Being counted as part of history

On Wednesday 21^st November, we witnessed and became part of a little piece of history in Bolivia. For the first time in 11 years, the Bolivian government decided to conduct a census to determine the size and demographic of the population.

The entire population was confined by law to their homes for 12 hours, and any person found on the streets without at permit was swiftly arrested and detained. In all between 300 and 400 people were arrested for breaking the curfew in the whole of Bolivia which, as a number of people pointed out to me, is probably less than are drunkenly arrested on an average Saturday night in England’s towns and cities.

It was a very strange experience; you think to yourself, ah great, a quiet day to go for a walk (can’t do this), get some shopping done (can’t do this either) or maybe grab some food (nor this). Ironically it would have been extremely special to be able to walk the streets had we been allowed: to see the capital city of a country completely devoid of people, cars and buses, with only stray dogs wandering the streets, it would have looked almost post-apocalyptic.

  

We began to feel slightly claustrophobic in the stuffy house and then in the early evening we were treated to one of La Paz’s spectacular thunder storms. With panoramic lightening, deafening thunder and torrential rain it was a spectacle to watch so we opened up all the windows on one side of the house and sat down to watch the show. Because of the way La Paz is situated in the ‘bowl’ of Andes Mountains, the almost daily storms are especially impressive to witness. It was certainly the most entertaining thing we saw that day!

The census was quite widely criticised across the country for a number of reasons including being accused of having poorly thought out questions, which, after talking to some of the locals questioned I would potentially have to agree with. The idea of the census was to gain a better understanding of the demographic and lifestyle of the population in order to create more effective government policy. However without asking the right questions that goal is lost to merely counting the population and causing an awful lot of inconvenience in people’s lives. Whether the questions were an effective use of 200,000 data collectors and 35,000 policemen’s time, as well as a temporarily halted economy, is yet to be seen. However from the point of view of a foreigner caught in the middle all I can say is it will probably (hopefully) be the only time in my life I will be subject to a military police curfew. 

Trout, the face of a cat and a 3 piece suite

With a weekend in La Paz this week, we decided to get up early on Sunday morning and go to El Alto Market, known to the locals as Mercado 16 de Julio. We had heard that it was experience not to be missed, not least because of its vast size and ability to sell everything you could ever imagine. We had also be warned that it was fairly dangerous and not to take anything remotely valuable with us. El Alto is situated above La Paz, high up on the mountain side (4150m above sea level) and is considered one of the fastest growing urban areas in Bolivia. However, El Alto is also considerably poorer than most parts of La Paz and is a much more dangerous place for tourists to venture, particularly at night. 

Despite this and a few scare stories, we decided to get the bus up the mountain on Sunday morning (which costs just 2 Bolivianos or approx 18 pence). My first impression of the market was the sheer volume of people, all locals, browsing, pointing, bartering and buying all sorts of goods. The market is situated right on the edge of the mountain, with the most incredible, crystal clear view of the whole of La Paz to one side.

Now, when it comes to what they sell, there really is no other way to describe it other than to give you a smattering of examples. They sell: fake designer clothes, rip-off adidas trainers, toiletries, old tyres, bits of engine, live chicks (10p each!), a puppy, llama feet, trout, the face of a cat, a 3 piece suite, carpets, beds, televisions, posters of naked women, phone chargers, potatoes, army gear, fresh juice topped with whipped cream (?), musical instruments, pirate dvds of every description, wads of fake money, fake taxi signs, number plates, baby clothes, billions of plastic toys, a sheep, used socks, CD’s, underwear, alpaca woollen clothes, make up, food processors, pans, plates, teaspoons, prams, cuddly toys, watches, brooms, mops and so much more…

Bringing a new meaning to the concept of a zebra crossing

This week, we were given the opportunity to do something truly unique.

Eleven years ago, an initiative was introduced in La Paz in an attempt to improve road safety for pedestrians, and make driving through the city easier for cars.

This essentially involved bringing together young and unemployed people in La Paz, providing them with training, plenty of enthusiasm and a full body zebra costume and head and sending them out into the streets to spread the message of road safety, bringing a new meaning to the concept of a zebra crossing.

For the first few years, the zebras were considered a joke. They were abused, kicked, pushed and laughed at by most and there was no respect for the message they were trying to promote. However 11 years later, the zebras are considered an important institution of La Paz and most citizens see them as delivering a vital message.

