Variety is the spice....

In addition to the rose, chief trouble maker Manualita got her fair share of confetti on Mother´s Day here in Bolivia.

Dorthe and I are really enjoying our time working here in Potosi. One of the main reasons for this is the fact that the work is incredibly varied. Although there are days where you spend all day with a mop inhand, cleaning up the mess made by a resident who missed the bedpan, there are other days that are so completely different and varied you wouldn´t think you were in the same place. It is this variety that makes the work so enjoyable, and the icky times bearable.

The last week in Bolivia has seen a series of festivals, which all occur in very close succession. In addition on a couple of local festivals, on Thursday, we had the catholic festival of Corpus Christi (if anyone can tell me what this is all about, please do so). This was then followed by Dia de la Madre - mother´s day - on Friday.

For Corpus Christi, there are a series of traditional foods that the locals just love - tahutahus (finger sized bars of a donut like dough) and sopaypillas (dry baked biscuits coated in syrup and sugar) for breakfast in particular. Dorthe and I spent a couple of days beforehand working with some local volunteers in the kitchen preparing these rather different foods. For lunch that day, I spent an entire morning dicing large chunks of pork fat into small cubes. The fat was then deep fried in, you guessed it, more fat, to produce a small dry crispy cube that was served up to the residents, who absolutely loved it. Dorthe and I weren´t quite so convinced.

Another big revent recently was Mother´s day. In Bolivia, Mother´s day is a much bigger event than Father´s day (which is also known as "dog´s day"). One local explained it to me that you can have lots of different fathers throughout your life, but only one mother, which I thought was an interesting way to look at it. Dorthe and I spent most of a day getting ready for it. First the residents had to be prepared, especially the ladies - in addition to the obvious showers and clean clothes, we also spent an afternoon trimming fingernails and toenails. The fingernails weren´t so bad, but many of the toenails hadn´t been done for months (years?). It was, suffice to say, interesting to see what happens to toenails after that long. Some of them were so big, distorted, dry and discoloured that I felt like I was working on a horse, rather than a little old lady!W e then spent the rest of the afternoon preparing the women´s dining hall - blowing up over a 100 ballons and decorating.

We arrived at work at 7am the next morning to get everyone ready - the ladies in particular all got make up put on (I am hopeless at applying eye-shadow, it has to be said) and put on their finest clothes. The day then started with a mass, followed by a big breakfast - the men also dressed up and came into the women´s dining hall to give them all a hug and a kiss, which was quite cute. There was then lots of Mother´s day cake for everyone, and then lunch was then served a out on the patio in the sun, a special treat. Later in the day, there was a concert for the residents - the brass band from the neighbouring military school came in and played - you can probably imagine that a brass band inside a small dining hall is somewhat defeaning (for those of us that still have our hearing anyway). This was accompanied by lots of dancing on the part of the oldies, and even a visit from Miss Potosi, who handed out roses and sets of gloves. One of the men (who we call "Blender Bob", on account of the fact that all of his food goes in a blender before he eats it) had the job of introducing her - he was very excited about it and even rushed away to put in his false teeth that he only very brings out on special occasions! It was a fascinating day, and everybody there throughly enjoyed themselves, including the rather deafened Dorthe and I.

But its not just the festivals that make it interesting - the more everyday things are also fascinating. A week or so back we paid a visit to a miners village - placed high on the hill overlooking the city, it was absolutely crawling with young children. Unfortunately, the vast majority of them had lost their fathers to the dangers of working in the mines (the miner´s average life expectancy is 10-15 years of work in the mines). Together with two of the nuns, Dorthe and I spent an enjoyable afternoon playing Bolivian childrens games with them.

On yet another day, we paid a visit to a government run collective for poor rural solo-mothers called "Los Pinos". There, they could practice traditional handwork and skills, and sell it back to the public, sustaining both the cooperative and their families. Every day of work in this place seems to bring something different. And that is what we like about it so much.

Random fact of the day: Here in Potosi, we are living at 4100m. At that altitude, water boils at about 85°C, which creates some problems - in particular, you can´t cook rice properly in water at that temperature, as the centre of the grain stays hard. Instead, what the nuns do here is to roast the rice in the oven first for an hour of so, until it turns golden brown. The roasted rice is then boile in the standard manner later.