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.

Life in mi barrio

I wake up to noise; I sleep to noise. I talk over it and listen under it. Awareness begins around 5 am when car horns blow on every corner to call the vendedoras to market. On Sundays, church bells clang soon after. Babies cry, and the roosters begin to crow. Dogs contribute a good portion. One begins and they all chime in with yips, yaps, woofs, whines, growls and squeals. The intensity grows and fades and disappears periodically – after a while one notices the lack of barking, not the barking itself.

We have Spanish class at my house this week. Yesterday, while my professor was explaining an activity, the radio blared and the family chattered away at the next table. The TV upstairs is almost never turned to off, even when all are asleep. (My family has a giant stereo, DVD player, cable TV and a computer. We do not have a shower, or a toilet that flushes.)



Well before the 8 am hour (and long after my host parents have gone), random strangers holler from the bottom of the stairs, “Dona Erlinda! Esta aqui?” My host father, Cesar, doesn’t tiptoe around when he leaves for work (or when he gets up to use the bathroom). I wake up seven or eight times before I actually get up.

Quiet is as elusive as privacy, a foreign concept in this foreign place. This house has four bedrooms, but still Kelly’s bed is in her parents’ room. I occupy one other room and the rest are for guests, or empty. I do my homework downstairs, where the family likes to “help” me. If I say I want to rest, they immediately assume I’m deathly sick.

We eat together three meals a day. I’m not entirely certain if vegetables are a rarity in Bolivia, or if Peace Corps regulations on food preparation (soak in iodine and rinse with filtered water) discourage my family from offering them. Starch is the primary component. It is normal to have rice, potatoes and pasta in the same dish. It is also common to have steak, sausage, chicken and (let’s call it) pork in one meal.



Latin machismo is evident at mealtime. When the men aren’t competing to out-eat and out-drink one another, the women still hover over with more food. Cesar is more than a little overweight, but he has no choice in the matter. When he tried to refuse seconds at dinner the other day, first Erlinda asked him if he was ill, and then she demanded to know why he didn’t like her cooking. Then she put another dollop on his plate!

As part of an assignment, I asked my family what they thought the primary difference was between the eating habits of Americans and Bolivians. My aunt Carola emphatically replied: “We eat from our gardens, from our animals. Americans only eat from cans.”

Erika, Vamos!

My life is hilarious. More often than not, I have no idea where I’m going, what I’m saying, what people are saying to me, or what I’m eating. I am learning a lot about Bolivia from my host family; they tolerate me well. They laugh at me often and with me occasionally, since I’m pretty good at laughing at myself. My new favorite thing to say is “no comprendo nada.” I don’t understand anything. Yet they still talk to me.

All the same, in the past three days, I’ve been to a wedding, to the market, and met the entirety of my “small” family. I had to show Kelly, my host sister who is 12, my underwear because we were playing a very girly board game. Thus, I consider us quite close. She loves my camera; indeed, my whole family pretends to hate having their photos taken and then demands to see the digital image.

Because it’s Carneval, everyone is free from work and school. In the mornings, we have tea and breakfast together: Cesar, Erlinda, Kelly and me … and the family of Argentineans whom I think are related to mine in some way, and are visiting here for an undisclosed amount of time. I pretty much hang out with Kelly until someone tells me it’s time to go.

We go from 0 – 60 immediately. No one tells me we’re going anywhere for the entire day, and suddenly, we’re in a big rush. Oh, but then there are the dishes. Oh yes, and first let’s wash the car (Bolivians are nuts about having clean cars, even during the rainy season. They will polish in the rain. Even cold rain.) So maybe an hour later we hit the road. I rarely ask where we’re going, but sometimes I ask when we’ll be back. Erlinda has a pretty standard answer, “about an hour,” which I’ve come to understand as five hours or more.

We went out to eat on Sunday, a process that took an entire day. I thought we were eating at Carola’s (Erlinda’s sister). However, this was only our first stop. We soon piled into the back of a truck and rumbled off to the market (presumably to buy stuff for lunch). After that, we stopped at another house that belongs to Carola (to eat?) but the keys wouldn’t open the front gate. Apparently this is a house-in-progress because the “painters” were there and also locked out. So instead, they jumped into the truck and we moved to the car. We cruised on down to the abuelos’ (grandparents) place (somebody feed me please) where mass confusion ensued. By the time we were moving again, it was 3:09 pm and we were supposed to return home before 4 pm to receive my luggage from Peace Corps. And we were headed into the city?

I should mention that Bolivia has carpooling down to a science. Seat belts and car seats and limits on occupancy DNE. Most small cars carry between six and eight on a regular basis. In a small truck and a small car, our final count was 16.

I checked my watch, and inhaled. Bolivians don’t wear watches much. Apparently there’s no point unless you’re waiting for your stuff to arrive. I looked at Dona Erlinda and said, “mi equipaje.” She made a call to the girls who work in the store out front and assured me no one would steal anything, but I was pretty sure Peace Corps wouldn’t release my bags without me, and furthermore would be none too thrilled about finding bags with my name on them amidst 60 others.

You see how much my dilemma doesn’t matter at this point. I saw it, too. So instead of worrying, I had a fabulous lunch. I learned one phrase in Quechua, How are you?, and used it to impress the grandparents. The men challenged each other to drink chicha, the local beer, and grandma kept right up with them just for the hell of it. I couldn’t have cared less about my bags, which arrived late and without a hitch, anyway.