Despite the Cosmos´ Conspiracies, I Get Home

Since I last wrote, my social and work re-entry back into Bolivian life and my routine have been almost as busy and frenzied as my literal entry of the country. When I last wrote I´d just arrived in Brazil, where the plan was to see the sites, i.e. beaches, with my friend Leah and quickly/easily get my next Bolivia visa. The first part of the plan worked swimmingly while the second turned into a multi-day nightmare of consular madness.

So when I arrived in Rio de Janeiro I was pleasantly surprised to find that despite never having spoken a word of Portuguese, I could speak Spanish with a nasal twang and fake my way through the essentials. I met up with Leah and while I have yet to feel homesick (which is different than missing people, which I do), seeing an old friend felt really, really good. We caught up on our times abroad, she´s been living in Argentina and Brazil for the past 10 months, and began planning the route of our three weeks together.

First she showed me around Rio and while I wasn´t really feeling the standard tourist sites, visiting the distinct neighborhoods (and their street food) of the city was tasty and educational. People also comment on the world-famous conditions of the favelas and while the disorder and violence inside these drug dealer-run city-states is unlike anything you´d find in Bolivia, I had to agree with one of Leah´s friends who said, "I don´t see what the big deal is, they mostly just remind me of walking around La Paz." My first night was spend in the decidedly upscale and correspondingly overpriced neighborhood of Ipanema (yes, the Ipanema of "The Girl From" fame, though to show my true colors, neighboring Copacabana Beach is named after the small Bolivian town of the same name). The next day we moved to Leah´s neighborhood of Santa Teresa, a place with a much more welcoming and homey feel. Whenever I return to Rio in the future I´ll definitely make my base there.

After a couple days of exploring we set off for Ilha Grande, a beautiful island only three hours south of the city. Unfortunately winter happens even in Brazil, at least parts of it, and the chilly wind and cloudy skies conspired against our plans for sun-tanning (Leah) and patiently waiting for said sun-bathers from shaded areas (me). We did take a nice hike across the island despite Leah´s snake phobia and our guidebook´s warning that the place was covered in serpents. We arrived at a beach often cited as one of the world´s most beautiful (Lopes Mendes if you find yourself in the area) only to find menacing clouds spitting rain and really rough surf. Our day of beach cruises the next day was a bit more successful.

From Ilha Grande we headed back to Rio to see Brazil´s first World Cup game. The US really has no parallel to the completely unanimous, literally traffic-stopping soccer hysteria we encountered there. We decided against standing in the sun with tens of thousands of other people on Copacabana Beach and opted instead for a more subdued viewing in a neighborhood bar. I also visited the Bolivian consulate in Rio and when they rejected my visa application, we nonchalantly decided to move on to the next city with a consulate (FORESHADOWING!)

Finally we started on the last leg of my trip: a quick jaunt through the Pantanal and what we´d hoped would be a similarly quick visit to a consulate. We arrived in Campo Grande and immediately trekked to the Bolivian consulate where I asked in my most patient and down-trodden way for my Bolivian visa. The answer was, of course, no. Thus began one of the more tramatizing and stressful experience of my life thus far. I´ll do my best not to be melodramatic, but it´s a constant struggle. So the consul told us I´d have to a. wait for an official letter from the foreign ministry in La Paz that I´d never heard of (2+ weeks) or b. stay in Brazil forever. Leah and I decided that an optimistic option c. must have been possible...but we decided this after wasting 3 days in the least mention-worthy city in Brazil. If you visit Campo Grande, leave it before you get your hopes up.

Next we arrived in Corumbá on the border with Bolivia, the end of the road and literally my last chance to encounter a visa. First we spent two days in the Pantanal and saw a life´s worth of caiman (little alligators) in addition to capybara (the world´s largest rodent and NOT a pet, despite this picture´s helpful scale aid), plenty of tropical birds our fellow tourists just loved, and river otters that our guide insisted on chasing up and down the river. As much as we both enjoyed it, that last sentence was maybe only 50% more sarcastic than it should have been. When we returned to Corumbá I went immediately to the consulate and received a healthy wallop of emotional abuse. For 8 hours straight. I had to wipe the consul´s spittle off my glasses. In the end, mostly because I´d had the patience not to punch this man in the face, I got my visa (after another 5 hours). I´m still not sure if it was worth it.

After planes, trains, and automobiles we arrived safe, sound, and very happy to be home in La Paz. Leah stayed for about a week and we got to hang out with my friends and visit my favorite monkey filled locale in Bolivia/South America. Leah, sadly, departed for more adventures in the north of the continent and since then life has been more or less normal for me. Even though I think of myself as someone who thrives on novelty and adventure (which I still maintain), being back in a homey place feels super.

