"The Margaret McNamara Memorial Fund (MMMF) is offering scholarship funds to women from developing countries currently studying in the United States or Canada. The MMMF awards grants of approximetly US$12,000 each; grants are not renewable. Every year, the MMMF also invites the recipients to Washington DC to participate in a three day Awards Program organized in their honour. Deadline for applications: February 18, 2010."
so i will be leaving for madidi this wednesday, taking a 16 hour bus trip from la paz to rurrenabaque. i will do one month of volunteer work (translating for tourists and doing environmental work - reforestation, reintroduction of fish in lakes, figuring out what to do with a lake that has become eutrophic, monitoring the number of macrofauna that i see in my hiking trips through the forest, and perhaps dealing with the occasional illegal loggers…)
it’s going to be really fun, and i think at the end of one month i will be tempted to extend the work for another month…. but my visa expires on the 12th of may (and i have my tickets to return on that day). i could get a visa extension, but it’s a hassle to go through that process… i will see. there is also the risk that the longer that i stay, the more likely i will get some tropical disease. i talked to an ex-volunteer today (who just arrived from the ohio last night, and who will now be working for at least 2 years a madidi b/c she loved it so much) about her experiences, and she did say that she got dengue fever… she said that it took her about a month to fully recuperate from the fever, but actually it was not so bad. whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger… hummm.
i will be working with some other volunteers along with rosa maria ruiz…. the woman who made it all happen…. she worked incessantly to establish the national park. she is an amazing woman with an amazing history. there is a national geographic article (march 2000 issue) on the whole story. you can see some pictures here: (rosa maria is in the 6th picture)
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0003/madidi/gallery01.html
and here is some more info on her and on the forest:
http://proxied.changemakers.net/studio/99february/ruiz/rosa1.cfm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madidi
until soon,
cheers!
-andrea
sorry it took me a while to write something, but i never got around to it…. goodness, life never stops…
life is crazy here (was it any less crazy in seattle?). just always things to be done, busy, busy… rarely appears the the hour in which i have to do absolutely nothing and i can contemplate the tranquilty of things. after the trip to yanayo i hung out with several of my aunts in cochabamba, staying in their respective houses. they have absolutely gorgeous houses and properties…. legacy of their wealthy german ancestory. one place was fanstasitic, with an entire lake and a forest and a soccer field and swimming pool in the place. i had my own little house to stay in. it felt like a hotel or something. the property connected with other yards and then there were intermittant houses, hidden behind a layer of tropical vegetation… the houses belonged to the other family members. and the entire property was guarded by nine german shepards. imagine this place… and every morning i would do yoga with my aunt, who was actually the yoga teacher. she would give classes every day at 9am to a group of older ladies. i was the only one under 60, haha… but it was fun nonetheless
after being in cochabamba for 4 days, i returned to la paz, and since then i have been reading books, reading bolivian forestry stuff, doing more reading, attending formal social events at USAID (i came out in the newspaper with the director of USAID who is leaving this year to go to afghanistan), searching for jobs and volunteer work in the US and bolivia, trying to get my bolivian citizenship, visiting family and more family, visiting more cousins and distant relatives, going out with family friends, running into family friends, taking driving lessons (i figure that if i can learn to drive a stick shift in bolivia, i can drive anywhere in this world), trying to get my yellow fever vaccination (which expires this year), climbing up part way the mountain of huayna potosi, traveling to the salar de uyuni (pics at end of post), going on a bike right on “the death road”, and preparing myself to do 2 months volunteer work in the madidi national park (the jungle part of bolivia). i will only have radio communication from there, and i must not wear any bright clothes (red, or whatever) in case i look appetizing to the jaguars… ehrm.
seriously, i have more family here than i ever dreamed of. and with a huge family comes tricky relationships and scandolus things… so i learned that some handsome uncle of mine was married to an ex miss bolivia for about 15 years, but apparently ex miss bolivia is the bitch from hell who had been cheating on him with another guy for 5 years. and this other guy was the husband of a very rich woman who owns the best jewerly shops in bolivia and even has some stuff in miami. in any case, my uncle has nice house in la paz, and in order to get some income (because his ex pretty much took all of his money), decided to rent it out to the french embassy. well, ex miss bolivia called the house everyday, being absolutely rude and abnoxious, so that the french folks who were living there finally had to leave because of her harassment. so, to help out my uncle a little bit, my my and i helped him move back into his house, transporting funiture and what not from one place to another.
