Building a school in the mountains of Cochabamba

One of my favorite teachers at school is involved in a project to build a school in a small village just outside of the city. They were already finished building most of it and this Sunday, they were going to go paint the walls. When she told me about it, I really wanted to take part. So this Sunday, she took me along!

Tuki (my teacher)`s friend in Switzerland somehow got a lot of money from her church, and she decided to donate it to a good cause. So her, Tuki, and their friends decided to use the money to build a school in a rural village in Cochabamba. Its a village about 2 hours by car + 1 hour of hiking from the city.

Sunday morning, i met Tuki at 6:45 am, and with her, her brother, an engineer, and an architect, we drove out, then got off the car, climbed down a mountain then climbed up the mountain on the other side.

Walking up, we saw some houses, although i didn`t see that many children, so i was expecting the school to be really small. But when i got there, it was a 2 story building, with 4 classrooms. A lot bigger than i thought! Apparently, there are about 100 children around there that would come to this school. They had a school there before too, but it was basically a larger sized hut, but wasn`t adequate, so they were building a new one.

So when we got there, a bunch of people from the community there had come to work on it. I love the idea of this project, its a development project ran by Bolivians for Bolivians. Its not like my teacher lives a wealthy life, but its great that Bolivians are always looking to help each other out. I`ve noticed that here a lot, for example, when we were coming down from the mountain in our car, a mother and her son were walking along the street, and so our car stopped to ask if they wanted a ride. Also, when we went to the rainforest, we took so much food, and there was so much left over, and we gave it to the local people. I have a feeling that we took extra just so we can leave some to the people there.

Anyways, back to this project. Its a wonderful project, but I also learned some of the difficulties that can occur in projects like that. Tuki and her friends consider themselves as just as helpers, there to help run the project, and the actual building of the school is supposed to be done by the local people. (Its not like they can hire a construction company to go build it of course) And the local people know that too, i think, but the project should`ve been finished in 6 weeks, but now its been 3 months and still unfinished.

So there was a meeting with all the adults, and with my limited Spanish and a little help from my teacher later, i understood that Tuki and her crew were saying that there should be more people there to help. The number of people there that day wasn`t even 1/2 of the number of people in the village that should be helping, and as a result, progress has been really slow. Also they were saying that this whole project is for your community, so we need you to put in the effort.

I had naively thought that because its all people from the same country, same culture, pretty much the same language (a lot of the people in the village spoke Quechua - one of the indigenous languages - but they also spoke spanish, so most of that day was in spanish), even coming from the same region in the country, it would be a breeze. No miscommunications, no misunderstandings, no cultural differences, hence, a smooth project.

But I realized it wasn`t that easy. To put it simply, there is a divide between those running the project and the people receiving orders. Although that putting it REALLY simply, because my teacher`s crew were definately doing hands on work on the school too, and it really is a joing effort between Tuki`s crew and the community. But i think there were different expectations from both sides.

And i thought, if things like this can happen between people of similar backgrounds, then international development projects must be so much harder! By international development projects, i mean something like, for example, Engineers Without Borders going to Angola to build a solar energy plant, or something like that. Basically, people from the "developed" countries going to a "developing" country to engage in a project that improves the local people`s standard of living. With people coming from different cultures, countries, customs, languages.... must be so hard.

It was a memorable day for me, and I think i learned something important that I wouldn`t have known otherwise...or maybe not until sometime in the future when i hopefully am able to take part in such development projects.