The 3-7-9 Plan

When you come and visit me in Gutierrez, here’s how it’s going to go. We’ll rumble off the highway onto the bumpy main street. The driver will blare his horn to announce our arrival (and the following departure) no matter what ungodly hour it is. We’ll wave to everybody I know, which is everybody, and shout buendía, bueñas tardes or bueñas noches depending on the time of day and whether it’s before or after lunch.



Later I’ll introduce you to my wild cast of characters. They have names such as Doña Flaca (Mrs. Skinny), Doña Pancha (Mrs. Tummy), Doña Negra (Mrs. Black, with the short black hair and dark eyebrows) and Doña Uva (Mrs. Grape). My host parents are called Don Yonny and Doña Vicky.

Do not be surprised if you see something dead and eventually edible hanging in the parlor; it’s normal. Likewise try to contain your excitement when Don Yonny shows you the giant boa he killed in the backyard with a shovel this morning; just because it’s twitching doesn’t mean it’s still alive.

If we’re lucky, Don Yonny will invite us to some of his homemade cheese, mild and soft like fresh mozzarella, with wild honey. It’s incredible. He’s also bound to show us photos of his family, as if to assert, look: I have a history here. No one exists without roots. The photos only half-aid in the process of naming one’s kin, as families grow large here. Between them, my host parents have nine children. My host dad comes from a family of eight. Everyone in town is related through blood or marriage or both.

Doña Vicky has a crown of dyed-blonde hair and flowers painted onto her toenails; she calls herself ‘reina de las ollas’: queen of the pots. This morning I asked her what her plans were for the day. “Sweep and cook,” she replied, chuckling, shaking her head goodheartedly as if I had made some big joke. Then she added, “and drink püro. Same as yesterday, same as tomorrow.”

Inevitably, we’ll share in some püro, otherwise known as hierba mate. We will sip slowly from a brown wooden cup with a rounded bottom through a silver, studded straw. Be careful not to burn your tongue. I always ask for mine without sugar, or ‘sin dulce’ because I worry about my teeth after drinking this concoction twelve times a day, but since you’re only visiting you might want to go for it. Don’t say ‘gracias’ when someone passes it to you, though. You only say that when you’re ready to leave the circle. I have been well trained.

We’ll do a project while you’re here – why not? I’ll call a meeting just so you can get the full experience. We’ll set it for 4 pm and invite all the padres (parents). You and I will show up at 3:50. A few people will trickle in at 4:30, 4:40 and insist on discussing some possibly unrelated issue in rapid fire Spanish that, I do apologize, I probably can’t understand nor translate. All in all, the primary result of the meeting will have been to set a date and time for a follow-up meeting.



Afterward, we’ll get some fried chicken in the plaza because that’s all there is and slurp down some watery beer. Guaranteed, quality aside, it will taste fabulous. The volunteers here call it the 3-7-9 plan, and it applies to just about anything (beer, food, members of the opposite sex, projects). When we arrived, we turned up our noses at the Bolivian brews and thought, ick, three out of ten at best. After training, we poured a tall foamy glass and slurped it down with seven out of 10 satisfaction. Here in my site, at the end of the day when the hot, dry sun descends over the foothills and a cool breeze sweeps the dusty streets, a cold Taquiña can turn any day into a nine.

Puppy Love

Well, I feel a little guilty about this but not guilty enough to change my mind. Let me give you some background first. Dogs are not friends in Bolivia. They live on short chains on concrete floors, if they’re lucky. I have seen them eat their own feces. If fed, their diet includes dog soup, made from chicken heads and other delectables, and bones from table scraps. They are skinny and often abused.

The rest roam the streets, angry and mangy, until they are hit by cars or poisoned or killed in fights with other dogs. Dog orgies along the sides of the road are not uncommon. One turns off the ability to see these things.

I had it in my head to adopt one of these such dogs, to rescue him or her and make an example to my future community of how rewarding it can be to have relationship with your pet – and also to abate my own loneliness once I get to site. I didn’t anticipate that my dog would choose me.

So meet Leona, the exact opposite of what I was looking for but everything I wanted. I nursed her back to health when one of the other dogs tore at her neck with its teeth. After much adieu, I bought her from my host family who couldn’t believe that one could train a dog to retrieve a plastic ball (evidence of our special bond; she’ll only return it to me) or that a dog would stop eating because it was depressed, as she was every time I left for a tech trip. They bought her to breed, but in the end agreed to send her along with me because they were truly afraid she would die when I left!

