Stuck in the rain

Last week I had the opportunity to visit one of the communities to see Natura's Payments for Environmental Services projects in action. We visited Santa Rosa, a community of about 100 families, 18 of whom receive compensation for conserving forest land. In this case, instead of cash, they receive compensation in the form of bee boxes, which come with some training in apiculture. The community decided they would rather receive bee boxes than cash, because they are an investment that can give them a steady source of income. Bee boxes also reinforce the importance of conservation, since an intact forest has flowers for the bees to pollinate.

The primary purpose of the trip to Santa Rosa was to check some rain gauges to see whether an increase in forest cover has any effect on local rain patterns. (They are also taking measures of water flow in the rivers.) But we woke up on Tuesday to rain. And they told us we couldn't go check the gauges in the rain because the paths would be too muddy. Great.

So we spent Tuesday walking around Santa Rosa in the rain, learning about apiculture (such as mixing propolis with cola to make what they call - really - propolissimo), and sitting around. Now the problem with the rain was not only that we couldn't do the work we had come to do, but that we also couldn't leave. The road we had come in on promised to be a giant dangerous mudslide, so we were stuck, unable to do much of anything, until the rain let up. This was my chance to practice my new Zen approach to accepting what life throws at me.

Not much to report about the days we spent in Santa Rosa - it was actually a very nice town and not such a bad place to be stuck. We were there for Mothers' day, so we got to see a performance at the school with kids performing poems for their mothers that they had memorized (and were thus performed in the incomprehensible let-me-get-through-this-as-fast-as-possible-so-I-can-get-off-the-stage monotone) and some lip sync dances which ranged from the very strange chicken and egg dance to some pre-teen girls who made it clear that cable had arrived in Santa Rosa. And a party where the women cooked a bunch of food and the men sat around drinking chicha - not the most feminist version of Mothers' day if you ask me.

On Thursday the rain had let up long enough that we decided to brave the roads and try to get back to Santa Cruz. This would prove to be another test of my Zen-ness. After two hours of driving we discover that someone had left something in Santa Rosa. So we hang out for 45 minutes while some people make some phone calls to see if someone can bring it down to us. Most of us move on the the next town to eat lunch while one person waits for our messenger to arrive. Then a couple of hours sitting around in a colleague's house full of "I love you" stuffed animals and tweetie bird all over the walls. At around 5:00, having driven about three hours since 10:00 AM, we take off, all of us, with all of our stuff. Thinking this is the end of our delays. Until an hour out of Santa Cruz we hear some banging from under the car. Several stops of jumping out, trying to see what it is, driving a little with someone in the back trying to see what it is, we decide we think it's the breaks, so let's drive slowly until we see a mechanic. Which we never do. So we drive all the way to Santa Cruz at about 30 km/hr, arriving at about 10:00. And that is how a six hour trip turns into an entire day of travel. And I used to get annoyed if I had to wait seven minutes for a green line train from Columbia Heights.

And by popular request, some photos of my trip to Santa Rosa. Apologies for the lack of captions, apparently captions are not on the list of things the Bolivian internet will allow today.