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.