Hey there from inside of the United States!

I have been getting a number of emails from friends and family sharing their encouragement and excitement for my adventures-to-be in The Gambia. Unfortunately, I have to tell you all that they wont be happening. In previous emails I had mentioned some back pain that had been going on since mid-August. Before clearing me for the Gambia, the Peace Corps took an MRI to rule out any serious back problems. To my chagrin, last week I found out that the pain wasnt purely muscular, but rather a herniated disc. The good news is that it wont require surgery. The bad news is that people with herniated discs do not fare well as PC volunteers, so I will be staying in the States, going through physical therapy and working on getting better. Now more than ever I dont know what the next few months will bring, but Id like to thank you all for your encouragement over the past two years. Thanks so much, and hopefully sometime in the future Ill be sending on emails from new adventures in the developing world.

Much love,

Jacqueline

Once all the volunteers were together after evacuation, I realized that my exit from Bolivia was the longest of all. Four days, three countries, eight blockades, one pair of flip flops, bikes, a boat, a plane, and many taxis later, heres the story in pictures.

Check it out at http://picasaweb.google.com/j.brysacz.

In designing my blog for my Peace Corps experience, I struggled with its title. How could I give one name to something so unknown, so big, so exciting. In the end, I decided that the only thing I knew for sure was that it would last for twenty-seven months. This past week, even that certainty burned up like a tire at a Bolivian blockade.

About ten days ago and long before they reached that magic number twenty-seven, 113 volunteers stepped off of a military plane and onto Peruvian soil. Since then, they have been buried by a blizzard of paperwork and life decisions, all while trying to collect themselves emotionally. Our turned out to be a particularly chaotic evacuation, squashed between the speedy turn of events in the country and the end of the fiscal year on October 5. We spent the first two days talking about what we left behind. I left my bee group and my godson. Gina left behind her earthworm fertilizer project. Mike his tree nursery. Ellen her elderly friend whom no one else visits. 113 people doing good work with 113 deserving communities, thousands of friendships ended with just a few hours notice.

On the third day, the Washington delegation arrived. It was tme to move on. We were given four options. We could close our service and travel South America or go straight home. We could re-enroll in another two years in another country. We could hope that Bolivia would settle down and wait to re-instate. Finally, we could transfer to another program. When a Peace Corps country is suspended or closed, headquarters sends an email to each country director asking if they could receive volunteers like us, Peace Corps Refugees. Volunteers are then given a list of what countries would accept how many volunteers in which projects, and for how long. The transfer option is especially attractive as many of the positions are available for just one year.

I was not ready to go back to the US. I have unfinished business with the developing world. With its logical chaos and its closeness to nature. I replayed in my head the day I met with the PC recruiter and I chose a Latin American assignment over an African one. This could be my opportunity to get the best of both world, to slip on my Africa shoes and see how they fit. I was hoping to find something for a year, preferably with bees. It felt like a long shot- only 6% of PCVs are agriculture volunteers, and I don’t speak the language in a number of the countries with ag programs.

When the list of possible transfer countries was unveiled, I flipped to the agriculture section. Seven countries had openings. Not interested in staying in Latin America, I looked to the Africa section. “Mali, two years, French required.” No. “Burkina Faso, one year, French required.” No. Finally, at the end of the alphabet, the only other option on the continent: The Gambia. One year. No French. I looked into their programs, and they focus on beekeeping and reforestation, which were my two main projects in Chimeo. Some of the Washington people sent my resume on to them and they enthusiastically ACCEPTED! I will be heading home this weekend for almost a month of home leave until my departure on October 20. I have been told that I will be working on the southern half of the country near the coast and learning a language called Mandinka. I will be about an hour from the capital city of Banjul and will work with the Gambian National Beekeepers’ Association. Tammy, the only other Bolivia PCV headed to the Gambia will join me then, and starting November 6 we will begin a Pre-Service training, mainly to learn the languages of The Gambia.

The Gambia will certainly be a much more challenging experience than my twenty months in Bolivia. I will have to learn the indigenous languages to communicate. I probably wont have electricity. I wont have a shower. Before my original departure I felt uncertain and a bit scared, but this time around its pure excitement. So, after a tremendously trying week, I’m looking forward. I feel terrible for having disappeared from Chimeo so quickly, for being swept up from a conflict that my dear friends will continue to deal with. I have been able to relay the message to the folks there that I will be back. I plan to send all sorts of letters to Chimeo from The Gambia and I will be back to visit and for a proper going away party after I finish my service in the end of 2009, after thirty-six months as a volunteer. I suppose now I ought to change the title of my blog.

As some of you may have read in the papers over the past few weeks, Bolivia has been suffering from serious social unrest. Almost a month ago it all started where I lived, in Villa Montes. The prefects and mayors got together and decided to go to battle with Evo over his redistribution of the hydrocarbons export tax. He wanted to take a small percentage of the funds and use it for projects in his side of the country, the poorer west. The political leaders of the Chaco, home to 45% of Bolivia's hydrocarbons, wanted to make sure the revenues from these taxes stayed in the land from which they were removed. Some claim that their real goal was to destabilize the Morales administation a la Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, where the leftist government was toppled after blockades and strikes destabilizes the government and ushered in Pinochet. Anyone who worked for the mayors office, prefecture, hospital, or schools were told to go and blockade the roads or they would lose their jobs. So they did. The campesinos, who had truckloads of tomatoes and papayas rotting in their fields, grew unhappy with the blockades and tried to break them down by force in Villa Montes. Four were injured (with sling shots) and as a result the comite civico worked to bring the campesinos on line by telling them that the objective of the fight for the hydrocarbons tax, the IDH, was to preserve some of the social programs they rely upon, such as the Juancito Pinto which give cash to school kids to buy their books. So the campesinos calmed down and the blockades continued.

After three weeks, more and more communities in the media luna, the easten half of the country, began to strike and blockade. The Cruceno Youth, a sort of university student run militia, began to take any office that was run by the federal government or those that had been recently nationalized, such as the national phone company Entel. With battering rams and stones and some stolen guns and tear gas, they held off the military police and began to loot and demolish their own city. The scenes on television were quite chaotic and an air of fear and uncertainty began floated over the country. Evo, unable to suppress the uprisings in a country with a history of military dictatorships, began to blame the United States for the social unrest. He cited meeting between the ambassador and the leaders of the media luna and declared Ambassador Goldberg a persona non grata. Tit for tat Ambassador expulsions began between Bolivia, the US, and Venezuela and its bellicose president.

Meanwhile, 113 peace corps volunteers listened closely to fuzzy radio signals and watch bleary eyed as their country was accused of trying to dismantle the same country they had spent a year or two trying to build up. I was in Camiri, a town 150 km north of me, visiting the doctor when the violence in Santa Cruz began to unfurl. I was told to stay there to wait out the violence, but when the Ambassador was dismissed I was told to cross the three blockades to get back to Chimeo and get my passport. The blockades which had been so easy to cross on the way up to the doctor a few days before had changed drastically. After three weeks of strikes gas had begun to run out and disgruntled locals had begun to puncture the tires of the taxis ferrying travelers through the Chaco. I made it most of the way with no problem, but north of Machareti the tire pinchers arrived. Our driver ordered us to bajense bajense bajense! about 15 km away from the next blockade when a tire pincher on a moto approached. Travellers had to walk this 15 km then another 15 km to Tiguipa, where taxi drivers felt far enough away from the blockade to ensure the health of their tires. Being a light skinned lass I was able to catch rides most of the way, and when I got to Tiguipa there was a taxi driver helping a farmer squeeze cane juice as payment for letting him hide his car in the farmers yard. Happy to be on the last leg of the journey, I bought a liter of jugo de cana for 5 Bs to take back to my friends in Chimeo. We weary travellers happily occupied every inch of the old toyota, and we were on our way. For a while. About half way to Chimeo, the car ran out of gas. We pushed it for a while, but when met by a particularly steep hill we gave up. Knowing that I was now a mere 15 km from Chimeo, I started walking with another girl from the taxi whom I knew. As she turned off to her house, a friend of my site mates picked me up and took me all the way into Chimeo. I thanked him and walked to my house to prepare for what would turn out to be my final twelve hours in Chimeo.

I spent the night and morning visiting, trying not to cry, and deciding what belongings would earn a place in the one bag I was approved to take with me. I visited with my four closest families and fielded a 0.750 not crying percentage. I told everyone that I may never be back, but I wasnt sure, that they had kicked out the ambassador and people were blaming my country for the problems in Santa Cruz. They assured me that everything would be resolved and that I would be back in a few days.

It wasnt until we boarded the plane in Bermejo that we were told: we were being evacuated to Lima, Peru. Now, a few days, hours of taxis, two rides in C130s, and much sadness later, I am in Lima, Peru. We are all in Lima, Peru. The program in Bolivia has been suspended and representatives from Washington will be arriving in the next few days to help us sort through what we will all do next. Some will go straight home, others will stay and travel South America, others will put in another year or two with PC in another country. I am still sorting out my feelings on leaving my very close friends and being forced to desert some really great projects that were a year and a half in the making. I will likely be here for another week before anything is figured out. I do not think that I am ready to go back to the US, but I dont know if I can give my heart to another community the way I did to Chimeo. Ill be sending an update in the coming days as my future becomes more clear.

Cuidense,

Jacqueline

One would be hard-pressed to think of a developing nation where the poor have better access to health care than Bolivia. Perhaps Cuba. Financed by its own national resouces as well aid from countries like Venezuela, Bolivia provides its citizens with free universal health care. Pregnant women and infants are guaranteed free medical assistance under the SUMI. Small communities like Chimeo have their own health posts, complete with a doctor, nurse, and dentist, to provide basic services to denziens. As a good friend of the doctor and nurse in Chimeo, I am constantly turning down assistance and medications for whatever might ail me. I am obligated to exclusively see Peace Corps’s fancy, Georgetown-educated doctor in Santa Cruz. Furthermore, I dont feel right taking the ibuprofin that could potentially benefit another commuity member who doesnt have the outside resources that I do.

The blockades and civil strike of the past month, however, had me turning to Maribel, my dear friend and Chimeo’s resident nurse. A year of long bus rides, terrible matresses, and copious hoeing knocked something loose in my back. Unble to do the things I need to, like hike through the monte, carry heavy boxes of honey, and clear my yard, I asked Maribel what I could do to heal myself. She diagnosed my problem as likely sciatic nerve pain, explained how the over-worked muscles, nerves, and tendons had left me in bed for days. She did conclude, however, that I needed to see a doctor.

This time I accepted her ibuprofin and vitamin B and went back to bed to contemplate my options. The roads to Santa Cruz were heavily blockaded, so getting there would involve walking many kilometers and spending at least 200 Bs (a 500% increase in the normal price as a result of gas scarcity and general Bolivian entrepeneurism.) I had 70 Bs and an inability to walk. For the first time, I was truly adversely affected by Bolivia’s uniquely turbulent politics.

