Espiritu Santo y lavar de bebes

Hi fans

My nose hurts. I think it is the altitude. A lot of the others have dodgy stomachs. We think it's the altitude. Or perhaps the difference in food and water, that's the other thing we like to blame. Nikki did actually have a bit of a fever, Zaida looked after her well and gave her jelly and coca tea, and said a prayer for her. I think it's the altitude. Darryl isn't feeling too well today, and neither is Zara, and Beth wasn't for a while, and Mariam wasn't either. We're dropping like flies, but I'm sure by next week when we start properly at our projects things should be better. The altitude may have changed by then. Talking of which I'm slightly scared of my impending trip to La Paz on Friday, as the altitude there is very high - around 4-5000m. I think we'll have a lot to blame on it.

Today me and my group went to meet the directors of our project for the first time - they were lovely - 2 ladies, I can't remember their names now, but we'll be seeing a lot of them over the next 2 months. There were also 2 other volunteers from Holland there, who will be at one of the 3 centres that Mosoj Yan works at. I invited them to play volleyball (which we had been invited to through our Spanish school - on Fridays), but then realised they will probably be very very good at volleyball as they are Dutch, so I may live to regret that.

We learnt about the 3 different centre that we will be working at - we will be in pairs, 2 at each one. In a nutshell, they are:

• Motivation centre - this involves going out to find the street kids and try to encourage them to come into the centre, and building relationships and trust with them. They can come in to the centre of their own accord and do whatever various workshops are on offer there too. 
• Restoration centre - where about 10 girls can live for a year to rehabilitate and learn new skills and rebuild their confidence, after being on the streets, or in abusive situations at home. 
• Working girls centre - works with girls who work on the streets, selling things, but hopefully who are not yet on drugs or other dangerous situations. As they aren't going to school much because of having to work, the aim of this centre is to teach them things they would otherwise be learning at school, and other skills such as baking, crafts etc. 

By the end of this week, we will know which pair is going to which centre for the next 8 weeks. David will mainly decide that, but he also knows about us and our previous skills / experience. There should be a fair bit of English teaching. We had to fill in a form today about these kinds of things, one of the questions was 'what is your speciality?'. I don't really consider that I have a speciality, so I wrote that, but I hope I can be involved in a variety of things, like English teaching, some crafts (I learnt how to make beads out of magazines with my friend Jo who volunteers at the guides, so I wanted to do that with them), maybe some gardening, baking, playing my ukulele etc. (Mariam and Shiv are amazing singer songwriters, so so far I have not been brave enough to even take the uke out of its case...).

After the meeting with Mosoj Yan we went for an ice cream with Melanie. She knows where the offers are at - today it was 2 for 1 at an ice cream place in town, so I had a chocolate one, and Darryl got a frutilla one. Not sure quite what fruit frutilla is, but I think he liked it. I'm now back home and just found out dinner is not for another hour, which gives me a good bit of catching up with the blog time.

I think I left the last blog at Saturday morning after our visit to La Cancha market. I have been wearing my new skirt, and all my new jewellery most days since then. I've already had an order via the blog for a ring like the one I put in my picture. Also had another comment that most of the jewellry looks like that of a teenager - ha ha, thanks for that (you know who you are). I thought it was very mature looking actually.

Saturday afternoon, we went to look for postcards, then had a coffee at Cafe Paris (for the Westerners) in town, by the main square. We got a taxi there, and I said take us to plaza 25 de mayo please. To which el taxista replied - that square doesn't exist. Oh. How about plaza 14 septiembre then? That's the one. These dates must have some kind of significance, but for now it's on my list of things to find out about. I think it's to do with independence from Spain, and possibly founding of the city of Cochabamba. Anyway, I digress. The coffee was weak, I have to say. I wouldn't go back there just for that, but it's a nice location by the main square (see picture below). Also we did meet 2 new people - Camilla and Anna, who are working for another organisation, and Camilla had been the worship leader at the church we went to last week. She has bright ginger hair, that's how we knew it was definitely her. (NB - the worship part of the church service is when  they do the singing - it's my favourite bit as you learn more Spanish vocab from the big screen at the front and if you want you can wave your hands in the air (I haven't done that yet)).

 After the weak coffee and some funny chat with the others (Darryl, Tom, Nikki and Beth), we went to meet the others in the main square for baby washing. What this involves is that every Saturday afternoon, the Quechua women can bring their babies (from around 3 months to about 5 years old) and we wash them, and wash their hair, and re clothe them. They then swaddle them back together into their shawls, and swizzle them around in their big blankets (they're called agauyos) onto their backs and off they go - I'm not sure exactly whither they go (always wanted to get that word into a blog), perhaps they live outside town in the hills and mountains, we're not totally sure. The kids obviously get dirty again pretty quickly, but it's a lovely thing to do for them we thought. Me and Nikki manned one of the 3 little baths, and most of our kids were really cute, we only had one that cried. One of us poured tepid water on to the babies and then a bit of shampoo for their hair, whilst the other did their feet and legs and arms etc. We tried to chat to them a bit, but not many were that chatty - not too surprising really. One of them brought her little chunk of watermelon she was eating with her, I don't think it will have tasted too great after shampoo and water were poured all over it, but she clutched it like it was the last bit of watermelon on earth.

Top is Nikki with the baby bath, below is Shiv doing a very cute little girl's hair, and Lee to the right.

We then passed them over to the drying station, where the others were drying them and dressing them. Their mothers came in to the tent sometimes and starting non-surreptitiously shoving lots of the clothes into their bags / shawls - they're only meant to take one set of clothes, but obviously saw it as a good opportunity for taking more than their fair share. These things always happen, and you can't really blame them I suppose. Next time we'll try to be a bit firmer and explain that the clothes are for all the other babies, not just them.We then played with the kids for a bit in the square, and chatted to some of the other westerners there, then went off for some pizza. Ordering the pizza was quite like a replay of the brazilian potato saga - we had 2 pizzas, 2 jumbo pizza slices, and extra fanta. Sounds straightforward right? Apparently not when I'm involved. I didn't realise Tom had pretty much got it covered, so I just kept repeating the order to them, whilst Tom rolled his eyes at me, envisaging about a million more pizzas coming to our table. All was fine, and the pizza was really tasty.

That was the end of Saturday, all in all a really interesting day full of new experiences. Then came Sunday, which was similarly full of new experiences. Which is probably why I had to take Monday afternoon off to lie down in bed and recover from a minor episode of exhaustion.  Anyway, Sunday started with a visit to Zaida's church, which is Asemblia de Dios, and was full to almost bursting by the time we arrived around 1030. The pastor came to meet us, as Zaida must have told him about us, he came and shook all our hands, and me and Mariam noted that he smelt very nice (that was probably a little bit ungodly of us). He shook our hands with real meaning and warmth, as did anyone else we met that morning in the church. There was a huge feeling of love and congregationality in the church - it was of, I suppose, a lower class, than the international church we'd visited the week before, and perhaps was more expressive therefore. On stage were the musicians and singers, and opposite us on another balcony were 2 small girls in angelic white dresses, dancing, flanked by 2 older ladies in blue dresses. Before starting the actual sermon, the pastor introduced all of our group to the whole church - we were on the front row of the balcony, so we waved down to them all, and got a little bit embarrassed too - but what a lovely welcoming thing to do.

