So I just got off a 20 hour bus ride from Rurrenabarque to La Paz. Unfortunately I got very little sleep because there were people sitting in the aisles and someone´s hair kept brushing my leg- disgusting p.s. So yes, it was not good times.
We got into Rurrenabarque about a week ago. Rurrenabarque is pretty much the opposite of any city I ahave seen so far in Bolivia. It is super humid, and super green. Palm trees line the Beni river in a very picturesque manner, tarantulas hide in corners on the floor, beautiful birds sing songs t o ensure that you too are awake to witness the sunrise. The people are also super relaxed- the sit outside their stores on beach chairs sipping their coca cola. There are very few cars, instead everyone drives motorcycles- even the taxis are motorcycles. They were pretty super awesome :) Since it is the entrance to Madidi National Park, it is very tourist oriented and as a result there was a French bakery that had delicious pastries, and an Israeli restaurant that had delicious falafel. Apart from the 300% humidity and the 35 degree weather, it would be heaven.
We set out for the jungle on a motorized canoe-like thing with a canopy. It was very luxurious. I fell asleep which was not all that convenient because I kept leaning to one side and sort of half falling out of the boat. After about three hours we arrived at our destination, a tiny bit of preserved land outside the main Madid Park called Sererre after the local bird, Sererre. We were in a group with two girls from Sweden (I think)- they spoke perfect English which was very impressive. Our lodge for the four days was a cabin with screen walls, embedded in a thick part of the jungle to give you some privacy. The cabin had its own bathroom as well as four beds and mosquito nets for all of them. I learned that while I think canopies are rather pretty and regal looking, they are actually stifling- however when there is a spider the size of your palm on the wall beside you, you quickly learn to get over your desire for oxygen.
The main house with the dining hall was spectacularly beautiful. Its walls were also entirely screen. Along the one wall were a whole bunch of banana stalks that have bananas in various states of ripeness- they were so good! I don´t understand why bananas in Canada can´t be this good. The upstairs was my favourite place to be, especially in the hot afternoon where you could be standing perfectly still and dripping sweat. It was quite nasty. But anyways, the upstairs floor had four hammocks, several couches, a couple of pillows on the floor to lounge on, a padded canoe to lie in and take a bit of a siesta, and then a whole bunch of curly branches everywhere to add to the decor. It was neat, because the animals really aren´t afraid of anyone at the lodge. Several macaws (look like parrots) come right up to the steps and eat the bananas and several monkeys are always hanging about.
Our first afternoon, our guide Rodolfo (who spoke only Spanish, which I can now understand :D:D:D:D), took us on a hike to lake something or other. There were so many mosquitoes! It was ridiculous. However, we luckily bought 28% DEET bug spray, and so they pretty much left us alone. I´m not sure I´m going to be able to go back to regular bug spray- this just worked so well. It was a bit worrisome though because it sort of caused a peculiar burning sensation when you put it on your forehead or your neck.
If you don´t want to read about cool animals and plants feel free to skip the following paragraphs...
While on our walk we saw these huge ants. If they bite you, you get a fever for 8 hours. There were other cool looking ant things that carry these pieces of leaves that are several times larger than their own body size. It was quite impressive. There was also this tree that has ants in the centre- it´s called the diablo tree. However, the bark can be used to make a tea that is supposedly very good for your digestion. Another tree that I don´t know the name of is so toxic that they would use the sap in darts to cause unconsciousness. If it is mixed with another type of sap it is instantly fatal, and if the tree falls into a river, within in an hour, the river goes black and all the fish die. The anaconda and the caiman can survive by getting out and searching for more comfortable surroundings. What else? We saw a ton of monkeys that I think are called Quati monkeys. They were quite cute, and very loud! One of them nearly got eaten by an anaconda- it was pretty funny. It sort of screeched and then scurried very angrily up its branch. Rodolfo then spent about 20 minutes prodding the water in an attempt to cause the anaconda to move. I stayed a safe distance away, given that I had no desire to be victim to an anaconda attack. Do you know they kill their prey in less than a second? Craziness! However, they are really slow on the ground, which is quite reassuring, so as long as you don´t fall in the lake, you have a fighting chance for survival.
The following days was pretty much more of the same. Generally we got up at around 5:30 and had breakfast at six. Breakfast was delicious- fruit salad with granola and honey and yogurt, followed by eggs and bread, with fresh squeezed orange juice and deliciously strong coffee. After breakfast,and a whole lot of complaining from our fellow companions- " the food wasn´t sufficient, they should have left the fruit plain, the coffee isn´t very good, etc" I was ready to kill some of them. Anyways, after all of this we would normally go on a 4-5 hour hike. The idea was to avoid the heat- it didn´t really work.
I think I shall just list all the other cool animals we saw because I think describing each day would be rather tedious:
- howler monkeys: they sound like motors. The first time I heard them I had no idea what they were, but they certainly do not howl.
- carnivorous ants: prey mostly on dead animals and humans, however they can also devour drunk/high humans. Note to all people who plan to visit the jungle- don´t drink.
- Electric blue butterflies
- tree with bark that generates heat and can be used to treat arthritis
- a ton of caiman- they can get up to 7 metres long! At that point they are quite dangerous to humans. At one point, we rowed over one that was buried in the sand, upsetting it and causing it to scuttle away very quickly. It rocked the boat quite a bit, and my heart actually stopped for a second. It was just so unexpected, not to mention I had no desire to end up in the water.
- gallaretas, cool birds that have red wings with yellow undersides
- oropendolo´s- black and yellow birds that are quite pretty
- brown birds that I named dodo birds due to their seeming lack of intelligence- we scared one of them and first it flew into a leaf, and then it tried to land on this tiny twig (it´s a fairly large bird, bigger than a seagull) which of course did not work, causing it to plummet several feet. hilarious!
- capivaras: they are the coolest thing ever- the world´s largest rodent. They look like overgrown guinea pigs. They can get up to 100 kilograms and they travel in groups. The first thing both Emily and I thought of were the huge rat things in the Princess Bride- apparently they really do exist! :D
-a ton of butterflies!
- rubber trees
- cocoa trees
- wild pigs: we saw them around this watering hole in the middle of the jungle. A couple of days earlier I had read an article about several guys being attacked by wild pigs to the point of being torn into unrecognizable bits. One of them managed to climb a tree to get away from them, but he didn´t get high enough so they bit off his buttocks. As you can imagine, I was a bit apprehensive a.k.a. terrified when they arrived, especially as our guide had left us alone for a couple of minutes.
We also went pirana fishing which was really cool. you take chunks of beef, and hook them onto the end of your line. You then toss the line into the river, wait about half a second, and then yank back very abruptly. If you waited any longer than that, the pirana would have taken the meat and left you with nothing more than a slight bit of fat to show its previous existence. I caught three!! It was good fun- their teeth are quite impressive.
Ooh, we also went on a night walk and saw a giant anteater. They´re huge. We were also looking for other animals. At one point we had stopped, and were being very quiet so as not to scare off the animals, and I farted super loudly. I was mortified! I think I scared off the animals because we didn´t see much else that night other than a nesting owl like bird with vibrant purple eyes.
After the jungle tour, we also decided to go on a Pampas tour. The Pampas are the grasslands of the jungle. Millions of years ago when South Africa broke off from Africa it ran into another continental plate, causing the uplift of the Andes. The Andes then blocked off the flow of the amazon which used to drain into the Pacific ocean. However, the blockage caused this huge lake in the middle of the amazon to form. Eventually the lake overran and forged its way through the Andes and into the Atlantic ocean.
The Pampas were also pretty awesome. It was pretty much a boat tour, so it was much cooler. Plus the animals are much more friendly, so capivara, herons, egrets, caiman, pink river dolphins!!! just sort of chill on the banks of the river. Good for picture taking!! We ended up swimming with the dolphins which was pretty cool. The floor of the river was hella muddy though and I kept thinking "leech". Not to mention the Caiman swimming about 10m from the dolphins, and the pirana. However, the dolphins totally rule the river, and nothing dares to cross them, so it was quite safe. Super warm too. Oh, do not pee in the water, ever!!! Apparently the penis fish really does exist and it follows the stream of warm water into very uncomfortable locations! Who knew grey´s has some medical merit to it, lol?
We want pirana fishing again, and this time there were sardines out in full force, and since I am so pro (jokes) I managed to perfect my technique to the point where I could get 9 sardines into the boat with one piece of beef. It was the sardine massacre of 2009!!! Marcel, our guide, caught actual edible piranas so we had them fried for dinner. They are extremely bony, but quite tasty.
We also went looking for anaconda and were lucky enough to find one. It was a baby anaconda, only about 15 cm diameter and about 1.5m long. We also looked for fake cobra, which can apparently bite you 4-5 times in a minute. Luckily they just give you a bad fever. I was happy to discover they wouldn´t kill me. However, we didn´t get to see any.
Alright, I think I shall end here. Point was that the jungle is absolutely incredible!!! And I love the cold! Oh, who would have guessed that ragweed thrives in the pampas?I was not pleased. I didn´t realize what it was for about 2 hours, at which point I had been climbing through fields of it. It made for a rather uncomfortable night. So yes, tonight we are off to Salta, Argentina. Only a 25 hour bus ride!
Oh and is Tess of the D´ubervilles meant to be a satire? I found it hilarious, but I wasn´t sure whether I was supposed to be taking it seriously or not.
Lots of love,
Toni
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
Epic Fail!!!!!
So we tried to leave this morning for Peregira Pampa. Tried being the operative word, as clearly we failed, and I am still in a location with running water, electricity and internet.
We arranged yesterday afternoon to travel to Peregira Pampa with the teachers of the school. They were leaving this morning at six, from an address I believed to be 739 calle colcechaca. So yesterday, we spent the afternoon running around furiously trying to find all the food we would need for our stay. This was challenging as Potosi is pretty dead on Sunday afternoons, with only a few vendors scattered here and there. Naturally, grocery stores are unheard of. However, we succeeded and were all ready to go.
So we woke up this morning at five, had our breakfast, and called a cab. Everything was going splendidly. The taxi arrived at 5:30, giving us plenty of time to get to the teacher´s house. Or so we thought;
Problem no.1 - the roads in Bolivia are one way only, and the one way you can leave from our hostel turns onto another one way street. However, this one way street is under serious construction, and therefore cannot be used. The other road that one could turn onto had a huge truck parked in the entrance to it, making it impossible to access. Bravely, our taxi driver decided to chance the road that was under construction. This did not end well. After several huge potholes that physically raised the bottom of the car under our feet, we arrived at a huge pile of dirt, making it necessary to drive backwards all the way back down the street because they are too narrow to change directions on. Of course, driving backwards is rather challenging and so we ran into several piles of bricks, and our taxi driver would regularly hop out and investigate the road before continuing. Hi-freaking-larious!
Problem no. 2- So after about 20 minutes wasted, and a whole lot of illegal driving, we finally got turned around. Within minutes we were at the street we were supposed to be at. Unfortunately no. 739 was non-existent. The road ended somewhere around 550. Oops! And seeing as how I had lost my SECOND cell phone several days before, I had no way of calling to verify the street name or number. By this point it was approximately 6:05. Our taxi driver, believing reality to be playing tricks on him, decided it was necessary to drive the street three times just to make sure no. 739 was not going to appear. Personally, I think he has read too much Harry Potter, and was hoping for an event similar to that of the room of requirement. This was despite our vociferous protestations that we needed to find a public phone, and pronto!
Problem no. 3- Finally, realizing that driving back and forth was futile, he set off to search for a public phone for us to use. So far our history with pay phones is dismal. We can never quite get them to operate in the way they are supposed to- money gets stuck before it falls into the proper location, area codes are not actually what they claim they are, etc. However, today´s pay phone takes the cake! It must have been from the 1930´s, maybe the 1940´s- it was bright red, and was one of those phones where you have to twist the big circle thing and then it does the clicky thing. I did not even know which direction to turn the dial, which led to general hysterics while trying to dial the number. Our problems were then further compounded by the fact that the peso´s back in the day were smaller than the peso´s now-a-days, and so our money did not fit. We substituted with 2 50cents, hoping that would work. It did not. Fail number 645 of this trip.
Problem no. 4- We then decided it might just be easiest to go back to our hostel and use the phone there. Unfortunately, the phone there cannot be used to call cell phones. Most land lines in Bolivia cannot be used to call cells, which I did not realize until today. Yet another reason to invest in another cell phone. Luckily Johnny let us borrow his cell phone. After calling the same number I called yesterday and discovering it was out of service, we tried a second number we had for the teachers, only to discover that they had left without us! Spectacular, Spectacular!
By this point, Emily and I were just about dying of laughter, and decided we needed to calm down. So at 6:30 this morning, we had a hot toddy with mint liquor that Emily had bought from the nuns at the monastery in Potosi (yes, you did read that correctly...nuns). Toddy is a chocolate powder similar to milo that we discovered is quite good with a bit of mint flavouring.
I also learned this morning, that in light of the upcoming Bolivian election, the miners are planning a protest for tomorrow or wednesday that might in fact close all roads into and out of Potosi. Spectacular, non? At this point, we are not sure what we are going to do. Felipe is quite busy at the moment in Sucre, meaning he might not be able to drive us out, and frankly I have no desire to get stuck in Peregira Pampa for an indeterminate time with only four days worth of food. So we are at an impasse...
We arranged yesterday afternoon to travel to Peregira Pampa with the teachers of the school. They were leaving this morning at six, from an address I believed to be 739 calle colcechaca. So yesterday, we spent the afternoon running around furiously trying to find all the food we would need for our stay. This was challenging as Potosi is pretty dead on Sunday afternoons, with only a few vendors scattered here and there. Naturally, grocery stores are unheard of. However, we succeeded and were all ready to go.
So we woke up this morning at five, had our breakfast, and called a cab. Everything was going splendidly. The taxi arrived at 5:30, giving us plenty of time to get to the teacher´s house. Or so we thought;
Problem no.1 - the roads in Bolivia are one way only, and the one way you can leave from our hostel turns onto another one way street. However, this one way street is under serious construction, and therefore cannot be used. The other road that one could turn onto had a huge truck parked in the entrance to it, making it impossible to access. Bravely, our taxi driver decided to chance the road that was under construction. This did not end well. After several huge potholes that physically raised the bottom of the car under our feet, we arrived at a huge pile of dirt, making it necessary to drive backwards all the way back down the street because they are too narrow to change directions on. Of course, driving backwards is rather challenging and so we ran into several piles of bricks, and our taxi driver would regularly hop out and investigate the road before continuing. Hi-freaking-larious!
Problem no. 2- So after about 20 minutes wasted, and a whole lot of illegal driving, we finally got turned around. Within minutes we were at the street we were supposed to be at. Unfortunately no. 739 was non-existent. The road ended somewhere around 550. Oops! And seeing as how I had lost my SECOND cell phone several days before, I had no way of calling to verify the street name or number. By this point it was approximately 6:05. Our taxi driver, believing reality to be playing tricks on him, decided it was necessary to drive the street three times just to make sure no. 739 was not going to appear. Personally, I think he has read too much Harry Potter, and was hoping for an event similar to that of the room of requirement. This was despite our vociferous protestations that we needed to find a public phone, and pronto!
Problem no. 3- Finally, realizing that driving back and forth was futile, he set off to search for a public phone for us to use. So far our history with pay phones is dismal. We can never quite get them to operate in the way they are supposed to- money gets stuck before it falls into the proper location, area codes are not actually what they claim they are, etc. However, today´s pay phone takes the cake! It must have been from the 1930´s, maybe the 1940´s- it was bright red, and was one of those phones where you have to twist the big circle thing and then it does the clicky thing. I did not even know which direction to turn the dial, which led to general hysterics while trying to dial the number. Our problems were then further compounded by the fact that the peso´s back in the day were smaller than the peso´s now-a-days, and so our money did not fit. We substituted with 2 50cents, hoping that would work. It did not. Fail number 645 of this trip.
