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.

Little by little

I am happy to report that I have really fallen into a routine with the classes. I still have around 25 different classes a week and the only difference is that they have different kids. I teach the same content which means that by the end of the week I am speaking without thinking and anticipating all the snags. The week wraps up with the 8th graders who are clearly the most fortunate because after 24 tries what I present to them is about as good as I can get it. The poor 5th graders at the beginning of the week get the first draft and unfortunately all of my frustration when it doesn't go well. They are long days and I'm not sure I can honestly say that I love it but I'm willing to stick it out because I see the value in it. It has only been a month so I expect that things will only get better. As I begin to get to know the kids better and get to relax a little more I think I'll be a little happier.
It has been nice to be exposed to a different population within the neighborhood. For a year I was working exclusively with women and just a small group of 30 at that. Now I have around 300 different kids ranging from 5-15 years old and a group of 15 kids from the city. They live in a boys home for kids directly off the street and the majority dealing with addictions. I have just moved around the corner from the bakery but I feel my ministry has opened up tremendously and I am experiencing a reality of Bolivia that I hadn't before.
I have been able to maintain my relationships with the women, specifically those that work in the bakery. I each lunch with them everyday and on Saturdays I take a break from computer lab free-time and go visit them in their houses. Yesterday I had a long lunch at one house and it was really nice to just sit and talk and play with the kids. I hopeful that this can continue and I can reap the benefits of both ministries :-)

End Week 1 of classes

Thanks to everyone for the encouraging and supportive words. I wish I had the energy to give you a more full accounting of my first week as a fulltime computer teacher. I am up at 6am and leave the house at 7:30 to arrive between 8:15 and 8:30 for my first class which starts at 9am. I have one hour blocks of class from 9am to 6pm with a one hour break for lunch, five and a half days a week. You'll note the timestamp on this post. I need to be getting to sleep because 6am comes pretty early, as most of you readers know. I don't pretend to be special. Lots of people get up at 6am, or earlier. I digress. It has been a pretty boring week because I have to administer pre-tests to all the kids except for my Kindergarten students because they can't read. They have been a joy. They are currently playing a educational software program to learn how to use the mouse. They are incredibly fast learners and so enthusiastic and so exhausting!! I'll try and write a more detailed account at some point in the not too distant future but for now I will sum up. This has been a transformative week in my ministry here in Bolivia and while it has been a little boring and yet overwhelming I am looking forward to seeing how it unfolds.

Computer Lab

Well folks it has finally happened. After nearly a year of waiting with baited anticipation, my computer lab has finally arrived. Sixteen computers equipped with speakers, headphones, and webcams, two printers and all in a freshly renovated room. Excitement doesn't begin to describe the last couple of weeks. I've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Things seem to be working fairly well for now. I've had some problems with the printers but I can make it work, not really the way it was intended, but if I can get a document from the computer to a piece of paper then that is enough.
One of the places I've been running frantically to is meetings. Everyone wants a piece of the computer lab, from kindergarten to adults attending night school and there are really only so many hours in a day. So far I've got the kids in kindergarten, fourth through eighth grade, the night school, and three separate groups of kids from the orphanage system, Amanecer, that will be coming from the city. Still to fit in is women from Tantakuna, the women's group. Oh, and free time where everyone can come and practice. It sounds like a lot and completely overwhelming and it probably will be but pictured below was Friday afternoon. I was sitting with the bakery women and said "I'm not going to print out any more accounting sheets for you. You're going to come to the computer lab and do it directly on the computer." They were very apprehensive and intimidated at the idea but we went and did some practice with the last weeks numbers. They did great and were so amazed and impressed by the capabilities of MS Excel to do all the calculations for them. Just sitting there watching them take control of their bookkeeping (entering the data into the computer is what I've done since last year) brought such joy and pride in my heart that I know all the stress and frustration that awaits me will be worthwhile.

Pumpkin Pie

While I was back in the States visiting in February my grandma bought me a Mennonite cookbook which I thought would be really helpful for new ideas in the bakery. My prejudice led me to believe that the cookbook would have recipes that had only basic ingredients, i.e. nothing special that had to be bought in the grocery store like Cool Whip or pudding. Big mistake. Those Mennonites love their processed ingredients but it wasn't all for not. There are a few basic recipes as well. At the beginning of this week the women were asking me for different pie recipes since our venture into apple pie turned out so well. Pumpkin was among the list and they jumped on it. Pumpkin is super cheap which was a huge plus. The recipe from the cookbook was nothing like Libby's but I decided to give it a go, also having never cooked pumpkin and always relied on the canned version, I was full of trepidation. From beginning to end I thought that there was no way that it was going to turn out well. I think the sign of a good chef is knowing when something is going to be awful...and it was. Okay, maybe not awful, people said they liked it but it was really liquidy and the flavor was all off. It was sweet so that is probably why people liked it. Here are my theories about what went wrong. First and foremost, I cooked the pumpkin and then mashed it and put it straight into the bowl. Turns out that pumpkin holds a lot of water so next I'm going to cook, mash, and then cook again to evaporate as much water as I can. Second, the recipe called for cinnamon and nutmeg, where as Libby's says cinnamon, ginger, and cloves. Third, the recipe called for only three tablespoons of pumpkin where as I'm pretty sure that there is at least a cup if not more in a can of pumpkin. All signs point to a much more successful second attempt.