I PROMISE, promise that I´ll post more updates (read: even more than one) in the next few days. The next month will be filled with either visitors from home (hey Jackie, Jess, and Justin!) or a visit will family (hey fam!) so I´ll try to squeeze in some interesting updates before then. Also look forward to my second picture update of the year. This should all be pretty epic in terms of my previous commitment to this blog. Abrazos a todos!

Excuses for Blog Neglect

Dear devoted readers and accidental passersby: I´m sorry I´ve neglected to update the blog for about a month. It seemed like for the majority of the month I was either too busy or, correspondingly, too tired to do a lengthy blog post justice. I´ll do better, just give me another chance.

I´ll make up for it with an exciting, dynamic, and ACTION-PACKED post. This mission is aided by the fact that (sorry if I didn´t mention it) I´m currently traveling through Argentina and Brazil. Before I left I had a really busy few weeks in the store and I also had my first public concerts with Coro Nova. The audiences responded really well to the performances and we sang two encores after the second. I left almost immediately after the concerts and after a week of getting back to my apartment around midnight every night, I slept very contentedly until the Argentinian border.

I immediately caught a bus to Salta, a city in northern Argentina with a larger indigenous population than most of Argentina. That said, as I was sipping my coffee and reading the paper in a sidewalk café on the plaza, it felt pretty cosmopolitan. In Salta I climbed a hill to the side of the city (and did the same in upcoming Mendoza; every city should have a look-out hill on the side) for a view of the whole valley. Other than that I basically just walked around town, drank real coffee, which after Bolivia, was a treat, and visited one museum. The museum, a very well-done exhibit on Incan child mummies in the mountains near Salta, was very professional and gave some new information on Incan society and its reach into what is now Argentina. The other cool thing about Salta was that I stayed in a hostel with free breakfast (normal) and free dinner (NOT NORMAL AND THE BEST). This should be a hostel policy worldwide.

After Salta I bussed to Mendoza, which had been highly recommended by many friends as a beautiful city and the center of Argentina´s world-renowned wine country. I met a French girl, Sofie, in my hostel and we proceeded to explore the city and, naturally, drink more coffee in sidewalk cafes. The best thing about Mendoza, despite its proximity to the Andes (but I sort of had a "been there, done that" sort of mentality there), is the opportunity to bicycle through the many vineyards and boutique chocolate/jam/liquor/olive oil producers in the area. We had some great tasting opportunities and because we were the only people in these tours who spoke Spanish the chefs gave us extra taste tests and more expensive options. Like, a lot of extra taste tests. Which wasn´t that problematic but we were on bikes. So to cool down, we took a break at a beer garden in the middle of a vineyard that sold artisenal beers. Just what we needed.

Now, after satisfying my inner wine-o I´m now in Buenos Aires for about a week. The city is beautiful and the organized chaos (opposed to the pure chaos in La Paz) has been really invigorating. I stayed with a couch surfer for my first two nights and spent about two days walking around the city. I walked around the strikingly modern Puerto Madero, the historic Plaza de Mayo, and visited the lower-class neighborhood La Boca. La Boca was definitely my favorite. Although there´s one street in which the colorful buildings have become super touristy, a couple blocks outside is pretty rough-and-tumble and I enjoyed seeing a different side of this cosmopolitan city.

I´ll be here for a few more days before I leave to spend a few days in Uruguay before I meet up with my friend Leah in Rio! We´ve been planning a trip to see each other since about December, so the realization of it should be pretty epic. We´ll travel back to Bolivia together quickly through Brazil and then she´ll spend a few days with me in La Paz before continuing on to more northern latitudes. I´ll be sure to write an update on that adventure at the first opportune moment. Until then, saludos desde Argentina, I hope everyone´s doing well.

Do Re Mi Fa So La Paz

Sorry I´ve been such an inattentive blogger, I have to be in this special vibe to want to write and haven´t hit that in a while. Since I last posted however, life in La Paz has been pretty busy with notable new commitments, a global conference, and increased emphasis on bigger projects.

About two weeks ago I joined a sort of intense, very upper-middle class, and extremely hilarious choir called Coro Nova. My friend Nicky has been singing in the choir for about a year and got me an invite to audition. After a test-run practice and a short sing-back audition with the director, I got in! I´d been looking for a cultural group to join in La Paz and while the choir may not have been what I had in mind originally, I´m anticipating a pretty great experience. I haven´t been active in music since high school and I feels really good to sing in a talented choir again. The other choir members, besides a few other foreigners, are upper-crust Bolivians and fill just the right choir stereotypes to be entertaining. People are generally pretentious and trying to one-up each other in making sectional corrections but are also very good-hearted and welcoming. There´s this very well-intentioned 50ish guy in the tenor section with me who acts as auxilary director to our section, much to the chagrin of the director (his brother). The practice room walls are covered in awards and official proclamations so only time will tell if I can live up to not only the choir´s storied history but also the snobby (though hilarious and generally very sweet) expectations of my choir-mates.