A nice man called Nick, who works at an orphanage connected to the church, translated most of the sermon for some of us. I liked listening the the sermon in Spanish and trying to get the meaning of his words - some of them got a bit shouty, which I guess was the bits he wanted to emphasise, they often contained the words 'jesus cristo' or 'hijo de dios'. It was very moving in fact, even though I didn't 100% understand it. There were a few other people who said various things, one lady seemed to be saying bad things about islam - the Spanish for muslim is musulman, which makes me giggle. I don't think it's appropriate to bad mouth other religions in order to promote your own, but perhaps I got the meaning wrong anyway, so I'll stop on this theme now.

After church, we went to see a 'feria de perros' - essentially a 'parade of dogs'. Every Sunday around that area, there are dogs for sale - they are expensive, swanky dogs, their prices start at $350 US dollars upwards. There were also some rabbits and cats too. Zara went crazy for them and grabbed a tiny little puppy from an old man for a photo. He didn't seem to mind, neither the dog nor the man. We perused the animals for a while, went home for lunch, then went out to watch the football. Here's Zara with the little puppy:

Normally in England I would not go to watch football matches, but when you're away you do things you wouldn't normally do, as can be seen from my 2 trips to church so far. Even the theme music to Match of the Day makes me cringe and run out of the room. But here we all are, and most of us went to watch it - we took Santiago (Zaida's son) too, who liked it. It was one of the local Cochabamba teams, called Wilstermann (doesn't sound very Bolivian does it), against Santa Cruz. We won 4-0. Hooray! I find it hard to get that excited about football, so here's some photos I took that sum up what I did for most of it:

This is what was actually happening on the pitch:

I thought this one was a good summary of the 2 religious experiences we had that day (look closely):

Just now whilst writing this blog, I've also been bombarding Alicia with questions about Spanish grammar. Here is something I'm very excited about that I've learnt: the people from the Andes (Cochabamba, La Paz, Potosi, and Oruro) use the preterito perfecto tense more than other past tenses; the people from the Oriente (Santa Cruz and Sucre) use the preterito. That is to say, if you're an Andino, you are more likely to say this sentence: I have eaten a banana today, whereas if you are from Santa Cruz or Sucre you are more likely to say this sentence: I ate a banana today. I find this FASCINATING, and am going to talk to Angelika at the Spanish school about it, because apparently she once explained it to Alicia, and it's a bit complicated / very interesting (some might say fascinating). I will definitely keep you updated, unless you choose to unsubscribe from Bolivian grammatical / cultural updates.

In other cultural news - I am reading a book called Foreign Familiar, which is all about the difference between people from hot cultures and those from cold cultures. It almost boils down to the differences between collectivism and individualism. The reason that perhaps hot cultures are more open and generous with their time and more interdependent, is that because it's hot they go outside more and see each other more, whereas people in cold cultures stay in their houses more so they don't have as much of a feeling of being around other people etc. That's kind of a summary of the first section of the book.

I will go now, and leave you with a picture I think is funny - of Leanne on skype to her niece, whose 2nd birthday it was - we sang happy birthday to her and then the boys threw confetti on Leanne:

Bye, hope you've enjoyed reading. pepinillo xx

La Cancha

This morning we went to La Cancha - this is the biggest market in South America. It is not an overly safe place, we (me, Nikki and Beth) went with Zaida (our mama). She goes often, to buy the food she needs for our house. We took just money (I hid mine in my sock), as it a prime pick pocketing location. Tom and Darryl went with Santiago (Zaida's son), and the others went in the afternoon with Melanie (a new person who speaks v good English and will help us with translating if we need it at our projects later, and basically is a good connection to have as she knows loads about Cochabamba - her dad is also a doctor and has got Darryl a prescription for giving up smoking drugs!).

Here is a video of La Cancha, as I obviously couldn't take photos there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DalPoDWCGvY

We got a taxi there - this being Bolivia, you can squeeze as many people as you like in to taxis. We were 7 in this one - me and Zaida squashd in the front, and the other 5 in the back... It's fine, it happens all the time here. I wonder what is the most people that have ever been squashed into a taxi in Bolivia / South America? I'll keep my eyes peeled to see if I can see more than 7 (especially a combination of gringos and Bolivianos - that would get maximum points in one of those I-Spy books).

When we got out, the first thing we noticed was a bit of a pungent smell and a gazillion people, people with wheelbarrows, with children strapped to their backs, with no teeth etc. The Bolivian way of crossing the road seems to sometimes be to just go for it - our way is a bit more Western, ie wait for a red light or green man, and sometimes scream a bit too as you never know if the traffic is actually going to stop. Zaida led the way, but our non Bolivian ness meant she was way ahead of us and across the road whilst we stood there trying not to get run over by wheelbarrows and / or cars. We walked for ages down stalls selling clothes - I found a nice long blue skirt, we did a bit of bartering, and it was 40 Bs (about £4) - it's  a bit like shopping at Primark, but far more exciting and you can't try anything on, and there certainly won't be any refunds if it doesn't fit (or perhaps that is Primark too?). So I risked it, and because it was meant to be, it fits fine and looks ok too. Encouraged by my first purchase I bought some jewellry in the artesan section too - see picture below, and let me know if you want anything similar as a present, it's really cheap and very nice (I've put it all on whilst writing this as it made me quite happy to have new things). Apparently the ring is made of llama string, which I guess means wool, but it looks decidedly more like silver to me. I don't always understand everything however, so I may have massively misunderstood that.

After the clothes stalls and artesan stalls, we tackled the food section of the market, which was Zaida's main purpose. We were soon laden down with huge shopping bags full of potatoes, oranges, bananas, beans, onions, and things I don't know the names for. We saw a few meat stalls selling things liket trotters, intestines, hearts, livers etc - I didn't look too closely, and thankfully our mission didn't involve buying meat today. Zaida explained that she normally buys meat at a small town nearby called something beginning with T - it's around 5km away, and she normally walks there on a Sunday at 6am ish so she can be back for church at 10. Wow - what a life, and she is always always smiling and being helpful to us. We said we'd go with her one Sunday - I bet I'll regret that when my alarm clock goes off at 5....

