quick update

We swear in as volunteers in two hours and Anna just got elected to be the represenative for our group and will be on VAC (volunteer action committee). So proud, shes perfect for the role. On another note it is necessary for me to stay in cochabamba for another two weeks of language training, not happy about it but it will be good for my language skills so I am accepting it, not worried about Anna traveling alone because she will be with a big group of people and there is volunteer in our site that is a great guy, and Okinawa is a safe site. we will write more soon with pictures from the swear in and the costume party afterwards! Chao

Just when you think you’ve gotten used to things . . .

We’ve nearly made it through the eleven weeks of Peace Corps training. These last two and half months have entailed sitting through forty hours of class every week, trying our hands at a variety of sanitation and water projects and mastering spinach. We’ve traveled through the vast plains of the altiplano, down into the green, green jungles of the Amazon basin, and through the rolling hills of the Andes’ valleys. We’ve lived with an amazing Bolivian family who share their meals and laughs and safe, welcoming home with us. We’ve found some incredible friends within our training group, spent countless hours in each others’ company, and have gotten used to being packed in eight to a car. We’ve missed family and friends and familiar things back home. And we’ve found things here to replace the numb feeling of homesickness.

It has been a time of reflection, absorption, and adjustment. I’m just about accustomed to the schedule, the life, the food, the faces, the language, the dog-filled neighborhood, and, for sure, the good company of the friends we’ve made here in Cochabamba. Just in time for another change. In a week we’ll be heading to Okinawa, Bolivia where we’ll make our home and do the good work we came to do for the next two years. Last night I was talking to my host mama about how hard it is to leave the things you’ve gotten used to, and she said, ‘yeah, imagine how it will feel in two years when you have to go back home.’

Third world luxury

Hello sloth in the tree.

In our visit to Okinawa last week I left with an eerie sense that it might be a little too posh for comfort. We will have a four room house to ourselves, complete with a flush toilet, shower (no hot water, but it’s generally 95 outside and humid as roasted peanuts), and water that runs 24 hours a day. And get this, you can drink it straight from the tap (yee who have been to Latin America knows how extraordinary this is). All the fruits and veggies, socks and undies, coffee and milk, and other basic things we’ll need are available in one of the many small stores around town. There’s a cute, clean park in the central plaza, a well organized water co-op we’ll work with, three good schools, sunny skies (except during rainy season when our house will likely flood), a public pool, cell phone coverage, a beautiful baseball diamond, and a competitive round of croquet at four every afternoon. This wasn’t quite what I had in mind when we signed up for two years of service in a developing country.

Some of our good friends will be living up in the altiplano, which is cold and barren and beautiful and dry and practically devoid of life outside of the small towns that dot the vast landscape. In the stores there you’ll find beer, toilet paper (on a good month), and rice. It’s a four hour bus ride to the nearest vegetable (remove any thoughts of traveling on a greyhound, it ain’t a cushy ride). Some will have running water, some will have water on Mondays and Thursdays from four to six in the afternoon (but don’t count on it), some will have electricity, some will be reading by candlelight, some will bathe in buckets, one has a mile long walk to the nearest toilet. That’s more like it.

I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky, but I feel like we got a site that someone else would die for. Despite the rugged image it has, the Peace Corps draws a surprising number of preppies, snappy dressers, and those who depend on hairdryers. The picture I had more in mind was of me and Tom deep in the jungle or high in the altiplano, shaggy haired and dirty, eating potatoes straight from the fire and sharing some local moonshine with our neighbor inside his hut. Looks like we’ll have to settle for the deluxe side of the developing world. I guess when we’re done with the Peace Corps we can seek out a more rustic life.

Okinawa's baseball fields.

Family of four on a motorcycle in Okinawa. Don't judge, it's totally normal.