Yesterday the world got very big for Leona, who’s barely left the backyard in her three months of life. First my language professor, Alex, donated his time and his car to take us to the vet Saturday morning (btw, I tested out of Spanish at Advanced Low, the biggest jump in my group). That thing where the dogs stick their heads out the window and smile is totally international.

Then she came to our going away barbecue at the training director’s house and played with his kids for two extra hours while I took a bike safety course. Last night, she was a perfectly behaved lady for a 12-hour bus trip to Santa Cruz. No barking in a very crowded bus station, where I was toting her plus everything I own, no accidents and lots of cute sleeping positions – mostly half draped over me (oh great, you got me two seats! But where are * you* going to sit?)



I have to go. Somebody just dropped a slobbery ball in my lap.

Wandering in Circles

This morning on the way into the city, I sat next to a scrawny, weathered, dirty but not quite scary old man. He was wearing two hats (one for cold and one for sun, presumably) and chomping away on what I thought must be nuts or chips, but on closer look discovered were definitely coca leaves. Just crunching away there on the bus, high as a kite without a care in the world.


Across the aisle sat a middle-aged cholita woman in the usual garb: lacy button up shirt, long black braids and stiff, flowery hat … save that her traditional, ruffled skirt (called a pollera) was made from fuzzy leopard print fabric (Mom, Mike, a la Lise?). This is why I love Bolivia. I’m not sure I can elaborate on that, but I’ll keep giving you examples.

The cancha in the city of Cochabamba is a market the size of an entire neighborhood where they sell everything under, over and to the left of the sun. My friend Helen nearly purchased a sleeping child in a bedroom store this afternoon. You’d be amazed how many of them you randomly stumble over while shopping, in the strangest places (and anyway, she really just wanted a travel pillow). We spied a cat asleep inside a glass cabinet alongside various breakable wares. Yes, a real cat.

Ask two people for directions in the cancha, and they’ll point down opposite roads. It is possible that they’re both right (ie two stores that carry the item), that one person knows and the other person is lying to save the embarrassment of not knowing, or that neither have a clue and just don’t want to admit it. To get somewhere you need to go, your best bet is to take a poll. Ten people, at least, before you put any serious effort into walking in a particular direction. Unless you’re like me and up for a stroll anyway, or care to turn it into a game: how many Bolivians does it take to find the kitchen utensils?

Meanwhile they’re playing, hah! Let’s see how long those ridiculous gringas will wander around in circles.

Author’s note: I later discovered that one could mash potatoes just fine with the bottom of a Nalgene bottle, anyway.

The Bad Side of Good

Chaparre is the region in Bolivia where they grow coca. For that reason, Peace Corps doesn’t want us hanging out there. But for a million reasons, I was so glad the car broke down on the way home and we had to spend five hours taking in the scenery. It’s astounding, better than any picture I saw before coming to Bolivia. Waterfalls descend from the tops of giant cliffs, seemingly from the center of the sky. Butterflies, lightning bugs and devil mosquitoes fill the air along with the aroma of wild lilies. It is rainforest at it’s best, and I kept thinking of the kids’ movie Fern Gully, a feeble comparison at best. The forest was alive, moving, breathing, speaking, soothing.

I returned to Cochabamba exhausted at 2am. I didn’t get up until late morning, and as is usual for the weekends my family was ready to whisk me away. Despite ample homework, I hadn’t seen them in a while and was up for the adventure. Seeing as how it was Easter Sunday, I assumed wherever we were headed would include church and food.

So we piled into the car and drove off. First we wound up at Aunt Carola’s, where we piled more people into the car. I sat double shotgun with Kelly. Then we headed in the direction of the highway, but turned off toward my grandparent’s house to wait for the others to gather. No problem – I’ve got this pattern figured out by now. I pulled out my Spanish homework and borrowed a pen. As I was writing, my little cousin Nicole, who is about one, was getting some pre-church beauty treatment from my host mom and making all sorts of googly baby faces in response. She’s adorable, and far more interesting than my Spanish homework.

Uncle Ever, Nicole’s father, is an angry man in general. He never greets me, as is customary in Bolivian culture. He has two young children and his wife lives in Spain, because of which, my family has warned me, he always bitter. At my grandmother’s birthday party one time he yelled at me, or at least in my general direction. I assumed he was angry with my aunt Lucy, with whom I was walking and talking, and that I was just caught in the crossfire. All the same, I asked to leave and did so. My family told me not to worry, that he was just a mean drunk looking for someone to yell at, and that he’d argued with others in the family that night as well. Note to self: don’t drink with Ever. Ever.

So I didn’t really anticipate any problems at 11 am on Easter Sunday until he put himself directly in front of me. Menacingly, he demanded to know, “Por que le mirabas a mi hija?” Why were you staring at my daughter?”