So on Wednesday morning we were given the morning off work and around 20 of us volunteers and some of the office staff made our way to the tourist area of the city- Plaza San Francisco- for 9am. None of us had a clue what to expect, we didn’t know what we would be doing, who with or how long for. We were greeted by two young Bolivian guys who took us down to the basement where we began two and half hours of team building, warm ups and training to get us ready for our zebra experience!

After we had jumped around like lunatics, assumed strange characters and sauntered around the room and therefore lost all our inhibitions (and possibly dignity) we were finally ready to be zebras. We were formally introduced to the full-time zebras by their arrival in the room, fully costumed-up and singing the ‘zebra song’. We were then ‘adopted’ by one of the true zebras, given our costumes- which turned out to be incredibly hot and stuffy, topped off by the head which allows only minimal tunnel vision. This wouldn’t usually necessarily be a problem, however, the job of being a zebra involves stopping traffic, helping pedestrians cross the road and keeping an eye on the traffic lights which generally needs to be done all at the same time…

We were finally let loose on the street and the fact that not only do I normally speak broken Spanish and have to listen extremely carefully to be able to understand others speaking it, but now I had a zebra costume preventing me from hearing or talking properly and that meant that I had no idea what my zebra was telling me to do, leaving me to resort to copying his every move.

I’ll paint you the picture. Me, in my costume, holding a circular sign reading ‘tengo actitud cebra’ or ‘I have zebra attitude’ dancing around wildly on the pavement waiting for the lights to turn red, waving the traffic through the lights and waving at anyone and everyone. On red, we would hold out our boards, encouraging the traffic to stop behind the line and then go out onto the crossing, helping pedestrians to cross safely (with more dancing, shouting and bowing). Another major part of the job was waving at and greeting small children who completely and utterly adore the zebras and make you feel like some sort of striped celebrity.

I think the most powerful part of the experience was the freedom and empowerment that wearing such a recognised ‘uniform’ gave me, and the strange feeling of walking down the same street as yesterday, when no-one even looked you in the eye or said hello, and have people respond cheerfully to your greetings, smile at you, say thank you for doing a great job etc. The problem was, after finishing our ‘shift’, taking off the costumes and then going to walk to get a bus, I had such a strong urge to shout ‘bwenas dias!’ at strangers in the street, cross the street by dancing in circles and even hold on to the tail that was no longer there….

Salty haven

Whilst Bolivians celebrated Todos Santos and The Day of the Dead this weekend, some of us took the opportunity of a four day weekend to see a little more of Bolivia and decided to travel to Uyuni and the salt flats. We took an 11 hour night bus on Thursday evening which turned out to be very comfortable and spacious, however sadly nothing can make 11 hours of Bolivian roads ‘comfortable’. The only benefit of not being able to sleep for more than about ten minutes was that I was able to see the landscape change and emerge as the sun rose in the early hours of Friday morning.

Wherever you go in Bolivia you feel sure that you must have accidently left the country and gone to some strange land, as the landscape changes so dramatically from minute to minute. Leaving busy, mountainous and warm La Paz we headed for what began to look more and more like the US mid-west (perhaps slightly post-apocalyptic). Dry, dusty and flat, the sun rose up over this semi-desert just as we came towards the town of Uyuni. Everyone commented on how odd a place this was; it essentially existed purely for the tourist trade, made up of numerous bus companies and tour operators and swarming with backpackers.

We arrived early on Friday morning and made our way round a few of the operators who all seemed to offer exactly the same tour for a variety of prices so we decided to go with the cheapest, which was 700 Bolivianos (about £63). This was a three day tour that included two nights accommodation, food and drink, a pretty comfy jeep, driver, petrol and all the landscapes you can imagine to see.  

The first day of the tour started in the salt flats. This vast plane of salt stands at almost 3,700m above sea level, measures up to 10,500 square miles (considerably bigger than Wales) and up to 10m thick in some places. Standing in the middle of the salt you lose all sense of depth and distance and not even the best photo can portray the sheer scale of the landscape. In the wet season it turns into the world’s largest natural mirror, although it was dry when we visited.

Our driver was Javier, a sweet man who found us very amusing and claimed to speak no English, despite laughing at our conversations and responding to whispered English requests to each other asking how to say ‘can you turn up the music’ in Spanish. He took us to the train cemetery, a collection of old steam trains deserted in the desert-like environment just outside Uyuni, just short of the salt flats. The trains were all lined up one in front of the other for hundreds of meters, rusty and covered in graffiti, making for some good photographs.

We also went to the Isla de los Pescadores which was a waterless island in the middle of the salt flats covered in giant cacti and with incredible views across the plains. We were served lunch on a stone table on the salt and then paid the equivalent of a few pounds to walk around the island, taking in the breathtaking views. The walk was tough, the altitude difference between La Paz and Uyuni really showing, despite being acclimatised to 3,400m, the extra couple of hundred meters really take their toll!

The way the tours worked was that each tour had its own jeep or jeeps and they followed essentially the same route around the whole of Uynui and the national parks, so we ended up meeting up with the same people (including two of our team leaders) at most points.

The first night we stayed in the Hotel de Sal (salt hotel) which was well above my expectations considering the price of the tour. It was a beautifully decorated hostel with dorm rooms and a great view of the salt flats to watch the sunset. The next morning we drove to an active volcano about 3 hours from the salt flats and took pictures and relaxed on the rocks from a distance. After that we drove to the first of a number of lakes which was the home to a species of flamingo, hundreds of which were feeding on the shores.

After this we entered the national park where there was another incredible lake, this time called the ‘red lake’. The reason for this became strikingly obvious as we approached. If I hadn’t been there I’m not sure I would have believed the pictures. The lake was so red it looked rather brutally like a massacre of flamingos had taken place. We were told that it was in fact, less morbidly, the colour of the sediment in the lake that made it so red. That night we stayed in the national park at a hostel on the edge of the lake.

The next morning was an early start- 4.30- but the morning was worth facing the freezing cold of the dawn. The first place we stopped was the geysers, at an incredible 5000m above sea level where hot water and sulphur bubbled to the surface creating vast quantities of steam (and odour!). It was an incredible sight, despite the early hour and freezing temperatures. The next stop was perhaps the most anticipated- the hot springs. Stripping off in the freezing cold at 7am took courage but the water was so beautifully warm and relaxing we couldn’t bear to get out for over an hour. After that we hastily got dressed back into jumpers, hats and gloves and headed for the third lake, more of a yellowy green colour because of the mineral content, and then to the valley of rocks, an incredible stretch of artistically eroded rocks, forming a kind of city sky line against the red mountains.

The whole weekend was incredible and despite hearing bad reviews about the lack of food and constantly breaking down jeeps, we were so impressed with the experience and didn’t want to leave this salty haven we had found. In just 6 weeks Bolivia has already proved to be a diverse country in landscape, people and experience and I’m confident the next six weeks will offer more of the same. Now, back to work!

Todos Santos y Dia de los Muertos

All Saints Day and Day of the Dead

A curious mixture of indigenous and catholic beliefs, Day of the Dead is celebrated in Bolivia on November 2^nd, following All Saints Day on the 1^st. Less morbid than it sounds, Day of the Dead is a day to remember those people who have died and celebrate their lives.

 The main cemetery in La Paz. A family can pay for a space to place flowers, photos and personal items behind glass. 

On the 2^nd, Bolivians converge upon the countries cemeteries to set up a kind of feast for their loved one, setting a small table with a tablecloth- white for a child, dark or coloured for an adult. They bake fascinating bread creations known as tanatawawas  in the image of the person they are remembering and place them on the table along with traditional items such as coca leaves as well as the favourite dish of the deceased.

Many in Bolivia believe that death is not separated from life, and the traditional belief is that on Dia de los Muertos the dead return to Earth for the day to renew their presence in the living world and to share the day and feast with their families. This coincides with Bolivian Spring, when the rains start to fall and everything turns green.

In traditional Andean beliefs, where mother earth or Pachamama is revered as sacred, an important concept is reciprocity. They believe that by feeding the dead with the Dia de los Muertos feast, they will be rewarded when the dead then intervene to ensure that pacahmama delivers the rains needed for harvest.

To come from a world where, for the most part, death is a taboo subject rarely discussed let alone celebrated as a part of life, there is something powerful about a culture who devote this weekend of celebrations to the people they love and remember. 

Nothing worth doing is straightforward

Now I have settled in to life living in La Paz, I thought I would share just a part of what I am really doing here.

There are sixteen British volunteers here in La Paz with the ICS scheme and we have been divided into three groups, each working with different local partner charities: Up Close Bolivia, Child Fund and my partner, Aldeas Infantiles SOS.

Within the Aldeas groups there are four sub projects which we are working to progress in the three short months we are here, following on the work that the previous cohort started. All the projects involve working in some way with some of the Aldeas Children’s centres in La Paz. These are day centres for children between the ages of 0-6 from disadvantaged backgrounds, where they can be cared for during the day whilst their parents are at work as well as properly fed, watered and nurtured.

