Pues

well (pues), if all goes according to plan, i will be heading back to the us of a tonight at 8.30.
it is so surreal to think about. i don´t know if im ready, part of me is because i am excited for another summer at camp, but there is so much i haven´t done or seen here and i would love to stay. i will be back some day, i don´t know when, but i will. i told my family in Llojjllata i would return one day with my kids. i intend on sticking to that.

the last week was insane. everybody on the program was working crazy hours to finish their products. my book is called El Hermano, La Hermana, y la Vaca (the brother, the sister, and the cow). i collaged all of the kids´drawings to make the illustrations. i think they look great, i included one here. there are a bunch of suns in the sky trying to tell the brother and sister where their lost cow is. i didn´t sleep at all really, so the week is sort of a blur of me yelling at photoshop and drinking lots of coffee and trying to explain to my host family--no, i am not done yet...

i have learned so much here from other members in my group, my host families, my professors, people on the streets---the culture has so much to offer and the people are so generous, you can´t help but feel changed. i have a lot of abstract thoughts in my head about decolonialization, the constructs of time as a line or a circle, living well vs. living better, hospitality, labels, development, etc. maybe i´ll figure some stuff out on the plane, but probalby not, and all of you will just have to figure it out with me.

¡Pre Order mi Libro!

Before I can even tell you about my last 3 weeks, I thought I´d drop a note to say that if you would like to pre-order the children´s book (that I am going to write this week as my final project...), let me know! As of today, all I really know about it is that, I am going to use the drawings of the kids I worked with the past 3 weeks and it will be in English, Spanish and Aymara (the indigenous language of the town I was in).

I think they will cost about $7. The publishing process takes a while so you probably wouldn´t get it for about a year. I will be bringing un-published copy back with me, so if you see me, you can see it.

If you would like one, or two, or 50, or would like to donate any money to my publishing costs, that would be great! I am working with the organization Kids Books Bolivia, (kidsbooksbolivia.org) if you want to check it out.

Let me know! tverstee@macalester.edu you can give me money in person, if that is an option, or send it to me at:

4683 100th
Montezuma, IA
50171

back from the country: children y potatoes

¡Buenos días! I´m back from3 weeks in Llojjllata (kind of like yolk-ya-ta, but not really, but thats the closest I can try to sound it out with english..,) a small Aymara community in the Altiplano.

It´s incredibly difficult to know where to start, but I will begin by saying that I was a "surprise" to the community, the school i hoped to work in, and the family I was to stay with. My advisor dropped me off at his brother´s house one day and, well I don´t know what he said to them, but probably somthing like "This gringa is going to stay with you for 3 weeks and work in the school. Okay?" Regardless of this short introduction, my family, the Quispes took me in with open arms. Their hard work, generiosity, and genuine kindness will stay with me forever. (foto of my host dad Gregorio and mom Justina at lunch one day)
Typical day: Wake up around 7.30. Have some maté (tea of eucalyptis, k´oa, or other plants or tree leaves) and bread. Then I would go to school from about 8.30-12.00. I lived right next to the school and would come home and eat the lunch of potatoes, cheese, salsa, and fava beans (They are green, lima bean shaped, but i don´t think they are lima beans, and you have to peel of the outer layer first...). Then I would write and work or read or play charango or wash clothes in the afternoon, but if i knew what field (pampa) my family was in, I would find them and help them harvest potoatoes for the afternoon. Around 6.30, we would come back from the fields and they would put the animals away and get water and we would sit in the kitchen together while my mom or sister made dinner. Depending on how tired everyone was, we either had soup of potatos, rice ,carrots, ava beans, some sort of herb, sometimes meat, or buñuelos--fried bread with maté, or warm milk and rice (arroz con leche). Sometimes I would "help" more like try to help, peel potatoes or ava beans. I now know the art of peeling a potato, but I cannot really do it will. I am slow and take off much more than the peel. Around 8.30 or 9, everyone would go to their rooms for the night.

A little more about my family:
Los Quispe are mom and dad, Justina and Gregorio, with 7 kids Jorge (29, studying sociology and development), Juan (28, mechanic), Carlos (25, studying law), Isabel (23, studying to be a nun), Adelia (19, studying to be a nurse), Edwin (16, in highschool), Alfredo (15, in highschool). I lived with mostly Justina, Gregorio, Adelia, Edwin, and Alfredol. The three older sons live in La Paz/El Alto working and studying, but came back home to help harvest potatoes as well, and the older daughter is in Colombia. They have about 8 fields of potatoes and fava beans ( broad beans...i think?), 4 cows, 2 sheep, 5 pigs, 2 dogs, and 2 kittens. Harvesting potatoes involves a pick ax, a bag, hours in the sun and/or rain, and breaking your back. It is tiring and difficult and they do it day in and day out in harvest season.

