El Blog Boliviano

Summer 2008: Back in Ascension

2009-03-31T20:23:00.005-04:00

Janaki and I arrived in Ascension with high expectations for the last 3 weeks of our trip. We were going to provide detailed feedback to COBAGUAL on their work, plan how the team was to shift it's focus to rural areas, perfom water testing on several of our already-installed filters, try to convince local authorities to give COBAGUAL more funding and support, figure out how to get COBAGUAL more autonomy as a Bolivian organization so that they could actively seek their own funding, and pass on CAWST training we had received in rainwater harvesting and latrine construction. Needless to say we had a lot on our plates.

As one might predict, we didn't manage to get it all done. On the other hand we had a very productive 3 weeks, which laid the groundwork for the next stages in COBAGUAL's evolution. We mainly split our time between shadowing COBAGUAL during filter construction, follow-up visits, installations, workshops etc., meeting with them to plan how and when we would start to work in rural communities and better capacitate COBAGUAL to one day be able to seek its own funding. We were able to provide some feedback to improve the quality of COBAGUAL's community education based on lessons we had learned from CASWT in our year in Canada, but were were generally extremely impressed by their diligence, patience and attention to detail in this area. Were were glad to see that filter building continued to go well, all of the mold problems of our first 5 months in Bolivia were safely in the past.

After much discussion we decided to move COBAGUAL's work to rural areas as soon as possible, because they had received many requests for projects in nearby communities, and because the dry season made conditions ideal for navigating the dirt roads outside of Ascension (many of which are impassible in the rainy season). Additionally we found out that the municipal government was on the verge of procuring funding for a massive expansion of their municipal water network and felt it would be best to wait to see how that project works out rather than duplicate their efforts. The main issues we needed to tackle were how to minimize transportation costs given that the municipal government was unable to support us and none of the employees had reliable vehicles. We decided that the best course of action was for the team to bring all of the materials out to the communities at the beginning of the project, and then to camp in the communities while carrying out their work (coming back home for days off, but only taking a maximum of one trip per person per week). We accompanied COBAGUAL to the community of San Andres, near Ascension, to lay the groundwork for the project there, and by the time we left Bolivia, they were ready to begin their first project outside of Ascension.

Our quest to convince the local authorities to give more support to COBAGUAL led to the conclusion that they wouldn't take COBAGUAL seriously until the organization was locally run. After much discussion with Pastor Ernesto, and the COBAGUAL team we decided that the best course of action would be to sign an agreement with Pastor Ernesto's church so that COBAGUAL could work under their legal structure, allowing them to operate as a charity within Bolivia. We hope that this change will lead to COBAGUAL becoming more independant in the long-term.

On July 30th we were excited to receive a visit from CAWST international technical advisor Andrea Roach, who spent a couple of days verifying COBAGUAL's work. We enjoyed playing host to a fellow Canadian in 'our' Ascension and had several interesting chats about the project, Bolivia and how it compares to other Latin American countries that she's travelled to, and life in general. She was able to provide some very useful comments on COBAGUAL's work and accompany us on several visits to homes where families had been using their filters for several months. Overall we felt that COBAGUAL received her 'stamp of approval' with her comment that they paid much more attention to detail than most BioSand Filter organizations she had dealt with.

Once Andrea left on July 31st, we literally only had a few days left before we had to head back to Canada. Unfortunately this meant that our water testing, and personell training ambitions had to be left by the wayside. We did feel, however, that we achieved a great deal in getting COBAGUAL well and truly prepared to work in rural areas, having their work verified by CAWST, and taking important steps towards giving them the power to fundraise more independently.

Summer 2008: Leaving Cochabamba and good bye to the immigration office

2009-03-31T20:03:00.002-04:00

After Janaki had recovered in Cochabamba we met once again with CEDESPAR to try to coordinate possible collaboration between our organizations. We had spoken to our friends Duane and Marlene and the younger members of the group quite extensively, but this meeting was a bit more awkward because most of their board of directors were present, including several older members who we didn't know very well. We were left to explain our ideas to them regarding how CEDESPAR could possibly incorporate the BioSand filter into their work, and in all honesty, were greeted by a cool and skeptical reception. It seems that, at least for the time being, they do not feel that they really want to get involved with water issues in the communities in which they are involved. We found this quite understandable since they are also a new organization and, like us, can't do everything at once. Somewhat disapointed, Janaki and I left Cochabamba to spend a few weeks back with COBAGUAL in Ascension.

On the to Ascension we had to stop in Santa Cruz to pick up our extended tourist visas at the immigration office. Needless to say, given our experiences from our first trip to Bolivia, we were prepared for the worst... long delays, rude officials, etc. Luckily, perhaps because this time we were just tourists, we breezed through the process and picked up our passports without any problems. The only downer was that they confiscated our expired Bolivia citizenship cards which we had kept from the first trip as a reminder of all that the good people at the immigration office had put us through. From their it was a same-day ride on the good old Trans-Guarayos bus back to Ascension de Guarayos.

Summer 2008: Jaraña´s work

2009-01-19T22:46:00.003-04:00

OK, so apparently a rushed conclusion to the trip to Bolivia last summer followed by the craziness of moving to Vancouver and starting our master´s degrees has not been conducive to keeping this blog updated... apologies to all those who have continued checking for updates...

Now that I´m back in South America (Currently in Lima, Peru waiting to get onsite at a mine in the Peruvian highlands where I´ll be working on a study of the effects of mine waste rock on water quality in the region) I´m feeling inspired to recount the tales of the last few weeks of our trip.

Our week with Jaraña left quite an impression on Felipe, Janaki and I. We were all deeply impressed by their commitment to help their less fortunate neighbours in rural areas, as well as with their ability to really get community members involved with every stage of their projects. It was also refreshing to be able to openly discuss the shortcomings of Jaraña´s work as easily as their successes. There was no hint of trying to hide the fact that sometimes (as is ALWAYS the case in development work) things don´t work out. They understand that the key is learning from their mistakes to improve future projects.

The week continued with a visits to a few other small communities where Jaraña had helped set up shallow wells with simple, easily maintained pumps, more greenhouses, and rainwater harvesting units (see the Jaraña section at www.bccwater.weebly.com). We finished our stay in Oruro by meeting with Jaraña to discuss ways that we could collaborate in the future.

Overall, it was not just the fact that Jaraña had some innovative projects that made us want to incorporate them into the Bolivian-Canadian Clean Water Network, it was their vision. Their projects are a demonstration of how the appropriate use of simple technologies can provide for a sustainable and lifestyle in a very harsh environment. Their dream is that this demonstration will be applied at a larger scale to help stem the massive tide of internal immigration in Bolivia from the highlands to the lowlands, and in so doing, help the Áymara retain their ancient culture, on top of releaving pressure on Bolivia´s amazon basin, the eventual destination of many of Oruro´s migrants.

Although things are moving slightly slower than we had hoped, the lines of communication remain open and we are working towards effective collaboration.

Back in Canada

2008-08-08T22:37:00.003-04:00

Hello all,

Just to let you know, Janaki and I have made it safely back to Canada. As was the case with our first trip to Bolivia, the last few weeks left us very little time to add to the blog, so we'll attempt to fill in the details of the rest of the trip over the next little while.

Adventures in the Altiplano

2008-07-14T21:31:00.003-04:00

On the evening of the 6th of July Janaki, Felipe and I hopped on a bus to Oruro with some members of Jaraña. The objective of the trip to the high plains of Bolivia was to learn from Jaraña´s work in providing clean and abundant water for indigenous people in poor rural areas of the highlands and discuss ways in which our initiatives could be combined to increase their effectiveness. Given that many of Jaraña´s members were born and raised in the region they gave us a great deal of insight into life in a barren and harsh part of Bolivia.

On the morning of July 7th, we saw the city of Oruro for in daylight for the first time. Set beside a reddish dusty hill and with virtually no vegetation it seemed a bit like it was from another planet (specifically Mars). It was quite obvious that the only reason it has existed for hundreds of years in its current location is that the reddish hill was jam-packed with lucrative ore deposits, some of which are still being exploited today.

We left the city late in the morning and kicked up dust as we cruised through the plains in Jaraña´s Toyota pickup. The landscape was about as different as you can get from the area around Ascension de Guarayos. Instead of cattle grazing in fields cut into the vast jungle of the Amazon basin we were surrounded by bone-dry, wide-open plains with scarce grass and low bushes that were being grazed by the occasional herd of wild Vicuñas (a golden-wooled relative of the llama and alpaca). The area was extremely sparcely populated, and the few towns that we passed through seemed to be mostly abandoned. After a couple of hours on dirt roads we finally arrived Romero Huma, a small Aymará community set in relatively fertile hilly terrain, where Jaraña has been working for about half a decade. We were immediately greeted by excited community members who served us some tasty quinoa soup and a curious concoction of pineapple soda and raw egg (neither Janaki or I knew what we were drinking at first, but found out in due time). After the meal we were checked out some greenhouses that the community had built with Jaraña´s training (basically adobe huts with steel doors and a plastic tarp to let light in and trap heat). Impressively, the majority of these greenhouses were producing delicious, juicy tomatos even though the night time temperature was easily -10 to -15oC. We also got to see some irrigation canals that community members of nearby Huarajka Huma had helped build to improve the productivity of their fields. In the evening, after checking out the projects, we were invited to participate in a community meeting to discuss the successes and failures of Jaraña's work in the town. Beginning with a ceremonially sharing of Coca leaves, the meeting gave us fascinating insight into the way in which Jaraña coordinates with the community to plan the next projects by building on past successes and learning from previous mistakes.

The next morning, after spending a chilly night sleeping on the floor of the town hall, we were served breakfast (including more pop mixed with raw egg) and had the opportunity to hike up into the surrounding hillsides and visit some of the biosand filters that Jaraña had installed in more remote parts of the community. The hike afforded us some spectacular views of the Altiplano in the early morning light, and gave us (especially Felipe) the opportunity to share lessons learned in BioSand Filter implementation with Jaraña and some of the filter users. After the hike, we were served a huge filling lunch (the hospitality of the community members really cannot be overstated... in fact for much of the time we were there we could barely walk because we were so stuffed) shared our good-bye speeches, and headed back to the city of Oruro.

