visitors beware!

Dear Dawn (and Erin, and the rest of you just for kicks):

A few things you should know before you visit me …



To meet and greet:

A woman greeting another woman or a man greeting a woman would take their right hand and the two would kiss on the right cheek. One person says “mucho gusto,” and the other “igualmente.” (Nice to meet you … likewise). Two men greeting each other would start with a handshake, and then there would be a simultaneous clap on both upper arms, followed by another handshake. It’s a funny little dance. Also, if someone’s hands are dirty or wet, it is perfectly normal for them to offer you a forearm to shake instead.

You greet everyone you meet, so if there’s a group of ten people there you have to go around the entire circle. When I first met my family in Cochabamba I thought I had all of my bases covered. I had greeted everyone properly except my youngest cousin who seemed really shy so I just shook his hand. Anyway, apparently he turned away not because he was afraid of me but because he was awaiting his little beso (kiss!). So my aunt said, ¿qué pasó que no le gusta a su primo? How come you don’t like your cousin?

For passers-by you say buen' día in the morning, bueñas tardes after lunch and bueñas noches when it gets dark. Most of the time people reciprocate warmly. Sometimes though, people look at you like you’re nuts. The Peace Corps training director explained this phenomenon. “Sometimes they take one look at you and decide they won’t possibly be able to understand what you’re saying, even if you’re speaking perfect Spanish.”

Food:

We don’t really eat breakfast or dinner here, but we always have a good lunch and you’re practically required to ask for seconds. Please, talk with your mouth full and eat with your hands or you’ll make everyone feel self-conscious. If your hands get greasy, you can wipe them on the tablecloth! I have never burped at the table but my little brothers do it often and with gusto, for which I apologize in advance. Also, at night they often drink coffee with about five scoops of sugar. It’s no wonder they’re out of control.

A few favorites here in the house include chicken feet soup and fried cow stomach. They usually cook me something else on those days but since you won’t have to eat it once a week for two years, you might want to just go for it. Once you’ve finished your second plate, it’s most polite to say gracias to everyone at the table (not just the chef) and they will reply with “provecho.” Likewise, that’s how you reply to others when they say gracias to you, or how you greet a table of eaters whether you plan to join in or not.

Water comes from a big cement tank in the backyard. It is green with algae, full of calcium and lord knows what else, and there are definitely some bugs swimming in there. I boil it for seven minutes then filter it to use for cooking and brushing my teeth; my drinking water comes in a bottle, a luxury I pay for and refuse to give up. My host family does at least bring water to a boil before we consume it. I have püro with them all the time and haven’t died yet.

After tea, my host dad will start chomping on a bunch of little leaves and putting white stuff in his mouth. The leaves are coca and the powder is not cocaine – it’s baking soda, which apparently activates the drug in its natural form. It doesn’t really get you high. Mostly he just sits and smiles and tries to talk to me but I can’t understand him with a big wad of leaves in his mouth. He tells me all the time it’s his only vice, and if that were true I’d say he’s doing all right for himself.

The Party Scene:

You will never have to pay for anything here; the family throwing the party provides it all (DJ and/or band, food, drink) and there’s even a special ceremony to pass next year’s party on to another family. It is possible to fake your way through most dances and I’ll let you know which ones to skip … or teach you if I’ve learned by then.

This is very important so you might want to print this out or take some notes! DO NOT just get a cup and drink it or you’ll be on your ass before you know it. Wait for someone to say “salud,” then take a small sip. There will also be someone walking around with some very sweet wine mixed with soda. BEFORE you drink it, look to someone else and say, “te invito.” I invite you – otherwise they’ll continue to pour them for you alone (you can imagine me figuring this out the hard way). If they try to give you the bottle, don’t let them! The pourer inevitably drinks the most and you don’t want to be tied to this job for the rest of the night; better to be first in line for the food (which usually comes around midnight or later).

