When I first came to Charagua, I was a little disappointed at the lack of wildlife. I’m used to seeing cute little squirrels up every tree and deer bounding around the woods at home, with seals and dolphins swimming around Santa Barbara. At first glance, Charagua showed no signs of having these little friends to give me the company that I normally enjoy. However, slowly but surely these little creatures are showing themselves. Therefore, I’ve made a list of animals (wild and domestic) I’ve seen so far in Charagua:
Cows and bulls
Horses
Chickens. These guys have the run of the land, they go anywhere and everywhere
Ducks
Dogs of every shape and size and in every stage of disrepair
Cats, but very few, and they are all house pets, no strays
Lizards (crazy colors too, bright lime green and white stripes)
Tiny lizard type things, but with big heads and eyes that crawl up walls in houses. Absolutely adorable.
Frogs and toads (dead frog bodies line the streets and several fat, happy ones live in my garden)
Bats. Good pollinators!
Birds. Okay, this is a big category, and if I had binoculars and a hell of a lot more patience, I’d be able to describe more of them. The only one that sticks out in my mind was a tiny little white-as-snow bird with a bright red face and spikey (white? yellow? I can’t remember) hair. It was sooooo cool looking and until it noticed I was there I got to watch it take a little bath in this pond thing. Anyway, I know there’s a lot of birds because the calls are all different and at different times. I hear them all the live long day. Especially my neighbor’s parrots, but those are definitely not wild. They demand food in Spanish all the time. “quiero comer, quiero comer.” They wouldn’t make it a day in the wild! Oh yeah, and tons of hummingbirds! Beautiful!
Pigs (both wild and domestic). The domestics are big, fat, and stinky and kept at home. Although I have seen a couple tied up to posts outside of buildings. It’s like someone rode their pig to work, I don’t get it. The wild ones are delightful! They’re smaller and just run a mock through the brush with their babies. I love watching them scuttle around and snort!
Goats. Soooooooo cute! I don’t know if they’re wild or not, but whenever I see them they’re in a herd all alone, walking in the brush. They have tiny horns and are all different colors. Once they got stuck on the main road I was walking on (they couldn’t escape into the bushes) and I scared the shit out of them. Literally. I had to walk in it until they could get themselves back into the underbrush.
BUGS!!! I wish I was an entomologist! There are so many cool kinds, but I have no idea what they are. Lots of colorful beetles with designs on their backs, walking sticks (you know, praying mantis-like, but thinner and that look like, well, walking sticks. There are a ton of these guys, too, just hanging out in the streets), tiny weeny grasshoppers that are everywhere and monstrously huge ones that scare the crap out of me whenever one suddenly jumps into my path, bees, ants, the wonderful fleas and ticks in my bed, spiders, mosquitos of course, BUTTERFLIES (I discovered a whole butterfly land near my house in a dried creek bed. I love walking by there now because my presence makes them get all flustered so that they all fly up at the same time and I feel like magic butterfly girl (?)), and probably more but that’s all I can think of for now.
Tigers!! Okay, I haven’t actually seen one personally, but I keep hearing stories about them. Apparently in the surrounding area there are a few, and people try to hunt them to show how manly they are. So except for the hunting thing (I’m determined to find these hunters and give them a piece of my mind), that’s really exciting!! One of these days I’m going to go tiger spotting!! All I need is a camera, khaki-colored clothes, and a funny hat. I’ll let you know if I see anything.

Well, moving from one animal world to the other (humans! Yikes!), I met a super nice family today (Sunday). They are the parents of my Spanish/Guarni teacher back in Cochabamba. Ben and I went to their house for a gigantic lunch of beef, rice, potatoes, yucca, tomato and onion salad, potato, fava bean, and pea salad, oranges, and of course, every family’s beverage of choice both day and night- pepsi. The dude (Don Julian) works for a NGO called CIPCA, and I’m really really really interested in working with them! He does agricultural tallers (workshop-like-thingys) with/for the surrounding communities (mostly Guarani), giving them advice on how to improve crop yield, etc. Surprisingly though, he doesn’t know how to compost, so I guess that’s a good place for me to start. I mean, geesh! I have to talk to his boss (the jefe of CIPCA) on Monday to see if I can work with them still, but hey, who’s going to pass up free manual labor? Don Julian also told me about an organization called CIAT (I can’t remember what it stands for) that does agricultural experiments on some piece of land on the outskirts of town. Hello!! Agricultural experimentation??!! That is what I’ve been dying to do since I got here! Of course, I haven’t talked to them yet, nor do I know if they’ll let the little white girl do experiments with government money, but hey, even if they just let me watch what’s going on every now and again that would be great. Hopefully by the end of this week I’ll know if I can work with either either/both of those groups or not. In the meantime, my boss (kind of, he’s the guy in charge of Natural Resource Management) and his little assistant girl (a third year volunteer) are coming to Charagua tomorrow and spending a couple days with Ben and I to see how we’re doing, if we’re finding work possibilities, etc. I’m excited just because it’ll be something to do. Also, I’ve heard that he’s super obsessed with the Mennonites (well, I guess fascinated is a better word), so I’m going to try my best to convince him to take us to their colonies. Apparently they’re awesome. Huge, old-fashioned (they don’t use electricity for anything except stoves I think), crowded with thousands and thousands of blond haired, blue eyed kids (each woman has an average of 13 kids!!! Don’t even get me started on what I think about this!), and in short, just a good place to go gringo ogling. Plus, I hear they make good cake. I don’t know if that’s why he likes to go there or not, but if I liked cake, that would be reason enough for me! So, in short, the next couple of days are hopefully going to be full of fun activity. And I’m not even picky anymore, any activity at all is good enough for me! I’ll let you know how it goes once the big jefe is gone!