¡Cochabamba!

2008-07-13T21:59:00.003-04:00

So, after our week in Oruro with Felipe learning about the work of an local NGO called Jaraña (topic of another 1 or 2 upcoming blog entries), Janaki and I are back in the city Cochabamba for a couple of days. This city has acted as somewhat of a basecamp for us on this trip as it sits midway between the eastern lowlands (where our project is based) and the western highland departments that we´ve visited on the trip (Oruro and La Paz). Situated right in the middle of the country it really seems to offer an average of Bolivia´s characteristics, most notably a pleasant mild climate (in between the sometimes frigid altiplano and the occasionally stiffling lowlands), and a seemingly heterogeneous political climate (some areas of the metropolitan area are strongly autonomist, like the eastern lowlands, while others support the central government, as is the prevailing attitude in the western highlands).

Though we´ve since developed a deep apprecation for the city, our very first impression of Cochabamba was not very welcoming. We arrived by plane from Santa Cruz just over a week before leaving the country in May 2007. Unfortunately we had arrived just in time for a general strike, which had crippled transit in the area. Not knowing the severity of the strike we hired a cab from the airport. The cabbie took us to the first intersection (which was blocked by masked protestors), dropped us off, and charged us for the full fare to downtown. We were left to walk about 6km from the airport to our hotel, which was a bit of a challenge since we were at an elevation of 2500 m above sea level rather than the 250 m that we had become accostumed to in Ascensión.

Once we were settled, our impression of the city rapidly improved. We were warmly welcomed by Duane and Marlene, friends of my parents who arrived in Bolivia in the 1960s as Peace Corps volunteers, and have worked on various development initiatives in the country ever since. They showed us some of the touristy sites of the city, and shared many stories of their diverse experiences in the country. They also introduced a group of indigenous youth with whom they coordinate to implement community development work in the tropical Chapare region as well as the city itself. We were amazed by the warmth and friendliness of this group (known as CEDESPAR) and their families, as they immediately welcomed us and made us feel a part of their community. We felt a noticeable contrast to our reception in the lowlands, where it seemed like months had passed before we had really gained peoples´ trust. We presented our work with the BioSand filters to CEDESPAR and they showed a great deal of interest in learning about the technology in order to implement water projects in needy parts of the department. Having recently overcome a large variety of challenges with the filters in Ascension, Janaki and I felt very capable of coordinating with other groups to help them get trained and started. Unfortunately, coordination from Canada proved harder than we had hoped, and for a variety of other reasons nothing resulted from CEDESPAR´s interest in the technology in the year that we were away.

Our second trip to Cochabamba in late June offered a chance for us to reconnect with our old friends. Duane, Marlene and the other members of CEDESPAR replicated their hospitality, and we felt right at home. We also planned a way to coordinate with Jaraña (a group that has also done some work with the filters) to give the youth a detailed orientation in the Biosand Filter on July 6th. Missing the bus to Cochabamba on the morning of the fifth forced us to take a night bus (a far more luxiurious experience than Felipe, Janaki or I had expected), which led to us arriving in the city about 10 minutes before we were supposed to meet with Jaraña and CEDESPAR. Luckily, once the meeting got going it was highly successful. Four members of CEDESPAR attended, and they seemed to almost immediately connect with Jaraña, and get along well Felipe. The success of the day-long meeting left the possibility open for further coordination between CEDESPAR, Jaraña, and our team in Ascensión to establish a demonstration project for the biosand filters in the department of Cochabamba. We´re now in the city for a fourth time on our way from Oruro to Santa Cruz. We´ve already stayed for a couple of days to recover from another bout of illness picked up in the higher elevations, and are also hoping to further develop a plan for collaboration between the 3 groups before heading back down to the lowlands to work with our team in Ascension.

Filters by candlelight, Poetry in the bus terminal

2008-07-05T16:55:00.004-04:00

It seems that the universe has forced us to stop for a moment and catch our breath. Thursday night we caught a bus from Ascension to Santa Cruz after spending about a week with our COBAGUAL team members and much was discussed. Some highlights of the week were:

- Accompanying Roberto, our senior community assistent on follow-up visits where filters had been installed. This particular neghbourhood in Ascension seemed particularly poor with noticebly contaminated water sources. The surprise house visits showed that people were really embracing the filters and new safe storage containers that the team has implemented, and also gave us insight it the great work that Roberto is doing connecting with the community

- Attending a night time COBAGUAL workshop put-on by the team in a neighbourhood without electricity. Roberto, Trevor and I each had a motorbike taxi driver take us from the light of the town´s core to total obscurity. Community members congregated in the nighbourhood president´s home using candlesticks, flashlights and the occasional cellphone to light the way. Roberto and Angel lead the presentation wearing their new COBAGUAL t-shirts (a big thank you to Trevor´s uncle and aunt, Roy Topley and Joanne Porter for their great designs of the logo...pictures to follow soon!). It was really cool to hear the way the team presented the filter project to the community.

- Meeting the Sub-Prefecto, the head honcho of the Province of Guarayos within the department of Santa Cruz. To be perfectly honest, I think we both had an image in our minds of what a head of government in Santa Cruz might be like (akward cough..) but this man was so incredibly genuine and welcoming. More importantly, he is willing to actually support our work in the surrounding communities of Ascension. Hooray for more community counterpart!

- Hearing about the cool work being done by Daniel and Vanessa Beams with their well drilling techniques in communities throughout the department of Santa Cruz. The technology they´re using is not only a lot more affordable than conventional well drilling, it can also be done manually, thereby involving the community to a greater extent.

So we´re currently in the bus terminal in Santa Cruz, along with our chief filter technician, Felipe. We were all hoping to catch an early morning bus to Cochabamba to meet with two cool groups doing great work in the Cochabamba area: Jaraña, and CEDESPAR. Unfortunately today was a popular day to travel to the Coch, and our attempts at strategiacally lining up at various bus companies at 6:30am proved unsuccesful, leaving us with some time to kill before boarding on a night bus. Randomly, some of the time was passed with a fellow by the name of Israel , who seemed to be a young poet in love hanging out in the terminal who was hoping to get our help in translating his lines of Spanish poetry into English to send to his girlfriend who lives very far away and only speaks English. We were very impressed at his knowledge of love-related words in English...quite specialized, the way I felt my Spanish was mid-way on the last trip, where I knew all these random terms related to the BioSand filter in Spanish, but still had trouble with day-to-day conversations.

Bueno, that´s all for now...chau!

Island in the Sun

2008-06-25T17:30:00.002-04:00

Since Janaki and I were so busy with the project during our last trip to Bolivia, we had very little opportunity to check out the many beautiful and fascinating sites that this country has to offer. In some ways we were slightly disappointed having spent 8 months down here and seen less of the country than many tourists see in 3 weeks, but at the same time we accepted that it was part of the reality of being focused on working on a water and sanitation project rather than sightseeing. We were especially disappointed, however, that we had not seen Lake Titicaca (originally Titi Kha´rka, which apparently roughly means rock of the puma in the Aymará language), an enourmous lake near La Paz set at nearly 4000 m above sea level, which was sacred to the Incas, and their predecessors in the region (and continues to be a very special place to the indigenous Aymará of the Altiplano). When we left Bolivia last year without having seen it, we decided that we would need to make it a priority to spend some time there the next time we were in the country.

So... last wednesday, after our first two days of adjusting to the altitude of La Paz and meeting with representatives from CIDA and Oxfam Quebec, we hopped on an afternoon bus and headed to the town of Copacabana on the lake´s shore. Our first day by the lake was spent relaxing, enjoying the view from our hotel room, and checking out the sites of the town (including a beautiful cathedral with distinctive middle-eastern influence in its archictecture).

On our second day we decided to venture out the La Isla Del Sol, a roughly 11 by 8 km island about 5 km from the lake shore. According to Incan legend this island was the source of the Inca, and according to Incan and pre-Incan beliefs it was the birthplace of the sun itself. As such, it was an extremely important ceremonial site for hundreds of years before the Spanish Conquistadors arrived in the area in the 1500s. The island today remains very significant for highland indigenous people, and is inhabited by 2500 Aymará who make their living through a combination of tourism, fishing, and subsistence agriculture.

Upon our arrival on the island we were greeted by a young Aymará man who offered to be our guide. Over the next 2 hours, showed us through the ceremonial sites and ruins on the north end of the island, while explaining the culture and way of life of the people who currently inhabit it. After the tour we were feeling reasonably energetic, so we decided to trek the 10 or so km from the Chincana ruins to the south end of the island where more ruins and hotels awaited. Unfortunately, we thought that we were better acclimatized to the altitude than we actually were, and the hilly terrain posed us quite a challenge. We finally arrived at a hotel just as the sun was going down. The hotel, like the ruins themselves, and most tourist facilities was run and maintained by the Aymará themselves(at least as far as I could tell). Visiting the historic sites on the Isla del Sol was even more impressive because the descendants of the people who constructed them are still there to talk about their history.

We took the boat back to Copacabana the next morning, and caught a bus back to La Paz, where we rested for a day because Janaki had picked up a nasty cold on the island.

After La Paz, we headed off to Cochabamba, the first part of Bolivia that we´ve actually revisited on this trip. In Cochabamba we´ve met with some of our friends who work with a community development organization called CEDESPAR. The visit has been very enjoyable and allowed Janaki some time to recover from her cold in a more agreeable climate, but we´ll be heading to Santa Cruz soon to check on the project.

Back to Bolivia (albeit, a much colder one than we remember..)

2008-06-19T21:33:00.005-04:00

Hey all,

After a long journey and continued bouts of altitude sickness, we´ve finally had the chance to write a quick note. We are back in Bolivia! It´s strange in some ways to write "back in" when we currently find ourselves in the part of the country we´ve never been to. Arriving in the mountainous and chilly La Paz was nothing like coming to the lush and humid Santa Cruz de la Sierra nearly two years ago. This really speaks to the spectacular diversity of the country.

