Visit to the Kansas cheese factory

It's quite exciting for us when fellow MCCers come to experience our neck of the woods (chaco). We had a great time with the Longeneckers in June, including a trip to a nearby Mennonite cheese factory (the most impressive one we've seen so far). It's a cooperative of 40 families living close together in the "Kansas" area of Pinondi Colony, up and running 2.5 years, and doing quite well.






The cheese is bought by Bolivians who come in cheese trucks and sell it further in Santa Cruz to the north or Yacuiba to the south (selling price is about $2.50/kg and it's sold for about $3.50/kg in the markets).


We got to take several kilos worth of scraps home--those strips cut off to make nice, even blocks of cheese.


Here we are taking orders for the Menno Bote in the Kansas cooperative store and queseria.


Bundled up like babushki for the cold ride home.

Scenes from Charagua

Old Colony Mennonites harvesting soya in Pinondi Colony; sorghum heaps in the back.


Harvesting soya with a pull-behind combine (vehicles that are not self-propelled don't need steel wheels), Pinondi Colony.


We bought four hens in the colony. This was the first egg--the only one, so far. Either we can't find the others, or we're missing some crucial ingredient (rooster?!).


The first papaya from the trees on our yard.


Hans Schroeder, our program coordinator, scavenging for avocados on our yard.


Our home.

Construction

Our yard has been taken over (again) by construction workers, at the behest of our overly ambitious landlord. Last week, just when we thought the resource center building was getting "close" to ready, things got a little crazy: roof ripped off, walls knocked out, new doorframes taken down. So now we are getting a kitchen. Another one. Along with a yard full of workers, their kids, dogs, radios, and friends for the foreseeable future. Our patience is running a bit thin these days...

Visit to Moro Moro

We ventured out of Charagua for the first time last week, returning to Santa Cruz to catch up on MCC business, do a bit of visiting, hit the big city markets, and pack up some of the books for our resource center. We also took a 9-hour bus ride into the mountains to visit our fellow MCC campo workers in Moro Moro. They are helping communities build systems to utelize water from mountain streams, produce honey, improve dairy herds, build dry latrines, and so on. The environment is strikingly different than Charagua, but it was good to also realize some of the overlap in our projects.

Click here to see more photos, including ones of us panting on the 8km hike (mainly) up mountains to visit Liz's second cousin, Nathan Harder.

Settling into a routine

It's now two months that we've been living in Charagua, and we still are so very content here. Photos of some of our activities are in the "Charagua photo album" on the right. On our yard the maralfalfa is about knee high in some places and Ramont laid drip tape just last week. The vegetable garden is growing like crazy: tomatoes, watermelons, carrots, onions and herbs are doing the best. Lemons and avocados are dropping like crazy from the trees on our yard. The rainy season seems to be extending later than usual, which is quite a bonus. The nights are becoming quite cool but the days are usually still hot. We're getting to know people in town, particularly through shopping and going to churches (both Catholic and Evangelical).

In terms of work, we're still in the stage of getting a feel for the context and making initial contacts with potential partners. Recently we went with rural medical staff to give vaccination clinics in Mennonite and Guarani villages (see photos in photo album to the right). This is a good way for us to scope out some of the areas beyond the colonies, particularly their water situation. In the colonies, Liz translated for the Mennonite women--but only in the somewhat rare cases of them coming without their husbands. This is a good way to meet more people, and some have even come to visit us socially at home. The best part of the vaccination clinics, though, is witnessing the sheer terror of toddlers made to step on the weighing scale!

Progress is (very) slowly being made on the building that is to house the resource center (formerly referred to as a mini Centro Menno). It will almost certainly be a few more weeks before we can move books and other literature into it, but we are now in Santa Cruz gathering those materials at MCC. It's fun to be in the city again and to see our MCC friends, but also a bit overwhelming--so many things in the market! so much traffic! so much night light! so much internet access!...

Visitors

We had our first weekend visitors recently. Hans & Elma Schroeder (our program coordinators) and their kids were the first brave folks from MCC in Santa Cruz to venture down for a few days. It was good to hear the news and otherwise visit, start painting out future resource center, eat outside meals, and go exploring for the "hot springs" (i.e. warm river water) in the mountains just west of Charagua.

Our yard and house is slowly getting even more ideal than it was: cement floor under the shauten dack, pruned fruit trees, garden vegetables and maralfalfa coming up, junk piles being hauled away, and so on. Besides working on that, we make trips to the Mennonite colonies about twice a week to meet people and ask question after question. We have also made plans to help a rural Bolivian clinic with vaccination clinics in Durango Colony. We anticipate that this "partner" will be a good link, as well, to some of the small Bolivian communities surrounding the Mennonite colonies.

Altogether, it is a calm, slow-paced life here in Charagua Station, and we cannot believe how lucky we are to be here! Development, partners, and capacity-building aside, the very best part of the day is making and eating our supper out on the patio, under the stars, and sitting there until it is time to go to bed.

p.s. New photos are posted fairly regularly into the "Charagua Photo Album," which you can click on to the right.