and so there are more stories like this one, where some aunt is married to the former mexican president, and some scandolus things happened. and my grandfather was putting up a scadal in cochabamba. i didn´t go visit him because of family issues. you know… now i am thinking twice about maybe, perhaps, wanting a big family. i think i´ll just forget about having kids.
life is good, life is crazy. it is definately an adventure……
the bug bites are pretty much gone now. just some scars, maybe. dunno. hopefully i won´t have any real marks cuz they look… not so pretty. hummm.
the mountain bike trip to coroico on the road of death was fun, an adventure, though actually quite scary at times. i was feeling nervous after there was a motorcycle accident. i did not actually see the accident because it was sooooo foggy. but what happened was that there was a german woman who was driving her motorbike downhilll as a truck passed her. the truck caused her to wobble on the bike, and she lost control, falling off the side of the road to a ditch (on the upslope of the road, not toward the super cliff). there was a cement drainage way that she must have falling awkardly into, breaking her back and neck. she could not move her feet, though she could move hands. so one of our group´s support vehicle had to drive her back to la paz so that she could get professional medical attention. and then later on the 5 hour bike trip, during which it was raining about 75 percent of the time, one of out group members was going to fast, slipped around a wet corner on the dirt part, and hit the ground or maybe the rock on the upslope side of the road in such a way that he broke his collar bone. he was the guy right in front of me. again, i did not actually see him fall, because it was sooooo foggy, but when i came up to him, he was on his side, just grunting sounds for about a minute. i was imaging the worst after the german woman´s motorcycle accident. i guess everyone else was too, because we huddled around him tell him not to move, in case it was a spinal injury. breath deeply, it will be alright. we waited for the guide to come up hill again (another guide called the main guide by radio communication). about 5 tense minutes went by. or maybe 10 minutes. i don´t know. the fallen fellow began to get over the shock enough to tell us that it was his shoulder that was hurting him bad. he ended up rolling himself over to get the pressure off of that shoulder. i thought it was a dislocated shoulder. you could see a definate swelling in his left shoulder. he was complaining that there was not enough circulation going through his arm, that it was getting cold. i was thinking that the dislocation might be pinching off his veins or something. finally the main guide came, and he told the small group of us around him to continue down the hill, and leave the situation up to him. 20 minutes later, the guide came down the road, with the injured fellow in the bus behind him, cursing the good lot everytime the bus hit a bump. it was diagnosed as a broken collar bone. i am now thinking about taking some serious first aid class. something really useful, because the course that i took to go to alaska doesn´t really show you much…. CPR and that is about it. i felt a bit useless, just looking at the guy, wondering what the hell to do, waiting for the real help to come. besides, what if somehting else happens like this… it probably will knowing that i do crazy adventure things. maybe i can take a class here? probably is cheaper, though i don´t know the quality of things. seriously… for 100 USD i can learn how to drive the manual transimission car. in the US it probably cost sooo much more. though i don´t honestly know how much.
looks like that i will not be able to get my bolivian nationality anytime soon… i have to go back to the US, get an official copy of my birth certificate in both english and spanish, have it legalized and something else, come back down to bolivia, and go through a who other process down here. i will leave it for another time….
huayna potosi
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2245563&l=fede6&id=10720400
potosi and salar de uyuni part 1
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2247992&l=6ed0c&id=10720400
potosi and salar de uyuni part 2
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2247993&l=fdec5&id=10720400
biking “el camino de la muerte” - the death road
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2251180&l=b700c&id=10720400
it was two weeks long, and i can´t remember what we did each day. i didn´t write down antything in my journal. i should have, i guess, but i didn´t really have time or energy… each night i was pretty tired, and didn´t feel like reading writing anything even though i brought many books and notebooks.
