Note to Bolivia

We moved house this week and lost a bit of street cred.  For the last five months I have been able to cite my suburb with a quiet smugness, knowing that any Cochabambino will be somewhat surprised and a little impressed.  People take a gringo seriously if they are living in Cruce Taquina. 

In the last few weeks of living there I started to investigate the upcoming loss.   People say Cruce Taquina is a bad part of town. That it is dangerous, or contextually, more dangerous that other parts of town.  In our time there we saw nothing to back this up; other than the big gates (keeping loud dogs angry) that plague most streets with actual houses in Bolivia.  

As I started to canvas the truth of the rumours, most agreed.  A local Bolivian friend of ours was even not allowed to come to a party at our house because of its location! 

So that leaves me lucky for my loss and at the same moment lucky for the time I spent getting to know the sites, smells, shops and sellers of where I (so smugly) called home.  

Now we’re living it up in the central city, in an apartment with mod-cons like an actual bed, an oven and the internet (street-cred rising again!).  

This is what life consists of

The great thing about working with Proyecto Horizonte is that you can pretty much do what you like! In the sense that if you see somewhere you and your expertise can help then by all means, help.  So aside from working in the school I have my fingers in a few other pies.  Last week I realised it might be a few too many pies but with just over three months left here I know that time will show me what will rise, what is burnt, what tastes good and what is just a little under-cooked in the middle.  So in terms of what else I’m doing here: 

A little marketing and PR – I’m working with Tantakuna, this is the women’s microenterprise group that consists of a bakery and a handicrafts group.  Their banana cake is good, very good, and I love banana cake so I will call myself a connoisseur.  We’re trying to sell their cupcakes at some of the nice spots around town to not only make a little money but also as a channel to talk about the Proyecto and Tantakuna to local Cochabambinos and travellers. 

One of the first prototypes of ´Cochabamba Cupcakes´

A little communications – A new website takes a lot of work! Fingers crossed I can help get this thing live soon…it has been almost a year in the making! 

A little branding – Tantakuna is a group of mothers that has a story to tell and we need to tell it.  I am working to develop some new words and branding for us to get the word out, both here and abroad. 

A little product development – The women of Tantakuna produce some beautiful (and very technical) weaving and knitting but not all of it appeals to the western world.  One of my first ideas when I saw the products of Tantakuna was how cute the key chains were and that with a little work we could appeal to the baby/kid gift market abroad.  So along with a fellow Kiwi volunteer here (who has a lot of persistence, patience and better Spanish than me) we have worked with the group to produce the first samples.  Their great, still samples and I think we can make some more improvements but so far I think they rock (no pictures yet, it is all still top secret)! 

A little design – It’s quite funny to think I’m working on Xmas cards here after all the time, politics, sweat and maybe tears that were involved every year in the process in my old job working for a large corporate with a strong CRM programme!  Here in Bolivia, they are still an excellent tool for communicating with our international audience, so we’re looking at running some art classes or the like to get some creative designs rolling from the kids at school. 

A lot of social marketing (fingers crossed) – I’m not sure why this is last on my list, maybe because it is what I am most excited about succeeding in and therefore most nervous and anxious about.  I want to do some social marketing on nutrition and health in the Ushpa-Ushpa community, no small task given my budget (zero) and my Spanish (slowly creeping above zero).  I’m still in the research phase and from the first few interviews the most used motto has been “Es muy dificil” (“It’s very difficult”)!! 

I won’t let that deter me (yet)!

At the start of May I was asked to move into the colegio (school) in Ushpa-Ushpa to help out in the classes of English. Initially I was a little hesitant given I’m trying to speak as little English as possible and quite frankly, school-age kids kind of scare me! I still remember (with an evil smirk on my face) how horrible I was at age 13 to that new science teacher at my school – I managed to convince the entire class to start ‘crying’ and the teacher that we were all orphans! Kids can be cruel and surely as soon as the kids here know how limited my Spanish is they will have a field day.

