Charagua!

This week we visted our new home, Charagua, for the first time. The drive from Santa Cruz takes about 5 hours by truck; the first three hours are on excellent pavement, the last two on curvy, very rough roads through beautiful hilly country -- with mountains closeby on the west. We checked out potential homes in both Charagua town and in Charagua "station," which are about 7 kms apart. The town is slightly larger, while the train stops at the "station," which feels more like a frontier town. The goal is for our house/yard to be our living space, a place for MCC visitors, and house a mini Centro Menno (we also want to have a garden plot, fruit trees, and a tiny pasture for a milk cow, but those are not written as specifically into MCC program plans :) Both towns have beautiful views of the mountains just to the west, small markets with fresh produce, sandy streets, chicken meals sold in almost every doorway -- and an invasion of the Tigo logo (cell phone company). The photo at right is of the Catholic Church in Charagua town; directly across the street from it is a beautiful, new town plaza.

On this trip, we also visited the Mennonite colony of Durango, which we'll be working with most directly. It lies about an hour's drive northeast of Charagua (it doesn't take long to feel completely out of the mountains). There we spent some time at a main gathering site for the colony - general store, parts store, milk gathering place, cheese factory, butchering ring, mill, and probably more - all on one yard. From there we went to a home for a LARGE lunch (noodle soup, chicken, yucca with gravy, deep-fat fried verenike, beans, rice, and bread) with a large family (12 children). In the afternoon we visited a few sites with MCC-sponsored irrigation projects: windmills, pumps, and cisterns. All told, we're quite excited to move to the Chaco and ease into a dual Bolivian/German world...come December.