While seeing new parts of the country is definitely part of the reason for returning here, our primary motive is to check on the progress of our team in Ascension (where we´ll be heading in about a week), as well as help our young organization through its early stages by collaborating with other oganizations working on water and sanitation issues in the country.

On our second day here we were lucky enough to meet with representatives from CIDA/the Canadian Embassy in La Paz and Oxfam-Quebec. Reps from both organizations were able to share advice and contacts that will definitely prove useful as we continue to develop as an organization.

We´re currently taking a few days to relax in Copacabana, right by the gorgeous Lake Titicaca - more to follow on how it all goes.

chau!

Newsletter 3

2008-05-26T18:36:00.005-04:00

Here it is: Newsletter Numero 3

Back to work

2008-03-18T20:36:00.006-04:00

The rains have been somewhat less intense since the middle of February, allowing the Bolivian team to get back to its job of building filters. The municipal government still hasn't come through with supplies to fix the worksite, but the team built a small make-shift site nearby so that they can have a sheltered spot to continue their work if the rains get bad again. The rains left many of the dirt roads around Ascension impassable, preventing the team from accessing appropriate sand for much of February. Finally in late February they were able to purchase a few cycles worth of good sand, and 20 new BioSand filters have been installed so far in March.

In other news, the flood-water around Trinidad has lowered, thankfully, and is no longer filling people's homes in the city. It will likely be several months until farmers will be able to return to their land, since it seems to take a long time for the area to really dry out after a flood. The flooding has drastically cut Bolivia's food production since it affected most of the country's productive agricultural land. This is driving up food prices, and is a major cause of the period of high inflation that the country is currently experiencing. Driven by food shortages, fuel shortages, and general political instability, some analysts have predicted that inflation will surpass 24% by the end of the year. One can only hope that the flood waters stay down and that the federal government is able to reach a reasonable compromise with the opposition so that the country can begin getting back on its feet.

When it rains it pours

2008-02-14T18:14:00.003-04:00

When Janaki and I were living in Ascensión around this time last year, the weather became kind of depressing. We had been prepared for it to be rainy, given that we were living in the Amazon Basin, but it seemed like every day it would just pour and pour. Even the people who lived there began complaining about how wet and dark and dreary it was, and commenting that it was worse than usual... probably due to El Niño. The effects of the rain on human health and food production were disastrous, as can be seen in the photos Janaki and I took of people paddling boats across their fields near Trinidad more than 2 months after the worst of the flooding was over. It turns out, unfortunately, that this year's La Niña climate phenomenon is significantly worse. The rains have caused the Amazon's tributaries to flood vast areas of the eastern lowlands, especially the department of Beni, and have displaced approximately 60 000 people and killed over 50. In Guarayos, where our project is based, the flooding has cost this years rice and yucca crops as well as pretty much anything else that people normally grow for food or clothing, devastating the local economy. Flooding has also repeatedly wiped out bridges on Bolivia's only major lowland highway, repeatedly isolating Ascensión, and leading to fuel shortages.

The devastation has reached extreme proportions in Beni, especially around Trinidad. Whereas last year, it was mostly farmland and rural communities that were destroyed, this year the waters have also breached dyke that surrounds Trinidad, a city of about 90 000 people. It's unbelievable to see pictures on the news of people paddling canoes down the streets of a city that Janaki and I were visiting less than 10 months ago. Our good friend Fanny, who invited us into her home and showed us the amazing sites of the area around Trinidad, is currently trying to cope with the fact that her home is filled with 80cm of water and that she can't leave because the roads are cut off and she's scared that people will loot whatever possessions she leaves behind. The floods have been called a National Emergency, and the international community, lead by Brazil, Venezuela and the US, has been pitching in to try to airlift stranded people to safety, and get food and safe water to the tens of thousands of people in Trinidad who are in Fanny's situation. We can only hope that international and national aid keeps pouring in to help all those whose lives have been destroyed by this catastrophe.

As if the worst national disaster to hit Bolivia in many, many years, if ever, weren't enough of a problem for the country, the eastern leaders and the central government are back at their normal game of blaming each other for the suffering of those caught in the flooding, and trying to force through their conflicting agendas to shape Bolivia's future. Needless to say, the political atmosphere is not ideal for trying to mobilize a unified effort to help those who need it most urgently.

The rains and political fenangling have halted our project for 2008 so far. When we left Ascension, we knew that the patchy, dilapidated roof on the worksite that the municipal government had donated to us was not going to serve our employees too well in the rainy season so we requested that the government help us fix the roof. They assured us that they would be working on it by the last week of may, and then repeated that it would be done soon over and over and over again until December, when they told our employees to try again in 2008. By this time, strong winds had further damaged the roof, making it completely useless, and the above mentioned downpours had rendered it impossible for our employees to mix concrete in an unsheltered area. Our employees have stepped up pressure on the government in 2008 to help us out, and they've agreed to, but since they are trying make sure they can put whatever money they can to mitigating the effects of the flooding, and are reliant on a departmental government that is in the same position, it is unclear when exactly we'll get the help we need to get the roof of the worksite re-built. In the mean time, the employees have been busy with preparing new workshops for water, filter use, and hygiene education, performing follow-up visits to check on the status of already-installed filters, helping to plan our approach to the project in 2008, and building a previsionary worksite out of a tarp and some posts that they'll use until the mayor's office finally comes through with the supplies we've been promised to allow us to fix our roof. So we're almost ready to restart in 2008, and we'll keep you posted.

Photo from BBC News online. For more flood images see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/6390249.stm

A rare post-us-in-Bolivia photo of the project

2008-02-14T17:57:00.003-04:00

We've always recognized the importance of images in communicating with people outside of Guarayos about our project. It can be extremely hard to visualize what our employees are working on if one has never seen Ascensión, or, for example, a Biosand filter. For that reason we tried to take as many pictures as possible during our time in Guarayos, and left a digital camera with our employees so that they could continue to send us photos with their updates. Unfortunately, the camera we left broke about a week after we left bolivia, and then repeatedly broke after it was repaired in various local shops... leaving us without any pictures since we left. In september, one of our employees was able to purchase a camera phone, giving us hope that we'd be seeing pictures sooner, rather than later. Unfortunately, his chord to upload pictures onto the computer didn't work very well... so we had to keep waiting. Suddenly in mid-December, without any explanation, we received 2 photos in our inboxes, sent to us by Roberto. Both kind of grainy... probably taken with a camera phone, presumably his. One appears to show the head of the first household in which we installed a filter wayyyy back in April 2007, smiling as she fills a glass from her still-functioning BSF. This one shows part of a family with one of the filters that were installed since we left. The young children will surely reap the, most benefit of the families' newly earned appliance... as it will protect them from the water-borne diseases that would have likely overwhelmed their immune systems and surely forced them to miss school and possibly worse.
Receiving this photo was especially welcome, as Janaki and I can sometimes forget, now that we are in Canada, that the effort we continue to put into raising the money for the project helping administer it is making a tangible difference in real people's lives.

The beauty of dialogue

2008-01-10T21:09:00.000-04:00

As you'll remember from our entries when we were down in Bolivia, Political tensions were often a major factor in our daily lives. Whether it was project delays because people had decided to blockade the roads, not being able to buy food or supplies due to a region-wide strike, or needing to hide out in our house because angry mobs were attacking political opponents in the streets of our little Ascension, there were several instances where were made very aware of the political and social tensions that can sometimes dominate life in Bolivia. Since we left, things seem to have only gotten worse. It all came to a head in late November when MAS (the party that currently has control of the federal government) and their allies retreated to an army barracks to avoid protesters that were blocking access to the normal site of the constitutional assembly and drafted the long-awaited new political constitution in the absence of the main oposition parties. In response to this move, protests in the streets of Sucre (where the constitutional assembly had been based) exploded into full-out riots, leaving 3 dead and hundreds injured from clashes with security forces in what has become known as 'La batalla de Sucre' - the battle of Sucre. Shortly thereafter, President Evo Morales' party, and their allies finalized the constitution in Oruro (having been driven from Sucre), once again, without the main oposition party. The leaders of the four departments in the Autonomist east (where our project is based) denounced the constitution as illegal and illegitimate and drafted their own rival constitutions. This provocative move drew swift condemnation from the central government, who plans to use the East's petroleum and agricultural wealth (which is currently concentrated in the hands of relatively few people) to help alleviate poverty throughout the country. With Evo threatening to use the army to defend national unity, and the opposition east, purported by some to have a well-armed militant wing, refusing to back down, civil war was not seeming too far-fetched in December. Janaki and I were left feeling extremely worried for the safety our co-workers in Ascension, our friends throughout the country, and the future of the country that we've come to consider our home away from home.

Things have, however, begun changing for the better. Evo Morales called a meeting with the leaders of the East earlier this week and they have actually managed to reach a couple of compromises. There is still a long way to go since their respective constitutions are almost mutually exclusive, but at least they are all sitting down at a table and discussing the issues in a civilized manner, rather than hurling insults and threats across the country and inciting riots. Our colleauges in Ascension are breathing a sigh of relief, and so is much of the country. We can only hope that this new, positive, direction sets the tone for Bolivian politics in 2008.
Photo: Evo and government Officials meeting with governors of the 9 regions of Bolivia (including 6 outspoken political rivals) source: http://www.sigloxxi.com/index.php?link=noticias¬iciaid=17106

Newsletter Number 2

2007-12-12T11:43:00.000-04:00

Okay, so a bit of a delay in getting this one out, but here it is...Our second newsletter

Our First Newsletter!

2007-08-01T22:28:00.000-04:00

Here is the link to the First Newsletter we put together for the BCC Water Network. We'll be releasing the next one at the end of this month.

Check it out, and laugh and cry...and maybe donate? Haha..but seriously, let us know if you have any suggestions for improvements.

(thanks for getting the link up for us Kent!)

Bloggin' in Canada, baby! (Strangely, it just doesn't have the same ring to it...)

2007-07-04T17:07:00.000-04:00

Hey all,

For those of you who are still following the development of this blog probably think Trevor and I are no longer talking to each other since I've been m.i.a. for the last few months of posts...not to worry. We're back in Calgary trying to readjust to Canadian life and support the project from here while the work continues in Ascension without us.

