FAMILY
After being met at the airport by a member of projects abroad, I was taken to the flat where I am to live for the next 10 weeks. Mariela is a 28 year old mother of her daughter Angela who is 4 and is already "my best friend." She immediately has taken to me, smothering me in kisses at every minute of the day, asking to "jugar" play or "pintar algunos dibujos" - painting, or just coming into my room and jumping on my bed. And when I do kick her out she just knocks, a lot. I have already learnt to tell her not to annoy me "no me moleste" but she is sweet and it certainly adds to things to do. Her mum calls her Gordita which basically means little fatty - would be very insulted if I was refered to as the same by my mother but she laaaves it. Mariela´s nephew Matau lives there too, aged 12 and the grandparents are always in and out as they live in a town about 30 minutes away called Sacaba which I will visit at some point I´m sure. They bring lots of fruit which is always great, which makes up for the tonne of questions I get.
DRUGGIES
The Flat is lovely and modern by Bolivian standards - I´m very lucky with it all and my en-suite baño! It is quite close to everything, I can walk to the main part of town in about 15 minutes, to the Projects abroad office in 15 mins and to where I have to catch my bus from in about 5 - all things I was shown in my induction of everything by Rosario, who works for PA. I have also been told that it is very important that I don´t go near any bridges surrounding downtown, as this is where the druggies hang out and jump out at you for money. Where else but Bolivia, home of cocaine. The drug wars were apparently in the countryside but now they are slowly progressing to the cities where there are turf wars occuring - which gangs can have what bridges, but I´m not planning on going out partying at night by myself anyway! Otherwise during the day, I feel very safe walking around - getting some stares being the tallest person around for sure, particularly in comparison to the traditional folk in the streets wearing bright colours and bowler or straw hats, with plaits poking out the bottom.
TRENDY BOLIVIANS
There are obviously a lot of trendy city folk as well and I visited the market with Mariela and her mother yesterday from about 4pm-6.30pm, travelling on the local trufi which follows a route but you just hail it and can tell them to stop anywhere, all journeys costing about 18p or 1.70Bs. (Bolivianos.) We wandered around the labrinth of this indoor market, La Cancha where you pretty much can buy anything - its effectively your Bolivian shopping centre, and very similar to markets you might find in Turkey. Here I was one of the gang helping choose trouser material, a new shirt for her work and more importantly a hold in body bra suit of all things! There is some very interesting fashion - her mama was pointing out dresses for me which I kindly had to turn down, lycra and frills just isn´t my style....
We have obviously reached that stage in our friendship as in the evening, I went with her to her friends house where we sat down discussing the ways of the world with beer (shame it wasn´t pimms haha) whilst being smoked out by her two friends and their 20 ciggs. The chatting was going well, until I reached a point of tiredness when my spanish functioning just does not work anymore, as they had drunk more and were discussing the ways of the world, speaking so fast I literally didn´t have a clue.... So between about 11.30 and 1, I just sat there wishing for the radiotaxi! But I was suprised I could join in the BANTS for at least an hour anyway.... In my projects abroad handbook, it says "drunkeness, particularly amongst women is frowned upon." Clearly with Mariela my new BBF (bolivian best friend,) is of a new generation that doens´t care as I was the one holding my arm out when we got back to the flat, helping her down the slope in her killer tacoñes (heels.)
We are off to more friends this afternoon wayyhayy, before I hopefully meet some other volunteers tomorrow and see some sights, such as the Big statue of Christo on the hill. Excited to speak some English for a bit!
SPANISH
Spanish is going well, but it is intense permeanently speaking it - It is improving, but now I want to say more complicated things I need to look up new words in my dictionary... particuarly as the vocab in south america is different from Spain - I have also been told that I have more of a castellano accent (originating from spain) which comes as a suprise to them - not sure why considering Spain is substantially closer than Bolivia! I visited my project at the special needs school on Trufi 110 yesterday for the morning, donning on my scrubs.
SPECIAL NEEDS
It´s certainly different from my experiences with special needs so far in England but I don´t feel I can have an opinion on it yet as I start properly on Monday. There are less children in wheelchairs, with profound and multiple disabilities and more with learning developmental delays. I figure this may be because medical intervention is less at birth so the ones with more severe problems don´t survive at birth, particularly if they have respiratory or gastro problems. All I know is that their version of a hydro pool came as a bit of a shock - it is effectively a big hot tub. They don´t know much about hydro, and I guess I will have to use my initiative. I mentioned that it would be beneficial for this girl there with cerebral palsy, but they may need some convincing. Manual handling is also out of the window, as she is carried everywhere so it could be a bit problematic getting her in the pool/ hot tub, minus any hoists.... But I will write more about my experiences later when I know more about what happens there.
Thank you for taking the time to read this if you´ve managed to reach the end! I hope to update you more in about a week when I´ve settled in some more xx