She told us all about the different parts of Bolivia, and the different clothing they wear in different areas, in La Paz they wear longer dresses (I can't remember the name of the dresses, but I think it is chalitos). See this link as I don't like taking pictures directly of the people here, it's pretty rude and they think it'll trap their soul in the camera etc - http://www.visitbolivia.net/files/imagecache/article-picture/images/bolivian_clothes.jpg

The reason for the longer dresses in La Paz is only because it is colder there. There is a reason for the bowler hats, I think probably to do with colonization. In the countryside areas they still have very traditional values and if you visit them they will give you all their best food and put you in the dining room, whilst they eat in the kitchen - as a sign of respect. There is an area near La Paz called Las Yungas, where they are African/South American people, and they have a very specific type of dance. Hopefully we will see a lot of dancing as part of the carnival around the 2nd week of February. The people from Las Yungas are called Yungenos, by the way.

Zaida said she normally goes to the same vegetables sellers each time, which makes sense - you get a better price due to loyalty, and it's all part of the relationship building / collectivism system. I asked her how on earth she carries all the vegetables when she normally goes there on her own - we were 4 of us and we struggled - I had the potatoes and one handle of the banana/carrots/oranges bag too. She said she takes Santiago or someone else to help her. Part of the market is on actual streets, so you constantly get beeped at and have to make sure the cars / buses / taxis don't drive over your feet. It's quite hard to explain in words the bustling-ness, and total foreign-ness of the market, but suffice to say it was the most Bolivian experience I've had so far, and it was great to go there with Zaida - far better than going on your own, to see her buying all the things from the different sellers, and also if you're buying things yourself you get a better price with her there. I felt a little bit euphoric seeing all the crazy buses and people everywhere, and not a gringo in sight (apart from Nikki and Beth). The picture below is not from the market, but it is one of the same types of buses that we nearly got squashed by there - super colourful:

Meanwhile, Tom and Darryl were in the other side of the market with Santiago - this is the most dangerous part, and Darryl did nearly get pick pocketed - they do a trick of putting water or milk on your arm, so that you have to take your hand out of your pocket to investigate what's just happened, thus meaning they can put their hand in your pocket and help themselves to what's in there. Santiago made sure that they were safe, but Darryl was splashed with water nonetheless in an attempted robbery. They saw loads of animals in their bit, scarlet macaws in cages - I'm glad I didn't see that as I may have freed them all and then been chased out of town / shot.

Darryl and Tom have decided I'm 95% (or 9.5 our of 10) insane - their explanation for this is mainly that I'm doing something like this at my age. They are pretty certain I'm trying to find a Bolivian man - whenever we get taxis, I sit in the front and try to talk to the taxi driver. This is because of all Mauge's talks about relationship building, and me wanting to practise my Spanish, but they see ulterior motives. Especially when I hand them biscuits or sweets..... They think that at the debrief / homecoming event in April when we're back, I'll be there with my Bolivian husband. Ha ha. Given that Darryl and Tom are the only boys here, surrounded by 9 girls, they're coping really well (probably actually loving being surrounded by so many girls), and keep us laughing our heads off most of the time. Darryl talks super fast in a very strong Bath accent, and sometimes I find it easier to understand the Bolivians talking in Spanish or even Quechua.

Yesterday (Friday), after Spanish we had a meeting with David specifically about our project at Mosoj Yan. We watched a video about street kids, taken in Santa Cruz (a nearby city - the biggest in Bolivia), which I had to detach myself from in order to not have a bit of a breakdown. I won't talk too much about the situation yet, as that will be all I will be writing about once we start there. One poignant quote from an ex-street kid who now works in one of these projects helping them, was that if the future of a country is its children, and the children are on the streets, then what kind of future does Bolivia have? Poverty is not just not having food, a home, or shelter, it is also the poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for.

We came up with some ideas of things we can do in our projects, and David described the 3 different centres that Mosoj Yan runs, in more detail. We drew some problem trees and solution trees - you put the problem description in the middle, and then the causes at the bottom - the roots of the tree, and the effects at the top - the branches of the tree. You can then turn the problems into solutions by reversing what you've got in your problem tree. It's a good way of clarifying things and seeing them differently, I think I will use it in other areas of my life. You have to make sure you have identified the right problem though so that your solutions have the right effects. We also learnt about project planning and monitoring and evaluation. As you may know, I find learning new things very exciting, so I was pretty excited about all this.

After this, we went to see El Cristo and some views of Cochabamba, I wrote about this on my last blog - and am sticking to my promise of better pictures for you:

some stats: his head alone weighs 11.8 kgs (or could it be 11,850kg - I can't tell where the decimal point is from the sign?, his total height is 44.4metres, of which 4.6m is his head). Those holes in his arms and body are for you to look through whilst climbing up the steps inside him, which I didn't do.

 There he is again peering through the cable car in front

The group, with Cochabamba behind (l-r: Santiago, me, Tom (falling off the cliff?), Darryl, Leonie, Leanne, Nikki. As you can see, they are far more stylish than me (ie they are not wearing an anorak).

A large lake in Cochabamba, seen from the cable car. Cochabamba is actually really big and sprawling, more so than you would think from being in it from ground level - below is part of the north of it (where our house is, not sure which one though):

After all this excitement we went to el globos for ice creams, here is our banana split:

It's nice to know there are places to get such things, but it's also nice to go to La Cancha and have a more 'authentic' experience (whatever that means these days).


I will leave it there for now so I can do some reading / Spanish homework (not really, but I like to pretend I'll do it...). We also went baby washing this afternoon, which I will write about later (it's pretty much what it says it is, but certainly a first for me) - tomorrow we have a visit to Zaida's church in the morning, followed by a football match in the afternoon (one of the Cochabamba teams versus who knows who - I have asked many a taxi driver, but so far I haven't found out).

Thanks for reading, am glad the internet stayed alive during the big storm we just had. Pepinillo xx

How to leave a comment

Hola

I have changed the settings on the blog, so that you should be able to leave comments now.

Here's what you do:
Click the bit at the bottom of the blog, that says 'no comments' (normally it will say that, but if someone has already commented, it will say '1 comment' (I presume).
Write your comment in the box
Choose from the drop down list - you can either choose anonymous (but please don't as I won't know who you are and I may find that mildly frustrating, but not as frustrating as almost losing my camera today - it was in one of the many pockets of my bag) - or you can choose the one that says name/URL, and then put your name in (you don't have to put the URL bit in)
It may ask you to fill in some boxes of letters / words / numbers, to prove you're not a robot. If you are a robot, you will be discovered.

I hope that makes sense.

Today we went to see the statue of Christ at the top of the hill -we took the cable cars - los telefericos - I like that word. You could climb the stairs inside him and peer out of some holes to look at the view. I refrained as I don't like small spaces, and am not sure how I feel about climbing up inside someone like that. It reminded me of climbing up someone (a political leader I think, not religious) in Mexico, with Sarah (remember?) and going all the way up to his valiantly raised hand, and peering out of his thumb at the town below. He wasn't quite so small inside, so it was fine.

