Bolivia – Posting 4 -- Habitat for Humanity Int'l 1
Bolivia – Posting 4
Driving through the streets of the small Bolivian town of Sipe Sipe one afternoon, I noticed a small house made completely of mud bricks. Such structures aren’t really out of the ordinary here, but a cactus had impertinently sprouted on the roof of this one and was happily growing in the baking sun. All I could think of when we visited the Andean town of Oruro was that cactus -- a surprising and persistent piece of life in an unexpected place.
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Festooning the faucet, residents of the Oruro neighborhood of Santa Ana celebrate the arrival of a steady supply of potable water after more than 15 years of living without.
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Steffan and I took a night bus from Cochabamba to Oruro, the driver tuning to radio coverage of a big soccer match between the two towns to keep his passengers entertained. The roar of the crowd and the announcers’ enthusiastic commentary faded to static as we climbed higher and higher into the darkness. Our first glimpse of Oruro was after midnight: no lights, no people, only the occasional group of dogs roaming the streets, until a flurry of activity at the bus stop.
The next morning, however, a long line of snack shops (ever-present in the Bolivian towns we have visited) was open early with their rainbows of sodas, juices and candies. Shoppers crowded into booths selling breads, vegetables and clothing. Vendors wheeled refrigerators and washers and dryers out onto the curb, unmistakable advertisements of the wares offered inside their old and crumbling business buildings. Residents crowded the streets, some in the colorful traditional Bolivian garb.
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New homeowner Fernando Sandy Lima moved into his Habitat house four days before our visit.
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Take away their collective vibrancy, however, remove the running children, the visiting neighbors and the ramshackle buildings, and what you are left with is Oruro’s almost-lunar landscape; town quickly yields to fields of dust and mud, which yield only to the brown emptiness of the surrounding mountains. And yet, this arid, stark, often-windy spot is the beloved home of Bolivia’s celebrated carnaval celebrations every year. Persistent life in a surprising place.
What Oruro’s otherworldly geography may lack in welcome is more than made up for in its people. During our day in Oruro, we meet with Habitat homeowners, some of whom moved in just last week, some of whom have lived in their warm, well-constructed houses for years. Ninoska Martinez de Urena, a mother of two, takes a break from her laundry and housecleaning duties to invite us inside. She raises her hands in mock horror when she tells us that, just like kids everywhere, 12-year-old Luis Miguel and 7-year-old Andrea Lorena regularly track mud into her house.
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Habitat homeowner Ninoska Martinez de Urena plays with her children Andrea Lorena and Luis Miguel.
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But she loves cleaning here, she says; it’s so much better than the one room her family used to share in her father-in-law’s house downtown. Here, she and her husband can sit together quietly in their living room, her favorite thing about the Habitat house, and her kids can run and play outside; and here, there is warm sun streaming in the windows and space for the children to study. “It’s like a peace field,” she says, gesturing to her family’s little piece of property.
Down the road, the residents of Santa Ana, a neighborhood of about 280 families that Habitat soon hopes to partner with, invite us to join a special day of celebration. They are celebrating the fact that on this day they finally have access to potable water, even though many families have lived here since 1990. Residents gather for a feast of carne de llama, children and old women dance, and neighborhood association president Yolanda Maidana talks about their new water system and the new life that it will mean for Santa Ana.
Each of these families, many of them single-parent, lives in a house they have constructed themselves, small homes with dirt floors and porous ceilings. Not enough space for big families, not enough protection from the elements. Many have simply given up, moving back to town, resuming a monthly rent payment because their houses offer inadequate shelter. Santa Ana townspeople are in the usually highly bureaucratic and expensive process of acquiring the documentation that proves they own this land, and then they hope to start constructing houses with Habitat’s help. On this day, though, they pause to celebrate one step in the long journey of the future they are building.
As I write this, we fly over the breathtaking barrenness of the Atacama Desert, headed for Chile, leaving Bolivia behind, but bringing with us its stories of hope and need.