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).

The Underworld

It´s been a busy week or so. I just got back from Potosí and Sucre and am trying to catch up with the real world. I have not faired so well.

Potosí is an old mining town and the highest city in the world (around 14,000 ft) and probably the reason why Bolivia became a country. When the Spanish colonized, they began mining silver out of Cerro Rico, which watches over Potosí. They forced many African slaves and indigenous people to work mining the silver and tin and 8 million miners died because of poor working conditions. Most of the other cities in Bolivia were settled to support this industry.The colonial influence is obvious by the architecture and by that it is an incredibly poor city now, because most of the wealth has been stripped from the mines, but none of the weath was ever invested in the city but pocketed by Spanish elite. Since then, Potosí still relies on the mines, even though they have been exploited to almost nothing. We got to go into Cerro Rico through mining tour company (a strange concept in itself). It is a different world and hard to undertand. The miners are very supersticous and rightfully so. They ask protection from a legend figure called Tio, who is frightening but atleast something to trust in. It was dark and sludgy and hearing dynamite blasts through the walls was haunting. We would run into miners on the tracks and gave them pop, cigarettes, coca, or alcohol as a sort of gift for getting in the way of their work.

Most of the workers now are in their late teens and 20s and most miners do not live past 40 because the breath in so much junk. Many of the young miners are trying to get through school but many never do and thus never escape the mines because they have to stop school to work, in order to eat. Even though the mines are hopeless, their is a definite pride to being a miner, maybe because they are aware they are killing themselves to support their families.

We also visited an afterschool sort of program for miners kids. It was wonderful, we played a rendition of duck duck goose for a really long time and red light green light. During a snack I talked to about five 7 year olds about the mines. They were all eager to work in the mines because all their brothers and all their fathers did, and they all said with equal enthusiasm that they were afraid of el Tio.

In other Potosí news, we went Karoke-ing with an Andean folk band and went to Casa de Monedas, one of the main minting factorites for the Spanish empire. We also took one morning and went to a natural hot spring. It was a wonderful temperate lagoon that I think I could have lived in. We swam around and also covered our selves completely with mud.

Cotidiano

So I´ve been back here in Cochabamba for the past week or so. It has been nice to be back and see my family and have more of a routine than our excursions. Cotidiano means daily life. It is easy to journal and blog about huge trips and experiences but I think that daily life in another culture is equally, if not more, important. Experiencing as much as I can the daily life of a Cochabambina changes my experiences and what I learn immensly, because it is less about being a tourist and checking of sites to see and more about being open to what the culture has to teach you.

Normal day, I wake up around 7 and run. I eat a breakfast of coffee and a bread or a piece of fruit and then I take a Truffi to school. Lately I have been walking because my host brother told me he used to walk downtown when he was in college. Truffi-ing takes about 30 minutes, if traffic is bad, which it almost always is and walking takes about 45 minutes. My brother also told me he is going to fix his bike tomorrow so I can ride to school. This should take me about 15 minutes, if I survive. I am excited for the challenge.

I then have class from 9-12.30. Recently, we have been focusing on topics assoicated with globalization and how this affects Bolivia. A lot of it has to do with resources and who controls them, Bolivia or private companies. A lot of Bolivia´s problems and poverty has come from the fact that they have not profited from their abundance of natural resources (like silver, tin, gas, etc.). Who is making the money? Well, international companies who exploit labor and resources to add millions to their billions. This causes Bolivia and other countries like it to depend on foreign support from other countries and institutions like the World Bank. However, all help comes with strings, and big ones at that. For many many years, Bolivia has been not governed by Bolivia but by really rich Americans and Europeans who want to get richer and threaten to take away funding if Bolivia does not comply with its requests. I am going to put it lightly and call it a viscious cycle. Recently, the Bolivian government has been trying to change this and make sure Bolivia profits from Bolivia´s resources, but the process is slow and complicated.

Anyway, I could go on about neoliberal policy and yada yada forever, but before you all either a. go to sleep with too much jargon or b. break your computer because it is all very upsetting, we all go home for lunch. My host brother works in the evenings, so most often he cooks lunch. For example, today we had avocado, tomato and onion salad, potatoes, and beef. I haven´t had one meal I haven´t liked. We sit and eat and chat, and if there´s time, descansa (rest). I begin Spanish at 2.45 until 6.15. My most frequent spanish teacher is Chi Chi. She is fantastic, fantastic, fantastic. We have practiced a lot of conversation, practiced a lot of subjunctive and sometimes visit intersting places in Cochabamba or have speakers. For example, yesterday we visited a therapy and legal help center for sexually abused children. Another day, we got to speak with Oscar Olivera, one of the huge leaders of the Water War in Cochabamba in 2000. I could go on forever about the Water War and and how incredible it is that we met Oscar. Look it up. It is a classic example of Bolivians fighting for what they want ( or don´t want, which in this case is to pay for rain water) and a lot of what happened, happened right where I go to school--the streets, the plaza, everything. We have learned a lot about the importance of the Water War in many classes from many perspectives, including, at least for me, my host family, who actively participated.

After Spanish, I either go home, or go to an internet cafe to do homework. The rest of the night I watch TV, eat a little bit, do homework, pretty normal stuff. It goes so fast. There are not enough hours in the day. Next week, we are going to Potoci and Sucre, old mining towns. Hasta luego.

The Time We Tried to Ford A River in a Tour Bus

It´s proven: playing "Oregon Trail" in real life is equally as fun, if not moreso, than the classic floppy disc game. Long story short, the bridge was out, we tried to cross, didn´t make it. An hour later, a tractor sort of thing from an Astro Turf factory pulled us out. In the meantime, we helped many elderly women cross the río inbetween helping the other passengers get their Truffis un-stuck. A good time was had by all.