Kiva Stories from the Field

A day in the life of a Kiva Roamer Fellow

13 December 2009 at 09:00 adamkb 9 comments

By Adam Kemmis Betty, KF9, Bolivia

With this latest batch of volunteers, Kiva thought they’d try out something new: dedicate two Kiva Fellows to borrower verification (checking that the information posted on Kiva is correct for a random sample of borrowers) at a handful of different institutions. While my fellow roamer Bryan Goldfinger has been charging around Peru, eating guinea pigs and tearing up the dance floor wherever he goes, I’ve been making my way (in a far more understated manner) across central Bolivia.

To give you a taste of this glamorous lifestyle, I thought I would share my latest bus journey, from bustling, tropical lowland Santa Cruz to the laid back and refreshingly temperate city of Cochabamba.

I arrived at the bus terminal late. I actually thought I was early, but it turns out that all bus companies shoot for an arrival time of around 4am to ensure maximum inconvenience. After fighting off a horde of touts trying to sell my tickets to anywhere but my destination and generally making myself unpopular by clumsily barging through the crowds with far too much luggage, I eventually found the last bus to Cochabamba. Now, Bolivia has an elaborate sliding scale of comfort when it comes to buses, ranging from luxurious to downright rickety. This bus was most definitely at the rickety end of the spectrum, yet – as punishment for my tardiness – priced at the level of the most luxurious.

As I boarded, I was confronted by a wave of heat and body odour, the air so thick that it had to be swallowed, with the occasional chew, rather than inhaled. Pandemonium had broken out because it turned out all that the 9pm travellers had got on the 8.30pm bus (thrown by the fact that the bus had indeed appeared at 9pm), resulting in a duel over every seat. On closer inspection I realised that my ticket said 9.30, which was a cause for concern because there was no bus at 9.30. After some frantic running backwards and forwards between the bus and the terminal building, and by this time dripping with sweat, the issue was resolved with the addition of extra loop to my “9”, neatly transforming it into an “8”.

At last we set off, and lest the temperate in the bus falls below 100˚F, everyone hastily closes their windows to keep out the deliciously refreshing breeze. Every half hour or so the bus will stop for a few minutes, apparently for no reason other than to take a breather from the strain of carrying so many people in the heat of the Bolivian lowlands. At around 2am we stop for the break that marks the halfway point of every long-distance Bolivian bus journey. Everyone gets off the bus, goes to the toilet in a nearby bush, and then stands around looking thoroughly bored while the driver disappears off for 45 minutes or so. Eventually the driver reappears, everyone clambers back on and the bus trundles off into the night.

After a fitful night’s sleep, I awake in broad daylight to find that we have made disappointingly little progress. In fact, we are stationary. What’s more, we are in a long line of stationary vehicles, where we remained for the next four hours. It turned out that the root cause of this jam was road works on the mountainous road that leads up to Cochabamba. However, things were made infinitely worse by the common practice of attempting to “overtake” any traffic jam that presents itself, so that the jam quickly occupied the lane for oncoming traffic. The inevitable result is that when the original blockage is removed, no one could go anywhere because the road was choc-a-blockwith vehicles going the other way. Eventually a particularly brave trucker broke the impasse by opening up a third lane, part jungle and part terrifying precipice.

Our bus has parked diagonally across the road, blocking oncoming traffic

Free to move again, we trundled on at a sloth’s pace and it soon became apparent that our bus had a dislike of hills. A couple of hours later, it emerged that in fact our bus’ problems were more deep-rooted as we came to an involuntary halt and spent the next hour watching our driving dismantling the engine piece by piece.

Eventually I joined a breakaway group of rebels who decided that a $1 shared taxi ride was a tempting option at this stage. I ran to the bus to collect my luggage, only to return to find the car full: “There’s nospace any more”. My heart sank. “Oh, now there’s a space”. I was slightly confused: no one had got out in this time. I crawled in, to find that with some skilful rearranging of his passengers – one girl on her boyfriend’s lap, another chap in the boot – the driver had earned himself an extra dollar.

Note the "middle front seat" being used by the lady next to the driver - often overlooked by English drivers

We set off with whoops of delight and excitement at our impending arrival, which only became louder half an hour later when Cochabamba came into view. We were cruising into the outskirts of town when – CRACK!! – we hit something. “What was that?”; “Hmm, not sure I think it was a bit of bridge”. After an examination of the car’s exterior, our driver came back grinning. “Yep,” he said, “That’s blown a tyre… But we’ll carry on anyway”, to applause all round. Eight hours later than expected, we finally limped into town.

To make a loan to AgroCapital, the root cause of this disastrous journey but nevertheless a great organisation with wonderfully hospitable staff, please click here.

Entry filed under: AgroCapital, Bolivia, KF9 (Kiva Fellows 9th Class). Tags: Bolivia, borrow verification, KF9, Kiva, Kiva Fellow, Santa Cruz Bolivia.