In the end, the PC medical office set me up with an “approved” doctor in a town just two hours north of Chimeo. I sold some homemade beeswax chapsticks to Maribel to raise money for my passage and set out. The kind doctor, who matches every word with gesture and ends every appointment with an awkward hug, perscribed for me all sorts of pills and, of course, what Bolivian illness would be complete a few shots of vitamins in the butt. To make sure it was merely muscular and not my kidneys, a jocular ecografista checked out my insides with an ancient sonogram machine while he practiced his broken English on me. A large lady with drawn on eyebrows unfazedly handled my bodily fluids to rule out any abnormalities. I refused, however, to have my entire trunk, where my baby making apparati reside, peered into by an x-ray machine that may have been built by Madame Curie.

Thoroughly prodded and reassured, I then spent 600 Bs on medications. Include consultation fees and transportation, and the trip cost me about 1000 Bs, about $125. Such medical extravagance would be out of reach of the typical Bolivian. This one illness would suck the entire monthly pay of a school teacher with ten years of experience. Earning 30 Bs for eight hours of work, a day laborer could not afford it even if he worked all day everyday for a month. Sure, campesinos have basic uiversal health care, but this is basic. Vaccines and antibiotics. No ecographs. No x-rays. No surgery. Awakened by my brief inability to access theattention that I needed, I began to wonder what it really means to lack access to modern medicine. We hear a great deal about providing areas ravaged by AIDS with retrovirals, but that is just the big stuff. What about the uiversal small stuff? The ladies with sciatic nerve pain? The strange rashes? The hearing problems? Truly tiny, elisive stuff that can keep people home from work for months. Throw in a lack of understanding of germ theory and a dash of literay, and ones health becomes a fey, ephemeral, inscrutable animal.

It is truly unfathomable. No matter how long one remains within another country or another culture, she remains concious of her other-ness, the parts of herself that are not as those that surround her. As a citizen of any wealth, western nation, perhaps moreso as a US citizen, one holds certain impregnable priveledges that can present unparrallelled opportuities. Freedom to travel. Access to education. Protection under the hegemon. Nonetheless, this same ushakable priveledge can prevent one from truly understanding, truly experiencing life in a poorer nation. Empathy a plenty with a scarcity of sympathy.

Despite the kind doctor’s embrace, the pain remains today, and I am in my fourth week of understanding that animal that Chiminenas know so well. The pills didnt seem to work. The expensive machines revealed nothing. My body keeps me from my thrilling fascinating work, while the worsening blockades keep my here in this large town. Bit by bit, I am starting to understand so much about life, about my own priveledge, about the back pain that seems to afflict most women on this planet, and about the harsh reality of healthcare that, if you crunch the numbers, afflicts most of the human beings on this planet.

All this in a very social democracy with universal health care. Imagine what could be.

Here are a few fotos from our first group capture. More can be found on my picasa account at-

http://picasaweb.google.com/j.brysacz

Below are some videos of our first group capture using the suits provided by the support of all of you through our Peacecorps Partnership. Since the boxes and suits arrived on the 15th every spare moment has bee spent looking for feral hives and capturing them. The last video is of Cecilio, my compadre and the leader of the capture, picking up the queen and putting her in the box. Once the queen enters the new home, the rest of the bees will follow her.

There are thousands of them. Thousands. All with a specific job, all decided by one corpulent lass with tremendous olfactory powers. Her belly too dilated with eggs to do any other work outside of processing progeny, the queen relies upon her many many daughters to keep house. She is a woman trapped in her eigth month of pregnancy, but for somewhere between two and eight years. This is not to say that she exales WATER! or FLOWERS! and the entire colony rushes after the same goal. Its more nuanced than that. Each worker bee’s role in the colony changes throughout her lifetime. The young, inexperienced bees are relagated to the poop deck, cleaning cells and feeding the brood, for their first week or two of life. As they become more adroit , the bees are promoted through the ranks, hopefully to one day reach the rank of field bee, directing their search for pollen, water, and tree resin by the position of the sun and sense of smell.

Despite their fey social structure, apis mellifera does have one weakness: nighttime. While their five eyes are able to adjust to the dark interior of the hive, outside of the hive they lose their way without the light of the sun. Try it: any bee caught outside of its hive at night will dauntlessly fly at a flame or flashlight. Awareness of this aspect of bee biology is indispensible to bee keepers. Hives are only moved at night when, after blocking the entrance with some wax, bee keepers can rest assured that all of the thousands of its denizens are tucked away inside. Enervated by the darkness, especially pugnacious hives can be more easily harvested.

In Chimeo this week, we took advantage of this in the first honey harvest using our newly arrived suits. About half of our group already has a hive or two, which they had previously managed with improvised or ancient equipment and protective gear. Combined with the end of a mild winter that smacks of a strong harvest, established bee keeps were thrilled to try out their new equipment on the spring harvest. On Wednesday, Freddy and his son Benito harvested thirty kilos from Freddy’s tremendously bravo hives, only sustaining three stings as opposed to the usual dozens. Freddy will sell his honey to an invalid Frenchman named Enrique who lives near the Paraguayan border at 30 Bs per kilogram. To put this in perspective, that’s as much as a Bolivian day laborer earns for eight-hours of work, and it will buy you almost two kilos of meat or four kilograms of flour.

I had the opportunity to try the suits out for myself on Thursday with my comadre and main homegirl Ana when we harvested one of the two hives behind her house. Her husband Cecilio was in the fields for the day, and Ana was proud to be completing the first all-female harvest. In the late afternoon we began the easy part: removing the mature honey panels from the honey super. All of them were fat and ripe, capped with perfect white wax, and where one wooden panel was missing, the bees had constructed their own complete white wax panel which I had the pleasure of removing by hand. We hustled the panels in a covered dish into her kitchen, where we decapped the mature comb and spun it in a centrifuge provided by a previous PC volunteer. When all nine panels had been sucked dry, it was time for the hard part: putting the panels back. When a bee keep arrives to take honey, the bees are startled. A man at gunpoint. A kindergartener on her first day of school. In a desperate attempt to save some of their riches, they gorge themselves on their honey and are rendered as drunk and incompetent as a gringo on Thanksgiving. The dry panels must be returned as soon as possible after they are harvested, however, to keep the bees from swarming in search of a bigger home. Upon returning, the bees have regained their equanimous wrath.

In an attempt to avoid their bee anger, Ana and I decided to replace the panels after dark, hoping to find thousands of benign and quiescent workers patiently awaiting the return of their wax. We were in part correct. So many clung to the inside of the top of the box that I could hardly lift it. Heavy and sticky with buzzy life. I strained and eventually lifted the box and placed it face-up on the ground. There they all were, lining the sides and floor of the honey super, lost without wax to mold or cells to inspect. They were impotent and impetuous, and using a flashlight and a brush, we had to find a way to politely move them to make way for the panels. It’s a strange feeling, to gently arrange these tiny creatures, which given the opportunity would end their lives in an attempt to end mine. Part of you just want to slam down the marks and run away, while the more vengeful ventricles of your heart want to squash them all for that time they entered your mask and stung you four ties on the nose. And then run away.

But you don’t. You have to watch out for every one of your thousands of money makers. With some fancy flashlight work we eventually fitted the panels back into the honey super, however the roof of the hive was another story. I recently hurt my back and simply couldn’t lift it. I had to shake off thousands of lives onto the leafy ground and hope that theyd viscerally follow their noses back into the hive. Despite our efforts, I found myself awake at four a.m., unable to sleep with worry about Ana’s bees. What if they remained there, cold, blind, freezing on the forest floor, a heap of formerly productive stripes? What if I had harmed their lovely productive colony? How did this strange relationship even evolve- they tried to kill me while I robbed them. And now I am losing sleep over them. Its is a sweet and viscous disfuntional love affair.

Since the harvest with Ana, Chimeo has seen the beginning of dozens of tumultuous relationships as we run up and down the mountain capturing wild colonies to fill our boxes. A few times each week I head out with a few fellas and ladies to chop down whatever tree has been found to have a colony tucked warmly inside its hollow trunk. Then, with the buzzing woody innards splayed out before you and tthousands of engry bees knocking at your mask, you must select some bee babies, some honey, and put it in the bee box, their new bee home. Finally, the hard part: finding the queen. She is distinct, but she is one of thousands. You have to learn to read the movement of the bees to find her, to follow their movements and reactions to know where to look. Under which mess of legs and thoraxes to dig. Once she is found and jailed inside of the box, the rest of the colony will follow her inside. The entrance to the box is then closed off with wax until the colony gets used to its new home.

This is my favorite part of bee keeping for its adventure, its uncertainty, and the knowledge that I will never, ever capture a feral colony when I return home. While in Bolivia and especially the chaco wild swarms regularly fly overhead and the forest is littered with colonies, Ive been told that wild bees are all but nonexistant in the US. Considering the importance of their polination practices, their absence to me seems strange. Worrisome. Until I return to that odd and contradictory and beloved place called home, however, I can be found gleefully ambling about the forest with an axe over my shoulder and a fearful insect love in my heart.

My half of Bolivia is currently in day eleven of a civil strike, holding my captive in Villa Montes, but as soon as I can get back to Santa Cruz I will be uploading some sweeeeeeeeet capture fotos. I know you can hardly wait, but try!

Love,

Jacqueline

I am an agriculture extension volunteer. Technically. In reality, while I make agricultural pursuits a priority, I am a whatever-I-can-do volunteer. Yes, we have our on-going agro-forestry and bee keeping projects, but those are not full time jobs. I have spent the last year or so making myself useful around town as a sort of Jill of all trades. I am an agriculture extension volunteer, but I am also a calculator, a bank, a technology specialist, a phone booth, a library, a cook book, and generally better than television.

The fair in Chimeo this week, commemorating its 90th anniversary, was a prime example of this reality. I made myself available to support the community in the fair’s organization, originally as its typist and official photographer. I originally stood back as far as I could to let the community put on its fair in its fashion, but as the fair approached, my resistance steadily eroded. First I agreed to change the date of a diabetes awareness workshop to coincide with the fair and a larger health fair at the same time. I agreed. The next week I was elected as the fair’s treasurer as a result of my own previous soliloquies on the need for transparency. The next day, I agreed to being in charge of trash and clean up, hoping to use it as a chance to promote recycling, separation of organic and inorganics, and general trash-can use. In the end, the organizing committee shrunk from 16 members to Enrique, Bartolome, and me.

Any town fair in Bolivia must have the following characteristics: it must present whatever product the community produces (I have attended Tomato fairs, Lime fairs, Algorrobo fairs), it must have a serenata (a closing night time talent show), and it must last for at least three days. Ours began on Friday with the groundbreaking ceremony for an expanded health post and a basketball game between health workers, in red, and the community authorities in blue. I sat furtively in the stands, but was eventually called down and given a blue jersey. Im not sure if Im now considered a town authority or if they just wanted me to play because they decided that gringos are good at basketball, but Im glad I was invited. See, I am a terrible basketball player. Somehow in the Bolivian campo, where basketball was discovered a few years ago and few people break 5’6”, I fit right in. There was not a single pair of basketball shoes on the court that day. Joining my blue flip flops were many sets of abarcas, the traditional campesino sandal made out of recycled tires, many bare feet, a couple pairs of soccer cleats, and some Chinese Chuck Taylor knock-offs. For the first time possibly ever, I had fun playing basketball. When I scored my first basket, the stands squealed, loving it almost as much as they loved 64 year-old Don Justino when he double dribbled.

