H is for....

H is for health and safety

Which is a bit of a joke really as people drive around without seatbelts in cars only fit for the scrap heap with bald tires and cracked windscreens. Entire families travel about on one motorbike, including babies and toddlers, Scaffolding consists of a few planks nailed loosely together with people hanging over the edges to fix other fittings. Plug sockets spark every time you try and fit a plug, and the pavements and parks are full of trip hazards. So its just as well the culture of litigation hasn’t reached these parts.

H is for Hail

So we are now into the Bolivia summer and to get it going at the end of September we had a huge hailstorm one afternoon, which produced grains about 1.5cm in diameter and turn the road outside of the FH office into a brown river. We were very impressed by it and Alana enjoyed playing in it and making a snowman or a bird (see which you think it is). Though it was fun to watch others were not so impressed. A friend of our landlord’s had spent the last few weeks keeping the birds off of their fruit trees only to see the hail destroy most of the fruit. Also some schools suffered damage to their roofs in the storm. Another part of Bolivian summers is huge thunderstorms, for most of this afternoon it has been raining and thundering. But these are not like what we have in the UK. The thunder rolls loudly around the hills for a long time and it produces some very large and bright bolts of lightening. So that combined with the noise of the hail banging on the tin roof across from our house it was not surprising Alana got a little upset by it today. All this said we hope that it doesn’t rain too much this month as Sarah’s parents are coming out we want some good weather (those not too hot) to show them around (as well as to be able to fly into Sucre). And also for the country as a whole because last year there were a number of problems here with floods in the cities and countryside.

Our Garden

The road in front of the FH office

H is for House
Not our house but a play house that a guy I met in prison here made for Alana, complete with cooker, shelves, table and chairs. She really enjoys playing in it, though does not like it when her friends come around to play, as she has not yet learned to share her toys with others.