So although we're not actually in Bolivia, we're hoping to keep this blog going with project updates and other random thoughts for anyone who's interested...

Lately we've had a chance to open up a bank account for the organization and are researching the best option of trying to become a registered charity (to be able to give out tax reciepts to donors)...if you don't care about tax reciepts and want to donate, we'd love to hear from you!

We've also been doing some voluteer work with CAWST. A few weeks back they had an open house and we were interviewed for an online news site....frankly I think we look like fools in the video, but I think it might provide some insight into the work we were doing in Bolivia, CAWST's role, the filters...etc.: http://www.quantumshift.tv/v/1182903414/

take care all!

The EXTREMELY holy trinity

2007-06-23T00:27:00.000-04:00

In late April we took a welcome break from the frustrations of trying to coordinate with the town authorities to do a little bit of travelling. We were to use the may day long weekend to take a long-awaited trip to the city of Trinidad (whose full name is La Santisma Trinidad, which literally means the very holy trinity).

We were a little nervous about the voyage, having heard that trinidad isn't the most pleasant part of Bolivia, especially given its reputation for open sewers on the sides of its streets. It also almost 300 km north of Ascension, making it quite close to the equator, rather deep in the amazon basin , and giving it a very humid, muggy climate. On the other hand we were excited at the chance to see another part of the country, and to visit Fanny (the mother-in-law of a local pastor who had befriended Janaki and I).

As it turned out, the city was quite pleasant and laid back, the open sewers (just storm sewers, thankfully) didn't smell too bad, and the weather was refreshingly cool. We had a great time with Fanny and she gave us a tour of some of the interesting sites around the city. One of the highlights was seeing the Rio Mamore, one of the major tributaries of the amazon. It was 800 m wide, and in it we saw a river dolphin.

The river was higher than usual, thanks to some serious flooding that occurred in the region earlier this year. As a result of the flooding many people lost their homes, and the road between Trinidad and the rio mamore was lined with refugee camps of people whose homes were still under-water even though the rains that had caused the flooding had stopped a couple of months before.

At times it felt like our trip was one disaster after another, or at least one very stressful situation after another. The weekend in Trinidad was no exception. In this case it was me getting a throat infection. It started as a sore throat, then quickly became a spiking fever. We ended up going the the Trinidad hospital at about 1am because we didn't know what was causing me to have such a high fever... luckily I was feeling better within a couple of days with the help of some antibiotics. In spite of the unplanned visit to another bolivian hospital, the trip to trinidad was a refreshing rest from the pressures of the project.
Photo: Some folks near Trinidad Paddling across what was formally a farmer's field. Note flooded home in background.

Expanding the project

2007-06-10T23:04:00.000-04:00

After our initial rush of the first 9 installations, our priority became expanding the project to include the rest of the Ascension de Guarayos in the most efficient way possible.

We faced 2 major challenges in reaching the rest of the town:
1) Prioritizing which members of the community needed the filters the most - The town has about 2400 families without running water. All of them are at risk to an extent, but some have relatively well-protected wells (more secure, while still under the threat of contamination), while others are drinking water from shallow springs, or streams running through the middle of town (probably much more contaminated).

2) Coordinating a work schedule with the members of the community - With the original pilot project with the old organization, we worked under the philosophy that people needed to contribute their labour to receive a filter, in the hopes that they would value it more, and therefore take better care of it. This wasn't too complicated in the church community where we worked, because there were only 30 families and they all knew our employees. Working with the entire town is, however, another story.

Ascension is divided into 16 neighbourhoods, each with a president in charge of representing its people. We decided that while we got the organization better organized and searched for dependable funding, we should try to install 20 filters in each neighbourhood as a sort of large pilot project. The neighbourhood presidents appeared to be the key to both prioritizing the 20 families with the most urgent need (since they should know the people of their neighbourhood, and therefore, which families need the filters first) and coordinating with the people (since they should know where the citizens of the neighbourhood live and be able to get them to come to meetings).

We decided to have a meeting with the neighbourhood presidents to discuss our strategy for reaching the most needy of Ascension and ask if they'd be willing to help us. Unfortunately, the results of the meeting were not what he had hoped for... a total lack of participation... and no questions. We called a second meeting to discuss a strategy with the presidents of the 6 poorest neighbourhoods of the town, but this time, no one even showed up. Finally we managed to meet with 3 of the neighbourhood presidents. They agreed to cooperate, making these the first three neighbourhoods in which we would work.

As I write this, the Bolivian employees have begun in the to work in the 2nd neighbourhood.

Our experience taught us that we cannot rely soley on neighbourhood presidents... our search for an improved work-plan in the neighbourhoods is ongoing, but we have made progress in the area.

Photo: Trevor with 2 of our Bolivian team members (Ángel and Roberto), waiting outside the El Comité de Vigilancia to have what turned out to be a very unproductive meeting with local authorities.

Back home

2007-06-06T00:27:00.001-04:00

Janaki and I arrived safely in Calgary on May 28th.

The project continues marching on without us... there are now 27 installed filters.

The last month in Bolivia was quite a whirlwind. We actually had far more to write about in the past month than we had in most other months on the trip, but couldn't do so because we were far too busy and, at times, exhausted. However, now that we're back, there should be some posts upcoming... also, when I find the energy I am planning to add a ton of pictures.

Even though we are back in Canada, the work of our organization is set to continue, so we'll probably continue posting project updates once in a while.

chau

Installations

2007-05-15T18:08:00.000-04:00

In the second week of April, after months of preparation and frustration, we finally, finally reached the point where we were ready to install filters. Next came the awkward task of going to the 9 families who had worked with us back in November and December (and thus had technically earned their filter long ago, since our philosophy is that people have to help to make their filter to get one, so that they have more appreciation for it) and trying to explain what had gone wrong.

Luckily, for the most part, they were quite understanding... most of them even volunteered to help us wash the gravel and sand for their filters. A few were a bit frustrated with us, but that is to be expected, I suppose.

We decided to get the 9 installations done as soon as possible, because we were running short on time in this trip, and wanted to expand the project to the entire town before we left the country(as opposed to the church community were we originally started working).

We ended up doing 9 installations in 4 days, which was crazy considering we had never done one before. It was a bit of a mistake, as we ended up needing to rush to keep up to the schedule, and we all ended the week quite exhausted from working 11 hour days...

In the end we got it all done with relatively few problems, while learning a great deal about how to create a reasonable work schedule so that we do not end up rushing the installations and burning us out. Something that will serve the organization well as we try to expand the original project.

We recently completed follow-up visits to the original 9 families, and much to our satisfaction, they are using their filters without any problems, and seem very receptive to the hygiene training that our employees give them.

It finally seems that our work down here is starting to show results.

Photo: Fermina - the proud owner of the first filter that we installed in Bolivia. Only 6.75 months after we arrived in the country! Her family 'only' had to wait another 5 months after they had been told they'd receive the filter by our previous boss.

A bit of an update

2007-05-05T22:19:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the lack of updates for the past 10 weeks or so...

The last 2 months and a bit have been extremely busy, and at times tense... Busy because we´ve just kept on working on the project, and tense thanks to the rather unfortunate and unpleasant dispute that we continue to have with the directors of our former NGO.

Here is basically what we´ve been up to...

New work site - after working in front of a local pastor´s house for nearly 4 months, it became apparent that we were no longer welcome (a new NGO was coming to town and they were going to occupy our space). After about a week of trying to find a suitable worksite to rent, finally got one for free, thanks to a sweet deal with the mayor´s office that came with free transportation for our filters (we have to install the maximum number possible while properly educating the users... sounds like a plan).

CAWST course refresher - In late March, Diana Frost, a CAWST international advisor, came to Camiri, Bolivia (a fairly large town in the south of the department of Santa Cruz) to teach some local NGO´s about the biosand filter. We decided to take advantage of the opportunity to send our (then) employees to the course to make sure that what we were teaching them was correct. Janaki and I also ended up joining the course for the last couple days, and although we couldn´t get away for long enough to really explore the area, it was a nice change in scenery from our regular Ascensión-Santa Cruz stomping ground. We found the course useful, but discouraging at the same time, because it seems that CAWST knows about as much about issues that one may encounter with the new flow rate as we do...

New molds - One thing we learned at the CAWST course, was that the stupid molds that were giving us so much trouble when we worked with the old organization were worse than we had thought... after looking at them Diana informed us that they did not have the correct measurements and that the walls on the filters that they produced were way too thin... part of the reasons our filters always broke...

Even before we knew this we had already started making new ones... a very long process that started with buying large planks of sheet metal in Santa Cruz in early march, transporting them to Ascensión in buses (a story in and of itself) and spending lots of time with welders as they worked with them.... as I write this, they are just finishing up... making it more than 2 months to get 3 molds made...

On the bright side: The two molds we have so far are fantastic! Of 19 filter boxes we have poured 19 filters have worked.... it has been a little less frustrating than our 45% success rate with the other molds.

New employees - After three months of working with us, and going to Camiri to become an expert, Mariano, left the organization to become an illegal motorcycle-taxi driver. I suppose to earn more money...

So... we moved on and hired 2 new employees, both of whom bring a lot of construction experience and enthusiasm to learn. One of whom has lived here his whole life and has worked with other NGOs in the area and thus brings a lot of useful ideas and local knowledge.

Within two weeks of working with these guys, we had solved the flow rate problem (thanks to some good fine sand and a lot of work), and with good, sturdy filter boxes (thanks to 2 new molds).... we were ready to install filters in the homes of Ascensión de Guarayos.

And as I write this we have 14 filters installed (more details to come)....

Photo: The course in Camiri. The woman in the blue shirt by the filter in the middle is Diana Frost, who led the course, and is now one of the BCC Water Network's board members (January, 2008).

Out of the frying pan and into the fire

2007-02-28T20:20:00.000-04:00

Due to some differences of opinion with respect to how funds were spent in the organization, we´re no longer going to be volunteering with CEAGUAC.

The last message sent to us by the founders of the organization was not exactly amicable, so for obvious reasons we´re going to keep details to a minimal.