the first day getting to yanayo was tough, as i have already explained in the earlier post. super long day of driving. and we were too tired to set up our tents, so we slept at german´s house. the next morning i awoke with a bunch of bites on my legs, just under my socks. i thought these were flea bites, but now i think it´s something else… i´ve had them for the full two weeks, and they spread throughout my body. it´s an allergic reaction, perhaps, to the “mara” plant, as german suggested. i´m trying to wait it out… trying to let it pass on it´s own, but if nothing happens in the next week, i suppose i should go to the doctor. i wonder if it could be something like chickenpox or whatever… though i already had chicken pox as a kid…
the first week in yanayo was pretty hectic. jeff and i surveyed the road from yanayo to tuquisa for the first could of days, which were scorching hot. we got sunburned…. i burnt my ears pretty badly, and now they are peeley (if that´s a word) and blistery. nonetheless, it was really nice to be able to walk around outside and see the spectacular mountain views. everything was green because it was the rainy season… it almost looked tropical, with the lush vegetation covering the landscape. and yet you would see the cactus around everywhere, reminding you that this is actually a semi-arid place, where the hills would turn dusty and brown in the dry season.
jeff and i had a difficult time figuring out the distance from yanayo grande to tuquisa - we really didn´t have topo maps or any good guidance as to the length of that section of the road. later on we found that it was 7 kilometers. but, by using the GPS, we figured that we had done about half of the road or just a little less during the first two days of work.
most of the road seemed “fixable”. the truth was soil that the road was build on was very unstable. it´s very crumbly stuff. but with the right measures and engineering, you could prevent a lot of erosion. drainage ditches, dry walls, gabions, and even some cobble stoning could help most of the road. but wherever there was a major river crossing, things seemed a bit daunting. the whole road was falling apart basically. some parts have a 120 ft fault going down the middle of the road, lengthwise… the whole slope/side of the road could slide down at any moment.
while jeff and i were doing the road, donee and susan occupied themselves with meeting, politics, with interviews/questionaires, spriometery tests, and stove fixing. busy, busy…
the meetings were about trying to coordinate work with the communities/villages, the government (represented by the mayor (alcalde)), EWB, and other players. meetings were often long and inconclusive, but they were necessary to try to get things moving along. i had the opportunity to sit in at a couple of meetings. they ones that i had attented were held at the local school building. people from the village were called in by several blows of a goat horn. an hour or two later, enough people gathered at the school to begin the meeting. the men gathered around in the circle. the women sat off to the side… they didn´t really participate in the discussion, they just listened in. the theme of the day were written on the chalkboard.
interviews
that they had for the communities of yanayo grande, yanayo chico, and cueva pata. there were tons of questions in spanish, so getting through each person took a long time. it took even longer because we need a spanish-quechua translator to help us communicate with the locals, most of whom did not really speak much spanish at all. usually the men would know more spanish than the women because the men would sometimes go to the big cities to sell their crops or produce, so they would need to know spanish. the women on the other had would mostly stay home.
spriometry and lungs
stoves
plastiforte - irrigation and water in bolivia
coming back - food, cloves, coca
lunar eclipse and thunderstorms
working on the road again - tuiquisa to the ”highway”
rural life, food, conditions, camping, soups, potatoes, rice, tea.
goat meal - last supper
caught in the canyon, road to taconi
ride out of yanayo - leaving a day early, piling rocks, chat with guido.
this post won´t be very long, i think, because the keyboard that i use in the hotel sucks… yet i have so much to say.
susan, donee, jeff and myself left to cochabamba (cbb) last monday, despite the threat of transportation stops. we looked on the tv for news, and they had canceled them that day. we were lucky…. we later found out that they held the transportation stops on thursday and friday. we could see the remants of the blockages as we drove into cbb this saturday the 23.
