Challenges

Holding 1) a commemorative heart from
the Day of Retreat on July 31, 2011, Santa
María de los Ángeles, "El perdón de Asís"
and 2) new ID from Archbishop's office,
used to enter Abra Prison

For completing work, this past week was more challenging than the preceding one.  Tuesday was a public holiday¹ so I did not visit the hospice at Santa Vera Cruz (SVC). I tried to make up that visit today by attending Mass at SVC, and congratulating one of the young hospice residents for joining the Church. This was the confirmation Mass for him and about 20 others from the surrounding community. Unfortunately, however, I was not able to accept his request to serve as his godfather. Having just met him, I was not prepared to fulfill all of the responsibilities accompanying that.

Our weekly teaching schedule at Abra Prison was also disrupted.  Ordinarily we have classes Wednesday through Friday.  However, this week the inmates held a strike in support of a fellow inmate who was not allowed to have a needed surgical operation.  (I don't yet know what operation was needed.) So, on Wednesday, the head of the education program at Abra called us in advance to tell us that we shouldn't bother to make the trip to the prison because we wouldn't be able to cross the protest lines. On Thursday and Friday we called to see if the strike had resolved. Both times we were told that we had better wait until the following week.

So, we had free time and tried to use it well. We examined our teaching materials and planned ahead for several sets of classes.  We also began planning a simple website for teaching English that would provide some on-line support for those San Jose sisters who are unable to continue meeting on Tuesday evenings. Periodic readjustment seems to be a regular part of life and work here. Also it looks like we will be teaching a new English class in our house for two students (Jose Luis and Adrian) on Thursday night after we return from work at the prison. We know Adrian from attending the La Salette Church in our neighborhood. We know Jose Luis from our days of attending the Maryknoll Language School during our first 5 months in Bolivia. Both Adrian and Jose Luis seem to be well educated and are studying English because they want to, so working with them is a pleasure.

I was also able to continue work on a website for a group of women who meet and work at the Franciscan Social Center in Cochabamba. They have difficult family situations and create gift cards as part of their effort to promote environmental consciousness and also to be self-supporting.  The name of their group is T'ikas Warmi, which means Flower Woman in Quechua. Each of their cards is a unique creation from recycled papers, paint, and dried leaves and flowers.  Their results are pretty amazing, I think, and they've amped up production for Navidad '11.  During our June trip to the US, Lynn and I distributed a number of cards in Nashville (The Scarlet Begonia, Logos Bookstore, the gift shop at St. George's Church) and Bloomington, Indiana (Howard's Bookstore), and they were enthusiastically received. More information about the women and their enterprise is available at tikaswarmi.weebly.com.

Yesterday I had an interesting talk with Max, a friend who owns a hardware and building supply store on Avenida Guayacan, a street just a few blocks from our house on Colibri.  Max has interesting ideas about increasing water supply in some of the under-served neighborhoods in this part of the south zone of Cochabamba.  He also wants to create a local business council to better represent the large number of small entrepreneurs here and find new markets for their wares.  Possibly I can help him communicate these ideas. Especially regarding the water project, it would be an achievement to increase or better distribute the supply of potable water in the Cochabamba Valley.  I remind myself that this is the dry season and that the rain will come. However, even with settling the dust currently in the air, Cochabamba will not fully return to the verdant, eternal primavera of its epithet. Max too acknowledged the impact here (hotter, drier, dustier) of climate change.

Our garrafa, hard at work, containing natural gas until we
need it to cook up yet another taste fest.

For residents of our neighborhood, the water problem was complicated recently by another sign of progress, the installation of in-ground lines for distributing natural gas. For cooking, most residents use natural gas in large cylinders called garrafas.  Like many people here, Lynn and I keep a second garrafa so we can continue to cook until we can trade the empty one for a full one.  This is usually done early in the morning when a truck loaded with garrafas circulates through the neighborhoods.  While sometimes the driver sounds a loud horn to alert people that he is near, more often a worker in the back of the truck bangs a metal bar on an empty garrafa to send that unique clang-clang-clang-clang through the early morning air.