After the game (we lost 32-30) I went with Gina, a PC friend visiting for the feria, to bake with Maribel, the town nurse. In addition to corn and honey, Chimeo is known for its anco, a hard shelled squash, sort of like a pumpkin but smaller, lighter, and much more delicious. Gina and I taught Maribel to make pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, and pumpkin cookies. Baking here in Chimeo is truly an art, not just because of the ignorance of recipes.com, but also due to the nature of wood fired ovens. The heating of the oven needs to be timed and its temperature manually estimated to tell if its nice and hot for bread making or maybe a bit cooler for cakes and cookies. Hand-laid using bricks and adobe, the tiny red embers inside seem to mimick the night sky of an alternate universe. We had success with the three pies and the cookies (the trick is a recipe using vegetable lard/Crisco), but somehow we botched the bread recipe when tripling it. While unfit for sale, our moist, cakey bread was well received by Gina, myself, and the neighborhood kids.

On exhibition alongside our pie de anco and galletas de anco were the Guarani foods women had spent the week preparing. The recipes consisted of traditional staples like kumanda (beans), andai (pumpkin/anco), and most of all, avati (corn). Avati is truly an amazing plant. In contrast to other staple crops around the world like wheat and millet, corn’s seeds are buried within its husk, thereby relying upon humans for its cultivation. When eaten in quanity alone it results in a sort of malnutrition called pellagra, but when mixed with beans it forms a complete protein. Furthermore, kumanda is what is called a nitrogen-fixer, replacing the nutrients that avati leaches from the soil. Throw in vitamin packed andai and maybe a wild animal for fats and you have a pretty complete diet. Im currently reading 1491, a book about the Americas before Cristobol Colon, which explains that this sort of sustainable agriculture was seen up and down the western hemisphere. So many years of surviving off of corn has resulted in a great deal of creativity. Below are some of the traditional corn dishes presented at the fair.

Achi: Soak it, grind it to dust with a man-sized wooden morter and pestle, Enjoy with a spoon for breakfast.

Pito: Toast it, grind with the mortal and pestle again, enjoy anytime with spoon. More delicious than achi.

Wintimomo: Soak it, grind it, place in colored layers in clay pot, cook over steam. Take with coffee or tea.

Tamal: Grind, mix with oil and sugar, wrap in husk, boil. Delectable.

Chicha: Grind, mix with sugar and ground peanut, boil for two days, let ferment for four days. Drink from clay pot.

Chirriada: Grind, mix with oil and salt. Heat flat rock. Make pancakes.

Dressed in their colorful traditional tipoys, the women set up their stands, adorning them with flowers, dried corn and beans. I distributed 50 kg feed bags provided by the corrigimiento for trash collected. Hoping to engender conciousness of recycling, each bag was labeled cans, plastic bottles, or inorganic trash. Somehow, in presenting our pumpkin pie, taking fotos of the participants, recording interviews for my radio show, and policing the recycling program, the morning disappeared without ever having reached my initial goal, the diabetes presentation.

That evening, after the pumpkin pie had been eaten and the recycling program long forgotten, I had another chance to make some sort of an impact: the play. I had been talked into it by the doctor and nurse of the health post, who wanted to present on domestic violence. They too wanted to do something about the problem, about the women who seemed to have bruises every time they brought their kids in for colds and rashes. The rest of the women in town are too timid to present on stage, so wouldn’t I play the part of the abused wife? I agreed, and we wrote a script that toed the line of Catholic family values and even would bring a few laughs.

The skit opened with my womanizing husband, the town dentist, drunk and professing his love and devotion to the only other non-timid lady in town, my octogenarian home girl Emilia. We put her in a wig and a short black skirt and set her prancing about the stage and insulting my husband in Guarani. They loved it. It was then my job to present the heavy stuff. I was nervous about stepping on cultural toes or ruining the festive mood, but the audience found the idea of a husband beating a blond-haired blue-eyed gringa wife even funnier than falling for an 80 year-old tart. We emphasized the need to denounce domestic violence and that if a woman is living in a cycle of violence that she can strike out on her own and find work. I imagine that it was receieved by at least a few women in the audience, as most of their husbands had been drunk since 4 pm. Below is a foto of 80 yr old Emilia joking around with her bbq "mountain pigeon" that she sold for 4 Bs a piece.

The events wound down around midnight, but a good number of community members stayed up until sunrise with the help of coca and alcohol, singing coplas and playing their guitars and flutes. Already people are talking about how to make next year's fair bigger and better, bitter sweet conversation for me, knowing that I will be long gone by the time it comes around.

Im extremely pleased to announce that our beekeeping project is now fully funded. Within our small circle of friends and family, we raised $3,400 in just a few months. At then end of July I will be taking a trip to Cochabamba for a conference between all of the agriculture volunteers in-country, and while Im there Ill be able to pick up the boxes and suits from our provider there. The equipment should then arrive in Chimeo just in time for capture season, and our group can really get to work. Thanks so much to all of you who donated or passed the word on to friends and family members. Furthermore, through a serendipitous turn of events I am now the owner of a nice, newish digital camera. This means that I will now be able to take fotos of our activities to share with those of you at home. Im most looking forward to the video possibilities-Id like to tape a capture of a hive of feral africanized bees. So, theres much to look forward to.

Ive also been pretty busy in the mean time. I had, without a doubt, the best fourth of July celebration of my life at my friend Geoff´s site. We arrived in the wee hours of the morning of the 4th on a bus from Santa Cruz and crawled into the beds at Geoff´s house, which doubles as the only hotel in town. A couple of hours later we were woken by his family which, like most families in his town, raises cattle. We marched up the hill and out of town to their corral for a uniquely Chaqueno treat called "ambrosia". Essentially you take a shot of "puro", or watered down rubbing alcohol, a teaspoon of sugar, put them in a cup, and top it off with hot, foamy milk squeezed fresh from the udder. Like that it can be hard to down, but with a scoop of nescafe its as delicious as any Starbucks latte. Really. Many, many ambrosias later we stumbled back to the alojamiento and set about the days other wholesome activities. First we set to preparing dinner, which at 11 am was still walking around and oinking. Although by now we are all quite accustomed to taking part in the killing of our dinners, we all gathered around somewhat solemnly to watch Geoff´s host dad take care of our pig roast. He did the deed, but the rule was that "El que no pela, no come"- he who doesnt help clean the pig, doesnt eat. As a former ethically motivated vegetarian, this to me was the best way to eat meat. While Babe cooked in the oven, we engaged in wiffle ball and a game called nails, which involves a tree stump, a hammer, and one nail per person. Throughout the day, any time anyone won anything, the Star Spangled Banner was sung in tribute. The day was completed with more wiffle ball, a delicious dinner, an excellent fireworks show that woke up the whole town, and fire-side guitar playing until dawn. I think that Bolivias rugged, lawless nature lends itself to indulgence in our idealized, freedom loving American-ness. Even though, or maybe because, we are so far from home, it was an excellent patriotic celebration.

I hope you all had similarly joyous and fun-filled Fourths. Thanks again and keep in touch.

Human beings of all walks have a desire to learn more about the lives of their ancestors. We preserve our grandmothers diary and our great-grandmother’s hairpiece to feel more connected to our past. We make pilgrimages and we look up maiden names on geneology.com. We go so far as to call these connections our roots, as if without them we could not live.

Even living as an adopted daughter in a surrogate land, I have felt the pull to learn more about what Chimeo and its people “were”. I hear a great deal about what life was like before the assistance of an indigenous, socialist president, before the paved road to Santa Cruz: the houses were made of simple adobe and thatch, the only water was gotten from the river, and people only ate the maize they grew. Somehow, though, this was never enough. I wanted to record their stories and life histories and learn to make the foods only the grandmothers remember how to prepare. I wanted to speak Guarani fluently, even if it would only permit me to speak more freely with older women. Although most of Bolivia’s population that claims indigenous lineage, Spanish is the language of commerce. School kids learn both Spanish and the local indigenous language in school, be it Quechua or Guarani or Chiquitano or Weenhayek, but like most young people, they prefer modernity, and few really master the language of their grandmothers. I am just the same. Instead of studying Polish, the language of my grandmother, I chose the study Spanish, Portuguese, and the other languages of the Americas. Perhaps that’s where I saw my future.

Fittingly, when offered the opportunity to visit an isolated Guarani community where I was told the people still live like Chimeo’s great-grandmothers did, I jumped at the chance. This past month I spent a week in a community of twelve families called Pentirenda (Literally: “place of tobacco”.) I went with another volunteer, Connor, who is working with his local radio station and his Peace Corps-founded library to produce a documentary about the life of Guarani peoples today. The streets of his community, Muyupampa, are at the center of the Bolivian melting pot. On the cross roads between Sucre, Santa Cruz, and Yacuiba, women in Guarani tipoys and Quechua polleras buy their milk from the same university milk monger, while gas plant workers in orange jump suits share their vin-up and cola with ranchers, and waxing philosophically on their Chaqueno lifestyle. The community is also at the center of the land reform debate (Connor knows the controversial American rancher from the NYT article I sent out with my last update), and Guarani and mestizos in town have been known to come to blows on the issue. One of the purposes of their documentary, therefore, would be not only to record a rapidly disappearing lifestyle, but also to promote further intercultural understanding between community members.

On Tuesday we set off in the pick up of NorSud, one of the few organizations that works in the isolated communities we would visit. Three hours out on dirt roads, the engineers with NorSud stopped to inaugurate a new centro de acopio for the corn cooperative formed by some 50 Guarani families from the area. From there our team, being Connor, the head of the local radio station, and our translator, set off for Pentirenda on foot. Some twelve rivers and thirteen kilometers later, we arrived. The community is perched upon a dry, scraggly cliff, high above the thirteenth river. Upon arriving, visitors are welcomed to the genta guazu, or big house, which looks over the side of the cliff. We were well received, probably due to the instant credit our translator, who is also the towns only professor, provided us. Dona Olga, whom one might call the concierge of Pentirenda, seemed unfazed by us, which was surprising considering our size and whiteness. (Connor stands a gangly 6’8” tall. The kids in his site engage in fierce debate as to whether his species is actually gringo or giant.) We were immediately served chicha and we shared with them some bread we had brought. We put down our things and set to getting to know the community.