At the last party I went to, the first person fell face-first in the dirt at 7:30pm. We do not run out of alcohol here; Emily and I put some serious effort into avoiding the bottles as they go around. She told me in a pep talk the other day that it’s best to “go in with a strategy.” For good reason, as Chaqueños (those from the Chaco) drink an alcohol they refer to as “pure” even though it’s usually mixed with soda. It is, in fact, rubbing alcohol. The same kind you buy at the pharmacy to clean wounds. Consider me thoroughly disinfected.

Transportation:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Bolivians have carpooling down to a science. They fit more people into a car than you would think is possible. For starters, there will be at least two people sitting at shotgun. It is very likely that crude seats have been constructed behind the driver’s and passenger seats facing backwards, knee to knee with those in the backseat. Kids and occasionally men ride in the trunk of what is usually a hatchback of some sort.

I have waited as long as four hours for transportation. Taxis leave when they’re full (see above). The micro that comes here at three actually comes between 2:30 and 5pm or not at all. If you do manage to get a spot, it’s lucky for you if you don’t have someone’s baby (or even like, their 10-year-old) sitting in your lap. There will definitely be something squawking in a canvas bag and quite possibly something with hooves tied to the roof, and it may or may not fall off during the journey. We may or may not stop to get it.

One time Doña Vicky asked me to drive her, in Don Yonny’s ancient jeep, to pick up some cheese from the farm when he wasn’t around. “Yo sé manejar,” I told her. “Pero no sé arreglarlo.” (I know how to drive but I don’t know how to fix it.) Luckily, every taxi driver is also a mechanic. I’ve been broken down on the side of the road with shocking regularity and he always manages to patch things up. I’ve also seen some pretty impressive rigs, for example, lawn chairs welded in where proper seats would be or one special car in which the driver tied a rope to part of his ignition and looped the other end around his rearview mirror to idle it while we waited for passengers. “Easier than starting it again,” he told me, at the beginning of a long journey.

Sleep

Last night there was a party at one of my neighbor’s houses. Loud native and Argentine cumbia music blared through giant speakers late into the night, loud enough to shake my walls and the insides of my eardrums. In the wee hours of the morning, the dogs started barking, literally, to beat the band (maybe they were telling the late night partiers to shut up?) A little while later, our very annoying black and white cat, who desperately needs to be neutered, started positively howling outside my window. I chased him away with a cup of water, but he came back about an hour later to continue his sad song of lust. Of course he can’t be bothered to go out and actually find a girlfriend – must be a man thing.

At about 3 am a PC friend who will remain nameless sent me a very funny drunken text message, to which I felt compelled to respond. It was almost four when my host dad got up and shuffled about, then left for Santa Cruz. Between 5 and 6, the chickens flocked onto the patio. The rooster climbed aboard the table by my door and mercilessly crowed his little heart out. One of the workers arrived, shouting at my host dad to get up (Don Yonny, of course, had already left). He then started up the crazy old jeep and used a sledgehammer to bang the broken door shut. I had brief homicidal thoughts but instead rolled over, smiled, and went back to bed. There are few deadlines in my job, and few concrete commitments. I was tired and I went back to bed. Thus begins another day in the Corps.

Born Again

I was in the shower when they showed up, by which I mean I was dousing water over my head with the help of a bucket in the bathroom. My town assumes I know and/or am related to every other American in Bolivia (they still think Emily is my sister). Thus, someone led two young missionaries from North Carolina and their translator to my house.

Now, if there’s one thing people have here, it’s religion. Indeed, sometimes it’s all they have: a faith that the sick will soon be well, that someday their lives will be prosperous and the world a better place, that heaven is waiting when our days come to an end. The result is somewhere between divinity and apathy. Change is difficult to inspire when everything is in the hands of El Señor, but sometimes the thought comforts even me.

I learned that their church has sent missionaries to this area twice a year for the past eight years, and that the same group five years prior built the evangelical church in Gutierrez. I said I hoped my trees in the school held up as well as their church five years from now.



