Bolivia – Posting 1 -- Habitat for Humanity Int'l 1
Bolivia – Posting 1
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2 de Agosto, Santa Cruz, Bolivia
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One day in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz is all you need to be reminded that for too many families in this world, owning a stable, safe and decent place to live is something that can only be dreamed of and struggled for.
Santa Cruz is known as the engine that drives Bolivia, a center for the poor South American country’s struggling business and industry. Population growth here is estimated to be 7 percent annually, as poorer Bolivians from more rural areas come to the city and its expanded opportunities. A frenetic flow of traffic fills the streets; wide boulevards divided by tree-shaded medians and lined with street vendors and outdoor markets give way to choked traffic circles and sometimes unpaved dirt roads.
Just off one of those roads, across a small ditch that often fills with sewage and runoff from the surrounding area, sits the community of “2 de Agosto,” a collection of tiny houses fashioned from bits of wood, bricks and mortar made of mud, blue plastic tarps and pieces of cloth. It is here that Berti Orellana has split his life in two in the hopes of one day owning a home. The farmer has left his wife and five children in a small community in the Bolivian countryside, now seeing them only about once a month when he makes the five-hour bus trek to be with them. The family tends its crops of rice and auca, a potato-like tuber that is a staple of the Bolivian diet, while their father plants seeds in Santa Cruz for a different kind of harvest.
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Berti Orellana (front), neighbor Luis Ricardo Fonseca (back) in 2 de Agosto, Santa Cruz, Bolivia
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Orellana is in the process of establishing residency on this bright and dusty plot of land, living in a one-room shelter he patchworked together from pieces of pressboard and flimsy wood. One of the first governmental requirements for land ownership is proof of residency; applicants must have lived on the land they desire for five years before they can even be considered for ownership. Because land can be expensive and hard to come by here, as in much of Latin and South America, Habitat Santa Cruz recently has begun to finds ways to work with families who first need to acquire land before they can partner on a house, offering microfinance assistance and advice. They hope to one day work with some of the 280 families that now live in 2 de Agosto like Orellana does.
In the afternoon, Steffan and I cross town to visit a row of houses in a community called Amanecer. Here, families of the physically disabled -- polio patients, amputees, paraplegics -- have built houses on government property, slowly piecing together structures of mud and tile and brick, creating a neighborhood where none was intended. We visit first with Benito Ramos, a polio-affected shoemaker who has lived here with his family of five for 11 years. He is a fixture at his work bench, and his wife Valeria takes in washing from the surrounding community, but he says the money they make is only enough for food for the family and school supplies for 16-year-old Gloria, 14-year-old Nestor and 13-year-old Amalia.
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Benito Ramos working at this bench in Amanecer community
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With nowhere else to go and little money to go there anyway, Ramos explains, the families stay here to be near their work as candy sellers, shoemakers and street cleaners -- and to be near each other. Families of five, six seven members crowd into single rooms with leaky roofs and walls that are decorated with art projects from school despite the fact that the dried mud that composes them crumbles into chunks at a mere touch.
Other families soon come out to talk to us, sharing the details of their lives and emphasizing that they try to look out for each other as best they can, the more able-bodied among them shouldering the load for those who need assistance with chores and household tasks. Sitting in small wooden chairs under an overcast afternoon sky, parents laugh as their children climb trees and turn cartwheels in the open yard in front of the small collection of homes.
These families also all say they share a common fear, that they will eventually be told that they must vacate the premises. One gentleman shows me how he has constructed his house so that he can take it apart and carry it with him if he is ever forced to leave. Their greatest hope is that they will somehow find a way to convince the government to allow them to stay and build better houses here. Because that is by no means certain, some say they are interested in partnering with Habitat, even if it means moving across the city from work, school, friends and the public transportation on which they rely. Habitat Santa Cruz staff say they seek the funds to purchase land more in the center of the city -- a more expensive proposition, but one that would keep these families nearer the services and support they need.
The theme that runs through all of this, of course, is how unshakeable the desire for home is. Families separate indefinitely, save for and scavenge building materials, work around leaking roofs and tight spaces, live with the fear of a knock on the door.
But they never give up the hope of a home. And Habitat for Humanity can never give up on finding new ways to help them have that hope. One day in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz is all you need to be reminded of that.