We do, however, still maintain our commitment to helping the people in Ascensión who lack access to potable water.

We´ll keep you posted on our progress.

Remembering Chris

2007-02-26T17:05:00.000-04:00

I would like to take a moment to reflect on the life of a good friend of mine who passed away three years ago today.

The way in which he made the best of his situation in spite of his many health problems has and will continue to inspire me to overcome any obstacles that I may face (Including but certainly not limited to the ones that we´ve faced here).

Thanks Chris

A little political background

2007-02-16T19:28:00.000-04:00

As we´ve mentioned a few times in this blog, politics is a very important part of daily life in Bolivia. There always seems to be something big happening in the country in support of/ or opposition to the government whether it is blockaded roads, stores shut down in protest, riots (usually on the other side of the country, thankfully), political marches, or hunger strikers in the central plaza. The factors contributing to these actions are generally very complex, but since they have affected us on a few occaisions on this trip, and are so important to understanding Bolivia generally, I am going to do my best to give them a brief explanation.

Many of the current political issues facing Bolivia have their roots in the complex ethnic make-up of the country. Although it was conquered by the Spanish in the early 1500s, they did not succeed in eradicating/assimilating the native population to the extent that they had in many other of their colonies. For this reason, over 60% of Bolivia´s population is of pure indigenous descent, and more than 40% of the population speaks an indigenous language rather than Spanish.

At the times of the Spanish conquest, the rugged Bolivian highlands were a part of the Incan empire and were occupied by the Quechua-speaking Incas, and their predecessors, the Aymara. Both of these groups had sedentary lifestyles and complex civilizations. The lush, tropical lowlands, were occupied by a diverse mixture of hunting/gathering tribes. Although many indigenous people live in the major cities of Bolivia, there are still millions who live in isolated areas and practise a more or less traditional way of life.

When the spanish arrived, they enslaved natives to extract silver from the highlands, and work on agricultural plantations in the lowlands. As is the case in most of Latin America (and according to some North America as well), indigenous people have generally been treated as second-class citizens ever since, with less access to education, clean water, health care, etc. than their counterparts of European or mixed descent.

Finally after almost 500 years of being ruled by viceroys, generals, and presidents of European descent, Bolivians elected an indigenous leader (with well over 50% of the popular vote in a multi-party democratic election), promising to correct age-old injustices, and provide Bolivia´s marganilized citizens a better way of life. Obviously the wealthy elite of the country, especially in the eastern areas where we are currently residing, are quite untrusting of these initiatives.

The project: frustrations, barriers and lessons learned

2007-02-11T18:35:00.000-04:00

I would be lying if I said that this trip to Bolivia has been all fun and games. Our frustration with our experiences here peaked in the past month, when I picked up a parasitic infection on a trip back to Santa Cruz from our project site to battle through another chapter of sorting out our immigration situation (which needless to say, continued to be a bureaucratic nightmare). I recovered from it fine, after an educational visit to a private Bolivian hospital (my illness wasn´t really that bad, but we didn´t know any doctors and the hospital is conveniently located a short walk from our beloved Hotel Aeronáutico) and Janaki and I restarted work again later in the week (our new employees diligently continued in Ascensión without us, they´re good kids).

Our frustrations resurfaced a couple of weeks later when someone snuck into our room in Ascensión and stole the majority of the money that we had with us to pay for project supplies and the wages of our employees (we are getting reimbursed). This was especially inconvenient because we have no way of accessing our bank accounts in Ascensión. We ended up being fine, however, and work with the project has continued as normal.

Which brings us to the project...

Back in October, when we were still building practice filters in Santa Cruz, we thought that the pilot project would be just the beginning.... get it done in a month or two, write up a report for funding organizations about how great everything went, and wait for the real funds to start coming into CEAGUAC to cover future projects... right...

Now, more than 4 months into our trip, and more than 3 months after we first disembarked from the now all-too-familiar 5.5 hour ride on the Trans-Guarayos bus from Santa Cruz to Ascensión, we still haven´t installed the first of our 30 filters.

How can this be?
Well... we have faced, and continue to face 2 major obstacles to installing a filter in someone´s house.

Making filter boxes - we were so excited in Santa Cruz, when we first build a working filter box, but the problems that caused the first ones to break have continued to haunt us. Of the 34 filter boxes we have poured in Bolivia so far, an unimpressive 14 have been successfully demolded without breaking. The problems, we have learned, come from the molds themselves. The concrete gets stuck in grooves and minor-looking imperfections in the molds, causing the filter boxes to break as we try to take the molds off the filters. We have done our best to fix this problem - taking the molds to 3 different welders in Ascensión, and more recently, using metal sand paper and a grinder to try to smooth out the bumps, and now epoxy to try to fill in some of the troublesome grooves. We´ll try to make some more on Monday to test our latest attempt, but so far, our efforts have only brought sporadic success.

Getting the proper flow rate - For the filters to work water needs to flow through them at about 1 L per 60 seconds. If it´s much faster, the filters won´t properly treat the water, and if it´s much slower the users might become impatient and not want to use their filter. To get the right flow rate, the employees and us have spent countless hours preparing media and installing practice filters at our work site. Finally, on about our 12th attempt we reached that illusive flow rate of 1 L per minute...Wonderful! Except that we recently found out that CAWST is now recommending a flow rate of a 1L per 100 seconds to ensure that the filters work at optimal efficiency. This has lead us to have to go hunting around Ascensión for the right sand for the job... a process that is ongoing.

Add to these problems the fact that the beginning of the project was delayed for a month for various reasons (see October and early November blog entries), we lost half of our potential workdays in November to getting a run-around from immigration and the Santa Cruz branch of INTERPOL, and we were rendered inefficient in December by a labour dispute with the organization´s sole paid employee at the time (who is now preparing to start working in Switzerland).... and you start to see why we are in the position that we are in.

But... there is a bright side... our new employees, citizens of Ascensión, are continuing to show a great deal of promise and enthusiasm. We´ve finished training them, so they now know everything we do about household water treatment and the biosand filter, and the general principles of hygiene and sanitation on top of their extensive knowledge of local customs, hygiene practices, sanitation issues, and the health problems that face community members.

We now have 4 minds working through our above-mentioned 2 major problems, instead of just 2, as was the case in December.

From here the goal is to get those filters installed, sometime before we go back to Canada in May, and leave them with the know-how and resources necessary to continue working in other communities in eastern Bolivia, and teach others what they have learned.

Wow! long entry, hey? I hope that makes up for the fact that I haven´t been heard from since November.

Once Upon a Time in the Project

2007-01-12T21:24:00.000-04:00

This here water project has been the cause of many frustrations, panic-stricken nights and at times sadness at the slow progress we’ve made over the last few months. While there were many contributing factors, one in particular was our concern that the work we’d been doing to set up the organization was not going to realistically continue given that we were only really working with one other person here.

Before Christmas this changed when serious disagreements with our one employee led to him no longer continuing with the organization. We spent some of our time in Samaipata developing a new project plan for the next few weeks and interview questions to hire a couple people in the community. All the prep work was worth it because this past week we successfully hired two people to fill the roles of a Filter Technician and a Community Steward.

So far they haven’t let us down. We’ve been so impressed by their excitement for the project and truly enjoy hearing the suggestions they offer us in attacking some of the project’s major problems. There is also some sign that at least one of them will want to continue with the organization in the future and they both seem open to training any new staff that the organization may need to hire.

While there are certainly still many obstacles ahead, we feel like we’re more on track now than we’ve ever been.

Happy B´Day (Yesterday) Trevster!

2007-01-12T21:17:00.000-04:00

In Search of El Fuerte

2007-01-09T20:11:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the lack of blog posts for the last little while. Hope everyone had a great Christmas and that the New Year is treating them well so far.

We headed back to Santa Cruz for Christmas Day and soon after escaped to Samaipata, a sleepy tourist town about 2 hours SW of Santa Cruz. The town itself is pretty unique since it is where Bolivia’s lowlands meet its highlands. This makes for some pretty spectacular landscape. Our appreciation for the Andean ranges started with our drive down there. Our shared taxi driver zipped through the mountains with ease despite his excessive speed and distractions like roaming donkeys, dogs, rock debris and newly established creeks flowing across the road along the way.

A big part of Samaipata’s draw for tourists is El Fuerte, a Pre-Columbian archeological site. It’s been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in particular because of the significant work preserved on a large surface of rock a top of a mountain peak. We were certain that we had to check it out, but thought it would be cool to go on an alternative route to the site that we’d heard about on New Year’s Eve.

Long story short we got lost. And although we managed to see some spectacular views, when we realized that what we presumed to be El Fuerte was still two valleys and a significant peak away, hiking back to Samaipata before a) we ran out of water and b) the sun went down, became our new priority,

Ín the end we ended up having to cut through privately owned forested area to get to what we thought was the main road to Samaipata. Instead, it was a scenic view (not what we were hoping for at this time) to a ridge overlooking the town. From there we hiked down to the bottom of a valley which once again was supposed to lead us to the main highway. One last ridge climbed and we were on our way back just in time for sunset.

So 12 after hours of hiking through more than 30km of rough terrain we arrived in Samaipata, downed water and juice and tried to relax while children lit firecracker after firecracker outside. Overall, it made for a pretty incredible, but strange New Year’s.

We did make it out to El Fuerte a couple of days later. While it was certainly an interesting place, it’s safe to say that it would have had to be pretty darn marvelous to live up to the expectations we had created for it during our long journey to find it.

Photo: a back country valley in the Andean foothills, taken during our search for El Fuerte. Lots of nice scenery, but no tour of pre-columbian ruins that day.

Things are getting serious... Or so they say

2006-11-29T14:32:00.000-04:00

The political situation in our autonomist little corner of Bolivia is getting interesting to say the least. El Presidente de la Republica, (indigenous) Evo Morales, has successfully managed to tweek the law-making process to make it a little easier for his party (Movimiento A Socialismo or MAS) to enact land reforms. This is a touchy issue throughout Latin America, where, generally, a few hundred (mainly white) rich famillies own vast tracts of land while poor peasants are left with next to nothing. Evo has taken it upon himself to try to rectify 500 years of such injustice by redistributing some of the land currently owned by these few families to (mainly indigenous) peasants.