The genta guazu was much larger than the other houses, having about six rooms, and is the only one with a porch, cement floors and walls, and a tile roof. Our room was meagerly furnished with beds of bamboo, wood, and goat hide. From the front one can see the dry rolling cordillera, and from the back the adobe houses of Pentirenda’s twelve families. The genta guazu is much larger as it is the former home of the patron of Pentirenda, from whom the community purchased their land back about a decade ago. It seems to have been a pretty simple hand over. We were told that the patron disapproved of the amount of time some of the older boys were spending playing soccer, so he told them to leave. Once in town, they signed up for their obligatory year of military service called Cuartel, where they made all sorts of friends who were not born under the auspices of a patron. They informed the boys that if they could unite the community to buy their land from the patron, he would have to leave. So they did. They went home and convinced the leaders that this would be the best thing to do. Soon thereafter the patron and his family left for the greener pastures of Bolivia’s cities and rumor has it, the US. We didn’t really learn much about him aside from his first name. The community members were in agreement that he was “maldito,” a bad guy, but they also assured us that he never physically abused the men or women of the town. He spoke fluent Guarani, decided the hours of work as well as the names of all of the townspeople. One older woman, we were told, was somehow forgotten, and never given a name. In her 60s she was forced to choose a name in order to receive her social security benefits. She decided upon Mariana.

People said their lives are better now because of the increased freedom they experience, denoted by a single word in Guarani: Iyambae. They choose what they will sow, where they will sow it, and when they will reap. Their children can now study-within one year of the departure of their patron, the federal government built the community a one-room schoolhouse with the only bathroom in town and a salary for a professor. Although there are only two grades- third and fifth- students can choose to continue on to high school in a nearby town. Most do. The community is now visited twice each year by the “vinchuqueros”, a team of men who spray the adobe houses with pesticides to kill the cockroach-like bug that live inside adobe walls and carry a deadly disease called Chagas. The effects of the disease take decades to appear, so many do not know they are living with it until they are gravely ill and have already passed the congenital disease onto their children. Rates of incidence in some communities runs as high as 80%- I wouldn’t be surprised if Pentirenda were one of these communities. The best way to inhibit the entrance of vinchucas and the disease some of them carry into a community is to revoke adobe houses with cement and replace thatch roofs with tin or tile, or to sleep in a mosquito net. One of the largest public health pushes in Bolivia over the past decade is to install such healthy housing, but its isolation and years under a patron have left Pentirenda far behind. While today not a single home has seen these changes, community members are hopefully awaiting such a project, which should arrive in the next year or two.

While increased levels of education have been shown to increase quality of life indicators, it can have its drawbacks for communities such as Pentirenda. Children go off to learn more about the world, and many discover that they don’t want to spend their lives loading and unloading corn by the mule-load. No matter how dear the way the light hits the river below Pentirenda at that certain hour of the afternoon, the curiosity inherent in their youth will draw them to the cities and larger towns. Some will return, but many will stay, and their children may never learn their grandmother’s language.

On Friday we set off again for Muyupampa. As we made our way back across the twelve rivers, a cold southern wind ruddied our cheeks. We spoke about what we had learned that week, the people we had met, and the questions we still had about life in the community. In Iguembe, we borrowed an ax from one family and started a bonfire on the side of the road to pass the hours while we waited in hope of a passing automobile. At dusk we finally had some luck and were picked up by a friend of Connor’s from town. The men told jokes on the way home, but I was silent, contemplative. I couldn’t help but feel foolish and ethnocentric for my fixation upon Guarani life as it once was in Chimeo and as it still is in Pentirenda. Yes, there is a great deal to be learned from people who still live so close to the earth, but only keeping in mind that they, like the rest of us, only want to provide a better life for their children. In today’s world, this likely doesn’t involve sowing corn and peanuts by hand, but rather machinery and education, fertilizers and migration. I suppose that in the best of all worlds, a generation from now Pentirenda will be a lot like Chimeo. Most people will probably communicate in Spanish. There will be greater connectivity between the community and larger towns nearby. There will exist a water system and they will have electricity. More of their children will have high school degrees. They will still value their culture and a unique skill set of traditional medicine and survival in a harsh climate. As to what the future truly holds for Pentirenda, so often my only resolution here in Bolivia, is that only time will tell.

Rarely are we faced with the question “How will the next two years change? How will I change in the next two years?” In joining the Peace Corps, however, a bit of reflection on this unanswerable question is inevitable. I think all volunteers must have asked themselves this before boarding that plane in Miami, DC, or Philly. Some predictions were easy. There would be a new president, probably a democrat. Prices would change, probably in an upward direction. Wars in Africa and the Middle East would burn on. New flavors of Frappachinos would be unveiled. Some things seemed bound to stay the same. Politicians would still be full of hot air. Fridges in US households would still brim with milk, fruits, beef, and Snapple. Articles would be written and conventions organized to stop wars in far off places. Frappachinos would still be tremendously bad for you.

As imperfect fortune telling machines, however, we are bound to make some mistakes and omissions when predicting just how the world will remake itself over the course of some 750 days and nights. While contemplating how the homeland might evolve during my two years, I failed to anticipate just how much change would take place within the town to which I was destined. I suppose I imagined that the town would be a sleepy hamlet, untouched by time, with paths leading into the woods and on into eternity. Granted, many things are perennial. Women still spend hours chatting over yerba mate. Boys are still reprimanded for spending too much time shooting marbles. Politicians are still maddeningly unscrupulous.

Much, however, has not remained as it was upon my arrival. Every home now has electricity. Many families have saved to purchase televisions and DVD players to watch and re-watch the antics of Van Damme and his friend Bruce Lee. The number of classrooms has doubled. As a result of the global food shortage, prices of the few staple goods one can buy in Chimeo-sugar, pasta, rice, and flour-have doubled. The lens of my camera has recorded the childhoods of many families, mostly new mothers, enthusiastic to record every moment of the evolution of their babes.

Just as the families grow, so must the infrastructure of the community. It may seem a peculiar correlation, but a government gift of barbed wire has resulted in the raising of about a dozen homes. To understand this effect, one must understand how animals are raised in our region. While in the US, cows and pigs are fenced in as farmers try to keep a close eye in their investment, raising livestock in the Chaco works in reverse. Owners let their cattle and pigs graze throughout the community, leaving the homeowner with the task of keeping the animals out. My dad learned this lesson on his first night in Chimeo. We were awoken at 2 am to the yells of my tremendously helpful and, at the time, tremendously drunk neighbors and their dogs herding and oosh! oosh!ing about a dozen cows out of my yard. This being so, a gift of barbed wire has afforded many families the ability to raise their own homes, as the rest of the inputs for a home are easier to find, just wood for fence posts and adobe for walls. This has drastically changed the view from my porch. Formerly surrounded by forest, my house is now encircled by homes in various stages of completion. It may be winter, but Marlene, Marina and the rest so badly want their own homes that they make do with improvised walls and ceiling of tarp, plywood, and tin held together by string, twine, and logs. They may not have proper walls or roofs, but at very least they’re not sharing lunch with the pigs.

Part of me is saddened to see trees felled, to see footpaths now cleared by tire tracks. I fear the disappearance of tiny cultural aspects with the arrival of modernity. That with radios and tvs, teenage boys will stop teaching themselves to play Chaqueno tunes on timeworn guitars and violins. That the next generation of girls wont speak a word of their mother’s language. This, however, must be what they mean by development. This must be the meeting of one of our objectives in the Peace Corps: work yourself out of a job. Its also a source of optimism that this rural community is growing, advancing, and accumulating while in so many part of the developing world young laborers leave their ancestral lands for already overcrowded cities. The seemingly careless felling of trees has led me to realize that any development needs to be managed. Therefore, with the hopeful end of harmonizing growth and nature, I and many other volunteers in similar communities have begun to focus on environmental education. I draw a lot of ideas from other volunteers from the environmental education program. Upon introducing ourselves fifteen months ago, I remember thinking their program too fluffy to be of real use in Bolivia. Yet another unexpected change.

So it goes each month, a lot of the same but always with tiny advancements. Life is slow, but it is definitely not paralyzed. I wonder just what sorts of similar miniscule changes must be going on inside of me. When I finish here, I will be 10% older than I was when I left the US. That is a lot of percentage points. It will be something to be analyzed later, though, when Im far from this place an able to compare and contrast myself and, well, myself.

Water poured down from the tin roofs into tiny pools in the mud and dirt, combining with the rest of the surrounding drizzle to make a sort of white, melodious noise. Balancing on my bike, one foot on the ground and the other on a raised pedal, I looked out onto the traffic circle. Automobiles of all sorts spun around it, each one making a quarter, half, or sometimes even full homage to the ten meter metal fish that marked its epicenter. An older, squat woman climbed down from a minivan, transformed with curtains and makeshift red velour seating from a family vehicle into profitable privatized public transit. It looked unsafe. I followed the minivan, known here as a micro, with my eyes, watching the exhaust and vapor rise from the vehicles and bodies. Behind me, a girl stood over a rickety metal cart-cum-kitchen, frying up potatoes and hamburgers for a few Bs each. It also looked unsafe. The dim lightbulbs above her swung in the cold wind, and the steam from her stove followed their same trajectory. Dogs sniffed at plastic wrappers on the side of the road, unhindered by the weather. The walls, now brown at the base but certainly once a pristine eggshell-white, mentioned something about a bus that must have once stopped here. I learned nothing about its schedule, but I do know that it went to Sucre. A moto splashed through a muddy rut, turning my attention back to the street.

I should be really freaked out, I thought. Night is coming on. It will probably freeze. I have nothing but my keys and 50 centavos in my pocket, and the only volunteer who lives here, in Villa Montes, is at a meeting in La Paz. I am not freaked out, though, not even in the slightest. How did this happen? How did I even get here?

This afternoon I cowered in my room, looking forward to crafting some summer birthday gifts and generally avoiding the cold. Yakeleeeeen called a voice from outside my door. Ug. Yakeleeeeeen it called again. Here begins the debate that rages in my head anytime I escape for a bit of alone time, for selfish hours spent reading, sewing, drawing, and generally neglecting my duties as a community member. Yakeleeeeen. Do I pretend I am not here, or sleeping, or do I open the door? Did it hear my music? Its cold out there. Its going to make me go out in the cold. It could be important. Ug. I open the door.

Its Bartolome, his shy, holey smile and receding hairline as endearing as ever. He informs me that our bike ride up into Aguarague to visit Dona Vicenta has been rescheduled for today. For right now. Could I please come over with my bike and my “machine”, which could normally be any number of apparati, but in this case means camera. I agree. After one last longing glance into my (relatively) toasty room, I roll up my pant leg and head for the street.

We make our way through the wide dirt roads of Chimeo, soon turning up, away from the houses and towards the forest. Bartolome is recounting a tale of one of the many cycling tournaments he has won. It is his favorite subject. I am feigning comprehension. We are going to visit Dona Vicenta, who for thirty years ago or so decided she wanted to live up, up, up in the mountain and raise her family there. Now her husband is gone, and most of her children live in Villa Montes, save the youngest, Julian, and one of her grandchildren, aged 4. We are on a quest to take her photo for the poster for Chimeo’s town anniversary and fair on July 18th as well as to invite her to participate. It is a quest which would be no more than a few clicks in the US, while here it will take all afternoon.

