Sharing my Passion for Castration

One of the hardest to reach places in Bolivia, just got a little harder to reach. An area of Southern Bolivia called the Chaco has some communities so remote that there aren't NGO's willing to work with them. In fact, World Vision recently asked us to do some training workshops there for them. So, we eagerly planned the first of three chicken and sheep workshops for right after the students finished their final exams, which, unfortunately, also turned out to be immediately after a landslide destroyed the only access into the community. :( With some quick re-adjusting our ever-resourceful Bill Janecke set up a little alternate trip to the campo (country) to replace our original plans.
Our friends at the G.A.TH.E.R. project have a model farm about three hours outside of the city where they show local subsistence farmers how they can use limited land to do some cool things with chickens, sheep, cattle, crops, fish, and honeybees. With that many animals running around you can always find some way to put some vets and vet students to good use, and that's just what they did...

We rounded up about 35 head of cattle to vaccinate, and without a chute or head gate that meant we got to practice our lassoing skills, and then after each injection our diving-out-of-the-way-of-hooves-and-horns skills. We castrated four lambs, three calves and two dogs. Then we topped it off with a female dog spay just to avoid the appearance of sexism. It was a great couple of days to give the students some needed practical experience, help out a neat project, and breathe the fresh air so hard to come by here in the city.
In January, we'll try again to reach the very very hard to reach in the little community of Kapiakuandi. Pray that God will make a way so that we can share some practical veterinary knowledge and the love of Christ, which as far as I'm concerned always go hand in hand.