The Home Straight

Home at last!

I left the hotel in Cochabamba at 5.30 on Sunday morning and after that it was one queue after another: queue to check in luggage, queue to pay airport taxes, queue to check boarding pass, then security and then to have all hand luggage searched.

In Santa Cruz there is not much time between flights and there we have more queues: queue to check boarding passes, passport control, Interpol, anti-narcotics and then hand luggage is searched again. The anti-narcotics control seems like a bad joke in a country where today the only crop that is being encouraged and is spreading is coca leaf cultivation!!!

In Buenos Aires I had an 8 hour wait which turned into 9 hours. At 10:30pm when we should have been taking off the first of the flight attendants began to trickle in and at 10:50p.m. some crew members were still shopping in the Duty Free shop.

The flight arrived in Madrid on Monday afternoon at 3.30pm when I should have been boarding the flight to Málaga. A mad dash brought me to gate M35 just before the flight was closed. Fortunately for once the Málaga flight left from an area of the terminal which meant that I did not have to make the train journey. Otherwise I would certainly have missed the flight.

However, my suitcase did not manage to get to Málaga and at this point in time its whereabouts are unknown. Let's see when it turns up ...

Mission accomplished!

Mission accomplished - more or less! This morning Vito, the man who makes our uniforms, came to collect me in his pick-up truck at 8:30 - slightly later than planned. We went to pick up the towels and toiletries and then started to make our way up to San Senito. As today is Saturday, it is market day at La Cancha so there was no point in even trying to take that route so we took the alternative which skirts the Alalay Lake.

Vito's truck is not so new so the journey took a while and we reached San Benito just before 10. Most of the families who live in San Benito and the surrounding area were already there but those who had to come down from Chaki Kh'ocha, Lobo Rancho and other more distant places had not arrived so we waited a little to give them a chance.

The Town Hall sent along a representative who is the councillor for Human Development. Sister María Olga, the headmistress of the school run by Dominican nuns also came along. Each one was able to say a few words as did Primo and then it was my turn. I stressed the effort that the children of St. Peter the Apostle school in Glasgow were making to sponsor five children because it is important that people realise that the people who support them are not rich but just ordinary people.

With the help of the town councillor and Sister Mª Olga, we were able to hand out all the things in quite a short time: first the school materials, then uniforms and schoolbags, then socks and finally toiletries. The children whose drawings were included in the calendar all received a copy for themselves and they were delighted with it. The vitamins donated by LABCATAL were distributed to the children we regarded as most in need of them which means the children from Chaki Kh'ocha in particular.

The three boys who are now in higher education received the money for certain items such as transport, lab fees etc. Alissandro Torrico is now in his final year of teacher training and it was heartening to hear him say to everyone gathered there that if it had not been for the help he had received from the project he would never have been able to get as far as he has and he will never forget this. Marco was not able to attend as he had classes this morning but his father signed for him.

The majority of the new beneficiaries are children starting school this year and they were all delighted to receive their uniforms and school books.

Before breaking up boxes of "empanadillas", a kind of turnover with various fillings were distributed to everyone and they all drank their favourite treat - the dreaded Coca Cola. The poor village dogs smelled the food and came in in the hope of being able to scavenge some leftovers. I think they did get some and some of the children gave them a piece of their turnovers.

Playing the tourist for a day

As there was absolutely no chance of getting any work done today, I went into town to see what was happening there.
At the junctions on the main streets, Heroínas, Ayacucho etc. there were groups of people blocking the traffic. As they had loudspeakers I found out that these were the schoolteachers protesting about their salaries and the government's arbitrary measure regarding education in general and, in particular, the fact that yesterday the government had appointed people to occupy positions in the education structure who had no qualifications whatsoever to do so and had overridden the promotional structure, whereas the protesters had had to take examinations and prove their worth in order to get a position at all.

Later I went up Heroínas and met another group of ELFEC workers. ELFEC is the Cochabamba electricity supply company. Later still in El Prado (Avenida Ballivián) the Federation of University Students from the Universidad Mayor de San Simón were marching too. This group was made up of both students and teachers.

