Meet team Tarija: Winston “Big Guns” Harrell, Sarah “Esther” Anderson, and myself, SC.

Winston, (25) is from rural Virginia and always up for most anything. After graduation from the Virginia Military Institute, Winston traveled and worked in Australia and New Zealand. In Australia he met Melissa; a very good looking woman in a bar. As they discussed Winston’s life plans she suggested he join the Peace Corps. And thus, we have Winston’s glowing presence with us here in Tarija!

My fellow PCVs and I would like to genuinely thank Melissa for her outstanding contribution to the Corps. Winston is a relatively quiet, go with the flow kind of person, but he will without a doubt accomplish exactly what he says he will – even if you only hear about it later in passing. Winston is truly dependable in every way.

Winston has already started up an internet cafe and is currently designing and building a miniature golf course made out of recycled material in his site.

Sarah “Esther” or “Rah” Anderson is the baby of our Bolivia 42 group (my training group), joining us at the young age of 22. Sarah is one of many PCVs who had never been out of the country prior to her Peace Corps service. Esther was pre-med at the University of Illinois and is hoping to become a surgeon after her service.

Sarah brings a quiet confidence and understated intelligence to all she does. She is a born problem solver, and one of her many gifts is to find solutions by building consensus – folks rarely even realize she’s been such an instrumental part of solving an issue. I like to think of Esther as being “conscientiously laid back”, I find it hard to imagine her truly “stressed out” and lucky for the rest of us PCVs she keeps everything in perspective with her expansive sense of humor.  

Sarah works with a state system of pre-school centers known as PAN about 45 minutes outside the city of Tarija.

As for me – well, most of you already know too much – so I’ll save the details of what I do for another blog entry so as not to bore y’all.

Thanks for reading !