Tuesday,Nov 21 2006, 05:12:47 PMNovember

Thursday, November 16, 2006                       San Antonio de Lomerío

 

            Back here in San Antonio and things were surprisingly normal upon my return. Or so I thought . . . So I arrived back in San Antonio to find that my garden was growing well but looked like a small jungle due to 2 weeks without weeding. This was quickly taken care of yesterday with the help of some of the kids in town who I paid for their work. As of now I have a few jalapeño plants and plenty of squash growing. Who knows if it is going to continue to grow but for the time being it gives me something to do.

            I guess the most shocking thing that I heard when I got back needs a little bit of background context in order to be understood. If you read the last few journal entries you might recall the second alcohol related death in the past 6 months when a drunken townsperson drove his bicycle into a ditch. Well it looks like the people have solved the riddle of why he died in a way that I never would have imagined. It turns out that the reason that the drunk guy died had nothing to do with his .3 blood alcohol level, or just the fact that you shouldn’t be going down a hill on a bicycle when you are as drunk as a college frat guy. No it turns out that in a neighboring town, a mere 20 miles from San Antonio, a male witch or wizard, had put a spell on him and cursed him to this fate. Now remember this is 20 miles from San Antonio, where I live, in a small village of about 200 people. So now the word was out that the drunk guy was cursed and that this witch was responsible. So the Sunday after the President of Bolivia arrived in a helicopter here, some of the townspeople in this town, 4 of them in particular, got together and decided to take care of the witch in the best way that witches can be taken care of. They rounded up the witch and burned him alive . . . I repeat it is now the year 2006, in a place where the President of Bolivia flew in a helicopter the day before, and they burned a guy alive for being a witch . . . I couldn’t believe it when I was told the story. Subsequently 4 of the culprits have been taken to jail in the city for their parts in the killing.

            What truly disturbs me is that the people in the town stood by while one of their own was burned alive for being a witch, and even more shocking to me has been the lack of response and disgust of the community here. I mean I am truly disturbed to my core that a human being was burned alive on purpose because of witchcraft.

            So there it is . . . I don’t really know what else I can say today other than my complete shock and just a general sickness that I fell knowing that this happened in a place close to where I am living.

 

Geoff

Friday,Nov 10 2006, 01:45:51 PMLa Paz, titicaca, worlds most dangerous road

Friday, November 10, 2006    10:00 AM   Cochabamba, Bolivia

 

          Wow the last few weeks have been amazing and really fun filled. First of all I came to Cochabamba about a week ago to have my one year medical exam and by some miracle I am free of all intestinal diseases. I really can’t believe that it is true but if the doc says so it must be. I also was able to go to the dentist where I was cleared of all cavities.

          So it was pretty nice to get together with all of my fellow B-40 volunteers and be out of San Antonio for a little while. The best part was after the medical exams when I went on Vacation for a few days.

          We arrived in La Paz, which is one of the most breathtaking cities I have ever seen. La Paz is situated in a small valley with houses going up almost 2000 feet all the way to the rim of the canyon. Other than a little bit of difficulty breathing it was great. We even found a German restaurant that had real beer!!! Now talk about a cheap drinking situation. Try drinking an 8% beer at 12,500 feet.

          The one thing that really freaked me out about la paz was all of the gringos that are there traveling along the gringo trail, basically machu picchu to la paz. I definitely am not used to being around gringos that are not volunteers. The second day in la paz we road down the world’s most dangerous road, as declared by the world bank, which was the most intense thing I have ever done in my life. About 26 vehicles fall off the road every year.You have to check out the photos in order to believe how crazy this road is. The road starts at about 4200 meters, or 14000 feet and descends in about 30 miles all the way down to 1100 hundred meters. You reach speeds of 40 mph on your bicycle and some times there are 1500 foot cliff drops just three feet to your left. It was incredible and even the photos I have don’t do it justice.