?Perdon?
“Siempre le mirabas!” You are always watching her.
“Por que … es bonita? I stumbled. Because she’s pretty.

Not really sure all that came after that, other than a lot of yelling at me, yelling between my family members, and my host dad grabbing me and saying, “Erika, vamos.” We sat in the car and my host dad took deep, loud, angry breaths to calm himself. I was practically in tears. I told him I was confused – previously I had barely spoken to this man. Kelly and my host mom showed up. “Are you okay?” Erlinda asked. “Don’t worry; he’s just mean. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Kelly turned around in the front seat and explained it all. “Es un racisto.” He’s a racist.

I’ve never been the object of such blind hatred. A million times since it happened, I’vereplayed the event in my head. Is there something I could have said to diffuse his anger? Is there something improper about the way I interact with his children? Should I have tried harder to befriend him in the first place, despite his reluctance? Am I in danger? What about his past causes him to act in such a way?

We went to church in two cars; surprisingly, Nicole came in ours on my grandmother’s lap. In Quillacollo, a nearby city, we separated again into two groups. In church I lit two candles as always: one for me, and one for my real mom, and placed them next to my Bolivian family’s candles. I asked the Virgen de Urkupina, granter of miracles, for a big one. Help me fix this. And got stuck on one phrase of the Lord’s Prayer, “forgive those who trespass against us.”

Lost in the Campo

Tech week

First I’ve got to tell you all about my friend Yolanda, my current partner in crime. She’s a Detroit native and chock full of attitude. She knows how to keep a class in line and keep us all laughing till we cry. She’s the first one to dive into just about anything, including street food, which we were told was off limits for our wimpy western tummies. “Erika,” she’d say, “God kissed that sandwich and handed it to me.”

I make a point of rooming with Yoli. I know my experience will be all the better for it. She celebrated her birthday during our trip, and as a mixed blessing that day we couldn’t get to the school where we were supposed to teach. People are forever blockading Bolivian roads in protest of one thing or another; apparently it doesn’t matter where you go because we were surely in the middle of nowhere. And like everywhere else, it’s not a dangerous event. It’s a bunch of taxi drivers drinking chicha and shooting the breeze. We tried another way out. A huge truck sat in the middle of the road and alongside a sleepy couple of cows joined in the fun by planting themselves directly in the way, injury to insult.



But this is why we have four-wheel drive, and this is what I love about Peace Corps, among other things. We literally went right up over the goddamned mountain. Our drivers are used to this kind of thing, but there was definitely one point where we just stopped, looked down, and simultaneously snapped our seat belts. Esteban (the driver) said, “If we don’t make it through, there’s no way we’re getting back up here.”

So we all raised our hands like riding a rollercoaster, and away we went: down the ravine, through the river and up the other side. Through mud that came up over the wheels, through dusty little towns and with random guesses as to which direction to turn, we emerged four hours later – five minutes from where we started, but five minutes means a lot when you’re on the other side of a blockade.





Over the next few days we worked hard. We visited an experimental farm, a radio show and a tree nursery. We delivered charlas, or lessons, to several different groups. For my part, Ben and I talked biofertilizers with farmers, the whole group divided environmental education with teachers (part philosophy, part identification of problem areas, part practical application: for example using recycled materials in the classroom, which is not only better but combats the lack of materials in many if not most schools).

I wrote a puppet show with Yoli and Andy on reforestation that was a big hit in the primary school (the kids understood Spanish but spoke Guarani!). Then we collected nearly two thousand dead batteries in various remote villages without adequate trash disposal. I wrote really silly mad libs about it and the kids chose Michael Jackson and Shakira as the main characters. Yoli and I were in stitches along with everybody else.



Toward the end of our long journey (ten days, more than 30 hours cooped up in a Land Rover), the current volunteers along with one of the host families threw us a huge barbecue. Animals were sacrificed, beer was flowing and sweet wine went from mouth to mouth all night long. Music filled the night air, slightly cooler and more magical than the stifling heat of the afternoon. Clouds meandered slowly by an almost full moon as we learned native dances but mostly tripped over one another. I smiled so much my face hurt. I remember thinking: God kissed this world and handed it to me.

Lasagna Boliviana

Yesterday Kelly and I made oatmeal raisin cookies from a packet I found at the gringo grocery store. Not that I can’t make them from scratch, but everything is just more complicated here and the packet looked so easy. Just add butter, water and an egg, it said, alongside nifty little pictures. Save that my family doesn’t have a cookie sheet and it took me two weeks to find one, or something resembling one, and we never use the oven so that was a new experience, too. It has five different temperature settings, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Worst case scenario I thought I’d have to do the math between Fahrenheit and Celsius (or like, email Hilary and ask her to do it for me). Instead I played the guessing game with the first batch, and made some adjustments for batch number two.

