One Neighborhood, One Perspective

This past weekend I spent a day in a neighborhood called Kara Kara - it is in District 9.  If you asked any local person downtown, if they knew this neighborhood existed at all, they would refer to it as the "neighborhood with the city dump."   A Maryknoll priest lives there and he wanted us volunteers to understand a little bit about the place he lives and works.

Kara Kara exists on about three rolling hills, that is to say, there is not more than a soccer field or two worth of flat space in the entire neighborhood.  There were no trees to be found on any of the hillsides, the ground is made up of mostly dry dust.  Ken, the priest, walked each of us volunteers to a different house to spend a couple of hours with an individual or family there.  He informed us that the people willing to have us stop by just happened to be the wealthy of the neighborhood so to keep that in mind.

I had the great fortune to spend a couple of hours with a man named Giovanny.  He has a little plot of land with a brick house on it.  It is a one room, no kitchen, no bathroom home (there is a "toilet" outside).  Himself, his wife, his 20 year old son, 18 year old son, and 13 year old daughter all live there.  They have an unobstructed, perfect birds eye view, of the city dump below them on the hill.

Giovanny and I spoke for a couple of hours about many different topics, including Evo Morales, the current Bolivian president.  I think what struck me most out of the entire rich conversation was when Giovanny spoke the phrase "...the middle class, like myself...".

He considers himself the middle class?  When I asked him what his dream would be for himself, what he most hoped for out of Evo as president or anybody in government, he said he hoped for a home with three or four rooms and a chapel in his neighborhood.

A couple of years ago, a non-profit organization, tried to get the city to move the dump as it is upstream of town (water issues is a whole different topic) and is just a hole in the ground with no lining or any sort of maintenance/regulations to keep the rain water from washing the dump into the river.  Kara Kara fought this organization like mad and organized to keep the dump and neighborhood as it was.  It provided a source of money and they didn't want to see that go.  They received a SMALL amount of money for having it in their neighborhood and used this money to make a soccer field, etc.  Another way they made money from it is dozens of people from the neighborhood wait at the dump.  As trucks from the city bring the trash and dump it, these people dig through it looking for recyclables or anything valuable that they can resell for money.

The dump was allowed to stay as nobody else wanted it, but, with the agreement it would start to be lined with plastic in an attempt to better the water flowing to the city.

I left Kara Kara that day so grateful to see one of many, yet a distinctly unique, Cochabamba neighborhood. I am lucky to get to work, live, and visit many more neighborhoods.