Problem no. 4- We then decided it might just be easiest to go back to our hostel and use the phone there. Unfortunately, the phone there cannot be used to call cell phones. Most land lines in Bolivia cannot be used to call cells, which I did not realize until today. Yet another reason to invest in another cell phone. Luckily Johnny let us borrow his cell phone. After calling the same number I called yesterday and discovering it was out of service, we tried a second number we had for the teachers, only to discover that they had left without us! Spectacular, Spectacular!
By this point, Emily and I were just about dying of laughter, and decided we needed to calm down. So at 6:30 this morning, we had a hot toddy with mint liquor that Emily had bought from the nuns at the monastery in Potosi (yes, you did read that correctly...nuns). Toddy is a chocolate powder similar to milo that we discovered is quite good with a bit of mint flavouring.
I also learned this morning, that in light of the upcoming Bolivian election, the miners are planning a protest for tomorrow or wednesday that might in fact close all roads into and out of Potosi. Spectacular, non? At this point, we are not sure what we are going to do. Felipe is quite busy at the moment in Sucre, meaning he might not be able to drive us out, and frankly I have no desire to get stuck in Peregira Pampa for an indeterminate time with only four days worth of food. So we are at an impasse...
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Into the Centre of the Earth!
Hi everybody!
Last Friday Emily and I decided we were feeling courageous enough to brave the mine of Potosi, Cerro Rico. We joined the Koala tour group and set off at 1:30. Our first stop was the outfittters- we were given marroon scrub looking pants, knee high rubber boots, a black polyester jacket, a yellow hard-helmet, a head lamp, and a red bandanna to act as a face mask. We looked spectacular!
Our second stop was the miner´s market. I discovered that it is possible to buy sticks of dynamite, a detonator, and a large quanitity of ammonium nitrite for the low price of 20Bs!!! Less than 3$!! And anyone can buy it, there are no regulations what-so-ever. I was midly disappointed to discover that dynamite is not the vibrant red colour it is in Bugs Bunny. The dynamite we saw was green, and sort of similar to plastecine (sp?). Anwyhoo, I digress from the main point. Among other items available for purchase was 96% alcohol, apparently the miners drink of choice! This is what I used to kill all the nasty invisible miscreants polluting the glove box during my research in first year!!!! We bought some coke instead, and a bag of coca leaves, and set off for the mines.
Immediately upon entering the mines, I found it more difficult to breathe, due to the shear amount of dust in the air. As we travelled deeper into the mine, the tunnels became narrower and shorter, so that I was constantly hunched over.
As we shuffled along, we passed el Tio, a large man like sculpture with horns and a scary looking visage. El Tio is the devil, the god of the mines. The miners believe that in the mines, Jesus does not enter, and so the only deity available to them is the devil. It is their belief that the devil is consantly looking for blood, and so to appease him, they offer coca leaves and alcohol, and occasionally llama´s blood. In doing so, el Tio might increase their chances of finding a good mineral vein, as well as spare them from dying in mining accidents. To neglect el Tio is to ask for death.
The mine we were in has six levels. We only saw three of the six. To get down to the second level you have to shimmy down this very narrow passage. The entire second level is about three feet high, meaning to get through it you have to crawl on your hands and knees. It is also very hot. It was at this point in the mine tour that every breath I took seared my lungs, so that it felt like they were being roasted from the inside out. We were instructuted to avoid touching the walls, because in addition to the sulfur and copper deposits there are large quantities of arsenic lining the walls. Unfortunately, when you are on your hands and knees it is not possible to keep from touching the dust.
It was on the second level that we met Carlos. Carlos is 19 years old, and has been working in the mine since he was 14 to support his family. A lot of the miners start as early as 10. He had been working since 9am and was planning to work until 4am. He was then planning to come back the next morning at 9am. The miners work without stopping for a lunch break or anything- they chew coca leaves to sustain themselves and drink the occasional bottle of coca cola. When we crawled to the area Carlos was in, he was drilling a hole in the rock by hand (for dynamite). According to him, in one day it is possible to drill 5 of these holes in one day. It looked like extremely tough work. Each strike was echoed by his grunts of effort, and panting exhalations. I don´t know how they do it. We asked him how long he was planning to work in the mines, and he told us he is trying to save enough money so that he can go to school and become a teacher. This is rather difficult as they only make money depending upon the amount of mineral they recover, which as far as I can tell is entirely dependent on chance and past experience. They do not do any sort of testing to see which area of the mines are mineral rich. Carlos then asked us what we do in our countries, and it was at this point that I felt quite ashamed. I have never had to work to have the ability to go to school. Most of the time, I complain because I find a lot of it unendurably boring. It was a humbling experience to perceive just how lucky we all were and are.
From there we continued to the 3rd level, which while hot, was at least tall, so that we could stnad without hunching. By the time we got to the third level, a lot of the miners were just finishing up their shifts, and had consequently started to drink. We discovered that they dilute the ethanol they consume with fanta. Em and I figured this brought the alcohol percentage down to about 70%. We were asked to join them in their drinking, and so we all got to try a bit of it. By a bit, I mean I drank about half a bottle cap full. This was enough that I could feel the effects of it. Their tolerance must be through the roof! In their drunkenness, they all started hitting on the white girls in our group. I was happy to be spared from the statements of "what are you doing tonight?" and "Are you single, etc..."
We asked our guide what the average lifespan for a miner is, and we were sad to discover that a lot of them never make it to 50. Most miners die of silicosis. Silicosis is basically a build up of crystalline silica within the lungs. Eventually, the immune response causes large degrees of inflammation, preventing them from receiving adequate amounts of oxygen. Sometimes, the lungs begin to bleed, and they die from fluid build up.
After this sobering discussion we climbed back up to the first level of the mines. Climbing up just about caused my to hyperventilate. The alitutde in combination with the dust in combination with the exertion was not a good combination. I was extremely happy to be back out in the fresh air.
Then our guide allowed us to light out dynamite. First you have to mush it up into a ball, stick the detonator in, and then sprinkle the ammonium nitrite into the bag and tie the entire thing closed. Then he lit the fuse, and passed it to all of us to hold on to and get our picture taken. It was very exciting, unfortunately Emily burned her hands on the fuse. After we had all been photographed, the guide ran the dynamite about 100m away from us. After about 15 seconds it exploded, and my heart actually stopped!! It is so loud! I wasn´t expecting it for whatever reason. I also can´t imagine lighting 12 at once, which is what they do in the mines.
All in all, a very interesting, humbling, and saddening experience.
Last Friday Emily and I decided we were feeling courageous enough to brave the mine of Potosi, Cerro Rico. We joined the Koala tour group and set off at 1:30. Our first stop was the outfittters- we were given marroon scrub looking pants, knee high rubber boots, a black polyester jacket, a yellow hard-helmet, a head lamp, and a red bandanna to act as a face mask. We looked spectacular!
Our second stop was the miner´s market. I discovered that it is possible to buy sticks of dynamite, a detonator, and a large quanitity of ammonium nitrite for the low price of 20Bs!!! Less than 3$!! And anyone can buy it, there are no regulations what-so-ever. I was midly disappointed to discover that dynamite is not the vibrant red colour it is in Bugs Bunny. The dynamite we saw was green, and sort of similar to plastecine (sp?). Anwyhoo, I digress from the main point. Among other items available for purchase was 96% alcohol, apparently the miners drink of choice! This is what I used to kill all the nasty invisible miscreants polluting the glove box during my research in first year!!!! We bought some coke instead, and a bag of coca leaves, and set off for the mines.
Immediately upon entering the mines, I found it more difficult to breathe, due to the shear amount of dust in the air. As we travelled deeper into the mine, the tunnels became narrower and shorter, so that I was constantly hunched over.
As we shuffled along, we passed el Tio, a large man like sculpture with horns and a scary looking visage. El Tio is the devil, the god of the mines. The miners believe that in the mines, Jesus does not enter, and so the only deity available to them is the devil. It is their belief that the devil is consantly looking for blood, and so to appease him, they offer coca leaves and alcohol, and occasionally llama´s blood. In doing so, el Tio might increase their chances of finding a good mineral vein, as well as spare them from dying in mining accidents. To neglect el Tio is to ask for death.
The mine we were in has six levels. We only saw three of the six. To get down to the second level you have to shimmy down this very narrow passage. The entire second level is about three feet high, meaning to get through it you have to crawl on your hands and knees. It is also very hot. It was at this point in the mine tour that every breath I took seared my lungs, so that it felt like they were being roasted from the inside out. We were instructuted to avoid touching the walls, because in addition to the sulfur and copper deposits there are large quantities of arsenic lining the walls. Unfortunately, when you are on your hands and knees it is not possible to keep from touching the dust.
It was on the second level that we met Carlos. Carlos is 19 years old, and has been working in the mine since he was 14 to support his family. A lot of the miners start as early as 10. He had been working since 9am and was planning to work until 4am. He was then planning to come back the next morning at 9am. The miners work without stopping for a lunch break or anything- they chew coca leaves to sustain themselves and drink the occasional bottle of coca cola. When we crawled to the area Carlos was in, he was drilling a hole in the rock by hand (for dynamite). According to him, in one day it is possible to drill 5 of these holes in one day. It looked like extremely tough work. Each strike was echoed by his grunts of effort, and panting exhalations. I don´t know how they do it. We asked him how long he was planning to work in the mines, and he told us he is trying to save enough money so that he can go to school and become a teacher. This is rather difficult as they only make money depending upon the amount of mineral they recover, which as far as I can tell is entirely dependent on chance and past experience. They do not do any sort of testing to see which area of the mines are mineral rich. Carlos then asked us what we do in our countries, and it was at this point that I felt quite ashamed. I have never had to work to have the ability to go to school. Most of the time, I complain because I find a lot of it unendurably boring. It was a humbling experience to perceive just how lucky we all were and are.
From there we continued to the 3rd level, which while hot, was at least tall, so that we could stnad without hunching. By the time we got to the third level, a lot of the miners were just finishing up their shifts, and had consequently started to drink. We discovered that they dilute the ethanol they consume with fanta. Em and I figured this brought the alcohol percentage down to about 70%. We were asked to join them in their drinking, and so we all got to try a bit of it. By a bit, I mean I drank about half a bottle cap full. This was enough that I could feel the effects of it. Their tolerance must be through the roof! In their drunkenness, they all started hitting on the white girls in our group. I was happy to be spared from the statements of "what are you doing tonight?" and "Are you single, etc..."
We asked our guide what the average lifespan for a miner is, and we were sad to discover that a lot of them never make it to 50. Most miners die of silicosis. Silicosis is basically a build up of crystalline silica within the lungs. Eventually, the immune response causes large degrees of inflammation, preventing them from receiving adequate amounts of oxygen. Sometimes, the lungs begin to bleed, and they die from fluid build up.
After this sobering discussion we climbed back up to the first level of the mines. Climbing up just about caused my to hyperventilate. The alitutde in combination with the dust in combination with the exertion was not a good combination. I was extremely happy to be back out in the fresh air.
Then our guide allowed us to light out dynamite. First you have to mush it up into a ball, stick the detonator in, and then sprinkle the ammonium nitrite into the bag and tie the entire thing closed. Then he lit the fuse, and passed it to all of us to hold on to and get our picture taken. It was very exciting, unfortunately Emily burned her hands on the fuse. After we had all been photographed, the guide ran the dynamite about 100m away from us. After about 15 seconds it exploded, and my heart actually stopped!! It is so loud! I wasn´t expecting it for whatever reason. I also can´t imagine lighting 12 at once, which is what they do in the mines.
All in all, a very interesting, humbling, and saddening experience.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Peregira Pampa
So because I am intensely lazy person, and Emily has already spent the 3 hours necessary to write about our adventures for the last two weeks, I decided I would just steal her post and embrace the lovely policy that our highschool teachers spend at least half of their time discouraging- plaigarism!
So yes the following is the Wonderful Adventures in the Village of Peregira Pampa set forth faithfully by Emily Tredger, with minor editations (is that a word, because if not, it is now) by Antonia Sappong...
Wednesday morning, we met Felipe and started out. First in order was food. How much food was confusing, because we might have been buying food for the teachers as well, who would take the food and cook us meals as well, or just ourselves, but anyways we bought lots to be on the safe side. We bought pasta, rice, potatoes, turnips, carrots, onions, garlic, apples, oranges, butter, sugar, salt, oregano, oil, tomatoes, peas, oatmeal, yougurt, and bread. Previously we had bought some juice, canned fruit, and chocolate. It was rather fun. It ended up working out to about $30 US for all that. Expensive life we´re living.
Then Felipe drove with us to our new home, Peregira Pampa. It was way up in the Andes, in the middle of nowhere basically. I think it´s about at the same altitude as Potosi, maybe a little higher, but not too much lower, based on how I feel now getting back to Potosi.
To describe the landscape, both desolate and beautiful would apply. There is so little vegetation, only scrub bushes here and there. I think I saw a total of 10 trees in all my wandering. Some of the slopes are terraced into fields, though it still utterly baffles me how they manage to grow anything at all. The rest are steep rocky slopes, broken by gullies and gourges. Despite the lack of vegetation, the variety of colours are amazing. All the shades of yellows, browns, greys, and red are there. Every slope seems to be a different colour.
And the mountains dont´seem to follow ranges, with lines of mountains and lines of valleys. Instead, it´s like a mountain forest, as if they all just sprouted up.
Perigira Pampa is where PAIS is funding the construction of bathrooms for the schools. This was supposed to start when we arrived (we took a bunch of supplies) but it turned out they were still missing some things, so that didn´t start for about another week.
Anyways, we arrived at a school on the side of the road. We were taken in to the school. The school is a walled compound (everything is walled here) with various buildings around a courtyard - two classrooms, two other rooms which don´t seem to be used on a daily basis but host special events I think, and the teachers residence. Behind the buildings, inside the walls, are a chicken coop, a cooking space with an oven, and a spot where the teachers park their car.
There are two teachers, a couple, who teach. We were introduced to them, and two other women who only spoke Quechua, Lorenza and Maxina, and a bewildering conversation of Quechua mixed with Spanish followed. Toni and I observed in a bit of a daze. I eventually established I could tell whether Felipe was speaking Quechau or Spanish based on what it sounded like, but that didn´t apply to the rest of the time, and even when it was Spanish I really couldn´t understand, and sometimes I would have been concentratedly listenign for a while only to realize it was Quechua, or zoning out and it turned out I was expected to have been listening. Everey so often Felipe would turn to us and specifically direct comments. For a while it seemed that we were going to be staying in a house that was a 3 hour hike away. (Eventually it turned out that if we wanted, we could go stay at this place for a day).
Around the walled complex are a number of other buildings. One is where Maxina and Lorenza (who cook snacks and lunches for the school kids) do their cooking and spend the day, one is a green house, and one is the building where we stayed.
Our house (room? it was something in between, I´ll call it our home I guess) was about 9 x 15 feet. It had a cement floor, and four walls that were, clay maybe? some sort of mud type thing. The front one was whitewashed which filled in all the cracks (though the cracks did not go all the way through). There was a window, which Felipe and the people setting us up nailed paper over, for warmth I think. The glass was not by any means air tight, really it was panes of glass held in by nails. The door was a little tricky, it took us a while to get the knack of forcing it shut over the floor without taking out chips of the whitewash. There was a little table and a few chairs. There was a so called double bed for the two of us, which was in fact just larger than a twin. Also one of the more uncomfortable beds I have slept in, even if it was just one person and you did not need to lie on the hard side bit. It was my least favorite part of the house.
