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I have now reached saturday 12th in my summary of the past few days. On the morning of Saturday, I meet lisa, galen, tristan to take a taxi to puka puka. They have been in Sucre to buy 1000 (later to be 3000) trees to plant in the village, and also to buy materials to build male and female urinals (I have been quickly initiated into the gritty details of toliet building, the problems, the different styles and methods. Again, as i am sure you are pleased to hear, i will come back to this later!) So, loaded up with pipes, urinals, tubes etc, we set off in the taxi. For the next hour and a half we happily chew coca, eat biscuits and observe the barren scenery. The most noticable thing about the countryside around sucre is that there are no trees. Only cacti and dry shrubs (and the occasional eucalyptus and pine plantation, which i have been assured is very bad because these trees are fast growing, are cultivated for wood, and suck the goodness out of the soil). The parched mountains stretch for miles, with occasional mud coloured collections of houses, and the rivers are almost dry.
I am told it is a totally different country in the rainy season, but for now it is brown and dry, eery but very beautiful. Water is rare, and as I am told and I will see when I arrive in Puka Puka, water is life. Agua es vida.
Puka Puka itself is a small village which doesnt feature in any guidebook, and it takes a while for the locals in sucre to register where you are talking about. It has a population of about 700, and it centres around a school. The school appears to be the priority, this is where water was first pumped to when lisa and galen arrived a few years ago, and it is now the only building in the village with electricity. They say that they are trying to get electricty to the houses by the end of the year, but they need money first. The school is covered with paintings and murals, depicting the necessity and beauty of water. Puka Puka is a fascinating place, both for the village itself and for the work that Lisa and Galen have done there. There is much to write about, definately too much to write here.
A large proportion of the village belong to the baha´i religion, which was brought to the village by a travelling elder i think 24 years ago. Originally it came from 19th century Persia, and it teaches that there is one god, one essence. From what I gathered by conversations with one of the leaders of the village, (albeit through my fragmented understanding of spanish and lisa and galen´s translations), it is based on tolerance and unity and love. There are other religions in the village and at each village meeting prayers are said from all the religions. What is most important to them is education and the Pachamama, the earth mother. The most striking thing about the people i met in Puka Puka was their intellegence, and their dedication to the earth, and their intense desire to look to the future and correct the mistakes that they have made.
Puka Puka seemed to me a place of contradictions. They listen to radios and many of the men at least wear largly western clothes (the woman still wear traditional dress, which is beautiful. Brightly coloured skirts, woven cloaks and wonderfully strange hats). But their houses are made of adobe and they
Teaching
The importance of compost cook on ancient, stone ovens.
A while ago pesticides were given to them, and now through overuse their soil is dying. It lacks moisture and nutrients, and so the only solution they have is to use more pesticides. Much of what Lisa and Galen do is incredably simple. They show the people how to create compost, how to punch holes in a rubber tube to irrigate the fields, how to cover the soil with grass and leaves so that it retains its moisture, and some of the nutrients are returned. They show them how to build composting toliets, that turns the yucky stuff into something positive. However it is a lot of work, and takes a lot of time to introduce a totally new way of living and working. It is incredibly sad to see water running in the streets tinged with blue, to pick up a handful of soil and see it crumble into nothing because, essentially, it is nothing but sand.
This possibly sounds confused, largely because there is so much to write. There are definately many stories that can be told, and hopefully I will be able to tell some of them. Apart from that however,
it was pretty amazing to arrive in Bolivia, and be taken immediately to a Quecha village, to sleep in a mud hut (freezing to death!), to eat (slightly questionable) bolivian food, to see lisa and galen doing something that is really changing these people´s lives.
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