They were curious about the local culture – no one spoke a word of Spanish, let alone Guarani. I described the outlying communities where no one has electricity or access to water. They seemed surprised when I explained the school schedule (4 hours per day, little kids in the morning and older kids in the afternoon), which meant the older half would miss their activities in the church. They hadn’t seen it, so I told them about the trash everywhere (I’m working on it), about how the kids don’t have books, just notebooks, and are required to pay for their own exam copies on test days. I explained that the windows are broken and the students shiver in their chairs during winter. My host mom often keeps my littlest brother home on the coldest days. These are not things you learn on two-week trips while staying in swanky hotels and zipping around in a private bus.

Their plans included a bible-themed puppet show, games and some coloring, face-painting and balloon animals.

I thought they would be interested to know that the PDA, a branch of World Vision (a Christian organization), works wonders here. They provided the notebooks, coats and backpacks that all the students have. I coordinated with them to start my school garden; they gave me the seeds. They covered medical and transportation costs for a local boy who needed an expensive surgery. PDA hosts festivals that always include (locally-contracted) lunch; they coach sports teams and run summer camps. Most kids have padrinos, or godparents, in other countries that send money at Christmastime. My host mom was able to buy Sair (age 6) a new mattress, winter coat, some clothes and a bicycle with last year’s gift.

I couldn’t help but add that the Catholic priest here, Father Tarsissio (from Italy), started a scholarship-based public health school that is thriving just down the road, and furthermore he adopted an entire community, Palmarito, way out in the campo. I’ve seen it and was blown away. He built an entire school, bought instruments so the kids could have music class and computers plus the generators to run them. He started adult literacy classes in his community room. The list goes on.



But my visitors were eager to get to the point. They practically cut me off. I do love to talk about my town. “I have to ask,” piped up the sandy-haired young man who appeared to be doing all the talking. “Have you been born again?”

Those of you who know me well will be impressed by my courteousness.

“No,” I admitted. “I’m Catholic.”
“Do you think you’re going to heaven?” he challenged.
“Yep.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’m a good person.”

He countered with the usual argument, and I nodded politely because there’s no sense arguing with someone so (Young? Inexperienced?) vacantly certain of how and why the world works. He was obviously not interested in a respectful discussion of differences and truthfully, neither was I. I’ve done it one too many times. Finally, somewhere between the Resurrection and my burning in hell, he seemed to run out of steam.

“Hey listen,” I said. “I’m really glad you all stopped by. It was nice to meet you and great what you’re doing for my kids.”

“We’re just here to bring the light,” he said, and the three of them got up to go. Of course I immediately thought, what else ya got? This business of saving souls might better be executed with the light and say, some hats and mittens for the second graders. Imagine how many one could buy with the price of those plane tickets!

But living here has changed my outlook immensely. So much that I’ve decided, after mulling it all over, that the next time someone asks me if I’ve been born again, I am going to give him or her a wholehearted “yes.”

I will never be certain of how and why the world works, but one thing’s for sure: I get closer every day.

The Patron Saint of Ipita

It’s 10:30 in the morning and I’m already buzzed. I’m sitting across from whom I later learned are representatives of Camiri’s alcaldía (ie very important people). But right now, they are just a bunch of guys looking to booze it with the white girls. Someone says, “salud!” Cheers. Another chimes in, “seco!” as in, bottoms up and drink it down, folks. Emily flashes me a grimace and I grin back at her. After a year as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ipitá, she can say with some authority: “it’s all downhill from here.”



The fiesta for San Juan begins on Saturday and continues through Tuesday. The Ipiteños have been planning for a year and killing things to grill for a week. Extended family started rolling in at 5am from Santa Cruz, Camiri and beyond. Giant sound systems compete from every corner of the plaza as locals set up tables of handmade wares to sell. The tiendas display walls of beer, imported for the occasion. Tractors roll by and dump water on the dusty streets. “For the stock car race,” Emily explains. It amazes her to watch it happen. Every other day of the year, villagers use donkeys to haul jugs of water in for their houses.