In view of all this there is very little activity in the city. As no public transport is running and very few taxis, the streets are unusually quiet (apart from the demonstrators' deafening explosions of course) and most shops are closed because the workers have been unable to get into town. Those that are open have the grilles at half mast so they can be drawn down in the event of trouble.

As I had time to wander around, I came across a lovely little shopping centre which is quite new. It is an old colonial building on three levels with a central patio. The little shops and businesses are ranged around the galleries and there are some quite interesting little places there: a physiotherapist, a spa offering aromatherapy and essential oils, an Indian clothes shop, a shop specialising in all things related to Angels and another business dealing with hand looms. They offer classes in weaving and sell looms of every kind from little hand looms (rectangular, square, triangular etc.) to pedal-driven looms. They also sell the yarn for doing this work. Unfortunately almost all the shops were closed because the people could not get in to work!

The little health shop in the main square which has been there for ever and a day was open so I took the chance to buy some amaranth, stevia and other things which are quite inexpensive here.

The best laid plans ...

No luck! This morning's plan to pick up the shoes at the factory have turned to dust. Yesterday the disturbances in Quillacollo were quite bad and the MANACO workers were at the centre of it. The manager has told us that it is totally impossible to open the factory for any reason because yesterday the demonstrators broke windows and caused a great deal of damage so the factory is completely closed. This is a major setback because it means that the children will not get their shoes tomorrow. All I can do is leave the money and when things return more or less to normal Primo will have to come down and pay the bill and collect the goods. Another wasted day!

Books and Uniforms

At least we managed to sort out the school materials and uniforms. They have now all been paid for and only some social science books remain to be collected because the publishers have not delivered them yet. The uniforms should ave been ready yesterday but, due to the strike, some work days were lost and they are trying to catch up. Hopefully the girls' blouses will be ready by this evening and that is the last item.

Today (Friday) we hope to be able to collect the shoes but it seems that the transport blockade is set to continue, particularly in Quillacollo where the factory is, and it is uncertain whether the factory will open at all today. We are trying to negotiate with the head of sales to meet him there and somehow get the material out as we need it for tomorrow.

Hope springs eternal!

This morning the sky is cloudy so let's see what the weather is like today. The weather forecast on internet was rain and thunderstorms all week so I came prepared for that only to find that the sun has been splitting the trees since I arrived and after yesterday's hikes in the open in the high valley where the oxygen content of the air is thin, the nape of my neck is like a boiled crab! .

Doña Sandra's cigarretes and clay pots

Doña Sandra lives in the countryside in the foothills below Chaki Kh'ocha. She is a young woman, around 33 years old, but she already has 6 children, the oldest of whom is 16 and the youngest about 3.

She is an amazingly industrious woman. She plants all her maize plants herself and works the land. She also makes handrolled cigarettes which she sells at the market in Tiraque. There her customers are mostly people who work the land and they all smoke quite heavily. She buys the tobacco leaves from the tropical region of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. She pays 150 bolivianos for one arroba of tobacco which she then flakes and rolls in paper which she cuts to size. The cigarettes are sealed using a glue made from four. On market days she has to be down by the main road for 5am to get the transport to the Tiraque and set up her little stall. She makes packs of 10 cigarettes.

When we had seen the cigarette-making process we then went inside to see how she makes her clay pots. Most of her production of handmade pots is bought by the chicha producers. Chicha is a kind of beer made from fermented maize and the largest of Doña Sandra's pots hold about 20 tins of chicha or 200 litres.

She starts the process by making a ball of clay which she then places on a round base. She does not have a potter's wheel but turns the base with her hands. As the clay becomes thinner as the pot gets taller she wets the top and adds a new ring of clay to keep on building the pot up. The vessel she made for us as a demonstration was in fact a clay cooker. It is a cylinder about 1 foot tall and at the top she adds three little "wings" that the pot sits on. In the side she cuts a rectangular hole where they can put in the twigs for the fire.