The first sub project is Strengthening Families, which deals with issues such as father participation in children’s lives and sex education for young people and adults, as well as looking at the factors that are important for early childhood development.

The second is Entrepreneurship, a project which is working towards setting up urban gardens in certain centres, with the aim to provide better nutritional support for the children as well as a potential source of income for the centre and wider community.

The third, which I am partially involved in, is ‘Ludoteca’ or ‘Learning through play’ which is a project aimed at creating a better environment in which the children can learn, providing more and better resources that serve both play and cultural and education purposes.

The fourth, which is the project I am working on most of the time, is TICS. This project is in the early stages but its aim is to provide the resources and training necessary to set up telecentres or ‘computer rooms’ in the Aldeas children’s centres for the use of the children and possibly the wider community and incorporate ICT into the curriculum. ICT technology is widely seen as an important tool of development and can offer benefits such as higher levels of engagement in children, reducing the pressures of teacher shortages, employment opportunities for young people and adults and reduced costs in many areas of society. 

The work I am doing involves a lot of research as the project is in its very early stages and therefore research is still very much a key component. I am looking carefully at other similar projects from Bolivia and Latin America, analysing the successes and failures of these projects in order to put together information on ‘best practice’ for TICS telecentres. I am also looking for potential funding sources for the project (any suggestions would be much appreciated!).

I’ve certainly learned some lessons about development already. 

1. Development moves slowly. There are more barriers to everything and more politics involved than I could have imagined and patience is most definitely a requirement not a virtue in this world. 

2. It is important to work out whether or not a project is really needed in the particular community in order to create positive results. There is a tendency for any charity offered to be given the green light even if it is not the right project for that community. 

3. Keep the bigger picture in mind. If you lose sight of that then frustration may get the better of you. 

4. Development can have a positive impact on people’s lives and even completely transform some. 

5. Nothing worth doing is straightforward. 

We are all beautiful flowers in the same garden

There are always moments in life where you realise you’ll never forget what you just saw. Some are because of a traumatic, disturbing event, some because of something wonderful happening. 

Others are harder to define.

On Friday we were given the opportunity to see the other side of La Paz in a visit to a state-run disability centre in the city, just down the road from where we live. From the outside it looked much larger than I had anticipated, and as we went inside, it seemed vast. The corridors were wide and clinical, although a clear attempt had been made to make it look welcoming with a colourful border painted on the walls and bright chairs lining the corridor. However this did not particularly diminish the bleak atmosphere and the feeling that you were inside an institution, as the paint was faded and there were bars on all the windows and gates at every stairwell.

We were taken to a particular ‘ward’ for children with a wide range of disabilities and the feeling we got was that this was where there were the most staff and the children were the least challenging, as they were certainly out to impress us. This ward was a home for the children without parents (or indeed without willing parents), where they played and slept, and those that could also attended classes and therapies within the building.

When we arrived, the children had just finished dinner and were busy being cleaned up so we were given the chance to speak to a doctor in the centre, a gentle seeming man in his early sixties who spoke very good English. He told us that he had worked at the centre for 27 years and that the ‘motto’ that they went by was ‘we are all beautiful flowers in the same garden’, a message of inclusiveness and solidarity in a country that often fails to provide for the most vulnerable in society.

The first child to be brought in to the bright room covered in soft toys (which was considerably more child friendly than the corridors outside) was a young girl who seemed unable to walk and had to be held and repositioned on the floor constantly. We were told that in the last few days she had entered a depressive state and had stopped walking very suddenly.

In the next room, a small dorm room, a very small boy was carried in and placed in a cot and we were told he had a number of conditions including reduced movement in his left side and an abnormally small brain size. Then two more boys were brought in and placed in cots and left alone with us (8 ICS volunteers and two Bolivian volunteers). Both captured my heart instantly. One Miguel*, had a condition in which he was unable to process images that his eyes saw, in his brain. His eyes looked around quite wildly and he had a number of repetitive movements which he seemed to make as a form of communication. He didn't respond to touch at first and seemed unable to grab my finger but after some time (and a few verses of twinkle twinkle little star) he grabbed hold of my finger tightly and didn't let go. 

The boy in the cot next to Miguel, Jonathan  had a similar brain condition to the first boy but with the added complication of severe epilepsy. Whilst we were in the room alone with him he started to choke on the medicine that he had just been given. Our Bolivian volunteer scooped him up and quickly rushed him through the next room and next door to where the staff were working. My instant reaction was, quite naturally, what would have happened if we hadn't been here?

Back in the main room, many more children had arrived including a number of boisterous and happy children with Downs Syndrome, who smiled, laughed and chased us around the room quite happily. Another boy was brought in and instantly tied to a pillar with a piece of rope which was placed around his middle. We were told he had Autism and was hyperactive. Clearly from our ‘child-cruelty’ westernised eyes, this was unacceptable. But as more and more children were brought into the room the ratio of ‘community mothers’ to children was rapidly dwindling.  What else could they do? They did not have the money to have enough staff to properly deal with the children’s needs and had therefore found ways to cope.

We were told that the community mothers were not necessarily trained, but all seemed to show genuine care and affection for the children and anything which we perceived to be unacceptable could easily be attributed to a lack of funds and a lack of staff. The children in this one ‘ward’ had such complex and different needs that it seemed impossible that they would all be given the care and stimulation they really needed to develop well in this environment.

Every member of staff we spoke to told us that the children lived for days when people like us came to visit, and some even pleaded with us to come back as soon as we could. The community mothers told us that what these children really lacked was love and affection. The centre was able to provide for the children’s needs in terms of their medical and physical needs, but there was not enough hours in the day to ensure that all the children received the kind of nurture and care that we would want and provide for our own children. They might have all been flowers in the same garden, but their garden seemed a long way from ours. 

the right to human rights

This is the story of some the work that International Service does in Bolivia.

Bolivia is a curious country. As I have said before, there seems to be much disagreement between both Bolivians and foreigners on how poor Bolivia really is. In terms of human development, it is ranked just 108^th out of 187 countries listed. However the human development index suffers from the same problems as any other general index. In order to be useful in comparing countries to each other, it must be largely simplistic. This is not to argue that it can’t be useful, only that it cannot possibly explain all the relevant factors. For instance, it does not necessarily take account of the divide within a country. 

There is a significant divide between urban and rural wealth in Bolivia, as around one third of the rural population lack access to basic services, many children attend school for just 4 years or less and disability is still seen as a curse and is not widely accepted. Many disabled people are denied the rights that they have as human beings. 

International Service has worked for nearly 60 years to help people around the world to understand their human rights. This may be a child understanding their right to a safe and secure environment in which to grow up. It may be a person with a disability understanding that they have the right to do everything that an able person can do. It might be helping to empower people to claim the rights they already know they have.

International service works with grass-roots organisations and local groups to help people to know, understand and claim their rights, as well as seeking to tackle the roots causes of why people are denied certain rights in Bolivia. For example, poor nutrition in children is seen as contributory factor to the large number of children living with preventable diseases such as polio and German measles. Part of the ICS project our group of volunteers is involved in (a very small part of the work International Service does in Bolivia) is aimed at tackling the root causes of poor nutrition and helping parents and communities to understand the connection between healthy eating and good health.

Today some of us were lucky enough to be able to volunteer on behalf of International Service at a huge disability fair in the centre of La Paz. Our stall consisted of information leaflets, mountains of blue wrist bands reading 'soy inclusivo', translated as 'I'm inclusive', as well as two games, designed specifically to deal with issues of disability and human rights. The first was a tactile version of twister, with each row of coloured circles also having a specific texture to them. The second was an adapted game of snakes and ladders, where the children (and adults!) taking part were given goggles with varying levels of visibility to make the game more difficult. Some squares were also marked ‘pregunta’ or ‘question’, where the participants then had to answer a question on human rights, tailored to their age in return for another go and a sweet!

The atmosphere at the fair was infectious, with the level of involvement of both children and adults astounding to us Brits, as well as the positive impact that the vast number of organisations that had turned out were having on the people of La Paz. Disability in Bolivia is slowly coming out of the shadows and into mainstream discussion, however there is still a lot of work to do in order to reach a place where disabled people are able to access all the resources and services they need to live full and free lives.

Temples, tranquillity and new perspectives

In the middle of Lake Titicaca, an ocean-like body of water that separates Bolivia from Peru high in the mountains, lies a small island. In Aymara culture it is said that the Isla Del Luna (The Island of the Moon) has acted as a tribute to women and the role they play in Andean culture since pre-Inca times. It is a haven of tradition and simplicity, embracing tourism only so far as to preserve the rich culture that has survived for so long. The tourist industry is constrained by a sustainable tourism project which has been set up on the island with the intention of creating new income for the people whilst retaining the character and culture of the island itself.

