Santiago de Chiquitos

About four weeks ago (Saturday, October 12) I took the 10-12 hour train trip out to Santiago.  Since then I´ve been so busy learning my job, meeting people, and working on my Spanish that I haven´t had a chance to check out the small internet café in Santiago (which doesn´t even work much of the time).

My first week was pretty intense.  Laurie, Peter, Paul Whittaker, and I took the noon train and arrived in Roboré at about 11:30 to meet Peter´s host father Don Willie who drove us the final 45 minutes to Santiago.  The next morning, Laurie and I walked down the road to Milton and Katheryn Whitakker´s for lunch.  About 40 years ago Milton came with MCC to Santiago to teach English and later Katheryn came with another organization (about 17 years ago).  They met, married and have worked on their own dairy farm in Santiago ever since.  Now they and their 5 children–  Ramona (14), Rachel (13), Joe (11), John Milton (9), and Paul David (6)—are the only people in town that I can speak English to.  They also own the the Escuelita that I live in.  Because Santiago is so small and not very wealthy, no one really has extra rooms to offer so my living situation works differently than some other SALTers.  Many years ago some missionaries built the Escuelita as a school for the indigenous people.  When they left, Milton and Katheryn bought the Escuelita and turned it into a guest house.  I live in one of these rooms, and my host family is the woman, Doña Marta, who takes care of the place and her three daughters, Daniela, Diana, and Samara.

 After meeting the Whittakers and eating lunch on Sunday we took their jeep into town for a welcome get together the orchestra and choir were having for me.  During this time, I met a bunch of people who I didn´t remember and got to hear the orchestra and choir for the first time.

We started rehearsing on Monday because during the upcoming week we needed to perform two concerts!  I began by watching how Peter worked with the orchestra and choir and gradually started to rehearse all the music with them.  On Tuesday morning we visited both of the schools in Santiago to announce to each classroom that the younger kid´s string classes would start that afternoon. 

Tuesday evening we had our first concert!  Some sort of eco-conference with people from around the world was meeting in Santiago´s hotel and they wanted to hear the local music.  They played several pieces that Peter had worked with them on before he left and I directed two of them.  Although I felt somewhat unprepared for this having only been in Santiago for 2 days, it forced me to jump in and start learning quickly.  With hardly any time to worry about it, I had participated in my first concert in Santiago.

After this we needed to prepare for a performance on Sunday.  The priest, Padre Piotr, who organizes the Chiquitania Baroque festival in April was coming to see how our orchestra and choir sounded so that he could better arrange our performance places for the festival.  At this point I had learned to conduct all the songs.  After the performance Padre Piotr seemed really excited about our musical potential for the festival, and expressed that the choir especially impressed him.  Also, he told us that he is going to send an organ teacher for December and January to get people started learning how to use the new organ.

Following this week of hard work and concerts, Peter headed back to Santa Cruz to work on the final details of getting the organ here, and I continued learning how to teach in Santiago.

~ by Kristen on October 14, 2009.