Monthly Archives: May 2011

In the final Bolivia blog, World Vision worker Chris Weeks hears about the challenge of connecting remote communities.

Nutrition fight: children are measured and weighed by World Vision expert. Photo: Martina Lees

The 4×4 is stuck again. We’ve got out to push but the wheels are churning up earth, forcing the vehicle deeper into the rutted ground.

So I follow the lead of my World Vision colleagues: shrug, grab our equipment, and continue on foot.

Later, I’m astonished to see that local World Vision office we left over an hour ago is just across the valley. This bone-jarring, epic journey has brought us such a short distance.

Children carry firewood on way to school

Modern-day tough guys

That’s the problem around here. It feels like the place isn’t suitable for human habitation because of the terrain and climate. But the people I meet – men and women, boys and girls – have adapted to their surroundings and are modern-day tough guys.

A very old man hands me a sack he’s been carrying for miles on his back so we can load it on the pickup truck. I can hardly lift it.

At a children’s playground (built with World Vision support) youngsters clamber over equipment in ways I’ve never seen before, perform acrobatic stunts, then run at lightning speed beside our truck to wave goodbye.

Woman in Tacopaya tending to crops

Above the radar

As we drive back to the World Vision office, bumping down a dried-up riverbed and swerving to avoid rocks, there’s a crackly radio report about a roadblock between Oruro and La Paz – a route I will need to take to the airport. Hundreds of pensioners are holding a protest march.

The demonstration doesn’t seem to mean much to people here. It feels like some families in these mountains are – almost literally – above the news radar.

A woman looks over the valley from Murata, Tacopaya district. Photo: Martina Lees

Hard to reach

As you travel between these communities, you meet people who are trying to do quite normal things. But this is an extraordinary place and there are obstacles everywhere.

In my short time here I’ve seen how World Vision has helped children get nutritious food for the first time; provided expertise to set up crop irrigation; helped establish llama farms; and supported children’s education.

I’ve also met a group of confident teenagers who, through a World Vision programme, know how to lobby for change. And we’ve helped scores of children get birth certificates. Without these, qualifications will not be valid and access to services may not be possible.

Greenhouse with a view, Tacopaya district

Connecting people

When scrutinising World Vision’s work, it’s clear that in Bolivia we spend an awful lot of time and resources just travelling to remote places to carry out these tasks – a challenge we don’t shirk.

I looked on Google Earth before arriving and could see only uninhabited mountains. It looks like that from the main road too. You have to get up close and start walking where the vehicles can’t reach before you eventually see that people live here.

No tourist would ever visit, yet World Vision is connecting people thousands of miles away through child sponsorship.

There’s nothing more incongruous than sitting in a mud house in the Bolivian mountains being shown letters from a sponsor in Kent. These connections not only mean so much to children here; they are the key to making real change possible.

Chris Weeks is a communications officer at World Vision UK

Achojcha - a Bolivian veg

World Vision worker Chris Weeks continues to blog from Bolivia, where families are reaping the rewards of fruit-and-veg on their doorstep.

I’m not sure how far I’d travel to buy tomatoes.

Felix, a father-of-eight in the Bolivian Altiplano, used to make a twelve-hour round trip.

It’s almost laughable, really – but not for Felix and his family.

Faraway fruit

Many of the things we enjoy on our plates in the UK are impossible to grow in fields up here. A scorching tropical sun, freezing nights, howling winds, and heavy rains destroy crops.

Felix's greenhouse

So parents like Felix – who want to give their children nutritious food – had no choice but to walk for an hour, wait for a bus then travel to the nearest city (Cochabamba) every month for tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and spinach.

There are no refrigerators or freezers so this all had to be eaten within a week before it went rotten – leaving three weeks without greenery on the plate until the next fruit-and-veg run.

Reaping the rewards

Now Felix – whose children aged eight and eleven are sponsored by World Vision UK supporters – simply reaches into his nearby greenhouse.

The same vegetables are free, plentiful, immediately available, and he gets up to five harvests a year.