Isla Del Luna is just 3km in length and 1km in width and is characterised by its steep inclines on both sides, culminating in a long ridge which stretches the length of the island. Just 25 families live on the island, a total of around 80 people, and there are no vehicles of any kind on the land (llamas being the only exception). This peace and tranquillity permeates the island, adding to the spectacular nature of the awe-inspiring views across the lake.

On one side of the island lies the community square, with a large football field and volleyball court, as well as the small school, shower and toilets and the church. On the other side of the island are the ruins of a pre-Inca temple (Templo de las Virgenes), which acts as the main draw for tourism to the island. The temple is said to have housed and educated hundreds of young girls, organised according to their relative beauty. The least/most (this varied depending on the tour guide) attractive were then taken to specific ceremonies on the nearby larger island of Isla Del Sol (Island of the Sun) to be sacrificed.

The remainder of the island is land used for grazing and agriculture, as well as a vast array of herbs which grow on the island and are used for medicinal purposes, particularly for stomach problems and dealing with the intense altitude (nearly 4000m above sea level). The houses are of varying sizes and standards but all are relatively simple, and although they do have electricity, this is mostly powered by individual solar panels attached to each house.

As a group we spent three days living in pairs with our host families, working and living within their culture, desperately trying to communicate in our broken Spanish, which is their second language after Aymara. Our family were a young family, with two daughters aged 11 and 12. Our father was primarily a fisherman and our mother a weaver of belts and bracelets, sold to the tourists who visit; however the family also kept sheep and rabbits to further sustain them.

On the first morning, we were invited to go fishing with our father, which meant an early start (5am), but also meant that we were able to witness the most beautiful sunrise over the lake. Fishing on the island essentially consists of laying nets the night before- which are marked by plastic bottles floating on the surface. These nets are then collected in the morning teaming with Ispie (small white-bait like fish) and taken ashore. The process of removing the Ispie from the net- by hand- was a slow and tedious process which the men did most mornings. On this occasion we then took the Ispie back onto the Lake and across to our father’s three static intensive farming nets to feed the Ispie to the Trout. Trout are not a natural inhabitant of Lake Titicaca and were artificially introduced by the US. However now they are seen as a key part of the economy as Trout fetch considerably more than the equivalent weight in Ispie.

Everything that is grown on the Island is grown specifically for personal consumption. Any surplus food is traded with other communities for other goods such as rice, bread and coffee. The fish is either consumed by people (or other fish) and then the rest is sold for a profit to buy other goods. This sustainable way of living means that although the island relies on the Copacabana (the nearest land town) for certain goods, generally they are highly self-sufficient.

From speaking to the local people the greatest threat that the island believes it will face in the future is the loss of its young people. The school provides for children up to 12 years old, but after that they must travel either to Isla Del Sol or the mainland in order to continue their education. There seems to be a divide between those parents on the island who see Isla Del Luna and the continuation of their culture as paramount and wish their children to return and live on the island. Then there are those who desire their children to move to the mainland, to La Paz and even further afield to find better jobs and new lives. Just as with any ancient culture trying to survive in the modern world, the island's inhabitants will face the long and difficult challenge of finding a way to carry on as they always have. 

Whilst we were there we also visited Isla Del Sol, which was considerably larger and considerably more tourist-logged. However the reason why the tourists flock to Del Sol was clear. If you ignored the chilly temperature and the debilitating affects of the altitude when trying to walk up a hill, we could easily have been in the Med. With white sandy beaches and crystal blue waters it certainly was idyllic. There are also considerable pre- Inca ruins on the island, much more comprehensive than those on Del Luna and the tour guide was equally ‘colourful’ in the stories and legends he told on the way round! The sad effects of tourism could also be seen, as one of the group attempted to take a picture of a large pig and her 12 piglets who were waddling along the beach, a little girl ran up waving a stick shouting ‘pay me! pay me for a photograph’.

The highlights of the trip are so numerous I couldn’t possibly share them all. However those that will stick in my memory include; the sunsets; the sunrises!; singing songs around a bonfire watching shooting stars; seeing the milky way so crisply it could have been just a few miles away; managing to communicate and share jokes with our family; swimming in the icy lake and sampling all the local cuisine. But most of all, what I will take from my time on the island is a new perspective on what we could all learn from the more simple and sustainable way of life led by the people of Isla Del Luna. 