Last week I skipped out on choir practice to attend the World People´s Conference on Climate Change in Cochabamba. Even though 31,000+ people attended representing more than 100 countries, the event received practically zero press in the states or Europe (click here for details). I registered for the summit about a month ago but when I arrived my registration information had mysteriously disappeared, the first of many encounters with the mismanagement of this world-scale event. I spent the day fuming with my boss´ family, who are lovely, and resolved to attack again the next day. I arrived at the foreign ministry´s temporary office at 5:30 the next morning and after a couple hours wait, found the right person. Once I got in, the conference was a great time.

In addition to the obvious thrill of attending a global climate conference billed as the alternative to the ineffective Copenhagen Summit, I also ran into most of my favorite people in South America. That´s right, the continent of South America. Not only did I see all of my friends from La Paz, but I also ran into my good friend Hortencia (see the theater post) who I didn´t know would be there and in an incredible turn of events, literally bumped into Juan Carlos Donoso, my host dad from Ecuador. It had crossed my mind that someone I knew from Ecuador would be in attendance but I didn´t follow through on the thought in contacting them. We caught up for a bit but were both too busy and had too many other connections to meet to really talk. I attended a few boring panels and poorly organized town-hall style meetings, but the majority of the panels I saw were informative and interesting. I saw an interesting talk on policies to protect the Yasuní National Park in Ecuador and sat in on a panel featuring Naomi Klein and Amy Goodman (:-0) on the relationship between militarization and climate change. Their panel alone is something I´ll remember for many years.

In the end, despite its lofty goals of providing a constructive alternative to Copenhagen, the Cochabamba conference ended just as mired in politics and egos. I attended the closing ceremony where we saw the Cuban vice president, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and Bolivian President Evo Morales (all without being metal-scanned entering into the stadium). They all spoke passionately about the evils of capitalism and the correlation between capitalism and climate change, which is a valid political argument. However the closing ceremony of a global, supposedly representative conference is not the place to rant about politics. Most people with whom I´ve talked about the conference came away with the same conclusion that I did; great things will come out of the networking between organizations and the increased awareness, but governmentally little will happen. I had a hard time listening to President Chavez rail against American consumer culture and the eagerness with which we burn fossil fuels when Venezuela is the continent´s largest oil exporter. I think even more disappointing were the audience members, foreign and Bolivian, who applauded so vigorously without understanding the complexity of the situation, oftentimes without even understanding the Spanish. My friends and I marveled at seeing the power of charisma and mob mentality in action. I´m trying not to be too jaded about the conference and am focusing on the concrete outcomes, but it is frustrating how divisive political personalities and platforms impede necessary change in all countries of the world.

Finally I just want to tell or remind everyone about a project I´m working on in coordination with other Spitting Llama-affiliated people. Noting the lack of Bolivia in American news and the difficulty of finding Bolivian news in English, we´ve been working on a blog and podcast bringing Bolivian news to an English audience. Since seeing the news blackout of the climate conference in the US, I´ve really been reminded of the reasons we´re doing this and would love it if you could check it out. The website is www.boliviaweekly.com, thanks for your support!

Being the American at the Table

One of the things I enjoy the most about my core group of friends in La Paz is the international diversity. Last night I had dinner with my 6 closest friends and at one point we stopped to marvel at the fact that among the 7 of us there was only 1 country overlap. The countries represented were Canada, the UK, Sweden (2), Italy, Bolivia, and the US. Obviously with this many nationalities in the conversation, opinions and experiences land on a pretty wide spectrum. Interestingly though, the spectrum has more to do with national politics and experiences than actual personal beliefs. The typical foreign-educated, NGO worker generally has a pretty left-leaning worldview and when we talk about environmental issues or human rights, we pretty much just reinforce each other´s opinions.

But last night we wandered into a political topic which varies greatly between countries, even generally ideologically similar Western European countries: immigration. It was a really interesting and occasionally heated (heated in the way conversations become heated between friends) dinner, with a complicated mix of international representation. For example, in explaining British immigration problems, my English friend brought up the influx of Eastern Europeans to Britain. According to her, Eastern Europeans undercut the minimum wage expected by native British and took some of the lowest paying work from working-class British. This opinion, which is a pretty common one in response to current American immigration as well, was rebutted by our Polish-Canadian friend, who argued that Polish immigrants to Britain are legal and make the same minimum wage as native British.

