Oh, the places you'll go!

When I was home in November I was looking for Spanish language picture books for some of the youngins I've grown so attached to the last couple years. I happened upon Dr. Seuss' Oh, The Places You'll Go! (Spanish title: Oh, Cuan Legos Llegaras!) and got to thinking not just about the young kids but about all kids. The message is so essential and ingrained in kids from the US, but I'm not convinced Bolivian kids have ever heard it. I could only get through the first few pages before my eyes welled up with tears because I am not so sure these kids will start on their journey and accomplish their goals. The vast majority of young kids don't finish high school. They have to work to help support their families or they become pregnant, starting their own families. When up against those odds, you can see in their faces they are just biding time until the inevitable plea from their parents to take on extra burdens and responsibilities. Maybe they won't becomes doctors and lawyers, but I couldn't help but think that they certainly won't if they have resigned themselves to settle for anything less.
Upon returning to Bolivia, I made a decision to make this book the focus of my last year in Bolivia. I will use it in all of my computer classes and if nothing else these kids are going to hear the message that they are capable of great things! What is so beautifully presented in this book is that it won't be easy and at times it will be scary and frustrating but it is important to keep moving forward. The first day of class this year I had them write me a little passage about what they want to be when they grow up. A task that kids in the US are doing as early as first grade but some of my ninth graders just stared at the blank computer screen. I read the book to each of my classes and the kids really responded to the message. They were able to identify the major themes and seemed very excited about the whole exercise. Books are an expensive luxury in Bolivia so not only do these kids not have books in their houses they certainly don't have reading time with their parents. Even the older kids were on the edge of their seats as I read this picture book to them.
This is my favorite passage from the book. The challenges somehow seem more tangible and daunting to these kids than they ever seemed to me.

But on you will go
though the weather be foul
On you will go
though your enemies prowl
On you will go
though the Hakken-Kraks howl
Onward up many
a frightening creek,
though your arms may get sore
and your sneakers may leak.

On and on you will hike
and I know you'll hike far
and face up to your problems
whatever they are.

A Four Fold Franciscan Blessing

I first encountered this prayer while in training at the FMS house in DC and I came back to it recently after a long time. I think it is beautiful and inspiring. It really challenges me and gives me hope at the same time. I hope you enjoy it as well.

May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.

May God bless you with a holy anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work tirelessly for justice, freedom, and peace among all people.

May God bless you with gift of tears to shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all that they cherish, so that you may reach our your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you really can make a difference in this world, so that you are able, with God's grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.

Amen!

Corruption

I recently finished a great book titled The White Man’s Burden: Why the West Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly. It gave me great insight on the US approach to foreign aid and a laundry list of reasons why it doesn’t help to bring people out of poverty. One of this arguments is corruption and bad government. As the vast majority of foreign aid goes from government to government, if the receiving end is corrupt then the poor will never see that money. He cites various research results that indicate that corrupt/bad governments create/maintain poor countries and not that poor countries create bad governments.
I’m not convinced that the current Bolivian administration is entirely corrupt. President Evo Morales was democratically elected and democratically supported in a referendum election. He is not a dictator and people don’t just go missing. The government could probably be doing more to bring its citizens out of poverty but on the whole they don’t appear to be horrible.
The government seems to do a pretty good job creating laws that protect people’s rights. The problem that I see exists in the corruption of the police that are charged with enforcing the laws. I have not met a single Bolivian that trusts the police. Recently some friends witnessed some criminal activity and tried to call the police station SEVEN times without anyone even picking up the phone. The large open air market known as La Cancha is probably home to the highest incidence of crime in the form of petty theft. There are police officers all over La Cancha, but they are directing traffic (poorly! it shouldn’t take an hour to move through 6 blocks of space). There is a vicious cycle of no one respecting the police because they accept bribes, don’t answer the phone, and don’t seem to actually help/protect people, because no one respects them; and the cycle continues.
I think my own personal worst example is in the barrio where I work. It is located just 10km outside the city. If someone calls the police for robbery, assault, or domestic abuse the police literally say “it is too far, uses up too much gas, deal with it yourselves.” I was talking about it to a Bolivian that lived in the States for 10 years and we actually laughed at the idea of calling 911 in the States and being told that six miles is just too far.
Easterly would probably argue that this country is never going to be relevant on an international scale until they find a way to eradicate, or at least seriously diminish corruption.

