MA Alumni Spotlight: Jordana Hoyt

Posted in Feature  |  Tagged Alumni, MA

Currently, Jordana Hoyt (MAGIC ’14) lives in a small town called Carmen Pampa in the Bolivian Yungas, a stretch of forest along the Eastern Andean mountains. Jordana writes, “Carmen Pampa is home to the only university in the region, the Unidad Académica Campesina (UAC) at Carmen Pampa and I have had the great opportunity to begin working here at the UAC as an English professor and the head of the university’s English department.”

Jordanna teaches advanced English to students in their last year studying Tourism and basic English to professors and administrators here at the university. Heading the English department and living where one works also comes along with a great deal of administrative responsibilities which vary as widely as filling out needed paperwork to update the General Director of the college to “calling list” to see which students are in their assigned dorms at 11 o’clock at night. 

Jordana notes, “One day a week I try to help out around the campus in different ways outside of the academic department. I usually work in the university’s organic garden in the morning — planting, watering, weeding — and round out my afternoons in the university’s pig farm — feeding, cleaning, and taking some of the pigs out for a stroll and fresh air.  Living here is unlike any experience I have had thus far. I live in a community volunteer house where we are expected to cook for each other and clean after one another. There is a really intense sense of community here, and it makes the fact that we have few luxuries of which to speak a whole lot easier on all of us.”