In talking about countries impacted by immigration, it´s virtually impossible to ignore the United States either historically or currently. But as a citizen of a country which has a disproportionately influential voice in global politics, I generally adopt a policy of not bringing up American politics unless invited to do so. I´m not afraid of talking about American politics and unlike many Americans abroad, I make a conscious effort not to internalize the decisions made by our politicians and let them become a personal guilt. I think Americans need to take responsibility for the actions of our country but it´s ineffectual to do so to the extent that we´re always apologizing or rationalizing. If I always felt the need to demonize or defend the US, I would be unable to add anything substantial to the conversation. So on the topic of immigration I sort of hovered around the edge of the conversation, not wanting to disrupt interesting debate with the conversational equivalent of a 1,000 pound immigration gorilla.

And I think approaching the topic that way was really rewarding. I learned about the recent increase in Canada of requests for refugee status from Czechs. From a Bosnian-Swedish friend I learned about the emigration of Balkan citizens in the 90´s. And although they didn´t come to any kind of agreement, I learned about the complexity of Eastern European immigration to Great Britain from two equally passionate sides of the issue. At the end of the night we all looked over the entrance or naturalization exams of our countries and came to the consensus that regardless of differing opinions on immigration particulars, the global system is generally broken. On that point, we had little trouble agreeing.

An Unusual Initiation

In addition to working at the bookstore for the next year, I´m also helping out with an organization called the Instituto de Rehabilitación Infantil. The institute works with handicapped children to provide them with low-cost prostheses and therapy. While so far I´ve only been calling plastics distributors around the country and handling translation projects, at some point I hope to actually be helping in the workshop. I have to say, the prospect of adding "volunteer prosthetics engineer" to my resumé makes me really excited.

The reason I´ve mainly been working with translation so far is because the head volunteer of the prosethetics project, Matt, has really poor Spanish skills. He´s a great guy and has poured himself into this project 150% but has been struggling with making contacts and calling suppliers of the various materials needed in the workshop. So a few days ago Matt asked if I would accompany him to a Rotary Club meeting here where he needed to ask for a letter of a approval. The Rotary Club is helping fund a new project bringing in some advanced prosethtic knees from the University of Texas and Matt needed me to ask the club for a letter of support for the UT team.

We arrived at the Rotary clubhouse in Zona Sur and found six middle-aged to senior citizen people seated around a conference table. Singing karaoke. And drinking Johnny Walker Red. I was sure we´d arrived at the wrong place, but the club immediately recognized Matt and demanded that we pick out our songs. Matt adamently refused but I treated the club to a rendition of "Hey Jude" with very little arm-twisting. They all got pretty excited about it and explained that they were practicing for an upcoming karaoke contest between all of the Rotary chapters in La Paz. They took a vote to nominate me their representative for the competition but since I had plans the night of the karaoke-off, I had to respectfully decline. After singing though, I think they were much more willing to listen to our opinions and requests...even if they were disappointed at missing their shot at karaoke glory.

What a Week

To say that I´ve been burning the candle at both ends this week would be something of an understatement. Rather, I made a bonfire of several candles and danced around it Bacchanalia-style for 8 days. I don´t know if that extended metaphor worked, but maybe that more clearly demonstrates my current state. That is all to say that today ends a week in which I worked 12-14 hours every day (between normal work and the theater), attended upwards of 15 plays, had a birthday, and saw the sunrise a couple of times from the night end of things. Despite the chaos though, or more probably because of it, I was just rereading my journal entries for the past few days and found several notes saying, "write blog post about how super this week was." So now in no particular order: this week.

First for the theater. What I initially interpreted as charming albeit annoying disorganization proved instead to be irreparable and unabashed mismanagement. Every single play started at least 30 minutes late (letting us out around midnight some nights), volunteers rarely knew exactly what we were supposed to be doing, and no one was sure if the group from the Congo was actually going to come until 4 days after they were supposed to arrive (they didn´t come). This last part was particularly frustrating for my friend Hortencia who was supposed to be their assistant and received absolutely zero communication until the festival director mentioned it as an afterthought. Despite the myriad problems with the festival itself, I saw some really great performances and worked with actors and volunteers from all over Bolivia and the world. The "chief" of my theater, Andrea, and I have become really good friends and a few nights we went out with the cast that night´s performance. We settled into a really comfortable routine and she helped Hortencia and me get into some of the more popular plays (the group from Holland being the stand-out in our opinion). All for free!

