basic santastic

Our project rocks. We get to build cement tanks to catch rain, drill wells that provide clean drinking water to families, design toilets and gray water systems, and play with worms. Basic Sanitation is where it’s at. Except sometimes, when it’s just plain gross.

We had our Basic San Project meeting a few weeks ago, together with all the other Peace Corps projects in Bolivia. 135 volunteers in one place. Oh my. Basic San is generally the envy of the other volunteers on account of all the fun we have playing in the dirt and the tangible impact of our projects. While the other groups were talking about bee hives and nutrition classes, the basic sanners were digging through the garbage of the hotel. It was awful, stinky, maggot-filled. And somehow, we were proud, and everyone else was jealous. Well, almost everyone.

A few of the basic san boys

It was a great week. We learned a lot about trash management, got to catch up with friends we haven’t seen in months, spoke English for a week (hands down my favorite language), even got to play in the pool and drink a piña colada. It was awesome, fun, informative, and refreshing. Those Peace Corps volunteers are good peeps.

After separating the hotel´s trash into organics, plastics, paper, and others, we weighed each category to see what percent of the trash total it makes up. Organics were the winners, coming in at 80% of the trash.

Yup, that´s gross.

After long days of meetings we chilled out by the pool at night, played a lot of texas hold ém, sang some karaoke, and enjoyed being in the company of 130 some friends.

me with the ladies

an emu that lives at the hotel

playing with fire

and some slammin beach volleyball. good fun