The 1 month milestone

As of yesterday, the 25th of February, I have been here for 1 month. I really can't believe it!

I have gotten so used to life here. A beautiful landscape of dark mountains and clouds every morning, with a huge moon if you get up early enough. All the best fruit in the world. Strange weather that changes all the time. Apart from the little incident with my bag last week I have been really lucky, felt safe pretty much all of the time so thank you to everyone who has been praying for me. 

I was talking to my host mum Chuly about it and she said it felt like I had been here forever, which was  a lovely thing to hear! I am really glad I chose to stay in a host family, I have been able to do so many things that I wouldn't normally, like family barbecues, the trip to Chapare, and also a couple of weeks ago I went with my host mum to one of those events where they introduce a new product, health supplements in the form of a coffee flavour drink, and persuade you for ages that it's great and you should buy it. Which... was interesting. I didn't buy it but it was good for my spanish. That's another thing, it has forced me to speak spanish all the time and I can really see the improvement!

I watched an Almodovar film from Spain the other day, and I realised how different the language is. Instead of 's' for 'c's they have 'th's which makes it sound like they all have lisps. I think I spoke like that when I first arrived though...

Work at Proyecto Horizonte has been the main part of my time here. I'm really enjoying it. 

Hand prints

This is my normal day.

I leave the house at half seven after un desayuno de fruit salad, tea, and toasted cheese sandwich. It takes me about an hour to commute to work through the city in 2 trufis. But that's pretty unreliable. Yesterday there was a blockade on the road to work (which is the answer to everything in Bolivia) which means we have to take a huge detour. I think there's one tomorrow that will be worse, which will mean walking 6km or... taking the day off...

Working with the children is sometimes really fun, sometimes really exhausting, sometimes really rewarding, depending on what mood they are in and what mood I am in. I would say 80% fun and rewarding. First thing in the morning they play with lego or wooden blocks or plasticine. Then they have breakfast, go to the toilet and wash their hands. 3 year olds are messy. The worst toilet experience I had was a kid, Jhassed, who had a really bad nosebleed whilst we were doing the toilet run. There was so much blood, it was everywhere. Then all of a sudden he just vomited blood. There was a lot of that too. It was really scary! He's been to the clinic and got sorted out now though I do believe. 

Then in the mornings we do all kinds of things. Drawing, colouring, making lolly stick puppets, we have dressed up like little children and taught the kids about sharing and not fighting, we have put on puppet shows, we often go for walks, to this little church down the road to sit and have a snack, or once we walked up to the school where the whole school were having a huge water and foam fight as part of one of Proyecto Horizonte{s campaigns about violence at carnival. The kids loved it. We{ve played musical chairs, we dance with the kids, and go over the days of the week, months of the year, numbers, colours, fruits, vegetables etc once a day.

Something else which we have started to do is teach them how to brush their teeth. The majority of the kids have really bad decay on their teeth, and some of them don{t have top front teeth because they don't look after them. It must be so painful! 

On Mondays we sing the national anthem and raise the flag with the whole school. Although at the moment it is just the profes singing, I'm sure it will come.. On Wednesdays we do physical education where we have races and do mini assault courses and play in the park. Hours of fun.

Then we have lunch, which for some kids is difficult. Some of them just don't want to eat!

Then they have a little sleep, we clean the room then that's my morning done!

In the afternoons I ususally stay in the offices for a few hours doing my work, I get all of Lidia's work off her and just rearrange it into an article, I interview people about things, upload articles... Now there is internet at the offices it makes everything a lot easier. 

Aline and me working super hard

Although sometimes we retire to our town office, Molino Blanco cafe, where we do work over tasty coffee and sometimes a slice of cheesecake de maracuya, passion fruit. Mmmmm. 

There is always a lot of work to do and I really feel like I am doing something that is making a difference. You can see all of the news on the google+ page  https://plus.google.com/100622138417357461791/posts and also on facebook https://www.facebook.com/ProyectoHorizonte

Also through the project I have had the opportunity to start a photography course with some other volunteers, twice a week which so far has been really interesting. I have learnt a lot about the technical side of photography and am yet to put it into practice whilst still camera searching, which my photography teacher is helping me with. (www.stevecamargo.com).

Today I also started yoga at Ushpa which is at 7.30am twice a week. It's interesting. I've not quite made my mind up about it yet. Haha..

So usually I work with Aline till 7ish, then either go to photography, or watch a spanish movie at home, or go out for a drink. 

