An Unusual Initiation

In addition to working at the bookstore for the next year, I´m also helping out with an organization called the Instituto de Rehabilitación Infantil. The institute works with handicapped children to provide them with low-cost prostheses and therapy. While so far I´ve only been calling plastics distributors around the country and handling translation projects, at some point I hope to actually be helping in the workshop. I have to say, the prospect of adding "volunteer prosthetics engineer" to my resumé makes me really excited.

The reason I´ve mainly been working with translation so far is because the head volunteer of the prosethetics project, Matt, has really poor Spanish skills. He´s a great guy and has poured himself into this project 150% but has been struggling with making contacts and calling suppliers of the various materials needed in the workshop. So a few days ago Matt asked if I would accompany him to a Rotary Club meeting here where he needed to ask for a letter of a approval. The Rotary Club is helping fund a new project bringing in some advanced prosethtic knees from the University of Texas and Matt needed me to ask the club for a letter of support for the UT team.

We arrived at the Rotary clubhouse in Zona Sur and found six middle-aged to senior citizen people seated around a conference table. Singing karaoke. And drinking Johnny Walker Red. I was sure we´d arrived at the wrong place, but the club immediately recognized Matt and demanded that we pick out our songs. Matt adamently refused but I treated the club to a rendition of "Hey Jude" with very little arm-twisting. They all got pretty excited about it and explained that they were practicing for an upcoming karaoke contest between all of the Rotary chapters in La Paz. They took a vote to nominate me their representative for the competition but since I had plans the night of the karaoke-off, I had to respectfully decline. After singing though, I think they were much more willing to listen to our opinions and requests...even if they were disappointed at missing their shot at karaoke glory.