          After that we headed out to lake Titicaca and chilled out for two days there. Titicaca is amazing and it is pretty crazy starring out at a lake and having a hard time breathing because the lake is higher than some of the peaks in Colorado. The last day of our trip we went out to the ruins at tiahuanacu, where there are some amazing pre-inca ruins.

          So that was the events, in short, of the last few weeks. I can’t wait to see most of my friends over Christmas and details will be forthcoming of the a get together.

 

Geoff

Thursday,Nov 2 2006, 02:16:10 PMOctober fun times

Tuesday, October 03, 2006     6:50 PM               San Antonio de Lomerío

 

          So umm, did any one else wake up this morning, go to their latrine and find a chicken in their and did it scare the crap out of you because that is exactly what happened to me this morning, that and the light wasn’t on again last night, and I sweated about ten gallons last night.

          So now it is about 2:40 in the afternoon and I am sitting here recording this on my new mp3 player that my amazing parents sent me sweating my butt off because it is about 100 degrees with an immeasurable amounts of humidity. I have already drank about 5 liters of water but I have already eaten two mangos so I guess it all evens out.

 

          6:50 PM     

         

Hallelujah, Hallelujah . . . guess what just came on in town. Now brace your self for something unbelievable. No the war in Iraq didn’t end, no you didn’t win the lottery, but something almost as unlikely has occurred. As I sit here typing this jamming to some inspirational John Legend tracks the lights are on in town, and it is lightning because it is about to rain. Now some of you don’t understand the incredibleness of the situation right now, I mean after living for 4 months without electricity, just because of managerial inaptitude, or without a really good rain the joy that these two things can bring. Honestly I ran outside when the electricity came on and I screamed at the top of my lungs . . . whoop!!!

 

Thursday, October 05, 2006   7:25 AM               San Antonio de Lomerío

 

          So brace your selves, pestilence, war, famine, and their other horsemen friend of the apocalypse are assured to be released upon the world soon. The concurrence of the events of the last few days can point to nothing less than something of Biblical proportions. There is no way that the electricity has been on for 2 days straight. That and the cement arrived for Chris’s project. He is building 20, 10,000 liter rain-water catchment tanks here in town and the supplies arrived on the truck yesterday. Every single piece of steel, every roll of chicken wire, and even an extra bag of cement was on the truck when it arrived, even if a day late, which is a miracle within itself here in Bolivia. So Chris and I gathered up the families who are going to be receiving the tanks and unloaded 305 bags of cement in an area of the Church that the new padre has been kind enough to let us use. (Check out the photos) Even the kids were getting into the unloading of the truck by carrying the chicken wire and moving the bags of cement to the doors of the truck so it could be unloaded.

          I would also like to let you guys know that you are now reading the words of a verifiable, by people here at least, radio star. Yesterday I was on the radio with a guy named Domingo,(yes he was born on a Sunday) talking about the town fair that is now less than 2 days away. I am so crazy busy right now with the artisans arriving back from Expocruz, the tanks which I am committed to help managing, and the town fair just around the corner. That is it for today, it is time to go and move some cement and lay the foundation for 2 tanks.

 

Geoff

 

 

Thursday, October 26, 2006   8:16 AM San Antonio de Lomerío

 

          Wow, I am sitting looking at the date of the last journal entry that I made and am stunned at how fast the time has flown. I don’t even really know where to begin as each day has been pretty much full to the brim with activities.

          Ok well as I last stated things here in town for some crazy reason decided to turn themselves around and everything seemed to be working. Strangely enough things have seemed to pretty much stay that way. The town fair has yet to occur, we will talk about that later, and the artisans are on the outs with me, but so many other good things have happened in town since I last wrote.

          Ok well like I said the materials for the tanks have arrived and we actually have started with the project and are moving at the speed of light by Bolivian standards. As of today there are 4 completed tanks, and 2 tanks that only have about another day of work in order to complete them. That means that in 3 weeks of work we have pretty much completed 6 tanks. So I think that we are both fairly encouraged by the progress so far, even if Chris has almost a daily breakdown because the people can be difficult sometimes.