The road goes from two lanes to one, to a footpath, to scarcely a path at all. We are carrying our bikes down the muddy mountain now. I am doubting his internal compass. I am focused on not falling. He is focused on retelling the tale of his victory. Finally we climb up out of a sandy gully and I recognize the river that runs past Dona Vicentas property. Bartolome is still talking and my bike is on my shoulder as we cross stepping-stones towards her citrus orchard.

Vicenta greets us and has us take a seat by the fire with her grandson. Bartolome explains the purpose of our visit, and she’s excited by the prospect of participation. She runs to bring her traditional mortadero, being a tree stump with a large divet in the center hollowed out for grinding corn. This is achieved by picking up a large stick and smashing it down on the corn bowl over and over again. Its charming and steeped in tradition, nonetheless Chimeo’s housewives are very happy to now have the option of purchasing bagged flour. As we wait, her grandson sits by the fire, squeezing and stretching a grey puppy in a dangerously loving way. Vicenta returns, we snap a few fotos of her and the mortadero, and that’s it.

Twenty minutes after arriving at our destination, we are on our way again. This time we are following a more direct route out, made for trucks from the gas company. Its almost entirely downhill and slippery. Disaster is repeatedly narrowly averted. Bartolome is done with his story and we are both laughing and breathing hard. I feel something entirely different. I feel…. eleven years old. Something about riding bicycles with a buddy, even if he is a 50 yr old Guarani man with a sparsely populated mouth and head, harkons back to those first few times I was allowed to explore on my bike. Despite his flat rear tire, we keep on barrowing down towards Villa Montes. We make a quick stop at the bicicleteria to patch Bartolome’s tire and head back for Chimeo. The ride, uphill this time, will take an hour, and it is already nearly dark. I am dreading the rain and pretty sure that his is a bad idea, but I agree to it. Maybe because my life here can feel so dry, especially these, the cold long nights of the southern winter. Or maybe because I don’t have taxi fare. But I agree.

Bartolome goes to run one last errand and leaves me there, on the rotunda by the giant fish statue. Just after the moto passes in a splash of muddy water, a familiar teal truck comes to a stop in front of me. It belongs to Rogelio, another community member, and hes agreed to take us home. We lift my bike into the back and the three of us climb into the cab. Closing the passenger side door is a two man job, and the windshield is fogging up. Rogelio says he has had the truck for about a decade, and Im pretty sure someone else owned it for quite a while before him. I would estimate that the aquamarine monster was born during the Eisenhower administration.

In another life, the monster was probably seen as a safety hazard and sold or donated. Here, its an asset. A prize. A reason for covetousness. The same goes for the girl with the rickety hamburger stand. And the micro. All these things which to me, a year ago, might have brought on apprehension, especially beneath the veil of a winter rain, are now just…life. Not negative, or even positive, but rather just accepted.

I suppose the reason Im writing this is because it became one of those great moments of realization: there are so many different ways to live. This lesson has come at me in the past from books and mouths of others, but tonight I really accepted it, processed it, slathered it in Heinz ketchup and washed it down with lemonade.

Since our adventure, Bartolome, myself, and the rest of the fair’s organizing committee have kept on with our preparations. There is a constant scratching of sandpaper in the houses of the male palo santo artisans, while the women spend the cold nights by the fire weaving. I recently passed a workshop with the female weavers, where I taught them to make string out of recycled plastic bags. This has a two-fold benefit. First, they can now continue to create even when there is no money to buy string. Second, they will burn fewer plastic bags (the only method of trash disposal in Chimeo), thereby decreasing exposure to dioxins and other carcinogens. I am also working with Chimeo’s nurse and doctor to present on diabetes, natal health, and domestic violence during the feria. Diabetes was my idea, while the doc pushed the domestic violence presentation. We are actually doing a SKIT. Were doing our best to give it a somewhat humorous tone, but I am still a bit apprehensive to present on the subject where general concepts of gender roles are a WHOOOOOLE LOT more traditional than my own. After seeing a few too many gals with black eyes, though, Im doing it. If our skit enlightens one man, woman, or kid, it will have been worth it.

This fair will be my main focus during July, and in August Im planning a trip into the Amazon for my birthday. If you were planning on sending flowers, chocolates, or a scarf woven by Tibetan monks, don’t do it. The only birthday gift that Im looking for this year is golden, sticky, and regurgitated by apis mellifera. That’s right: the bee project. Thanks so much to all of you who have donated- we are already 1/3 of the way to our goal. This still leaves a good amount to go, however, so if you were planning on donating, please do so as soon as possible. We really hope to have our financing go through before September as a result of the agricultural calendar here. August and September are the only months for capturing wild hives, so if we don’t have the financing by then, we will have to wait until January. If that happens then the project will still be in medio camino when my service is up in April, so Ill probably have to extend to see through its implementation. Thus, I am holding myself as ransom until our beekeepers have bee suits. So spread the word: support Chimeo’s bee keeps! Also, I am preparing bee-themed tee-shirts as a thank you for those who donate. If you are a contributor and are interested, just let me know and Ill add you to the list. To donate, just go to the following site:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=511-096

Happy Independence Day,

Jac

When I had the good fortune to stay home sick from school as a wee lass, the day was spent curled up on a worn in brown leather couch watching reruns of television shows whose time ended decades before I was even a twinkle in my Daddy’s eye. Gomer Pyle was a staple, M.A.S.H. always creeped me out, and Bonanza! was the most anticipated thirty minutes of the morning. For all the rugged frontier wisdom of Billy Joe, Hos, and the other members of Bonanza’s cast, I do remember doubting their knowledge in the realm of health care. Every so often Hos would encounter a raven-haired damsel in a good deal of distress, having been caught out in a chilly spring rain. Hos and his comrades would invite said damsel into the lodge and warm her up with blankets and tea, fending off the possible onset of pneumonia. I remember thinking them naïve, dated, uneducated, because Hos, darling, we all know illness comes as a result of bacteria, viruses, and general genetic unluckiness.

Many years later, Im learning that Hos may have been right. I have been coughing for nearly a month. It seems that sleeping out in the cold and rain with the corn, while one of my better ideas socially, has left me physically depleted. As we warmed ourselves by the fire during our chilly vigil, the women remarked that we would all certainly be knocked down with colds and flus as a result of the elements. So much of what I had learned over the years, both through experience and in the classroom, had taught me that getting stuck in the rain wouldn’t lead to illness. Rainstorms with and without indoor heating, however, are very different creatures. As the women predicted, soon a cough set in, each day sinking deeper and deeper into my chest. With no way to escape the cold, it quickly morphed into something ugly.

Despite the PCs complete health care coverage, I remained reluctant to see a doctor. Not for its cost or any fear of the doc herself, but for avoidance of travel. Because of the indeterminate nature of Bolivian hospitals, the Peace Corps insists that any potentially serious illness be treated by one of their physicians in a regional city. Therefore, while a doc at the municipal hospital discovered bronchial-pneumonia for 10 Bs ($1.25), I was sent to Santa Cruz for finer treatment. Seven hours and 204 Bs ($28) later, a private doctor in a fancier office agreed. He prescribed the usual: antibiotics, cough syrup, lots of liquids, and for kicks, a shot in the butt. So much of Bolivian culture seems to have stepped out of the US in the 1950s, but nothing beats the strong belief in the healing power of shots in the butt. Usually the shot is purely vitamins, but due to my history of asthma, this doctor decided that only hydrocortisone would do the trick. For those of you who have never had a shot of hydrocortisone in the butt, let me put it into perspective. The previous day I had gotten a wax and a particularly enthusiastic pedicure: all smiles. This shot, however, led to screams and left me immobilized on the doctor’s table for half of an hour. I don’t know why Bolivians are so fond of the vitamin shot (“ampollo”), but be glad that it is no longer customary procedure in the US.

Partly out of fear of another ampollo and partly out of distaste for Santa Cruz, I escaped the doc and returned to Chimeo four days before he was prepared to release me. Therefore, I arrived coughing and hacking worse than I had been upon departure. Noticing my wheezing and my absence, everyone in town had a home remedy to offer. Don Mariano enthusiastically prescribed a glass of warm rubbing alcohol and lemon juice, which had to be drunk under covers and layers of sweaters so that I might sweat the illness out. Ana reported once having healed herself of a similar cough by drinking spoonfuls of warm vegetable oil. Enrique regularly treats himself with a drop of diesel fuel on the tongue.

Silvia came down with the same illness from the same week with the corn, however she did not have the ability to see a doctor. Chimeo has a health post, however we share our doctor with three other communities. After repeated failed attempts at a consultation, she went to a curandero, or doctor of traditional medicine. He prescribed spoonfuls of cod-liver oil and inhalation of the vapor of chamomile tea. This is entirely typical of health care in Chimeo. There is universal free healthcare for everyone in town, but the doctor and nurse that serve our post are frequently absent. Even when they are present, community members have little faith in their modern medicine. Some believe that the treatments are expired ones sent as a sop by the government, while others simply have more faith in traditional medicines. Like agnostics at Easter mass, Chimenos prefer to cover their bases. Most people visit the post (free) and then go to the curandero in the market (usually about 100Bs) for serious illnesses. If it is not seen as serious, an illness like a rash or a cold will be treated by a local curandero (usually Dona Josefa). Most remedies involve medicinal leaves, tobacco, massages, and alcohol. While I doubt the AMA would approve, these treatments seem to work-eventually.

While some of the home remedies and beliefs of the causes of illness (Best example: Sitting on hot rocks will give you diareah.) can be good for a laugh, the disconnect between modern and traditional medicine in Chimeo (and likely the rest of the Bolivian campo) is a serious issue. There is a great deal of useful traditional knowledge, as well as a legion of well-trained physicians backed by a government that wants to pay for them. Perhaps due to the strong support of both camps, it seems that both types of health care providers want to sell their “goods”. PCVs are literally prohibited by our modern doctors from letting our friends practice traditional medicine on us. On two occasions, however, traditional medicine has served me well. First were white grape leaves applied to my back, which stopped (or at least seemed to stop) the spread of my shingles outbreak in 2007. Second, when my gas stove exploded in my face, a neighbor quickly applied sabila, an aloe-like plant, to my burns. Everywhere she applied the cool gel healed quickly; anywhere she missed blistered terribly. If it weren’t for the sabila, today half of my face might be scarred.

This does not mean that Ill be packing away my cipro. What I would like to see is greater dialogue between providers of western and traditional medicines to take great advantage of Bolivia’s diverse resources. I have heard of some towns compiling booklets of traditional remedies, and many Chimenos have expressed interest in doing the same. This may go hand in hand with our cultural recuperation project in the future. but it will have to wait. Tomorrow I am back in Santa Cruz, waiting to see if the 1000 Bs worth of visits and treatments get my failed respiratory system back on track.