As we watched the chickens and ducks and kittens and other animals all wandered around at will.

Two children were at home. The youngest child is still too young to go to school but the daughter, Noelia, was at home because she did not have any school books or pencils, notebooks etc. She will join the project too. Luis, the boy who has just joined, walks about 3 kms. through the countryside to school. Today it was dry but when it rains the tracks must be very muddy.

The water tap is about 1km from the house so every day water has to be carried up for cooking, drinking and washing as well as making the ceramic pots.

The clay for the pots comes from close by as the erth i that area is rich in silicates. Further up the mountain COBOCE, the cement company, exgtracts white clay which it exports for making porcelain.

Doña Sandra accompanied us part of the way and as we went she pointed out some families with children who cold also benenfit from some help. She also told us that her husband had been "bewitched". This probably means that he suffers from some kind of mental illness. He used to beat her a lot but now that her oldest son is 16 years old he does not allow this to happen any more.

I was most impressed with this woman - full of character, industrious, resouceful and always smiling ...

Brickworks

The brickworks lies on the outskirts of San Benito in the high valley of Cochabamba. Most of the families who live and work there are migrants from the area around Potosí, traditionally a mining area. In centuries past silver and tin were mined there (these two metals tend to occur together) and it was such a wealthy area that in Spanish there is an expression to the effect that something valuable is worth "a Potosí". Nowadays, however, it is a poor region and many people migrate to other areas of the country.

A number of the children from the family we went to see have been in the project for some years. The oldest girl is due to finish her secondary education this year. She is 21 years old but due to economic difficulties missed years and got left behind. Since she has been receiving the project's help she has managed to stay in school and she thinks she would like to study business management. If she does go on to higher education she will be the first girl from the brickworks to do so, so we are encouraging her as much as possible.

This family is quite typical of the social fragility of families from the Potosí area. Families are very unstable. The mother of this family has had three different husbands and there are children from each marriage. The son of the oldest son has now just joined the project. I was able to speak to both father and son. Children from both later marriages are also beneficiaries.

One of the children was at home when we called as she goes to school in the afternoon (Schools run morning and afternoon sessions as the premises are not big enough ad there are not enough teachers to accommodate all the children at once). Her grandmother was complaining that she did not help out enough at home and was not always respectful, so we had a little chat with her about that.

Among the young men working making bricks was a relative of this family. He had come from Potosí recently and as the eldest son in a family of 8 he had brought along his youngest brother and was acting as his guardian. We went to see where they lived and seeing the conditions we decided to take on the young brother as soon as another sponsor becomes available.

One of the main problems which contributes to the fragile family structure is drinking. At the weekends people drink chicha (fermented maize beer) and when they drink they lose control. This leads to fights and is one of the main causes of separations and divorces.

Our hope is that by giving some of these children a better education they will have a better start in life and thus break the chain. The girl I mentioned earlier has herself recognised that if it were not for the help given by the project she would probably have 2 or 3 children by now.

Improvisation

Today was an interesting day. I left the hotel at 7am. to go up to Chaki Kh'ocha, but when I got out on to the street I found that the trufis (microbuses) were not running today either. The transport strike was supposed to have stopped last night but ... I took a taxi to the place where you can get trufis and trufi-taxis (taxis you share with other people) to Punata, one of the main centres in the High Valley. One was about to leave and there was a free seat so I took it.

I got up to San Benito at 8:10. As Primo had not yet arrived, I stood around on the road at the market. At that time the traffic was fluid. Ten minutes later a trufi arrived from Punata and another from somewhere else. The occupants, who turned out to be union pickets, stopped the traffic and made all the taxis and trufi-taxis pull over and the passengers had to get out. They could go no further. One of the pickets produced a large pair of scissors from his pocket and stuck them in the tyre of the nearest taxi. This did not look promising for my trip up to the puna!