Sometimes you forget

I shared this story with some recently but for everyone else...

I wait on a corner at the edge of the city to catch a second trufi to the barrio where I work. For months there has been a woman sitting in the median with donkeys. A mother and baby donkey to be exact. For these months I've assumed that she was selling the donkeys. I don't know why someone would come into the city to buy a donkey but that was nevertheless where my thought process went. Finally one day a couple weeks ago I saw a man approach her. I thought to myself, "lo these many months this woman is finally going to sell her donkey!" I just hoped that it wouldn't be for magical beans. I stood there and waited to see the pending transaction even as numerous trufis past. To my horror I saw her walk towards a bucket with drinking glasses on top. A bucket I failed to notice before. She walked over to the mother donkey, milked her straight into the glass, and handed it over to the man who seemed more than willing to pay to chug some donkey milk.

Sometimes I forget that I live in a poor country but there are always incidences that remind me.

A Strong Sense of Community

One amazing thing about Bolivia is the sense of unity that Bolivians carry with them. I learned quickly that the proper etiquette for eating in a group is to first offer to those around you. For example, if you have a bag of potato chips you would open the bag and make a general offer before taking any yourself. I thought at first that maybe this was just a way to get free food off the foreigner but then I noticed the Bolivians doing it themselves. You would think that when you have less you would be more likely to horde but it is quite the opposite. There is an unspoken expectation that if you have today then you will share with those that don’t because tomorrow you might need to rely on those very people.

I was reminded of this recently in my computer class. Now that classes are out on summer vacation I am teaching the teachers to use the computers. With my first group I decided to do a trial run of an idea I have for next year’s students. My idea is to give little stickers to the kids if they win a game or can do something the fastest and the student at the end of the term with the most stickers will win a prize. I thought the teachers would be a good group to try with because they are older and more laid back. Apparently when it comes to stickers teachers are anything but laid back. They were incredibly competitive and telling on each other in hopes that I would take away a sticker as punishment. The whole week they were obsessed with the whole sticker activity. At the end of the week it came time to count them up and give the prize (a cake made by the women in the bakery). I could no sooner deliver the cake to the winner before she was asking for a knife to cut the cake and split it amongst us all. A week of fierce competition and the winner ended up sharing her cake equally with everyone and there weren’t even leftovers for her to take home.

I really admire this trait in Bolivians and I think there is a lesson we can learn from their selflessness and strong sense of community as opposed to the individualism we see so prevalent in the US.

Photos from class

I thought people might enjoy an array of photos from my various classes.

Here we have a student assigning the name of an internal computer part to its picture. Yes he's blindfolded.
He's clearly got some help from his team.

An effective tool for learning the finger positions on the keyboard.
More typing
Kindergarteners learning how to read.
And enjoying it :-)

Running Water!!

Running water in Mineros San Juan might be a reality before the end of 2008. People, mainly women as the men work all day, have been slaving for months now on digging ditches to lay water pipes. The barrio was officially formed in 1995 with people finally having houses instead of living in tents around 2000 (though there are certainly still those that live in tarp covered lean-tos). Water continues to be delivered by big tankards into the used oil drums that everyone has outside their houses. Needless to say this is a huge milestone in the lives of the people and you can sense a certain buzz of excitement in the air. Honestly, I am skeptical of what will come to pass once the water is actually turned out. There has been no education regarding responsible water use and I can imagine people leaving their faucets running all day because they don't have a sense of were the water is coming from or where it is going.
The picture shows one such ditch ready for the water pipes. Those huge rocks along the side are what the ground is made out of in Mineros. It was startling the first time I heard dynamite go off in the neighborhood but now it is just part of the ambient noise as I'm teaching my classes. In a country that was built and sustained on mining, dynamite is easily accessible and readily used. The horrific side of that coin is the history of the Mineros San Juan neighborhood where there were violent confrontations between the land owners and squatters leading to dynamite wars and left many people, including children dead. The opptomistic side is the facilitation of digging ditches for running water. I'm not sure it balances out.