But I dont´ mean to make it sound unflattering, I loved our home it was cute and lovely and really very nice.
Anyways, so Felipe and us and the teachers, and a few other people, including a man named Juan who was the village authority, stood around conversing. Some of it seemed to be about us, specifically how we were going to eat. We could cook with the teachers, but they went to Potosi for the weekends. There was a fireplace out back, which we were happy with but we needed to borrow a pot. We did our best to convey this (which involved using the dictionary for the word pot) but it was all really very ambigous. Lorenza and Maxina were going to bring us some meals, for which we agreed to give them 10 bolivians per meal, and possibly bring us a pot also. We arranged with the teachers that we would start music in the school the next morning.
Felipe was helping us get settled and gave us a little padlock for the door. I promptly managed to break it, the top round part of the lock came off of the bottom square bit. Felipe tried to fix it, with the result that when the key was turned, the top round part when shooting across the room with a springing sound. Fortunately he found this as hilarious as we did. Eventually we decided it worked just fine, you just had to be ready to catch the top bit as it went flying. (After a day or so, Toni managed to break it a little further so that it did not spring, just disconnected, which was actually an improvment in fuctionallity, if less exciting).
Anyways, after Felipe left, we collapsed in a state of mental exaustion and worn out ness.
Around 5, one of the teachers came to get us. It appeared we were to cook with them. He instructed us to bring rice, a potoato, and two eggs. We followed him to the kitchen he and his wife used. They gave us specific instructions regarding how to cook, which mostly confused us. For example, it was very important that we toast the rice. We were also a little unsure what exactly one cooked with rice, potato, and egg. This led to them concluding that we did not know how to cook, despite our explaining that we did, just in a different style. Part of the problem is that we just couldn´t seem to communicate with them. Neither of us could understand the other´s spanish. Anyways, we got them to write down some Quechua words for us. This didn´t in the end do us any good, because no one can understand our prounouciatiosn of any of the words except ¨imansutikki¨ which means what is your name. This, combined with ¨takinini¨ you sing, and ´imata¨ (what) and sometimes yaku (water ) reamins all the quechua I can communicate.
We went for a short walk around. Possibly through some potato fields by accident (it´s equally dry, rocky, barren looking ground as all the rest) though we later were reassured they were not yet planted. We met a man named Natalyo. For whatever reason, we could communicate with him in Spanish quite clearly, which was a nice relief.
There were some of the most consistently beautiful sunsets I have ever seen in that place. So many colours, every single night. Then, it gets dark at 7, and I mean dark. We lit a candle in our room and tried to learn some Quechua. And then did our best to fall asleep on our bed. What a day!
Our first muisc class was quite a success. We taught Skinnimerinkidinkidink, though we subsituted zapa zapa zuba for the verse, with different actions, which I think is a great improvement on the original actually. This song became a hit. The kids regualrly request it, and we hear them singing it all the time, even in class (I´m not sure if this is appreciated by the teachers). At first we were quite daunted, because the kids wouldn´t sing! They were too in awe I think. But once we got them to echo the first note, that was the biggest battle. They adore songs with actions, and remember them much better. Ram sam sam was also a big hit. They struggled with Shalom at first, but once they got it, they quite enjoyed it too. Alloutte, they loved the actions, though I´m not really sure they understood how to sing the whole thing. In short, the music classes were great. We taught them for about 45 minutes each morning at 9.
The first few days were really just a whirl of ´what on earth will happen next´.
Thursday afternoon, Juan came by. He took us to visit a nearby house, but that was quite a fail. We instead decided to ask him what he thought about health in the village. Initially he did not think there were any health problems, but with further questions, we found out lots of things that we thought were problems (such as children who die of sicknesses every year). What was really interesting was how he thought about it, which was echoed in the answers we got from other people. Despite that there is rampant chronic diahorea among the children, no one really thinks of it as a health problem. I think it might be similar to Canada, where (at least until recently) probably most people wouldn´t have listed colds as a health problem.
Anyways, we got back to our home, and it turned out that the teachers had left for Potosi while we´d been out with Juan, firmly locking the school behind them. I guess they don´t teach on Fridays. This was a problem, because a) we had been planning to borrow a pot from them, and b) the water tap was inside the school. We tried to bring these up with Juan, but it was so very difficult to communicate. We only got gists of things. Most questions such as ¨Can you repeat that¨ or ¨where can we get water¨ were answere with ´yes.´. So when he left, we were not optomistic about pots or water appearig. So, first we climbed the fence into the compound to acquire water. This was really quite easy. The tricky part was we weren´t sure how people would feel about this and we certainly didn´t want to give the kids ideas, so we did our best to scan in all directions before embarking, though people have a remarkable ability to pop up unexpectedly on the horizon with a herd of goats. Then, for the pot, we went to visit Natalyo. We met him in the field and he enthusiastically urged us to go get a pot from his wife. This was a little trickier, because she didn´t seem to speak any spanish or respond to our attempts at Quechua. So we stood in their yard for a bit. Then she gave us a bowl of boiled potatos (this is what happens when you visit any house. We were told it is very rude to refuse, so even if you are very full it is necessary to eat potatos. If you don´t finish the bowl by the time you leave, you take the rest with you. This led to a large surplus of boiled potatos in our house. Eventually we started mashing them for variety). Anyways, then Natalyo and a bunch of his kids showed up. I never managed to pin down how many kids he had or which ones, because there were different ones each time we visited. I don´t think they were all his, but it was a little hard to say. We chatted with him for a while, borrowed the pot for the week, did our best to thank his wife who was very reserved, and agreed to come back the next night with the guitar.
Friday, we were a little at loose ends. Given our disastorous attempt to visit houses with health information, we decided to do some brainstorming and goal planning. Our eventual plan became
a) wash hands conspicously whenever we eat. (We did our best to do this. It was tricky because there was only water intermittently, but we usually would carry a waterbottle. People mostly thought we were insane, and possibly a little rude because we did not immediatley dig into the offered potatos but instead stopped for this aparantly pointless excercise. Nevertheless.)
b) try to find out what we could about health in the village, and what people thought about it. I still think this is extremely important because why would they bother trying to fix things they didn´t think were problems?
c) try to share a bit of information.
So we drew some stories of kids with diareah, one who got lots of water and got better, and one who didn´t and didn´t. This was before we realized that this was not something they really considered a problem.
Our next plan was to hike around until we found a house. Here I should mention that this was not a village in the sense of streets and buildings. All along the sides of the mountains were scattered houses surrounded by their fields. Each was anywhere from 10 minutes to 45 minutes from the next. Houses as far away as 3 hours were considered part of the village. (The poor kids getting to school). Then, we would sit within hearing distance of the house, and sing and play the guitar. The guitar was very interesting to people generally. They didn´t seem to have any in the village. Basically the point of this was to give people the opportunity to invite us in. If they did, great. If not, that´s fine too, and we´d wander on. Our idea was that once we were invited in, we could play them some songs, visit as best we could, and perhaps show them some of our health pictures.
This was a nice idea. It never quite worked out like we intended, but it generally did work out. For example, one day, we met Alejandro, who had been mentioned to us as the village health worker. He was a great source of information on the village. The next day, he dropped by just as we were making supper with a pot of boiled potatos for us, some delicious salsa, and some fanstastic fried bread. We gave him a bowl of pasta. Another day, we met a fantastic little old lady. She spoke not a word of anything we spoke, but still bobbed up and down enthusiastically and gestured in all directions while she spoke rapidly in Quechau. She requested some songs on the guitar and seemed to thorougly enjoy them. Meanwhile, a young girl with her was in utter awe of us, and hid behind nearby rocks and hullucks. Occassionally, she´d peep over the edge but if she saw us looking would duck back down again. The old lady would urge her over, but to no avail.
Anyways, we never got bored. We usually went to bed shortly after the sun went down. Friday night, about 8, we were just about to blow out the candle when there was a knock at the door. Rather surprised, we answere the door and there was a woman we´d briefly earlier in the day. Her name was Esperanza, and she taught at a school farther along the road. We understood that her car had broken down and it was quite cold outside. We brought her in and gave her a blanket. We were unable to ascertain when she could catch the next shared car bus thing. After about half an hour started to wonder if she was staying the night. We didn´t mind, we just had absolutely nowhere for her to sleep. Right about then, there came another knock on the door. This time it was a man, who we did not recognize. He set about conversing with Esperanza, while Toni and I watched in baffelement. Eventually Esperanza translated into Spanish that he was the school guard, and he spent the nights in the school while the teachers were gone. Eventually he left. We went back to chatting with Esperanza, growing more and more tired, when there was yet another knock. What a night. It was the guard again. He had brought us a blanket, and this time came right into the house, and continued to chat with Esperanza. By this time Toni and I were getting very tired. We sat on the bed wondering what on earth was going on, why this man was in our house in the middle of the night, how long they were both staying (were they planning on sleeping in the house? we certainly hoped not and were not sure this was appropriate) when they both got up. Esperanza said the guard was going to sleep in teh school, and she would go sleep in there with him. This seemed like a good solution to us, so we bid them good night, and finally got to sleep. What a night! They were both gone in the morning.
One of the reasons we went to bed so early, is that at about 7 in the morning, people started dropping by. They might knock, and say good morning. Or they might just stare in through the window. This would continue all through the day. Lorenza dropped by at random with meals, which might be a bowl of soup or a pot full of boiled potatos. This only lasted for Friday, but left us continually uncertain about whether we should cook or not. One man dropped by, who spoke entirely in ´ha´s while gesturing to us, our house, himself, and the surrouding areas. ¨Ha ha, ha ha HA ha, ha, ha Ha, HA, ha ha ha.¨ Not like laughing has, these had much more emphasis. Not really sure how to respond, eventually I started saying ¨Ha ha, ha HA¨¨ in agreeing tones at what seemed like approprate times. Friday morning, we were awoken at 7 by knocking at the door. At first we thought we would ignore this ( we were still in bed) but it conitinued. So I eventually opened the door, bleary eyed in pajamas, and Lorenza was there with breakfast. She´d just left, and we were sitting there contemplating our bowls, when there was another knock. A man, his wife, and child were there. He managed to communicate that he would take us to the school to get water. So Toni grabbed a pair of shoes, the pot, and an empty bottle and went with him. Turned out he thought we had the key (he did not have one). How this made sense, I´m not entirely sure. But anyways. After that we started getting up and dressed earlier.
Water was a continual challenge. We finally came to the conclusion that it is only on every other day. Saturday, we cooked ourselves scrambled eggs and bread for breakfast. When we finished there was no water, so we left the dishes and went out. When we got back, still no water. AFter hiking in the sun, this was a bit of a problem. I decided I was not going back out into the sun until we got more water. About 5, still no water. At this point, we had to make supper. What to make without water? Lentils, pasta, and rice were out. Potoatos, turnips and carrots could be peeled, but wouldn´t cook this century without water. (Seeing as all the wood is from little bushes, and about the size of my pinky at best, it is hard to maintain a fire for long.) Tomatos? couldn´t be washed. Applesauce? No water to make sauce. That left us with bread, eggs, and onions. Same as breakfast. I have to admit frying the eggs on top of the blackened egg residue of the morning was not overly appetizing, but theydidn´t turn out too badly. Then we decided that this was the time to break into our stocks of chocolate.
Sunday morning, there was still no water. Problem. We languished for a while, climbing the wall periodically to check for more water, until about 10 when Hallelujah! There was water. We decided the advantage to the water being inside a walled compound was that we could have baths at the tap, which we did. I´m not sure I´ve ever had a bath quite that cold. We came out shivering and aching, but soon the sun warmed us up. (At this point Em speaks for herself- I have never had either my wrists or ankles that cold before. They hurt to turn them!!! I eventually realized that rather than parading around naked while trying to wash myself, I could wash half my body at a time, while keeping the other half firmly ensconced in many layers- so much more effective!)
People were continually coming through with herds of goats, sheep, and a few very large cows. Sometimes the herds came through all by themselves. This conveniently meant we could throw our compost outside and they would come get rid of it for us. Once, we had a visiting herd of goats sans herder, and I thought this would be an ideal chance to get rid of some of our older extra boiled potatos. I grabbed the bag and went out to start distributing. I tried to feed some to the very cute baby goats. While I was doing this, behind me a few clever sheep started exploring our house. Toni luckily noticed and started scrambling about chasing them out. Meanwhile, the rest of the herd had figured out that I was distributing exciting food, and started mobbing me. This got really out of hand really fast. I beat a hasty retreat to the house, where I had to force the door shut on the heads of the goats determined to follow me in to the potatos. That was the last time I fed the goats.
Everything went on in this vein until Thursday, the day we left. We packed up our things, gave away our leftover food, and taught music class. Just before we left, I went out of our house to take some left over food to the teachers, and figure out what to do with the coca. The group of workmen, sitting on a hill 100 m away, somehow recognized the coca bag for what it was, and began yelling and waving me over and holding out their hats. I certainly did not have enough coca to give to all of them (given that they happily chew about a 1/4 bag at a time) so I pretended not to know what they were on about, and proceded into the school. Lorenza was there, so I gave her the bag of coca, which she seemed to appreciate. I gave the food to the teachers and went back to my house. Natalyo came running over, and started asking if I had some ¨cocita¨(a little coca) I could give the ¨compaรฑeros¨. I could honestly say I did not, but he continued to press me, until finally he was convinced. I concluded I really do not understand the role of coca in their culture. These are people who would barely accept gifts of food, have never asked for a thing. To get them to agree to accept the payment for food that we had agreed on at the beginning was like pulling teeth. But with coca, they will readily accept, ask, even press you for it.
Anyways, after saying goodbye to various people, we headed off with the teachers. It only took us an 1 and 1/2 hours to get back to Potosi. It always takes so long to get anywhere with Felipe in comparison, but it´s because he´s always stopping for this or that, to pick up materials or to show us something delicious and Bolivian, or to pour water on to the engine so that it might run for the next bit, and he´s such good company that it´s more fun anyways.
All in all, it was quite the 9 days. Really a wonderful experience all round. Everyone was so welcoming and friendly and generous and patient, despite our lack of language or awareness of anything that was going on.
Toni´s editations:
At one point during our stay another volunteer from a different organization came to teach the women about hygiene and nutrition (In Quechua- much more effective), which then led to an increase in vegetables being cooked the next day. Rather than just rice and potatoes and beans, there was now lettuce! At first Emily and I were very excited by the prospects of green things, until we realized that it was possible to ruin lettuce! They somehow managed to drown it until all crispness had run out of it, and then they proceeded to pour at least half a cup of salt all over it. It was kind of similar to seeweed, except saltier and slimier. Good times- we now understand why they don´t eat vegetables on a regular basis. We are thinking that we might bring supplies to make a yummy salad for the kids next time we´re there.
What we learned about the state of health in the community:
1. 3-4 kids die every year from respiratory illnesses
2. There are very few, if any, people trained in first aid, not to mention there are no first aid kits.
3. The nearest clinic that stocks any antibiotics is in Tacobamba (about an 8 hour walk), meaning that when infection sets in it is very dangerous
4. Dental hygiene is non-existent, meaning that by the age of 40 no one has many teeth left
5. It is difficult to grow anything other than potatoes and onions, making vegetables rather difficult to acquire
6. There are a lot of eye infections that I believe lead to blindness over time
7. People wash themselves approximately once a week.
8. There are rarely enough blankets for everyone in the family, leading to run down immune systems.
One day, during our wanderings, we met a young girl of 12. Her name was Rose. Her mother had died (unsure how), leaving her with 4 (?) younger siblings to look after. Her father works hard to provide for them, leaving her to act as the mother to the rest of her siblings. As a result, she no longer goes to school, but instead takes care of the laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc. She came to the workshop on hygiene & nutrition with the other mothers. It was a sobering experience for both Em and I. She is just so young! I admire her strength.