After sobering up with some picante de pollo (spicy chicken), we meander over to the race where the mayor and the local school principal, both of whom are already tipsy, stand way too close to the revved up cars waving checkered flags. A lone police officer whistles at the crowd to get out of the way -- surprisingly they do, but it doesn’t last. Emily shakes her head. “Just wait,” she says. “This is going to turn into a shit-show.”



I should explain that Emily is my favorite Mennonite. I didn’t know that about her until the third time I met her and occasionally, like today, I still find it hard to believe. This is a girl who knows how to have a good time, to drink and dance and fall madly in lust with a man she refers to as “hot cowboy.”

But she’ll tell you how much she loves her town, and it’s obvious how much they love her. She knows almost everyone there, even the visitors. Kids from her English class yell her name from across the plaza and trail behind her wherever she goes. She has the kind of close girlfriends that I can’t imagine making in a foreign language and culture. They have no qualms about putting her to work; she moves tables and mixes cake batter and runs from one end of the fair to the other. It seems like nothing would function without her.



In the afternoon, we park ourselves on plastic chairs with some of the Santa Cruz people. The cold is setting in, or at least we’re starting to notice. We share Leona between our laps, and my poncho over our shoulders. Her friends offer cups of beer to help warm us up. We get colder but ultimately more cheerful. The boys pop open a few more bottles and fill our glasses. “I’m telling you,” she whispers in English. “It’s the beginning of the end.”

A Big Hole

The dirt is as tough as bricks but I hack away, eager for something productive to do and something physical to occupy my mind. This is the spot my host family designated for my compost project. Beggars can’t be choosers.

I hit another rock and try to pry it up using the shovel as a lever. It won’t budge but a centimeter, and it’s not a rock at all; I tuck my fingers underneath and heave with all my might. Archaeologists work here uncovering treasures. I uncover, quite laboriously, random scrap metal from the backyard dump. The book says to dig about a meter deep, which at first seemed easy but now is bordering on the impossible. My homemade shovel is durable but dull and small. Neither of us is quite up for the job ahead. A jackhammer would do it, maybe.

It helps to get a little angry at the dirt, so I think about how nuts my work counterpart is turning out to be and how my little brothers are about the noisiest creatures that ever lived. Chop, thwack! I mull about how I need to find a better flea control method for my dog, get her fixed before she gets knocked up by a dirty, half-wild street animal.

Oh, and yesterday we planted seven new trees in the school as part of an arbolization project and wouldn’t you know, it took about five minutes for one to get stepped right on and busted (and all my restraint not to bust the head of the child doing the stepping). Chop, scoop. There is nothing satisfying about the tiny piles of rocky soil as I toss them over the edge.

When I start to feel the ache in my shoulders and lower back – it’s been about two hours -- I sit down on one of the random metal pipes lying all over the place and take a slug of my noxious boiled filtered water. Leona abandons her stick, comes up and plants herself beside me with one paw and her whole nose in my lap. I look out at a tough morning’s work disdainfully but my lips curve into a half-smile. “Leona,” I say. “It appears that I have dug myself into a very big hole, here.”

Perfect Society

I had two thoughts when I boarded the micro (bus) at 6:30 this morning. One: this could be a complete failure on a number of levels, for example, this could be the wrong micro, it might not stop to pick up Emily, she might not be ready, or I might forget something important. Two: this could be fun, which should always be your backup frame of mind as a Peace Corps volunteer, whether things go as you planned or not. Thus, I sat myself down armed with a backpack full of warm clothing, some snacks, water and three giant packs of seeds.

First fear realized: the micro decided not to drive into Ipita, where Emily lives. I had all the stuff and no idea where we were going. I convinced the driver to stop at the highway and he blasted the horn until her blonde head appeared, ponytail bouncing. First crisis avoided. We arrived without a hitch in Taterenda Viejo, one of the community schools surrounding Gutierrez. Here all of the houses are mud and sticks; they have no electricity. No roads network this tiny town, just little goat paths that jut off in various directions. For all intents and purposes the school is the center of town and the language is Guarani.

