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Cochabamba is a great place. Its in a valley surrounded on most sides by mountains which you can walk up at weekends. Lovely climate, blue all day, not too hot but hot enough. Everyone is pretty cheerful as if they know they´ve got it ok here. Lots of open spaces to relax, lots of bars and cafes etc which you can eat at, and street vendors you don’t touch with a barge pole. Really fallen on our feet here.
We have a very nice ´granny flat´ attached to a large house and are left to our own devices by the owners. Good, safe part of town as well, although we have a private guard at night who patrols the street.
Have joined the country club. This place is great, real touch of luxury, so we are making the most of it and playing tennis most days. Borrowed a set of golf clubs and played for the first time today. All in all very busy, we can sense the time rushing past already…
It’s been difficult to find the time and resources to give you a good idea of what life in Cochabamba has been like so far. But now
Calle German Urquidi
Our street - calle german urquidi, cochabambaI have found a keyboard which sort of works and on which I can find most of the English punctuation and function keys so here goes!
Please feel free to read as little as you want, it’s just providing lots of detail on our everyday life if you’re interested;
The Area we live in
The apartment is situated in an affluent part of town. Daniella, the Director of Teaching Projects Abroad (TAPA) lives a few houses away from ours on the top floor of her parents’ house. Her Grandfather lives opposite, one Uncle runs the mechanics shop next door and the other the neighbourhood restaurant El Porten on the corner.
We live in the shadow of Cochabamba’s exclusive shopping mall and apartment complex, Torres Sofer which is complete with drive in hotdog restaurant. In the shopping mall is one of only 3 supermarkets in Cochabamba! This means we are only a few minutes away from western civilization and food.
Every road in this area has a guard who is stationed in a hut on the street, they are there all night and 24 hours at weekends. In addition there is a bicycle powered guard who patrols
German Urquidi and Cristo
German Urquidi with the Cristo in the background. the area. This is all paid for by the houses in the street.
Daniella’s Uncle’s restaurant is somewhat unique. It´s a Churrisqueria which means that it specialises in flame grilled meats. This is very upmarket though and it has a ‘funland’ for children attached including swimming pool. This is where the well heeled Cochabambino’s come at the weekend. The wine list is 4 pages long and has 2 of our all time favourites from Argentina on it for a tenth of what we pay at home!
Our biggest problem is pronunciation of ’Calle German Urquidi’ to Taxi drivers after a few beers.
The Apartment
Our apartment ajoins a house belonging to a Dr Rosel and his wife. They are currently in Houston so we haven’t met them yet. They have a housemaid Rosemary who we communicate with in smiles and pigeon Spanish.
They also have a son Fillipe who is 40ish and runs the musical instrument store in the centre of town. He’s a funny guy with crap DIY skills and has been the source of a few good nights out. Last Saturday we went to see a Bongo band that was brilliant, African,
South
tapa volunteers
SOme of the other volunteers at TAPA American and Middle Eastern rhythms.
You go through big gates to get to our front door which is surrounded with honeysuckle. This opens into a living area with two chairs and a sofa of the most uncomfortable old
person style imaginable - unfortunately I hate this room and it makes staying in the apartment in the evenings very uncomfortable. It’s just old fashioned and dim and not
homely at all.
We have a huge bedroom with comfortable bed and ensuite bathroom. This is top of the range 1970’s complete with bidet and avocado suite - nothing to complain about. There are loads of lovely tropical flowers outside the window.
In the kitchen we have a new cooker, toaster etc but the trouble is that it is much cheaper to eat out than to buy food in so we just use it for coffee, tea and cereals.
The fridge is huge!
The second bedroom is currently laid out as a dining room and we have a guest bathroom too. The outside washing areas is just that, a court yard with two huge sinks and a washing line.
The Garden
The Rossel´s house has the most gorgeous garden and Fillipe has allowed us to use their veranda. Not sure if we can when they get back from Houston though. It has apple trees and lemon trees, the biggest geraniums I have ever seen. Every boarder is a riot of
colour, Echinacea, lilies, arum lilies, stralitzia (!) and every tree festooned with blossom and flowers. Hummingbirds in the trees and manicured lawn.