A few photos

the view from our apartment- La Paz

La Paz from a viewing point high in the city

The Devil's Miner

 Today we were shown a fascinating and heart wrenching documentary about child labour in the Potosi silver mines in southern Bolivia. It told the story of Basillio, a fourteen year old boy who had worked as a miner for four years. When Basillio was just two his father had died, forcing the family to move from the city to live up in the mountains and make a living from the mines. Basillio’s mother received a small salary for ‘guarding’ the mines at night and Basillio and his brother worked for no fixed salary deep in the silver mine. How much they were paid was based on the quantity and quality of the silver they unearthed.

Basillio explained that every day when he, his brother and his ‘boss’ entered the mine, they made offerings to a statute which can be found at the entrance to every mine in Bolivia. ‘Tio’ is essentially a representation of the devil, because the miners believe that whilst God can protect them outside, once they enter the mine, God does not follow them. They therefore offer ‘Tio’ coca leaves, alcohol and cigarettes and ask for his forgiveness and that he protect them from accidents, collapse and explosions and help them to discover mineral wealth. They believe that if they do not offer Tio gifts, he will not spare them. The Rosario mine where Basillio goes to work alone to gain a better living is an extremely dangerous place to work and is harrowingly known as ‘the mountain that eats men’. Mining in this environment is not only dangerous because of the imminent risk of collapse, unexploded dynamite, arsenic lined walls and dangerous machinery; it is also a cause of significantly shortened life expectancy, as most men will die young of lung disease from inhaling vast quantities of dust. The men and children can work 24 hour shifts and earn nothing if their labour does not produce any silver.

Basillio was adamant that he would attend school with his brother as well as work in the mine, he was a bright boy who comprehended the emancipatory nature of education and learning, determined as he was not to work in the mines for very long, knowing it would soon kill him. His words spoke of determination but his eyes showed little hope. At the time the film was made in 2005 there were over 800 hundred children working in the mines of Potosi, most of whom would never leave. Whilst some of the adult men who work in the mines do so to support and feed their families, many work in the mines because they do not know any other life. They earn their money and drink their sorrows away on their days off, lacking in hope and despairing at the outside world and their chances of happiness anywhere but the dusty mines.

Many of the Bolivians that I have spoken are keen to distance themselves from the notion that they are ‘the poorest county in South America’. An observation of the city certainly challenges this view, as most people seem have food to eat and homes to live in. There is little more begging than can be found on the streets of London as most people sell goods to earn a living of some sort. There is often a common assumption, compounded by the rhetoric of development that poverty and hunger are entirely synonymous. The first millennium development goal refers to both poverty and hunger as if they were just one evil. Clearly, there is a fairly significant link between the two. However what the miner’s story and the story of many in La Paz shows is that hunger is not the only way in which people can be poor. Poverty of hope, poverty of joy, poverty of a child’s right to play and be innocent are just a few ways that the definition of poverty can be challenged. Basillio’s twelve year old brother got up every morning wondering whether or not his brother would die today, wanting to protect him and keep him safe but being powerless to stop it. Basillio went to work every day knowing it would kill him, perhaps quickly perhaps slowly. These children carry the weight of the world on their shoulders every day. 

Embracing our inner tourist

A few further days in La Paz and I feel a little more at home. On Saturday we embraced our inner tourist and saw the sights of the city from two very different points of view: firstly, in the morning we took an all-too-obvious open top bright red tour bus around the city, driving past La Paz’s best architecture, around Plaza’s adorned with various monuments and best of all to a viewing point from which you could see all that the city has to offer. What made it contrast most starkly, perhaps, with other tour bus rides I have been on was the warning given at the beginning: remember to duck when you see the power lines. This became evident fairly quickly as people narrowly missed limb decapitation from holding cameras above their heads. All part of the fun!

In the afternoon, those of us who still had the energy took a walking tour of the main cemetery and markets with some local men who were all shoe-shiners by trade. All over La Paz men can be seen in full balaclavas, hats and dark blue clothes, carrying a small box and pointing at your shoes- these are the shoe-shiners. The reason that they cover their faces is two fold: firstly shoe shining involves bending down by the side of the road a lot and the pollution in the city is appalling, with large trucks pumping out tonnes of black, toxic gas at every junction and hill (of which there is one or the other or both every 50 yards!). Secondly, shoe shining is considered to be a shameful job that pays very little and many of the men do not wish to show their faces for fear of brining shame on their families. Most of the men who showed us around showed their faces, one even brought his family along.