Another great part of the week was having Hortencia stay with me. We´ve developed a really natural and comfortable dynamic and we´ve spent the majority of the past two weeks together. Despite my usual aversion to doing things for my birthday, at Hortencia´s insistance we went out with some friends to my favorite bar and had a fantastic time. She left today to travel around Bolivia for two weeks but will be back for a few days after which we´re hoping to take a weekend trip to Sorata.

Lastly (but really kind of firstly) I had a really enjoyable birthday on Monday. My co-worker Liz got me a big, extravagant cake and an acquaintance who works in a jewelry store in the same gallery gave me a great necklace and bracelet. I went out to lunch courtesy of the store and had a peaceful night volunteering before going out with friends. Pretty much perfect.

And that´s about the extent of it. I´ve left out the substantial amount of social life and work that went on as well, but suffice it to say that although this week was really one of my better ones, I´m ready for a cup of tea and a nap. This week expect to find me keeping monastic hours and a strict regimen of NPR podcasts and lemon teas.

Coming soon: the living hell of visa applications and an immigration-required stint in Chile

The Theater, The Theater, What´s Happened to the Theater?

So a few weeks ago I signed up to volunteer with the International Theater Festival of La Paz (FITAZ) which brings companies from all over the world to a relative dramatic backwater for two weeks every March. My friend Hortencia signed up as well and having a bit of theater experience from high school, I was excited to get involved on the professional level. While I´m still excited, thus far my encounters with the festival´s colorful characters, chronic organizational malfunction, and demanding hours seem to be teaching me more about Bolivian culture than the world of international theater.

One of the first surprises I encountered in this volunteer experience was when I sent in my form listing all of the times I was available to work for the festival. Whereas in the US when you say you could conceivably work for 5 hours every night for 9 days, you probably will not be asked to do so, this has proven not to be the case in Bolivia. I´m sure the volunteer director lit up at seeing what he obviously interpreted as my eagerness and now I´m the theater assistant in Teatro de Cámara from March 20-28, 7:30-12:00.

Another surprise has been the drastically different expectations of theater etiquette between my past experience and what I´ve encountered here. Not only do most theater patrons loudly munch snacks during the performance, leave and enter seemingly without consideration to timing, and treat humble theater volunteers with contempt, but several people I´ve seen hardly act differently in the playhouse than they do in the soccer stadium. Don´t get me wrong, I´m really enjoying the theater (run-ins with aggressive 60-something women included) and have met a few great people. But at the same time this has maybe been the biggest cultural shock of my time here.

For the most part theater in the US is an almost sacred space with pretty concretized rules and expectations (although obviously several American theaters purposefully try to subvert that system). To compare that structure with the chaos of theater in Bolivia highlights one of the biggest differences in our national cultures. While Americans aren´t as disciplined or timely as the Swiss or Germans for example, Bolivian disorder makes the US seem like a utopia of systematic precision. If you´re into that.

I don´t think it´s possible to make a blanket statement about which is better. Certainly in some circumstances a bit more organization would be nice (I would love for one of these plays to start on time for example) but not in all. As much as I don´t like being the bullied volunteer (I´ve always been a martyr for the arts), the unruliness also makes the theater more accessible in a way. Maybe I´ll lose that relativistic perspective as the week wears on, but my theater outing has been a great test of my ability to adapt, go with the flow, and for at least 5 hours a day, adopt a more "Bolivian" mentality.

Fighting For The Right To Party

Today and tomorrow bus and taxi drivers in La Paz are hunger striking and blocking roads in protest of a new law they consider grossly unjust. What possible new law could incite such a reaction you ask? A law which would revoke the drivers licenses of people caught driving drunk.

That´s right, in a country in which hundreds of people needlessly die in traffic accidents every year (most of them in the exact "intoxicated bus driver" incidents the new law aims to stop), bus unions are picketing and bringing the national transportation system to a stop for two days in an attempt to maintain their right to drive drunk.

And I thought the tea-partiers in the US were crazy.

Living Abroad Is Mostly Just Livin´

Lately I´ve been pondering this business of living abroad. I think people (myself included) expect daily revelations and jarring cultural encounters at every turn, but I´ve come to realize that my life here is generally more routine and "normal" than it was before I came. Obviously certain things are a little harder and I learn new things every day. After a while though, things like buying groceries in the open-air markets, boarding minibuses as they slow to a crawl, and organizing customer receipts to the liking of the government just sort of become routine. I guess in a way it´s satisfying to see the things that initially inspired excitement fade into background noise. That was part of the goal of living abroad for me, to become comfortable living in a different culture.

