I am coming off of 2 of the most rewarding and fun weeks I could imagine having here in Bolivia, which involved roofing 9 homes in a crazy marathon roofing week followed by having 8 friends visit from the US to help with building a home in Cochabamba. If you aren’t going to spend Thanksgiving eating turkey and pumpkin pie with your family, I have to say building walls with a needy family and drinking Bolivian wine with close friends has to be one of the best ways to give thanks. Click HERE to see pictures from the past 3 weeks: roofing, building walls, and the Blitz Build in Cochabamba!
Roofing week (two weeks ago) was a great success despite some coldish and rainy days. I had a buddy, Brian, from New York in town for the week and Winnie, a friend from the Peace Corp, pitched in. The 2 of them provide some much-valued muscle as we roofed 2 homes a day. The families were wonderful providing some kicking good chicken and potato meals and shoveling rocks and dirt to prepare the cement mix. I had my share of marriage proposals from the ayudantes (workers) which is my bellweather for whether they think I am working hard or not!
Brian and I then headed up north to a larger city, Cochabamba, where we were joined by an awesome crew of friends last week, mostly my classmates from business school. They were troopers, cranking out walls, mixing cement, and excavating dirt for the Siles family in Cochabamba, even in rainy days and despite the altitude of 8000 feet. The family was so impressed and amazed by how much we got accomplished in 5 days: from just having the foundations in place to building all the walls to putting in the first row of cement for the roof. I don’t know if I’ve been prouder of my friends ever.
The only downer the past couple of weeks has been my (ongoing) battle with the mayor over water installation. In order to get a meeting with him I ended up attending an inauguration for a new school and dancing with the whole town council. That was fun, but the meeting itself was a slight disaster... He’s definitely my match in stubbornness, and expects kickbacks to support installing water in my neighborhood. I’m holding out and looking for ways to get the darn water system installed without resorting to supporting a corrupt politician. I’ll keep you posted.
Saludos,
Naomi
Gold medals of Japanese athletes in Athens are driving many Japanese exciting. The person on the bottle had been a national hero, inspired patriotism in Japanese history. On the other hand the taste of beer is very light, too light.
Posted by: smiley flea market | July 11, 2008 at 03:50 PM