We then went to 'el globos', for an ice cream. El globos is a western style place, for westerners, or rich Bolivianos. Me and Nikki shared a banana split, and we all shared a dish called Pique Macho. This is a typical Cochabambino (yes, that is the adjective for something from Cochabamba) food, which is bits of beef, and onion, and tomato and pepper (some hot peppers too). The legend / reality goes: back in the day (quite some time ago), women went to work in the fields, and men stayed at home, to cook. As men are generally simpler than women, the most straightforward thing they could cook was this dish as it just requires some slicing of vegetables and meat, and then cooking it and maybe adding spicy sauce. The work Pique means spicy (picante), and - get this, this is the very interesting part - the word Macho, in Quechua (one of the indigenous languages here), means hombre, which means man. There you have the etymology of the word 'macho'. I probably overuse the word fascinating, but that is what I find this kind of thing.

We now have internet in our house, which may mean less conversation / more googling / emailing. This is fine I think, and will be useful when we get started on our projects, as we will need to research some ideas I am sure.

I will leave it there for now, as I'm tired, and want to read more of my book - the days are going fast as we are so busy, and learning all these new things is making me pretty exhausted. Oh one last thing - today we paid for a trip to La Paz and Lake Titicaca, and a night on the Isla del Sol (island of the sun). That's next weekend. I was going to try and refrain from spending all my savings on things like this, but seriously, what else are you meant to spend savings on?

A picture for you, of Christ, from a distance - I'll upload some more soon of the telefericos. We met some Chilean boys in our cable car, and I chatted to them, they are on a road trip for a month. One of them had very nice thick hair, but I didn't comment on that as I am not completely au fait with making hair chat with a Chilean in a cable car yet. I did learn the word for playground - campo juego - there are lots of pretty colourful ones around, even at the top of the hill where Christ is.

pepinillo xx

if you squint you can see him I think. I promise the next pictures will be better.

Culture vulture

Hi everyone

Welcome to blog number 2 (written from Tuesday 23^rd onwards).(It's another long blog, but you get 4 pictures as a special treat). As I write this the weather has changed from rainy and cold to muggy with threatening stormy clouds rolling down from the mountains surrounding us. Opposite our house in the East of Cochabamba is the biggest statue of Christ in the world – 14cm bigger than the famous one in Rio. His head and shoulders are often shrouded in cloud. We are going to see him close up on Friday, and I hope he has forgiven me for leaving the sermon halfway through last Sunday.

I have been practising my Spanish on the people of Bolivia. Here is who I have met so far:

Juan Pablo – our taxi driver yesterday. When I asked him his name he said John Paul, as he wanted to practise his English. I said ah, mucho gusto Juan Pablo. He was from La Paz, but had lived in Cochabamba for 8 years. Meanwhile in the back Zara was hanging on to the door, which had flown open as we went round a corner – generally the doors do stay closed, and generally there are seat belts, but you never quite know. Health and safety isn't really a priority in Bolivia, or rather they don't have enough money to fix things when they break. One thing we have to remember when getting in or out of a taxi is not to slam the door – Bolivians are very connected to their things, and if you hurt their things, you are hurting them. We should be quiet and not talk too much English in taxis, as this makes the Bolivian taxi driver feel excluded, especially as you are laughing – they will assume that you are laughing at them. They have been exploited over the years by various other nations, and treated very badly by white people – when they see white people like us therefore they are reminded of their anger towards being exploited and colonized, and they assume that we are here to exploit them or rip them off, or that we are generally untrustworthy in some way, and that we are all from America. We need to make sure we don't make them feel like that, so I always try to have a conversation with them and tell them we're from England. Sometimes they don't want to talk, which is also fine.

Alice – who sold me a burger in Cine Centro on Sunday – it's a kind of Westernised restaurant mall, where you can get fast food. Mauge and Angelika took us there in case we wanted something like that instead of all the Bolivian food we've been eating. I had a burger, and then an ice cream. When buying my burger I had a big conversation with Alice, who served me. She was really friendly and wanted to know all about what we were doing in Cochabamba, and whether we liked it. The people here are so friendly, and once you say 'no soy de Estados Unidos' (I'm not from the US), then they are even more friendly. I had maracuya flavoured ice cream, and the next day I had chirimayo, both of which are Bolivian/Peruvian fruits, and both really tasty.

Favian – today's taxi driver after we went to town to look at the markets. I asked him how his holiday was (yesterday was a holiday, un feriado), he said it was fine, and he'd spent it at home with his parents. I asked what the festival was about (it goes on until the end of February and seems to mainly involve children throwing water balloons at people in the street). I didn't understand his answer. This is a common problem once you start a conversation with people, and there's only so many times you can say 'puedes repetir' (please repeat), and then you have to revert to nodding and saying si and smiling. I offered him a biscuit, which he accepted and in return I got his business card. Good bit of relationship building I thought. [NB: I understand that yesterday's holiday is to do with Bolivia declaring itself the plurinational nation of Bolivia, rather than the Republic of Bolivia, as it was previously – in order to include and recognise all races of Bolivians, ie the previously excluded indigenous races].

Zaida – she is our lovely abuela (grandmother) who looks after us in our apartment. She has a 17 year old son, Santiago, who we are going to meet soon. He's in Santa Cruz at the moment as he had 3 days off school for the feriado. She bought him the flight back as a present, but he took the bus there – an overnight bus. My memory of overnight buses in this part of the world is that no matter how many sleeping pills you take, the fear will keep you awake. I heard that 95% of Bolivian roads are unpaved, ie just gravel, and with lots of holes in them. Anyway, he will be back soon, safely on his aeroplane.

Zaida cooks all our food for us, which is all Bolivian food – lots of soups for lunch mainly, with quinoa, potatoes, carrots, beans, peas, and chicken in them. In the evening we have things like rice, with fried platanos and chicken, or other types of meat, and sometimes pasta – tonight was spaghetti bolognaise with Bolivian cheese - quesilla. For breakfast we have bread, with butter and jam, or oats with warm milk – kind of like readybrek rather than porridge. We have made a washing up rota to help Zaida, as she also has to do our washing and cleaning, while we're out at lessons or at our projects once they've started (I find it strange having a person who looks after us like this, but I guess it's necessary while we're so busy). Anyway Zaida is the lucky recipient of me practising all my Spanish... she doesn't seem to mind, she's really really lovely. Yesterday we podded peas for her, these are called 'arbejas' (and bees are 'abejas' – I think it's quite a weird coincidence that these words are so similar in both languages) – she buys all the vegetables at the big market called La Cancha, and we are hoping to go with her for a visit – it's best to go these places with the locals and everything becomes much easier. Today we podded a kind of large broad bean, which is an 'haba'. You pod it from its pod, then take it's outer shell off, and then it's there in the middle. She explained that the bean is wearing clothes which are pantalones (trousers – the pod), a camisa (its shirt – the shell), and a little tie, which is that bit at the top. I have taken a photo to explain, in case it's not clear:

That's the trousers on the left, then the bean with its shirt on, then the bean with no clothes on.

