The night we arrived we just showered, napped, went out for dinner, and then went back to sleep. We were exhausted. Carolina picked us up at 2 the next day, and took us to her house. We had a delicious dinner there, and went to bed quite early again. Cochabamba is only at 8000 feet, however this was still a relatively high altitude for us.
The next day (friday) we went with another volunteer team currently visiting (from Waterloo!) on a tour of a charitable organization which sells goods made by women in prison and currently on parole, as well as 2 orphanages, one of which is the one Emily and I are volunteering at next week. The one we are volunteering at is called Soloman Klein, which is for children ages 0-6. It is a government run institution, and it has a capacity of 120, and it currently has 160. We will be painting the front entrance hall and the dining room (HUGE) with a painter and another volunteer. It will be a lot of work, but we are really looking forward to it.
In the afternoon we went to the campo (very poor semi-rural area surrounding Cochabamba) where we got split up into groups of 4 and got to see inside the home & property of some of the poorest residents. As exchange for letting us see their home, the group we were with had brought big bags of clothing, food, toys, and other necessities. It was an incredible experience to see how they lived, and their gratitude for the few items we brought was absolutely touching.
Friday night we watched the promotional videos for Niños con Valor, the organization Emily´s cousin Tyson & his wife Carolina volunteer for. Tyson is the executive director, and Carolina is the nutritionist and the boss of the executive director. The videos are very informative and we will be able to show them to people when we get back.
Afterwards we watched the Devil´s Miner, which is a documentary about children mining in Potosi, the largest mining town in Bolivia. It was very well done, and I highly recommend it. It is both very well done and informative about mining in Bolivia, and the culture and landscape of the country in general. (at least the culture in the Andean region). It was playing at the Princess recently, although i am not sure if it is yet out on DVD. I will buy a bootleg copy of it out here and bring it back, in case it is not yet released officially.
I will be posting pictures soon (hopefully), once I use an internet cafe that has computers with usb ports.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment