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Published: June 17th 2007
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After finishing up at Pablo and Betsabe´s, we made tracks early in the morning. We decide to hire a car to take us to the next location, the home of David. In typical Bolivian style, 15 of us cram into 2 cars, plus all our equipment and the toliets, and we start our journey. Valle Grande is about 5 hours drive away, and over those 5 hours we move from lush mountains into dry desert. Valle Grande is the location of Che´s last stand, and the town is filled with Che memrobillia. I dont like Valle Grande, the town itself is rather depressing, nothing to really like about it. It is in cowboy country, very dry, there are cactuses and canyons everywhere. David´s house is about 20 mins from the town, not very picturesque. Whilst Pablo and Betsabe´s home had been primitive yet endearing, David´s house was not. On a road, whilst overlooking the mountains, the house didnt insipre enthusiasm. The first thing I see is bired wire hanging across the small courtyard, on which hangs strips of old, dried meat. The ground is covered in rubbish, and with animals. Cats, dogs, horses, ducks, chicks, donkeys, cows. Again, my stomach
Bired wire meat
In our lunch, not so amusing. flips. Hygine, where art thou? Again, it turns out ok, i dont die of food poisoning, whilst the food isnt as nice as the last place, it is edible, and as long as i dont look at the ducks sitting in our bowl of potaoes, all is fine. Its quite incredible how your standards of hygine disappear, by now i was already ripping food apart with my fingers, despite having not showered for a week, and my hands being stained yellow with all the material organico I had collected (manure).
Again, the first thing that L, G and I do is go and look for tent spots. We have to go quite far down the hill away from the house until we find something relatively flat, but that actually turns out better. The hills are pretty, and further down is a lovely little secluded river. Im actually happier camping here than in the last spot, it is drier and therefore (i hope, although my hopes turn out to be incorrect) less spiders.
There is just as much need and poverty here as at Pablo and Betsabe´s, but different. Less appealing, but no less deserving obviously. It is hard to motivate
ourselves, especially as here the work is a lot more heavy. For Lisa and I this is hard, since our muscles are not so great, and it is difficult to not feel at a loose end. They have water here, installed just a week ago (previously David´s mother would have had to walk the 5 mins down the hill to the dirty stream). However, they have neither a toliet or a shower. Over the next few days the students work incredibly hard, building a solar powered shower and a composting toilet, and also sorting out the kitchen. When we arrived, the mother was cooking in a room about 1x1m, no chimney, the ceiling black with soot. I could barely breathe in there, it is horrific to think that David´s mother had probably spent a large portion of her life there. So we also put in a chimney, build her an oven and a sink. Again, at the end of the 3 days the family is incredibly grateful. So it was a good experience, although there were good parts and bad parts. One evening, half way through eating my rice and carbohydrate mess, Galen nudges me and points at the barbed
wire. It is now horribly bare, I look down fearfully at the scrawny bits of meat in my bowl. That was a bad point. A good point was when we decided to cook pizza in the family´s huge outdoor oven. Galen made the dough, Lisa and I collected firewood, chopped vegtables, grated cheese, and it turned out fabulously! One of the best pizzas ive eaten, despite the occasional bits of dirt and ash. And when we asked David´s younger brother, he didnt know what pizza was. So it was nice to do something fun like that with them.
I have to say, i was definately ready to leave at the end of the 3 days however. I was dirty, hadnt showered in 10 days, had been wearing the same socks for 5, couldnt face another bowl of yellow food, if i heard the phrase material organico again i might cry, i wanted to sleep in a bed with sheets. But despite all that, it was an amazing experience. To stay at both David´s home and Pablo and Betsabe´s. Sitting outside before i curled up at night in my tent, looking at the southern cross and the milky way, i even
began to enjoy being dirty!
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