so, anyway, the drive to yanayo was super long. we woke up early, around 6am, and we did not arrive in yanayo until 2am. we had taken the first half of the day to buy some food and equipment. we traveled on the main highway between cbb and potosi. but this main highway is a sketchy dirt road, far from the paved freeways of the US. we were able to make most of the way to yanayo, but about 2 km from the village, the road became impassable. we parked the car on the road, and carried our bags with essential things into the village. we later found out that the road from acacio (another village) to yanayo was passable, so we left our bags in the village and walked back to the car. we back tracked our route, and by the time we got to acacio it was 10pm. we went to german´s house (the mayor of yanayo, who was at the time staying in a little room in acacio). we picked him up, along with another fellow from yanayo called guido. both guido and german are fluent in quecha and spanish, which is very useful to us when we communicate to the rest of the mainly quechua speaking villagers. so we picked up german and guido, and drove to again to yanayo on a different route. we also picked up a woman and her two kids along the roadside. they ended up sitting in the back of the car, on top of all our food and equiment, squishing the bananas, tomatoes, and other things…
we drove in the dark. i had a headache. i was dehydrated. i was tired. the road was bumpy as hell. it was narrow in places. huge holes and rockfalls. we couldn´t really tell how bad the road was because it was dark, but in the daylight the really bad condition of the road was evident. i was feeling sick. it was rough on all of us. susan did a really good job driving on the road despite the exhaustion.
we slept in german´s house that night because we were too tired to set up our tents. that night i got a flea, and ever since then i´ve had a massive number of bites all over me. they itch like crazy… and i can´t tell if i´m getting new bites, or if they are the same old ones. i´m keeping on eye out on them incase they are anything weird, because i don´t want to get biten by the vinchuca (the kissing bug) and get chagas disease and then die at the age of 40 of intestinal problems.
then i don´t remember to clearly what happened the next day… time has been one continuum (if that´s a word) since then.
i don´t have time to write more. but i will write again when i can. tomorrow brian and i will leave to yanayo again. hopefully it won´t rain and the road will hold up. the way coming here was pretty bad… it took us 8 hours to drive 150 km, and there were rock falls and mudslides. they also say that there will be a transpòrtation stop tomorrow…
hopè all is well with everone…
andrea
yesterday i was still in la paz. i didn’t really do much traveling. in fact, i pretty much just stayed in the hotel, trying to research and read as much as i could about bolivia on the internet. i spent several hours surfing the web, trying to see if i could find an organization i could volunteer with in the departments of el beni, el pando, santa cruz, or cochabamba… the places that have been hit by the flooding. but i couldn’t find anything that said “come join us! we need your help”. i just found websites where you could donate your money to help out. and i also found out about what specific organizations are doing - donating food, etc - but nothing about recruiting volunteers. i was frusterated i couldn’t find anything…. so anyway, later in the evening my dad an i went out to dinner, and in the restaurant we ran into one of my dad’s co-workers in usaid. we chated a bit, and i told her what i was doing with engineers without boarders (ewb). she then mentioned something about how she had talked to someone earlier that week who was looking volunteer work in bolivia. and that she can hook them up with opportunities in the flood emergency areas of bolivia. hummm. i kept thinking about how i couldn’t find anything on the internet, wasting like 7 hours, and now this woman knows everything that i want to know. she even invited my dad and me to dinner to talk about career opportunities for me… ha!
today i traveled to cochabamba (cbb) by bus. orginally, the ewb group was supposed to arrive in la paz bolivia at 6.30am today. so i went (with my dad, who has been very helpful in coordinating some ewb logistics) to the airport to see if i could greet them, and travel by bus with them to cbb. but, we learned that the plane was to arrive at 8.30pm because the plane had engine problems…. after one hour into the flight, the plane had to turn back to miami. throughout this whole week american airlines to la paz bolivia has been arriving late for one reason or another. there was also an engine problem sometime last week as well.
so i took a bus to cbb at 7.30am by myself. the trip took 7 hours, and it was not bad at all. i very much enjoyed looking at the scenery, seeing the people, thinking deep thoughts about poverty, socialism, evo morales, natural gas, water shortages in the country and flooding in other part of the country, the fulbright scholar fiasco and spying on venezuelan and cuban doctors, and che (and about you nicole, after you metioned the motorcyle diaries :-P). i keep seeing the murals painted with socialistic ideals - strength in unity, military service, a muscular arm painted on the wall carrying a torch symbolizing power and progress by working together. like in many countries, it is required that the males go through 1 year of military service.
