I enjoyed a second night in the great Hotel Cortez and Juan Carlos picked me up at 9 after more papaya for breakfast! We first visited the downtown campus of UEB where I was impressed mostly with the number of classrooms and with their aggressive recruiting. They seem to use students for lots of things…including a telephone bank for calling prospective students. I asked and found they get the names from visits to churches and schools and from pastors, then follow up carefully!
Next we visited the Medical Center directly across from the main campus. It’s another testimony to the visit of Meredith Shefelen. It is a fairly large facility rented to a group of 25 doctors who maintain a clinic PLUS. By PLUS I mean that most of those 25 doctors are actually on site daily, where they treat 250 patients in 10 or so clinical specialities. They also have 32 beds for hospital stays, and surgeries that perform 20+ procedures daily! They have xray, ultrasound, and their labs. In short it is a real hospital but costs much less than the other private hospitals in Santa Cruz. UEB connects with them by using it as an internship site for students in biochemistry (working in labs), working to orient the people who come, in nursing, and in nutrition. I urged them to put special badges on the students so locals will realize the pervasive links between the hospital/clinic and UEB. The two lead doctors gave me an hour or more of their time and seemed very proud of their work. There were literally hundreds of patients waiting despite rain and mud all around. Brenda (Timoteo’s second assistant…besides Zondra) was a good “tour guide” along with Juan Carlos.
Juan Carlos is the “jack of all trades” incharge of recruitment and PR. (He chauffeured me and played guitar for the afternoon staff chapel!) He said that Morales’ bent toward socialism and secularism would permit homosexual marriage, and mandate the curriculum, including that traditional religion would be required for children and perhaps also for universities. There is now NO government financial support for the private universities, but they can still control with curriculum and hiring restraints. He said it might even turn out that the government would require someone ON THE ADMINISTRATIVE staff of the university to monitor (“watchdog?”) everything. Shades of U.S.S.R.! I also learned that before becoming president, Morales had been a “drug lord” specializing in cocaine! When I asked how someone like this could be elected, the answer was that he is popular with “the people” in the rural areas…the indigenous people who suffer under the historic disparities of the colonially established market system. There is no easy way to number them, since there are so many mestizos, but Morales won election by 62% so perhaps that indicates the size of this group. Santa Cruz as a city probably would not be especially supportive and someone joked that the SC flag might become a national flag. Next I spent time with AVP Douglas Sanchez. Asking him what were his greatest concerns…..what “kept him up at night.” His two ideas were: Evaluations from outside…the informal “audit” they have all talked about, including their board chair Daniel Viracotty. And second, better lobbying in LaPaz. I had already noticed that the penchant to avoid involvement in government means they really don’t have a good system for influencing these matters that affect them directly.
I spent time with Timoteo…perhaps an hour and a half. He shared his priorities for exchange programs, his support for his board chair’s desire to have an audit team visit, his desire to see visiting individuals or teams to present on board governance, good administration, faith & learning, and to teach modules in their grad programs. He said he’d send more detailed lists of these desired topics. He seemed pleased his board chair was supportive of the audit team and open to education for the whole board about governance. His board chair is a former faculty member and pastors the university church. His college chaplain is the first UEB rector and father of his AVP!
We went to lunch at the hotel restaurant…the rain would pour then sun would shine, then it would pour again….sometimes it poured and shone at the SAME TIME! We even talked about visiting Machu Pichu together. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, and he has never done it either. He has a friend that lives there….so maybe he and his wife Susanna, and son Alejandro might try to do it.
We finished the day attending a devotions/chapel for the faculty and staff. I spoke for 10 minutes on Work…using John 6:28 and Philippians 1:6. Timoteo translated….there were about 50 present in their chapel at the center of campus….what a quiet and beautiful place it is.
Timoteo took me to the airport…but not until his assistant Zondra tried many times with 8 phone numbers to get some confirmation that Patricio Proano the president at Universidad Cristiana Latinoamericana in Quito was actually still expecting me. No one at the numbers she called seemed to know him, and yet gave him other numbers to call….more on this below!
I enjoyed the time in Santa Cruz….Juan Carlos got me a map too! There are 6 “ring roads” around the city. Many streets are still dirt off the main ones…a lot like Kigali, and traffic is fun. By that I mean that at intersections people just head in and often you see cars crossways…bordering on gridlock…but they all seem to play the same game so it works ok. Traffic circles even have lights because once those circles get too much traffic their elegance gives way to impracticality…..God bless the French who like them so much!
I caught my flight on time to Lima via LaPaz….the airport in Lima is MAGNIFICENT…brand new and better than 95% of the airports I have ever seen anywhere! I struggled to get wireless…my Boingo account is apparently only for my wireless phone…but even that did not connect to their VEX network that supposedly shares roaming with Boingo. I was pretty frustrated that I had to buy a day pass for 2 hours! And the VIP lounge deal using Jimmy’s Goldman Sachs Platinum AMEX card didn’t work either. Tho I must say it was a pleasure to use it in Miami! (Biggest lounge I’ve ever seen!)
I arrived at 2:30 am, passed customs, and found NO ONE waiting. So eventually I took a cab ($5) to a Hotel Savoy he recommended. Paid my $40 cash and hit the hay. It was clean…and seemed relatively safe….Timoteo had been worried. I told him a preacher must be prepared on a moment’s notice to preach, pray, or perish. I hope I am!
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