Sleeping In A Stranger's Home.

I never thought routines would be what saved me on this trip, but hey, who knows everything right? The beginnning of the homestays were kind of rough. My spanish was shaky, I didn´t know the people, and I was suddenly on my own. The noises outside were loud and would carry on into the night. The nonstop barking of dogs and the fact that I was sleeping alone in a strangers house made my sleeping sporatic at best. i would wake up every couple of hours, with the party outside raging on, and the dogs still barking at each other across town. The second night was not much better and I cried myself to sleep, while playing my music loud enough to drown out the noise, but quiet enough that I. could fall asleep. Come the third night, I had a breakthrough. I finally slept the whole night. I have since decided that it was probably because it was raining that night and all of the dogs (and people) were in dry hiding spots sleeping. But also some part, perhaps even a larger part, was because I had settled into my routine.

Wake up at 8 (but lets be honest, it was probably 820 before i finally dragged myself out of bed) and get ready for the day. Breakfast was at 830 with my host mother, Ilda and occasionally my host sister Nilda and her two little children. Breakfast consisted of some type of bread with either tea or weak hot chocolate (but who is going to turn down hot chocolate, even if it is weak). I would then wash the dishes and wait to be picked up at 9 by Sam, Emma and Neal to go do whatever project we had planned for that day. That usually lasted until 4 or 430 when I woulde be dropped off at my house for the night.

There were a couple nights evenings when we would have té, around 415 or 430. Té consists of bread and some kind of hot beverage. Most evenings though, I got home too late to enjoy té, and I would just go to my room and hang out until 630 when I would go out to the kitchen  to help make dinner, which usually meant play with the kids while Nilda and Ilda made dinner. Dinner was at around 7 or 715 and after eating I washed the dishes before returning to my room, and they to theirs by 745. The time between then and sleeping was spent listening to music and reading.

I am thankful that I stuck with it, because with a few bonding moments comiserating about girl problems with my host family, and comparing different things in Bolivia and the US, I have really come to enjoy my host family and everything I am experiencing. There are still hard moments, that is for sure, but I know that I can always go home (to my host family) and complain about it in my broken spanish (although that is improving greatly!). I cannot believe we only have one more week in Bolivia, and I am looking forward to all of the bonding moments to come.

I am not really sure why most of this blog post is in past tense, but it may have something to do with the fact that right now we are in a nice town called Sorata, and not staying with our host families. Tomorrow I will return to Batallas and my nice routine, and all of this will become present tense once again.

I will try and post some pictures of them sometime soon.

Good__(enter whatever time of day it is as you are reading this)____, I hope you are doing well!

Adios from Bolivia! - Annie

(Also, writing on the keyboards here is a pain in the butt because everything is moved around and there are added keys. Just thought you should know that.)

Our First Five Days in Photos

We are finally in a place with both internet and time.  We have been doing a lot.  It's been fun and also really hard.  We will write more later, but we thought that pictures would be just the thing right now.  So:

At the Minneapolis Airport, after an early morning.

The view from Elias's family's country house in Huajchilla where we spent the first 2 days resting and acclimatizing.

And the courtyard there.

From the river bed in Huajchilla.

Sam with Patricia, our incredibly gracious host and Elias's mother.

Neal and Elias's little brother Gonzi.

Enough said.

Sam looking cool.

Moon Valley outside La Paz.

Gonzi being cute.

A young Elias gets busy on the dance flo'

Feeding pigeons in a La Paz plaza.

Hanging out with Emma's former host family in La Paz.  We watched the local soccer team, Bolivar, come back to tie in a Copa de Libertadores match.

Neal is sick on our way to Batallas.  

Emma is not interested in being photographed..

Cereal at the bustling Saturday market in Batallas.

About 60 local high school students cram into a room to see a presentation about Scattergood and our environmental ideas before we go out to pick up some recycling after the market.

Neal and his fans.

Annie and Raquel, a solid basketball player and very sweet young lady.

A lot of bags of separated recycling.  Pretty good for 30 minutes work.  Annie does the "Irving".

So that gets us through Saturday!  More photos and stories to come from the last few days.  A brief preview: On Saturday we went to 2.5 hours of a 6 hour service at Emma's Quaker meeting in town.  We shared a great potluck lunch.  On Monday we mini-bused to El Alto and taught a lot of English to high schoolers at the local high school there.  Yesterday we were at the local elementary school in the morning, and came to La Paz in the afternoon.  Today, back to the Quaker School in El Alto.  

We've now officially been here for one week.  Whoa.  

Long Travels and Huajchilla

Hi everyone!

We´ve been somewhat off the grid since we arrived, so this is our first opportunity to post on the blog. Thanks for your patience.

