Part 1 – Ongoings with the old folks in Oruru

From left to right: Kattya (Bolivia's best translator), Mum, Me, Noemi (Viva Oruru Director), Dad

Well it seems a while since I last wrote. Since then the 100 day countdown for South Africa 2010 has started, the snow has gone and the rain has come (not here I must add – blissful sunshine) and, well, not a lot else. They do say that January and February are the most boring months of the year...

March 1st brought a couple of excited visitors here to check up on me... my parents. They were over for a few weeks which was great. An inevitable few stomach bugs aside we had an awesome time. After meeting them bright and early at La Paz airport, crashing at the hotel, hitting a cafe, visiting a church, freaking Mum out showing her the llama foetuses they sell at the local market (more on this later), a big dinner and bed, we hit the city of Oruru the next day (see http://www.flickr.com/photos/82329049@N00/ for a few (alive) llamas we met along the way and other bits).

Oruru is a very difficult place to describe. There are clear signs of underdevelopment throughout the city with poverty more obvious. Unlike Cochabamba where in most places the roads are well built, the infrastructure better planned, where there are more ‘western’ style shops and high-rise buildings, Oruru is a dusty, dark place with litter filling large areas and quality of housing being obviously worse. Add to this the population of Oruru has a very mixed belief system. Catholicism is strong alongside a firm focus on Bolivian traditions and rituals. We visited the Catholic Cathedral. Inside it was similar to any regular Cathedral you are used to seeing however, via passing through the Cathedral, underneath is a mineshaft. In this mineshaft is a horrifyingly ugly model of a Devil who was and is still worshipped and given offerings (most prominently alcohol, cigarettes and money). It is believed through tradition that the Devil, ‘the God of the underworld’, will protect those there in the mines. It is nicknamed ‘El Tio’ (Uncle) to help try portray a friendly and loving image of someone who will protect you. Rituals throughout the city include regular burning of incense outside houses and shops asking for safety, wealth, job security, plane tickets... anything. Another includes burying a llama foetus under your house for evil spirits underground to consume, thus keeping them away from your house. The bigger the house, the bigger the foetus. I have heard of blocks of apartments, given their bigger size, having human bodies buried alive underneath.

One huge problem across Bolivia, being highly unrecognised, is that of child abuse. In 8/10 families across the country child abuse takes place. This is a statistic that comes as a surprise to so many Bolivians when told it and this is why action is being taken by Viva, largely through its Child Ambassador Scheme, to put a stop to it. In every project – daycare centres & homes – has 3 or 4 elected Ambassadors. These Child Ambassadors are the voices of their projects. They speak at Churches, events, on the streets asking for signatures for petitions and most recently and amazingly in Cochabamba, on television on such issues.

We visited many projects across Oruru that Viva is working with. There are huge amounts of work being done with much credit going to numerous people putting their hearts and souls into serving children in their areas. All very very challenging stuff! From talking with the project leaders and volunteers the commitment is clearly huge. In the past projects like these functioned largely independently. As projects they had no accountability or resources for knowledge and support. It has been incredible to see the massive positive influence Viva is having across this city on such projects. Not just from the example of Oruru but governments across Latin America are approaching networks wanting to know what’s going on. Many governments just don’t know in what direction to head when faced with all these situations of such desperation. Once they see and learn about what is going on through Viva and how it has set itself up to function they want to know more. They see that there is a sustainable setup in place that doesn’t just involve feeding a group of families and moving on or giving away money and not educating the recipients adequately on the best way to use it. They see that Viva are providing people with long-term skills and opportunities to develop into educated people having very good chances of reaching potential. EXCITING!

Of course this ball can only keep rolling and the results improving with help from people like you. If you would like to make a donation and support the ongoing work of the Early Encounters Viva/Toybox partnership then please visit http://www.toybox.org.uk/index.html to do so. Any amount is massively appreciated and goes such a long way. At two of the projects I have been volunteering at, Fundacion Emmanuel and Casa de Amistad, I have asked each why they can’t expand their work in certain ways. There are wonderfully passionate people at these projects willing to help and their programs run hugely successfully. But there is still so much more potential that can be reached. I asked Fundacion Emmanuel why it only operates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays – providing a caring daycare service to children whose mothers are prostitutes - and Casa de Amistad why they couldn’t have a few dormitories on sight so the children didn’t have to go back to the prisons to sleep every night. The solitary answer from both was simple: ‘We don’t have enough’. Having seen how immensely amazing we get it in the UK – the way our country is so developed, where money is being spent and all the benefits we get – it is puzzling that there are amazing projects here struggling day by day to provide basic, essential services to children that are so deprived and are living in awful situations facing malnutrition, abuse, lack of education, the list goes on... So please kindly consider what you can do to help these people.

There are so many untold stories and details I haven’t gone into here. If I did I could go on and on and on and on... so you’ll have to ask me.

Anyway, part 1 over. In part 2 the next stop is my hometown - Cochabamba.

‘till then,

Ciao x