This is making the rich and powerful, who seem to be concentrated in Santa Cruz and neighbouring Tarija, quite outraged. There are people hunger striking in the principal Plaza of Santa Cruz, Tarija is threatening to cut of gas supplies to the rest of the country, and there is talk of a national strike that could bring parts of the country to a halt in the next couple of days. We got a letter from the Canadian consulate warning us to stay away from any protests and are feeling a little bit uneasy about the situation overall.

To make matters worse, most of the ´news´ channels in Santa Cruz help fuel the anti-evo sentiment by providing a very one-sided and rediculously over-dramatic portrayal of the issues (complete with scary music and weird camera angles to emphasize the effect).

The only real alternatives are CNN Español, which has some US-bias, but at least attempts to appear unbiased, and Evo Morales´ good friend Hugo Chavez´s very own Telesur, which runs a nauseatingly redundant series of adds supporting Evo and attacking his opponents in every commercial break.

With this sort of media coverage it is no surprise that the country, or at least this part of it, is becoming very polarized. What will come of the situation remains to be seen.

Back in the Santa Cruz Groove

2006-11-18T22:03:00.000-04:00

After a little over a week of working on the project in Guarayos, we´re back in our home away for home for a few days. We were hoping to have our visa situation taken care of while here, but that was a bust, so we´ll likely have to make a trip back next week before our current visas expire.

Overall it´s been very strange being back. There were certainly times when we were in the town where we felt incredibly far from our routines in the big city. Ascensión is a quaint town where motorbikes dominate the streets (which are mostly unpaved), chickens and dogs are numerous and roam freely, and the bugs are big and plentifuly. We are staying with a local gentleman in a house in the neighbourhood on the outskirts of the town where our project is taking place. Overall, we´ve adjusted quite well to small town life, and the fact that we haven´t been staying in our cozy Santa Cruz hotel anymore. We´ll try to get some pictures eventually to show you what the town is like.

The project has not progressed without problems, but the townsfolk have been really helpful and patient with us. We also have been working successfully with a local pastor to educate the people who will be receiving filters and we are confident that things will work out... we´ll just be there a lot longer than we had originally expected.

Chau Santa Cruz. Hola Ascension!

2006-11-07T12:47:00.000-04:00

So it seems after some delay we will be leaving for Ascension de Guarayos this afternoon to begin the pilot BioSand Filter project.

If we have internet access we´ll definitely keep you posted, if not, then we´ll be back in Santa Cruz in a couple of weeks to update y'all.

Take care and hasta luego!

Pictures!

2006-11-04T18:37:00.000-04:00

So we´ve finally have some pictures up on the web. We´ll do our best to update them when we are able.

You can find them at: http://boliviapics.shutterfly.com

Just hangin´ out...

2006-11-04T18:09:00.000-04:00

Well, not much is new to report lately. Janaki and I remain in Santa Cruz waiting for things to get organized so that we can head out to Ascensión de Guarayos to begin the pilot project. We have been continuing our quest for a visa, and have made some significant progress (100% thanks to Alejandro´s help) but still do not have it. Other than that we have been hanging out in the downtown area loading pictures onto the internet (a very time consuming and frustrating process), practising Spanish, going to movies and a even checking out a yoga class....

We went on a really refreshing stroll today on the outskirts of the city by the River Piraí. The river was absolutely beautiful with a wide sandy floodplain bordered by seemingly untouched forest with a nice view of mountains on the horizon. It is also a popular swimming spot for the locals. We decided to take a walk through some of the settlements on the edge of the city and into the jungle. Unfortunately we have no pictures to show from today, so instead you can enjoy checkin´out this lizard that was chillin´on on the front door of our hotel a couple of days ago.

M.I.A.

2006-10-24T21:18:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the lack of updates for the past week. A busier schedule and head colds have kept us away from internet cafes. Here´s a bit of a recap of last week:

You´re not in Santa Cruz de la Sierra anymore, Dorothy
Last Thursday we took our first official trip out of the city to some neigbouring villages (about 10 km from the city limits)

Germán, Alejandro and the two of us we hoping to find a site for the pilot water filtering project. The first village we checked out had been recommended by the Rotary Club in Santa Cruz as a potential fit. After chatting (i guess we played more of a listening role..) with the Mayor of the Village it sounded like the people there were already treating their water, so the prospects didn´t seem too good. He did recommend some other places to check out, so that was cool and we were able to provide some material on the filters to a couple of different village representatives.

It was just so interesting to feel a second phase of culture shock coming on...in a lot of ways we´d become really accustomed to our downtown Santa Cruz lifestyle, and seeing life in a village packed with roaming animals, dirt roads and all these uncertainties that we hadn´t been exposed to really shook things up a little.

Evo Sighting...close, but not quite
Later on Thursday we had heard that President Evo Morales was in town signing a big natural gas deal with the Argentinean President meaning that Bolivia will provide Argentina with natural gas for the next 20 years. Evo had been around before, so we didn´t get too excited, except that this time there was a rumour that he was having lunch at a restaurant a block away from our hotel!!

There was tons of media waiting outside the restaurant, and we were right there beside them...especially when we saw them flock around a car. Unfortunately we couldn´t get a close look inside, but it looked like some random woman and not the President at all which was highly disappointing. Oh well, I guess there will be other opportunities...

Getting cultured
Friday we had decided to check out the art scene in Santa Cruz...We were really excited at the prospect of seeing the etnofolklórico museum by Park Arenal, maybe catching a Spanish movie and then taking in a live Bolivian band at a local bar. Our plans ended up a little different when the museum was closed due to need of major (and we are talking major) renovations and our inept palnning skills (okay, this one was my fault) meant we had to head to the massive Calgary-style ¨Cine Centre¨ movie theatre rather than the quaint one down the street from us. We were also slightly disappointed when the movie ended up being in English with Spanish subtitles eventhough it was about the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic so everyone has Spanish accents...

The movie itself (called The Feast of the Goat) was both very sad and disturbing, yet showed an interesting perspective on dictatorship overall.

Yvaga Guazu Park
Saturday we ventured to an ecological park in Santa Cruz. There was certainly a healthy dose of skepticism over how a "natural park" within a major city could really be any good, but we were pleasantly surpirised.

The park´s 26 years old and much to Trevor´s excitement had about four hectares of untouched jungle. It also housed a considerable amount of native and non native (but well established) plant species and our tour guide was very thorough in his explanations and we learned a lot eventhough he spoke to us entirely in Spanish.

We witnessed some bats resting in a plant just above our heads (yikes!) and saw a coca plant (i.e. the source of cocaine) up close...not sure it would have been a representative bolivian eco park without one.

Bolivian Road Trip
Sunday would have been an ideal day for a trip to the county except that sitting cramped in the back of a Mitsubishi jeep with a headcold for the 10 hour drive out and back was less than ideal.

Despite this, I could certianly appreciate the lush scenery and the even harsher reality that we were no longer in Santa Cruz de la Sierra any more (please see Trevor´s next blog entry for more details).

When we were actually in Asensión de Guarayos, we were warmly welcomed by a Pastor of the community and his family. The Pastor and his wife seemed genuinely excited about getting involved with the project and even helped us check out sand sources for the filters in the area. So it looks like doing a pilot project here might actually be a fit (fingers crossed).

Immigration...zim boom bah!
This week we´re going to attack the immigration requirements to get our one year visas and we´re going to do it hard. I´m feeling optimistic (which is probably more than a little jaded of me given our recent luck with our dear immigration friends) since Alejandro has offered to help us get the necessary police checks, blood work, notorized legal letters and other doo dads to get the job done. As always, keep you posted.

Agro-business on the Edge of the Amazon

2006-10-24T21:07:00.000-04:00

Sunday´s trip to Asensión de Guarayos was our first lengthy excursion out of the fine city of Santa Cruz, and thus offered a second, and more thorough, chance to see the countryside. I was quite excited for this opportunity because Santa Cruz is just south-west of the Amazon basin, which has captured my imagination for as long as I can remember. We left our hotel at 6:30 in the morning and after overloading Germán´s truck with Alejandro, Hernan and our supplies, headed north-east on a surprisingly well-paved 2 lane highway.
Once clear of the city, we were greeted by the lush green countryside - dense tropical forest interspersed with large clearings. Some of the clearings were being grazed by cattle - their clearly visible ribs attesting to the fact that tropical grasses are not incredibly nutritious. The remainder were mostlplanted with soy. At bend in the road I hoped that we would leave the agricultural area, and get to see some relatively undamaged forest. However, after more than an hour it became apparent that I wasn´t seeing dense tropical forest interespersed with large clearings, but rather enormous fields bordered by remaining patches of sparse tropical forest.

The generally nutrient-poor soil of the amazon basin is not great for agriculture. Usually small patches that have been burnt away can support crops for a few rainy seasons before the soil becomes exhausted. It isn´t the ideal location for enormous soy plantations or cattle ranches. Which, I presume, is why Dow Chemicals has such a strong presence in the area. Billboards advertising their wonder pesticides and fertilizers to soy growers were a very common site on both sides of the highway for most of our drive, giving the impression that this type of agriculture is very chemical-dependant.

I expected the owners of huge soy plantations and cattle ranches like these to be very well off. To my surprise, however, the only dwellings visible near the farms were very basic thatched-roof, mud brick huts. They were sturdy looking and well-maintained, but certainly not extravegant. Whether the people who live in them own the large farms (which I find doubtful), work on the large farms, or try to carve out a meager existance by farming small patches of land next to the large farms remains a mystery to me.

To my relief, after about 2 or 2.5 hours driving (including passing through a town with the amusing name of 4 Cañadas) we finally entered hilly landscape of Guarayos. The transition from Saskatchewan-like flatness to rolling hills with impressive granitic rock outrcrops coincided with a disappearance of the large soy farms, and a significant decrease in the number of cattle ranches. At last, we were able to witness some substantial patches of relatively undisturbed jungle. Located in the midst of this beautiful landscape is our pilot project site, Asensión de Guarayos.