This month we will be preparing the apiaries and collecting seeds and seedlings of meliferous trees for the tree nursery. We are also preparing for a cultural fair to commemorate the anniversary of Chimeo on July 18th. On July 10th over 50 volunteers and their counterparts from Bolivia and Paraguay will converge upon Villa Montes for the 4th Encuentro Chaqueno. Over the course of three days, we will discuss what has and has not been working for volunteers in their sites throughout the chaco. It will be an opportunity to discuss new technologies and strategies, and in the end we will develop a regional strategy. Finally, thanks to all of you who have been able to donate to our apiculture project online. We are hoping to receive all the necessary funding by August, in order to have our equipment installed when the season for capturing wild hives begins. I will be getting some fotos up of our training sessions and workshops up within the next few months so that donors can see where their funds are going.

After reviewing and translating the Storytelling podcast with Bartolome and Silvia, Ive made a few changes to the translations of their stories. We also recorded and updated the first of what will be many traditional songs in Guarani. You can check out the corrections as well as the new stuff on the podcast, whose link can be found above.

The time has come. After months of organizing, planing, writing, and revising, Chimeo´s Partnership is up on the web. As I have explained throughout my year in the community, when I arrived there was a great deal of interest in bee keeping, however no one to train them or help them look for funding to bee suits, smokers, boxes and other much needed equipment. Our group today consists of ten diverse families. Our oldest member is 68, while the youngest is 19. Half are new and half are experienced, and we are split evenly between men and women.

Group members have demonstrated their commitment by passing bee biology and hive maintenance classes with me about once a month, and they will continue to do so for the rest of my service. Each family will also provide a counterpart of 40 Bs to purchase the materials to make their own homemade bee mask and gloves. The thinking behind this is that bee keeping is a family affair. It is not safe nor easy to revise a hive of africanized bees alone. Therefore, each family receives one complete bee suit and they make another, for the spouse or older children. In addition, group members will work in the community tree nursery to promote environmental conservation as well as to raise mellifluous trees for their apiaries. The bees themselves will be captured from the plethora of feral colonies in the community and in the Parque Aguarague. The project will also provide each family with tools, smokers, three boxes, and one nucleus hive. The group will receive the one piece of wax transforming equipment that we lacked as well as a workshop on genetic selection to learn to breed less aggressive colonies.

Group members will not simply harvest honey for sale. As a community that puts more emphasis on natural medicine than western medicine, the many products of the bee hive- propolis, wax, pollen, royal jelly, and honey- are already highly valued. Group members will also learn to transform these products for auto-consumption as well as for sale.

This project, nonetheless, cannot be completed without the support of friends and family from the US and the world at large. The idea behind a partnership is that the community puts a counterpart- bees, money, wood, etc. in our case- while we ask contacts within the US for further funding. I feel that one of the most positive aspects of donating to a Partnership project is in its accountability. Whatever project it may be, in whatever country on whichever continent, donors can be assured that there is a volunteer there, making sure that every cent of the funds is properly allocated (and often putting in a few cents from their own pocket.) Donors should know that even small donations go a long way in Bolivianos. $7 will buy Don Justino his bee smoker, which tames the bees and renders the hive workable. $40 will buy Dona Marina a bee box that will harvest up to 100 kilos of honey each year to provide for her six children. $100 would pay for our entire genetic selection workshop.

If you are interested in donating to this partnership or other partnerships currently listed on the web, they can be accessed via www.peacecorps.gov. From there look to the left hand side of the screen and click Donate Now. From there you can select where you would like to donate by country, region, or volunteer´s home state*. My country would be Bolivia, and as of this writing it is the first Partnership listed. Chimeo´s partnership can also be accessed directly at https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=511-096. A good friend of mine, Britta, will also soon be posting a Partnership which is nearly identical to mine. While Britta and her community are equally deserving, please read the project briefing before you donate.

As I said before, I believe that Partnerships are an excellent, highly accountable way to donate to those who may not be so economically fortunate as those of us in the US. Even if you do not have the ability to donate this spring, please keep Partnerships from PC Worldwide in mind when you do donate in the future. Please feel free to send this email, my blog link (jbrysacz.blogspot.com), or the project link on to friends and family who may be interested. If you would like more details on our project, just ask. This email and the breif on the PC website are minuscule compared to the entire written project. I would be happy to send the details on.

Thanks in advance for your interest and support.

*My home state is listed as Florida because that is where I currently hold residency. Dont be fooled, I was raised in Ohio and am very much a Midwestern gal. Go Bucks!

It's the first week of May, and while the northern hemisphere is dusting off its summer dresses and picnic baskets, in the Chaco we gather around the fire to warm our tootsies. Clouds crawl up from the south, bringing with them a snowy perfume. Temperatures right now are mild-60s by day and 40s by dark-but with no heating and an outdoor shower, it feels colder. My sisters and I used to don bathing suits and lay out by the pond when it hit 60 in the Great Lakes spring, but somehow 60s here draw me down into my mattress, under three blankets and a myriad of sweaters. Last winter was nasty, and the prognosticos are calling for this one to be even uglier.

Despite its goosebumps, winter does have its redeeming qualities. The sweet tangy gift of our region's citrus trees plump up for the picking by the wheelbarrow full. Any visit I make to a friends house ends with an armload of mandarin oranges or grapefruits. Winter is also the only time of year one can dine on fish in land locked Bolivia, and the only place to get them is from the Rio Pilcomayo in Villa Montes. The most exciting winter prospect for me, however, is camping. The cold lulls the snakes and bugs into dormancy, making a night in the woods more enjoyable and a heck of a lot less terrifying.

This past week I spent my first night out in the monte. Chimeo's womens' group had spent the week harvesting four hectares of corn that they planted as part of a chicken project implemented by the departmental government. While the project began with nearly 50 women, months of sowing, hoeing, and harvesting had reduced participation to 22 women. Throughout the fall we watched as thieves-possibly members of our own group- stole ears of corn while we waited for it to dry on the stalk in order to properly store it. To deter more theft, the women agreed to spend the night in the corn field once it had been picked and piled. The first night a truck pulled into the field to fill with maize, and without a man present, they said, the women were too scared to approach the thieves. Instead, they said, they sent their dogs after the men in the truck. The dogs apparently shared the women's sentiment and turned right back around. Due to this fear, the second and third nights the women enlisted a few husbands to help hold their corn vigil. The fourth night Don Euardo had a birthday party, leaving the men indisposed, so the women brought the next best thing: the gringa.

I arrived at the corn field at dusk, backpack brimming with coffee, layers, and my sleeping bag. The first objective of the evening was to take fotos of the proud women with their piles of maize. The four hectares had been consolidated into three enormous piles of gingery nourishment. For the first foto, the women climbed up the mountain of maize and posed, legs together and knees bent, in the style of a JC Penny catalog. Dona Josefa, who speaks the least Spanish of anyone in town and bears an uncanny resemblance to my grandmother, sat at the summit of the mountain, and we crowned her Miss Avati (corn) 2008. We took more fotos of Miss Avati, this time with a crown of the largest anko (squash) that had been harvested this year.

We returned to the camping site on the side of the field to make some dinner and warm ourselves as night fell. We used machetes to split some golden buttery anko and set it to boil in an enormous recycled manteca vegetal (Bolivian Crisco) can. Conversation slipped into exclusive Guarani, which to me sounds something like this:

One woman xxxxxxxxxx you come xxxx we talk xxxx tiger xxxxxxxxxx big fire xxxxx lots and lots xxxxxx work xxxxxxxxxx nothing but a liar xxxxxxxxx woman xxxxx husband xxxxxxxx delicious xxxxxx two x no no no never xxxxxxx fox xxxxxx delicious xxxxx work.

Not that I mind. Seldom do I have the opportunity to sit and listen to Guarani, as Spanish is the language of business and commerce in Chimeo and Villa Montes. The only Spanish spoken was to me, usually to let me in on a joke being told at my expense. At some point we slept, nothing but blankets and the open air. They curled up between wool blankets and their children while I, as they put it, "bagged myself" in my sleeping bag. Dona Elva told stories for a while and we slept at some point, but judging by the puffy eyes in the morning it must have been late. At dawn, the women with children in school returned home. I stayed behind with the older women and we had a breakfast of sugary mate and their delicious anko, with sugar sprinkled on top as the sun rose in the sky.

This would be the last night that the women were in such jovial spirits. The truck from the mayor´s office that was due to arrive on Monday morning never arrived. We waited. Tuesday. We waited. And Wednesday. After a week of sleeping outdoors in the cold and with rain threatening, the women ran out of patience. They sent me to ask Don Perez, one of the non-Guarani living in the community, if we could contract his dump truck for the afternoon. He agreed, but for a hefty fee of 100 Bs per truckload. The four hectares had rendered three truckloads, and I was looked to to front the money. The group will pay me back in short order, but I am loathe to lend. I constantly fear that community members will start to see me as a bank, not as a source of knowledge or technical assistance. I paid the man, and together the fifty of us-women, husbands, children- lifted the corn by the sackful into the truck. A cold rain started to fall, but luckily not so hard that it soaked through the husks and ruined the corn. In high spirits we finished after dark, and now our jokes had turned to the representative from the mayor´s office, deemed Inginiero Yapusiki (Mister Big Liar).

Although Im glad its over, something changed in my relationship with Chimeo´s women this week. As a result of shared hardship or maybe my rapidly improving Guarani, we are all closer now. Those who speak Guarani fluently no longer address me in Spanish but rather their mother tongue. This, to me, is huge. There is a painful stigma of backwardsness attached to Guarani people in this country, and it has been drawn into the spotlight in recent months with the government´s attempts at land reform. I don't feel that I know enough about the legislation or its implementation to write on it, but there is an article on it that came out in the NYT today (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/09/world/americas/09bolivia.html?ref=world).

In addition to the corn harvest, our projects are humming right along. The 8th graders recently painted the tree nursery´s tank and will present their work along with information on photosynthesis and the importance of ecosystems at an environmental fair in a nearby town. We should break ground on the nursery itself this month. We have planted onions, tomato, carrots, lettuce, parsley, cauliflower and broccoli (the last two at my insistence) in the gardens at the elementary and nursery schools. Last, but certainly not least, our beekeeping partnership project is up! A link to the project can be found at the top of this blog.

No matter how open the arms of the people, or how good my Spanish, I never forget that I am a foreigner in a foreign land. There are the jokes that I still never catch, a cordiality that to me seems superfluous, and spoonfulls of sugar without which any drink is considered kaima, tasteless. One of the least avoidable Bolivianisms that I still struggle to understand is the road blockade, or bloqueo.

It goes something like this:

An interest group wants to draw attention to their cause, demand, or dissatisfaction with the government, they block the road way with spiny branches, themselves, burning tires, machetes, automobiles, and so on. While in a country with interstates, turnpikes, and country roads, this would not pose a problem, it can bring transport to a standstill in a country as mountainous and poorly connected as Bolivia. Blockades may last a morning or a fortnight, and the government usually has no choice but to meet the demands of the strikers. Until this agreement is made, trucks full of bananas and lettuce rot while their frustrated chofers do their best to pass the hours.

