First Class of First-Aid

Last Friday we taught an awesome first aid class to 15 + women in Nueva Esperanza. We have a friend who is a Med student here in Santa Cruz who was supposed to help us teach the class, but last minute (11:30 p.m. the night before) he backed out. Thank you, friend. I guess you could say we were a little frantic the next morning trying to pull everything together. Carmen, our Bolivian side-kick, wasn’t going to be able to come with us either because she too had a class to teach in another community (23 de Octubre), so were on our own.

A wrong bus ride and a lost taxi driver later we made it to our humble open-air chapel to teach the class. We used a manikin to teach CPR and the Heimlich Maneuver to the women and each of them had the opportunity to practice their mad life-saving skills on Little Anne (the manikin). Afterwards, we taught general first-aid care which included the following topics: skin infections, fever, diarrhea, dehydration, snake bites, chagas (a common parasite), bleeding, etc.

Apparently the class was a success because we were asked to teach two more classes to a group of boy scouts. Wish us luck!

a seizure and a cemetery, fruit and some empanadas (not necessarily in that order)

Last weekend, we headed to the local (and infamous) Fería de Frutas (Fruit Fair). The Fería is an annual event held in La Guardia, the municipality home to the communities we visit every day, so of course we wanted to support. We began the day by making delicious empanadas (filled with local Menonite cheese) with Carmen.

On the bus ride to La Guardia, Amanda got a chance to save the day and get some serious nurse training. A man in the bus suddenly began having a grand mal seizure, and nobody on the bus knew him or knew what to do. As I assured the bus ¨¡Ella es enfermera!¨ (She´s a nurse!), Amanda worked on keeping the man´s airway open while trying to get him conscious using some pain stimulus after the seizure ended. In the meantime, I worked on convincing the bus driver (who didn´t even stop the bus) that the man needed to get to the hospital. The guy was in bad shape, and luckily we did manage to stage a quick exchange when both the bus and an ambulance pulled over on the side of the road as the two drivers dragged the man into the front seat of the ambulance (banging his head on the way out), and strapped him in like an average passenger. We hope the man is ok. Also, Amanda is a rockstar.


To recover from this traumatic experience, we gawked at, bought, and ate lots of fruit. Check out all those beautiful orange colors!

I have a strange love of all things cemetery, so Amanda indulged me and we spent way too long in the La Guardia cemetery. So awesome.

Peace and Moises

This 14-year old young man is pretty much our best friend here in Bolivia. His mother is enrolled in Jhon's Micro Enterprise class in the community of Nueva Esperanza, and we love to hang out with him every Monday and Wednesday night. It seems like every time we find ourselves in Nueva Esperanza, Moises pops out of the woodwork and tags along with us. Unfortunately, Moises is dealing with some complex personal and family obstacles, and is not always in the best of environments for him to develop socially, physcially, and emotionally. We are currently working with his family, using our social work and nursing backgrounds, and while Ascender is not designed to provide the medical or counseling help this family needs, we are helping them in whatever way we can and hooking them up with local social service resources.

p.s. Don't mind the peace signs. He thought it was cool.

Feria de la Mujer and Toilet Trouble

Yesterday the entire Ascender crew went to La Guardia to participate in a Feria de la Mujer (Women´s Fair). Ascender worked in conjunction with other organizations to put on this big event, which turned out to be a huge success. We expected about 500 people to attend, but the number was closer to 1000. Quite the extravaganza!

Each member of the team had a job: handing out soy milk samples with recipes (Bolivia is the 4th largest export of soy. Who knew?), teaching children the importance of dental care (every child swished with fluoride then watched a pretty awesome puppet show about brushing teeth), and providing info on sexual health. Fernando gladly passed the responsibility of teaching the sex ed portion to us, which we in turn, happily accepted. We created two very large posters explaining the different methods of birth control. Doug Mortenson, our roommate, was quite intrigued with our project. He kept asking us questions like, “how do you not get embarrassed when talking about this?” and “are you really going to talk about that?” Apparently our nursing and social work educations have sufficiently desensitized us on the subject. There is a great need for sex education in Bolivia, which is not taught in most schools. It was very interesting to talk to women about different methods of birth control and sexual health, and we tried to provide some good, solid, and concise information.

Doctors were supposed to be in attendance to the event to offer their services to the women and children, but fell through at the last minute, which was a bummer. Although Amanda was able offer aid to some, she was unable to help the majority without the needed supplies and help of other trained personnel. There is an obvious need for health education! We were surprised at how many people were diabetic but didn’t have the means to control the disease, or had eye strains but had never had their eyes tested. We hear stories about boys who have been blessed with amazing talents to play soccer but get periodontal disease which leads to arthritis and heart defects and hinders their ability to play. We find ourselves wanting to talk to everyone and help everywhere, but are conscious that we are very small parts of a major movement to improve the economic and physicial health of Bolivia. We also try to be conscious of differentiating between genuine needs and things we just percieve as needs based on our backgrounds.