I could say alot about this family. They are incredible. I miss them a lot already. We laughed a lot, I don´t even know about what, I think a lot of me makinga fool out of myself. I taught them a little English and they taught me a little Aymara, how to make cheese, how to milk a cow, how to cook over a fire, among many other things. They are gracious and humble and incredibly innovative and saavy as well has hilarious and goofy. Life is about living well, not about trying to get ahead. (foto of Juan, Justina, Alfredo, Adelia, Adela (Juan´s wife), and Eli (Juan and Adela´s daughter).

A little more about the school:
The first few days I showed up at Unidad Educative Antofagasto, the kids didn´t know what to do with me. They were really shy and I had a hard time talking to them, but I didn´t know if it was that they didn´t understand very much spanish or they just didn´t know what to do. It turned out to be the later because they because very un-shy very quickly after I started working with them in the classroom and playing fútbol with them during recess. We never played anything else.

The little ones (los chiquititos) were pretty crazy. I spent a lot of time trying to stop the reallly little ones from eating paper and crayons, and to stop the others from fighting, and teasing.... kids are kids, no ve? They did tell me I have the eyes of a cat and the nose of a pig various time...my host family found this quite funny (and kept insisting I don´t believe them).

All the kids are incredibly goofy and bright, but I learned a lot about how different our lives and backgrounds and mentalities are. The activities, games, and ideas I brought into the classroom were so different from what they have been taught. There are a lot of things to talk about about rural education in Bolivia, but I came into the classroom with a completely westernized mindset, with out intending to or realizing (that was the last thing I wanted). I guess to explain better, I will give one example. One day, with the older kids (los grandes), I asked them to draw or write about the perfect day. They were so confused, "What do you mean the perfect day? What do you want us to do?" Blank blank stares. I tried to explain it more and more and eventukally they started and it turned out that most of them drew what had drawn other days when I asked them to draw their house and where they live and what they do. In my mind, why not think about what could be, hypothesize, think about what you could want in the whole wide world, but for them, there isn´t this striving for unnattainable perfection. They are grounded in their reality, which is about living well where you are. I feel like this mentallity is one of the biggest differences between our countries and cultures. Its not to say people don´t realize they don´t have a lot, they know that, but the idea of being "poor" doesn´t really exist or atleast its not as looked down upon. This could go on a really really really long time about colonialism, imperialism, NGOS and "devopement" project, individualism, neo liberalism, and all the other silver dollar words...its just too much to type. On a lighter note, here is a foto of almost all the kids the last day. And yes, the professors (a married couple who live in the La Paz on the weekends and have beeing teaching here for about 20 years) got them to stand still, not me.

to the campo

Buenas tardes,
I am just finishing up my last week in Cochabamba before I head out to a rural Aymara community in the Altiplano for my independent study, near where my SIT group did our rural homestay. I don´t know the name of the town yet, but I will be living there for about three weeks. My project is to hopefully help out in a classroom but also hold "creative writing activity" sort of things with the kids. In the end, I want to mix and match, and compile their stories for a children´s book that will be published through the organization Kids´Books Bolivia. It is all sort of a day by day thing. Pretty much, I am showing up on Sunday and we will see from there. I do not know if I will be able to access internet either, sooooo you will all have to wait in eager anticipation.

Until May.
Nos vemos.

Monkeys, Elections, and a Baby

A whirlwind of a weekend. I took a trip to the Chapare, which is the tropical forest region 3 hours from the city, that surrounds Cochabamba. It was a great 2 days full of misadventures and wandering around, not quite knowing what was going on. There is a tourist town, but of course, we went one town passed that in our bus, but stayed there anyways. A really nice woman who sold us banana shakes both mornings helped us figure out where we were and what to do. I am convinced that if the people here were not so kind, I would still be in the airport trying to find my way out. We went to Parque Machía and walked in some waterfalls and watched the monkeys follow us through the park. One of them even tried to steal my water bottle but she let go eventually. We also had really really really good fish in town and coconut milk straight out of the nut or fruit or whatever it is. Of course, we cannot have a trip without having bus adventures and our bus on the way back got two flat tires. The first everybody waited on the side of the road for an hour for them to change it, and the second time, we all had to hail other busses from the side of the road. I think in only these times is when we got swarmed by bugs, and my legs look like i have the chicken pox. But we made it back finally and had some good street food by the market in Cochabamba before we went home. I had "api" which is this sweet drink made of a purple corn and a yellow corn and you eat it with fried bread.
It was also Holy Week, which complicated things in the Chapare a little bit because things were not open but in Cochabamba it was hard to tell what was going on because Sunday was also the election day for governor and mayor. For weeks the plaza by my house has been covered with flags and signs for all the parties and every weekend there have been tons of people with free stuff and music. So on Sunday there was no public transportation ( I think because of elections) and because of this no Easter church. This seemed very strange to me, but I had also been told by my other academic program adviser, Heidi, that Easter one of the least celebrated holidays. This seems strange in such a Catholic identifying culture but we learned that the emphasis is more on Good Friday and the crucifixion.

My host sister-in-law, Male and my host brother Jorge had a baby girl, April, on Sunday night. I have not seen her yet but will try to take tons of pictures. Everybody is very excited and I think a little more relaxed now that the baby is born and elections are over. My tías (aunts) and host mom have been knitting constantly for her ever since I have been here. I think she will have enough sweaters to last her entire life.

A Hot and Humid Tierras Bajas

Ive been a traveling fool for a little while so I haven{t been able to get on the computer. We got back last Thursday from the Lowlands. The first couple of days we went into the rural areas, to a town called Ascension de los Guarayos. The short and sweet (or sour, more like sour I would say, or maybe sweaty--it is unbelievable humid there. I know that those of you from the midwest do not believe me but yes, it was worse than our lovely summers in heat-thick air) version is: we learned a lot about the privatization of the rain forest which means trees are disappearing at an alarming rate by being cut down by large businesses, not a new story for Bolivian natural resources. A few people we talked to said that in 5 years, this part of the rainforest probably won{t have any trees if they keep cutting them down so rapidly without replacing them. There is a lot of conflict over land ownership as well, because the indigenous communities think they have possession over their land but every time they think so, it turns out their land title is fake and the land gets taken away by a big business...A lot of these communities are fighting to have governmental autonomy from the Santa Cruz region, because the city of Santa Cruz is much different the the region called Santa Cruz. There are also a lot of problems with water access and accessibility to education, especially after high school. Right now, rural universities are few and far between, so people have to go to the city to study and because there are no jobs in rural areas, most stay or immigrate out of the country. It is a struggle right now to make rural life sustainable.

In these two days, of course we had our share of bus adventures. We had heard before that we might have problems crossing roads because in the beginning of February they had tons and tons of rain and it caused lots of flooding. At least we were ready, but at this point, we expect to have to push our bus anyways. After we went swimming in a river for a good while, which was after we made it to the end of a Palm Sunday service in a nearby town, we were back on the road. There were piles of dirt and gravel to fix pot holes, but they were covering almost the entire road. our bus driver tried to go around, however the problem was that on either side of the road was swampy marsh lands. We didn{t make it very far before we had to stop, get out and problem solve. We tried many things with rocks and the jack and pushing but eventually somebody drove by and towed us out of trouble, and we also moved the rock piles in the middle of the road to one side so everyone could get by. We spent a lot of time on the bus those first few days because this town was 8 hours outside of Santa Cruz. I was able to make pretty good headway on East of Eden by John Steinbeck and practice my charango skills (A charango is a small string instrument native to Andean music here and I bought one a few weeks ago. It has been a good investment so far). I will also note I slept both nights in a hammock. I don{t know if I ever want to go back to a real bed...

In the city of Santa Cruz we came upon another world. Santa Cruz is the wealthiest city in Bolivia, or atleast has the wealthiest people (but also the poorest) and one of the largest. It has grown incredibly in the past 50 years, especially because of the "rainforest business" that has created a stronghold of elites that control the region, and it is incredibly westernized. I saw many American clothing stores, neon lights, and I think even a strip mall with high end furniture. I had been told by my host mom and one of my academic program directors, Ismael who grew up in Santa Cruz, that it is another country, and not in a good way, a lot of racism and discrimination between classes. We also visited some sand dunes that are the direct result of deforestation. They did not exist 50 years ago.