When Primo arrived we went across to the house of the man who was supposed to take us up. He said it was impossible. There was a fine of 300 bolivianos for anyone found infringing the blockade. Primo went to talk to the leader of the civic committee who advised that we should wait an hour or two and see if things calmed down.

So as not to waste our time, we took the opportunity to walk down to the brickworks (ladrillería) to talk to some of the families there whose children are on the project, and also to see some possible new beneficiaries for next year. The visit was quite productive and we got a lot of information.

After that, we went back to the civic committee but the situation was still the sam,e so there was nothing for it but to abandon the idea of going up to the puna. We decided to start walking and see whether we could reach the home of Doña Sandra, a lady whose son has just joined the project, as I wanted to take photographs of her activities for the first year classes at Saint Peter the Apostle school in Glasgow who are going to sponsor some children.

After about 2-3 kms. a car came by. The driver had managed to get around the blockade by taking some dirt tracks. We stopped him and asked whether we could ride with him and Primo would show him the way along some other tracks so he could make the next leg of his journey. He agreed, so we managed to do a few miles more.

When he dropped us off, we continued cross country down some rough tracks and by asking the people working along the way we finally managed to reach Doña Sandra's house. We sat on upturned boxes under an acacia tree and watched while she showed us how she made her cigarettes. Then she took us inside and showed us how she makes her clay pots. In fact she made a clay cooking stove, which is smaller and quicker to make, but the rpocess is the same.

Dona Sandra's sister, Eli, then came along with two of her five children and we were able to take down some data so that one of her children can join the project as soon as a new sponsor appears.

It was time to head back. We walked back down towards the main road but, as no trufis or taxis were running, we decided to sit down under a tree and wait in the shade. Miraculously a trufi appeared trundling along the dirt track. He had also managed to circumvent the road block by coming cross-country but he was not quite sure how he should continue. Again Primo offered to direct him if he would take us too. He agreed.

We got out of his vehicle at the Qliza crossroads and waited. Meanwhile we bought some peaches from a cholita (indigenous woman) who had set up her stall in the shade. A taxi appeared but stopped at the crossroads. He said he was going no further, so we settled down to wait again. After a while the passengers in the taxi managed to convince the driver to continue a little further so we were able to squeeze into the taxi. There were four of us in the back (two teachers returning home plus Primo and me) and a rather fat man, his wife and two children in front beside the driver!!!

Most of the trip was spent convincing the driver to carry on just a little further. Eventually he agreed to take us to Km. 9 but no further. We got out there and stood around for a while longer. Eventually another taxi came by and he took us the rest of the way to Cochabamba. By then it was about 2pm so we had something to eat. When I got back to the hotel I was certainly covered with the dust of the highways and byways of the High Valleys!

This afternoon I hope to be able to see the people who make the uniforms for us and the man who supplies our school materials.

Contradictions

Bolivia is full of contradictions. Maybe that is what I like about it. This morning the whole city was in chaos, people marching with sticks and shouting slogans. Then this afternoon the sound of young people practising as "caporales" dancers for the Carnival celebrations next month...

Developments

As nothing was happening on the work side, I decided to go into the centre of town to confirm my return ticket and see what was going on there.

The main square is full of people and thousands more are milling around in the adjacent streets. Most of the shops are closed or only have their security grilles partially opened so they can pull them down quickly if things get out of hand. I did manage to sort my ticket, so that was good.

On the way back through the square the anti-riot squad came by on their motorbikes but the crowd surrounded them and would not let them pass. They were showered with anything that came to hand. However, it was all fairly good-natured on the whole.

Primo still can't get down as there is no public transport running from the high valleys. Maybe he will be able to come down in the afternoon ...

