Rebekah Nimtz is an MCC Service Worker in the cross-roads, bread-basket city of Cochabamba, Bolivia.
On just another day in Bolivia I find myself flying around mountainous curves in a shared minivan taxi on a route dotted with signs warning of falling rocks, llama crossings (experienced multiple times), and no passing zones (completely ignored). I am on my way to the town of Llallagua, the former throne of the “King of Tin,” Simón Patiño. Llallagua is also the site of several massacres by government forces of striking miners, including the largest massacre of workers in Bolivian history in 1967. “Llallagua” is a name derived from a traditional Andean spirit of abundance. In light of Llallagua’s history, its natural mineral abundance could also be considered an example of a phenomenon known as “the resource curse.”
Llallagua. Rebekah Nimtz.
I am visiting MCC’s partner organization PRODII (Integral Interdisciplinary Development Program) which focuses on a different and more sustainable kind of resource: agriculture. The higher we ascend the brown-grey mountains and cross expanses of land textured by yellow tufts of highland brush while passing bone dry riverbeds, I am amazed at how agriculture can thrive in such conditions. It is precisely due to these harsh conditions that PRODII has stepped in to assist family units in local communities.
PRODII began in 1999 as a non-profit working in holistic rural agricultural development with four municipalities in the north of Potosi, an area of extreme poverty where only 10% of the land is cultivable. It’s a region particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change with freezes, hail, sudden heavy rains, drought, and soil erosion. PRODII’s multi-faceted work places a special emphasis on the involvement of women and older generations in the productive potential of the family unit. The result is greater economic well-being of a community through gender-based education and well-researched, sustainable initiatives.
Street vendors in Llallagua. Rebekah Nimtz.
I am with MCC Seed participant, Mei-Ling Dueñas, from the hot, low-altitude coast of Honduras. We share a breakfast of sweet api and fried buñuelo while she points to a group of vendors, and tells me that “Those women selling in the street are usually there from 6am to 11pm everyday.” The group of elderly women are seated on a tarp in the chilly morning air, their grey braids hanging out from underneath their traditional hats, little rows of wild herbs and locoto peppers laid out in front of them. These are products that bring in no more than a few cents a day.
PRODII informational brochure. Rebekah Nimtz.
PRODII has three main goals: to identify productive potential in the region; to form projects focusing on the management and use of the agrobiodiversity already present while adapting to climate change; and to foment rural economy by giving emphasis to the productive potential of all members of the community regardless of generational and gender differences. Mei-Ling shares the awed response of one of the older women they work with following participation in their Leadership Formation School for women, “I never imagined there was more to life for me besides working at home in the kitchen!” I asked if the school was ever met with resistance by any of the men in Bolivia’s very gender-traditional highland communities. “Yes, but once they get used to it some of the men later encourage the women whenever their attendance wanes by saying, ‘You need to go!’”
Workers at APROKAT turn oca flour into nutritious bread. Rebekah Nimtz.
Mei-Ling takes me to a factory where we observe oca flour being turned into nutritious bread while a few smiling workers timidly dodge my camera. Due to arid growing conditions in the region the typical diet consists mainly of starches and grains, resulting in high rates of malnutrition. Some Andean tubers, such as oca, however, are very nutritious In 2002, instead of simply selling unprocessed oca PRODII partnered with the association APROKAT to dehydrate oca to produce flour. The transformation added value and the productive chain was furthered by turning the flour into cookies, bread, and api (a hot, sweet spiced beverage typical of the highlands) to sell as well as to distribute in a school breakfast program for rural schools in the region, fighting malnutrition.
Mei-Ling in the tea warehouse. Rebekah Nimtz.
PRODII also partners with the association APROHIMA to help communities gain more value from native herbs and medicinal plants such as muña, tusawayre, fennel, chamomile and lemon verbena—plants which had always been traditionally used but never thought of in terms of productive potential. Small producers now haul their harvests of native medicinal plants into a warehouse in Llallagua. Mei-Ling takes me to visit the highly aromatic plant where the herbs are processed into beautiful boxes of tea and sold to cities in neighboring departments. While PRODII teaches native species conservation to communities through tea production–construction of terraces to prevent erosion and repopulating eroded areas with native plants–environmental awareness is also raised.
“Our initiatives are medium to long term with a focus on sustainability, working within a climate of adaptation to change,” shares PRODII’s founder, Germán Jarro. In a region where the work of some outside NGOs can cultivate an unhealthy reliance on hand-outs, PRODII’s projects are “…grounded in reality, in direct participation with the community and small producer associations in the identification and meeting of real needs. The long-term, sustainable approach is hardly easy. Each time we move forward we encounter new obstacles.”
Beginning in 2009, PRODII began combatting the most adverse effects of climate change in the region with water collection and irrigation projects which allowed them to assist 499 family units in crop production diversification. Crop diversification not only fights malnutrition but allows families to earn more income as they are able to sell new varieties of produce at the market beyond just the typical cheaper potato crops.
Mei-Ling on her walk to work. Rebekah Nimtz.
Mei-Ling recounts with me her experiences helping distribute breakfast to rural schools in the region: “They joke that I’m famous to the kids out there,” she laughs, a thought which she at first resisted. “But then one of the teachers clarified to me that many of the kids who live so far away that their participation in school is intermittent, still travel hours and hours on foot not so much to see me but because the school breakfast [oca cookies or api] could be the only meal they get that day.”
Despite the poverty and malnutrition facing the communities where PRODII works, the tradition of gaining energy for a hard day’s work in the cold and altitude in the form of a huge midday meal stands strong. Mei-Ling, with her naturally tall, thin frame, laughingly recounts how she is frequently declared to be “starving” by the Quechua women serving the food in meetings with rural communities, recalling how often she’s had to stuff herself with more than one giant plateful of food.
Despite the myriad of, sometimes humorous, challenges that arise living as a foreigner from such a vastly different cultural context and climate, Mei-Ling’s service through MCC allows her a taste of that abundance which PRODII works so diligently to preserve for its local communities and generations in the rural highlands of Bolivia.