Mucho Trabajo

Bolivia. WEEK ONE
Lets start off by introducing ourselves... Hailey and Amber, the newest interns for Ascend Alliance here in Santa Cruz, Bolivia! Since day one, we have been blown away by how different it is here compared to Utah, which is where we are from. We've been here less than a week and we have already had so many opportunities to help out. It's so amazing to see how much of a difference that the various Ascend programs have for these Bolivian people. They are always grateful and so willing to learn all that they can. We are loving Bolivia so far and can't wait see what this week will bring us! Stay tuned!

ascender peru: whats going on out west in cusco

Amanda and I just returned to Bolivia after a brief stint in Cusco. We spent a week in beautiful Peru, checking out our first Maravilla del Mundo, and getting a feel for how our neighbors at Ascender Peru do their thing. We were:

energized by the structure in which Julia, Ascender Cusco´s manager, conducted this group dialogue between leaders of the community Patabama. Using some great visual processing, the group of leaders discuss community issues, what tactics have been tried in the past, obstacles and consequences of those efforts, and ways to improve the efficacy of Ascend´s involvement using available resources from both ends. Very grassroots, creative, and valuable way of communicating.
owned by altitude. Our hike to the top of this peak was both beautiful and educational (thanks, Geoffrey), and we loved every moment spent huffing and puffing from the few extra thousand feet. Saw some great ruins, talked to some cheerful local farmers, gaped at the views of Cusco Valley and surrounding mountains.

appropriately awed by Machu Picchu. I´m not sure there is much we can say about the Lost Incan City that hasn´t already been said by many people more eloquent than ourselves…the place is incredible. Worth the hype.

intrigued by the rich setting in the Cusco area. The political, cultural, linguistic, and historical context for Ascend´s work there is very different than ours here in Santa Cruz, something we want to be conscious of as we work in these communities.

impressed by the staff´s organization. We sat in on a planning meeting for the upcoming Ascend Expedition to Cusco, and it was evident that the small-ness of their team encourages them to be well-coordinated and organized. Also impressive is the great spread of work they have created in several communities: from health campaigns, reforestation and construction projects, a thriving greenhouse at an orphanage, various community classes, and a slew of other projects. Busy busy!

It is wonderful to be back with our Bolivian staff, where we have exciting work to do and our toilet sings. A big fat thank you to our wonderful hosts and guides, Perú interns Kyle ¨Carlos¨ Grey and Geoffrey ¨Weirdo¨ Strom, as well as Julia and Ruben. They have their own set of blogs as well, check them out here and here.

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