We’ll end on a lighter note. It seems that since we arrived in Santa Cruz we’ve had a lot of trouble with our toilet. It never has worked right, but according to Luis, our boss, we are the reason why. It started out with our toilet continuously running. One night as we attempted to stop the running problem we accidently dropped the toilet lid inside of the top part of the toilet (which apparently houses all of the important stuff). The heavy lid definitely broke something because the toilet was shooting out water after that happened. The only way we could make the water stop gushing out was to hold one of the pipes at a certain angle. Seeing how it was in the middle of the night we couldn’t call the plumber and we weren’t smart enough to figure out that the knob on the side of the toilet was to turn the water off.

Being the geniuses that we are we make-shifted a leverage system out of a hanger and bag which stopped the water from leaking:

The plumber came and “fixed” the toilet and now it makes this awesome sound every time you flush it. Erwin says the toilet is crying after being used, but Carmen thinks it is singing with joy. The jury is still out:

We love our Bolivian family and how they wear sweet glasses with us:

Video Blog Week #1

Bienvenido a Bolivia

Hola! Amanda and Annika here - we are interning at Ascender Bolivia in Santa Cruz, and loving every minute. Until August and July, respectively, we are working with the staff here in developing their ongoing programs, refining the evaluation and research processes, and learning about the intriguing historical and cultural perspectives of Bolivia. Here are a few of our impressions these first few weeks:

These people know what they are doing. The staff here is organized and efficient, and their programs are carefully thought out to be appropriate and meaningful for the communities and families. In San Miguel, a small rural village, we have met families who don’t have much, but do have plenty of space and great soil. Carmen, Health Director at Ascender Bolivia, is teaching the women in San Miguel how to create and sustain family gardens. While Ascender provided the first seeds, some instruction, and lots of encouragement, these women are the driving force behind making their ¨huertos¨ (family gardens) a success.

In Nueva Esperanza, Jhon (another staff member) is teaching budding enterprisers from a small community about the foundations of business. In the last class, we learned about the difference between short and long term goals, how to set appropriate goals, and how to change dreams into reality. Even in freezing weather, there is always an impressive turnout to the biweekly classes, and we can see the wheels turning as the students think about how to empower themselves and their futures.

Bolivians have big hearts. Everywhere we go, we are impressed by the hardworking, generous, and kind nature of Bolivianos. This street vendor was PSYCHED when Amanda bought orange juice from him, couldn’t stop grinning, and even gave her a free refill. As we spend time in more rural parts of Santa Cruz, we find that those who have little, give much. One woman, living in a house with dirt floors and no running water, was excited to give us soy milk she had learned to make in a class with Ascender – we recognize that her offer to us is probably a sacrifice, and feel so honored to be around such great people.

We are getting fat. Anyone who knows either of us will not be surprised that our short term goals usually include trying out the food at a new street vendor or comedor. Yesterday, we literally walked three hours in search of the perfect meal. One staff member thinks our obsession is particularly funny, and often refers to our “lugar favorito,” (favorite place) – an open market food court bustling with hundreds of vendors and food from Bolivia, Argentina, Mexico, and even Austria. We figure we brought enough Pepto Bismo to allow us to try any and all. 

Trabajo en Equipo

About two weeks ago (sorry I'm so late in posting about this), we went out with all of the staff here in the office to carry out more questionnaires in Campanero, the first community that is being surveyed as part of the ongoing evaluation project. Volunteers had already started surveying in Campanero a couple days before, and we interns accompanied them; then we went with the staff so that all the staff could become acquainted with the questionnaire and know what's going on with this ongoing evaluation.

Campanero is a rather small community outside of Santa Cruz, a couple minutes past a larger community called Cotoca. Apparently, most of the people in Campanero work in the brick and roof tile factory there. There is one paved street and one taxi line that connects the community to Santa Cruz.

The day before we went out we had a meeting with the staff to train them on administering the questionnaire and to be able to read through the entire questionnaire. The training went well, though it was fairly long. The staff had a lot of good questions and clarifications, which was great. The weeks before we had spent quite a bit of time adapting the questionnaire to focus on indicators both of Ascend's impact on the lives of these families and of demographic aspects that might guide Ascend's future involvement in the given community. Campanero, where it was decided we would start, is actually a community Ascend is not currently working in, so the data from there will mostly serve to give some idea of the situation of the families after Ascend's involvement.

The day we went out to Campanero was actually freezing cold. A very chilly cold front had just happened to come in that week, sadly. But even though we all had to bundle up quite a bit, the staff was committed and we all went out to survey. Here's some live shots of surveying in Campanero:

Jhon surveying a woman outside her house.
Doug and Jefe (Luis) showing that surveying can really be the funnest thing ever.

Don Nano surveying a woman with Jhon's supervision.

Kendal surveying a mother (or is it the child?) while the mother doesn't lose time from her sewing.

After we were all sufficiently frozen, we warmed ourselves up with plenty of meat from Brasargents (a Brazilian grill), back in Santa Cruz. This was a great reward for the deserving work the whole staff put into surveying in the morning. Here's a few pictures from lunch: