Home

Up to now, we had been having orientation meetings, getting settled in to our place, and getting used to day to day life in Bolivia. Today, we were picked up by Ken and taken over to his place for lunch. We were supposed to go about an hour out of town to a home for either street boys or orphaned boys, but the rain came down so hard this morning that the many streets were flooded and Ken said there was no way we would get across the bridge on the road out to the boys home. Instead, we had the opportunity to drive around the town a bit and to take one of Ken's boys to his soccer game. One of the ways that some of the boys get into school/university is to try out for soccer teams and try to get scholarships. Its not easy to do, since everyone here plays soccer, but its worth a shot, and David is pretty darn good at it.

On the way across town, we passed through some of the wealthy area and through some of the poorer areas of the city. The picture here is of a "home" we passed along the way. This particular house is made up of many different pieces of houses that have been scavanged from the ruins or other houses. These people will soon be moved along by the authorities because their home is right where the city is building another road.

We talked with Ken and David on the way to the soccer field about these people and the street kids. You see the street kids at almost every corner trying to make money one way or another. The young ones are either trying to shine shoes, or doing circus tricks like juggling to get money, the older ones are cleaning windshields as the cars stop, still others are running up to the cars trying to sell fruit they have picked. Some cars give a coin or two, but most continue past. I can't blame them really. If you gave a coin or two to every person you passed at the intersections, you wouldn't have any money for yourself and your family.

We eventually got to David's tryout and dropped him off. I obviously had been picturing a Canadian soccer field in my head, because when I saw the field that the University soccer tryout game was being played on, I was completely shocked. The field had grass about 5 inches long, was as bumpy as any washboard gravel road back home and in front of each net was a 10ft by 30ft mud puddle about 3 inches deep. I was also amazed at the skill of most of these young guys have and at the level of violence that they play the game with. This soccer game was as violent as most hockey games back home but with no fights.

David is a little out of shape since he hasn't had much opportunity to play soccer lately, but although he couldn't run as far or as fast as the others right now, he did show great skill with the ball. He impressed so much that he was one of the lucky ones to be told by the coach that his name was being submitted to receive a scholarship. To put that in perspective, this University which these guys were all killing themselves on the soccer field to get a scholarship to has a monthly tuition of about $100 Canadian dollars. That may not seem like much to use, but the average monthly income here is pretty much exactly the same, so you can see how hard it is for people to get their education, especially when they come from the streets. For those interested, David's team fell behind 2-0 but came back in the second half and won the game 3-2 on a beautiful corner kick play.