That tune will change soon with the installation of the in-ground gas lines.  Bolivia has the second largest known deposits of natural gas in South America. Installation of the new gas lines is a government-sponsored program, and residents here are understandably enthusiastic (cost and convenience) about the progress. However, with growth come growing pains.  It seems that the workers digging the ditches for the new gas lines have also punctured more than a few of the water pipes leading onto people's property.2  These pipes carry water pumped in from the community well.

With inadequate pressure, water will not flow through the pipes to reach people's sinks, toilets, and so forth. Apparently because of the low pressure and the number of punctured water lines, the administrators of the community well have had to shut off the pump until the leaking lines are located and repaired. Some houses, such as the one we are renting, have reserve tanks for water. When those are depleted or for those without a reserve tank, the recourse is to purchase water from one of the tanker trucks that drive through the neighborhoods. Of course, if we conserve, we have enough water, but not everyone has a reserve tank.
__________

¹ The holiday on Tuesday followed the weekend festival of the Virgin of Urqupinia (There are a bunch of video clips on YouTube about this).
² I think that this would be a likely outcome as the workers must dig all day, day after day, through rock and dirt down to shoulder height, producing a trench that is little more than shoulder width. I later learned another possible incentive--the workers are paid per meter dug.

Another Good Week, cont'd

A poster on the wall of the
Exaltation Chapel in our neighborhood. It
reminds me that in being alive I have both
rights and responsibilities.

Not recalling the street names on the way to the hospice in Santa Vera Cruz, I splurged on a taxi and then quickly remembered the location as the cab passed south and then turned west toward Petrolero. We passed a large open warehouse surrounded by a wall of wooden crates. The driver said this was where many tomatoes arrived and were disbursed for market throughout the Cochabamba area. At Petrolero we turned south again and in a short time we arrived at the church, Santa Vera Cruz.  I paid for the cab (about $2.10, which included a tip) and made my way into the enclosed grounds through the door and along the open corridor between the church and the school, which was in session. The passageways were old but clean, a welcome contrast to the littered roadsides around Cochabamba.¹

When I emerged from the corridor I recognized that I was beside the retreat house. The three-story brick structure appeared to be empty at the moment, but I couldn't tell for sure, just because of closed doors and an empty parking lot.  The hospice was a short way down a dirt road at the bottom of the hill.  As I walked, I saw an old swimming pool off to the left and lapsed into a reverie about swimming pools in my past. I think they represent people's idealism when there actually is time and money enough to relax and enjoy jumping into cool clear water. Maybe the circumstances always change, but for the moment there's that time of enjoyment. Not a bad thing for those lucky enough to have it.

At the gate to the convent and hospice I was welcomed by one of the Calcutta Sisters whom Lynn and I had met there when we first returned to Cochabamba.  She was still cheerful and led me through the sun-filled hallway on the first floor of the hospice. We walked past a young man mopping the floor and exchanged greetings. I was then led into a waiting room until the sister in charge of the hospice could come to speak to me. At this point I really had no idea how I could benefit anyone.  The facility was only recently completed and blessed. It has only three or four residents and also has almost as many volunteers to assist them. I couldn't exactly wish for more terminally ill residents so I could feel good about trying to help them. I wondered if I would spend the morning talking to the other volunteers. Fortunately, that was not to be.

I talked for a while with one of the hospice residents, a Bolivian man older than I. He wanted to know where I was from, how long I had been in Bolivia, and what I was doing here. Beyond that, and wanting to know whether I were a priest, he seemed indifferent to my presence and anything I had to say.  His eyes drifted away or half closed as I talked, and occasionally he drew a long breath and coughed in a way that seemed to unsettle his whole body.  I sensed that he was the one that the head of the facility identified as not wanting to live anymore.  His disease, HIV (here called VIH), was apparently well advanced by the time he sought medical help. According to Sister, he had once had money, and now he was without money. Also, apparently because of the social stigma associated with the disease his family did not want to take care of him.  This unwillingness to care for their own breaks the custom here that families care for their own aged and infirm.  What a powerful disease that it can destroy individuals and social custom. In this guy I could see, from the Franciscan standpoint, my leper.² While I might not expect to restore his will to live, at least I should be able to interact with him in a way that would declare my own acceptance of him.

