Universidad Academica Campesina-Carmen Pampa, Bolivia

Un Recuerdo de Bolivia: Living the Global Locality

Josh Meuth-Alldredge

 

Living and working at the UAC-CP is often feels like exploring the innards of a paradox. This place is fundamentally defined by what is local, just as it is essentially characterized by its global engagement. Every day I learn new things both about the university and the village in which it was founded. Carmen Pampa is a mostly Aymará community of two hundred people that dedicates itself primarily to the cultivation of coca, coffee, bananas, and the raising of livestock and chickens.  At the same time, this village is home to 700 students of the Unidad Académica Campesina-Carmen Pampa.

The UAC-CP is one of the premier accredited undergraduate institutions in rural Bolivia, and represents one of five such Campesina Academic Units within the Bolivian Catholic University system. Situated in a mile-high jungle valley, our university offers B. S. degrees in Agronomy, Education Sciences, Veterinary and Zootechnical Medicine, and Nursing. Additionally, we offer a 3-year technical program in Ecotourism and a one semester Pre-university preparatory program.

Our students hail from across all of Bolivia, and most of them come from low-income families as the first member to attend university. Studying in the UAC-CP, for them, is a unique gateway to a rewarding and empowering professional life. But just as importantly, it allows them to gain the skills necessary to return to their communities and empower the entire population. In a very real way, these graduates sustainably develop their communities: They often return home and improve the local schools through their teaching, implement and share new crop technologies, bring higher quality medical attention to their communities, and make animal production more safe, efficient, and humane. Through these actions, they help to integrate and advance rural Bolivia in the global economy. In short, our empowered graduates become the next generation of development in Bolivia.

                Through our five majors and diverse projects, the students we serve are entering the global marketplace as nurses, vets, teachers, sustainable farmers, researchers, and ecotourism guides. The uniquely local-global aspect of the university exists most visibly within them; coming from rural, poor, and often isolated villages, they receive a heavily subsidized quality education, which helps them seek new opportunities in a developing Bolivia and a globalized world. Crucially, though, the graduates strive to remain involved in their localities, either working within their communities to effect change or improving their region by pursuing careers in the nearby cities and countries.

Working within this university context as the External Relations Coordinator is truly eye-opening. Every day runs the gamut from tasks such as advancing international collaborations, grantwriting, and coordinating international visitors to local jobs like advertising our guest speakers, scheduling traditional dance workshops, and introducing campus staff to newly engineered water facilities. The work is never boring, and there are always new projects and crises to be approached (and hopefully handled!).

Best of all, the local, intimate, real aspects of this community permeate my life, and hold the pressures of our globalized work system at bay. Making it to Skype meetings can become a novelty when the tropical downpours cut power every other day.  Twenty feet from my front door is a trail that winds through the jungle for hours of hiking, accompanied by good-natured hunting dog.  “Commuting” to and from my home to the upper campus, where I work, involves a thirty-minute trek up Uchumachi mountain through coffee plantations, groups of livestock, and forest.  But it’s the people, and getting to know them, that really solidify the connection to this locality of rural Bolivia. Walking down from upper campus the other day, I came upon the washed-out remains of a log bridge crossing a stream. On my side, watching the flow, there was a stooped and elderly chola (cholas are indigenous women who wear a distinctive outfit of multiple skirts, elaborate shawls, and tophats).  Clearly unable to balance on the few wooden poles that remained of the bridge, she turned and muttered a few phrases to me. Together, hand in hand, we managed to walk her across one of the logs. On the other side she loudly thanked me in Spanish, grabbed my hand again, and said a few words in indigenous Aymará, ending with “waliki.” Waliki is one of the few Aymará words I know, and it means good. Little things like this give me strength and perspective, and hardly a day goes by that I don’t appreciate this link with “the local.” It balances my stressful workdays, and it helps me understand better the reality from which the UAC’s students come. And that perspective is sure to be the most lasting lesson of my time here in Bolivia.

Casey Harrington at the Centro Educativo Trilingüe Nuevo Amanecer in Parramos, Guatemala

            Since moving in July to the small, rural town of Parramos, Guatemala to carry out my Princeton in Latin America fellowship, my world has gotten a lot smaller and a whole lot bigger at the same time.  Parramos has just under 10,000 residents and is located in the central highlands of Guatemala, about a fifteen-minute drive from Antigua.  Living and working in the confines of a small town has required me to adjust to living out the majority of my days within about a three block radius of my host family´s home. While the geographical space which I occupy has shrunk significantly since moving here, my knowledge, skills, connections with the projects and people of Parramos, and my desire to become even more involved in this community in the coming months have expanded beyond what I thought possible. 

While I am involved in a number of projects here in Parramos, my primary work site is at Centro Educativo Trilingüe Nuevo Amanecer, a school in Parramos where I work with elementary, middle, and high school students teaching English. It has been a rewarding and challenging experience finding ways to engage kids, even those who think they will never be capable of learning English, through singing, Total Physical Response, and various games. I have learned that it requires endless amounts of energy and creativity to be a successful teacher, and everyday I gain more knowledge about how to provide that energy and creativity to my students.

In addition to teaching at Centro Educativo Trilingüe Nuevo Amanecer, I have worked the past few months with a team of citizens to coordinate a summer school that will take place in November and December, when the Guatemalan school year ends. In addition to recruiting volunteers to teach Mayan culture, physical education, dance, math, and English, I have been working hard to advertise the school to the children of Parramos. It has been really rewarding to see the kids cheering and clapping when I enter classrooms to talk to students about the vacation school, and I am excited that they will have productive, interactive activities to participate in during their vacation months.  Another benefit to coordinating the summer school is that it has allowed me to develop connections with dozens of citizens in Parramos and given me an opportunity to learn the strategies I need to use to organize projects here in rural Guatemala. I realize now, for example, that going directly to someone´s home and talking to them face-to-face is a hundred times more effective than calling or emailing them.

                  In Parramos, I have had the privilege of engaging in projects not only in education, but also in public health through my work at the town´s local health post.  During my first few months at the post, I have had the opportunity to learn how to vaccinate and supplement patients. Now that I have spent a few months working on those skills, I am currently transitioning into learning how to provide patient consultations with the health post´s doctor.  She is teaching me to diagnose basic illnesses and to decide which medications and dosages to use to treat patients. Given the large Kaqchikel indigenous population in Parramos, it has been interesting to see how cultural perceptions of health and well-being affect medical care and strategies for patient education. This newly acquired knowledge regarding how to provide culturally sensitive patient education has proven to be very useful in talks I have given in a public school here in Parramos on family planning and substance abuse.   

                  I did not expect to find myself this deeply intertwined in the Parramos community this early in my fellowship, but the collaborative nature and warmth of the town´s residents make it so easy to get involved. Life in Parramos is wonderful.  Between waking up to mountains and fog every morning,  drinking fresh blackberry and pineapple juices, and getting to say “Buenos días” about fifteen times to acquaintances during my two-minute morning walk to work, I´m really learning that I need to savor every moment I spend here. I can´t wait to see how my perspectives, relationships, and work in this small but vibrant community will grow and change in the next seven months.

    Casey with two elementary level students at Centro Educativo Trilingüe Nuevo Amanecer 

    Casey working at the health post in Parramos

           

    A beautiful view while hiking a volcano

    A street in Parramos very close to Casey’s house           

Welcome to the PiLA Blog

Over the next few months, we will be working to create a platform through which current and former participants can share about their experiences working in Latin America through the PiLA work placements.