That said there are some differences of life here that are hard to overlook. For one, emotional peaks and valleys are higher and lower respectively than they normally are in the US. The simplest things, such as a successful bartering session, making a kid laugh on the bus, or exchanging phone numbers with a new friend make me not only happy, but ecstatic. In the evenings after days with these simple successes I walk home with a literal skip in my step. On the other end of the spectrum an unpleasant encounter with a customer or not being able to find a product I want have a disproportionate impact on worsening my day. Granted, I have yet to feel very lonely or homesick but these small things can really put me in a funk. It still surprises me that not being to find real soy sauce can have an effect on my mood but I think since most things are just a little harder than to what I´m accustomed, triumphs and defeats create a correspondingly strengthened response.

One other difference which is difficult to ignore and I hope always will be is the striking disparity between rich and poor. As in any city, here I walk past extreme wealth and poverty every day but I think a few factors in La Paz make these small interactions unique. Maybe because in many ways La Paz is a big city in miniature, socioeconomic differences are visibly noticeable on every level. With the social make-up of La Paz pretty easy to see on both macro and micro levels, I notice the differences that much more. Standing on El Prado, the main artery of central La Paz, demonstrates the macro view in which looking south you can see the shift from poor to wealthy in the types of buildings and quality of landscaping. On a smaller scale I can dodge a shiny black Lexus to land on the sidewalk in front of an old woman begging for change. I don´t know if at a certain point brushing off kids selling gum settles into the same routine as the traffic and bartering over rice prices, but I´m hoping these issues maintain the foreground they deserve.

How To Survive Carnaval

In all of my travels only 2 or 3 things have really lived up to their hype. Don´t get me wrong, I´m not a jaded traveler, resistant to admitting when something really blows me away. It´s just that oftentimes Incan ruins or ziplines or whatever are breath-taking, but not "literally the most amazing thing I´ve ever seen." Before you write me off as a pessimist, let me get to the point. This weekend I went to Carnival in Oruro which everyone assured me was one of those "once-in-a-lifetime" experiences and much to my pleasant surprise, it turned out to be just that.

Friday night my friends Hortencia (French) and Oscar (Bolivian) headed out to Oruro for Carnival. Oruro´s a city of more than 400,000 which has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site based almost solely on its world famous Carnival celebration. Carnival is a pretty big deal throughout Bolivia and when I left on Friday La Paz was already exploding in firecrackers, water balloons, and aerosol cans filled with foam. La Paz on Friday gave me a small taste of Carnival in Oruro, but didn´t prepare me for the extravegance in the other city.

We arrived around 2 am on Friday night and the streets and plazas were full of people. The huge parade didn´t start until Saturday morning but people were out all night partying with friends and reserving prime seats for the next day. We headed to Oscar´s cousin´s house to grab a few hours of sleep and were back a block off the main plaza the next morning around 9:30. Walking to the parade was a hazard in itself because a big part of the celebration is a country-wide water fight. Walking through town you can´t trust anyone not to soak you. Old women tossed balloons at me a few times and we had to be especially cautious passing under balconies and walking too close to taxis.

The parade itself was almost beyond description. Groups and bands from around Bolivia and dancers from around the world danced a 12 km. long route from Saturday to Sunday morning. Women danced in high heels and many dancers were dressed in heavy costumes covered in hair, sequins, and feathers. Where we were toward the end of the route dancers were usually tired but found the energy to perform enthusiastically for us. I talked with a couple of dancers at the end who told me they were able to stay energetic because the dances were in celebration of their devotion to God. Their religious fervor was more than impressive and was maybe only surpassed by the frenzied partying on the sidelines.


The party reached something of a peak in the early hours of Sunday and a French friend Solen and I danced to the marching bands between dance acts. We sort of hammed it up for the crowd and got a modest applause (and a water balloon or two). I had so much fun spending the day (we stayed almost 36 hours) with friends and ran into several people I know from La Paz. Because everyone spends the whole day I also got to know my neighbors on the bleachers pretty well and an older woman next to whom I was sitting insisted I visit her in Cochabamba. I´m not sure if I´ll need to spend 36 hours in this festival in the future, but I guess that means I left satisfied in my newest "once-in-a-lifetime."

Criss-Cross-Cultural

So I know I´m not doing very well in the blogging and the updating...but I have a new resolution to improve on this. In addition to blogging on my life here, I´m also working on a new project called "Bolivia Weekly," bringing Bolivian news to an English-speaking audience. At this website you can catch up on all the goings on in Bolivia and listen to our weekly podcast. Sreally cool, you should check it out.

