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.
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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.