Note to all travellers in Bolivia- when you are shopping for tomato sauce for spaghetti, do not trust that the red can with tomatoes on it contains tomatoes. We learned, upon opening it, that it instead contains sardines in a tomato sauce. Emily was not impressed with this at all! I actually thought it wasn´t too bad. Furthermore, if you bring along canned peaches, make sure you open them as far away from you as possible. If not, they have the unfortunate tendency to semi-explode, dousing you, the floor, and the blanket with sweet, syrupy stuff that is impossible to remove, thus leading to an accumulation of dust unprecendented by any other experience of dust.
...................................................................
So yes, thus ends the tale of our first volunteer experience. We are not at all sure we are being of any use to anyone, but we are learning a lot, and the kids are having fun, so we shall see. The communication barriers alone make it very difficult to get to know the other people in the village. But we will continue to try :)
At the moment, I am off to the salt flats of Uyuni. Google them- they look pretty insane. Should be good!
Cheers,
Toni
So yes the following is the Wonderful Adventures in the Village of Peregira Pampa set forth faithfully by Emily Tredger, with minor editations (is that a word, because if not, it is now) by Antonia Sappong...
Wednesday morning, we met Felipe and started out. First in order was food. How much food was confusing, because we might have been buying food for the teachers as well, who would take the food and cook us meals as well, or just ourselves, but anyways we bought lots to be on the safe side. We bought pasta, rice, potatoes, turnips, carrots, onions, garlic, apples, oranges, butter, sugar, salt, oregano, oil, tomatoes, peas, oatmeal, yougurt, and bread. Previously we had bought some juice, canned fruit, and chocolate. It was rather fun. It ended up working out to about $30 US for all that. Expensive life we´re living.
Then Felipe drove with us to our new home, Peregira Pampa. It was way up in the Andes, in the middle of nowhere basically. I think it´s about at the same altitude as Potosi, maybe a little higher, but not too much lower, based on how I feel now getting back to Potosi.
To describe the landscape, both desolate and beautiful would apply. There is so little vegetation, only scrub bushes here and there. I think I saw a total of 10 trees in all my wandering. Some of the slopes are terraced into fields, though it still utterly baffles me how they manage to grow anything at all. The rest are steep rocky slopes, broken by gullies and gourges. Despite the lack of vegetation, the variety of colours are amazing. All the shades of yellows, browns, greys, and red are there. Every slope seems to be a different colour.
And the mountains dont´seem to follow ranges, with lines of mountains and lines of valleys. Instead, it´s like a mountain forest, as if they all just sprouted up.
Perigira Pampa is where PAIS is funding the construction of bathrooms for the schools. This was supposed to start when we arrived (we took a bunch of supplies) but it turned out they were still missing some things, so that didn´t start for about another week.
Anyways, we arrived at a school on the side of the road. We were taken in to the school. The school is a walled compound (everything is walled here) with various buildings around a courtyard - two classrooms, two other rooms which don´t seem to be used on a daily basis but host special events I think, and the teachers residence. Behind the buildings, inside the walls, are a chicken coop, a cooking space with an oven, and a spot where the teachers park their car.
There are two teachers, a couple, who teach. We were introduced to them, and two other women who only spoke Quechua, Lorenza and Maxina, and a bewildering conversation of Quechua mixed with Spanish followed. Toni and I observed in a bit of a daze. I eventually established I could tell whether Felipe was speaking Quechau or Spanish based on what it sounded like, but that didn´t apply to the rest of the time, and even when it was Spanish I really couldn´t understand, and sometimes I would have been concentratedly listenign for a while only to realize it was Quechua, or zoning out and it turned out I was expected to have been listening. Everey so often Felipe would turn to us and specifically direct comments. For a while it seemed that we were going to be staying in a house that was a 3 hour hike away. (Eventually it turned out that if we wanted, we could go stay at this place for a day).
Around the walled complex are a number of other buildings. One is where Maxina and Lorenza (who cook snacks and lunches for the school kids) do their cooking and spend the day, one is a green house, and one is the building where we stayed.
Our house (room? it was something in between, I´ll call it our home I guess) was about 9 x 15 feet. It had a cement floor, and four walls that were, clay maybe? some sort of mud type thing. The front one was whitewashed which filled in all the cracks (though the cracks did not go all the way through). There was a window, which Felipe and the people setting us up nailed paper over, for warmth I think. The glass was not by any means air tight, really it was panes of glass held in by nails. The door was a little tricky, it took us a while to get the knack of forcing it shut over the floor without taking out chips of the whitewash. There was a little table and a few chairs. There was a so called double bed for the two of us, which was in fact just larger than a twin. Also one of the more uncomfortable beds I have slept in, even if it was just one person and you did not need to lie on the hard side bit. It was my least favorite part of the house.
But I dont´ mean to make it sound unflattering, I loved our home it was cute and lovely and really very nice.
Anyways, so Felipe and us and the teachers, and a few other people, including a man named Juan who was the village authority, stood around conversing. Some of it seemed to be about us, specifically how we were going to eat. We could cook with the teachers, but they went to Potosi for the weekends. There was a fireplace out back, which we were happy with but we needed to borrow a pot. We did our best to convey this (which involved using the dictionary for the word pot) but it was all really very ambigous. Lorenza and Maxina were going to bring us some meals, for which we agreed to give them 10 bolivians per meal, and possibly bring us a pot also. We arranged with the teachers that we would start music in the school the next morning.
Felipe was helping us get settled and gave us a little padlock for the door. I promptly managed to break it, the top round part of the lock came off of the bottom square bit. Felipe tried to fix it, with the result that when the key was turned, the top round part when shooting across the room with a springing sound. Fortunately he found this as hilarious as we did. Eventually we decided it worked just fine, you just had to be ready to catch the top bit as it went flying. (After a day or so, Toni managed to break it a little further so that it did not spring, just disconnected, which was actually an improvment in fuctionallity, if less exciting).
Anyways, after Felipe left, we collapsed in a state of mental exaustion and worn out ness.
Around 5, one of the teachers came to get us. It appeared we were to cook with them. He instructed us to bring rice, a potoato, and two eggs. We followed him to the kitchen he and his wife used. They gave us specific instructions regarding how to cook, which mostly confused us. For example, it was very important that we toast the rice. We were also a little unsure what exactly one cooked with rice, potato, and egg. This led to them concluding that we did not know how to cook, despite our explaining that we did, just in a different style. Part of the problem is that we just couldn´t seem to communicate with them. Neither of us could understand the other´s spanish. Anyways, we got them to write down some Quechua words for us. This didn´t in the end do us any good, because no one can understand our prounouciatiosn of any of the words except ¨imansutikki¨ which means what is your name. This, combined with ¨takinini¨ you sing, and ´imata¨ (what) and sometimes yaku (water ) reamins all the quechua I can communicate.
We went for a short walk around. Possibly through some potato fields by accident (it´s equally dry, rocky, barren looking ground as all the rest) though we later were reassured they were not yet planted. We met a man named Natalyo. For whatever reason, we could communicate with him in Spanish quite clearly, which was a nice relief.
There were some of the most consistently beautiful sunsets I have ever seen in that place. So many colours, every single night. Then, it gets dark at 7, and I mean dark. We lit a candle in our room and tried to learn some Quechua. And then did our best to fall asleep on our bed. What a day!
Our first muisc class was quite a success. We taught Skinnimerinkidinkidink, though we subsituted zapa zapa zuba for the verse, with different actions, which I think is a great improvement on the original actually. This song became a hit. The kids regualrly request it, and we hear them singing it all the time, even in class (I´m not sure if this is appreciated by the teachers). At first we were quite daunted, because the kids wouldn´t sing! They were too in awe I think. But once we got them to echo the first note, that was the biggest battle. They adore songs with actions, and remember them much better. Ram sam sam was also a big hit. They struggled with Shalom at first, but once they got it, they quite enjoyed it too. Alloutte, they loved the actions, though I´m not really sure they understood how to sing the whole thing. In short, the music classes were great. We taught them for about 45 minutes each morning at 9.
The first few days were really just a whirl of ´what on earth will happen next´.
Thursday afternoon, Juan came by. He took us to visit a nearby house, but that was quite a fail. We instead decided to ask him what he thought about health in the village. Initially he did not think there were any health problems, but with further questions, we found out lots of things that we thought were problems (such as children who die of sicknesses every year). What was really interesting was how he thought about it, which was echoed in the answers we got from other people. Despite that there is rampant chronic diahorea among the children, no one really thinks of it as a health problem. I think it might be similar to Canada, where (at least until recently) probably most people wouldn´t have listed colds as a health problem.
Anyways, we got back to our home, and it turned out that the teachers had left for Potosi while we´d been out with Juan, firmly locking the school behind them. I guess they don´t teach on Fridays. This was a problem, because a) we had been planning to borrow a pot from them, and b) the water tap was inside the school. We tried to bring these up with Juan, but it was so very difficult to communicate. We only got gists of things. Most questions such as ¨Can you repeat that¨ or ¨where can we get water¨ were answere with ´yes.´. So when he left, we were not optomistic about pots or water appearig. So, first we climbed the fence into the compound to acquire water. This was really quite easy. The tricky part was we weren´t sure how people would feel about this and we certainly didn´t want to give the kids ideas, so we did our best to scan in all directions before embarking, though people have a remarkable ability to pop up unexpectedly on the horizon with a herd of goats. Then, for the pot, we went to visit Natalyo. We met him in the field and he enthusiastically urged us to go get a pot from his wife. This was a little trickier, because she didn´t seem to speak any spanish or respond to our attempts at Quechua. So we stood in their yard for a bit. Then she gave us a bowl of boiled potatos (this is what happens when you visit any house. We were told it is very rude to refuse, so even if you are very full it is necessary to eat potatos. If you don´t finish the bowl by the time you leave, you take the rest with you. This led to a large surplus of boiled potatos in our house. Eventually we started mashing them for variety). Anyways, then Natalyo and a bunch of his kids showed up. I never managed to pin down how many kids he had or which ones, because there were different ones each time we visited. I don´t think they were all his, but it was a little hard to say. We chatted with him for a while, borrowed the pot for the week, did our best to thank his wife who was very reserved, and agreed to come back the next night with the guitar.
Friday, we were a little at loose ends. Given our disastorous attempt to visit houses with health information, we decided to do some brainstorming and goal planning. Our eventual plan became
a) wash hands conspicously whenever we eat. (We did our best to do this. It was tricky because there was only water intermittently, but we usually would carry a waterbottle. People mostly thought we were insane, and possibly a little rude because we did not immediatley dig into the offered potatos but instead stopped for this aparantly pointless excercise. Nevertheless.)
b) try to find out what we could about health in the village, and what people thought about it. I still think this is extremely important because why would they bother trying to fix things they didn´t think were problems?
c) try to share a bit of information.
So we drew some stories of kids with diareah, one who got lots of water and got better, and one who didn´t and didn´t. This was before we realized that this was not something they really considered a problem.
Our next plan was to hike around until we found a house. Here I should mention that this was not a village in the sense of streets and buildings. All along the sides of the mountains were scattered houses surrounded by their fields. Each was anywhere from 10 minutes to 45 minutes from the next. Houses as far away as 3 hours were considered part of the village. (The poor kids getting to school). Then, we would sit within hearing distance of the house, and sing and play the guitar. The guitar was very interesting to people generally. They didn´t seem to have any in the village. Basically the point of this was to give people the opportunity to invite us in. If they did, great. If not, that´s fine too, and we´d wander on. Our idea was that once we were invited in, we could play them some songs, visit as best we could, and perhaps show them some of our health pictures.
This was a nice idea. It never quite worked out like we intended, but it generally did work out. For example, one day, we met Alejandro, who had been mentioned to us as the village health worker. He was a great source of information on the village. The next day, he dropped by just as we were making supper with a pot of boiled potatos for us, some delicious salsa, and some fanstastic fried bread. We gave him a bowl of pasta. Another day, we met a fantastic little old lady. She spoke not a word of anything we spoke, but still bobbed up and down enthusiastically and gestured in all directions while she spoke rapidly in Quechau. She requested some songs on the guitar and seemed to thorougly enjoy them. Meanwhile, a young girl with her was in utter awe of us, and hid behind nearby rocks and hullucks. Occassionally, she´d peep over the edge but if she saw us looking would duck back down again. The old lady would urge her over, but to no avail.
Anyways, we never got bored. We usually went to bed shortly after the sun went down. Friday night, about 8, we were just about to blow out the candle when there was a knock at the door. Rather surprised, we answere the door and there was a woman we´d briefly earlier in the day. Her name was Esperanza, and she taught at a school farther along the road. We understood that her car had broken down and it was quite cold outside. We brought her in and gave her a blanket. We were unable to ascertain when she could catch the next shared car bus thing. After about half an hour started to wonder if she was staying the night. We didn´t mind, we just had absolutely nowhere for her to sleep. Right about then, there came another knock on the door. This time it was a man, who we did not recognize. He set about conversing with Esperanza, while Toni and I watched in baffelement. Eventually Esperanza translated into Spanish that he was the school guard, and he spent the nights in the school while the teachers were gone. Eventually he left. We went back to chatting with Esperanza, growing more and more tired, when there was yet another knock. What a night. It was the guard again. He had brought us a blanket, and this time came right into the house, and continued to chat with Esperanza. By this time Toni and I were getting very tired. We sat on the bed wondering what on earth was going on, why this man was in our house in the middle of the night, how long they were both staying (were they planning on sleeping in the house? we certainly hoped not and were not sure this was appropriate) when they both got up. Esperanza said the guard was going to sleep in teh school, and she would go sleep in there with him. This seemed like a good solution to us, so we bid them good night, and finally got to sleep. What a night! They were both gone in the morning.
One of the reasons we went to bed so early, is that at about 7 in the morning, people started dropping by. They might knock, and say good morning. Or they might just stare in through the window. This would continue all through the day. Lorenza dropped by at random with meals, which might be a bowl of soup or a pot full of boiled potatos. This only lasted for Friday, but left us continually uncertain about whether we should cook or not. One man dropped by, who spoke entirely in ´ha´s while gesturing to us, our house, himself, and the surrouding areas. ¨Ha ha, ha ha HA ha, ha, ha Ha, HA, ha ha ha.¨ Not like laughing has, these had much more emphasis. Not really sure how to respond, eventually I started saying ¨Ha ha, ha HA¨¨ in agreeing tones at what seemed like approprate times. Friday morning, we were awoken at 7 by knocking at the door. At first we thought we would ignore this ( we were still in bed) but it conitinued. So I eventually opened the door, bleary eyed in pajamas, and Lorenza was there with breakfast. She´d just left, and we were sitting there contemplating our bowls, when there was another knock. A man, his wife, and child were there. He managed to communicate that he would take us to the school to get water. So Toni grabbed a pair of shoes, the pot, and an empty bottle and went with him. Turned out he thought we had the key (he did not have one). How this made sense, I´m not entirely sure. But anyways. After that we started getting up and dressed earlier.