Last weekend I went to the jungle to Villa Tunari with some friends, the journey which was meant to take 3 hours took 6 because of landslides because of all the rain! We went to the Machia national park, which was absolutely beautiful. Saw so many new things, plants insects, had a shower in the cold waterfall at the end of the trail which was well deserved, and when we were losing hope of seeing any monkeys they crept up on us from behind. They are really amazing creatures. Whilst we were there we also had fish, which is really uncommon in Cochabamba, but here it was so delicious, I have really missed it. I bought a cocoa fruit and am going to make my own hot chocolate, and also tried star fruit juice. It's tasty. Here are some pictures!

the jungle

Mmmmm Surubi

All very sweaty at the top of the mountain


Also I am really happy I cut all of my hair off. I would really reccommend it .  It makes life so much easier and is som much more comfortable. However it has got to the point where I am considering getting a comb.

Carnaval!

 I think I may have picked the best time to come to Bolivia. The first couple of weeks in February are carnival season, something which I will try to describe as best I can but really is quite indescribable.

The main carnival was in Oruro last saturday the 9th, a town about 4 hours from Cochabamba. We only decided to go last-minute, everyone had told me I absolutely had to go. In Bolivia you can't buy bus tickets in advance so we went to the bus terminal at 4am in order to get there as early as possible. Even at 4 the bus station was packed, and luckily we managed to get on a bus at 5. Which cost me the same as a pint! 

I can never sleep on journeys normally, except this time I thought I saw cameras on the roads to check if travelers were eating anything, and that there was a witch blockade under a bridge. So I guess I must have slept. 

When we got there Oruro was packed! The town is a lot older than Cochabamba and not as nice, but as we were walking through to go to the carnival there were so many people dressed up in costumes, musicians walking past with huge brass instruments, a lot of people selling ponchos and a lot of people spraying everyone with shaving foam.

We had seats on the side of the main road, it was basically 8 rows of wooden planks and we were at the top, which meant we had to climb up this wobbly wooden ladder. 

The parade was like nothing I have ever seen before. There were 50 dance groups, each group had about 500 people, and they went from 6am to 3am. The dances were from different parts of Bolivia, and each dancer had an amazing costume on. Huge bear costumes, tiny little dresses with big boots, bells on boots, masks of ugly faces, huge head pieces………I wish I had photos to show you!

Just the sheer amount of people was incredible! Everyone sat in the front row was having foam fights, all the kids and also some adults who looked like they were enjoying it more than the kids. People just got covered in foam!

Some people behind us, on the top row with a big drop behind them were really drunk; a very funny combination: heights, dodgy ladders and drunk people. But they were all really friendly!

It was sunny all day but then at about 9 it started to hail really hard, with thunder and lightning. We had the great idea of looking for toilets at that exact time, we found none but got very very wet. The streets were inch deep in water. At one point the roof of the seats fell in and a huge waterfall landed on some very poor people. It was an absolute disaster! But the show went on. The dancers danced with umbrellas and the musicians wore ponchos.

Then the best act, number 34, came. It was la diablada. All of the costumes had led lights in, flashing eyes, flashing wings, flashing skirts. And they had fireworks coming out of some of the masks so people were literally dancing with fireworks coming off their heads and some people breathing fire. They also had a washing line with fire coming off it. It was amazing. 

I think Oruro is a town that really lives for carnival though, I can't imagine it's very lively the rest of the year!

It was really hard to find a bus back on Sunday, finally found a cama bus (bed bus) at half 3. It was so nice, I was on the top deck right at the front with the best views. Around Oruro was this huge flood plain, completely empty with tiny little muddy lakes and piles of litter. I think there might even have been a golf course, wierd. Then we were in the mountains. Winding through them, with huge cliff faces on one side and death drops on the other. The roads were covered in debris from the cliff faces, and as it had rained there was a waterfall of red mud sliding onto the road. Again, I wish I still had my photos...

Monday and Tuesday were bank holidays. On Monday I had a really wierd headache and stayed at home and watched Harry Potter, but on Tuesday I went with my host family to their casita in Villa Tunari in the tropics, about three and a half hours away. I went with Chuly, her manfired Rahul, my host brother Aldo and Rene who came to look at the house because they want to sell it. The drive there was also amazing, completely different. So many layers of green, also really mountainous, with little streams running down the side of grey cliffs. The mountains were covered in clouds, and the air was thick with water. 

Their house was on the outskirts of a village called Villa Tunari deep in the jungle. 