Alicia – she lives with us too in our house, and speaks really good English. She teaches Spanish at the school we go to, and also is very involved with her church. Today she taught me how to say thunder and lightning, which is what was happening outside, and lightning is rayos, but I can't remember thunder now. Storm is la tormenta.

So today is day 3 of Spanish lessons, we're going pretty fast through our text book. I'm in a class with Nikki, Tom, and Mariam. We have about 5 or 6 different teachers, and 2 classes a day which are 45 minutes each with a break in between. (sorry for the boring details, but just in case you were wondering). Today we learnt how to talk about people's personalities and physical appearance which was really useful and I'm going to revise the new adjectives tonight.

In the afternoons we have orientation meetings, yesterday was with David and was about safety and security in Bolivia. There are lots of risks in certain parts of the city, but lots of things we can do to stay safe, is a basic summary of his talk. We can never go anywhere alone, and if we're out after dark we have to take a taxi to get home from wherever we are. We use radio taxis to get around everywhere – there are buses, but as yet we haven't been on them, and I don't think we're allowed to. It's strange thinking of all the travelling I did in this part of the world previously without having anyone there to orientate me and tell me what risks were all around me. It's certainly useful to know, and to know what the Bolivian perception is of foreigners in general, and how that should inform the way we interact with them, and act as a group of foreigners.

We discussed other things like our expectations of what we will get out of the projects, and the expectations of our partner organisations (our groups is working with Mosoj Yan, the street kids centres, and the other group is working with an orphanage and school called Oeser). The obvious beneficiary of the whole ICS scheme is the partner organisation and the children they work with, but also we are obviously going to benefit in many ways – such as being in a new challenging situation, and realising what we are capable of, and learning some Spanish, and learning about the issues surrounding International Development and global poverty, and hopefully returning to England and this informing our next move in life. The UK government has invested a lot of money from their aid budget in sending us here, so we have to do the best we can do and hopefully be inspired about continuing in this kind of work when we return to England.

We've also had 2 sessions with Mauge about the cultural differences between Bolivia and England, which boils down to the differences between an individualistic society and a collectivist society. 85% of the world is collectivist. It is fascinating learning about all these differences, especially having experienced a lot of them first hand from living and spending time in Latin American countries. The main concept of collectivism is that without the group, you cannot survive. There is no such thing as personal preference, or privacy – decisions are made collectively and relationships with your family and friends are more important than absolutely anything else – spending time and having fun is a priority – which is not to say that work still doesn't get done, it just gets done with different priorities in mind. In a perfect version of collectivism, the grand parents would bring up the grand children while the parents go to work.

Another main difference is the perception of time. If we have a dinner party in England for example and invite someone and tell them it starts at 6pm, we would expect them to turn up at 6pm, and be a bit upset if they turned up at 630pm without an explanation. Here, if you invite someone to come to your dinner party at 6pm, they would start getting ready at 6pm, and they would not ever turn up at 6pm as that would be rude as they would presume you would need more time to get things ready. If you go to for example a birthday party for a friend, the same applies, - but in this case if they are a good friend you would ask them if you should come earlier than the 4pm start time, and they would accept this. So you would get there at 3pm and when you get there, they would ask you to help by going off to buy the cake, blowing up the balloons, getting the drinks ready, generally doing all the preparation with them. We would think this is extreme disorganisation, but the emphasis in collectivist societies, is on people doing things together. The preparation for the party that you do together is the important thing, it builds relationships, and strengthens feelings of interdependency, which is the key concept of collectivism. If the party lasts 30 minutes, and the preparation took 5 hours, but you all did it together, then that is the point.

Mauge is also making us very aware of the fact that the best thing we can do in our projects while here is to build relationships with the Bolivian staff and the kids we will be working with. She told us that these kids have been abused, have taken drugs, been kicked out of their homes, or left of their own accord. They have zero self worth, and the absolute best thing we can do whilst here is just to spend time with them and make them feel worthy. We don't have to teach amazing things, or achieve miracles, but just spending time doing something like making a hot chocolate with them, or some basic arts and crafts, or playing games, will make them feel that they are worth spending time with, and therefore that perhaps there is some hope for them in life. It is all about relationship building, not ticking things off a to-do list. We may have to have planning meetings with staff, Mauge said these might take hours and hours, or circular chatting, of everyone having their opinion heard, and of finally maybe making some kind of agreement or plan of work. But the main emphasis is that everyone is part of the process, and that everyone is heard. In England to achieve the same outcome could take 10 minutes perhaps, but that is the point – we are motivated by outcomes and plans and projects and achievements in our work, not motivated by building relationships primarily.

A collectivist society relies on connections and networking – you might get a job through a friend or cousin – what we would call nepotism and perceive somewhat negatively, here is an essential part of life. If you jump a red light and your cousin is a policeman, he will let you off – loyalty to family is far and away more important than sticking to the rules and the principles. [We do have some of these concepts in our societies in fact too, there can be some overlapping between the two types of society].This in turn does mean that many abuses within families go unreported as the disloyalty it would show and the shame it would bring to the family is unthinkable, so the mother may let the father keep abusing the children rather than report it. Corruption is accepted in all parts of life here.

The customer is absolutely never right here. There is no accountability for businesses providing proper services – if you buy something and it breaks, you will not get a refund. This reminds me of buying a small speaker for my ipod in India which broke, and they said it was our fault at the shop and we typically westernly stood there shouting and saying we would call the police. Mauge explained that westerners who stand there shouting and making a fuss about a customer related issue, will just look stupid and be ignored. This is pretty much what happened in the Indian speaker scenario, and now it all makes sense. I do wish someone had told me this before I did all that travelling.....

It is totally unacceptable to say no to a Bolivian if they invite you to some event, or offer you some food. If you reject that, you are rejecting them, and given they have a history of cultural rejection, then they are extremely sensitive to any more of it. If you really can't go to something you're invited to, you have to make an excuse like saying you have a prior appointment, but that you will try to change it and try your hardest to come. They know this means that you won't come, but it is a very indirect and gracious way of saying no, and they can handle that. If you really can't say yes to some food you are offered, you must ask if you can take it home with you, or explain that your stomach is very sensitive, or that you have been told by whoever you are working for, eg Tearfund, that you can't eat that particular food – as long as there is an external reason for you saying no, it is just about acceptable. Communication here is indirect – you don't see road signs, you don't have many signs at airports, or bus stations for example – the reason is that you are supposed to belong to a group in a collectivist society, and that is how you would get your information. You would not rely on written instructions like we do, because you would just know things from your belonging to a group. You would never find instructions for how to behave, for example in a classroom, like you would in the west – you would just know it by how you have been brought up, or by seeing the consequences of misbehaving. I can now understand the reasons behind a lot of the things that I found so frustrating when living in Belize – like lack of information, lack of time keeping, lack of signage etc.