The whole school singing the national anthem

So I turned up on my first day determined to be the opposite of what I had been in the guarderia; without smiles, without patience and ready to be stern.  This was almost all thrown out the window when I met the English profesora that I would be helping and she welcomed me with open arms and a big contagious smile! I was introduced to each class and the kids were allowed to ask me anything they wanted as long as it was in English. Phew, this at least cut down the topics significantly and only one of the classes plucked up the courage to ask if I had a boyfriend!

My lovely fellow English teacher

The first couple of weeks were a bit rough. The second day I turned up at school the English teacher wasn’t there. So there I was in front of a class of 30 kids that I hadn’t met yet with no experience teaching, no preperation time, not much Spanish and not even a whiteboard marker!   I successfully found a marker and proceeded with my stern approach by utilising the ´staring in silence´ technique – which also assisted greatly in giving me time to think of something to do…and then how I could verbalise that in Spanish! The class ended up going okay with an introduction game, some number practice, some Bingo and the round song, ¨Black Socks they never get dirty the longer you wear them the blacker they get¨.   This happened a few more times over the next couple of weeks and with the younger classes was almost impossible. One class scared the living daylights out of me when they started dragging a boy, that I was telling off, to the front of the class on the ground…I can only begin to imagine what would happen to a teacher in New Zealand if something like this was to happen!

Las chicas!

After the first couple of weeks things quietened down and the classes have continued to go well. Each day I help out with pronunciation and then assist individual students with their work, I’ve been surprised at how much I can actually help the kids understand with simple probing questions and my level of Spanish.  I’ve also been surprised at the amount of singing I have done! Who would have thought ¨Heads, shoulders, knees and toes¨ would be such a hit!

Being in the school has turned out to be really good for my Spanish because I can understand what the students are saying and when they are learning the basics of English it reinforces the basics in my Spanish. The biblioteca (library) also has some cool kids picture books which are great reading practice for my Spanish!

So after my initial hesitancies, no one has been cruel or even close to it. Yes, the younger classes can get pretty loud but kids get told to be quiet enough times in their lives so I won’t be starting that any time soon. It’s been great feeling part of the school community and it never fails to make me smile when I hear the students speaking English with a Kiwi accent!

"Profe Sara...a mi a mi ami"

Most of my time in Cochabamba is now spent volunteering in Ushpa-Ushpa, a community on the outskirts of Cochabamba.  I’m working for Proyecto Horizonte which has been based in the community for six years and aims to develop it into a sustainable and desirable place to live.  Six years ago the community was just make-shift shelters and there were no local services.  Now there is electricity, shops, a school, a kindergarten, a medical centre, microfinance and most recently the World Wide Web has stopped by for good.  There is still no running water or many employment opportunities but I think people’s lives are slowly improving in small ways each year.

My first month at Ushpa-Ushpa was spent in the guardería (the kindergarten).   Here I was fully immersed in the day-to-day activities and was able to see and learn firsthand about the community, the kids, the staff and the project as a whole.

Each day was spent with a class of three-year olds helping out where I could while my Spanish improved.  For me, this was an eye opening experience, but not in the way one would expect when working in a poor community on the outskirts of Cochabamba.  For me, it was the first time I had spent any significant amount of time with kids in my life!  And I can only say it was a treat to hang out with these neat ninos.

Brisnet and un gato

In terms of improving my Spanish – it is pretty hard to understand what a 3-year-old is saying in any language, especially through tears or a tantrum.  And getting 3-year-olds to actually do something that you want them to do doesn’t have a whole lot to do with what you say to them!

Aside from Spanish, in just a month the kids did manage to teach me a lot and at the same time, do all things people say kids will do to you: made me feel young, made me remember how to ‘play’, showed me the power a smile, taught me patience and proved to me that kids really do say the darnedest things in the cutest ways.

The cheeky one!

In return I did my best to act as silly as possible to get a laugh each day.  My favourite was when the girls would laugh so hard that they would topple over, and because they were holding hands they would tug down all the other girls into one big pile of giggling three-year-olds.  I miss hanging out with them, brushing their teeth and scooping some more of the home-cooked lunches into their little mouths.  To them I was ‘Sala’, the funny gringa with the weird short hair.

No, that's your nose. And are you about to spit on my feet?

What a world away from corporate ‘Sarah’ I am now.

Who said you can't wear jandals everyday for a year