Bienvenidos to Cohort 14 and our first Cultural Integration group! by Chloe Savenko

After what felt like an eternity of planes and airports and a rather insightful glimpse into Bolivian organisation, us Team Leaders arrived to the dizziness of La Paz knowing we would soon be separated and sent off to our projects.

Chloé, Louise, Rachel, Bettina

After two days of training, altitude sickness and lots of Spanish language adaptation, I departed rather abruptly to Coripata, four hours away from La Paz, with Lorena, my Bolivian counterpart, and Eric, our programme manager. As we arrived to Coripata we soon realised the city was plunged into the dark. 

Plunged into the dark is an accurate metaphor of the way we felt and the community felt at the beginning. In fact, we spent our first week explaining the project to local actors, selecting host families and in-country volunteers, and meeting with representatives from the municipality, the hospital and the schools where we plan to work. Luckily the darkness passed quickly and while we continue to get used to each other, the first assumptions and a priori have vanished.

Soon enough we found ourselves back in La Paz to welcome UK volunteers and guide them through their first few days filled with induction sessions, cultural exchange and history presentations prepared by our lovely Bolivian volunteers, a photo scavenger hunt around the city and workshops with our partner organisation, Fundación Afrobo.

Dilan, Fran, Marcelo, Sergio,  Ana, Indiana, Johel, Ryan, Conor, Harry, Kelsey

Finally, with lots of apprehension and excitement, we got on our minibus to our new home for the next three months. Coripata. A city in a region where mining and growing coca are omnipresent. A city whose name signifies ‘altitude of gold’. A city where we will live, work and play.

However, no matter how many times we make this four hour dirt road journey to Coripata, we never get used to it. Just like our project path, the journey from La Paz is different every time in adaptation to the stops, the people and the desires of the pachamama  (‘mother earth’). Indeed, we keep having to adapt to the community and the weather can be capricious at times, hindering our progress.

In the end, our first week in Coripata went by quickly. In the swirl of things, we were welcomed warmly by the municipality and the city council in a small public ceremony in the city hall. Eric, the programme manager, and George, the country director, accompanied us.  

Eric and the President of the Council

The next few days consisted of team building and team planning activities for our cohort, along with a smattering of organisation and translation. While we are going to struggle with communication as a team at the beginning,  I am sure both in-country and UK volunteers will learn each other’s language in no time and will develop innovative and fun ways to get understood and understand each other.

Ana, Angie, Conor, Dilan, Fran Harry, Indiana, Johel, Kelsey, Marcelo, Piter, Ryan and Sergio welcome to International Service’s Cultural Integration project in Bolivia! Enjoy your time to the fullest! We are going to be so busy putting this new project in place that we will find ourselves saying goodbye to each other way too soon…