In Sucre again

My head is spinning!! We have just driven for 6 hours to get back in time for both Sherman and I to catch flights to Santa Cruz and we are both still in Sucre, hours after our flights left! More about that saga later! We drove through the most incredible mountainous scenery, this time in brilliant sunshine instead of pouring rain at night, have stopped in a village called hmm Tacaburo I think at 3000+m to buy yet more pressies for the girls, and one for Anthony for doing a sterling job looking after them in my absence. I will say here how much I appreciate what he is doing and what it is enabling me to do.

I have had to change the settings on the camera to lower resolution so I could take enough photos to even begin to capture what I am seeing. What we have discussed throughout this mammoth road trip, over meals, in meetings etc is the cause of my spinning head. The potential here is huge, and some people might be very surprised to hear this but this place is actually, in some ways, more advanced than UK. The difficulties which have to be overcome just to get through each day are immense - we´re talking 20-100 miles between villages here, on foot. To get to the market town it is 5 hours drive on a good day. In the rainy season, ie now, the roads can be entirely closed off for days or longer. And this means that in some ways they are leapfrogging the developing world because there isn´t quite as much bureaucracy nearby to contact or to deal with to make something happen that is inevitable and essential.

So, what are we proposing here? The projects I am ´consulting´ for are changing people´s lives. Drastically. They are giving them access to information, and in some cases it may seem very simple, but it has never been available before. Each day, in the window of the Telecentres are posted the market prices for all the agricultural products, from lentils and maize, through to exotic fruits etc so that the local producers can consider their choices about what they could grow, can see what they can expect for their harvest, take note of trends, etc. They bulk buy fertiliser, seeds, etc as part of a club. They have access to national and international contacts for marketing their products into new markets, discovering about exports etc. Many of these people can´t read so they come to the Telecentre to get help with letters, or regulations, etc.

I was told a story of 2 people who come to the Telecentre regularly now. One was taught to read many years but has forgotten through lack of use, the other is now learning. They are both learning to type and take it in turns to read out URLs whilst the other types them and they are surfing the internet looking for information to help them improve their lives.

Most of the telecentres do not have broadband in any shape or form. Only 2 have an ADSL connection. But many of these villages have no phones, at all. Some have one phone line which is housed in a public call centre. Imagine if you live 20miles or more from the village? Medical help is slow coming, if you can get any without travelling 100km or more to a clinic to find it yourself. This is a world apart from UK. We drove a total of 220km on our road trip - felt one helluva lot more!

Well, I guess I´d better mention that I´ve been asked to stay on a few more days so I can go to La Paz and see 2 projects in the altiplano - I was wrong about where we were going before, Chuquisaca is in the south of Bolivia and isn´t the altiplano, even though we´ve been up to 3200m. It´s the Highland Valleys, aprt of the central cordillera that we´ve been to. La Paz and the projects up there are 3600m+ and apparently life down here is pretty easy compared to there. That might tax me a little as I´ve had problems coming to terms with the idea of walking 20miles to talk to someone and then finding they are not in, let alone getting medical treatment, shopping, going to school etc. But before I go there, I have been invited to stay in Santa Cruz for a few days and I intend to go to the national park just outside if I can remember what it is called! I think it´s Espejillos, and with any luck I can chill out until Friday when I am flying to La Paz.