Anyway, they turned out fine, maybe a little sweeter than I would have preferred. My host mom, beaming, invited four people over to share cookies with us but made me set aside one each for my aunts, uncles and cousins to try out the next day. Apparently the 20-minute act of producing cookies from a plastic pouch puts me on par with the Iron Chef, which, if you think about it, has the same general theme: find all the ingredients/supplies you need and put them together in a strange kitchen which may or may not have utensils while six hungry Bolivians wait downstairs for the official taste test. No pressure.

It’s no secret how much I miss American food, especially since I’ve been well (tummy-wise) almost as much as I’ve been sick here. So today my Aunt and Uncle took me to a restaurant where the daily special was, of all things, lasagna. Even though it was a tough call between that and the other two reasonably normal albeit Bolivian items on the special board, I wanted to humor them so I went with lasagna. So did my cousin Carla and my aunt Carola, probably out of curiosity and, you know, solidarity.

First came the salad, which I vacuumed. Most Bolivian food comes sans vegetables. The previous day I ordered some specially to share with the whole family, a big plate, and wound up eating the entire thing by myself. No problem. It’s not just that they rarely eat veggies here; they don’t even like them!

I had a choice of two soups, corn or peanut. The peanut soup, or sopa de mani, is something I might actually miss someday. I went with that.

Then came the lasagna. Take a moment to consider what you might put in lasagna, or better yet, what you might find inside one. The first curiosity was the layer of mashed potatoes on top of the noodles (*whimper* Where’s the cheese? QUESO!?) I was hungry, and took a big old bite. Chomped right down. Stopped. Started chewing again slowly. Something sweet. A … raisin?

Cause for more examination, to say the least, so I pried that sucker open. Noodles, pretty standard. Minced meat. Carrots? Holy crap, is that an egg? “Alexander, que es esto? Un huevo?”

Alexander (aka Oscar or Chino, since everyone has three names here and some people have four), is my cousin who is about 7. He and I made an English-Spanish list of what exactly we found today in my lasagna: olives-aceitunas, beans-beines, carrots-zanahorias, raisins-pasas de uva, potatoes-papas, meat-carne and pasta-fideos.

It really was a detective game because the items listed here are in no way ‘the filling’ of the lasagna; they’re more like finely diced additives sprinkled sparingly into the usual meat and potatoes (and potatoes, and potatoes) that I eat every day.

Were I not salivating for a mound of mozzarella cheese and tomatoes, I might have actually liked my lunch. The moral of the story is, next time I may as well order something Bolivian, because at least then I’ll know (and this is an improvement on language and experience on my part), at least now I know in that case what I’ll be getting.

Public Transit

Anyone who has played MarioKart probably has a pretty good idea of what the roads are like here. Sand traps, obstacles (also known as pedestrians), and an earnest desire to hit every straight zone as fast as you can without losing control or tipping over when your bus is already top-heavy with too many passengers, so many that a couple of them are probably hanging out the door, and hopefully still hanging on. Just yesterday we were jam-packed into a trufi (public transit van), and a bus (called a micro), sped by and clipped off our driver’s rearview mirror.

So, welcome to Latin America. Grab your ‘oh shit’ handles; it’s a wild ride. Our driver proceeded to hit the gas, catch up to the bus at the next stop and swerve in front of him so he couldn’t move. He jumped out of the trufi and stormed off to the micro. Much obscene gesturing and many shouts later, our intrepid chauffer reappeared, yanked open the van door and said, “Quien tiene un boligrafo?” At which point it was unclear whether driver #1 was going to use the borrowed pen take down information, or just stab the driver #2 in the face with it.

Most micros in Bolivia are red, white and blue with orange and yellow flames painted on the front and along the sides. Really. But they’re little buses, so it’s more comical than badass (though I assure you, both drivers 1 and 2 are wholly badass). Most have themes emblazoned on their windshield and/or rear window. The “Urkupina,” or local miracle-granting virgin (whom I learned about in church, for all of you thinking dirty thoughts right now), is pretty popular. This morning I had a ways to go. I hopped “el poquito volador” (little flyer) to the “chico malo intocable” (untouchable bad boy). We passed by the “si me ves no llores”(if you see me, don’t cry), and I thought … nope, wouldn’t cry. Might take care with my mirrors, though.