UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies

Today was packed with stuff to do. To start, we woke up at around 6:15 in the morning in anticipation for our community meeting. After a brief breakfast and such, we set up the room and finished packing our stuff so that the community meeting could be held indoors. It was pretty cold outside, but the inside temperature wasn't much better. At 7:30 when our meeting was going to start, we only had 5 or so people on time; this was a drastic change compared to our first community meeting where we had plenty of people show up on or before our start time of 7:30. We didn't start the meeting until about 9 or so, and launched into our parts. Sophie, Sam, and Stephen talked about the soil and water sampling we had done, as well as household surveys. They described why we were there and also what tests we were doing. Then, Allison talked for Lauren (who was starting to feel really sick and couldn't give a speech) about forming a latrine committee. This was the turning point in our tal...

I started the day with a bit of breakfast and some household surveys with Allison, Sophie, and Ana. The first interview we had lasted about 40 minutes, and concerned a community member, his father, and his mother. He explained that although he already had a latrine, it was very uncomfortable, and he didn't like when his dad went to the bathroom because his dad was sick often. It was an interesting circumstance that could be perceived as cruel, but the fact of the matter was that these people had absolutely nothing, and had to negotiate for what little they did have. Ana had a really good way of talking with the community members, as she was very charismatic and had a way to make them laugh. Afterwards, we moved on to a house that we had not previously surveyed or taken a point of, which was interesting considering that we thought we had marked everything. The resident had a nice latrine, but it was unfinished, and although he was in Parque-Colani (the place that we had agreed to do...

Today was packed with a lot of driving. Sam and I woke up and scrambled to get dressed. Fortunately for us, Ana, our NGO, had not arrived yet; however, it wasn't long before she did. The person at the front desk of our hostel had taken our passports as a deposit for our Wi-Fi password and key, which felt sketchy, but we got them returned all safe and sound. Ana, to my surprise, was a young engineer probably in her late 20's or early 30's. She was from Spain and spoke fluent Spanish and English. She detailed our plan for the day and was thorough with some paperwork we had to sign. She had a good energy about her. After packing the truck, our driver Jose drove us to Achacachi, which was our first stop on the way to Sorata. Before our drive, I noticed older women wearing the iconic hats that were present in Bolivian photos. They were very traditional, but I was surprised at the frequency of how many women wore them. Men wore a kind of fedora which was also interesting, and I g...