Authority here is absolute, and never to be questioned – hierarchy is very important, in the family it is the father, then the mother, then the siblings in order of age that have the power, in descending order, and there is a distinct gap between authority figures and those beneath them. You would not question your teacher, or boss, the way we do – you would trust in them as they are the authority figures, and you would respect them.

Mauge explained how these children have ended up living on the streets and getting hooked on glue. It all comes back to the mines. There are huge amounts of natural resources here in Bolivia, mainly tin and silver. Potosi and La Paz seem to be the main places for mining, and as mentioned previously Potosi used to be the richest city in the world. However, the mines ran out of minerals in around 1982 which meant that 300,000 workers lost their jobs. The government supported them for some time after that, but the country would have entirely collapsed if they had continued, they just didn't have the money in the government to keep helping them. This meant that a log of the ex miners turned to alcohol - they had no other job options as all they knew was mining and there were now no mines. Through the alcoholism and desperation, they then either left their families entirely or started abusing them (3 out of 5 Bolivian girls are being or have been abused, and 1 in 5 boys). If they left the families, the mother may find a new partner, who often would start abusing the children too.

The kids therefore very often ended up on the streets, stealing and begging, got hooked on glue, and found new 'families' there, ie gangs, which is where our project comes in to try and help them.

Another side effect of the closing of the mines was that many of the ex miners moved to the region called Chapare, and became coca growers and therefore drug trafficking increased. You can earn 10 times as much money growing coca than you can growing sugar or coffee for example. This is where Morales emerged as a leader, as it is the epicentre of the coca trade, which always had to fight for its right to continue, against US interference – they want to be seen to be stamping out the coca production here as that is good for their public image, without taking into consideration the effect that can have on the livelihood of the thousands of coca farmers. I have never studied economics or whatever you call this subject, but it's very interesting to learn about the direct socio-economic link between the collapse of the mining industry and the abuse, drug and family problems that ensued.

I think that's enough for now anyway, I have some homework to do for tomorrow's Spanish class. The others are watching a pirate copy of the Life of Pi, which I've seen, so in an entirely non-collectivist way am not with the group but writing this instead. In other news, we went to the market today near the post office, and looked at lots of traditional Bolivian handicraft things; I asked Alicia what book she was reading this afternoon, and she told me it was one about a particular chapter of the bible, and asked if I read the bible – not really I said – ah, not yet you mean, she replied. Eek.

Adios chicos, Lucia Pepinillo xxx ps here's some more photos for you:

 downtown Cochabamba

 a night time view from our balcony, it's on night setting so the colours aren't actually quite like that

from left - nikki, shivon, lee (the other team leader), and me, podding peas!

Talismania

Hola chicos - haven't had wifi access until now - am sending this to you from our Spanish school where we just started lessons this morning and have a small break before going home for lunch. All is fine - the altitude has given me a headache for the last 3 days which I'm trying to defeat by drinking copious amounts of coca tea, so not feeling great today, but otherwise all is going fine out here so far and everyone is getting on well / behaving. Below is the blog I've been writing so far over the last few days. It's long, and I can't even offer you a photo yet as I only have 10 minutes to be online, sorry, but I hope you enjoy it. Adios por ahora xxx

Hi everyone. I'm writing this from our apartment in Cochabamba, it's Saturday night 730pm (1130pm your time). I haven't been able to get any signal on my phone or to get on wifi at this point in time, thus the not being in touch yet. But mum I hope you got my text from the team emergency mobile which we all used to text home and say we had arrived. I am of course listening to my Bolivian pan pipe music as I write.

So we luckily left England just in time to miss the snow you've had, though the worst it would have done would be to have made a 36 hour journey into a 46 hour one I suppose. I don't want to dwell on the details of an essentially boring long journey so here's a summary:

Flight 1: to Madrid. Nothing of note happened. Nikki did a suduko, Leanne ate an apple, I ate a melted crème egg (regreted it) and read some of my book.

Flight 2: Madrid to Sao Paolo. Had 2 hours in Madrid airport, it has a lovely curvy roof. I had some garlic potatoes, then raced against Leanne and Darryl – them on the travelator, me on the normal floor. We finished together, but I had power walked whereas they had strolled.

This flight was 11 hours of flying. The lady at the desk had said there would be tvs in our seats, but there weren't. Nikki did a sudoku. I read my book. Darryl and Tom were sandwiched between 2 fat snoring men, one of whom put all his food on Darryl's table, and then poured coffee all over his leg, and at the end of the flight offered them some money. We don't know why. Mariam got the one seat on the flight that had no seat infront of it, thus 2 miles of leg room compared to our 2 inches. (Marianne, Beth, Siobhan, Zara and Lee are the other Bolivia group – they are working on a different project to us, but we're all living in the same apartment).

I have brought with me a little purse with some taslismans (talismen?) in – these are:

• a moonstone from Helie (it is a talisman of good fortune, hopes and wishes. It calms, balances and protects during travel. It aids intellectual reasoning, self-expression and insight. It helps you to understand changes in your life and universal destiny. It also helps with insect bites. It is the most amazing stone).
• a small blue Tibetan charm, which was blessed by some visiting Tibetan monks me and Luisa had gone to see in Kilburn one afternoon last year. I would tell you more about it, but I can't read the Tibetan leaflet that is with it.
• a Saint Christopher on a turquoise ribbon (he's the patron saint of travel and turquoise is my favourite colour)
• a piece of grass which I got in Dharamsala at one of the Dalai Lama's teachings. It is blessed by the Dalai Lama and I slept with it under my pillow for a long time after, following some of my Tibetan friends' advice – with the grassy end of it pointing East because that is the most blessed way to point.
• my prayer beads, also from Dharamsala, also most likely blessed by someone at some point.
• some valium (also bought in India, and blessed by the pharmacist).

Guess which one I trusted the most?

My left earring fell out on this flight, but I found it and have put it back in. This reminded me of Siobhan who had helped me put it in before I left, so just thought I'd mention that.

Around breakfast time, I spoke to the man next to me – it feels weird not to speak to someone when they're that close to you and having the completely same experience as you for those 11 hours, and also when you've jumped over them in the middle of the night to go to the loo. He was on his way back to Sao Paolo from some time in Scotland, and yes he had seen some of those cows with the long hair, it was one of my first questions too. We explained what we were doing in Cochabamba. He told us we could go to Sao Paolo city centre during our 8 hour stop there and eat some lovely steak at an Argentinian restaurant (he was previously married to an Argentinian lady but they had divorced – I thought it was suspicious him giving me that much information so didn't pursue that part of the conversation). I made an executive decision not to go to Sao Paolo, as it's $50 each way in a taxi and also it's hard enough shepherding my little group around an airport let alone into the 3^rd biggest city in the world for no good reason.

