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.