Old, Gray Faithful

Semana Santa is a wrap, and school is back in full swing. In Latin American cultures, holy week is a pretty big deal, likely due to all the Catholic influence. This meant that we got a week long vacation from school during which most of the kids went home. For me, it was una semana media santa--a half-holy week. It got off to a really terrible start, improved as I took my 48 hours off, and ended quite pleasantly. Sounds a bit like the Easter story right? Going through trials, resting a couple of days, then shaking it off to come back to life (figuratively in my case).

The beginning of the week was a break from teaching, but the time I gained not having to prepare for classes was filled by work. The vacation schedule calls for work in the mornings, and only two meals per day. Because it is vacation, we are only asked to work for a few hours, but there is so much to do, that the volunteers usually end up working all day. The kids who stayed, however, would work the bare minimum and proceed to laze around the rest of the day. After long days of work knowing the kids were sitting and doing nothing productive, it was pretty frustrating coming back to the house to complaints of hunger (a product of the two meal-a-day vacation schedule) and demands to make food. Thankfully, each house was given some rice to cook throughout the week for such occasions.

Two Mondays ago was the climax of the terrible part of the week. Starting at 7 am, I went out on the tractor to mow down the overgrown field that Jorge, a new volunteer from Argentina who is helping out with our agriculture, asked me to clear. It’s a bumpy ride out there with the brush being as tall as the tractor and too thick to see more than a few feet. I would often hit tree stumps with the tires or fallen trees from when the field was torched last semester. There were a few times when I felt like I was riding a mechanical bull out there with all the bumps (an experience further authenticated by listening to “Old Town Road” at full blast… only kidding, “Live Like You Were Dying” is more my speed). It was all fun and games until the bull came down on a tree stump that smashed its oil filter. I made it back to the shop and changed the filter out for a new one, but enough oil was lost to give a dry reading on the dipstick.

With no oil on hand, I decided to go back out into the overgrown area on foot to look for the tractor ballast weights that I found to be missing when I changed the filter. My “bull ride” had exploited their poor quality and caused them to break off and bury themselves deep in the mowed brush. After an hour and a half of machete-ing in the heat of the day, I was able to find all but one of the weights. I came back into my room completely wiped and nearing heat exhaustion. I rinsed off with cold water and sat in front of the fan for a while but nothing seemed to lower my body temperature. Only after thirty minutes with the fan on full blast and two liters of water did I finally begin to cool off.

Once back to a normal temperature, I decided it was time to take on our poor, helpless shower that was flooding again. I was able to convince one of my boys to help me bring the air compressor to the house which we used to blast air into the drain pipes connected to our shower in order to knock the blockage loose. We knew there would be some drawbacks to this method, but we never could have guessed how bad they would be. We thought we had covered our bases by plugging the kitchen sink and shower drains with rags. We forgot, however, to plug the bathroom sink which resulted in a chunky, gray water geyser rivaling “Old Faithful” upon the first blast. After plugging the sink and a few more blasts of air, we deemed the issue to be fixed. I spent the next hour and a half carefully using a squeegee (no mops here) to scoot the gray water kiddie pool out of our bathroom, through our room, and out the door of the house. By the time I had finished, it was late afternoon and all I wanted to do was take a nap… But the kitchen sink had other ideas.

Not thirty minutes later, the boys yelled for me to fix the kitchen sink because it wasn’t draining. It turns out that we had cleared our bathroom drain by blasting the blockage up to the kitchen sink. Another round of the air compressor fixed that, but our efforts to stifle the pressure of the gray water proved futile, and our once clean bathroom was again splattered with the aftermath. Although it was my fault for not checking for other clogs, I was now up to my head (figuratively and literally), and grumbled through another round of cleaning the bathroom. This time, Seth was around to help, and as we finished the second round of cleaning, I knocked over Seth’s candle which shattered onto the bathroom floor. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

I went outside to let off some steam then went straight to bed… at 5 pm. I had had enough for one day and was feeling prone to snap at someone. I slept somewhat fitfully until 5 the next morning. It was a rough day, but improvement was on the horizon--that morning began my 48 hour vacation time and I headed into town with some of the other SM’s.

I was still pretty out of it that morning, but Seth and I had planned a fun little excursion that quickly brought me back to normal. Along with Pablo, the nurse’s husband, we headed to a little internet store that offered an hour on a Playstation for a few Bolivianos. We had a pretty great time taking turns and cheering each other on. From there, we headed to the hotel in which we would be staying the night for the equivalent of $15 a person. We played some card games with some other SM’s, swam, and then hiked up to the cross that overlooks Rurre to catch sunset.