Interlude: 8 hours in Sao Paolo airport (which is weirdly only 3 hours behind England time). This was fairly uneventful. We stood in the sunshine outside for a while, Tom got sunburnt, Darryl called home and heard all about the snow. We decided to eat some food – there was a handy baked potato restaurant, so we ordered 6 batatas com bolagnesa y quiejo. Then realised that unless you have Brazilian Reales or a credit card, you can't pay for your batata. Leonie's bank card wouldn't work, so she bought a fanta at a different shop with dollars and got Reales in change. A large queue had built up behind us during the potato palaver, I was talking to the potato sellers in Spanish, because I can't speak Portuguese, without realising this is quite rude. We were quite typical English people abroad at this point. The potatoes were definitely worth the wait and hassle though.

Flight 3: Sao Paolo to Santa Cruz de la Sierra (southern Bolivia). Choppy flight. I consulted my talismen to calm me down. Anyone that has ever been on a flight with me will know I am one of the worst people to go on a flight with ever. Something strange has happened which is that because I am the Team Leader, I have to be mature and responsible (more so than normal), and thus I took on the ability to not panic. When we bumped up from Sao Paolo through some very turbulent clouds and everyone screamed, I calmly said – 'why are you screaming, it's just some bumpy air?'. How smug am I. Interesting psychological development, rather like the famous experiment to do with prison guards and prisoners, and people taking on roles that are assigned to them. I wonder what else I could become?

We were fed a small bready sandwich with some unidentifiable meat inside it on this flight, and a little cake too. Then tea came round. I asked for 'te negro please' – they said 'we have te normal' – I said 'that sounds fine please', thinking what could be more normal than black tea. But no – normal tea, in Bolivia (or at least in the sky above Bolivia) is cinammon tea. It's very nice, sweet and cinamonny. I got 2 cups. Other than the bumps and my smugness, I don't think anything else of note happened. Tom had a minor sulk as we had told everyone that this flight was 45 minutes long, whereas it was actually 2 hours and 45 minutes. There is a 2 hour time difference from take off to landing, and we didn't really realise this when looking at the timings on the itinerary. I reasoned that there was nothing we could do about this, and that given the length of our journey so far, it really was neither here nor there whether we ever stopped taking off and landing. I read my book, and Nikki probably did a sudoku.

On arriving in Santa Cruz we had 4 minutes to go to our next flight to Cochabamba. We had to go through immigration and fill in those little bits of paper declaring that we haven't brought soil or livestock with us, and remember to say 'turismo' if asked the purpose of our visit to Bolivia, and not 'trabajador' or 'voluntario'. We all managed to do this, and Darryl even managed not to sneak away for a cigarette, and a lovely Bolivian airport man walked us to where our gate was. They had held the flight for us and other people on the Sao Paolo flight which had been delayed, (probably due to the bumpiness of the clouds).

Flight 4: Santa Cruz to Cochabamba. This was 30 minutes long. We had a small rectangular crustless cheese sandwich, and a cakey thing. I sat next to an old indigenous Bolivian couple who asked me a few questions about where we'd come from and where we were going. (I always want to ask absolutely everyone this question when they are going on the same route as me somewhere). Came in to Cochabamba through some hills and mountains. Got off the plane and it was raining and humid and the airport was surrounded by green mountains half hidden in clouds. I instantly loved all the Bolivian people I saw.

We were picked up by David, our in country coordinator, who has lived in Bolivia for a good few years and knows a lot of things, and by Mauge (pronounced Mao-he), and Angelika – they run the Spanish school we'll be at for the first few weeks and are helping with the orientation process and our apartment. Our bags were flung on to the roof and tied on with rope and we were flung in to the mini bus and off we went to our new house for the next 10 weeks.

After dinner and sitting around and generally exclaiming that we couldn't believe we were here after such a long journey (it's certainly my longest: left Dulwich at 1.20pm and arrived here at midnight (UK time) the next day = 35.20 hours), we went to sleep, and thus ended dia uno en el casa del gran hermano boliviano.

Today (Saturday), David, Mauge and Angie gave us a tour of Cocahbamba. Lots of David's sentences seemed to finish with 'this is one of the poorest areas of Cochabamba', or 'this is one of the most dangerous areas of Cochabamba'. I bombarded David with questions to do with all aspects of Bolivian life. I had been worried recently that my question-asking ability / curse had diminished, but fear not readers, it is still there. I realised that I like to collate lots of information about things and then go and mull it all over, or write a blog about it if it is a blogging part of my life. Here is a summary of what I learnt:

• Evo Morales' socialist government, 3 years ago, kicked out all the NGOs because apparently Evo likes to have ultimate control of all the money that is coming into the country and what is done with it, and he couldn't do this with the NGO money, so they all had to leave. But these NGOs were working to help the lower classes, which are the indigenous people, of which he is one so it seems slightly paradoxical. He is essentially uneducated – he was a llama farmer (got to write a song utilising that rhyme whilst here), and then a coca grower, and still is the head of the coca growers' union. He has always been very politically active, as you would probably be if you were part of the uneducated and exploited race, that has no access to education or civil society, and no real voice, in a country where there is a huge disparity between haves and have nots. There is massive resistance to him from these rich upper classes, a lot of whom live in Santa Cruz. There are rich people in the North part of Cochabamba, and La Paz too and Potosi (which was once the richest city in the world, and whose silver mines helped Spain become so rich back in the days).

• There are a lot of Americans living in Cochabamba, who often pretend to be Candians by carrying Canadian flags in case stopped and asked. There is massive distrust of US in Bolivia, obviously due to their foreign policy – they have historically funded and supported the kind of military dictatorships that suit their interests in Bolivia (and numerous other countries), rather than the interest of the people, and recently they tried to ban the growing of coca plants here (even though they must be one of its biggest consumers!!!), but it has now been recognised officially as an 'acceptable' crop to grow, mainly due to Morales' campaigning and support of the coca growers. What would they do for money without it – but this is part of a tangled and convoluted debate to do with international development and right and wrong and many other things full of paradox and difficulty. We will be discussing things like this as we go through our 10 week placement here so I'll keep you updated as I'm sure it will be a fascinating learning curve into many things.

• There is currently a minor water shortage here. The mountains that surround Cochabamba used to have snow on them, which melted into water and was used for the city. Only one of these mountains now does, this is due to climate change, and the result is less water. There are times when the water is turned off completely. There was a film I watched before leaving, called 'la lluvia tambien', which is about the water wars in 2000 which was real and happened in Cochabamba – they privatised the water and the price shot up, and most of the non-rich people couldn't afford it and massively kicked off about it and it was reversed (watch the film, but obviously I've just ruined the plot for you).