These small structures, which are scattered up the slope in front of me, were built with help from World Vision. But it’s the local people who own them, who carried the materials up this narrow, treacherous path for their construction – and who reap the nutritious rewards.

Damian, 53, and children

Fresh ideas

It’s often the simplest ideas that are the most effective.

These greenhouses are small buildings with a door, ventilation holes, and a plastic roof tinted yellow so plants aren’t scorched by the sun.

As you’d expect, some are extremely organised with neat rows of strawberries, spinach and lettuce; others are rather like jungles and you become entangled in vines of fruit when you walk through the door.

The temperature here plummets when the sun goes down but I’ve stepped inside one of these greenhouses in the evening and felt how they retain the heat and humidity brilliantly. Plants are protected from the harsh weather which sweeps across these mountain ranges.

Tackling the cause  

Chris and Sabina share fresh salad from the greenhouse

Chronic malnutrition – known as ‘stunted growth’ to you and me – is a big issue here.

Many children are simply too short for their age because they aren’t eating the right food at the right time. Neither are pregnant mothers-to-be.

I’ve just been handed a chart by the local World Vision nutrition expert who checks up on children’s health and keeps a record of their progress. It shows the extent of the problem.

So the greenhouses aren’t just a bit of fun or a hobby in the back garden; they’re vital for these children’s future.

Chris Weeks is a communications officer at World Vision UK

Beware: World Vision llama project ahead

World Vision worker Chris Weeks blogs from the mountains of Bolivia – South America’s poorest country – where a llama farm brings fresh potential for an isolated community.

Bolivia is a land of ludicrous extremes.

I’m in the tropics but my teeth are chattering with cold. The guidebook refers to steaming jungles, grasslands teaming with wildlife, and vast salt flats.

But right now I’m 15,000 feet up a mountain range, face-to-face with a flock of llamas being proudly herded around by a ten-year-old girl called Adriana and her seven-year-old brother, Sabino.

Yes, you’ve probably guessed it…

10-year-old Adriana with llama

Adriana and Sabino are sponsored by supporters of World Vision UK which helped set up the farm three years ago. It began with seven llamas; now there are 45 of these bizarre-looking creatures.

Life on the ground

To me (relatively new to World Vision) this is a baffling place – like a dream where nothing makes sense.

The llamas have their very own house made of mud bricks with a thatched roof.

Adriana’s dad, 45-year-old Filomeno who helped build it, shows me around and invites me to the family home next door. Unlike the llamas’ house, his own home has no roof (he’s carrying out repairs).

I survey the breathtaking scenery from the doorway. There’s nothing here – just bizarre rock formations jutting from a lunar-type landscape. No electricity, phones or internet; no toilet that I can see.

As in strange dreams, you can’t run away either; I tried when one of the llamas lunged at me. At this altitude, the air is so thin you’re left gasping for breath.

Filomeno's llamas

Harsh environment

Of course, this environment is all too real for families and children who live here.

Until Filomeno’s first llamas arrived the only farming he could do was grow potatoes, he tells me. Now, there’s food for him and his family – and, for the first time, surplus meat to be sold. There’s also a chance to sell the llamas’ wool.

As a child, Filomeno walked five hours to class and five hours back. No wonder he completed just two grades and quit to start growing potatoes.

Things are different for his five children, including Adriana and Sabino, who now go to a school supported by World Vision just up the road.

Filomeno's children attend the local school, which is supported by World Vision UK

Future ambitions

Filomeno’s a proud guy. He’s rightly proud of the life he’s built here; of the houses he’s built (for him and his 45 llamas); and he beams with pride when talking about his wife and kids.

He wants all his children to stay in school, he tells me, and to go to university. Crucially, he insists, he wants them to develop skills that can be put to use in this community.

This llama project is just one small part of the development jigsaw in remotest Bolivia. I will try to get my head around the other pieces of this puzzle.

For the moment, I’ve seen for myself how a caring dad living up a mountain in South America has the first chance to earn modest funds to help his children’s dreams become reality.

Chris Weeks is a communications officer for World Vision UK