Water was a continual challenge. We finally came to the conclusion that it is only on every other day. Saturday, we cooked ourselves scrambled eggs and bread for breakfast. When we finished there was no water, so we left the dishes and went out. When we got back, still no water. AFter hiking in the sun, this was a bit of a problem. I decided I was not going back out into the sun until we got more water. About 5, still no water. At this point, we had to make supper. What to make without water? Lentils, pasta, and rice were out. Potoatos, turnips and carrots could be peeled, but wouldn´t cook this century without water. (Seeing as all the wood is from little bushes, and about the size of my pinky at best, it is hard to maintain a fire for long.) Tomatos? couldn´t be washed. Applesauce? No water to make sauce. That left us with bread, eggs, and onions. Same as breakfast. I have to admit frying the eggs on top of the blackened egg residue of the morning was not overly appetizing, but theydidn´t turn out too badly. Then we decided that this was the time to break into our stocks of chocolate.
Sunday morning, there was still no water. Problem. We languished for a while, climbing the wall periodically to check for more water, until about 10 when Hallelujah! There was water. We decided the advantage to the water being inside a walled compound was that we could have baths at the tap, which we did. I´m not sure I´ve ever had a bath quite that cold. We came out shivering and aching, but soon the sun warmed us up. (At this point Em speaks for herself- I have never had either my wrists or ankles that cold before. They hurt to turn them!!! I eventually realized that rather than parading around naked while trying to wash myself, I could wash half my body at a time, while keeping the other half firmly ensconced in many layers- so much more effective!)
People were continually coming through with herds of goats, sheep, and a few very large cows. Sometimes the herds came through all by themselves. This conveniently meant we could throw our compost outside and they would come get rid of it for us. Once, we had a visiting herd of goats sans herder, and I thought this would be an ideal chance to get rid of some of our older extra boiled potatos. I grabbed the bag and went out to start distributing. I tried to feed some to the very cute baby goats. While I was doing this, behind me a few clever sheep started exploring our house. Toni luckily noticed and started scrambling about chasing them out. Meanwhile, the rest of the herd had figured out that I was distributing exciting food, and started mobbing me. This got really out of hand really fast. I beat a hasty retreat to the house, where I had to force the door shut on the heads of the goats determined to follow me in to the potatos. That was the last time I fed the goats.
Everything went on in this vein until Thursday, the day we left. We packed up our things, gave away our leftover food, and taught music class. Just before we left, I went out of our house to take some left over food to the teachers, and figure out what to do with the coca. The group of workmen, sitting on a hill 100 m away, somehow recognized the coca bag for what it was, and began yelling and waving me over and holding out their hats. I certainly did not have enough coca to give to all of them (given that they happily chew about a 1/4 bag at a time) so I pretended not to know what they were on about, and proceded into the school. Lorenza was there, so I gave her the bag of coca, which she seemed to appreciate. I gave the food to the teachers and went back to my house. Natalyo came running over, and started asking if I had some ¨cocita¨(a little coca) I could give the ¨compaรฑeros¨. I could honestly say I did not, but he continued to press me, until finally he was convinced. I concluded I really do not understand the role of coca in their culture. These are people who would barely accept gifts of food, have never asked for a thing. To get them to agree to accept the payment for food that we had agreed on at the beginning was like pulling teeth. But with coca, they will readily accept, ask, even press you for it.
Anyways, after saying goodbye to various people, we headed off with the teachers. It only took us an 1 and 1/2 hours to get back to Potosi. It always takes so long to get anywhere with Felipe in comparison, but it´s because he´s always stopping for this or that, to pick up materials or to show us something delicious and Bolivian, or to pour water on to the engine so that it might run for the next bit, and he´s such good company that it´s more fun anyways.
All in all, it was quite the 9 days. Really a wonderful experience all round. Everyone was so welcoming and friendly and generous and patient, despite our lack of language or awareness of anything that was going on.
Toni´s editations:
At one point during our stay another volunteer from a different organization came to teach the women about hygiene and nutrition (In Quechua- much more effective), which then led to an increase in vegetables being cooked the next day. Rather than just rice and potatoes and beans, there was now lettuce! At first Emily and I were very excited by the prospects of green things, until we realized that it was possible to ruin lettuce! They somehow managed to drown it until all crispness had run out of it, and then they proceeded to pour at least half a cup of salt all over it. It was kind of similar to seeweed, except saltier and slimier. Good times- we now understand why they don´t eat vegetables on a regular basis. We are thinking that we might bring supplies to make a yummy salad for the kids next time we´re there.
What we learned about the state of health in the community:
1. 3-4 kids die every year from respiratory illnesses
2. There are very few, if any, people trained in first aid, not to mention there are no first aid kits.
3. The nearest clinic that stocks any antibiotics is in Tacobamba (about an 8 hour walk), meaning that when infection sets in it is very dangerous
4. Dental hygiene is non-existent, meaning that by the age of 40 no one has many teeth left
5. It is difficult to grow anything other than potatoes and onions, making vegetables rather difficult to acquire
6. There are a lot of eye infections that I believe lead to blindness over time
7. People wash themselves approximately once a week.
8. There are rarely enough blankets for everyone in the family, leading to run down immune systems.
One day, during our wanderings, we met a young girl of 12. Her name was Rose. Her mother had died (unsure how), leaving her with 4 (?) younger siblings to look after. Her father works hard to provide for them, leaving her to act as the mother to the rest of her siblings. As a result, she no longer goes to school, but instead takes care of the laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc. She came to the workshop on hygiene & nutrition with the other mothers. It was a sobering experience for both Em and I. She is just so young! I admire her strength.
Note to all travellers in Bolivia- when you are shopping for tomato sauce for spaghetti, do not trust that the red can with tomatoes on it contains tomatoes. We learned, upon opening it, that it instead contains sardines in a tomato sauce. Emily was not impressed with this at all! I actually thought it wasn´t too bad. Furthermore, if you bring along canned peaches, make sure you open them as far away from you as possible. If not, they have the unfortunate tendency to semi-explode, dousing you, the floor, and the blanket with sweet, syrupy stuff that is impossible to remove, thus leading to an accumulation of dust unprecendented by any other experience of dust.
...................................................................
So yes, thus ends the tale of our first volunteer experience. We are not at all sure we are being of any use to anyone, but we are learning a lot, and the kids are having fun, so we shall see. The communication barriers alone make it very difficult to get to know the other people in the village. But we will continue to try :)
At the moment, I am off to the salt flats of Uyuni. Google them- they look pretty insane. Should be good!
Cheers,
Toni
Sunday, October 4, 2009
My Holiday is Officially Over!
Where to begin? So much has happened in so little time...
This past Friday, we went to talk to Felipe, who had just gotten back from La Paz. What a conversation. All I can say is that I am soooo grateful we stopped in Cusco to learn some Spanish. Nevertheless, the Bolivian accent is quite different from the Peruvian one, which threw us for a loop. Plus Felipe speaks in very fast Spanish, and so epic levels of concentration are necessary for any comprehension to occur. Basically, Felipe is expecting us to finish building the health centre in the province of Topabamba, plus teach some health education classes for the local women.
Once that mission is accomplished, he also wants us to direct the building of the washrooms for a school in some other tiny village. I know nothing about construction, nor do I speak Quechua, so this should be interesting! While building the washrooms, we are supposed to go door to door talking to the local people (in Quechua...anyone seeing a common problem :D) and share our knowledge about nutrition and sanitation etc. We are also supposed to teach about 50 children to play the guitar/sing.
Then we are supposed to travel to some other tiny village to supervise the construction of a fishery (is that a word?), basically these tanks to raise trout. Um...so, my knowledge of fish is right up there with my knowledge of construction. Good times!
In between all of this, we are also supposed to be teaching Felipe to speak English, translating the website for PAIS into English, and learning to speak Quechua. All this in 2 months!!!! Can anyone hear the slight edge of panic here? Ahaha, oh well, I do thrive on a challenge- time to test my mettle.
So those of you who were worried I was just going to be on holiday for four months, fear not, for the work has arrived!!!
Yesterday, we woke up at six, and met Felipe at his office. The plan was to travel to Topabamba to see the current state of the Health clinic. According to Felipe, the trip there was supposed to be about 5 hours by car. So we got to Felipe´s office at seven and started our journey. Some other guys who work with Felipe also accompanied us so it was a little squishy (by squishy I mean there were three of us in the back seat, three in the front, and 2 standing in back of the truck).
At some point, we stopped for breakfast at a tiny market. Breakfast consisted of deep fried bread and coffee. I felt quite ill after this, especially considering Felipe and the rest of the guys kept pushing me to eat more, because apparently, by Bolivian standards my appetite is quite disgraceful. I fear that by the end of Bolivia, I may have to roll home.
We then continued on our way to Sucre. Once we arrived in Sucre, about four hours into the trip, we went on this wild goose chase for cement, tiles, and other materials needed for the clinic. By this point there was at least 2000 pounds in the truck, probably more- one bag of cement weighs more than I do...craziness, no? Then of course, lunch was necessary, and again Emily and I were not permitted to share a menu, which lead to more unhappiness. Emily managed to get a cramp while sitting and doing nothing- that is how full we were! In retrospect, it was probably good that we ate that much, but I digress.
Around 2:00, we left sucre, with the promise that it was only another 2 hours to "el campo". So we started up the mountain, at which point the pavement turned into cobblestone, followed by sand, followed by gravel, followed by jagged, uncompacted rock! At this point, it is only safe to go about 30km an hour, especially as the road is just barely wide enough for one truck and twists around in these fantastically frightenting ways. There were some points that Felipe would stall going around the corner, causing the truck to start rolling backwards towards the edge, and I must say thoughts of death crossed my mind. Needless to say, it was slow going. I must say, I have now seen a truck do things I did not know they were capable of. We actually drove through several rivers!!! This gave me a mild heart attack, but it all worked out okay
Did I mention that the truck had no radiator fluid (I think, my knowledge of cars is sketchy at best), and so every hour or so we would have to stop the truck, and pour about a litre of water into it, at which point it would hiss and smoke and produce the most nasty of odours.
Anyways, after about 2 hours of driving, we still were nowhere near our clinic, and lo and behold the truck had run out of oil! Felipe then drove all the way back to Sucre to get some more oil, and the drove all the way back to pick us up (we opted to sit by the river and be stared at by some children- it was quite funny, I think strangers are quite the event, let alone strangers from a different coutntry). By the time Felipe got back it was 5:00, and we still had another 2 hours to go.
At this point, the road then became even more unmanageable, at which point we had to get out and walk, so as to relieve the truck of some 900 pounds. Unfortunately, this was not sufficient, and one of the tires blew! I have never seen a tire deflate quite that fast- it was impressive. By this point, it was starting to get dark, and the truck was too heavy to prop up with the jack. So then we had to unload all of the cement, roll the truck back onto flatter ground so that it would not tip over, change the tire, coax the truck up this very steep incline, reload the truck and continue on our journey! What an adventure! We finally arrived at our destination around 8:30- only an extra 8 hours of driving :D
Once there, we unloaded all the stuff, not that they would really let us help. We weren´t allowed to move the cement- too heavy for las chicas. I didn´t really mind. More power to their macho-ness! We then did libations with extremely warm Pepsi- I would not recommend Pepsi as a good beverage for these rituals but whatever. The clinic is quite lovely. Orange walls, beautiful ceilings, a nice tiled floor, lighting- it is quite high tech! I think it will be beautiful when it is done.
Then after about a half an hour, we started back to Potosi! We left around 9:30 and got into Potosi at around 5:00. Unfortunately, the chairs were rather uncomfortable and so I could not sleep. As you can imagine I am super tired!!
Tomorrow, we go back to the clinic to help paint, and set-up things. Then Tuesday, we go to the second village to build the washrooms and all that jazz! Craziness! So yes, I will be out of contact for about 2 weeks. I am sure I will have many wonderful things to talk about when I get back. Until then, have a marvelous time. I think I am missing thanksgiving- so happy Turkey day!
This past Friday, we went to talk to Felipe, who had just gotten back from La Paz. What a conversation. All I can say is that I am soooo grateful we stopped in Cusco to learn some Spanish. Nevertheless, the Bolivian accent is quite different from the Peruvian one, which threw us for a loop. Plus Felipe speaks in very fast Spanish, and so epic levels of concentration are necessary for any comprehension to occur. Basically, Felipe is expecting us to finish building the health centre in the province of Topabamba, plus teach some health education classes for the local women.
Once that mission is accomplished, he also wants us to direct the building of the washrooms for a school in some other tiny village. I know nothing about construction, nor do I speak Quechua, so this should be interesting! While building the washrooms, we are supposed to go door to door talking to the local people (in Quechua...anyone seeing a common problem :D) and share our knowledge about nutrition and sanitation etc. We are also supposed to teach about 50 children to play the guitar/sing.
Then we are supposed to travel to some other tiny village to supervise the construction of a fishery (is that a word?), basically these tanks to raise trout. Um...so, my knowledge of fish is right up there with my knowledge of construction. Good times!
In between all of this, we are also supposed to be teaching Felipe to speak English, translating the website for PAIS into English, and learning to speak Quechua. All this in 2 months!!!! Can anyone hear the slight edge of panic here? Ahaha, oh well, I do thrive on a challenge- time to test my mettle.
So those of you who were worried I was just going to be on holiday for four months, fear not, for the work has arrived!!!
Yesterday, we woke up at six, and met Felipe at his office. The plan was to travel to Topabamba to see the current state of the Health clinic. According to Felipe, the trip there was supposed to be about 5 hours by car. So we got to Felipe´s office at seven and started our journey. Some other guys who work with Felipe also accompanied us so it was a little squishy (by squishy I mean there were three of us in the back seat, three in the front, and 2 standing in back of the truck).
At some point, we stopped for breakfast at a tiny market. Breakfast consisted of deep fried bread and coffee. I felt quite ill after this, especially considering Felipe and the rest of the guys kept pushing me to eat more, because apparently, by Bolivian standards my appetite is quite disgraceful. I fear that by the end of Bolivia, I may have to roll home.
We then continued on our way to Sucre. Once we arrived in Sucre, about four hours into the trip, we went on this wild goose chase for cement, tiles, and other materials needed for the clinic. By this point there was at least 2000 pounds in the truck, probably more- one bag of cement weighs more than I do...craziness, no? Then of course, lunch was necessary, and again Emily and I were not permitted to share a menu, which lead to more unhappiness. Emily managed to get a cramp while sitting and doing nothing- that is how full we were! In retrospect, it was probably good that we ate that much, but I digress.
Around 2:00, we left sucre, with the promise that it was only another 2 hours to "el campo". So we started up the mountain, at which point the pavement turned into cobblestone, followed by sand, followed by gravel, followed by jagged, uncompacted rock! At this point, it is only safe to go about 30km an hour, especially as the road is just barely wide enough for one truck and twists around in these fantastically frightenting ways. There were some points that Felipe would stall going around the corner, causing the truck to start rolling backwards towards the edge, and I must say thoughts of death crossed my mind. Needless to say, it was slow going. I must say, I have now seen a truck do things I did not know they were capable of. We actually drove through several rivers!!! This gave me a mild heart attack, but it all worked out okay
Did I mention that the truck had no radiator fluid (I think, my knowledge of cars is sketchy at best), and so every hour or so we would have to stop the truck, and pour about a litre of water into it, at which point it would hiss and smoke and produce the most nasty of odours.
Anyways, after about 2 hours of driving, we still were nowhere near our clinic, and lo and behold the truck had run out of oil! Felipe then drove all the way back to Sucre to get some more oil, and the drove all the way back to pick us up (we opted to sit by the river and be stared at by some children- it was quite funny, I think strangers are quite the event, let alone strangers from a different coutntry). By the time Felipe got back it was 5:00, and we still had another 2 hours to go.