Though I expected that the landscape around Santa Cruz would not exactly be prestine, and realized that rainforests are cleared for agriculture all over the world, seeing it in person brought it home a lot harder than reading about it in a textbook or a Lonely Planet guide. I understand that people have to eat, and that Bolivians need jobs, but I can´t help but believe that there must be a better way to provide these essentials than destroying one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems in the world to grow chemical-soaked soybeans. Not to mention the fact that a large portion of the profits go to a US-based megacorporation and that the vast majority of the beans are used to fatten up farm animals in overseas feedlots rather than feed people directly.

ON a more positive note, there are alternative agricultural practises being used in the Amazon basin. For example, yesterday Janaki and I found some chocolate coated Brazil nuts that were made in La Paz from nuts and cocoa beans that had been harvested from wild plants in the Bolivian Amazon basin. No rainforest clearing necessary and another example of delicious locally produced food.

Hecho en Bolivia - Made in Bolivia

2006-10-17T20:33:00.000-04:00

Something truly impressive about Bolivia is how much of the food sold here is made here. And we´re not just talking in South America (although a lot of products do come from neighbouring Peru, Brazil, Chile and Argentina) but so much of what we´ve been buying is actually made in the city itself.

Here are some examples: breads, cookies, dried soy protein, Fanta (yup, Coke has a bottling plant in the city), peanut butter, chips and a plethura of fresh fruit that are apparently soon to be abundant...and more!

This is definitely not something we´re used to in Calgary where buying from Sunnyside or farmer´s markets is as close to locally grown commercial goods as it gets and even then the products made in Calgary are not usually readily available in mainstream grocery stores.

Project update again

2006-10-16T22:43:00.000-04:00

If all goes well, then in 2 days we will go to a different part of Guarayos to give some information on filters and evaluate the need and level of interest in the area. This could be the location of the pilot project for the Coordillera Water Supply Center. Other options are a town to the south of Santa Cruz de la Sierra called Gutierrez and a village in the neighbouring departmento, Beni. So, we´ll see what happens. We poured 2 more filters today... we´ll see how they worked.

On an unrelatd n0te, he´s a picture of a capybara from the Santa Cruz zoo...

Project Update.... delays

2006-10-13T23:36:00.000-04:00

So... we are not going out to a small village in the province of Guarayos any time soon. They decided that they didn´t want our filters at the moment because they are experiencing water shortages and the initial filter building process requires a significant amount of water.

We are currently searching for a new community that would be interested in our help, and continuing to build filters (weather permitting, since you apparently can´t mix concrete when it is too humid).

Random Observations Around Santa Cruz - Part 2

2006-10-13T23:10:00.000-04:00

- Although we were told that being vegetarian in Bolivia would be a nightmare, in the last 2 days we´ve discovered 4 seperate vegetarian restaurants in the city. This is quite impressive considering that meat appears to be the norm in most (if not all) meals in Santa Cruz. We´ve also been lucky enough to use the kitchen in our hotel, so there´s been some interesting cooking adventures...

- Public transportation are so impressive here! We were a little wary of taking the infamous Micro buses when we first arrived, but our first ride in one proved to be quite the adventure. Each bus has a basic path that it follows, but it stops whenever a request is made, which makes for a bit of a jerky ride. Also, buses run quite regularly...waits are generally around 5 minutes.

- There are very frequent public displays of armed personnel around the city. You don´t have to look far to see guards with pump-action shot guns watching over the neighbourhood family restaurant down the street.

Military police are also a common sight... and today, for some unknown reason, we saw fifteen police with bullet-proof vests and in full riot gear surrounding a peaceful looking school in the middle of the afternoon

Today our hotel is housing about twenty-five uniformed paratroopers for the night. Earlier today, Trevor worried that he might be interrupting some sort of top secret meeting when he attempted to cross the hotel dinning area where many of them were gathered.

No nos gusta la oficina de migración aquí

2006-10-11T18:52:00.000-04:00

So... our trip to Guarayos has been delayed a bit due to the water level in the wells being too low. I am not sure why that delayed our trip, but the fact remains that we are still in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Thinking that it would be our second last day in the city, we decided to take Monday to extend our visas before we left because they would expire while we were out in the countryside. Monday also happened to be little Janaki´s 22nd birthday.

We arrived at immigration on a hot, sunny (like usual) day and were welcomed at the immigration office by a line-up that literally went around the block. Luckily we met up with Alejandro, who guided us to a much shorter line that was meant for foreigners (The long line was for people who are waiting to obtain passports to leave the country).

Long story short, with Alejandro´s help we were able to talk to an immigration official after about a 5 hour wait. After I went to great lengths to explain our situation (she was not very patient with my attempts to understand and speak Spanish) she gave us a list of requirements to obtain a special 30 day visa, which we would need to obtain the yearlong visa that we actually require... I pause here to note that we talked several times to the Bolivian embassy and consulate in Canada and determined that the best course of action would be to purchase a $100 Visa Radicatoria before we left, and then go to immigration in Bolivia to extend it to a 1 year Special Purpose Visa with a letter from our organization stating what we would be doing. Simple enough, right?
Not when the immigration officer ignores the visa that we already had in our passports (even when I said ´look we already have a 30 day visa´) and instead gives a regular 30 day tourist visa.

Needless to say, this was not a good way for us to spend Janaki´s birthday... although we made up for it somewhat by going out for dinner and ridiculously cheap (and good) ice cream in the evening.

Anyway, they kept our passports overnight so that the immigration directors could sign them... we had to wait 4 hours on Tuesday for me to get my passport back, and try to give a letter from Germán to the immigration officer to get our special 30 day visa... she redirected us to a guy named Pablo who spoke some english (who we later found out was some kind of immigration lawyer) who informed us that to get our desired visa we will need to get a notarized letter from a lawyer, a better letter from Germán, a full phyisical from an accredited doctor, blood work, and police checks from two different police agencies. Meanwhile, he found out that the immigration officer had made a mistake in giving us a tourist visa, because it was actually a step back in the process since we already had a Visa Radicatoria. To make matters worse, they kept Janaki´s passport for another night.

so we returned today... got the passport, found out through another guy who spoke some broken english that our new tourist visas had nullified our more useful visa radicatorias, so we will probably have to pay another $100 dollars each to get an equivalent visa, and then move on to try to extend to one year. We will have to try to use Alejandro´s connection to the vice-mayor of the city to try to sort this mess out once we return from the village.

The take home message form all of this is that trying to navigate through government beaurocracy when you are still learning the language and don´t understand the whole process is a pain in the ass!! We have much more respect for what people must have to go through trying to get into Canada after going through this process so far.

Please note: we have some pics up now! Please go to old blog entries to view them.

Filter building Succes!!!!!

2006-10-07T22:15:00.000-04:00

So....... today Hernan (Germán´s son), Alejandro, Janaki and I finally successfully demolded a functioning filter box. It isn´t perfect... a few chips missing on the outside surface, but I think it was good enough that even the folks at CAWST would have kept it. We have yet to fill it with sediment to really complete it (it is just a funky looking concrete box right now), but we did the hardest part, so we are pumped.

In other news... I was walking across a street today when a large truck drove past, dislodging a power line, which fell only a couple of feet behind me. It freaked me out a bit, cuz I don´t know how well insulated the wire was and it just didn´t quite seem safe to have power lines coming down around me.... ah the everyday adventures of Santa Cruz...

In other news, Trevor has a chin

2006-10-07T13:34:00.000-04:00

Yesterday Trevor shaved off his beard.

In the time that I´ve known him he´s always had some sort of goatee (spelling?) or beard which prevented me from seeing his chin in the flesh, so to speak.

So, yup, just wanted to keep you updated....

2006-10-07T13:03:00.000-04:00

Frolics in Filter Construction

So, I´m not going to lie to you, we´re feeling a bit of stress at the moment...Germán, Alejandro, Trevor and I are planning to leave for the village on Wednesday and as of yet all of our practice filters have had some serious issues (leaks, broken filter noses, weak walls...etc.)

On the positive side of things, every faulty filter helps us improve future attempts. Also, seeing Alejandro getting excited about filter construction and the future of the project as a whole is just amazing....this means that progress made in the next months could actually be sustainable where he could be hired on more permanantly and help train others as the organization expands.....exciting.

Later this afternoon we´ll be demolding another filter, so we´ll see how it goes. We´ve come to terms with the fact that we may still need to pratice a bit when we get to Guarayos next week so we´ll take the challenges ahead as they come.

2006-10-07T13:02:00.000-04:00

An update of our impression of poverty in Santa Cruz de la Sierra....

So... on our second day here I was very disturbed by the site of women with children that appeared to be living on the streets. It was especially overwhelming to me that this occurred 3 times within about 2 blocks.... since then, however, we haven´t really seen that level of obviously visible poverty. I haven´t been approached for spare change any more often than is normal in Calgary and haven´t seen an alarming number of people living in the streets overall. Part of the reason that we haven´t seen as many people on the streets since that day is that we haven´t been wandering around the central plaza much since then. So, the initial experience described earlier in this blog was shocking, but has not been repeated to the same extent.

2006-10-05T20:39:00.000-04:00

It has begun....

Yesterday we poured the mould for our first biosand filter in Bolivia.... at long last. It feels really, really good to be building biosand filters rather than just talking about building biosand filters. On the downside, we have had some very frustrating moments caused by language barriers and differening ideas on how a biosand filter should be built. Luckily, we have the help of a man by the name of Alejandro who was born in Honduras but grew up in Canada and spent 10 years working in cement construction in the United States. His proficiency in both Spanish and English, his wealth of knowledge about concrete construction and enthusiasm for the project all make him a very important part of Cordillera Water Supply Center.

Next week we should be heading out to a small village in NW Santa Cruz department to build filters and enducate people on how to use them.

We also need to sort out our visas next week, which we were supposed to do on monday, but couldn´t, apparently because El Presidente, Evo Morales, was having a party there, and there has been a massive backlog ever since.