Welcome to the Jungle

Holy Japanese town in the middle of Bolivia! Who knew? Okinawa is beautiful (sort of, if you use your imagination), the people are friendly, the palm trees are green, and the streets are lined with trash and waste water. There is no short supply of work for us to do there. This week we spent a few days getting to know the town where we´ll spend out next two years, tagging along with Rudy, Peace Corps Volunteer man of the year. He has left some big shoes to fill, having constructed fifty ecological bathrooms for families around town, twenty some gray water systems, and also did the ground work for a municipality wide recycling program. Still, there is plenty left for us to do, and when we move to Okinawa in three weeks, we´ll start the process of talking to town leaders, families, womens´groups, youth groups, etc to find out what kind of projects will be most beneficial and where we should direct our energy.

We´ll put some pictures up when we get back to our laptop and flashcard in Cochabamba. For now, party on. We´re soon to be bonafide volunteers, just three weeks left of training, and then we´ll be set free to do the good work we came to do.

Headed to Okinawa, Bolivia

Alright folks two and half more weeks of training and then Anna and I are headed to Okinawa, Bolivia for the next two years. Here’s a bit of information I received from the Peace Corps about Okinawa, Bolivia:
The area has the typical Santa Cruz climate: hot and humid with occasional surazos (these are south winds that originate in Antarctica and are extremely cold) coming through bringing the temperature way down. The terrain is flat and very green, especially in the rainy season (February and March). Flooding is common during the rainy season. Tropical fruits, such as mangos, guayabas (don’t have a clue), and tangerines are available most of the year. Due to the easy accessibility, Okinawa has a steady supply of staples (fruits, veggies, meats, and diary products). Every Tuesday there is a feria (fancy word for farmers market) where products from all around are brought to the market, the nearby river provides surubi (picture a 400lbs catfish) to Okinawa on a daily basis.
Okinawa (Alt. 350m) is a Japanese rice-growing colony found northeast of Montero. It is comprised of Japanese immigrants who arrived after WWII. The expropriation of farmland by the U.S. military, who occupied Okinawa, Japan for 27 years, led to 3,200 Okinawans emigrating to Bolivia in the ten years from 1954 to 1964. The Okinawans received 50 hectares each from the Bolivian government for cultivating the then harsh lowlands. Today only ¼ of the original settlers remain in Okinawa. Once the Japanese established their farm lands Bolivians came in search for work. Nowadays there exists a deep divide between the Bolivians and Japanese who still live in Okinawa. The Japanese have their own schools and are not very integrated with the Bolivians who, by far, are the majority of the population. The general trend is for the Bolivian to be the worker, while the Japanese is the land owner. About 60% of Bolivians living in Okinawa work for the Japanese, but in total everyone in the community depends on agricultural activities. Soy, rive, sorghum, and wheat are some of the main crops and the primary livestock are cattle and pigs.
Most of the two paragraphs above is information the Peace Corps has given us. It sounds as though there is quite a racial divide in the region, I hope later to report that this is not the case.
It sounds as though Anna and I will be living in a four room house with its own shower, private bathroom (big deal in Bolivia) and a laundry room, and a guest room. The house is independent but within close proximity to another house and family who are essentially our hosts. Transportation is a piece of cake, sounds as though we are about an hour and a half, on a paved road (another big deal in Bolivia) from Santa Cruz, which is Bolivia’s most modern city replete with an international airport (the price the other day for a round trip from DCA was 710.00).
Take care everyone, We miss y’all, more to come. T&A

Technical week training and travel and Happy B-Day America

Anna and I in the salt flats/beach of Lake Poopo

The well rig. It took about forty minutes to set up.

The well drilling crew, thirteen basic sanitation trainees and about a dozen trainers and other volunteers.

The bird that was almost breakfast if it woke me up again at 4 in the morning.

This is Javeo pumping water in his front yard for the first time. This was the well drilling site about 50 km outside of Huari.

A different kind of train.

One of the first steps to building the rainwater catchment tanks is forming a wire “skeleton” with rebar and chicken wire, it’s a very time consuming task. Nice mustache eh?



