Last Friday, we traveled on a bus through the night to arrive in Santa Cruz Saturday morning. Although I didn’t sleep wonderfully, the trip went well, and it was fun to meet up with the other MCC workers again. Before leaving Cochabamba, we had a few interesting and exciting experiences.
Monday afternoon, Laurie and Lynn took us to the Democracy Center to hear a little more about the political/economic/social situation in Bolivia.
{In the MCC library I found a book about Latin American history that someone recommended to me called Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galeano and reading this has enhanced my curiosity about Bolivia’s history. This intriguing and moving group of stories from the 1970’s recently made history again when Hugo Chavez publicly presented the book to Barach Obama during the 5th Summit of the Americas.}
This organization, which does work all over the world, was started in California in 1992 and then moved its base to Cochabamba, Bolivia. The Democracy Center “works globally to advance social justice through investigation and reporting, training citizens in public advocacy, and leading international citizen campaigns.” They gave us a lot of helpful background information on the complex situation in Bolivia, especially in their recommendation to “always assume that you don’t know what the hell is going on, and most of the time you’ll be spot on.” If you’re interested in learning more about Bolivian politics, they have a link to their “Blog from Bolivia” at– http://www.democracyctr.org/index.php— and a new book titled Dignity and Defiance: Stories from Bolivia’s Challenge to Globalization, ed. by Jim Shultz and Melissa Crane Draper. Also, they have great internship possibilities that I’m sure some of my friends would love.
Also in Cochabamba last week, I learned some new Salsa dancing moves and went on a piercing escapade with the other SALTers! Out of the six of us, five got something new pierced and this included 3 new nose rings and 3 new earings. I got two of the ear piercings right next to my other earing holes (eventually I’ll have some pictures).
Now in Santa Cruz, Laurie has filled this week with more orientation activities, and all the rest of the SALTers went home with their host families last night. This week we’ll visit each of our workplaces (they’ll come visit me in Santiago later in the year), learn important Micro (bus) routes in Santa Cruz, and get to know our places of employment. I’ll be staying in the CCM guest rooms until I leave on Saturday with Laurie and Peter, and during this week, connecting with music organizations in Santa Cruz. On Saturday I met Peter Wigginton who had my job last year and is coming back to work for SICOR (Sistema de Coros y Orquestas) again this year teaching cello. He will help to introduce me to some of the music organizations in Santa Cruz and then orient me to what I’ll be doing in Santiago. So far everyone I’ve talked to has seemed really excited about Santiago de Chiquitos so I’m excited to get there.
… some great articles that people have brought to my attention:
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8206836.stm> This BBC article talks about a similar program to what I’ll be doing only they live farther North in Bolivia.
<http://pressroom.earlham.edu/articles/2009/08/ec-organ-its-way-bolivian-jungle> Peter has been working on getting Earlham’s old organ donated to the church in Santiago de Chiquitos. We’ll be having a concert with it in October!