At this point, the road then became even more unmanageable, at which point we had to get out and walk, so as to relieve the truck of some 900 pounds. Unfortunately, this was not sufficient, and one of the tires blew! I have never seen a tire deflate quite that fast- it was impressive. By this point, it was starting to get dark, and the truck was too heavy to prop up with the jack. So then we had to unload all of the cement, roll the truck back onto flatter ground so that it would not tip over, change the tire, coax the truck up this very steep incline, reload the truck and continue on our journey! What an adventure! We finally arrived at our destination around 8:30- only an extra 8 hours of driving :D
Once there, we unloaded all the stuff, not that they would really let us help. We weren´t allowed to move the cement- too heavy for las chicas. I didn´t really mind. More power to their macho-ness! We then did libations with extremely warm Pepsi- I would not recommend Pepsi as a good beverage for these rituals but whatever. The clinic is quite lovely. Orange walls, beautiful ceilings, a nice tiled floor, lighting- it is quite high tech! I think it will be beautiful when it is done.
Then after about a half an hour, we started back to Potosi! We left around 9:30 and got into Potosi at around 5:00. Unfortunately, the chairs were rather uncomfortable and so I could not sleep. As you can imagine I am super tired!!
Tomorrow, we go back to the clinic to help paint, and set-up things. Then Tuesday, we go to the second village to build the washrooms and all that jazz! Craziness! So yes, I will be out of contact for about 2 weeks. I am sure I will have many wonderful things to talk about when I get back. Until then, have a marvelous time. I think I am missing thanksgiving- so happy Turkey day!
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Aloha,
So yesterday I was the victim of the classic crime!!! Em and I were eating lunch at a fairly posh restaurant, when this guy came up to us and asked us, in very fast spanish, about something to do with the table next to us. While we were distracted trying to figure this out, another guy snuck around the table and stole my little green backpack. Unfortunately, we did not notice until it was too late. So I have now lost the journal I had since Italy, my cell phone, my Spanish book and dictionary, my favourite deodorant, my nivea (ahaha-vee, good times), two of my puffers, and my gum. However, nothing essential so I consider myself quite lucky. It could have been much worse- they didn´t even get my mp3.
I have already replaced my journal with a red one that has graph paper in it- it makes me very happy. Today I shall endeavour to find a cell phone- grr!
Tehe, life is fun :D
So yesterday I was the victim of the classic crime!!! Em and I were eating lunch at a fairly posh restaurant, when this guy came up to us and asked us, in very fast spanish, about something to do with the table next to us. While we were distracted trying to figure this out, another guy snuck around the table and stole my little green backpack. Unfortunately, we did not notice until it was too late. So I have now lost the journal I had since Italy, my cell phone, my Spanish book and dictionary, my favourite deodorant, my nivea (ahaha-vee, good times), two of my puffers, and my gum. However, nothing essential so I consider myself quite lucky. It could have been much worse- they didn´t even get my mp3.
I have already replaced my journal with a red one that has graph paper in it- it makes me very happy. Today I shall endeavour to find a cell phone- grr!
Tehe, life is fun :D
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
I´m in Potosi- finally!
Hey Everybody,
So we got into La Paz two days ago, but after having taken two buses, a ferry, and a taxi, I was not up to blogging about it. La Paz is huge! I wasn´t expecting it. Huge, and polluted, and very chaotic. The first night we got there, it was pretty much sensory overload. For whatever reason, the bus we were on decided not to drop us at the bus terminal but instead on some random road, which was more stressful than you might imagine. After eventually stumbling upon some dingy, but decent hostal, we pretty much crashed for the night. The next morning we woke up feeling much more equipped to deal with the craziness of La Paz. I discovered my love of saltenas, which are the best meat pies ever made! actually! They are juicy, and spicy, and probably one of the only Bolivian foods with a decent amount of vegetables to accompany the meat :)
We also bought our bus tickets to Potosi, and we were all good to go when we got an e-mail from Felipe approximately two hours before our bus was scheduled to leave. (Felipe is the guy in charge of the volunteer organization in Potosi). We e'mailed him about a week and a half ago to let him know that we would most likely be arriving on the 28th or 29th. We of course didn´t hear back from him, but we were not overly concerned because he is not the most prompt e-mail responder. In retrospect, perhaps we should have been a little more concerned, lol. So whatever, we open the e-mail, and it is Felipe telling us that he is actually taking a bus to La Paz as we speak, and will be there by morning. Consequently, he thought we should delay our travels to Potosi, so that we could travel together. Well then! Not sure if any of you have traveled extensively in South America, but returning bus tickets is not the easiest thing to do when one speaks limited Spanish and the people at the train station work on commission :)
We decided it might be a good idea to call Felipe, and so we found a locutorio and dialled the number that was supposedly his cell phone. At first it went to voicemail, and so I was left stumbling trying to compose a message that would make sense to him. At some point during my ramblings, someone picked up the phone. I assumed it was Felipe, and so we started talking, except that his Spanish is much faster than my own, and so there was much confusion. However, then the person I was talking to got all confused about my travel plans to Potosi, because he thought we were going for a couple of days rather than a couple of months. At this point, I began to become a little suspicious. Just who exactly was I talking to? When I asked him this, he said something that might have been to the effect of "I am Felipe´s brother", possibly he told me that he was not Felipe and had no clue what I was talking about, or possibly it really was Felipe and we had just managed to be mutually confused. Honestly I have no idea. Unable to maintain my composure on the phone, I told whoever I was talking to that we were heading to Potosi, and would write an email to felipe with the details of this plan. Upon hanging up, Em and I laughed until we cried.
So yes, now we are in Potosi, waiting for Felipe to get back here, at which point who knows what will happen. Nothing like a good adventure :)
So we got into La Paz two days ago, but after having taken two buses, a ferry, and a taxi, I was not up to blogging about it. La Paz is huge! I wasn´t expecting it. Huge, and polluted, and very chaotic. The first night we got there, it was pretty much sensory overload. For whatever reason, the bus we were on decided not to drop us at the bus terminal but instead on some random road, which was more stressful than you might imagine. After eventually stumbling upon some dingy, but decent hostal, we pretty much crashed for the night. The next morning we woke up feeling much more equipped to deal with the craziness of La Paz. I discovered my love of saltenas, which are the best meat pies ever made! actually! They are juicy, and spicy, and probably one of the only Bolivian foods with a decent amount of vegetables to accompany the meat :)
We also bought our bus tickets to Potosi, and we were all good to go when we got an e-mail from Felipe approximately two hours before our bus was scheduled to leave. (Felipe is the guy in charge of the volunteer organization in Potosi). We e'mailed him about a week and a half ago to let him know that we would most likely be arriving on the 28th or 29th. We of course didn´t hear back from him, but we were not overly concerned because he is not the most prompt e-mail responder. In retrospect, perhaps we should have been a little more concerned, lol. So whatever, we open the e-mail, and it is Felipe telling us that he is actually taking a bus to La Paz as we speak, and will be there by morning. Consequently, he thought we should delay our travels to Potosi, so that we could travel together. Well then! Not sure if any of you have traveled extensively in South America, but returning bus tickets is not the easiest thing to do when one speaks limited Spanish and the people at the train station work on commission :)
We decided it might be a good idea to call Felipe, and so we found a locutorio and dialled the number that was supposedly his cell phone. At first it went to voicemail, and so I was left stumbling trying to compose a message that would make sense to him. At some point during my ramblings, someone picked up the phone. I assumed it was Felipe, and so we started talking, except that his Spanish is much faster than my own, and so there was much confusion. However, then the person I was talking to got all confused about my travel plans to Potosi, because he thought we were going for a couple of days rather than a couple of months. At this point, I began to become a little suspicious. Just who exactly was I talking to? When I asked him this, he said something that might have been to the effect of "I am Felipe´s brother", possibly he told me that he was not Felipe and had no clue what I was talking about, or possibly it really was Felipe and we had just managed to be mutually confused. Honestly I have no idea. Unable to maintain my composure on the phone, I told whoever I was talking to that we were heading to Potosi, and would write an email to felipe with the details of this plan. Upon hanging up, Em and I laughed until we cried.
So yes, now we are in Potosi, waiting for Felipe to get back here, at which point who knows what will happen. Nothing like a good adventure :)
Saturday, September 26, 2009
My Cusquenan Weekend; Part II
Sorry for not finishing sooner- I got distracted by Maccu Picchu :)
So as I was saying, Sunday was also an amazing day. Manuel is a professional musician, in addition to being the sound and lights guy for a bunch of different theatres. He was kind enough to invite us to a community music production- a wonderful collaboration between Manuel´s music group and a group of kids from a local elementary school.
Originally he thought that it was in the same location as they had it the last month, and so he met us at our hostel at around 3:00 and we started walking. Now Cusco is very high, with very little oxygen, and it also happens to be built into the side of the mountain...see where I´m going with this? So basically, we walked straight up for about 45 minutes. I don´t think my heart has ever pumped as fast as it was when we were climbing. I actually couldn´t talk. It was ridiculous. Luckily, Manuel seemed to tire, too, just not the same degree. Eventually we made it to the top of the hill, near the ruins of saksaywaman (called sexy woman by the majority of people in Cusco), only to discover that it was in fact on top of a completely different part of the mountain! So we then climbed all the way back down, hailed a taxi, and drove to the next site. Unfortunately, the taxi driver had no idea where we were going, which led to us getting out and walking up many more flights of stairs. Good times :)
Finally we arrived at our destination- this tiny little park beside a church. Success!! Only problem was that no one had any idea where the music production was supposed to be either, which led to a whole bunch of tardiness. While waiting, one of the guys from Manuel´s group procured a full bag of coca leaves (yes I am referring to the same plant as the one used to make cocaine, however coca leaves and cocaine are in no way related, as many locals are wont to tell me). At first, I just assumed we were going to chew on them to keep ourselves occupied- little did I know that there is a beautiful ceremony that accompanies coca leaf chewing. So, to start, you painstakingly search for three perfectly formed coca leaves- this is more challenging than it sounds because they are typically very dry and brittle. Once you have selected the coca leaves, you blow on them, and present them to another person in the circle. They then accept the leaves, blow on them, and then place them in their mouths. You continue to do this until everyone has a large wad of coca leaves in their mouth. What I did not realize was that coca leaves have anaesthetic (sp?) properties, leaving your mouth feeling as though you have sucked on too many
Hall throat candies :) It was an interesting sensation. Back to the ceremonial aspects of coca leaves- it was just such a warm and friendly gesture. Emily and I felt perfectly accepted within their group, and it was an honour to have participated in it.
Then out came the beer, and I discovered they do libations too!! One person starts with a glass, fills it to whatever depth they want, then passes the bottle to the next person. It took me quite a while to figure out what I was supposed to be doing with the bottle- at first I thought they wanted me to drink from it but this seemed a little rude. Anyways, they sprinkle a little bit on the earth, and throw a few drops behind them, and then drink the rest and pass the cup to the next person. The next person repeats the entire process, until everyone in the circle has had a chance to thank the Earth for providing for them. It was very cool! They also did tobacco smudging, very similar to some of the native ceremonies, but this once I skipped out on because I didn´t think smoke on top of a lack of oxygen would be very good for my health.
After all of these wonderful gestures, the music finally started, and it was beautiful. There were many pan floutists, and a couple of drummers. After watching for a bit, we realized that in the group, every person has one or two notes that they are in charge of playing, and then to produce the melody they basically all take turns playing their note. The amount of coordination this takes blows my mind! Then the dancing started, which was so much fun!!! They dance in circles, and somehow they all seem to know when they should be changing directions. Naturally, Emily and I had no idea, and as a result, spent many minutes getting our arms yanked out of their sockets. It was marvelous!!! After the dancing came the drinking, and they really do not enjoy taking no for an answer. As a result, I drank way too much beer for life, and I don´t even like beer! At some point during the night, I climbed the soccer posts, which seemed like a very natural thing to do. Apparently, Peruvians do not normally do this, and so Manuel and Emily spent many a minute discussing the levels of craziness/inebriation I was exhibiting :) What I found most amusing was the very drunk Pablo that decided to join me on top of the soccer posts. Hilarity! He was not sober enough to speak Spanish simply enough for me to understand, and so we just spent a whole lot of time being very confused. At some point, I think he was trying to convince me that he was acutally a famous singer, although I am not really sure of this.
Post all of these musical festivities, we returned to the main part of Cusco and decided to go out dancing with Jesus and Manuel. First we went to this bar called Muse- very strange decor, but quite enjoyable. The bartenders thought I was married because I have a ring on the fourth finger of my right hand (apparently it´s backwards in Peru). They were very relieved when I told them I was not, and proceeded to propose rather loudly. Oh dear! Hilarious! Then I got bored, because Muse was playing too much Reggae, so we went to a different club whose name I don´t know, and I came to the conclusion that clubbing in Peru is the same as clubbing anywhere. Same type of music, although I must say that there is more salsa dancing, which is spectacular!!
Alas, thus ended my rather lovely Cusquenian weekend. Such a learning experience, and so much fun :)
So as I was saying, Sunday was also an amazing day. Manuel is a professional musician, in addition to being the sound and lights guy for a bunch of different theatres. He was kind enough to invite us to a community music production- a wonderful collaboration between Manuel´s music group and a group of kids from a local elementary school.
Originally he thought that it was in the same location as they had it the last month, and so he met us at our hostel at around 3:00 and we started walking. Now Cusco is very high, with very little oxygen, and it also happens to be built into the side of the mountain...see where I´m going with this? So basically, we walked straight up for about 45 minutes. I don´t think my heart has ever pumped as fast as it was when we were climbing. I actually couldn´t talk. It was ridiculous. Luckily, Manuel seemed to tire, too, just not the same degree. Eventually we made it to the top of the hill, near the ruins of saksaywaman (called sexy woman by the majority of people in Cusco), only to discover that it was in fact on top of a completely different part of the mountain! So we then climbed all the way back down, hailed a taxi, and drove to the next site. Unfortunately, the taxi driver had no idea where we were going, which led to us getting out and walking up many more flights of stairs. Good times :)
Finally we arrived at our destination- this tiny little park beside a church. Success!! Only problem was that no one had any idea where the music production was supposed to be either, which led to a whole bunch of tardiness. While waiting, one of the guys from Manuel´s group procured a full bag of coca leaves (yes I am referring to the same plant as the one used to make cocaine, however coca leaves and cocaine are in no way related, as many locals are wont to tell me). At first, I just assumed we were going to chew on them to keep ourselves occupied- little did I know that there is a beautiful ceremony that accompanies coca leaf chewing. So, to start, you painstakingly search for three perfectly formed coca leaves- this is more challenging than it sounds because they are typically very dry and brittle. Once you have selected the coca leaves, you blow on them, and present them to another person in the circle. They then accept the leaves, blow on them, and then place them in their mouths. You continue to do this until everyone has a large wad of coca leaves in their mouth. What I did not realize was that coca leaves have anaesthetic (sp?) properties, leaving your mouth feeling as though you have sucked on too many
Hall throat candies :) It was an interesting sensation. Back to the ceremonial aspects of coca leaves- it was just such a warm and friendly gesture. Emily and I felt perfectly accepted within their group, and it was an honour to have participated in it.
Then out came the beer, and I discovered they do libations too!! One person starts with a glass, fills it to whatever depth they want, then passes the bottle to the next person. It took me quite a while to figure out what I was supposed to be doing with the bottle- at first I thought they wanted me to drink from it but this seemed a little rude. Anyways, they sprinkle a little bit on the earth, and throw a few drops behind them, and then drink the rest and pass the cup to the next person. The next person repeats the entire process, until everyone in the circle has had a chance to thank the Earth for providing for them. It was very cool! They also did tobacco smudging, very similar to some of the native ceremonies, but this once I skipped out on because I didn´t think smoke on top of a lack of oxygen would be very good for my health.
