Important

Well. It has indeed been quite an adventure. We have ruined a clutch and gotten stranded in the middle of nowhere with no cell phone service, completely thrown away our original project designs for a a new one, and have gotten kicked out of the municipality where we were working, so our project is now over...!

Here's the short story, since all the details have a) gotten jumbled in my head and b) would take forever to explain because they are so ridiculous. Basically, EWB UW started working in Yanayo, another small, rural community, six years ago. We paid two people, who I will name Juan and Marie, there to do extra work for us (translating, cooking, facilitating, and generally helping. Marie's husband, Diablo (can you see where this is going?) is an alcoholic sociopath who decided he did not what Marie making more money than him and working with Juan so much because rumors had started about them having an affair. So, he beat one of his children, burned down Juan's house, and got mad at EWB/Donee. He has also since claimed Marie and EWB have stolen from him and tried to kill him, which are petty ludicrous accusations. Unfotunately, it turns out he's an extremely charastatic person who is connected to what seems like every person in the Bolivian governent (including the President!) and many people owe him favors. Diablo threatened to file a denuncio (I think that would be denunciation in English) against our organization, which would, I believe, get us kicked out of the country and prevent us from working here again. Obviously this was a bit of a problem so after all sorts of conversations with people in various communities and with many lawyers, Donee met with Diablo, local community leaders, and the mayor of the province we were in, and wanted a guarantee that we would be able to work free from the threat of a denuncio. The leaders of the communities/mayor were only willing to help gaurntee our ability to work this summer but not in the future (Diablo can file this denuncio any time in the next two years) and since we were not willing to stay there and work without this gurantee, the mayor told us to leave. So, we had a brief midnight group meeting, packed up all of our tents, and drove the four hours back to Cochabamba. It's kind of a bummer but this kind of thing can happen in a developing country with corrupt government officials. Ten out of the eleven of us paid exorbitant fees to American Airlines (MY LEAST FAVORITE AIRLINE COMPAY) to come home sooner since we are all a bit tired. All ten of us, with in the span of three hours or so, called the same customer service number to change our ticket and we all received wildly different information regarding flight availabilities and cost. It was absolutely ridiclus. I did, however, somehow manage to get a flight on the 14th (in business class!) even though there weren't any open seats that day at the beginning of my conversation. So strange.

We spend about two days in Cochabamba figuring things out, sending materials that we had already purchased to Piriquina and Taconi, repacking, etc. We stayed at the Hotel Monserrat (EWB always does when we're in Cochabamba) and luckily they are very accommodating and allowed us to check out late (as we did every single time haha) and then hang around the hotel waiting to leave later in the day. We did do our frrst touristy advenure and go up to the “Big Jesus”, which is a giant statue on top of a large hill in the middle of Cochabamba. The road up to the top was cobbled, which was too similar to rural roads for my taste, but the view of the city was fantastic. Buildings are all several stories tall and the roads are narrow, so you can't actually see more than a block or two away when you're walking around, but the city is actually huge and very pretty from a distance. (Unfortunately it's kind of gross and covered in trash when you look close). We then took a gondola down the mountain, mostly because it was awesome and walking in the hot weather wasn't super appealing, but there were also rather entertaining signs warming us that if we took the stairs, we would get mugged. We exited the gondola into an entertaining playground/park/series of (dry) fountains and spend a while playing and imagining how dangerous it actually would be for kids to play there: cracks in the concrete, weird pieces of rebar sticking out of the ground by a jungle gym, broken swings, and somewhat sharp pieces of metal welded on to the edge of the monkey bars. Welcome to Bolivia. Also we enjoyed nerding out and talking about the 63mm HDPE pipe that was laying around for irrigation. (We bought some 50mm for our project!) We then packed up all our stuff and went to the airport for a flight to La Paz and a trip to Lake Titicaca! More to come soon on that story and the other adventures we've had so far!