This is a picture of me in Cochabamba. It can also be found on my Facebook page.

I arrived safely in Moro Moro Monday night. It feels good to finally be at my final destination where I will be serving until next July. Moro Moro is vastly different from any other place I've ever lived before to try to explain everything in one blog post would be way too much and then I wouldn't have anything to write about for the rest of the year. So this blog post will focus on roads and transportation.

Leaving Santa Cruz the roads are all paved, but once you get further out into the campo (countryside) the roads are no longer paved. Not only are they not paved, but they can be pretty rocky and uneven. Gravel roads are unheard of here, the roads are a mixture of clay, dust, rock, and sand, whatever is the natural terrain. Car rides are very bumpy and are only somewhat faster than walking. The roads zig zag up and down mountains and in many places the roads are not wide enough for two vehicles to pass. The custom when going around a blind curve is to blow your horn.

Only in the past few years have people in Moro Moro been able to earn enough to buy vehicles. The most common vehicles found in Moro Moro are motorcycles, station wagons, and trucks for transporting agricultural goods. The station wagons here are almost all illegal imports from Japan that originally had the steering wheel on the right side of the car, but have been switched to have the steering wheel on the left side, not that it really matters when there is really only one lane of traffic. Most cars here don't have license plates because there isn't much of a police presence in Moro Moro. Hitchhiking is standard practice here. If you want to go somewhere like Vallegrande, you just wait along the road that leaves town and ask passing vehicles where they're going. Yesterday on the way back from doing some work in preparation for a potable water system we hitched a ride in the back of an ambulance that was returning from doing an animal vaccination campaign in a rural community. That's all for now, next I'll tell you more about my work.