After all of these wonderful gestures, the music finally started, and it was beautiful. There were many pan floutists, and a couple of drummers. After watching for a bit, we realized that in the group, every person has one or two notes that they are in charge of playing, and then to produce the melody they basically all take turns playing their note. The amount of coordination this takes blows my mind! Then the dancing started, which was so much fun!!! They dance in circles, and somehow they all seem to know when they should be changing directions. Naturally, Emily and I had no idea, and as a result, spent many minutes getting our arms yanked out of their sockets. It was marvelous!!! After the dancing came the drinking, and they really do not enjoy taking no for an answer. As a result, I drank way too much beer for life, and I don´t even like beer! At some point during the night, I climbed the soccer posts, which seemed like a very natural thing to do. Apparently, Peruvians do not normally do this, and so Manuel and Emily spent many a minute discussing the levels of craziness/inebriation I was exhibiting :) What I found most amusing was the very drunk Pablo that decided to join me on top of the soccer posts. Hilarity! He was not sober enough to speak Spanish simply enough for me to understand, and so we just spent a whole lot of time being very confused. At some point, I think he was trying to convince me that he was acutally a famous singer, although I am not really sure of this.
Post all of these musical festivities, we returned to the main part of Cusco and decided to go out dancing with Jesus and Manuel. First we went to this bar called Muse- very strange decor, but quite enjoyable. The bartenders thought I was married because I have a ring on the fourth finger of my right hand (apparently it´s backwards in Peru). They were very relieved when I told them I was not, and proceeded to propose rather loudly. Oh dear! Hilarious! Then I got bored, because Muse was playing too much Reggae, so we went to a different club whose name I don´t know, and I came to the conclusion that clubbing in Peru is the same as clubbing anywhere. Same type of music, although I must say that there is more salsa dancing, which is spectacular!!
Alas, thus ended my rather lovely Cusquenian weekend. Such a learning experience, and so much fun :)
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
My Cusquenan weekend!
Hola a todos,
I am on my twenty minute break from spanish class, so I don´t have much time, however I felt that it was necessary to share my most spectacular weekend with you.
Saturday we woke up at a very leisurely 8 o´clock- late for us because the sun rises around 5:30 and wakes us up. I then stayed in bed and luxuriously read the three musketeers. Funniest book ever! I definitely recommend it if you haven´t already read it. I think Planchet, D´artagnan´s servant is my favourite, although D´Artagnan himself is a close second. Then Manuel and Jesus decided to take us out for lunch in un restaurante tipico, which was wonderful. We started with these enormous glasses of chicha, which is this fermented corn drink that is definitely an acquired taste. The glasses were seriously as big around as my face- I had to hold it with two hands!!!! I felt very much like a 3 year old again, trying desperately to drink without spilling all over myself. Manuel and Jesus can down 5 of these gigantic glasses in one sitting. I don´t know where they put it. I am slowly getting used to it...who knows, by the end of the trip I may even love it. It is defintely the drink of choice for cusquenans.
I am also slowly but surely getting used to having to kiss everyone as a greeting. I definitely offended a couple people, unintentionally, by shaking their hand instead of doing the much more socially acceptable kiss on the cheek.
Anyways, after lunch, they took us to this beautiful roof top terrace where you could see the entire city. Emily and I sang songs, and danced, and I of course did handstands all over the place. After that, they took us to this wonderful cafe where we had peruvian hot chocolate, which actually is the best thing I have ever tasted!!! Emily and I believe it is the milk they use- whole milk instead of partially skimmed- seriously who came up with the idea of reduced-fat milk? So unnecessary. And THEN they took us to un teatro to watch a Cusquenan production. It was wonderful! It was basically a play symbolizing the fiesta de la somebody...can´t remember her name. And so it showed the battle between the Incas and the Spanish, and cultural traditions of both groups. There were acrobats and jugglers and fire spinners! Que bueno!! So yes, that was our saturday.
Sunday was even more spectacular, but it is going to have to wait until after Spanish class...
Be back soon :)
I am on my twenty minute break from spanish class, so I don´t have much time, however I felt that it was necessary to share my most spectacular weekend with you.
Saturday we woke up at a very leisurely 8 o´clock- late for us because the sun rises around 5:30 and wakes us up. I then stayed in bed and luxuriously read the three musketeers. Funniest book ever! I definitely recommend it if you haven´t already read it. I think Planchet, D´artagnan´s servant is my favourite, although D´Artagnan himself is a close second. Then Manuel and Jesus decided to take us out for lunch in un restaurante tipico, which was wonderful. We started with these enormous glasses of chicha, which is this fermented corn drink that is definitely an acquired taste. The glasses were seriously as big around as my face- I had to hold it with two hands!!!! I felt very much like a 3 year old again, trying desperately to drink without spilling all over myself. Manuel and Jesus can down 5 of these gigantic glasses in one sitting. I don´t know where they put it. I am slowly getting used to it...who knows, by the end of the trip I may even love it. It is defintely the drink of choice for cusquenans.
I am also slowly but surely getting used to having to kiss everyone as a greeting. I definitely offended a couple people, unintentionally, by shaking their hand instead of doing the much more socially acceptable kiss on the cheek.
Anyways, after lunch, they took us to this beautiful roof top terrace where you could see the entire city. Emily and I sang songs, and danced, and I of course did handstands all over the place. After that, they took us to this wonderful cafe where we had peruvian hot chocolate, which actually is the best thing I have ever tasted!!! Emily and I believe it is the milk they use- whole milk instead of partially skimmed- seriously who came up with the idea of reduced-fat milk? So unnecessary. And THEN they took us to un teatro to watch a Cusquenan production. It was wonderful! It was basically a play symbolizing the fiesta de la somebody...can´t remember her name. And so it showed the battle between the Incas and the Spanish, and cultural traditions of both groups. There were acrobats and jugglers and fire spinners! Que bueno!! So yes, that was our saturday.
Sunday was even more spectacular, but it is going to have to wait until after Spanish class...
Be back soon :)
Friday, September 18, 2009
My brain is exploding!!!
Hey everybody,
Cuzco (or Cusco- after a bit of confusion, I have decided both are actually used equally) is awesome!!! We are staying in a very cute hostal that is a five minute walk from a small local market, which means that every morning for breakfast we get up and walk to the market for some freshly sqeezed juice. This morning´s was awesome- the put beets and carrots in it! Then for lunch, we go back to the market and split a menu, because they are way too big to finish alone. You start with this giant bowl of soup- today´s had several chicken feet, and then there is the actual meal- normally meat and rice and potatoes, followed by some kind of dessert. And all this for the low price of 3 soles (1 USD).
After about a week of being generally confused, and having no clue how to articulate most of our thoughts, we decided some spanish lessons were in order. Luckily Cusco is the most touristy town we have been in yet, and there were a multitude to choose from. We decided to go with a school called Mundo Antiguo- not sure of the significance. As it stands, currently, we do four hours of lessons a day, by the end of which, our brains are fried past the point of recognition. As a result, if this post makes no sense, it is because our spanish lesson finished about an hour ago, and I haven´t had my nap yet :) We are learning a ton, though. I can now have a conversation as long as it is only in the present tense, which is a very exciting accomplishment. Today we learned the conjugations of all the irregular spanish verbs, plus how to use pronombres directs y indirects which is not the same as in french!! Ahhhh!!!! The bad news about these very intensive Spanish lessons is that we are left with absolutely no energy to explore the touristy sites at the end of the day. We sleep, eat, and breathe Spanish.
Yesterday, we did make it to the plaza armas, where I was accosted at least ten times by young boys wishing to shine my shoes. Apparently they are in a horrifying state of uncleanliness, and they just cant seem to fathom why I would refuse to let them make them "muy bonitos". I also got chastised by the police for putting my shoes on the bench. I was thinking that perhaps some new shoes might be in order. Around the plaza de armas, there are literally dozens of touristy souvenir shops. There are also ladies dressed in traditional garb holding llamas so that tourists can take their picture for a small fee. The weird thing is that people pay for this. It is a bit disconcerting to be in the tourist centre because all the signs and all the menus are in English, giving it an atmosphere that is almost European. We decided that there must be more to Cusco than immediately apparent and so we walked perhaps ten minutes past the plaza and lo and behold normal peruvian life!! It is just bizarre. One block and it is as if you are in a different world.
A couple of days ago, Em decided to get a watch bracelet made for her by one of the street vendors, and so while we were waiting to pay one of the other guys came up to me and started chatting, which was fine. But then he conned me into trying on some of his jewelery- I should have refused more vehemently. And then he decided to take a picture of me while I wasn´t paying attention!!! Ahhh!! I was a little weirded out, mostly amused though. So far my brown skin has definitely been working in my favour as Em gets way more attention than I do, which is fun for me, and not so fun for her =)
As far as reading goes, I have already finished All that matters, my stroke of insight, and I am halfway through the 3 musketeers. What am I going to read when I´m finished!?!?!? Suggestions anybody?
Cuzco (or Cusco- after a bit of confusion, I have decided both are actually used equally) is awesome!!! We are staying in a very cute hostal that is a five minute walk from a small local market, which means that every morning for breakfast we get up and walk to the market for some freshly sqeezed juice. This morning´s was awesome- the put beets and carrots in it! Then for lunch, we go back to the market and split a menu, because they are way too big to finish alone. You start with this giant bowl of soup- today´s had several chicken feet, and then there is the actual meal- normally meat and rice and potatoes, followed by some kind of dessert. And all this for the low price of 3 soles (1 USD).
After about a week of being generally confused, and having no clue how to articulate most of our thoughts, we decided some spanish lessons were in order. Luckily Cusco is the most touristy town we have been in yet, and there were a multitude to choose from. We decided to go with a school called Mundo Antiguo- not sure of the significance. As it stands, currently, we do four hours of lessons a day, by the end of which, our brains are fried past the point of recognition. As a result, if this post makes no sense, it is because our spanish lesson finished about an hour ago, and I haven´t had my nap yet :) We are learning a ton, though. I can now have a conversation as long as it is only in the present tense, which is a very exciting accomplishment. Today we learned the conjugations of all the irregular spanish verbs, plus how to use pronombres directs y indirects which is not the same as in french!! Ahhhh!!!! The bad news about these very intensive Spanish lessons is that we are left with absolutely no energy to explore the touristy sites at the end of the day. We sleep, eat, and breathe Spanish.
Yesterday, we did make it to the plaza armas, where I was accosted at least ten times by young boys wishing to shine my shoes. Apparently they are in a horrifying state of uncleanliness, and they just cant seem to fathom why I would refuse to let them make them "muy bonitos". I also got chastised by the police for putting my shoes on the bench. I was thinking that perhaps some new shoes might be in order. Around the plaza de armas, there are literally dozens of touristy souvenir shops. There are also ladies dressed in traditional garb holding llamas so that tourists can take their picture for a small fee. The weird thing is that people pay for this. It is a bit disconcerting to be in the tourist centre because all the signs and all the menus are in English, giving it an atmosphere that is almost European. We decided that there must be more to Cusco than immediately apparent and so we walked perhaps ten minutes past the plaza and lo and behold normal peruvian life!! It is just bizarre. One block and it is as if you are in a different world.
A couple of days ago, Em decided to get a watch bracelet made for her by one of the street vendors, and so while we were waiting to pay one of the other guys came up to me and started chatting, which was fine. But then he conned me into trying on some of his jewelery- I should have refused more vehemently. And then he decided to take a picture of me while I wasn´t paying attention!!! Ahhh!! I was a little weirded out, mostly amused though. So far my brown skin has definitely been working in my favour as Em gets way more attention than I do, which is fun for me, and not so fun for her =)
As far as reading goes, I have already finished All that matters, my stroke of insight, and I am halfway through the 3 musketeers. What am I going to read when I´m finished!?!?!? Suggestions anybody?
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Hola!
So I am back in Arequipa now after a whirlwind trip to Cotahuasi Canyon. The original plan was to leave the night of the 6th, and spend five nights in the canyon, and come home on the 13th. Hence, the day of the 6th was spent running around like chickens with our heads cut off searching for gear, food, and clothing for our six day trek. The guy who rented us gear wanted to keep our passports as collateral- we thought that was a rather terrible idea, and so instead we left him 100USD. He seemed to think this was a novel idea. So we quickly packed and then ran to terrepuerto- the local bus station, only to discover that all the tickets for that night were already sold out. That was the end of plan one.
We ended up leaving the following night at 4:30, and for some silly reason I decided it would be a good idea to drink two glasses of strawberry juice at around 3:00 that afternoon. Naturally, after about an hour on the bus I really had to go to the washroom. However, this is generally frowned upon while on Peruvian buses. Nonetheless, I managed to talk to bus driver into stopping to let me off to find a bathroom. Then I got back to the bus, and the bus was gone!!!! My heart just about stopped. Apparently the bus driver decided three minutes was an exorbitant amount of time, and had decided to leave without me. Luckily, some other passengers were looking out for me and managed to convince him to stop about 100m up. Since then I have learned it is better to dehydrate oneself before all 12 hour bus trips, and so now I don´t drink anything for about five hours before getting on the bus- much safer :) Other than that, the bus ride was quite tame. Oh wait- we had to go through a 6000m pass, which was freezing and gave me a horrible headache. The air is just so strange- you try and breathe deeply but your lungs stop expanding long before you feel you have enough air.
Finally we arrived in Cotahuasi at 4:00 am completely exhausted, only to be told that the bus that goes to the drop-off for trekking leaves at six that same morning. Unable to fathom hiking for eight hours on two hours of sleep, we decided to get a hostel room and crash for a couple of hours and then go to the hot springs, which I have decided are my new favourite thing.
The next morning we got up at five and began our hiking adventure. Trying to find any information on how long it was between villages was quite an adventure. The locals would all say you could trek to the furthest village in about a day, and then you would talk to a guide who would tell you it takes about seven hours to get to the first village! All in all we were quite confused, and mildly apprehensive. However, we set out with high hopes.
Day 1: Hiked to Sipia in about 2 hours- which was a 150m waterfall- really beautiful with very nice rock plateaus to sit above the drop off. Emily and Kurt (A traveller from Iowa we picked up in Arequipa) just about had a heart attack watching me climb to the edge :) From there it was a three hour completely uphill trek to Chaupo, and then a two hour trek to Mayo. I very nearly died! I have decided I don´t ever want to gain 40 pounds- it just makes life so much more difficult. I was out of breath after like 12 steps upwards. The altitude probably didn´t help either. We finally arrived in Mayo and I pretty much collapsed- the backpack bruised my collarbones and my hips!! Ridiculous.
Day 2: Woke up and trekked to Quechualla, which was very cool! It is the main village in the canyon- max 50 people! Their agricultural systems are absolutely stunning though. They manage to construct these plateaus that are on a small angle. Then at the top of the plateau they somehow manage to dam the river. When they want to water their fields, they open the gate, and the water, very slowly and perfectly, flows evenly between each row of alfalfa, or potatoes or whatever they were growing. We were all very impressed by this. I don´t know how they manage to grow anything at all- it is just soooo dry!!! We were drinking at least six litres of water a day, and we were still dehydrated at the end of it. But they manage to grow grapes, and oranges, and papaya, and other things! We tried their homemade wine- nastiest thing ever but Kurt enjoyed it.