So we got stuck on the salt flats of Lake Poopo and the driver was having a heck of a time trying to get it out, I don't think he'd been stuck ever before, I jumped in the drivers seat and had her unstuck in about a minute, pretty good for not driving in the last two and half months.



Fighting billy goats on a road outside of Mizque, the goats were painted the night before for a weekend long fiesta called San Juan in which people light fires and paint there animals, sounds dangerous but it was a lot of fun.



Looking at the inner workings of a “baptist style well pump”


Anna and I in the altiplano, about 40 kilometers outside of Huari.


Anna with the locals teaching about hand sanitation with a two liter plastic bottle invention called “tippy-top”.



Anna O. and Anna Bird riding llamas in the town square of Huari in the altiplano (the only town that makes decent beer).

Anna inside a rainwater catchment tank with Chris Payne (another basic sanitation trainee) and Alexis (Lex) our trainer.


Hello everyone, hope all is well. To those who were considering sending peanut butter we have a plenty, Thanks Mama Montgomery. Anna and I have been having such a good time these last two weeks traveling with our group through Bolivia learning about specific projects within sanitation – wells, latrines, gray water systems, and rainwater catchment systems – having a great time with new friends, and not being sick.
We left about two weeks ago on a ten day trip. The first half of the trip was to the town of Mizque were our training and work concentrated on rainwater catchment tanks – they hold anywhere between 10 cubos (10k liters) to 50 cubos of clean potable water gathered from gutters during the rainy season – we also worked on a gray water system which utilized the waste water from a large kitchen to feed a garden plot outside the kitchen. The rainwater tank and the gray water system was for a small boarding school outside of Mizque in a small town called Tin Tin, the school had about 50-60 students. Our group was in Mizque for a total of five days and then we returned to Cochabamba for an evening before departing the next day to Huari which is in a region of Bolivia called the altiplano (rough translation High and Flat and cold).
It took us roughly six hours for us to get to Huari from Cochabamba on some of the most dangerous roads I’ve ever been on through some treacherous mountain passes which topped out at the lofty elevation of 15,000 ft. Huari is a small community about two hours drive from Oruro (a large mining town) Huari’s main industry is a beer factory, Huari beer is the best beer in Bolivia, which quite frankly isn’t saying much, but it is pretty good. Huari is also close to Lake Poopo, Bolivia’s second biggest lake. It is a cold and isolated place, usually freezing or below at nighttime with the daytime temp getting to 50 to 60 degrees and a fierce sun that gives you a sunburn within a hour, but it is a beautiful place and reminded Anna and I of big sky country (where we met).
In Huari our projects consisted of well drilling and the construction of a latrine for a family that had a two to three hour walk to water. The project took about four hard days of work and we ended up hand drilling to a depth of 7 meters around 20 feet. During those four days we also helped build the base for a latrine out of adobe and cement. The latrine will have two chambers the family will use one chamber for six – eight months then switch to the other chamber after another six to eight months the first chambers contents should be able to be used as fertilizer with no threat of disease or contamination. There are a few more specifics but I don’t feel like making somebody toss there cookies.

Anna and I got a letter yesterday in which there where specific questions about the people here and other cultural aspects we have encountered, those answers will be forthcoming.

Congratulations cousin Jason, sounds like the wedding was great. Anna and I wish we could’ve made it.

Thanks Ma Montgomery for the Peanut Butter, fruit rollups, and the pictures of Meg and Jeff’s wedding (wish we could have been there). Take care everybody and enjoy the pictures below.

Oh and we found out we will be in a town called Okinawa for the next two years, its approximately 70 km northeast of Santa Cruz which is Bolivia’s most modern city, international airport, five star hotels and I’m sure it has a Bojangles. More to come about our site as well. Peace Peeps. Enjoy the pics.

Just finished Technical week

Hello all, Anna and I have survived the 10 day Technical trip in which we dug a well, made a rainwater catchment tank, a gray water system and a latrine. Hope all is well with everyone and theres more to come along with lots of pictures.