My Site

We all had a big Fourth of July celebration (on the third) with hamburgers, fireworks, and volleyball. The pinnacle of the night was finding out all of our sites for the next two years. We are all scattered all over..Two of us are going to be living at 12,000+ ft. Others are in the jungle fifteen to twenty hours from the closest major city. My site, however, is somewhat rediculous. Let´s just say I lucked out. I am in Tolomosita Centro, a small community about thirty minutes outside the city of Tarija in southern Bolivia. Tarija is a city of 140,000 people, known for its safety, layed-back atmosphere, and wine. The accent is slow and poetic; the people identify more with Argentina than with Bolivia. The area has good meat and fresh produce like strawberries and peanuts; again, there are around five wineries in the Tarija area. The elevation is around 6,000 ft with a valley climate. The valley climate doesn´t involve seasons; they call it eterna primavera, eternal spring; 70-80 degrees F and sunny all year. I will be living in a newly contstructed room across the field from my host mom. I am pretty sure it´s just me and my host mom; I´m not sure where the rest of her family is. Tolomosita Centro is one of several of the communities that I will be working with..All of the communities are on the banks of Lago San Jacinto, a very large lake. My house is not exactly on the lake, but it´s within 100 meters. The lake also has a bike trail around one-third of the perimeter. Because there are transportation issues, I asked my boss if I could buy a boat to get to the different communities..he didn´t say yes, but he didn´t say no. All he said was, ¨You should wear a life-vest.¨ He also told me to expect a lot of failure. These are not communities that are excited about improving water and sanitation issues and need technical knowledge. My communications background landed me a position with several organizations who are not functioning well, or even together, but need motiviation to pull together. My job will be to gather the different organizations and get them fired up about dry latrines to avoid the situation now of sewage going straight into the lake. Even though I am something like 30 hours by bus from the central office here in Cochabamba, I have a regional office there in Tarija, as well as a market and everything else I need. It´s hard to get anywhere else, but then again, I don´t need to. I am happy to have received a site with people as warm and laid back as I am. My site description foreshadowed lazy afternoons eating Bar-B-Q by the lake. We are all going on site visits this Sunday. Site visits are five days of hanging out and getting to know the area in each of our individual sites..because we are so far out, all the Tarija kids are making the trip by plane. I will get a permanant mailbox this week, so any mail should wait ´til then..thanks to all of those sending me letters; it means more to me than you know. Take care, and know that I am thinking about you!
-Mike