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Well folks, we finally arrived at our destination. You know, the so called reason for traveling in South America: Buenos Aires, the capital city of Argentina. The city is expansive and culturally inundated with Italian style food and a mix of French and Spanish style architecture. The "New York of South America" truly exists, and it makes me wonder if all major metropolitan cities have a similar potential, regardless of language and culture. Cities are cities wherever one may end up, and the excitement is in the idiosyncrasies of daily life. This is why I am thankful to be with a Porteño (from Buenos Aires) family.
Andy and I arrived a little over a week ago from Salta, in the north of Argentina. We were received by Andy's grandmother's cousin's son, Emi (I'll leave it to Andy to tell the story of their relationship), and taken back to his apartment. For the last week we have had nothing but the comforts of home. Andy's family has taken excellent care of us and shown us around the city and a bit of the outskirt provincial area.
On a daily basis, we have been looking for things do get us out of the house. I found a life saving yoga class that is making me feel great after nearly 6 months of no routine exercise, and Andy is training for a 10k race at the end of the month. Otherwise, we have found some free Spanish classes and have plans to go out on the town with the cousins.
---FAST FORWARD TO AUGUST 31, 2009---
Now we are at the end of our stay in Buenos Aires and I never got around to posting the above post. I continued with my yoga classes and turned into work-out barbie, and Andy trained for the 10k, which he ran today. His time was 44.12 minutes and ran under the name of ¨Manuel Francisco Lopez¨because registration was closed to Emi´s (Andy´s cousin) company. Manuel ran a pretty good time for not having shown up, eh?
Our lives were a little lazy in Buenos Aires, but we enjoyed it all the while. We went to some great museums, took a few more weekend outings to the province with the family, and went out on the town a few nights til 5 am. The clubs don´t even open til 2, and dinner doesn´t start til 10 or 12 on the weekends. Coffee at 1 am? Sure.
We took our free Spanish classes that ended up being a pilot program for a new ´ex-pat´ program for the ever increasing number of ex pats in Buenos Aires. The class was great and focused on ´Lunfardo´ (the Porteño slang), the vos form that replaces the tú form in Argentina, hand gestures that speak for themselves, and Porteño history and culture. You won´t believe the dirty insults and foul words I learned, hah! No me rompe las bolas, ¿eh?
Now that we are used to the late lifestyle, we are leaving to work on early rising farms. Tomorrow we both leave for El Bolsón in the South (22 hours by bus). We are going to work on separate farms that happen to be hardly 30 miles away from each other. The personal space is much needed for the both of us and we look forward to seeing another side of Argentina. The government and money is centralized in Buenos Aires, so I am interested to see what the other regions are like. So far, Argentina has been the most comfortable place to live in terms of public services and amenities. Emi and his girlfriend Veronica were so nice to put us up for an entire month, as well as his entire family to take us out and treat us like their own. Ain´t nothin´ like Argentine hospitality. I do believe they can claim real Southern hospitality as their own (sorry Texas).
Also, Emi introduced me to the U.S. 1980´s tv series ¨V¨. Strange discovery while in Argentina, but it is probably the best series I´ve ever seen, and I don´t usually watch tv. Anyone know it? Was it popular in the states?
I don´t know about you, but I´m ready to come home.
Love you all,
Lauren
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Sucre: Basurero
As Lauren had promised, the thing you had been waiting so eagerly for... the DUMP, in Spanish, basurero. Apparently, landfill tourism isn't very popular (I'm not sure why), but it was one of our most memorable tours so far. Thanks to our friend Brendan Mulligan, whom we met in Sucre through our Spanish School, we had the opportunity to see something that even locals were not aware of.
Brendan is from Canada and completed his masters in hydro-geology. He is spearheading two landfill projects in Bolivia, one in El Alto (above La Paz), and the other in Sucre, where we visited. His objective is to mediate between Canadian students and Bolivian students to address the problems of leachate (water runoff) in both these sites. The work of a hydro-geologist overlaps with landfills in many regards: location of landfill in relation to water systems, type of soil/rock the landfill is placed on, and how to manage the leachate. Ideally a landfill is placed on bedrock that captures the leachate, if this is not possible, a protective liner must be used. Leachate can escape the bedrock through cracks, for which a hydro-geologist may test the surrounding soil.
We first met Brendan at his University and were suprisingly also met by the owner of the garbage company, the operations director of the landfill, and a master's student under Brenden's project. We were given a presentation by the director about the state of garbage in Sucre and how the company operates to serve the community. From the presentation and simple questions that we could ask in Spanish, we quickly learned that Sucre did not have a recycling program. This was shocking to us, only because our favorite park was equiped with three different recepticals: one for paper, one for plastic, and one for organics. Though these recepticals were painted different colors and had decent signage, there was no regular trash receptical aside from the recylce recepticals (first bad sign), which made the contents inside indistinguishable: mixed waste. The owner of the garbage company explained to us that the city merely put these containers in the park without consenting the garbage company, with whom they contract. Brendan had two theories about the matter: #1 The City merely wanted to look progressive under the false pretenses of having a recycling program, or #2 Some person from the City was naive and thought that if you simply have the containers, then you have recycling, giving no foresight to the fact there there needs to be a system in place to haul the segregated materials, not to mention a facility to process them, of which there were neither. We left the University with Brendan and the owner of the landfill to begin our tour.
