Work update, apparently we just have to make our own sometimes.

I haven’t written a blog in quite some time, sorry for the sparseness, it was purely unintentional. I had wanted to write about a success but the successes like highway mirages keep moving away. I had left Okinawa for the jungle three days ago with the hope of drilling seven wells in ten days (which would be on par with congress solving the deficit in a day or so). The whole trip out started off badly. My ride, a disgruntled employee, was very late but that enabled anna to meet up with me when her trip out to another part of Bolivia fell through. We arrived two nights ago to downpours on a road that was dirt and quickly changed to a soupy muddy nearly impassable mess, not a good sign. Because of the rain the previous night the next day’s road was bunged and we could not travel to the well drilling site.

Anna, me, Ben and Bryan (Ben and Bryan are also Peace Corps volunteers) are now on are third day of waiting to go drill and being cooped up is starting to take its toll (we designed and built a walkway for Ben’s host family so they don’t have to walk through a mud pit every time they use the toilets or kitchen, at least we accomplished something). As Peace Corps volunteers we are not allowed to drive and instead we are to rely on others for our transportation needs. Unfortunately the gentleman we are relying on to take us out to the jungle has no concept of time. After this gentleman dropped us and the drilling equipment off in Ben’s site he left to retrieve more drilling equipment and he has yet to return, we think he may have just forgotten us. We ended up leaving Hardeman (Ben’s site) around noon yesterday and as of seven o’clock last night Ben said the truck driver had yet to show up, kind of a bummer.

Before brick walk way.

After brick walk way.

Other news from Bolivia; Anna and I are training for a marathon that will be in October in Buenos Aires, this will be our first and probably last marathon. My project for implementing a water lab in Okinawa might actually receive funding from the prefectura’s office (think governor’s office), keep your fingers crossed. Anna is making excellent progress with the first ever sanitation committee and we hope to start a composting yard (fruit peels, leaves, etc…) just outside of town in the near future, again, cross those fingers. I was elected by fellow volunteers to be on peer support network (PSN); there are eight to ten of us for about 150 volunteers. PSN acts as a confidential liaison between volunteers and Peace Corps staff, sort off an internal watchdog, psychiatrist, and volunteer advocate rolled into one.

Anna and I will be heading off to Santiago, Bolivia for a technical workshop between Anna’s work counterpart and Josh, a fellow volunteer, who has a successful composting operation. We will also be stopping off in San Jose de Chiquitos and Robore to see Anna O. Mathias and Abe. These sites are close to each other but are fourteen hours away from our site via train, which I hear ‘falls off the track sometimes’, should be an interesting visit. After this small ‘working vacation’ Anna and I will head off to Cochabamba for a little more than two weeks for some added training, workshops, and meetings.

As always more to come.
Take care. Tomas.