Demonstrations

As I have to hand around the hotel in case Primo manages to get into town, I decided to see what was going on with all the explosions and shouting. The demonstration is passing along El Prado (Avenida Ballivián), one of the main arteries of the city. All the transport unions and cooperatives are taking part in protest against the rise in fares etc. There are thousands of people marching. They are marching up towards the Cala Cala bridge and there they met up with another march coming from the opposite direction. After that they joined up and are now coming back down the other side of the avenue towards the main square in the centre of town. All the shops are closed and the street door of Jacquelines office building (She works for the electricity company) is closed with a bar across it. Apart from the noise of the explosions and the shouting, everything seems to be peaceful here at the moment. The usual slogans "El pueblo unido jamás será vencido" (The people if united will never be beaten) and banners "Bus Line 114 is with the people"; "Transport Union/Cooperative X, Y or Z are also part of the people and suffer with them" etc. etc.

Unrest & Blockades

The day dawned bright and sunny but the clouds of social unrest seem to be growing. Today's plan was to go to the MANACO shoe factory to collect our order and take it up to San Benito. However, as I was waiting for Primo to come, the phone rang and he said that he could not get down from San Benito to Cochabamba because there is a transport blockade and no forms of transport are running - or being allowed to run.

He called the Manager of the Manaco factory to say that we would not be able to get down as arranged, and he told him not to come before Friday because Quillacollo where the factory is located, is one of the main hot spots and they were not even opening the doors. Yesterday the march got out of hand there and any vehicle that had the misfortune to pass by had its windows broken by people wielding sticks. We have been told not to go before Friday, but that knocks out the whole programme as on Friday I am supposed to be going up to Chaki Kh'ocha on the puna to speak to the children and their families and teachers.

I must now wait at the hotel to see whether later in the morning things calm down and Primo can get down to town. If he could manage to do that, we could do what we had planned for tomorrow inside the city and juggle things around. From the hotel I can hear lots of fireworks, which here always means there is unrest.

Journey to Bolivia

Monday February 14th.

I finally arrived in Cochabamba at 9.30 pm. The flight left Madrid one hour late because one of the seats in Business Class did not recline properly and they brought someone in to repair it! That didn't really matter much to me because I had an 8 hour wait in Buenos Aires, which wasn't much fun because Iberia had not checked my luggage through to Cochabamba and I had to pick it up in Buenos Aires and hold on to it. The annoying thing was that when I asked to check it in there, the Aerosur employee told me that they did have an agreement with Iberia and they should have checked it right through.

Straight to bed!

Tuesday February 15th.

The first thing I had to do was change some money into bolivianos with the street money exchangers. Then we went to La Cancha market to buy the socks, towels, toothpaste, toothbrushes and soap. I did my best to buy cotton products made in Bolivia and not the Chinese products that have inundated the market. That took the whole morning and there was a lot of carting stuff around.

The city was pretty troubled today. Fortunately we had decided not to go to the MANACO shoe factory today because Quillacollo, where the factory is, was in uproar. All the businesses were closed and the workers committees were marching through the streets protesting against the rises in bus fares and transport in general. The MANACO workers were heading the march. Things got a bit out of hand in some places, and people armed with sticks were breaking the windows of any vehicle that happened to pass by or were parked in the vicinity.

The roads into and out of the city were blocked on the north, south, east and west. There were other marches related to the cost of milk, and later in the day some other areas of the city were cut off.

The general mood is one of unrest. Prices have risen around 80% over the last year. The government backed down over the rise in fuel prices but all the other rises have been maintained. There is no sugar to be had when Bolivia was once a sugar exporter; rice is in short supply and the price of chicken rises 50 centavos every day as a result of which many families are now no longer able to buy chicken and can only buy chicken offal instead.

Bolivia has always had a flourishing informal economy and usually it was the women who sold things in the streets. Now the government has set up a trading company which is selling the same items and undercutting the prices.

The president, Evo Morales, was kicked out of Oruro a few weeks ago when the miners, supplied with dynamite, turned up at the event he was attending. He had no option but to leave. This is significant because Oruro, along with La Paz and Potosí, have been his main power points as they are mainly Aymaras. Many people are now openly calling him a dictator! And these are indigenous people who originally voted him in.

It will be interesting to see what happens next, as corruption is another major complaint.