The other two residents whom I met there were younger, more mentally agile, and friendly.  When they found out that I taught English language classes they enthusiastically declared that I should teach them.  I agreed to do that, and we set up a plan for me to teach them two hours each morning, using various DVDs that we have and also one of the texts that we bought during our June trip back to the US, Ingles para Latinos. This book is less formally structured than a textbook for a course in English. It focuses on useful phrases and also includes a pronunciation guide for Latinos, a very beneficial addition I think. I had not planned to teach language at the hospice, but I had decided before going there to just see what the interests and needs were and to let my activities develop from that.

After chatting awhile, the four of us--the older man, the two younger ones, and I--had lunch together. The two younger ones kept cracking jokes, and the older guy would respond either with a deadpan look   (I don't believe it was practiced) or a brief remark in what I presumed was Quechua. By the time I left I was convinced that this was going to be a good assignment for Tuesdays. I caught a trufi back down Petrolero toward Suezia, a cut-through street to the other side of the mountains to the west of our neighborhood.  It was a beautiful, sunny, big blue-sky afternoon (you can safely use that tag for 95% of the days here) so I decided to walk the short distance from Petrolero to the east end of Suezia. The air was full of the smells of food from the street vendors, children shouting and the general mid-day hum-a-drum that rises up as gradually more people and vehicles enter the world of transit. When I reached the airplane, the one that marks the east end of Suezia and that was converted into a library for the children, I caught a bus for home.

On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday Lynn and I taught at Cárcel Abra, the men's prison on the other side of the mountains to the east of our neighborhood.  Because we take a taxi there and sometimes travel on the road over the mountain, I wanted to take some photos (these included below) from the crest as the road passes from one side  over to the other.  I used a Flip HD video camera for these and exported the still frames that were best.  This was hardest on the ascending side because I didn't want to ask the driver to stop, and believe me, image stabilization doesn't do a bit of good if you're trouncing along a rocky, unpaved road. More importantly, however, our days of teaching at the prison this week were good ones:

• The guards at the entrance were kind enough to let me pass through the checkpoint despite my having left my ID from the Archbishop's office at home.  Since we teach there each week, they know us, but the rule still that no one enters without first leaving their permanent ID there at the checkpoint.  In addition, we also have to leave behind items such as cell phones, phone cards, pocket knives, any medications.
• The beginners group (we teach two groups, beginners and advanced) seemed to loosen up some, respond to jokes, and contribute more. They get credit for being in class, but they also seemed to want to be there.
• Three of the men from the advanced group turned in their examinations over the first half of the textbook and did very well. They're learning English grammar, and their pronunciation is good.
• A group of the soldiers and at the gate into the prison and their commander suggested that we should have an English language class for them as well.  We're going to try to do that.

I can't say that we're changing the lives of the men in prison, but our interactions indicate that we've been accepted, and gradually we begin to know when various ones are feeling up or down, and they likewise seem to detect our moods as well. We don't expect everything to be positive, but it feels as though we can work through the problems there that come our way.

Oh yes, and today at Mass, I was pleased to see that Minh, our friend who is a Maryknoll lay missioner, was with her brother Peter, a Christian Brother who is visiting from New York. In addition, Maggie, a Maryknoll sister, received a blessing before her trip that will take her first back to Ossening, NY and then to Tanzania to visit with her parents. Also at Mass I was struck by the representational figures--muñecas or dolls some might call them--in the chapel. Here there are more of these symbolic figures in church, especially around festival days, such as the current festival, the Virgin of Urkupiñia (Virgin of the Mountain--It is believed that in the 1800s Mary appeared to a young girl). I was also impressed by the far-reaching power of the American cinema and animated film because in one very happy young Cochabambino's arms Buzz Lightyear (see below) seemed to be assuring him everything was A-OK.

And to top it all off, today I had this terrific lunch at the house of Juan Carlos, Lupe, and Lizbeth in which I was served zapallo soup, mote and ispis, and a fine main course of sorubí (breaded) , arroz, plátano, yucca, papas fritas, and all the llajua I cared to drizzle on for extra zest! Now for some photos. Click the photos to view larger images.

Looking northwest toward Cochabamba from the road over
the mountains. The green area in the foreground is the golf
course of the Country Club. Most of the area around
Cochabamba is arid now. Some residents tell us that 20 years
ago it was verdant. The water is part of Laguna Alalay, the
last of 3 lagunas around the city. 