          As can be seen by the photos I have pretty much been ankle deep in cement for the past 3 weeks. LINK Here is one funny story about all the tanks. So Chris goes out looking for John Flowers Aka Juan Flores who we joke about being Chris’s son here in town even though he is about 50 years old. So Chris is looking for ole John Flowers in order to ask a question regarding the water tanks and his wife tells Chris that John is working on putting a top on one of the water tanks mas alla which means more over there but in Bolivia stands for any or all of the cardinal directions and also distances. For instance if you are looking for something in the city and you ask a storekeeper and they don’t have it they will always say it is mas alla in the opposite direction of which you were coming from. Let me just say that if it was left up to Bolivians for earthly exploration I doubt they would have ever made it past the Andes. So that being said Chris went in search of the mythical land, mas alla, and eventually came upon a house that seemed very familiar to Chris. It seems that when Chris arrived for the first time in San Antonio, to visit Steve who he would be replacing, Steve was working on his last tank in town. So 1 year and 4 months ago when Chris arrived and went and talked to Steve here in San Antonio Steve was working on his last tank that only lacked the top and Steve said something along the lines that normally he lets them finish the tanks by themselves as they know how to do it and it is not that big a deal. Now, fast forward, 1 year and 4 months and Chris is searching for John Flowers and has arrived at this house where Steve was letting them put the top of the tank on. Now Chris hopes, prays, and curses all at the same time that they are not just now putting the top on the tank. Sure enough John Flowers is up there finishing the tank, which now must hold the record for longest time to ever complete a tank in history, as the construction is at most a ten day process.

          In other San Antonio news the economics class has been going really, really, well even if I might be stirring the local population into harassing the mayor a little bit. It turns out that the mayor’s office sets the price of beef in town, and we proved in my economics class that the reason there is never any meat is because they have the wrong price set. I worked this into the class on free-enterprise, command economies, and so forth and asked the profes who owned the cows, the mayor or them. At this point there were lots of rallying cries that it is not right that the mayor controls the price of their private property.

          So that was my work against the mayor’s office this last month but I guess that I also worked with him as we finally had the monthly fair like I have been trying to do for some time. The only difference is that somehow the fair eventually morphed into a visit by Evo Morales, the President of Bolivia. Evo came out to celebrate 2 new tractors, a water tanker, and some other things that were being given to our town and the mayor and I decided it would be good to take advantage of the presence of the authorities to sell traditional food and artisan goods. One funny thing that occurred when I was planning the fair was my talk with Domingo, you know the one born on Sunday. So I was talking to Domingo and I said knock on wood and asked him if he knew the expression. He said that he did know the expression but that people in San Antonio don’t believe in superstitions. I could hardly contain myself. I mean as far as I am concerned the people in San Antonio are the most superstitious I have even met. So I asked him if they don’t believe in superstitions what is the deal with sitting on hot rocks and getting sick to which he replied, well everyone knows that one is true . . .

          In other good news I have found funding for my Sunday game day with the kids while the parents get wasted. Unfortunately there was another death last Sunday related to alcohol in the Lomerio area. It turns out that one of the guys in a town nearby left the soccer game completely hammered on his bicycle and crashed it in a ditch on the way out of town injuring his head and killing himself. Yet still the town doesn’t see the drinking as a problem. They all said the reason he crashed was because of a fight with his wife and it had nothing to do with his .25 or so blood alcohol level. Either way I really hope to get this game day going with the nuns and the priest in town. My only worry is that it might turn into an incentive for the parents to get even more wasted as the kids will be occupied. But I guess if the parents don’t care now then why would they change their behavior now.

          Well that is it for now and I will write again after my bike trip down the worlds most dangerous road and trip to lake Titicaca.

Geoff