Home in Charagua!!

We finally made it! Six months into our MCC term, we are now at "home" in Charagua station. We arrived a week ago Wednesday with two vehicle loads of basic furniture, household supplies, and clothes. The house is lovely and the yard is one large paradise (now disguised by piles of building supplies and junk, but that will change). So far we have mainly been working on the house and yard: Ramont built window screens, under-the-door rubber shields, a kitchen shelf, brick sidewalks to the water tap and bathroom, and killed a gigantic tarantula outside our room (while there was still an inch gap under the door and no window screens). Liz has mainly been in bed with dengue fever, but things are looking brighter on that front today. Sevaral times Bolivians or Colony Mennonites have come to our gate to see what is going on and/or when the Centro Menno will open (that will be a few weeks of heavy labor away).




In short, it feels truly good to be here and we look foward to now getting to know some of our neighbors and the Mennonite communities better.

Roadtrip(s) to Charagua

Since we're still not living in Charagua, we've been making the trip there from Santa Cruz weekly. The 280km trip takes about 9 hours by bus or train, 5 hours in a snazzy vehicle, and about 6 hours in "our" Toyota--which we took for the first time this week. The ride is HOT and wind-blown, but this time not too dusty since it recently rained. Here are a few shots from the road:

Here the pavement ends, about 180 kms into the trip. The last 100 kms on bumpy or muddy and winding dirt road can be (or at least seem) a bit daunting...

...but also very beautiful. Cows, donkeys, and goats are the main road blockers, but we also see plenty of pigs, foxes, dragon lizards, and little kids.


Sometimes the road takes us through a river bed,

and sometimes we wish it would.Up close, this bridge looks a bit less than inspiring.


Here is the entrance to Durango Colony, about an hour east of Charagua. The bars across the entrance are to prevent cattle crossings.


Lunch time in Durango; for the Old Colony Mennonites, this means 10.30am. We went gourmet on this day: canned wieners, Menno nacho chips, granola bars, and terere.


A mid-day view of Campo 5, Durango Colony. Much of the colony was at a widow's estate auction. She had recently remarried and so, according to church rules, is required to distribute half of her net financial worth to her children (i.e. half their inheritance).


This is the view going west to Charagua pueblo from Charagua station, a distance of 5 kms. We'll be living in Charagua station, which is slightly smaller of the two.


Heading back to Santa Cruz through another river bed...


...and over another bridge, this time on the highway between Argentina and Santa Cruz.

Snapshots

Here, finally, is a representation of willage vater. This Old Colony Mennonite yard has a "complete set"--well, cistern, and windmill--that MCC has helped provide for low-income families. These two boys live on this yard.




Above is a field of maralfalfa, which Ramont has been checking out as a way to improve dairy herds. Below is field work (using steel wheel tractors) in Pinondi Colony, which borders on the east side of Durango Colony.




Visiting in Durango Colony last week.



If you look closely, you can see our future dinner under the leaves.

We're (a wee bit) independent!

We can now drive in Bolivia! Ramont's driver's license has the original name whited-out and his real name typed over it. Liz's lists her purpose in life as "esposa de Ramont"...

We took our very "own" (MCC) pick-up for Charagua out for ride last Sunday, visiting our former host family in Morganland colony. That trip has been immensly simplified and shortened by the opening, just two days earlier, of the Paila Bridge east of Santa Cruz. We whizzed over the Rio Grande in record time and marveled at the modernity of it all. You can see the old bridge off to the left in this photo.

a fruity future

Our future house in Charagua is...still not finished and probably won't be this month. On the upside, now that it's full summer the yard looks like a mini paradise. We noticed the following trees with fruit on them or soon to be:
lemon
lime
avocado (3 gigantic trees)
maracuya
chirimoya
papaya
banana

There are also 8 fairly young citrus trees and a serious grape vine in need of pruning. On the vegetable side of things, we plan to plant our winter garden in early February.

Christmas in Chaco, Paraguay

We just returned from 10 days in Colonia Menno, in the heart of Paraguay's very hot, very dry Chaco. The trip was amazing in many ways. I (Liz) got to probe my grandmother for stories about settling in the Chaco and life thereafter. Thanks to visits with all nine of my mom's siblings who live there--and many more adult cousins--we saw and heard about all kinds of professions: cattle ranching, milking, water hole digging, credit union manager, crop research director, Cooperative commerce administrator, colony slaughter house and milk production workers, nurse, anesthesiologist, hair stylist, satellite TV business owner, computer programmer, caretakers at a home for mentally disabled children, and the list goes on (and on). We were deeply impressed with the Mennonite colonies' political organization and especially the cooperative system. But we also have many more questions than could be answered in ten days!

It was a unique and meaningful way to spend Christmas (four times, with different families each time) and to welcome in the new year. May it go well!


With Oma Toews in Loma Plata. [More photos in the Paraguay 2008 album to the right].

It was a good year:

We're heading off tonight by bus to spend the holidays with the large, extended Toews family in Paraguay.

Merry Christmas to all of you!