We left with Catherine (thanks!) at 4:30 Tuesday morning to drive to the Cedar Rapids Airport.  We went to sleep in our beds in Huajchilla roughly 24 hours later, at around 4 am.  In between, we made stops in Minneapolis, Miami (a nice halfway point, as there was a lot of Spanish all around us), Bogota, and, finally, our arrival in La Paz.  We cleared customs at around 3 am.  After passing by some money-sniffing dogs (they busted Neal for his $20 that he had already declared) we finally made it out the gate.

We were greeted there by the best possible welcoming person, Patricia Quevedo (Elias´s mom).  She hustled us into a van with blankets and te de coca.  Just walking to the parking lot left us out of breath.  We made the sleepy drive to her family´s guest house in Huajchilla, south of La Paz, got ourselves settled, and went to sleep.

Yesterday we woke up late, ate lunch with Patricia, her son Gustavo (Gonzi), and Doña Sonia, her nanny/cook/awesome lady.  We then walked down through some fields to a river.  Gonzi was incredibly cute and charmed the heck out of all of us, especially Annie.  Her heart was won when he kissed her on the on the cheek to say goodbye.

In the evening we grilled out with the crew from lunch and also Elias´s other brother Daniel, and cousin Nicholas.  Lots of food and good multi-lingual company (including a rousing game of 2v2 futbol, and some spoons).  We are now in an internet cafe in the Zona Sur (the trendiest part of La Paz), on our way to meet up with Emma downtown.

More to come, including pictures!

Nos Vemos,

Sam, Annie, Neal

12 Hours 6 Minutes left here at Scattergood.

As we are gearing up and making all of our final checks to leave for Bolivia, the reality of it all has really started to sink in. Because of some recent events, the number of people that are going on this trip has been reduced to four from the originally planned eight. This has been a hard start to the trip though we have not really had time to fully process everything. We have been needing to focus on finishing our pre-trip check list, packing, and finalizing this blog.

We are really gonna miss our friends who could not come with us and are really feeling this loss. We'll try to to embody the experience that we all would have had to the best of our ability. We will show as best we can what we have done and who we have met on this blog.

Our next post will be from Bolivia!

-Neal, Annie, Sam

Our Itinerary

Bolivia Trip 2014 Itinerary (all dates May)

T(6): Fly from Cedar Rapids in the morning.  Connect through Minneapolis, Miami and Bogota.

W(7): Arrive La Paz in early morning. Stay in Huajchilla with Patricia Quevedo.  Acclimatize and rest.

Th (8): Acclimatize in La Paz.  Rest, and visit museums/parks/sites/etc.

F (9): Drive from La Paz to Batallas (Emma’s home town). Begin home stays with local families.

Sa (10): In Batallas with families. Visit famous Saturday market and work with local students.

Su (11): Friends Meeting in Batallas, rest, free time with families. Optional hike.

M (12)/ T (13): Service learning at Emmanuel (a Quaker HS) in El Alto.

W(14): In Batallas.  

Th(15): In Achacachi, service learning at El Cuaquero (on way to Sorata).

F (16): Service learning in Sorata (a Quaker Guest House in mountains north of La Paz).

Sa (17): Hiking and relaxing in Sorata.  Back to Batallas.

Su (18): Friends Meeting in El Alto.

M (19): In Batallas, rest, short visit to Agricultural University.

T (20): Visit Tiwanaku (an Aymara archaeological site).

W (21): Achacachi, service learning at El Cuaquero.

Th (22): to Isla del Sol (in Lake Titicaca), hiking, beach, relaxing.  Stay in Copacabana.

F(23): from Copa back to Batallas.  Last night with homestay families.

Sa (24): Go to Market, travel to La Paz

Su (25): Fly home.  Leave La Paz early morning and arrive in Cedar Rapids at 9:00.