The next day, we slept in and gorged ourselves on the included breakfast. I went to go teach Yufar, my migrations buddy, some English and then met up with the group of SM’s to go on an adventure up the river. For 25 B’s each ($5), we got a ride to a waterfall and swimming hole where we spent an hour splashing around and taking ridiculous pictures. From there, we went back to the hotel to relax before a big pizza dinner which ended our precious 48 hours..

I was slightly concerned that I would dive back into my frustration upon coming back, but I actually felt at peace. I had really needed those two days off, and I came back feeling refreshed and charged to finish the rest of the year. Thursday and Friday were busy work days as well, but were a little more exciting for me as I got to feed my growing cooking obsession. On Friday, Seth and I were due for our turn in the kitchen, so we used Thursday afternoon to be extra and make cinnamon rolls and tortillas. We got quite a few compliments the following day for making enough cinnamon rolls for everyone to have seconds and for our experimental fajitas with grilled veggies and soy meat. Seth made the comment that if he closed his eyes, it almost felt as if he was eating in America (no offense to Bolivia, it has its moments, but the availability of ingredients just isn’t the same here).

Being vacation and all, we were able to change things up on Sabbath, too. Instead of doing church on campus, we went to churches in the surrounding area: Rurre the first Sabbath, and Nueva Esperanza, a community down the road, the second Sabbath. The first Sabbath, I got roped into a last minute (literally 15 minutes before it happened) special music which consisted of me singing “You Are My All in All” solo with a harmonica for accompaniment. Unfortunately, the key of Brayan’s harmonica was a pretty terrible one, and I was fending off voice cracks the entire time. Nevertheless, I think the congregation enjoyed the song, or at the least the novelty of a white guy singing in English.

With less kids around, it was also possible to take the whole group to play wallyball with the Rurre church both Saturday nights during vacation. Now that we’ve gone a few times, I’m starting to get the hang of it. It’s a lot like racquetball and takes some quick thinking to calculate angles and speeds of the ball coming off the wall. The church goes almost every Saturday night, so they are pretty formidable opponents. We generally have to put together a Familia Feliz all-star team just to give them a challenge and winning is never a given.

Now, with vacation over, all the long-term volunteers are reminding us how fast things will go. The end of the year still seems pretty distant, but there will be a lot going on in the meantime which generally makes the time fly. First off, we will be receiving three new volunteers in early May. One is an SM from Southern who plans to stay three months until August. The other two are sisters, one of which was an SM here last year--they will stay just the month of May. A couple weeks after their arrival, we will be having a school week of prayer. We are planning to split the boys and girls for the nightly segments, and I have been asked to plan the theme and coordinate speakers for the boys. I’ve already done some planning and have decided on the theme, “Hombres de Dios”--”Men of God”. Following that will come the last few weeks of school which will include a special dinner with awards and an end-of-semester video, finals, and packing. It’s going to flit by whether I want it to or not.

One of my favorite verses in the Bible is found in Romans 8:38, 39: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” It’s hard to comprehend that kind of love, but my “Old Faithful” experience this week made for a fun parallel. I tried everything to plug our drains: towels, t-shirts, buckets, bowls, and even my bare hands. But, when it comes to a 50 liters of air at 100 psi being blasted into the plumbing network, there’s not much you can do… at least with the resources in Bolivia. God’s love is the same. Nothing exists that can stop the flow of God’s love. Not even we can stop it from entering our souls. It’s overwhelming and incomprehensible. So don’t try to stop it--let it cover you like the gray water geyser did my bathroom.

TL;DR

My “holy week” was a great reminder of what Jesus went through two thousand years ago. I finally understand how my dad felt when he would work outside while my brother and I lost brain cells in front of the TV screen. I have my own mechanical bull, but I broke it. Have my own “Old Faithful”, too--I just highly prefer not to view it. Forty-eight hours of vacation may not sound like much, but we got to have some fun and refresh ourselves in preparation for the final push. I’ve learned several new skills here including gourmet Bolivian cooking (no promises for what I can do in the States), how to dig a volleyball out of a corner, and the fine art of coming up with a special music in fifteen minutes. We’ve still got six weeks (Only 3 more blog posts from Bolivia, I will be doing a few “Re-entry” posts, more on that and my summer plans in the next post.), but there’s a lot happening which will make it fly by. God’s love is gushing out for you.

P.S. Some of you may have been looking for my opinion post that I mentioned a month ago. I have decided not to write such a post as there really is no way to take back what is posted on the internet. While on the topic, there is another update; we lost another volunteer this past week who had some involvement with the SM leaving a month ago. It was another tough one. Because I will not be doing a post dedicated to this topic, I will leave it at this: having volunteers leave early is extremely tough on the kids and remaining volunteers. Being a missionary takes some hardcore commitment.