The landfill was a drive into the outer-rim of the city. The suburbs are not like the suburbs of the States with large tract homes. They are rather shanty towns. The further you get from the city, the poorer the communities. We approached the entrance of the landfill, and digging through some exposed trash was a pack of dogs. As we entered the site, dogs were drinking from the toxic brown water that was the reason for our visit.
Walking the site, we quickly observed the purpose for Brendan's project. There were several exposed runoff locations that led into a large lagoon of black water with trash floating atop. The landfill was designed on the slope of a large hill, so that all rainwater from the top passes right through the landfill into this holding pond. A concrete wall was setup to dam the material, however, the wall was perferated to let the water escape, as the water pressure in the wet season is enough to break the wall down without drainage. We were encouraged to take pictures, which I have posted on the photobucket website www.photobucket.com/endlesswinter (under the Bolivia tab).
All in all, this was a wonderful experience and we have to thank our newfound-friend Brendan. We were honored to have recieved a presentation and tour from the official sources of Sucre's waste community. I asked myself at first, why would such professionals in the field take the time for two travelling B.A. grads as Lauren and I? The reason is that so little resources are available to make drastic changes. Any exposure possible to the situation opens possibilities to outside assistance. I explained to them my background in the waste management field, and Brendan explained to me that there are great the opportunities to do research in Bolivia, as the Country's universities and private sectors are usually unable to fund such undertakings. I hope to go back to school for my master's in the next couple of years. My visa to Bolivia lasts another 5 years... so who knows, maybe I will take Brendan up on his offer and use his expertise to guide me on a research project. The owner of the garbage company will have planted a good seed.
~Andy
Brendan is from Canada and completed his masters in hydro-geology. He is spearheading two landfill projects in Bolivia, one in El Alto (above La Paz), and the other in Sucre, where we visited. His objective is to mediate between Canadian students and Bolivian students to address the problems of leachate (water runoff) in both these sites. The work of a hydro-geologist overlaps with landfills in many regards: location of landfill in relation to water systems, type of soil/rock the landfill is placed on, and how to manage the leachate. Ideally a landfill is placed on bedrock that captures the leachate, if this is not possible, a protective liner must be used. Leachate can escape the bedrock through cracks, for which a hydro-geologist may test the surrounding soil.
We first met Brendan at his University and were suprisingly also met by the owner of the garbage company, the operations director of the landfill, and a master's student under Brenden's project. We were given a presentation by the director about the state of garbage in Sucre and how the company operates to serve the community. From the presentation and simple questions that we could ask in Spanish, we quickly learned that Sucre did not have a recycling program. This was shocking to us, only because our favorite park was equiped with three different recepticals: one for paper, one for plastic, and one for organics. Though these recepticals were painted different colors and had decent signage, there was no regular trash receptical aside from the recylce recepticals (first bad sign), which made the contents inside indistinguishable: mixed waste. The owner of the garbage company explained to us that the city merely put these containers in the park without consenting the garbage company, with whom they contract. Brendan had two theories about the matter: #1 The City merely wanted to look progressive under the false pretenses of having a recycling program, or #2 Some person from the City was naive and thought that if you simply have the containers, then you have recycling, giving no foresight to the fact there there needs to be a system in place to haul the segregated materials, not to mention a facility to process them, of which there were neither. We left the University with Brendan and the owner of the landfill to begin our tour.
The landfill was a drive into the outer-rim of the city. The suburbs are not like the suburbs of the States with large tract homes. They are rather shanty towns. The further you get from the city, the poorer the communities. We approached the entrance of the landfill, and digging through some exposed trash was a pack of dogs. As we entered the site, dogs were drinking from the toxic brown water that was the reason for our visit.
Walking the site, we quickly observed the purpose for Brendan's project. There were several exposed runoff locations that led into a large lagoon of black water with trash floating atop. The landfill was designed on the slope of a large hill, so that all rainwater from the top passes right through the landfill into this holding pond. A concrete wall was setup to dam the material, however, the wall was perferated to let the water escape, as the water pressure in the wet season is enough to break the wall down without drainage. We were encouraged to take pictures, which I have posted on the photobucket website www.photobucket.com/endlesswinter (under the Bolivia tab).
All in all, this was a wonderful experience and we have to thank our newfound-friend Brendan. We were honored to have recieved a presentation and tour from the official sources of Sucre's waste community. I asked myself at first, why would such professionals in the field take the time for two travelling B.A. grads as Lauren and I? The reason is that so little resources are available to make drastic changes. Any exposure possible to the situation opens possibilities to outside assistance. I explained to them my background in the waste management field, and Brendan explained to me that there are great the opportunities to do research in Bolivia, as the Country's universities and private sectors are usually unable to fund such undertakings. I hope to go back to school for my master's in the next couple of years. My visa to Bolivia lasts another 5 years... so who knows, maybe I will take Brendan up on his offer and use his expertise to guide me on a research project. The owner of the garbage company will have planted a good seed.
~Andy
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