The cemetery was beautiful and very different to anything I had seen before. It was made up of ‘blocks’ which even came complete with street numbers (it was a very big place). The blocks were made up of rows and columns of what were essentially tombs fronted by glass doors, behind which the family of the deceased could place fresh flowers, photos and ornaments. Some people had even placed miniature versions of their loved one’s favourite things such as tiny bottles of Fanta and Coke, tiny guitars and toys and games. Families paid a premium price to rent these spaces for between one and five years, so this was not a burial place for the poor by any means.

Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed the tours and sights, it was somewhat of a relief to return to being just a gringo and not a fully fledged tourist. 

Mini-buses and bowler hats

At the end of my second day in La Paz, I can wholeheartedly confirm that it is a truly fascinating city. Even those people here who are lucky enough to have travelled the length and breadth of the world keep a special place in their heats for La Paz.

It is hard to know where to start. Perhaps I ought to follow convention and start at the beginning! After a somewhat dodgy connecting flight from Miami to La Paz in total darkness, the views as we drove down the mountain from the airport at El Alto proved worth waiting for. As dawn broke and the fog (with a lot of smog added in) lifted, the vast and dusty city was rather spectacularly revealed.

In fact, the word ‘vast’ doesn’t quite cut it! What I think makes it appear bigger than it actually is, is that it exists in a large V shaped valley created by the surrounding mountains, so from any point in the city you can see almost all of the rest of it. The only way I can describe it is for you to imagine taking each corner of London and folding it upwards!

From where we are living- in a quiet residential area on the edge of the centre- it is a 1.50 Bolivianos (about 15 pence) bus ride up the mountain to the city centre and the offices of both IS and Aldeas (the gradient makes walking it unthinkable).

The transport system is both thoroughly entertaining and extremely chaotic. It is essentially made up of tiny minibuses which can ‘fit’ about a dozen people in which have signs on the dashboard stating the route usually accompanied by a man hanging out the window shouting out the same instructions. You flag it down, jump (literally) in and it will stop anywhere you want on the route (bus stops are like flying pigs here and stopping in the middle of a roundabout is not uncommon) and then everybody has to shuffle around when someone wants to get off. One of the most important phrases which we have needed so far is 'aqui mi bajo' or ‘I want to get off here please’!

Perhaps the most striking aspect of La Paz however is the indigenous culture that still dominates much of modern life. Many of the women, particularly the older women wear traditional Bolivian dress every day, whether they work in a tourist area or construction. The traditional dress consists of thick layered skirts in all shades and colours and at least two brightly coloured shawls, as well as Bolivia’s famous bowler hat perched precariously on their heads. Some of the locals also chew cocoa leaves, a very mild narcotic which staves off hunger and dilutes the effects of the altitude.

The altitude hasn’t proved too much of a problem for most of the group so far, although walking anywhere is tiring- even just walking up a short hill makes your heart race which has made me feel dizzy more than once.

These first two weeks are mostly training, learning about the projects we will be working on and getting to grips with the language- something that I am really enjoying and after just a few days my Spanish is considerably better than it was before I left (although I still have a long way to go!). 

Stories, hopes and maybe even the dreams

"Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead

This blog has been created to document the next three months of my life, which will be spent working for a development project on the International Citizen Service scheme at over 4000 m above sea level in the breathtaking and truly unique city of La Paz, nestled in the Andes mountains of Bolivia. 

In 40 hours time I will leave our small, overwhelmingly green island and travel to a country of extremes: Bolivia's climate can be described as both tropically warm and bitterly cold; dry and arid as well as exceptionally soggy. This land-locked nation boasts majestic mountains, vast salt flats and more than a few spatters of Amazonian jungle. 

It is also the poorest country in South America and it is Bolivia's indigenous peoples, who make up over 60% of the population, who continue to be among the very poorest.

Over the next twelve weeks I will be working with some of the most deprived communities in La Paz with the charity Aldeas Infantiles SOS, which is an organisation that works to strengthen and offer support to families and aims to give adults and young people the tools to  take control of their lives. 

Through this blog I hope to share some of the stories, hopes and maybe even the dreams of the people of Bolivia, as well as those of the people who have devoted their lives to international development at Aldeas, International Service (which is the UK based charity that has worked very hard to facilitate my place on the project in Bolivia) and anyone else I have the honour to meet. 

I hope you enjoy reading my blog. I cannot promise that the effects of altitude sickness will allow me to continue posting coherent sentences, but I will do my very best....