• There are often riots in Cochabamba, or just peaceful marches, by the indigenous people, in support of the government generally. David thinks it is partially because they don't have too much else to do, and want to remind people about their presence. They used to close whole roads for days at a time, and really disrupt things. I hope we get to see one whilst here, though we have to walk away from it and not join in with it in case it gets more severe.

That's pretty much my summary of Saturday. During our city tour we also saw the locations of the projects we'll be working on and learnt a lot more about the street kids and their situation, and the Bolivians perception of them, and the government's lack of support of the organisations that work to help them – more on that to come as we learn more and get started on the placements, which will be next week – for now I think it's enough to say that it is not going to be easy to come to terms with what we'll be faced with when we start.

It's now Sunday, and we're sitting in our lounge chilling out after playing a few games and realising quite how competitive we are... Who knew a game of Tell Me could get that heated... (and thanks Luisa for lending it me, that killed a good 2 hours of a rainy Sunday afternoon). We're not really allowed to go out without either David or Mauge at the moment, until we've had all our safety and security briefings this week, and learnt how to order taxis and orientated ourselves around the city. This is fine, but so far I'm not feeling like I've had much of a Bolivian encounter as it's mostly been contained to our group and our apartment. This will all change tomorrow however when we start at the Spanish school – the plan is Spanish lessons every morning for 2 weeks – I'm so excited.

The one encounter I have had so far, was with the assistant pastor at the church we went to this morning. As we are here with the Christian charity Tearfund, normally the groups are Christian, and all the partners they work with are Christian too. We are the only non-Christian group that Tearfund send, but we are obviously made aware that we are working with Christian partners and that we may be invited to church etc. So this morning we all went to church, both 2 groups of us. It is an international church, and the sermon was given by an American pastor, preceded by some singing in both languages about Jesus and God etc. I like that bit as I learnt some more Spanish words. American pastor man talked about how to make good decisions and how to base these decisions on the consequences that you want to arise from them, and that they should be good consequences that you aim for. And then he referred to the bible a bit, and I struggled more with that bit as I'm not really a bible reader though I am technically a Christian in the sense that I have been christened. We had some really interesting discussions on the walk home though – it's really nice to be able to talk so openly to the other group about their beliefs and how they came to them and how they practise their faith. And essentially I would say that I have Christian values, but I don't have a particular relationship with God, like they do. For me the talk about the devil, heaven and hell is when I stopped listening to the pastor as I find it doesn't quite resonate with my particular beliefs. I do like the singing though and remain open minded about all things.

Me and Nikki left at the devil bit of the sermon and sat outside and talked to Jorge, the assistant pastor. He knows the projects we're working on and we arranged that he would come and visit us, so I gave him our phone number to arrange it. I'm not sure I was meant to do any of that, but it seemed like a nice thing to do. I did explain that we're not all Christians, and I'm not sure what he thought of that, but he certainly approved of us being here to help.

My final thought that I would like to say to finish blog post number 1 is that I have realised that the reason I didn't have any massively huge feelings before I left England (ie overwhelming excitement or nervousness or feelings of doing the wrong thing), is that this is TOTALLY the right thing for me to be doing right now. Please note capital letters.

Anyway, I think I will stop now as I'm kind of boring myself and I don't want that to happen to anyone else. It's a common danger on my blogs and as usual please accept my apologies. xx

Cochabamba here we come

Hi everyone. I have decided to use proper punctuation and capital letters in this blog you'll be pleased to hear if you are one of the stylistically frustrated readers of my last blogs. I have used lots of green on this blog, as it is one of the colours on the Bolivian flag, and also supposedly reduces your heart rate, so reading this blog is officially good for you. Enjoy.

So this Thursday I'm off on my merry way to Cochabamba, in Bolivia, with my team of 5 volunteers. We are volunteering as part of the ICS programme (www.ics-uk.org.uk), at a homeless children's centre, and I am the team leader (which involves being part of the team and some extra responsibilities). Cochabamba is Bolivia's 3rd biggest city. My uncle Chris had gone there in the 60's when it was a 'small market town'. It now has a population of about 650,000, so has grown a bit. The population of Bolivia is around 9 million, with 1.5 million in La Paz, the capital. I have been to Bolivia before, but not to this part of it, so I'm getting excited about seeing a new place.

Bolivia has a pretty big problem with poverty, which leads to / continues the cycle of homelessness, lack of education and opportunities (especially for girls and especially for the indigenous population), and drug problems, amongst other things. The project my team and I will be working at is called Mosoj Yan. Mosoj Yan means ‘new road’ in Quechua (the indigenous language of that area of Bolivia). It was founded in 1991 with the aim of assisting young women working on the streets. This Christian organisation provides various different rehabilitation and prevention services to young women and children. Mosoj Yan runs four different programs around the city, including a daycare shelter with educational facilities, two residential homes, a handicrafts shop, and a café.

The aims and objectives of Mosoj Yan are:

• To provide educational services and support for girls looking for alternative employment
• To support girls through the process of social reintegration
• To provide shelter for those who have left home
• To create micro-finance opportunities
• To offer counseling and psychological aid, as well as legal, educational and health services

So we will be helping to run workshops (on anything from arts and crafts, to self-esteem, to baking etc), doing some TEFL teaching, maybe some gardening, games, or all sorts of other things that they need us to do, alongside the Bolivian staff members and volunteers. In our team we are: me, 2 boys and 3 girls, who I met at our training weekend - they're Leanne, Nikki, Leonie, Daryl and Tom. They are all very lovely - let's hope the feeling's mutual, and let's hope the loveliness lasts. 

I've had my jabs (complete with having to lie in the recovery position to recover as I don't like jabs); got my US dollars (you can't get Bolivianos in the UK); had some Spanish lessons; bought a new camera; tried to think of ideas for activities we can do with the children out there; and had a flamenco lesson (got to be prepared for all eventualities). Just need to do my packing now - anyone that wants to help, come round to mine on Wednesday and you'll get a free coffee in return (or other item of food that needs using up from my cupboard - chocolate mousse if you're lucky / tinned mackerel if you're not). 

Thanks for reading, and I will try to do weekly updates as we go along. 3 days and 4 flights (wish me luck) is all that stands between us and our amazing adventure now. 

Adios chicos - I'll leave you with a picture of the Bolivian flag and the president Evo Morales (click link for an interesting article re him and the relations between him and the US). Re the flag: (wiki-quote) According to one source, the red stands for Bolivia's brave soldiers, while the green symbolizes fertility and yellow the nation's mineral deposits (source of much plundering by the developed world (my note)).


(flag in waving mode)


(Evo Morales looking very indigenous)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12166905

Hasta pronto, el pepinillo xx