to hold our rig, we usually cut down a couple of trees, but up in Oruro, there is no vegetation, so they have to lug around a huge metal tripod to hold up their rig. I had never drilled up there before, so it was a cool experience to see how the other-half lives. Here’s a wide shot of the whole process, quite different from what it looks like down here in Santa Cruz:

Since it is so high up (and since we were in the middle of winter), it was really, really cold up there. The sun was strong though, so that helped to keep us warm during the day, but if you got wet or something, you were miserable. Down here in Santa Cruz, when you get wet while drilling it’s usually a welcome refresher. “Altiplano” means “high plain” and that’s literally what it is. There are peaks rising up in the distance, but for the most part there are just huge, vast flat plains that seem to go on forever without trees at all. If you’re into live things and lush vegetation, you might consider it an ugly place. But, in my opinion, the sunsets made up for it:

Due to having the nastiest cold of my life that week, I did not actually work much. Plus, all the new trainees were really motivated to work, so that helped. Not being one to often keep my mouth shut, I offered verbal assistance whenever I could as well as got some wicked rounds of the movie game going, which always helps to pass the time. We drilled to nine meters, installed the pump and got some clean water out of the well. It was really great for the trainees to see a well from start to finish and it was a cool experience to be up there helping out. Luckily that weekend I recuperated at my friend Anna’s house in Oruro city by sleeping a lot and eating some yummy food and taking hot showers. Oh man that was nice. Thanks Anna, you’re amazing.

Bienvenidos al Mundo, Riley Jo Hanauer

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 23:07:00 +0000

So back in December I found out that my sister Maurie was pregnant, which made me pretty excited. I’ve always thought I’d make a pretty good uncle, after all I’ve had some pretty amazing uncles to train me…I mean how could I not be a good uncle after having learned from the likes of Uncle Ron, Uncle George, Uncle Mitch, Uncle Fred, Uncle Mark, Uncle Jamie, Uncle Denny, Uncle Scott, Uncle Bill and Uncle Rob? So I was pretty pumped to get to try out my uncle-ing skills, although I knew I would have to wait a bit before I actually met the new baby. Well, on Thursday morning, July 26 around 9:30 am, my sister gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named Riley Jo Hanauer. I have no idea how much it weighed but I know she was healthy and with a solid head of black hair, Von Allmen style. Here is a shot of Maurie with the new baby and the proud father Joshua:

And of course the new grandparents, Grandpa Joe and Grandma Julie:

It’s certainly a bummer not to be around for all of this fun stuff but they are keeping me updated with news from home. Here is a link to a little video Joshua made for me, which makes me happy and sad all at the same time:
(videolink)
Congratulations to the new parents, and I look forward to meeting the little tyke a year from now. Keep the pictures coming!

La Vida En Hardeman

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 22:47:00 +0000

Lately the most notable thing in Hárdeman has been the weather. It is technically the dry season, which I thought would mean that it would not rain at all, like it was in Cochabamba last year. But the dry season in Santa Cruz just means that it no longer rains for 4 or 5 days at a time. It still rains and it is always accompanied by a “surazo” which is a strong, cold wind from the south that blows up from Argentina and Antarctica. Around here people just call it a “sur” and one can arrive without warning, blowing dust all over town and dropping the temperature 20 or 25 degrees without blinking an eye. Since it’s usually in the 80s or something down here, one might think that some 50 or 60 degree weather would be welcome. Well, yes and no…imagine it being 55 degrees, terribly windy and cloudy. And then imagine that you are essentially camping in that weather, since pretty much all of the houses here are just random rooms without hallways or connecting walkways. It’s kind of like living in a college dorm except as soon as you walk out of your bedroom, you are outside. You have to walk outside to eat, go to the bathroom, everything. My bathroom here in Hárdeman is actually farther from my room than the bathroom was in Bradley Hall my freshman year. Ok, so you’re always outside and even when you are inside, the windows are not exactly well sealed and there is no heat. It can get a little uncomfortable. Now imagine taking a shower with cold water. Needless to say, bathing was not high on my list during those chilly days. Throw some water on the face, toss on my stocking cap and I was ready for the day. It got cold enough in the office that I even lit a candle to keep warm in my little corner:

Note how my hair is nice and confined under the hat. Here’s what happens when the hat comes off:

They say it’s been colder this year than in years past and I frankly am ready for it to be warm all the time now. Drilling wells in chilly, windy weather with only a cold shower awaiting me at the end of the day is not my idea of a good time. Here are some random shots of people and places around town.