The internados are students who spend the weekdays with families nearby the school because their homes are much farther away. With this group we proposed to start a huerto escolar, or school garden, to ease the burden of feeding extra children on the host families. Sixteen boys and girls from the afternoon group, grades 6-11, appeared with shovels and machetes in hand, flip flops on their feet. A local family donated an enclosed garden patch, so we crossed the highway and went up a steep path to a thatched roof home then descended on the other side toward a large field with misty mountains in the distance and the beginnings of a clear, hot day.





It soon became abundantly clear that the kids knew much more about farming and gardening than we did, something Emily warned me about. I was pulling up roots in my lovely blue garden gloves while they hacked away much more quickly with their tools. At one point I fell squarely on my butt with a small tree in hand and proclaimed, “Gané!” I won! A boy handed me a machete, which I stared at dubiously. I made a half-hearted attempt to use it for the first time in my life until he laughed and did it for me.

The biggest challenge was not clearing the brush, which was hard, or finding some “fertilizer,” which took a good hour as well. It was trying to keep the young teenage boys out of the nice family’s orange tree. “No sacques la fruta,” I told them. Don’t take the fruit. “No es nuestra.” It’s not ours! I continued muttering angry bits of Spanish until Emily discovered a much more effective methodology. She ran them halfway up the hill with a machete.



As we sat drinking the powdered chocolate milk the school had provided along with some animal crackers, one of the boys turned to me and said, “no quiere llevarme a los Estados Unidos?” Don’t you want to bring me to the United States? This is a common question among kids and adults alike, one that makes me uncomfortable. They all envision this perfect society in which everyone is educated, rich and powerful. It’s taken some time to realize, by comparison, how very right they are.

Dogs on the Bus go ZZzzzzzzz

In Santa Cruz I bought two seats on the flota (bus) back home for lots of reasons: one being I didn’t want any problems about the dog and figured they’d be more lenient if I paid double. Also I didn’t particularly want to carry her in my lap for five hours, as she’s getting quite heavy, and furthermore the price is cheap: just 20bs. That’s less than three dollars each.

So of course a family of three sat across from me and shared two seats. The little girl clutched a hungry kitten wrapped in a sweatshirt. The boy squeezed into the middle and the mom flashed me a warm smile from the window seat. No elbow room there, no room to wave. The little girl, whom I would find out later is called Iliana, was about to sit next to me before she saw the dog curled up (it was dark). “Oh,” she said, disappointed and a little incredulous. “¿Ud. ha comprado dos pasajes? You bought two tickets? I had literally put Leona’s name on seat number14 and had a good laugh with the secretary at the terminal.

I mumbled something about her getting too big and heavy to carry in my lap, but as soon as it came out I had to bite my tongue. Her little brother was probably about six, and far bigger than my dog. No one buys additional seats here, and more often than not they take the chance that an extra will open up somewhere so they can stash their kids.

I thought about putting Leona in my lap and inviting the girl to join us, which would be in effect buying her seat, but then I thought up a bunch of excuses before I got around to it. I spend a lot of time uncomfortable here, so I take my few “luxuries” where I can get them. I just wish I didn’t feel so bad about it.

My Bolivia: photos

La Paz, from the airplane; my first view of the mystical world in which I live. My heart was racing when I took this photo, and still does sometimes when I look at it. I wanted to capture the moment -- the anticipation and delight and fear -- forever.



To me this represents quintessential Bolivia, a mixture of tradition and a steady influx of modernity. We went back and forth all night from a traditional live band who played music for the cueca, a dance, and during the breaks loud Argentine cumbia music blared from the speakers like in an urban club. The woman pictured was my host grandmother in Cochabamba, Dona Magdalena.



I can't take a bad picture between Cochabamba and Santa Cruz; the landscape is so beautiful and the people are so diverse. This was taken in the high-altitude region of the Chapare where a cold wind kept people dressed warmly but the bright sun lured them out to picnic.



I lived in Barrio Kami San Jose, outside of Cochabamba, for three months. This is the only picture I have shown despite the many I have. The reason is that I am committed to showing you the beauty and energy and hope here, not the poverty.



This is me, my job and my life.