A passerby can tell just how long a bloqueo has been carrying on by the levels of comfort and entrepeneurship the drivers have developed. Two weeks ago I crossed two bloqueos, in their ninth day, on my way to Santa Cruz. In the first crossing, we were duped into paying three Bolivianos a piece to be carried 200 m between two blockades of mora branches in a station wagon. At the second crossing, vendors had begun to sell empanadas and lemonade, while truck drivers had strung up wash lines to dry the clothing that had been scrubbed clean in nearby rivers. Young boys with wheelbarrows offered to carry the bags of men and women alike for a few pesitos. After 100 bs, a succession of taxis, a number of new friends, we made it across the second bloqueo at 530 pm.

At 7 pm, the blockades were lifted.

This is not to say that the entire country returned to hunky-dory harmony at 7 pm that day. At the same time, blockades were bubbling up in Oruro and the post office had been on strike for two weeks. During my stay in Cochabamba traffic was moving freely, but my blockade borne shigella kept me in bed, unable to do some much needed price checking for Chimeo's bee project. This same shigella kept me in Cochabamba under "observation" for two extra days, which fortunately gave me time to do my bee work. Unfortunately, it delayed my return to Santa Cruz, giving time for new blockades on the road to Villa Montes time to relight. Two weeks ago folks were supporting Camiri in its demand for the "presedency of the petroleum industry. Today (and likely tomorrow and the day after tomorrow) there is a great deal of unrest concerning a new land redistribution law.

Meanwhile, this new burst of blockades has me stuck in Santa Cruz. Thoroughly tired of the city, Im anxious to return to Chimeo after two weeks away and even more anxious to get the heck out of Santa Cruz. If Im lucky, you wont be hearing much from me and the international press wont hear much of Bolivia until then.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Having fallen ill in Cochabamba with a shigellosis* it has taken me longer than expected to crank out my project update. With a week’s worth of antibiotics under my belt, though, here it is. Enjoy!

The beekeeping group, “Grupo de Apicultores Chimeo,” has recently signed contracts and the project has been turned in to my bosses here at PC to check over. The group consists of ten families, some of who are experienced beekeepers, others are beginners. Project participants will all supply a counterpart- class and workshop attendance, 40 Bs, one homemade set of bee mask and gloves, preparation of apiaries, capture of three feral colonies, tree nursery work, and the planting of 10 meliferous (nectar giving) trees near their apiaries. In return, they will receive what they need to become productive beekeepers- protective gear, tools, three hives, and a nucleus hive for captures. The entire group will share equipment for the processing of wax- which mush be melted down, filtered, and re-stamped every year or two- and bottling materials to sell their harvest. They have agreed that some of their profits after the first harvest will then be reinvested to purchase more bottling materials. If all goes according to plan, this will transform Chimeo’s current stalled-out honey industry into a productive, sustainable source of income for participants.

The funding for the project will be drawn from what is called a Peace Corps Partnership. Partnerships can have any monetary value- sometimes as little as $500 and as much as $10,000, but they all demand at least a 25% counterpart on the part of recipients. Our project is asking for approximately $3000. Each of the 10 participating families will receive 3 boxes, one bee suit, the gear they need to work with bees like smokers and hive tools, and the community will receive equipment to melt, filter, and restamp old wax for their hives. In return for these goods, participants will attend classes on hive management (given by me), prepare their apiaries, capture feral colonies, sew one protective suit and pair of gloves, and attend a workshop on genetic selection given by a technician. Once the project receives the final signatures by my bosses at the PC, a profile will be uploaded onto the internet. There, interested contributors can donate directly to the project. Once we reach our goal of $3000, I personally will receive a check from the PC to go about buying all of the goods. When everything is purchased I am responsible to turn in receipts to cover every last Bs to the PC. So, the project (as well as other ones like it made by other volunteers and listed on the same website) has 0% overhead and 100% accountability-a philanthropist’s dream. When I have the web address Ill send it out to those of you on my listserv, but don’t be shy- feel free to send it to any friends or family who might be interested in helping out. Thanks in advance for your support.

In March I met with the 48 women who raise chickens and sow corn as part of Chimeo’s womens’ group to discuss the possibility of a family gardens project. The women were interested, and we are contemplating just how we will go about the garden project. I am interested in utilizing grey-water systems, where simple filters are installed to reuse water from kitchen and laundry to water vegetable gardens. The problem right now is that most of these systems are for deeper roots than vegetables would have, so we’ll have to tinker with the model a bit, or look for a different kind of technology for our family veggie gardens. The project itself is still in its developing stages and nothing will likely be planted until December.

I’m still passing Guarani classes every Tuesday night, and as of now we have recorded about a dozen traditional stories. Bartolome and Silvia, the storytellers, are interested in making CDs for sale. I would like to include with the CDs a booklet of written English and Spanish translations, but it will ultimately be up to the storytellers. We will hopefully get started burning CDs this (Bolivian) winter when the agricultural work comes to a standstill.

The tree nursery has its 10,000 L tank but not much else has been done with it as of this writing. Various community cleaning dates have been foiled due to an extended rainy season. We will somehow eventually clear out the grass and paint the tank itself before installing the beds for the saplings themselves. The funding is already there (its funded by the mayor’s office) so it will si o si be happening this winter. The bee keepers will also be lending a hand in the nursery, having committed to planting at least 10 melliferous trees around their apiaries-to-be.

*Shigellosis.

ah. the rainy season.

senorita honey and polen.

if you look closely you can see the tiny yellow bees.

arming the skeleton.

working hard.

hardly working.

thin board atp bricks atop rotting metal drum. very bolivian.

It is Sunday night, at the tail end of the most productive week yet of my time here in Bolivia. It began last Sunday with the group of bee keepers, now down to a solid 10 families, in their first training session. I prepared a theory lesson on the general basics of beekeeping and an introduction into bee biology. Worried that I wouldn’t be able to hold the group’s attention with a pure theory class, I organized the lesson into a series of answers to questions they’ve likely had about bees- why does smoke calm bees? How long do they live? How do they reproduce? To my delight, the approach worked well. All ten members were attentive, taking notes, and I even caught a few of them smiling. Afterwards they asked questions and to my own surprise, I was able to answer all of them. I am constantly amazed by the bee and plant knowledge Ive accumulated over the past year, and it felt wonderful to be able to share it.

I could have been satisfied for the entire week with the victory of the first successful bee class, but the community had chosen the following Monday to begin work on a 10,000 L water tank that will serve as the first step towards our community tree nursery. In the afternoon I went into Villa Montes to pick up the five other volunteers from the basic sanitation and environmental education programs who had signed up to help with the build. We caught up over fruit salad and lasagna as heavy rains began to fall, turning the streets into rivers and mud pits. That night we caught an express taxi up to Chimeo, paying the driver an extra 5 bolivianos for putting up with Chimeo’s muddy entrance. Five white pods, known in the PC as travel tents, popped up on my porch and we stayed up later than we should have, chatting and enjoying the company of fellow English speakers.

On Saturday I had been a bit skeptical that the build would actually take place this week; upon arriving at the site I found grasses taller than me and no semblance of a path to the “tree nursery.” That day though, Enrique had rounded up six men and together we machete-ed down the grasses and axed down the trees that stood in our way. We had chosen to put the tank on the highest possible ground, which was incidentally home to five small trees. When asked how we could put the tank there amongst the trees, they responded with a most typical Bolivian can-do attitude. Its simple, they said-move the trees. Three hours later the trees were gone and we had enough space cleared to let the dump truck and materials through to begin on Monday.

Having built an identical tank a few weeks ago in Villa Montes, the steps have become familiar. First, form the wire and iron skeleton, then pour the base, next slap on the cement walls, clamp on the roof, finally cover that with cement, and voila. It is always interesting working in a group of mixed linguistic backgrounds on projects such as this. Most of the time I find myself at the losing end, stumbling and pretending to keep up with rapid Bolivian speak. This week, however, we were split 50/50 gringos to Bolivians, and we often split into task forces according to ones mother tongue. The groups were nonetheless forced to cooperate on the second day, when the 10 foot iron skeleton of the tank had to be lined with ply-wood before cement can be applied to form the outer layer. Then holes must be punched from the outside so that the people on the inside can tighten wires around the irons placed inside the tank to the irons on the outside that are attached to the base, which also lies on the outside. The wood must be pushed on from the inside in order to permit the hole-puncher from the outside to reach his goal. You furthermore want to complete the task as soon as possible to get out of the tank, which in the late morning sun quickly becomes a cement and ply-wood oven. Participants cannot see each other, have a language barrier, and have a sort of heat-induced time limit. This week it was gringa Beth, myself, and Bolivian Juan on the inside, being directed by gringo Jeff and the Bolivian masons from the outside world. After a few unintentionally stabbed palms and a lot of confusion, we each ended up with a specialty on the inside, directed by one of our compatriots on the outside. All of the gringo participants have been in Bolivia for at least a year and speak pretty good Spanish, nonetheless we had to turn to our native language to get the job done quickly. I myself am nearing a decade of what I long considered Spanish fluency, and I still couldn’t keep up. In all the experience gave me an even more profound respect for immigrants to our (or any) country who must struggle daily to keep up with the chit chat of the the Joneses, or the Patels, or the Van Dammes.

After five days the tank was finished, and two fellows from Chimeo were half-way towards being certified in ferro-cement tank construction. The rest of our volunteer help headed out, while Beth stayed an extra two nights to come up the mountain to capture a colony of senorita bees. The senoritas are tiny, yellow, with legs that hang down like a wasp, and they don’t bite or sting. They make a honey that is lighter and more liquid than normal honey, and people around here swear that its medicinal qualities are greater than apis mellifera honey. Most hives are found in tree trunks near the ground, where the delicate things can retain a cooler temperature and hide more readily from predators. We went with Cecilio, armed with nothing but an ax, machete, and a specialized home-made cedar bee-box. The trained eye could see the tiny bees dancing around the entrance like dandelion fluff, making their way to the opening, a wax trumpet no more than 8 cm long and 1 cm in diameter. Cecilio cautiously set to hacking open the base of the trunk, making sure not to damage the tiny colony. As we got closer to the heart of the tree and the hive, he switched to his machete and began to peel away slices of tree to reveal the hive. First were half-inch balls of pollen, wrapped in the same papery wax and separated according to color. Apis mellifera bee pollen is packed with vitamins and proteins, but few would call it delicious. This senorita pollen, however, had a rich, sweet odor, and its flavor like eating the most delicious Odyssian lotus petal. Further up the trunk was stored the honey, packaged in the same wax sacs, so delicate that a light human squeeze breaks it open and sends the honey dribbling down your wrist. Whats even more impressive is that these balls are much larger than the senoritas themselves- I would estimate that over a dozen senoritas could fit into one of their storage balls. Finally towards the bottom of the colony we found the brood, whose honey comb was like a miniature apis mellifera colony. We placed the brood in the box with a good store of honey to get them started, and headed back to Cecilio’s puesto with our pollen and honey winnings.