Scenes

Yesterday we went to a Mennonite auction near Pailon. Getting to Pailon requires crossing this bridge -- which can add as much as six hours to a trip, depending mainly on whether impatient drivers clog up the path onto or off the bridge. Our wait yesterday was about an hour.



Loading up the bus for another trip to Charagua last week.



Main street, Charagua Station, Bolivia.



This is what we call "home" these days, across from the MCC complex in Santa Cruz. Not only the bananas are abundant; mangos keep dropping from the sky like hail.

Photos

Just a reminder that you can see many more photos by clicking on the "Photo Album" button on the right hand side of this blog. Once you're in our Picasa web album, you can navigate around to see several different sub-albums (though it's still not ideally organized!).

On the road

We made the trip south to Charagua last week...and realized that we won't be moving there on 1 December as planned. The property MCC plans to rent for our residence and mini Centro Menno is not nearly ready to be occupied yet. The bottom photo shows that the three-room house still has no roof, floor, windows, or plaster siding. A very old building in the yard's center still needs to be demolished. An outdoor bathroom will yet be built. The future Centro Menno building needs a cement floor and repairing. But, all the materials are on hand and work is progressing (if too slowly for our impatience). And seeing the property again reminded us how ideal it seems to be for a garden, testing a super variety of alfalfa, fruit and avocado trees, and much more. We simply can't WAIT to get started! Tomorrow we'll take the bus or train back to Charagua for a few days, in order to begin making contacts in town and further scoping things out. So while many of you will be eating turkey with your families, we'll be eating yet another meal of greasy rice and pollo in a tiny pension with the TVs blaring. Happy Thanksgiving!

Morganland

We spent the past five weeks in the German Mennonite colony of Morganland (officially called Canadiensia II), which is 2-3 hours east of Santa Cruz. We lived with the Fehr family, whose two daughters still at home are Liz' second cousins. Ramont spent a portion of each day studying Low German from a book and the rest of the day hearing it straight from the mouth of native speakers. And now...he can understand it fairly well and what he speaks sounds like a native!

Life at the Fehrs was slow-paced, steady, and comfortable. Few words are wasted, yet going visiting in the evenings and on Sunday is expected. Work is more than a livelihood; it seems to border on a hobby (for example, we're always looking to make tasks more efficient so that we can get back to what we "want" to do; here we did tasks slowly and thoroughly because they ARE what we "want" to be doing). A typical day for us went like this:

Ramont helped milk at 6:00; Liz drank mate with the eldest daughter and helped get breakfast ready. Breakfast was anytime between 7:30-8:30. On Mondays and Fridays, Liz helped one of the daughters do laundry from before breakfast until late morning; Saturday mornings were spent cleaning; other mornings held various tasks such as yardwork, visiting, doing the grandparents' laundry, cooking, etc. Ramont would help Peter with whatever he was working on, including field work. Siesta was until 2pm, and scheduled terere breaks were somewhere between 9:30-10:30am and 2:30-3:30pm. Evening chores and milking went from 4:30pm until about 6:15. After that we would drink terere again (or other refreshing drinks!) and have a late supper at 7:30 or so. In the evening we'd often sit outside with just the family, or with visitors, or listen to Low German news on the radio.

We got to visit several different churches in the colony, met most of the Toews relatives, ate copious amounts of heavy farm food (meat, dairy, and carbs), and discussed many a medical condition and details of gory accidents. It was an extremely rich glimpse into one kind of Mennonite colony life.

Here are a few photos:


Now we're back in Santa Cruz for a few weeks, biding our time until we can finally move down to Charagua (around the first of December, we hope...).

MCC Retreat 2008

The entire MCC Bolivia team--roughly 25 national workers and 25 international--met at a Catholic retreat center outside Santa Cruz this Wednesday through Friday. The days were full with workshops, visiting, swimming, napping, eating, and a rather hilarious talent show. It was a very well-planned and organized event, but also had lots of exuberance and creativity...and Spanish.

~~~~~

On Sunday we head out to the Morganland colony to live with a Low German host family for a month. We'll be staying at the Fehr's, whose two daughters still at home are my (Liz') second cousins. Although he'll hear lots of it, Ramont will essentially be teaching himself Low German with a brand new Low German primer, Wi Leahre Plautdietsch (many thanks to Professor McCaffery). It seems like it will also be a good opportunity for us to experience Mennonite colony life, even while this family and colony are far from the most conservative here in Bolivia. At the very least, I hope I can learn to butcher a chicken without flinching.

Colony visit

Last week turned out to be quite eventful. In addition to the Charagua trip, we spent an afternoon at our Spanish teacher's quinta (in this case, a small dairy farm) near Santa Cruz.

The next day, Centro Menno staff took us new MCCers [see photo, minus Lynn] to visit a rather wealthy Old Colony Mennonite family in the largest Bolivian Mennonite colony, Riva Palacias. The family has a business making and selling augers and hammer mills; in addition, they own at least one of the colony stores. Below is a colony general store, selling everything from fabric to Catechism books. At bottom is an Old Colony Church in this colony.