In fact, the whole of Cochabamba is a blaze of colour and this isn’t the flower season we are told.
The University
Big and oversubscribed and busy busy busy. The classrooms are out of the Victorian era but with a whiteboard at the front. It’s quite normal to have 80 to 100 students in one class. It’s a public university which means that they pay relatively little to go there.
Bolivian’s are very laid back and this applies to their attendance but as you would expect there are some who really want to get on and therefore come along to all lectures.
The campus is strewn with communist like statues and murals but in the main its nice and has lots of open areas to sit and chat and get coffee.
Teaching
Simon is computer science and I am Economics - we are guinea pigs as neither discipline has had volunteers before. My class is first year economics but I am taking them for conversational English. So far I have been to 3 of their lectures in which they are
learning to conjugate verbs. I managed to get them to sign up to my additional conversational classes last week (white board, timetable and pens and told them to put their name next to a class!) which start in earnest on Monday. It’s quite comical
because my Spanish isn’t good enough to keep up with their excuses.
I did get to give my first lesson this week though - introductions and greetings. We think that they have learnt English for years at school but with teaching methods being out of the ark they have never really spoken English. Things hot up next week with the
inflatable globe becoming the focus for lesson 2 ‘where are you from? and nationalities!’
Of course we have had no instruction on what to teach them so we’ve decided to run our own Spanish lessons in reverse. I spent last Tuesday snowpaking out the Spanish on our night school Latin American handouts and putting English in its place. But it works and they cant believe that they get free handouts!
We are trying to make the lessons fun and varied because you really wouldn’t believe how they are taught - its excruciating. They are also really shy.
The other Volunteers
We met them for the first time on Tuesday night. As luck would have it we bumped into a guy we met on the open day in Brighton and he took our mobile number and called us with the rendezvous.
Three social nights later we can report that: We are the oldest by miles apart from one retired lecturer Valerie still to be seen! Some are 17 which make me twice their age and others 25 ish. But they are a good bunch. As you might expect they are trying so hard
to be cool travelers that they end up looking the same. They are festooned in friendship bands and have started to learn the guitar. They are an intrepid bunch who travel around Bolivia most weekends.
It is frightening how mature some of them are having already done projects in Africa etc and just think they are only 4 years older than Edward! They stay with host families and these are the source of endless conversations as they vary so much. Some have got
satellite in their rooms, others have a 30 minute bus ride to town, some have curfews of midnight which causes endless strife as things don’t start here until 10pm. Some get lunch (the main meal here in S America) only and others get rice and beans 3 times a day.
Most of them are on medical or care placements. This means they help out in clinics and vaccinate children and take blood. The care homes are awful by all accounts and the kids can be mentally, physically handicapped and in some cases the victims of physical and sexual abuse. I have read some of the cases and it’s heart breaking. What suprises me is that the volunteers work in these institutions at such a young age and without any formal training. However they seem to make a positive difference.
The food
So far the volunteers have had 2 cases of typhoid and so has my supervisor at the University - she picked it up when she went into hospital for planned surgery. Of course the volunteers who have had it are quite proud (hard core travellers now). I however am
not so keen to pick it up.
Simon and I are very cautious and luckily we can afford to eat at the best places in town without a problem. It is so cheap here I cant tell you. We regularly have dinner and drinks for less than two pounds.
The best café in town is quite a surprise its Brazillian and Japanese. You get great coffee and brazillian snacks alongside a full Sushi Sashimi menu. Both are great. There is a very noticeable link between Bolivia and Japan. The Sumitomo corporation has just built a new hospital at the end of our road and one of the last Presidents of Bolivia was Japanese. It is thought that the two races are genetically linked and since we learnt about this you can really see it in their features.
There is an authentic little French café for crepes and we had Mexican on Tuesday owned by a Mexican producer director who has invited us to his village one weekend if we fancy it. Cochabamba also has the best Italian in Bolivia but we haven’t been there yet. We had traditional bolivian fare too but boy do you have to be hungry for that!
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Tim
non-member comment
Cochabamba
As a Bolivian and Cochabambino, I was amused at your artcle.. Bit Bolivia mever had a Jap for a Presidnt . It was Peru, and he is in disgrace in Japan at the moment.