SITE INFO:

Drumroll please-----

I am going to SAN JOSE DE CHIQUITOS!
Region: Santa Cruz... close to Brazil
Area: Chiquitania
Work: Many, many possibilities including Gray Water Gardens, Community Development, Public health and hygiene, Ecological Banos, Rainwater Catchment Tanks... and the beat goes on....

Ill be visiting my site next week, so I´ll know a lot more soon!

A couple photos from Tech week

The Anna´s at an ancient Incan bridge outside of Mizque Beautiful Valleys near Mizque

Well drilling into the evening in Huari

Mizque!

We started our technical trip about 4 hours away, in the Cochabamba valley, in the city of Mizque. There are 2 Peace Corps volunteers in Mizque and we had a great time getting to know them and working in their community. In Mizque we stayed at a nice hostel and started each morning there cooking breakfast. It was a really big treat, and a lot of fun to be able to eat things like banana pancakes and breakfast burritos. After breakfast we would load into our 4 Landcruizers and drive through the beautiful mountains and valleys of Mizque. Our work site was a boarding school outside of a small town called Tin Tin. Most of the kids from the boarding school were home for vacation but the few that were there helped us with our projects. In this area the primary language spoken is Quechua, and we felt privileged to hear this ancient language. Although Quechua is the preferred language, most also spoke Spanish, so we were able to communicate. We worked at the boarding school for 4 days and built a Ferro cement rainwater catchment tank and a gray water garden system. All of our work was done by hand, without using any kind of machinery, this meant a lot of cement mixing, sand sifting, rebar tying, digging… The rainwater tank was made from cement and molded using chicken wire and wood. The water is caught from the roof of a nearby building and then flows into the closed tank. Without any light, the bacterium in the water dies, and then is ready for use for things such as showering, cooking, etc.

I really enjoyed working on the gray water system. We made a simple plumbing system from the leftover, used water in the kitchen (from cooking, cleaning…) and piped this water underground and outside to an area that we had cleared for a garden. We made holes in the pipes in the garden area and surrounded them with a filtration system of gravel and rocks. The kids at the boarding school were going to follow-up the project by planting vegetables and flowers in the garden.

10,000 L Rainwater Tank A bus that runs on train tracks!
Mizque Women
Mizque Man

San Juan

San Juan is the festival of the shortest day of the year, and was the best night of our technical trip. We had our fiesta at the house of the Mizque volunteer, Katie! Armando, one of our technical trainers made an awesome bbq dinner for us, and we enjoyed celebrating the holiday in the typical Bolivian fashion with a huge bonfire and fireworks. The whole town of Mizque was bright and warm from all of the bonfires and there were fireworks everywhere. A funny tradition in the Mizque area was painting their livestock pink!

Medidores

Who would have guessed I would be giving a presentation on water meters?

Lago Poopo

Made it back from the technical trip-- more info soooooon!! This is me on the salty remains of what used to be a much bigger Lago Poopo. I am holding a lucky flamingo feather!! Tomorrow I find out where I will be living for the next 2 years... wish me luck! Hasta Manana!

The Altiplano

Driving to the Altiplano we got to see the extreme differences in the Bolivian landscapes… The Altiplano was barren but beautiful and the people were very inviting and gracious. We spent 5 days in Huari, about 5 hours outside of Cochabamba. Here we stayed in a very simple hostel with rooms so tiny we could barely fit our suitcases inside. The doors were also very miniature and we all had to duck to get inside. The hostel had about 15 small rooms, with one pour flush toilet. Needless to say it wasn’t my cleanest week. The mornings and nights in the Altiplano were cold and my new warm sleeping bag was much appreciated. The landscape of the Altiplano was pretty amazing. The big skies reminded me of being out west. The land was flat, with mountains in the distance. There were only 2 types of vegetation, sparse grasses. The main crop there is quinoa, but it was not in season. We saw llamas, vicuñas (wild llamas) and flamingos (in the salt flats!)

Our work site was at a small adobe house in the middle of nowhere. We couldn't’t be seen or heard by anyone in the surrounding area. There were 2 women and 2 younger boys that lived there. They did not have any water, or any type of bathroom or latrine. We worked on drilling a well for them, which was such an amazing experience. Our well drilling rig took about a 1/2 an hour to set up and was a very basic pulley system. The well drilling itself was hard, repetitive work, but we did a lot of switching off. We ended up hitting water at 9 meters, and capped the water with a pipe and pump. Most well drilling must be done in one day because if you take a break the walls tend to cave in, however with the cold nights of the Altiplano and the hard soil we were able to do the job in 2 days. Because of our lack of time we had picnic lunches at the site, which usually included soup, salads and solar oven cooked bananas. One day the Dona of the house made us lamb in an adobe oven and quinua soup! We also started an adobe dry latrine for the family, which will be finished by the Huari volunteer Dan. It was truly a wonderful thing to see how we improved the lives of this family that previously did not have access to clean water. They were so grateful for us and our work, and we left with a feeling of accomplishment.

The rig
Water!