Laafi - Sam

 As I look ahead to my fifth trip with Scattergood to Latin America, I find myself reflecting on what has been memorable in the past trips. The easy, comfortable moments have mostly been with my fellow travellers. We are made close by our now-obvious similarities and shared language. We see each other as a refuge. We exchange books and stories, laugh with each other, and try to make hard decisions together. We reflect on what is going on around us, and try to better understand how the world works. The moments which have been harder, less comfortable, and more memorable have often been made with our host families. A highlight for me was in Honduras, when Leah’s host mom learned that I wasn’t married yet. To help me with this obvious problem (I was already 28!) she got all of us to join hands and pray with her, to make sure that I had found a wife by the next time that I was there. I think back to the Zapotec family I stayed with last year in Teotitlan del Valle. The abuela, who looked absolutely ancient, made her own chocolate from dried cacao, slowly roasting the beans over an open flame, adding cinnamon and other spices to the mixture. It’s hard to make connections in a second language, and even harder when you don’t speak or understand much at all (which is sometimes the case for my students on these trips). I got a sense of that feeling when visiting my friend Kase who was volunteering for the Peace Corps in Burkina Faso, West Africa. Much of my time there was spent living the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer on holiday. We moved about in small groups of white people, eating kabobs, pommes frites, and, once, a whole chicken, slaughtered and cooked to succulent garlicky perfection while we waited. Five days of this trip felt different, though. These were the days spent in Kase’s village, Zogore, about 20 km from Ouahigouya in the northwest of the country. Zogore was set up as a loose collection of family compounds, each about half a football field away from each other. I’d only ever traveled before in mountainous countries with no space to spare, houses on top of houses. Zogore luxuriated out into the Sahel. The spread of Zogore had an interesting effect on greetings. Villagers walking here and there would swerve well out of their way to say hi. These greetings in the local language, Moré, included at least three exchanges about one’s health and the health of one’s family. I mostly remember the word for “health”, “Laaafi” going back and forth, drawn out like a song. Laafi, Laaaaafi, Laafi. It had been dry for months. My third night in Zogore, though, the first storm of the rainy season hammered down on Kase’s corrugated tin roof, bringing much needed moisture to the ground and a brief respite from the heat. We had been sleeping outside, in sparse tents, and barely made it inside before the deluge. When we woke up the next morning the broad puddles were already tinged with rings of green, where only dust had been before. On this day I got more insight into all the “Laafi’s”: in a culture close to death and sickness, health is something to be noticed and blessed. The rain had brought a little more freshness to the air, but it was still very hot. Kase and I were sitting in his courtyard in the late afternoon, slowly moving our chairs to stay in the shade of the house, when one of his neighbors came by to collect us. Kase didn’t quite know what was going on, and I, speaking neither Moré nor French, was useless. We walked a short distance to a large Baobab tree. There was a circle of shoeless men. We took our shoes off too, not knowing why, and added them to the pile. I peered through the circle of men; it turned out they were digging a grave. As groups of men with an engineering project do all over the world, they were arguing about it, offering unwanted advice, being know-it-alls. Soon, though, the job was done. Later, a group of women would proceed out of a nearby compound with a dead child wrapped all in white cloth. They would wail and cry out. The child would be interred after some brief words, and we would eat together. But what I most remember is that moment standing around after the grave was dug. The moon was rising full through the Baobab tree as the sun set behind us. The ground was newly tinged with green, and we were waiting, nothing to do, empty as a pocket. The moment felt quiet and sacred: a group of men standing barefoot around a hole under a tree, a pile of ordinary shoes resting nearby, waiting also. I understood almost none of the words spoken that day, and the experience certainly was not comfortable, but the words and my comfort, weighed against this moment, mattered very little.

Quakerism In Bolivia - Ale

When one thinks of Bolivia, the stereotypical image conjured is probably one of llamas, alpacas, potatoes, and bowler hats, rather than Quakers. While less than one percent of Bolivians may identify as Quaker, Bolivia, the poorest country in South America, and one of  the poorest in the Americas, actually has the highest number of those who identify as Quaker relative to its total population (around .3%). Bolivia also comes in third in plain volume of Quakers, just behind the United States and Kenya.

While many at Scattergood might think that the bulk of Quakers in the world are unprogrammed, non-pastoral friends (meaning their meetings have no pastor or set program), the truth is that most Quakers worldwide are Friends who have pastored meetings, many of which are also considered Evangelical in their belief in ‘savedness’ and the sanctity of scripture.

Similarly, the majority of Bolivian quakers are Evangelical, pastoral Friends, and associated through their yearly meetings with Evangelical Friends Church International (EFCI). While these groups are much more rooted in scripture, they also consider themselves to be part of the wider Quaker world community, and as such serve in and are served by groups such as Friends World Consultation Committee.

This sort of evangelical Quakerism was brought to Bolivia in 1919 by William Abel, an American evangelical Quaker of Navajo background, who preached Quakerism in La Paz, prompting those who found truth in his message to study at the Friends’ Biblical Institute in Guatemala and then preach in Bolivia.

Additionally, Quakers are present in Bolivia through humanitarian poverty-aid efforts, such as Quaker Bolivia Link (QBL), an organization which aims to provide a quaker response to poverty in bolivia, and “raise awareness of Bolivian culture and society.” It seems QBL does important work the right way:

QBL funds projects generated by the communities themselves. We do not impose our ideas, but work with the populace to meet their self-defined goals. QBL provides skilled planning, supervised construction, maintenance and management training, and long-term evaluation.

However, what is more interesting perhaps is the relationship between Bolivian, largely evangelical, Quakerism, non-Quaker bolivia, and the wider Quaker world. Despite wide apparent ideological differences, evangelical Quakers, non-evangelical pastoral Quakers, conservative Friends, and liberal Quakers alike gather each year at the World Gathering of the Society of Friends. All these groups also contribute to Quaker literature, such as Spirit Rising, a collection of testimonies on spirit from youth, where, in contrast to most of the American and Canadian entries, the Bolivian entries tended to refer to savedness.