OK, on to my multi/inter/poly-cultural life. Last Saturday night/Sunday morning I had opportunities to enjoy several cultural mash-ups. The first, at a little bar I´ve visited a few times with my friends Hortencia and Oscar, was a party bringing together traditional Aymará spirituality and collegiate themed parties. Saturday was either the 3rd or 13th anniversary of the bar depending on whom you ask (not a momentous occasion in either case) but the resulting celebration was more reminiscent of a centennial or at least sesquicentennial bash. This tiny bar is pretty popular with local Paceños but the anniversary celebration seemed drastically out of proportion compared to its normally tranquil atmosphere. The main event of the evening was a parade featuring a sapo, the Aymará spirit which protects the bar and brings good luck for the year. According to Oscar, the owner of the bar was walking through the witches´ market one day when the sapo whispered to her, "Hey, buy me, I´ll bring you good luck." 3 or 13 years later to the day (Saturday night) the sapo was paraded around the block accompanied by a 15 piece band and a crowd of over 50 patrons. We marched around the neighborhood for about an hour with people occasionally running back to the bar for refreshments which were equal parts consumed and poored on the sapo. This was a big party and I´m dreading that I may not be in Bolivia in 2 or 12 years for a more momentous occasion.

The following morning I went to a going-away lunch of sorts for some friends from Peru and France. The girlfriend of François, the French friend, was visiting and brought along some traditional French ingredients. Max, a Peruvian cyclist and chef, prepared the rest of the meal for the group of 10 Bolivians, German-Bolivians, Peruvians, French, and Americans. The result was incredible. After a night of excessive partying in the name of the Aymará spirit, nothing quite healed my headache like a bit of foie gras (I know, unethical) scraped over bread from a Bolivian market followed by stuffed peppers prepared from a recipe by Max´s Peruvian mother and potatos au gratin all accompanied by good French and ok Bolivian wine. The gastronomic diversity was only surpassed by the varied experiences of the friends at the table and I think for one of the first times here I felt truly at home.

Copacabana Ain´t No Dakota

Today I got back from a two-day trip to Copacabana, a small town on Lake Titikaka. This week was the Fiesta de la Virgen (The Festival of the Virgin) celebrating the appearance of the Virgin Mary to an Incan man centuries ago. I´d heard from several friends that the party is quite a spectacle. Bands battle for attention in the too-small and echoing plaza while cholitas in their finest skirts and men from the area dance in an unending parade through the town. For three days the most devoted revelers drink and dance in the plaza with no pause. I didn´t belive the "no pause" part of the description, but quickly learned that "no pause" hardly does justice to the intensity of the event.

(Un)fortunately I stayed in a hotel right on the main plaza where my friend Claudia lives. The music literally did not abate from 8 am in the morning to the same hour two days later. Torrential rain had little impact despite the electrical current coursing through the plaza and if anything people welcomed the cooler air. I couldn´t believe how hard people were partying, but I guess it´s pretty typical of Bolivian festivals.

In addition to the dancing Claudia had planned several activities that should have made me feel as though I were right back in South Dakota. About the first, a trail ride, I was dubious to say the least. I´ve seen horses in South America and considering the general health of rental horses around the world, I came with low expectations. Despite Claudia´s assurances that she´d reserved good horses (and to her credit she hadn´t seen them beforehand), the ponies that showed up were the most skeletal, droopy-eared, close-to-death animals I´ve maybe ever seen. After much strained explanation with the horses´ owner we opted to rent some kayaks on the lake instead. I was relieved with the much more humane option.

Afterward we headed to what would either be a rodeo, a running of the bulls, or a bullfight (depending on whom we asked). I was excited to see this Bolivian rodeo and was somewhat disappointed by the results. Although I definitely respect anyone willing to provoke a bull eye-to-eye, these bulls were almost the size of roping steers and the bull fighters (as it ended up it was a bullfight of sorts) spent most of their time chasing rather than running from the bulls. It was interesting to a point (and there was a 12-year-old participating, which was impressive) but ultimately paled in comparison to full-grown bulls and professional cowboys.

Apparently I missed the day of the festival where a statue of the Virgin was paraded around town but many people assured me that religious fervor was behind the debauchery. In a few weeks I´m planning on attending Carnival in Oruro, a festival of gigantic proportions where every year a few people literally die from partying too hard. We´ll see if I can spot the religion there too.

Life Takes Visa

For the past few days I´ve been watching my boss´ family wade through the bureaucratic swamp that is getting an American visa in order to attend their daughter´s wedding in August. Yesterday the family had to interview for their visas and in addition to compiling dozens of official letters, passport photos, and copies of everything, the cost ran into several hundred dollars. The Cornejos were lucky enough to have a straight-forward interviewer and will now be able to attend Rommy and Dave´s wedding and visit the US for the first time. Despite their ultimately positive experience, they told me that many of the families appying, many with identical reasons and documentation, were turned away.