Day 3: Hiked to Ushua, the deepest point in the canyon. Emily got a cactus/burr thing stuck in her foot. It was vicious. And touching it just led to being stabbed. Kurt just about died laughing watching the two of us try and remove the damn thing.
Day 4: Hiked back to Mayo, swam in the hot springs- these ones were more lukewarm springs, and all that kept going through my mind was the large quatities of bacteria I was sitting in. yuck! The stars that night were amazing. There is no light, and so you can see pretty much everything. The milky way is bigger in the southern hemisphere! I thought this was exciting. And you can still see Orion´s belt :) Other than that, Emily and I resorted to creating our own constallations. We found running man, upside-down eiffel tower, ninja star, and cheshire cat :D
Day 5: Trekked all the way back!
I don´t think I have ever had such chapped lips in my life! They actually have scabs, and are constantly in pain. It was an amazing trip and the locals were all so accomodating and helpful! One day we met this traveller named Rick. He was an American who went through what sounded like an ugly divorce, and decided to trek around the world. He must be about 70 but he looks about 50. He was hilarious! He is convinced that coca leaves (you chew them, and they are supposed to help fight altitude sickness and aid digestion) are the solution to all life´s ailments, and consequently all the pharmaceutical companies in the states have banned them because it would ruin their business. He is also convinced that both the avian flu and the swine flu were engineered by scientists to make the flu vaccine seem necessary. Through this vaccine, the US was going to carry out a mass genocide - to what end, I am still unsure. What a character! He recently bought a burro (a donkey is the same I think), which was quite cute. I must say, by the end of the hike I was quite envious.
We finally arrived back in Cotahuasi city where we met a couple of Germans, a guy from New Zealand, and some other travellers from the US. That night was the beginning of the festival of Senor Chaycalla, and so everyone in Cotahuasi was out in full force. We discovered that there are actually nearly 500 people in town! So many! The festival was a lot of fun. One of the prize foods is french fries, covered in chow mein, slathered with mayo, and then sprinkled with hot dog bits. It made my stomach turn just looking at it! They also had fireworks that just about took out a couple of people! They didn´t aim them high enough and so sparks kept hitting people. It was actually really funny :) They also had this really crazy 15 foot high, bamboo man constructed with a whole bunch of fireworks attached. At the end of the night they lit it on fire and the entire thing burned to the ground. It was really cool, but I was midly terrified because the power lines were perhaps ten feet in front of this large firework man (shake head).
Note to Laura- you thought our ladder placements were sketchy this summer- nothing compared to those in Cotahuasi!! They had three 15 feet wooden ladders, that they then tied together with some rope to make a rather tall extended ladder. They then placed this on a rocky bank against a telephone pole at perhaps a 60ยบ angle from the floor. Three people then had to stand on the bottom while one climbed up to fiddle with the power lines. The thing was swaying and creaking- I was just waiting for someone to die, but luckily all was well :) So funny!
Tonight we head to Cusco. From here on out, it is pretty much just travelling for the purpose of getting to Potosi where the real work shall begin :) Cusco is rather high though, so we might have to stay a couple of nights to acclimatize. We shall see. Plus, I really want to see Macchu Picchu!!
Miss you all,
T
So I am back in Arequipa now after a whirlwind trip to Cotahuasi Canyon. The original plan was to leave the night of the 6th, and spend five nights in the canyon, and come home on the 13th. Hence, the day of the 6th was spent running around like chickens with our heads cut off searching for gear, food, and clothing for our six day trek. The guy who rented us gear wanted to keep our passports as collateral- we thought that was a rather terrible idea, and so instead we left him 100USD. He seemed to think this was a novel idea. So we quickly packed and then ran to terrepuerto- the local bus station, only to discover that all the tickets for that night were already sold out. That was the end of plan one.
We ended up leaving the following night at 4:30, and for some silly reason I decided it would be a good idea to drink two glasses of strawberry juice at around 3:00 that afternoon. Naturally, after about an hour on the bus I really had to go to the washroom. However, this is generally frowned upon while on Peruvian buses. Nonetheless, I managed to talk to bus driver into stopping to let me off to find a bathroom. Then I got back to the bus, and the bus was gone!!!! My heart just about stopped. Apparently the bus driver decided three minutes was an exorbitant amount of time, and had decided to leave without me. Luckily, some other passengers were looking out for me and managed to convince him to stop about 100m up. Since then I have learned it is better to dehydrate oneself before all 12 hour bus trips, and so now I don´t drink anything for about five hours before getting on the bus- much safer :) Other than that, the bus ride was quite tame. Oh wait- we had to go through a 6000m pass, which was freezing and gave me a horrible headache. The air is just so strange- you try and breathe deeply but your lungs stop expanding long before you feel you have enough air.
Finally we arrived in Cotahuasi at 4:00 am completely exhausted, only to be told that the bus that goes to the drop-off for trekking leaves at six that same morning. Unable to fathom hiking for eight hours on two hours of sleep, we decided to get a hostel room and crash for a couple of hours and then go to the hot springs, which I have decided are my new favourite thing.
The next morning we got up at five and began our hiking adventure. Trying to find any information on how long it was between villages was quite an adventure. The locals would all say you could trek to the furthest village in about a day, and then you would talk to a guide who would tell you it takes about seven hours to get to the first village! All in all we were quite confused, and mildly apprehensive. However, we set out with high hopes.
Day 1: Hiked to Sipia in about 2 hours- which was a 150m waterfall- really beautiful with very nice rock plateaus to sit above the drop off. Emily and Kurt (A traveller from Iowa we picked up in Arequipa) just about had a heart attack watching me climb to the edge :) From there it was a three hour completely uphill trek to Chaupo, and then a two hour trek to Mayo. I very nearly died! I have decided I don´t ever want to gain 40 pounds- it just makes life so much more difficult. I was out of breath after like 12 steps upwards. The altitude probably didn´t help either. We finally arrived in Mayo and I pretty much collapsed- the backpack bruised my collarbones and my hips!! Ridiculous.
Day 2: Woke up and trekked to Quechualla, which was very cool! It is the main village in the canyon- max 50 people! Their agricultural systems are absolutely stunning though. They manage to construct these plateaus that are on a small angle. Then at the top of the plateau they somehow manage to dam the river. When they want to water their fields, they open the gate, and the water, very slowly and perfectly, flows evenly between each row of alfalfa, or potatoes or whatever they were growing. We were all very impressed by this. I don´t know how they manage to grow anything at all- it is just soooo dry!!! We were drinking at least six litres of water a day, and we were still dehydrated at the end of it. But they manage to grow grapes, and oranges, and papaya, and other things! We tried their homemade wine- nastiest thing ever but Kurt enjoyed it.
Day 3: Hiked to Ushua, the deepest point in the canyon. Emily got a cactus/burr thing stuck in her foot. It was vicious. And touching it just led to being stabbed. Kurt just about died laughing watching the two of us try and remove the damn thing.
Day 4: Hiked back to Mayo, swam in the hot springs- these ones were more lukewarm springs, and all that kept going through my mind was the large quatities of bacteria I was sitting in. yuck! The stars that night were amazing. There is no light, and so you can see pretty much everything. The milky way is bigger in the southern hemisphere! I thought this was exciting. And you can still see Orion´s belt :) Other than that, Emily and I resorted to creating our own constallations. We found running man, upside-down eiffel tower, ninja star, and cheshire cat :D
Day 5: Trekked all the way back!
I don´t think I have ever had such chapped lips in my life! They actually have scabs, and are constantly in pain. It was an amazing trip and the locals were all so accomodating and helpful! One day we met this traveller named Rick. He was an American who went through what sounded like an ugly divorce, and decided to trek around the world. He must be about 70 but he looks about 50. He was hilarious! He is convinced that coca leaves (you chew them, and they are supposed to help fight altitude sickness and aid digestion) are the solution to all life´s ailments, and consequently all the pharmaceutical companies in the states have banned them because it would ruin their business. He is also convinced that both the avian flu and the swine flu were engineered by scientists to make the flu vaccine seem necessary. Through this vaccine, the US was going to carry out a mass genocide - to what end, I am still unsure. What a character! He recently bought a burro (a donkey is the same I think), which was quite cute. I must say, by the end of the hike I was quite envious.
We finally arrived back in Cotahuasi city where we met a couple of Germans, a guy from New Zealand, and some other travellers from the US. That night was the beginning of the festival of Senor Chaycalla, and so everyone in Cotahuasi was out in full force. We discovered that there are actually nearly 500 people in town! So many! The festival was a lot of fun. One of the prize foods is french fries, covered in chow mein, slathered with mayo, and then sprinkled with hot dog bits. It made my stomach turn just looking at it! They also had fireworks that just about took out a couple of people! They didn´t aim them high enough and so sparks kept hitting people. It was actually really funny :) They also had this really crazy 15 foot high, bamboo man constructed with a whole bunch of fireworks attached. At the end of the night they lit it on fire and the entire thing burned to the ground. It was really cool, but I was midly terrified because the power lines were perhaps ten feet in front of this large firework man (shake head).
Note to Laura- you thought our ladder placements were sketchy this summer- nothing compared to those in Cotahuasi!! They had three 15 feet wooden ladders, that they then tied together with some rope to make a rather tall extended ladder. They then placed this on a rocky bank against a telephone pole at perhaps a 60ยบ angle from the floor. Three people then had to stand on the bottom while one climbed up to fiddle with the power lines. The thing was swaying and creaking- I was just waiting for someone to die, but luckily all was well :) So funny!
Tonight we head to Cusco. From here on out, it is pretty much just travelling for the purpose of getting to Potosi where the real work shall begin :) Cusco is rather high though, so we might have to stay a couple of nights to acclimatize. We shall see. Plus, I really want to see Macchu Picchu!!
Miss you all,
T
Saturday, September 5, 2009
We´re in Arequipa!!!
Hey everybody, sorry about the earlier difficulties with commenting. Hopefully this site is more user friendly. So yes, where were we on our crazy peruvian adventures... (note to father: lima citizens are called limeros - not really sure on the spelling). Our second day in Lima was not quite as thrilling as our first night. after a leisurely desayuno (breakfast), we hopped on a microbus heading to lima centro, supposedly the city centre where all the museums and galleries are located. The microbuses are a lot of fun! There is a driver and then a guy who stands by the doors to let everyone know where the bus is going. This is not really useful if you have no clue where you are going, but entertaining none the less, as he speaks incredibly fast and always seems on the verge of tumbling out of the bus. Eventually we got to central lima, only to discover that none of the roads have street signs, which lead to a whole lot of being lost for the majority of the afternoon. The traffic is as crazy as Ghana, and so crossing the street was always an adrenaline rush.
We eventually stumbled into a tiny hole in the wall restaurant where we had jugo de fresca (strawberry juice)- so good!!!! So far, neither Emily nor I have gotten sick from the food, however, we feel that it is just a matter of time :) We stopped in a park- which was very strange. The park is in the middle of the main road basically, completely fenced off except for two entrances. At one end of the park, there is a beautiful fountain with these super well groomed gardens, and then at the other end, there is a jungle-gym, a soccer field, and a blow up Shrek family. "Wow" was the only appropriate term. After being surrounded by the never ending noise and chaos of downtown Lima, Emily and I decided to call it quits and head back to our hostel for a well-deserved nap. The amount of sleeping I´ve done on this trip is bordering on ridiculous, but oh well, I suppose I am finally on holiday- sorta.
After spending a little more time exploring Lima, we decided it was time to move on. So we hopped on a Cruz del Sur bus that would take us to Arequipa overnight. I am not sure how to describe these buses. Hm, okay first of all, the music, which is played loudly for your enjoyment, consists of the worst re-makes of popular american songs I have ever heard. Imagine a breathy sounding woman singing Hey Jude and Rock with You along with pan flutes and bad spanish guitar. It was irritating to say the least. Then they decided to play movies for us. Again there are no head phones, so you are forced to listen. So first we watched Monster in Law, which is NOT better the second time, followed by Oceans 13, which might have been good if I had seen Oceans 11 or 12, followed by the Polar Express. Christmas anyone? All in all, I probably got four hours of sleep on the 16 hour bus ride- good times. Emily and I are contemplating flying from Arequipa to Lima on the way home.
Arequipa is absolutely beautiful. Gorgeous mountains in the background, charming buildings painted bright oranges, blues, and reds, plazas filled with lovely monuments and, more importantly, ice cream vendors. We decided to go visit the Monestaria De Santa Catalina, a beautiful building built some time in the 1500s for a group of nuns. Did you know they used to be called "mistresses" instead of "sisters"? I thought this was interesting. Some bishop-or-other decided that title was unacceptable and changed it at some point. Anywhoo, I won´t bore you with the details- but if you are ever in Arequipa I definitely recommend it. We then finished the day on top of a restaurant terrace drinking pisco sours and eating chocolate cake. Does life get any better than this?
Tomorrow we are going to see the Petroglyphs, possibly do some rafting down the Chile river. Monday, we are planning a 3-day trek into the valley of the Cotuhuasi canyon- the deepest canyon in the world!!! When I get the chance, I will try and post some pictures, although I must say Emily and I are very bad at rememering to take any at all.
Lots of love,
Toni
We eventually stumbled into a tiny hole in the wall restaurant where we had jugo de fresca (strawberry juice)- so good!!!! So far, neither Emily nor I have gotten sick from the food, however, we feel that it is just a matter of time :) We stopped in a park- which was very strange. The park is in the middle of the main road basically, completely fenced off except for two entrances. At one end of the park, there is a beautiful fountain with these super well groomed gardens, and then at the other end, there is a jungle-gym, a soccer field, and a blow up Shrek family. "Wow" was the only appropriate term. After being surrounded by the never ending noise and chaos of downtown Lima, Emily and I decided to call it quits and head back to our hostel for a well-deserved nap. The amount of sleeping I´ve done on this trip is bordering on ridiculous, but oh well, I suppose I am finally on holiday- sorta.
After spending a little more time exploring Lima, we decided it was time to move on. So we hopped on a Cruz del Sur bus that would take us to Arequipa overnight. I am not sure how to describe these buses. Hm, okay first of all, the music, which is played loudly for your enjoyment, consists of the worst re-makes of popular american songs I have ever heard. Imagine a breathy sounding woman singing Hey Jude and Rock with You along with pan flutes and bad spanish guitar. It was irritating to say the least. Then they decided to play movies for us. Again there are no head phones, so you are forced to listen. So first we watched Monster in Law, which is NOT better the second time, followed by Oceans 13, which might have been good if I had seen Oceans 11 or 12, followed by the Polar Express. Christmas anyone? All in all, I probably got four hours of sleep on the 16 hour bus ride- good times. Emily and I are contemplating flying from Arequipa to Lima on the way home.
Arequipa is absolutely beautiful. Gorgeous mountains in the background, charming buildings painted bright oranges, blues, and reds, plazas filled with lovely monuments and, more importantly, ice cream vendors. We decided to go visit the Monestaria De Santa Catalina, a beautiful building built some time in the 1500s for a group of nuns. Did you know they used to be called "mistresses" instead of "sisters"? I thought this was interesting. Some bishop-or-other decided that title was unacceptable and changed it at some point. Anywhoo, I won´t bore you with the details- but if you are ever in Arequipa I definitely recommend it. We then finished the day on top of a restaurant terrace drinking pisco sours and eating chocolate cake. Does life get any better than this?
Tomorrow we are going to see the Petroglyphs, possibly do some rafting down the Chile river. Monday, we are planning a 3-day trek into the valley of the Cotuhuasi canyon- the deepest canyon in the world!!! When I get the chance, I will try and post some pictures, although I must say Emily and I are very bad at rememering to take any at all.
Lots of love,
Toni
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