My SM Year in Bolivia: 60. 3-Month Anniversary

Wednesday, 12/5/12

Today is my 3 month aniversary in Bolivia. Cheers!

I am thankful Stephen made breakfast for us today. Turns out, I would need to sleep in for the energy I needed.

I woke up at 7:00 to the smell of oatmeal. Apparently it rained hard last night...it woke up everyone but me. Therefore, we had no water. Shortly afterwards, we ate.

I decided to go to the toma (our water source a two-hours walk away) to fix the fix our water. It usually take 2 days for full water pressure, so it needed to be fixed right away. The question is, who should I take with me? I needed muscle, so I took Jose. I needed to keep Chad alive while I was gone, so I took our little trouble-maker, Edwin. Plus, he is the only one who has never seen the toma. With him gone, it should be a problem free paradise for Chad during the 5 hours I am gone.

We took off at 11:30. In a torrential downpour!! But it had to be done. We marched off with a machete in my hand and dodged the lake-sized puddles. An 1 1/2 hour later, we arrived at the usually shallow toma. It was huge and flowing erratically. Looked like a tsunami to me. We had to cross it though to get to where I suspected the pipe problem to be. We ate, gathered up our courage, and plunged in...carefully. We held hands, and took our time (15 minutes) to cross the dangerous river. Edwin almost got swept away a few times. Thank goodness for long arms.

We finally found the problem: a bursted pipe and a clogged water source. We spent an hour rearranging and cleaning the pipes, and then it was problem free. Though exhausted, we celebrated wildly (I wish I could show you the video). We then returned home after collecting mangos and oranges for the whole family. On the way home, Edwin found some snails on random trees. How cool is that? He named them after the volunteers.