A lot of the political opposition in Bolivia comes from Santa Cruz and it was very evident. There were many political party rallies because the elections for governor and mayor were that weekend and many of us stopped by the MAS rally because there was a rumor Evo Morales, El Presidente, was going to speak. It was a big rumor and he never came, but a lot of us acquired MAS flags from the rally. We were told not to show those outside of the rally because we might be accosted or harassed. Some members of my group were stopped by cars in the street because the drivers were convinced that we did not know what we were doing. There was an assumption because we are white, we cannot support MAS and must be confused. That is Santa Cruz, or at least the sector that has money.

We also traveled to the edge of town, which is a world apart form the city center. There is a neighborhood called Plan 3000 that we visited to learn about the community activism in trying to gain independence from the larger city. you see, in the 80{s there was big flood and many indigenous communities lost everything. So the government moved 3000 families to the edge of Santa Cruz, which was still jungle at this time, and left them to survive without food or equipment to build anything. Since then, the 3000 families has grown to 300,000 people and there still is no water and no sewer system because the money from the region of Santa Cruz stays with the elite. The cherry on top is that Plan 3000 has since become Santa Cruz´s one and only landfill, which brings another whole group of health and living problems. This is why Plan 3000 wants to govern themselves because they feel it is the only way they can improve their conditions.

I´m very glad I got to see this side (geographically, politically, socially) of Bolivia. A lot of people think "Andes" when they think of Bolivia, but 2/3 of Bolivia is tropical forest and low lands. I would have liked to spend more time there because it is so different but I will not miss humidity, at all. Also, it was very hard to understand a lot of people because they speak with a different accent. They never us the letter "s" and the speech runs together a lot more. We also learned some words in Guarayu, the main indigenous language, ands its a shame i can´t remember them. I couldn´t pronounce them right once, much less remember now.

I will try to put up pictures later but I forgot my camera cord....

The White City

This is Sucre. Very quaint, very colonial. ALL the buildings are white, no kidding. It was an awesome city and we got to do a lot of really cool things including the Museum of Indigenous Art. There were incredible weavings and clothing, so complex and detailed and colorful. The musuem is also run by an organization that trys to help weaving communities sell their products in the market. I also went the CasaDel Libertad, which has original constitution and a lot of other really cool artifacts from the independence in1825. Our guide was really nice and it was nice to "be reminded" of everything we learned in history class in early February. One of the big things is that one of the reasons the "revolutionaries" won is because a bunch of upperclass sons of the Spanish decided to switch sides and support Bolivar so when they won independence, nothing really changed anybody who wasn´t wealthy colonist because the new people in charge were pretty much the same Spanish elite, only their sons. Oh colonialism.

We also had a sort of private concert with Las Misas, a pretty famous Andean folk band in Bolivia. One of the men also has a music school in Sucre. It was awesome. We got to hear music from the school, which was little kids to mothers, and then a concert from the band. (we also had really good steak.) One reason I love Andean folk music is because the dancing is so fun. There are definite moves and steps so to speak but really nobody cares what you do so everyone is just moving around yelling periodically.

One afternoon we ventured to Pisili, a Quechua weaving community about 2 hours outside of Sucre. They have hadSIT students beforeand knew we would enjoy helping them cook the lunch and the women let us where their traditional hats ( i will try to put a picture up soon). Something else I hae really enjoyed about the campo and meeting different indigenous communities is that their traditional clothing is all so distinct and different to their region, the colors, the patterns, the styles, everything. We were just starting to play fútbol witihsome of the boys when it started to rain. Not really a big deal except that our bus driver didn´t think we would be able to make it up the road if it was a little muddy. Ahhh, and we were just getting started and we had even scored.

Of course, the mud wasn´t the problem, but the slope and narrowness of one part of the road. It is hard to describe, but we had to turn a corner and go up hill at the same time. It wasn´t a problem on the way there because dip wasn´t a durastic from the other direction. Basically, we had to widen the left side of the road with rocks so wewouln´t fall into the ditch/small ravine and on the right side we had to make a small ramp with rocks because the front of the bus kept dipping too low into the slope of the road. With a little patience and a crow bar, we were back on the road.

I have been back in Cochabamba this week and it has gone incredibly incredibly fast. It began by going to mybrother´s ballet on Sunday night and since then I have pretty much consumed by a group project about the special education system in Bolivia. We leave Saturday for hot and humid Santa Cruz, which I have heard is "un otro país" (another country).