i think it would be great if both men and women were required to do one year of service, but not necesarily military. it would be a way for people to really feel a part of the greater social network. get rid of individualism and selfishness for a while - realize that you live in a country, and you are part of that greater organism. make real change as an organized force. i’m not sure if i’m expressing myself well, but what i’m trying to get at is how much power there is in an organized group of people working together, with the same heart and mindset. watch the documentary “un poquito de tanta verdad”. watch how people mobilize themselves, watch how they work together for a cause. i think i am socialist at heart… a moderate socialist perhaps?
and now i am in cbb at my great aunt’s (tia vigi) house. i think that is what she is in relation to me…. she is my grandmother’s (from my mom’s side) first cousin. i can never get the geneology straight. i got a call from my dad and he said that the airplane with the ewb group is now due to arrive at 10.30pm. ok. so that means that the group will get here in cbb tomorrow, sunday. we better hurry… we need to buy supplies and food for 2 weeks. tia vigi said that on monday there will be a “paro”or a strike of public transportation (buses, taxis, trufis, minibuses, car rentals), so the roads will be blocked, and we probably won’t be able to get out of ccb. the ewb plan was to rent a car and drive 6 hours, or 100km as the crow flies, to yanayo. so we better rent the car and leave tomorrow, sunday. but the again, susan, the ewb coordinator says that part of the road is impassable to cars (from the rains maybe?). so we will have to get out in a town before yanayo and walk 13km. but that would be a very difficult job when carrying 2 weeks worth of food, so we will probably hire porters to help us carry the food. ha! now talk about a breathful of issues…. this is going to be interesting…
today was my second day here in la paz.
the altitude does keep my walking pace slow, and i am careful not to push myself. i can feel my heart beat heavily while going up stairs…. i did take a long walk today, nonetheless, walking through the city district of calacoto, through obrajes, all the way to the center, to a street known as “el prado”. it was about a 2 hour walk, going up hill… perhaps 5 or 6 miles.
at the end of the walk i sat on the steps the san francisco church, and talked to some shoe shine boys for about 30 mins or so. or maybe even an hour? i wasn’t really keeping track of time. one boy was about 9 and the other two about 17 and 20. of course they approached me with the intent of shining my shoes, but in the end they shined them for free, as i chatted with them about anything. they were curious about life as a white person in the US, or a white person in general. when they learned that my mother is/was bolivian, they labeled me as a white mestiza. they told me about their life… how one guy doesn’t know who his parents are. no brothers. no sisters. what life is like in poverty. we talked about politics, and i asked them about what they thought of the current president. they were surprisingly knowledgeable about life… about world events, about US politics… we got along well. it’s nice to see how human we all are… how we can enjoy each other’s company despite being of completely different backgrounds. i wondered what the other people around us thought as i, a rich white american, socialized with three boys with stained and unwashed hands who smelled of turpentine (from the shoe shine polish) and who hadn’t yet eaten that day. i thought of princess diana… how people liked her for seeing how human we all are. though i can’t say i can compare to her in the way of leadership and heroic deeds….
after a while i gave hints that i would leave, and they began to give hints if i could help them out… it’s only expected… a little food, a little something. i didn’t quite want to give them money, nor invite them out to lunch or something, haha. but i did want to give them something… i had made friends with them, and i couldn’t leave just like that… so i gave them a ring that i was wearing…. a silver and gold one. it wasn’t something very expensive in my eyes, but they could do as they wished with it… sell it for money, or keep it as a keepsake. money would have probably been more useful to them… but whatever. the guy joked that this was a token of my marriage to him, and he would find me in the US to stop my wedding.. 
just to say i made it safely to la paz, bolivia. skies are blue. it’s sunny and warm… far from the torrential rains that are/were making the new the last couple of months. i believe that there is still rain in the north of bolivia, in the department of beni… that’s where the floods caused most of the damage.
it’s so nice to be back in la paz… really quite scenic with the multicolored hills surrounding the city and houses. though it’s poor, the conditions seem to be a lot better than what i saw in bosnia…. at least so it seems. i suppose i can tell you more after a spend a week traveling around
that’s all for now… i won’t bore you with the details of my long and boring flight