I was totally pumped to see this girl wearing an OSU sweatshirt, especially one depicting the 1997 Rose Bowl, where Joe Germaine led the Bucks past Arizona State in a glorious come-from-behind victory. Great memories of watching that game in Scott’s basement with Skyline dip and Mary Jane’s Oreo Goop. Mmmmm.

How’s that for a pig? This thing was so huge I could not resist a picture. People in my town just have these pigs living in their yards like dogs (not so much as pets but just roaming freely). Mom, remember when you used to say you’d rather have a pig than a dog? Care to reconsider?

On top of the water tank on the day I got inside and helped our plumber Francisco clean the tank. This was a pretty fun time cause it was actually hot outside and it was nice and refreshing to be playing around in the water inside the tank.

The cutest kid in town, my host-niece Tahira, goofing around with some costume glasses sent down from Aunt Joyce in a Halloween package. This little girl makes some of the crappy days a lot better.

Like I said, the cutest kid in town…seen here on her first birthday. Fun fact, she was born on my dad’s birthday, June 14th. Get those flags out!

Those of you who know me well know that I don’t give up any chance to write on whiteboards and use them to make all kinds of seemingly important lists. This is a rough sketch of a redesign of the water system in town I did on our whiteboard in the office…I had lots of fun with all the colors and stuff, but it turns out we don’t have money to do the redesign, so sadly I had to erase it. But at least I have this awesome picture. And I also bought a tiny whiteboard for my room in my house, so now I can rest easy with all of my tasks noted and color-coded.

This was a wedding I attended back in June in Hárdeman. The nice lady who washes my clothes, Doña Nena, invited me to her parents’ wedding, who are an elderly couple but finally decided to get married. Here’s how the conversation went down:

Nena: Hello Benjamín, how are you?
Me: Fine Doña Nena, how are you?
Nena: No complaints here. It’s hot isn’t it?
Me: Yeah it is hot. Dusty too, huh?
Nena: Yeah damn this dust. When are they going to finish the stinking asphalt road?
(My brain): So much for no complaints.
Nena: Anyway, I would like to invite you to my parents’ wedding on Saturday, they are finally getting married after all of these years. We would be honored with your presence.
Me: Wow Doña Nena, that’s very nice of you, of course I can come.
Nena: Oh, and you’re going to bring your camera, right?
(My brain): Ah. The truth comes out.
Me: Sure, I can take some pictures for you, thanks for thinking of me.
Nena: Great, see you then!
Me: Good-bye!

The truth is, since I know these folks and they are my friends, I don’t mind taking pictures for them. Anymore, I consider it part of my service. So, that’s how I found myself in this tiny chapel in the nuns’ house attending this wedding. About 10 close family members and some poofy haired gringo taking pictures. And that’s not even the best part of the story. That would be the priest. After arriving over an hour late to start the ceremony, he was a little rusty on how it all went down, so Sister Ana (the nun you see in photo) had to coach him. She obviously knew what was up, but since women can’t perform Mass or weddings in the Catholic Church, they had to bring in this obviously extremely inexperienced priest from out of town who didn’t even know these people. How do I know he didn’t know them? Well, about 2/3 of the way through the ceremony after referring to the bride as “Don Manuel’s woman,” he finally broke down and asked her name, and then promptly forgot it. I was appalled. Some days I just don’t get how people here can call themselves religious and keep a straight face. But, that’s a whole different conversation for another place and time, best after a couple of drinks.

I was lucky enough to have Carlos come and visit in Hárdeman to help me drill a well, and here he is preparing some yummy macaroni and cheese in the kitchen at my house. During one of the days it was too cold to drill, Carlos and I went to the plaza to shoot the bull about possibly putting together a huge-scale long-term well drilling project in my municipality. It was a great discussion, something I think I’ve been lacking down here in Bolivia…an opportunity to bounce ideas off of someone and also listen to their ideas. We started out on benches but after a few minutes I needed to stand up because I think better on my feet, as some of you may remember from a Steering meeting long ago in the basement of the Ohio Union. Carlos loves to sneak candid pictures, and here is one of me surely coming up with an amazing idea.