We were in there for about 10 minutes before we realised there were fleas in the house! I think it was because the dogs had been sleeping in there. They were everywhere! After de-fleaing manually we went to find some insect repellant and sprayed the house and ourselves down. We then had to leave to give the fleas some time, so we went to a nearby park where monkeys live! We walked up a small mountain, and on the way were met by little friends, who held my hand, bit me, tried for my camera and sat on my shoulders. I had some really great photos... At the top were some really lovely views over the valley and the village. And I tried cinnamon ice-cream for the first time!

Back at the house we opened the beers and got the barbecue going. Bolivians can barbecue properly. We had chorizo, beef, and a whole cross section of an animal. 

Another tradition is Ch'allar every month; you make a little fire and burn a bit of everything; herbs, sweets, fake money, rubbish. It smells really nice. Then you carry it around every corner of every room in the house to protect it from everything bad.

When we got home, after a beautiful journey home through the clouds, we discovered there was no water in the house! So we were dirty and flea-ridden with no shower! In the end we went to the my host cousins house to shower. They were having a carnival party with all of the family, so of course we stayed and danced! 

The half week at work went really well, all the kids are starting to settle in now and getting used to being away from home and the routine. We started off the first week with 30 kids, but now there are only about 20 every day. On Thursday it rained a lot so we had to stay inside, and the kids were really agitated and struggled to finish their lunch and also had trouble getting them to sleep! On Friday we went for a walk up the hill to the school to eat our bananas where they had just had a campaign against violence at carnival, as part of the fun is throwing water bombs at passing-by cars, and sometimes they are not filled with very nice things... The whole school was having a water fight with water guns  and foam, the kids really love it.

Then Saturday was the Corso de Corso parade in Cochabamba. Very similar to Oruro but they had a load of fun dances in the afternoon, like an army of smurfs, of marios, and a beach float with all-painted girls. Then all the usual dances, caporales, diabladas...

Managed to get some photos off a friend;

I preferred the atmosphere here, it was a lot more chillaxed and we danced on the street and met a lot of cool people. 

Then, my bag got stolen. Someone just grabbed it from underneath the seats and ran off before I even had time to react. We looked everywhere just in case someone had taken the valuable stuff out and thrown it away, and spoke to the police but there was nothing I could do. I lost my camera, with all of my photos on, phone, my house keys, my little book with all of my information in...So that was pretty rubbish! My rain jacket also fell off the back of the seats and got taken. Woohoo!

But there was nothing I could do, and it definitely could have been worse. At least I wasn't stupid enough to take my passport or my bank card with me. So I continued to enjoy the carnival, empty handed. I went to have nachos and mojitos with the girls, and then went out dancing. I met 4 english people that night, which is really wierd as there are almost no english people here! And some of them had heard of Malmesbury, which is even wierder!

Back to work this week. A German couple have sponsored one of the kindergarten classes for the year to celebrate their own daughter's first birthday, so I am doing some work on that, presenting the class to them and planning fortnightly bits of news to send to them. As well as that there is still the general covering of all of the events here and getting news from the other volunteers about their experiences. Although now I'm working with Lidia, the communications lady, she is covering a lot of the events which makes my life a lot easier.

And we are planning another trip to Villa Tunari this weekend!

Start of work at Proyecto Horizonte

This week I have started work properly at Proyecto Horizonte. In the mornings I help in the kindergarten in a class of about 30 3 year olds with 2 teachers Raquel and Susannah. The children have breakfast, lunch and snacks here and inbetween we go for walks in the community, play in the park, lots of playing, sing songs, learn about colours, days of the week numbers etc... as well as why fruit and vegetables are great and why washing your hands is good. Most of the children are absolute angels and get on really well, but there are a few right little rascals and also some who are really home sick and cry all day. I have had many an encounter with pooey bottoms but not as bad as my friend Aline, who got peed on yesterday and has her class of crying 2 year olds following her in her dreams!

My class Inicio 2, eatin platanos

Congestion as someone got stuck up on the slide

Cayetana and Drisley

In the afternoons I am working on news production and communications. This involves co-ordinating and writing articles about everything that goes on here; from events and meetings with other organisations to everyday activities and impressions. We are trying to increase our social networking activity to increase awareness about what we're doing! It's a lot of work, but it's really good as I can continue with it when I get home. Also I have missed making posters and doing presentations and writing letters and using that part of my brain since college!
If you'd like to be added to Proyecto Horizonte's mailing list and receive updates and photos about what's occuring just let me know!