Our first week in Bolivia was spent in Uyuni near world-famous salt flats called the Salar (needless to say, the salt here is pretty cheap). Time in Uyuni was generally restful. I could see the desert mountains in the distance through the open door of the room we stayed in. I excitedly watched rain clouds form over those mountains, anticipating the rain that the arid land needs. When I walked around town I felt a little like I was in an old Western movie, waiting for the tumbleweeds to cross my path as I walked down wide, yet strangely vacant, dusty streets. Somehow 35,000 people live there, though I´m not sure where they are.
Unfortunately, the majority of the people on our teams experienced some sort of illness upon entry to Bolivia and our team was detained several days before moving on to our final destination, Llica. Anytime someone from our team mentioned that we would be leaving Uyuni in a few days and traveling to Llica, people would respond with something like ¨LLICA?! It´s uglier, drier, and more remote than here!¨ Needless to say, our team met our travel day to Llica with some trepidation, though we were excited to finally go to our own site and get a feel for what the rest of the month would be like.
The bus ride alone was impressive. It wasn´t bumpy and lurchy like the 13 hours bus ride from La Paz to Uyuni. Instead, the drive was smooth and stunningly beautiful as we drove across the Salar with mountains in the distance and clouds overhead. Llica was much more than we could have imagined. It´s a quaint village with somewhere around 4,000 people (maybe?), settled near the foot of a gigantic dormant volcano. Many of the people in the town, including our hosts, are somehow involved with the cultivation of quinoa.
We´re teaching English to the primary and secondary students at school every day. The students love to come up to us when they see us in the street and say whichever English greeting they leaned or if they´re young or shy, they just say ¨Profesora!¨ and ask us what we´re doing or tell us a story about something.
Not to say that life here hasn´t been hard. Our water only turns on for an hour or two every day, during which the entire household rushes to make sure that all of the water receptacles are full, since you never know when there will be a day when the water doesn´t reach our house. A few days ago, our house didn´t get any water for three days. We were blessed to make friends with people down the hill that shared their water with us, so we carried it up the hill in two-liter bottles in order to cook, flush the toilet, and wash dishes (we stopped doing non-essential things like showering and doing laundry).
All in all, I love it. To me it´s very similar to my dry desert home, just with higher elevation. I know God had me in mind when he put our team here. I get to wake up every morning to mountains, cool air, and intense sunshine. My heart is happy here, and it is at home.
