It's 11:30 am. I have a break between the English classes I'm teaching, enough time to think about what I've been doing since moving to Carmen Pampa from Cochabamba in June. Lynn and I are working at our assigned duties1 here at UAC-Carmen Pampa:
- teaching English classes for the Departments of Ecotourism (lower campus2) and Education (upper campus),
- assisting with Mass preparations on Wednesday evening and Sunday afternoon,
- assisting with the students' Thursday night Pastoral meeting on the upper campus,
- conducting an early morning Liturgy of the Hours service in the chapel on the upper campus (Tuesday through Friday),
- staffing the children's library on the edge of the lower campus.
These are some of the proposed assignments we received shortly after we arrived. There were others, such as coordinating the painting of the chapel interior on the upper campus3, but these were the ones that became routine duties.
The environment of the two campuses was very different in late June from what it is like now. We were between semesters. Few students were on campus and we were not taking classes ourselves so we relaxed. Except for noticing different and more dense vegetation,4 maybe the occasional clouds outside the door of the apartment where we moved our belongings, it felt like being on any college campus between sessions in the United States. We worked at meeting and remembering the faculty and staff still around the school--making lists to associate names and faces and functions. They all were very patient as we slowly fitted ourselves into their midst.
In the empty apartment we moved into we found a big echo and some memories of the previous Franciscan missioners (Jean and Leo Lechtenburg) and volunteer David Flannery who lived there. Yellow curtains decorated the two windows in the front room.5 A giant Asian fan spread wide over the main wall in the kitchen area. A large set of shelves covered one wall, waiting to become our bookcase. Two maps of this north Yungas region and a poster of Saint Francis filled the area by the front door. A San Damiano cross hung at door-top level on the sliver of wall between the doorways to the two rooms directly off of the front room. Two UAC uniform shirts for teachers hung on the rack in the bedroom. The two cooking pots and lid beneath the kitchen sink lay waiting to be discovered as, in fact, a double boiler so that just maybe with a little free time and enough fresh eggs we might have a batch of hollandaise sauce for eggs benedict. A small cylinder of fabric on one of the tables unfurled to reveal a Tibetan prayer flag. Once we found places for our own things among these things the echo vanished.
A supporting part of our mission during this quiet time between semesters was spent setting up various daily life systems for eating, hygiene, laundry, and getting to and from work. Every environment presents its challenges and surprises. Setting up some of these routines in Carmen Pampa took more time than I expected. I also learned new methods for things we have taken for granted in our lives in the United States.
I'll write about some of this with my next post, but right now Janina, one of the children from Carmen Pampa and a frequent library visitor, has discovered that the library door is open. That technically means that the library is open despite the regular hours, and she has headed immediately for my laptop. She wants to play a game of ajedrez (chess) against the computer. I'll close out this post so Janina and I can walk over to the dining room of the food cooperative where there's more space for the game and where her mother works. Not knowing the regular hours of her school, I want to be sure this middle of the day ajedrez habit has parental approval. . . . "It does?" Yes. Okay, caballo b1 to c3, and she's off to the races!
The photo above shows some of the regulars at the children's library while they're playing Scrabble.
The photo above shows some of the regulars at the children's library while they're playing Scrabble.
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1 We are doing these things without salary from UAC, but our housing is paid for, and we receive a stipend for living expenses from Franciscan Mission Service. This helps UAC provide education at a lower cost for students in the Yungas. Thanks to all of our friends for supporting our mission here.
2 The lower campus, Manning, was built first and is further down the mountain (Uchumachi), beside the community of Carmen Pampa. Further up the mountain and close to the main road to Coroico is the upper campus, Leahy, built as more career areas were added to the curriculum.
3 This would exclude the mural decorating the wall behind the altar. This was painted by missioner Leo Lechtenburg. It unites the chapel with the natural beauty of the Yungas and the people who live there.
4 Well, okay some of these plants I have seen frequently in the US, such as impatiens, fern, wandering jew, caladiums, and ajuga, but they were growing anywhere there was space to spread leaves and throughout winter here.
5 Through these windows each morning we could see that the sun ascended over the top of Uchumachi at about 9:20 am. This was in late June, and by the longer days of mid-September, the sun was topping the mountain at about 8:15 am.
