Choosing the cast
Today we slept in till eight and got a ride in the back of a pickup with several community members on the steep 6-switchback road to the upper campus. We had planned on getting some footage of the paths through the village to the upper campus, but a downpour and incredibly slippery mud killed our motivation.
University registration for the 600-700 students begins today and continues all week, so we got footage of the lines into the main office. Lines began forming last night and featured students sleeping outside as if they were waiting for Star Wars tickets. It was an encouraging sight to see so many fresh and enthusiastic faces (and heavily indigenous) lined up to restart their education and attain housing in the bunkrooms closest to where their classes will be. (Also interesting for Jason and I was to contrast their wooden boxes and blankets to the piles of expensive junk stuffed into dorms by flustered parents at Boston College and Loyola). Also, we got some quick interviews asking where the students were from and what they were studying. Some come from La Paz, some from Carmen Pampa and surrounding villages, some from the flat jungles on the Amazon river basin. The university features four departments based on the needs of the community- Agronomy, Veterinary Science, Nursing and Education. There´s also a pre-university program to prepare students whose high school education may not be up to university standards.
We´ve steadily been chatting up students of different departments and at different stages of their education to pick out a few to follow closely with our cameras to be able to see how the university lives up to its UN award for being one of the best projects in the world for the eradication of poverty. A focus of the film will be how the university affects the communities it serves (economy, political participation, women´s movement, etc) and following students who must write theses addressing problems of the region in their particular field is a good way to see that.
Prospective stars of the film include Lydia, a nursing student from Sorata, who sticks to wearing traditional Bolivian clothing like most indigenous women, layered skirts, a blouse and two long black braids. Very few women involved in higher education remain in this tradition, although as a nurse to a population that values tradition, she is able to quickly win the confidence of rural women.The nursing students have public health practicum in the surrounding villages, often 3 hours walk away. Future Agronomist Cecilia is another option, with her immense coffee production project. In an attempt to move away from coca, which faces truly ludicrous adversity from the US and harms the soil in the long term, Ceci is building community involvement and beginning to successfully generate revenue in La Paz and perhaps abroad (The issue of coca is at the forefront of regional and national, as well as international politics right now- especially here in the second largest coca-producing region of Bolivia). Gabriel Paco is another potential example, with his recycling program thesis, the first of its kind in all of Bolivia, which he hopes to involve the surrounding communities in as well as Carmen Pampa.
There´s lots of students like these and I think it will show the university as a very effective force for social change in the region and on the national scale as well.
Tonight will probably hold more futsal on the court and more conversation topics with students ranging from political/intellectual to new ways of insulting each other. You never know.
(a not-so-great article on the university)
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20031021-104439-4619r.htm
University registration for the 600-700 students begins today and continues all week, so we got footage of the lines into the main office. Lines began forming last night and featured students sleeping outside as if they were waiting for Star Wars tickets. It was an encouraging sight to see so many fresh and enthusiastic faces (and heavily indigenous) lined up to restart their education and attain housing in the bunkrooms closest to where their classes will be. (Also interesting for Jason and I was to contrast their wooden boxes and blankets to the piles of expensive junk stuffed into dorms by flustered parents at Boston College and Loyola). Also, we got some quick interviews asking where the students were from and what they were studying. Some come from La Paz, some from Carmen Pampa and surrounding villages, some from the flat jungles on the Amazon river basin. The university features four departments based on the needs of the community- Agronomy, Veterinary Science, Nursing and Education. There´s also a pre-university program to prepare students whose high school education may not be up to university standards.
We´ve steadily been chatting up students of different departments and at different stages of their education to pick out a few to follow closely with our cameras to be able to see how the university lives up to its UN award for being one of the best projects in the world for the eradication of poverty. A focus of the film will be how the university affects the communities it serves (economy, political participation, women´s movement, etc) and following students who must write theses addressing problems of the region in their particular field is a good way to see that.
Prospective stars of the film include Lydia, a nursing student from Sorata, who sticks to wearing traditional Bolivian clothing like most indigenous women, layered skirts, a blouse and two long black braids. Very few women involved in higher education remain in this tradition, although as a nurse to a population that values tradition, she is able to quickly win the confidence of rural women.The nursing students have public health practicum in the surrounding villages, often 3 hours walk away. Future Agronomist Cecilia is another option, with her immense coffee production project. In an attempt to move away from coca, which faces truly ludicrous adversity from the US and harms the soil in the long term, Ceci is building community involvement and beginning to successfully generate revenue in La Paz and perhaps abroad (The issue of coca is at the forefront of regional and national, as well as international politics right now- especially here in the second largest coca-producing region of Bolivia). Gabriel Paco is another potential example, with his recycling program thesis, the first of its kind in all of Bolivia, which he hopes to involve the surrounding communities in as well as Carmen Pampa.
There´s lots of students like these and I think it will show the university as a very effective force for social change in the region and on the national scale as well.
Tonight will probably hold more futsal on the court and more conversation topics with students ranging from political/intellectual to new ways of insulting each other. You never know.
(a not-so-great article on the university)
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20031021-104439-4619r.htm
posted by Jason and Paul at 9:12 PM
2 Comments:
hello fellow graduates of loyola and boston college. there are not enough letters on this keyboard for the vocabulary that i encompass. your feeble minds would explode. keep up all the good work and we're all proud of you both. enjoy the times, we're stressing out with all the mierda the society puts on us. paceña it up for the both of us
...
wat up gangsta hos, how be da respek in de bolivian, booyakasha
"veternarian, v-e-t-r-i-n-..a-.....r" it be da one and de only farmer man vet/vet
te adooooooro te ammmmmmo
luvs and hos <3<3omgomgjklol
What a great experience and a way to share with the Bolivian community!!!!! I read all the articles and I am very proud of you. Keep up the good work, have fun dancing waca-waca
Chichi
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