9 days and counting, and the girls, Allison and I are off to Canada! I feel a mix of excitement, anxiety and sadness when I think about it. The trip is going to be an unbelievable experience for the girls. At the same time the competition marks the end of Allison’s time in Bolivia, and the beginning of a struggle to maintain the progress she has made in the sport.
During Allison’s 4 month in Tarija she’s accomplished an incredible amount: choreographing two teams, a combo and a duet, preparing a synchro clinic for 70 new swimmers; fundraising over $6000 to send a duet to compete in Canada; and organizing all of the logistics for their trip; among many other things. These are not easy accomplishments, especially in Bolivia.
Over the last few weeks Allison and I have taken on three new projects:
- Organizing a course for coaches and judges
- Finding money to purchase a sound system with an underwater speaker
- Finding a new coach to replace Allison
The present political climate is both helping and hindering our projects. I feel like we are balancing on the high point of a teeter totter, knowing that at any moment the scales could be tipped and we could loose our advantage and find ourselves back on the ground.
If you’ve been following the news in Bolivia at all you may have heard that on August 10th, the Voto Revocatorio is being held. This is a nation wide election that decides whether the present political leaders will stay in power or not. The President, Vice President, and the Prefectos (the equivalent of premiers or governors) are all affected by the vote, and could maintain or loose their positions as a result.
Why is the vote being held? Because the country has become ungovernable. In what is known as the media luna or the south of the country, huge protests have been launched against the national government to the point that its difficult for them to move forward with anything. Departments like Santa Cruz and Tarija have declared their independence and passed statutes – something like their own constitution – through illegal votes.
The “recovactorio” will uncover the nature of these protests and determine whether there is a majority against the national government or if the protests are in fact being fueled by the rich minority, trans-national companies, the US, and the media that they control, in an attempt to gain back the power and wealth that the popular government is supposedly taking from them.
For the last month both the federal and departmental governments have been in election mode, promising the sky to try and secure votes. The departmental government has promised us money for a sound system, for the transport and lodging of a trainer to do a judges and coaches course, and for the airfare for a new coach. Unfortunately, the only thing we have is their word, which will count for nothing on August 10th if the prefectural government is ousted. Even if they win, the words from the prefectural government may amount to just empty promises, as they have given me more than my share of false promises.
The political instability makes it incredibly difficult to plan anything. We can’t find a new coach, bring in a trainer or order a music system, knowing that tomorrow everything could change.
This situation raises one of my biggest questions: how do you make synchro sustainable in country that is so unstable, where poverty, economic and political crisis make the commitment and consistency that competitive sport requires so difficult to obtain? At a more immediate scale: how do I sustain what Allison has created if I can only dedicate an hour a day to the coaching and there is no one else in the country with the knowledge to teach the sport?
Synchro is difficult to teach and learn. It’s almost impossible to create a population of coaches, before you have a population of retired swimmers. So if I don’t have experienced local swimmers, how and where can I find coaches to be able to build the sport in the way that it has the potential to grow?
I can offer room and board to a coach from outside of the country, and maybe a plane ticket, but the salary of $150 per month, which most coaches here earn, isn’t very enticing for someone from outside of the country – nor is the $400 that the very best earn. So far, I think the only way to maintain what I’ve started, at least for the next few years, is to find people interested in coming for the love of the sport, desire to experience a new culture, and the motivation to make history, by introducing a new sport to the country. The other option is to find corporate sponsorship – not a simple thing.
I’m afraid of what will happen once Allison leaves. We’ve built a beautiful castle of talented swimmers with huge potential, but we don’t yet have the coaches to keep it together, nor the political and economic stability in the country to maintain things easily. Developing synchro in Bolivia doesn’t only require finding a new coach, it involves fighting for a political and economic situation that allows everyone, regardless of their social and economic reality, to be able to participate in the sport. I’m hoping that the results of the revocatoria will bring us a step closer, rather than a step farther, from achieving this larger goal.
