Revamping our web site

It is almost eight years since our web site was first launched and very little has been done to it since, so I thought it was definitely time to give it a face-lift!  I have found a very nice person (info@master-design.info) who does a wonderful job, is highly efficient and charges a reasonable fee, so I will let you all know when it goes live!

New Sponsor

Quite out of the blue a new sponsor has appeared who is prepared to sponsor not one but three children.  This is wonderful news and means that the number of beneficiaries now stands at 73!

Honesty & Generosity

This week I received an e-mail saying that one of our children would be leaving the project. AT first this was a disappointment as usually when a child drops out it is due to worsening family circumstances. However, in this case, when I asked the reason for the decision, I received a pleasant surprise. The child's father has found a steady job at the agricultural experimentation centre in San Benito. As the family will now have a steady income, the family has decided that their son should give up his position in the project so that another less fortunate child can benefit from it. Refreshing honesty indeed!

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.

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.

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.

Happy Christmas!

Best Wishes for Christmas and the New Year to all our sponsors, and thank you once again for your continued support.

I hope to travel to visit the project in February. The new school year begins on February 1st. but the teachers need some time to prepare the book lists and Willy, our supplier in La Cancha market in Cochabamba also needs some time to prepare the individual packets. I will keep you posted on plans.