Another photo Carlos snuck in. This is me explaining to my good friend Pedro how we can try to improve his well that we drilled for him…perhaps by putting a windmill on it. Carlos has quite the artistic eye.

This is what we would refer to as a bad-hair-day. After a few days of no bathing (because of the cold) and being stuck under my hat, here’s what escaped from underneath. I can hear my mom gasping right now…”Oh my GOD, Ben!” Another quote from my mom regarding my hair from when I was in the states…”uh, if you’re looking for opinions…I think you should cut it.”

This is my attempt at being artistic. I threw my OSU hat on top of my dresser after a long day of muddy drilling and I thought it looked cool set in front of the Dark Side of the Moon backdrop.

This is my host cousin Inés and her boyfriend Fernando…we were celebrating Fernando’s birthday with some yummy food and a few vasos de cerveza. This was definitely a fun night.

This one’s for you, Joe Ranz. So my family is having a new kitchen built, which makes me happy because the current kitchen is pretty disgusting. Surprisingly, drywall has not made it to Hárdeman yet, so I was delighted to see them plastering the ceiling. Certainly reminded me of working back home, except they mix in an old half-tire and don’t really use moulding or hawks as far as I can tell, which means nothing to most of you. I was going to offer my services but the scaffolding looked pretty sketchy, plus I’m sure they would look at me funny when I asked them why we weren’t checking it with a light.

Quality Time Spent Out of Site

noreply@blogger.com (J. Ben Ranz) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 22:38:00 +0000

Knowing that it is sometimes a challenge to stay sane and calm with what can get to be the trying and lonely life of the Bolivian campo, the Peace Corps is kind enough to give us five days a month that we can use as personal days which don’t count as vacation days. These are days we can use to go into the city to do some shopping for things we can’t get in our sites, take out money and maybe see some other gringos and speak some English. We are also allowed to spend our out-of-site time in another volunteer’s site, hanging out with them and meeting the folks in their town. While it is important to be in our sites as much as possible, it’s also important for our emotional health to be able to get out for a bit if we need to. I try to limit my time out-of-site but an escape is nice every once-in-awhile. Here are some photos of some out-of-site activities.

This is Rudy and me after a long days hike in the rain. This was definitely a cleansing, refreshing and much needed day of hiking with a good friend. This hike recharged me like no other, despite the rain and cold.

Hanging out with my compadito Carlitos on the plaza in Santa Cruz city. It’s really a great plaza and heavily guarded by guards who don’t let you put your feet on the benches. Carlos and I are trying to plan a trip to his native Colombia for Christmas, so hopefully that will work out. He has not been back in five years, so it will be quite a homecoming for him.

That same day, we saw this guy taking old school photos for 5 pesos. He set it all up and we had stand there still for like 6 seconds while he uncovered the lens and let sunlight in and then covered it back up and developed it for us right there on site…the precursor to those photobooths you see in the mall. It was crazy.

This is my good pal Josh (from Maine) who unfortunately was spending some of his out-of-site time in the hospital in Santa Cruz with some nasty stomach problems. Fortunately for Josh, the lush hospital the PC puts us up in Santa Cruz comes complete with flat screen TV and DVD player, yummy food, and even some nice leather couches for his friends to sit on while they visit him…check it out:

Does this look like a hospital room to you? I think not!

After a long and arduous process, Carlos finally got his long-term VISA so he can legally stay and work in Bolivia…he has been given the run-around by the Bolivian immigration people for about a year now, so it was a big deal when it all finally came through. That’s one happy Colombian.

One Saturday in June a few of us met up in Okinawa, where my friend Rudy is stationed. Okinawa is interestingly enough a Japanese colony right here in Bolivia, whose history is interesting but I won’t go into here. They were having a Japanese festival and this crazy ball rolling thing was one of their activities.

It strangely reminded me of that ridiculous show that my dad watches in the middle of the night with the Japanese people doing ludicrous stunts and competitions. Quite entertaining. After the festival we got on to tossing some Frisbee around, which is a favorite pastime of us gringos.

After a yummy dinner, we headed out to Japanese Karaoke, where we successfully cleared out the place when we arrived. But we didn’t care, we sung anyway. Here’s Rudy and Andy putting on a heartbreaking rendition of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”

And here’s the huge beer they gave me on the house after I scored a perfect 100 by performing “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling”

I’m not sure what they were scoring on, but I was glad to get a free drink the size of a small country to share with my friends.