2006-10-02T23:05:00.000-04:00

Gringos in Bolivia

One of the things that I have enjoyed most about Bolivia so far is how uncommon it is to have people speak english to us. In fact, it generally seems that very few people come around this part of Santa Cruz who don´t speak Spanish as a first language. As a result of this, Janaki and I seem to be a constant source of entertainment as we stumble our way through the spanish necessary to get through day to day life here. People here also don´t seem to acknowledge us as tourists and few have even asked where we are visiting from...
There also seems to be a bit of a tendancy to clump everyone who doesn´t speak spanish as a first language into the category of Gringo (which I had previously thought mostly referred to Americans). For example, one of our taxi drivers told us that he had a brother-in-law from Belgium and then commented on how this relative was ´a gringo like you guys´.
Due to this experience so far, we had a bit of a shock today when we scouted out a ´backpackers hostel´ a few km from the City center. The place was newly renovated, air conditioned, had a swimming pool, a DVD collection, a pool table and was playing Coldplay in the communal areas. Most shocking to us, everyone in the hostel was speaking to eachother in English, and all of the signs in the hostel were in English. I think we actually had mild culture shock and decided we felt more at home in our quaint little room in El Hotel Aeronaútico (which has no english-speaking staff, and one english speaking guest that we have encountered so far) where we may not have an airconditioned room or a kitchen, but we feel as though we are having a more ´typical´ Santa Cruz de la Sierra experience.

2006-10-02T22:43:00.000-04:00

El Zoologico...Petrobras style

A couple of days back we had the pleasure of checking out the Santa Cruz Zoo. It has a reputation of being one of the best zoos in South America, so we were intrigued to say the least.

The highlight for me was watching a sloth lazily making its way around the zoo, free as a bird, inhibited only by its own speed. They´re such interesting animals which has got me thinking what the world must be like through their eyes...

Obviously the conditions for some of the animals were below what you´d expect in most North American zoos with respect to cage size, which was certainly hard to see...however what was even more surprising was the sheer disrespect people had for signs indicating not to feed the animals. We saw children dumping entire bags of colourful cookies into an ostrich pen...yikes!

On top of this we were left with a sour taste in our mouths by the fact that Petrobras (the national oil company of Brazil) sponsors the zoo and is not shy about advertising all the good they´re doing for the people, animals and environment of Bolivia. We think that having more zoo staff on hand to encourage better behaviour towards the animals might be a good place to funnel some extra cash.

2006-10-01T22:23:00.000-04:00

Back it up a little...

It might be best to provide everyone with a little background info as to why exactly we´re in Bolivia...

At the end of April we both took the Biosand Filter (BSF) course through CAWST (Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology...check out www.cawst.org for more details) based in Calgary.

Through our friend Erin Swerdfeger, we met her aunt, Patricia Slind. Patricia is a Bolivian woman now living in Calgary who has also taken the BSF course and volunteered a lot at CAWST. She created the Coordillera Water Supply Centre as an NGO based in Bolivia and focusing on water and sanitation issues in some rural areas of the province of Santa Cruz.

Throughout the summer, Trevor and I have helped with working through some of the logistical aspects of the organization, but finally decided that we could fulfill this need while doing a lot more if we were actually here...so, aqui estamos.

2006-09-29T22:40:00.000-04:00

What the???....

I just read off cbc.ca that Ted Morton believes that, "the evidence is absolutely overwhelming that same-sex marriage is not a basic human right, but rather it's a social experiment"....what the hell is that supposed to mean???

Although I am in favour of same-sex marriage I can see how the man is entitled to his own opinion... but how the heck do you have evidence of any basic human right?!? Is the term not a fluid and abstract concept?

¡No comprendo!

2006-09-29T22:03:00.000-04:00

Some Random observations about the streets of Santa Cruz

1. Roads, especially intersections, are crazy...
I think the streets of Santa cruz de la sierra are proof that anarchy works... at least sometimes...
In the downtown areas where traffic is quite busy, the intersections are generally completely unregulated.. no yields, no stopsigns, no lights... nothing. The rule seems to be that whoever gets to the intersection first gets through first... but with narrow streets it is not easy to tell if someone is coming. So, people just honk their horn as they approach the intersection in the hopes that other vehicles have the time to and are willing to stop. Needless to say I have seen several near accidents where people have slammed on the breaks, or, more often, swerved around a vehicle to get through the intersection. However, amazingly, I haven´t seen anyone actually crash yet, and traffic flows much better than it would with lights or stops... so there you go... the lack of system works. On top of everything else... in the few, randomly dispersed, intersections where traffic lights are present, they are often ignored...
crossing the street as a pedestrian is always a challenge and best done in pairs so that there are two opinions about whether or not the next oncoming car will hit us.

2. In the downtown areas it is normal to see women walking unaccompanied at night... this gives the impression that the streets are quite safe, and is not something i remember seeing often in downtown calgary.

3. the graffiti against morales and leftists in general seems to get harsher further from downtown (in quasi-residential areas) e.g. - ´death to the communists´

in other news:
It looks like we will be in this fair city for about another 10 days before we leave to the village... much of that time will be spent preparing ourselves for the task at hand.

2006-09-27T21:09:00.000-04:00

Last night we had the pleasure of going back to the Expo Cruz...frankly, I think we were both feeling a little uneasy about it given some of the things we´d seen the first time around. To recap, here´s some highlights of the disturbing things the event had to offer over the two days:

- A young Mestizo man wearing a clean, nice-looking shirt with a big swastika on the shoulder (possibly one person seen on two seperate occasions, or even more disturbing is that this is becoming a trend...weird)

- Potential genetically modified cows...you can´t get over that easily. Maybe it´s the hindu in me, but their eyes just looked so sad..

- This fair might has well have been called ¨autonomists rejoice¨cause everywhere we looked there were signs, stickers, even people signing a wall in a makeshift bar in support of independence from La Paz. It´s sometimes a little hard to postpone judgement since most of the same arguments (mostly economic) have been used by Albertans in favour of seperation...although we did find that it is in fact autonomy and not seperation that most people here are after

- True, sex sells, but its excessive use at the fair made us uncomfortable. For example, does the Santa Cruz Zoo really need women wearing pleather bikinis in order to draw in interest?? Don´t the llamas and capybaras speak for themselves???

Despite all the negative criticsms, there were definitely some positives. Most of all it was great to spend some time chatting (well, i did my best...) with German and Elva. They truly are very genuine people and have been so hospitable and wonderful to us! Although, it was a little awkward when we discovered that they fall into the autonomist camp and aren´t Evo Morales´biggest fan....we´ll have to see how this unfolds.

2006-09-27T20:47:00.000-04:00

This is from our second day here... so two days ago now. It is a part of an email to my parents but i wanted to share it with more than just them... it is a bit long, but hopefully not too boring.

The trip was ok in the plane... we couldn´t sleep much from miami to la paz.... it was amazing seeing the andes from the air as the sun was rising. it was hard finding vegetarian food in miami airport. Seeing the Andes from the air as the sun was rising was amazing and probably not something I will ever forget. I just thought ´wow I am really in (or at least over) south America!!!!´

So.... soo much to tell you it seems... Patricia´s parents (Elva and Germán) are great... they have been really nice to us and they took us to expo cruz ( a bolivian and hypercommercionalized version of the stampede, but minus the rides as far as i could tell). There were these highly disturbing humpbacked cows there with very short hair that were about the size of a hippopotamus ( some weighed 1250 kg or more!!) There were all tied up on display and we thought they looked sad. i don´t know if they were genetically modified or just their feed was, but there was lots of agribusiness advertising around them and the word ´genetico´ was very prominent....

Santa cruz is a very nice city with, for the most part from what we´ve seen, clean streets and a very safe feel overall. It reminds me a lot of Playa del Carmen, mexico except much less touristy (very, very few people speak english) oh, and it is far from the caribean... although, it should be noted, we mostly have been downtown.

We had a positive experience with a street vendor from the highlands yesterday when we (eventually) bought a small wallet from him while we were chillin´ in the central plaza. He then took a break on the bench beside us and played an andean flute for a while before starting a conversation with us about where we are from, where he is from, and how we like Bolivia etc... we shared some bread that Janaki and I had just purchased from a bakery (2 croissants and a HUGE loaf of whole wheat bread for about 1 cdn dollar), and then he was off to continue his work.

Another note about Santa Cruz is that there is no secret that Evo Morales is not liked here..... there are many examples of grafiti saying Evo: Dictator or Evo: hijo de pierra (son of a bitch). There are also lots of ´Autonomia Si´ banners and a party called Podemos that appears to be seperatist. It is like alberta on steroids in that way: lots of mineral wealth, no tolerance for a national government who dares to ask them to share with the rest of the country. However, i have only been here for a few days and will eventually make an effort to get the opinions of some of the people from santa cruz on the situation. maybe it isn´t quite so simple??

I think the reality of Bolivia set in when we rounded a corner to be confronted with a young woman in beautiful hand-woven indigenous clothing and a baby on her back politely asking for our spare change. We gave $1 US to a little girl with her (her daughter? i think this woman was younger than me). Within a couple of blocks the story repeated itself only a more middle-aged woman with even younger children, and then a second group only a few meters away... they appear to be indigenous folks from the highlands here to try to find a better life in the richest city in the country... instead they get stepped over in the streets by the Cruceños (citizens of Santa Cruz) as they go about their daily affairs...

What is really bugging me is the contrast between the poverty stricken indigenas (indigenous people) in the streets, and the arrogant ´our wealth we don´t have to share it´ attitude of the Santa Cruz autonomy movement.

Janaki and I have decided that we will give change to people here because they really seem to be on the brink... we are going to budget for a few dollars a day... and when we see young families on the street we are going to give the mothers $1 USD or 10 bolivianos becuase it is at least something, enough to get a reasonable amount of food here if nothing else. I know we can´t help everyone but I want to do something... at least to let people know we acknowledge them as human and have empathy for their situation even though they are indigenous.

anyway, i don´t think that anything could have prepared me for that experience, even though it is to be expected in a developing country, of course.

Bloggin in Bolivia, baby!

2006-09-26T16:39:00.000-04:00

So, the peer pressure was too much...here it is, our blog. Hopefully we can try to keep it updated with progress on the water project as well as our insights from the streets of Santa Cruz and from wherever else circumstance takes us...