Looking northeast just across the summit from the same road
 over the mountains. Below the slope are the walls and buildings
of Cárcel Abra, the men's prison where Lynn and I teach.
Beyond that is the community of Abra and the city of Sacaba.

Peter and Minh, brother and sister from the United States,
receive communion from Padre Juan Carlos at Capilla Exaltación.

Juan Carlos, a native Bostonian and La Salette priest, gives a
benediction to Maggie, a native Tanzanian and Maryknoll sister,
a couple of days before her trip to the US and back home.

A young parishioner at Exaltation Chapel holding an image
of the Madonna and infant Jesus.

Another young parishioner holding Buzz Lightyear. If you
press a button on Buzz's control panel, his wings pop out.

________
¹ Today at lunch our friend Lizbeth told me that Sucre, known here as the white city, is much cleaner than Cochabamba. I'm not sure why people in Cochabamba litter as much as they do.  To me it seems a little like people feeling that it is their right to drive while drunk if they want to, and apparently there's a lot of that here too among the professional drivers.

² "One day while riding through the countryside, Francis, the man who loved beauty, who was so picky about food, who hated deformity, came face to face with a leper. Repelled by the appearance and the smell of the leper, Francis nevertheless jumped down from his horse and kissed the hand of the leper. When his kiss of peace was returned, Francis was filled with joy. As he rode off, he turned around for a last wave, and saw that the leper had disappeared. He always looked upon it as a test from God...that he had passed." From Catholic Online.                                                                                                                                         

Another Good Week

This has been a good week for me because I feel close to the people I work with. Monday was a day to prepare for the classes that Lynn and I teach Wednesday through Saturday.  Admittedly, some of this is just reflecting on what we've done and where we'll go next. (We seem to have developed some credibility at the Archbishop's office, well with the head of Penitencial Pastoral in that we've been reimbursed for photocopying books and handouts, purchasing minor supplies like markers for the whiteboard.) We also consider the problems our students are having, look for examples to help them, create handouts, and  generally get to know our spoken language better,  the way you usually get to know a work of literature better if you read it to teach it rather than just reading it for yourself. Most of this is actually fun because we remember things we've forgotten, discover patterns we never knew, and create material for handouts. The goal is to have a more definite direction when the time for class arrives. After all of these years it still feels good when Lynn and I plan together because we challenge each other's ideas.  Generally this leads to more productive class time, which means, I think, that we spend less time talking about language and more time in teaching practical use of a language and guiding the students' use of it.

Yesterday morning (Tuesday) I made my first trip to the hospice at Santa Vera Cruz (SVC)recently opened by a group of the Calcutta Sisters, Mother Teresa's order, at about kilometer 5 on Petrolero, on the other side of a row of hills to the west of us. This was a good step for me because I have been unsure about the best way to use my service time on Tuesdays:

• in the Apoyo Escolar (school help) program in Nueve Vera Cruz (a bit further down the road from SVC)
• in a comparable program in the La Salette Church in our neighborhood
• begin teaching in another prison, but one with worse conditions for the prisoners, such as San Sebastian

There are good reasons to choose any one of the specific sites because volunteers are needed in each one. However, in the end I chose to work in the hospice at SVC. Actually, serving in the hospice was one of our original prospective service sites when we returned to Cochabamba following a semester of teaching at the Unidad Academica Campesina-Carmen Pampa in the North Yungas. In the search for mission sites in January, we decided to spend the bulk of our time at the prison, partly in honor of our friend Harmon Wray (we observed the anniversary of his death on July 24th), and also because we know that volunteers from the free world are always needed and appreciated by the society within walls.  We also were less certain about what we might be doing as volunteers helping terminally ill patients. Maybe we were afraid of them or more accurately the risk of contracting tuberculosis or HIV.

Regardless, after working a few months in our other sites, this didn't seem to be an issue for me because I knew so little about the populations I was working with.  I just had to remind myself to take appropriate precautions in all of them. After I understood that, working with the hospice population seemed like an interesting challenge.  (More about this week later this week. Oh yes, and if you're headed this way, here's a nice welcome from Marcela who owns and operates the tienda just across the street.  Her bread is always fresh!)