Upon arrival we set the plate of trappings down on his home-made table. The honey we took would measure no more than a liter, as tiny bees also produce tiny bits of honey. A good number of senoritas had stayed with their honey, and I set my chin down on the wood to watch them. Half of them had begun to drown in their own unleashed honey, while the other half wandered aimlessly about the place, seemingly bound for the same fate as their brethren. Harvesting from an apis mellifera have is always a thrill that makes my hair stand on end and the honey taste even sweeter, while taking from senoritas almost felt immoral. They are fragile and unique creatures with no way of defending themselves against a big groping human (or other intruder for that matter). Granted, we placed the hive itself in a box next to its original home to hopefully grow and prosper, but these pixies are just so defenseless. The handling and raising of senorita hives will be one of the focuses of bee keepers in Chimeo this year, as the local bee keepers association ADACHACO will execute a project focused on them.

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After this whirlwind of a week, Im currently in Santa Cruz awaiting the arrival of a big Polish man I like to call Daddio. He will be in Bolivia, seeing the sights, meeting the people, and learning to drink chicha. While he is here we will celebrate Bolivian father’s day (March 19th) as well as his own 66th anniversary of life. Ill be sure to post fotos and stories of the trouble we get into.

I came late to the party. I wasn’t sure what to expect but the hosts, Bartolome and Silvia, told me it would get going in the afternoon, so I spent the morning cleaning and paying other owed visits. The sun was hot and high when I finally arrived, and my belly was purposefully empty in anticipation of a possible meal invitation. I took a seat between Cecilio and an out of town guest from Tucuman, on a wooden plank held up by a few precariously placed bricks. Chimeno by birth, the fellow who lives in Tucuman was visibly uncomfortable; after twenty years in the city, he says, he finds country celebrations a hard adjustment. Cecilio, on the other hand, was in his element: draped in a red and white poncho, a goat hide drum in hand, an endless, and puro-induced smile illuminating his leathery face. In front of us I also notice a man, either dead or drunk, passed out at the base of the Guyava tree that gives us all shade. He is missing one shoe, his shirt is half-way up his belly, but thankfully his pants are belted tightly around his thin waist. The Tucuman focused his attention on me, as a white-skinned compatriot in what he sees as backwards country madness. He asks me how many days Ive been here. I tell him about three-hundred. As he begins a lecture on never forgetting the people of the countryside, a tiny, aged hand rescues me, drawing me into the dancing in the center of the party.

The dancing here in Chimeo is distinct from the elaborate costumes and steps I saw two weeks ago in Oruro. Here it is a species of glorified ring-around-the-rosie, as we shuffle together to the left, break, and to the right. Behind, or maybe in front of us, half a dozen men beat drums while Bartolome sounds out sweet, discordant notes on his wooden flute. Our steps mimic the music, step shuffle shuffle, step shuffle shuffle. After a while, the music falls apart and we, the dancers, take our seats. I move to the corner by Dona Juana, and some younger fellows begin to pass around a pitcher of cold red wine and cola. We go around, inviting each other to two ounce sips at a time, swallowing it down and then picking the next victim to be invited.

The sun is still high and I can feel the wine robbing my brain of oxygen, when from the corn stalks bursts the cuchi. Dripping in mud and leaves, this naked beast calls “cuchi cuchi!,” smearing the revelers with his filth. The look on his face falls somewhere between ecstasy and confusion as he makes his way around dance arena, giggling, smearing, tripping, drinking, and smearing. I am laughing wildly. One moment later, the cuchi disappears back into the corn, on his last step tripping and nearly losing his underwear. The party focus quickly turns back to the music and dancing; no one seems to be all that affected. I am still laughing wildly.

Through the rest of the afternoon we sit, some of us chatting and sharing chicha, some of us fighting off sleep in this last stretch of a fortnight-long party. As the heat wears off and the sun heads for the tree line, the cuchi returns. This time, however, he has multiplied, trailed by three meter-tall, mud sodden cuchicitos. Cuchi evading chaos erupts as the beast and its babes hunt down the last of the clean shirts and the newly bathed. Curtains are torn, windows are entered, and laughter abounds. The cuchis dissolve into the corn stalks as quickly as they came, but their place is taken by the bull, the tiger, and the devil. The tiger and bull have the faces of beasts but the bodies of men, leathern, lean and strong, the kind that is only earned by years in the fields. The beasts writhe on the floor, engaged in a battle of bellows, while the devil makes his way about the crowd, making dancers of the spectators with his spiky, cellulose-encrusted whip. The circle grows and grows, turning faster as the battle escalates at its center. The bull and the tiger each defeat and throw out a ghost of carnaval in his white cloth mask, slinging the slim bodies of the losers over their shoulders. The bodies are left among the corn, their pale faces with long slender noses and horns protruding from the russet leaves. Finally the beasts engage in their final fray, writhing and bellowing until the bull emerges the victor of their slow-motion battle.

The tiger is left beside the ghosts as the dancing shifts to a procession. The devil takes up the cross of yellow carnaval flowers and beams from the center of the dancing, and two older women hoist the man asleep at its base. The party joins hands and heads into the street, lead by this devil and the body of the drunk. Fingers grab for a piece of the yellow flowers adorning the cross and we weave and twirl our way down the road. Heads peak out of doorways, and anyone who wasn’t earlier part of the party joins in. Over the rise, down again, and around the corner, a kilometer later we arrive at our destination. The body of carnaval is thrown into the bushes, followed by the flowers, followed by hugs for some, kisses for those who are now a few more sheets to the wind. I am one of the last to go, and I can see that beneath the flowers the drunk retains his toothless, cloth smile.

We make our way in silence, back to town, to the house, to the bed. Carnaval, the time of plenty and rain and drink, is over. Soon winter will work its brutal way up from Argentina. The trees will once again go brown, the bees will huddle in a thousand-buzz mass inside their hives, and the tap will run dry. For today though, we are drunk, we are merry, and life is good.

It’s the tail end of a long trip and the first week of carnaval, and I don’t know where to start. A week ago I set out from Chimeo to Santa Cruz, went straight onto Cochabamba and then onto Oruro. 28 hours later and 12,000 feet higher, I arrived along with a couple members from my training group for the biggest party in Bolivia: Carnaval in Oruro. The streets were filled with Quechua speaking ladies selling their wares: squirt guns, confetti, candies, fruit, and flowers. Oruro is a world apart from the cities I know in the low eastern half of the country; it is the land of dry, thin air, llama herders, and the checkered flag of the indigenous. It’s a culture I came to know and love three years ago in highland Peru, but since arriving in Chimeo my familiarity with it has been crowded out by the Guarani. I cant remember the names for pieces of clothing unique to the zone, and my attempts at speaking the tiny bit of Quechua I remember from Qosqo are not understood by their Bolivian ears. Just as Ive forgotten these bits of cherished knowledge, the city itself seems forgotten by the rapid progress Ive grown accustomed to on the tropical, oil rich eastern half of Bolivia. Stores and houses in the city center are still made of adobe, and the terminal floor is dotted by tiny Andean women squatting, enveloped in their colorful polleras. It is shocking to see such a dramatic difference between the two halves of the country, but it does make their animosity easier to understand.

The dancing begins early Saturday morning, and we, the twenty-some volunteers and their friends who have come to Oruro this year, take our place in one corner of the plaza. Each of us wears a 2 Boliviano plastic poncho to shield us from flying shaving cream and water balloons. During Carnaval throughout much of Latin America “water wars” engulf the streets as kids and teenagers hide in doorways and second floor windows with buckets and balloons of water, waiting for the unsuspecting passerby or, if fortune smiles, gringa. The hostility increases as Carnaval approaches. On these, the biggest days of carnaval, the streets become all out warfare and armor a must, especially for fair-complected females. Our corner of the plaza becomes a favorite target, with shaving cream and water balloons flying back and forth, as sellers swarm like sharks, offering us ammunition at inflated prices. In the baccanal we buy, buy, buy, happily dropping a blue 10 Boliviano bill for the chance to get back at that guy in the blue poncho. Morenitas, Coporales, Diabladas, and Tobases make their way through the plaza, each with their own band and their own spin on these traditional dances. The balloon launching pauses each time one of these groups passes, out of respect for their elaborate costumes and well-rehersed steps.

At dusk the battles subside with the hot Andean sun as temperatures fall to near zero. We will be waiting until dawn for our friends, part of the 150-dancer strong Tinku group Las Llajwas, to make their way through the plaza. As the temperatures drop and the crowds thin, we are able to get closer to the dancers and the bands who are likewise drooping with sleep and alcohol. Slowly the crowds and the dancers become one, with dancers and musicians offering the chance to don their masks and instruments for a beer or a handshake. At 430 the Llajwas enter the plaza, amazingly jovial and alert for this hour of the morning. We dance behind them up to the Plaza Civica to catch a glimpse of their dance from the bleachers. As the pale morning sun peaks through the clouds, we are treated to a unique view of the dance they have been practicing for months. Even in their fifth hour of dancing, the group retains their unity, spinning, stomping, singing, and swinging their hondas in ever shifting rows and columns. The sun goes from pale blue to white above their heads, and they pass onto Oruros biggest cathedral. This morning its twelve foot wooden doors are closed to the public, but each dancer will be admitted, making her way on her knees to the Virgin at its front, asking her blessing for the coming year. Dancers and we the non-dancers reunite at dawn, making our way past the steaming breakfast stalls and drunken couples to the hotel to sleep for a few hours. The dancers will do this all again tomorrow, completing the two full days Carnaval.

After the festivities in the city had wound down, a few members of my group and I make our way to the site of our friend Tiffany. It lies two hours outside of the city, and today Tiffany has been invited to dance in her town’s festival. We start the morning off with a hike up the mountains on the edge of town for a picnic lunch of apples and peanut butter and honey sandwiches. We are followed by a shaggy stray dog with an ancient limp. Even this unanticipated companion is a reminder of the differences between the two halves of the country. In Chimeo all of our dogs are small and skinny, their ribs poking through their short haired coats, while the street pups in Oruro are large, shaggy, and hearty. The view from our picnc spot is spectacular, with the high plains and Lake Poopo stretching out to eternity with an unreal flatness. It is reminiscent of a small towns in the plains of the US, the tiny houses and Huari beer factory surrounded by verdant squares of quinoa and corn.

As soon as we return to town, we are swept up again by Tiffany’s host family, which has arrived with costumes in hand to dress us up as Pepinos (Cucumbers) and Cholitas and dance around the plaza. We are braided and buried beneath blue and yellow layers, and our now empty bellies are filled with Huari beer. There is no refusing- we are told we will need the beer for strength during the dance. Four glass liters later we are swallowed up by the train of dancers and we swirl back and forth around the plaza. Every minute or so the band strikes a minor chord and every cholita in the crowd is spun by her pepino, and polleras fly up, exposing the layers of white slips that lie beneath to make her hips more plentiful. Amidst the twirling, winding steps shaving cream ad water flies at the facers of the dancers, and water flies from braided tresses. After an exhausting hour, the dancing and drunken haze wear off, and we escape the plaza to warm up indoors. We are soaked to the bone and exhausted, now in our fourth day of celebration. Carnaval itself will officially continue for another fifteen days, but tomorrow we will go our separate ways, back to work in our own distinct corners of the country.

They dressed us up, got us drunk, made us dance, and covered us in shaving cream.