To put this in perspective, Americans entering Bolivia have to buy a $135 visa and are supposed show proof of financial solvency, file an application with a passport photo, bring a letter of invitation, and be vaccinated against yellow fever. In reality only the money and a passport are required and the process is relatively stress-free. Traditionally American travelers are used to a free pass in Latin American countries and working in the shop I hear several tourists complaining about the costs of their Bolivian visas. The "eye for an eye" entrance policy of the Bolivian government poses hard questions about American entrance policies and the role of American money in Bolivia.

It´s a difficult situation politically speaking. One one hand the experience of the Cornejo family was incredibly expensive and filled with seemingly random bureaucratic hoops. The system is designed to make them feel like 2nd-class citizens and if anything, worsens international sentiment toward the US on an individual level. Knowing the difficulties of Bolivians entering the US, Evo´s reciprocal visa policy seems about right. Charge those imperialist Americans!

On the other hand, those Americans who are turned off Bolivia by the visa costs had the potential to pour lots of money into the country. Like it or not, tourism is a major sector of the Bolivian economy and several of the tourist operators I´ve talked to have mentioned a dip in the numbers of previously lucrative Americans. I guess this visa situation is just one example of the myriad problems between the US and Bolivia (the ouster of the American ambassador being another toward to the top of the list) but it seems like Bolivians are losing in the situation regardless. Not only are they unfairly prohibited from visiting the United States, but they are cheated out of American tourist money which, while sometimes harmful, could also do some good here.

Coming Soon: my suitcase full of money

Two Introductions Personal and Political

Before I left for Bolivia I read newspapers, blogs, and asked around for information about Bolivian history and current events. After my research and bearing experience in other areas of Latin America I felt sufficiently aware of the general social situation in Bolivia. My passive understanding of Bolivian politics was catapulted to in-your-face awareness yesterday with two drastically different introductions to two figures who will play important roles in my time here. The first, our landlady at the store, introduced me to one side of Bolivian politics and my neighbor provided balance with an opposing perspective.

Yesterday as I was closing up the store, my boss Mario called to remind me to pay this month´s rent. I grabbed the money and ran up to the office of our landlady, the misnomered Doña Lili. She was in a meeting but assured me that she would be down to the store "prontísimo," or "really, really soon." 30 minutes later she walked in, knocked over a couple of displays and looked at my co-worker Alex as if to say, "you gonna get that?" She then proceeded to introduce me to old-school Bolivian racism and elitist politics. After showing disappointment that I would voluntarily move to Bolivia, she lamented the current state of country and waxed poetic about the "old times." I have to at least give her credit for not mincing her words in her explanation of those times; things were much better when the "indios" (a pejorative term for indigenous peoples) knew their place in the country and didn´t meddle in politics or economics. She asked me if the "indios" had given us any trouble in the store (apparently those wily folks can strike at any moment) and because the universal rules of etiquette regarding landladies apply here as well, I told her only, "No, I don´t know what you´re talking about."

This unsettling interaction was followed by my introduction to my neighbor Raquel and her family. I went over to introduce myself and within minutes found myself on the family´s couch with a bowl-full of fresh strawberries in my lap and her 2-year-old son playing with toy trucks at my feet. Where Doña Lili maintains an us-and-them outlook on Bolivian society, Raquel shared a much more nuanced and pragmatic ideology with me. She´s excited about the increased emphasis on multiculturalism in the country, distrusts international organizations but concedes the importance of foreign investment, and hopes Evo creates positive change even if she doesn´t like him (a sentiment completely lacking in the US at the moment). She didn´t make any assumptions about my political opinions and openly questioned my misunderstandings and her own.

These two meetings in the span of only 2 hours provided a pretty accurate, if condensed, round-up of the current political situation in Bolivia and much of Latin America. In this example I´m missing the hard-core leftists who have dominated the scene in recent years, but the dramatic differences in worldview between Lili and Raquel highlight some of the problems faced by Bolivian citizens and politicians. As long as a certain percentage of the population insist on the continued existence of two Bolivias, one which has and one which hasn´t, one rural and one urban, one mestizo and one indigenous; whatever hopes for improvement either side harbors will fail. I´m looking forward to talking with Raquel more in future to better understand how she keeps her cool when settling into one of the political poles seems like the much easier and acceptable option. My conversations with Lili will also continue, not only out of necessity, but because on some level I need to be able to empathize with her, if not sympathize.

On my own

Two weeks ago I sat in my bedroom surrounded by boxes and piles containing all of my earthly possessions. And it felt good. Really good. Rather than packing my bags, as I should have been, I spent several hours looking through the things I´ve accumulated in the past few years. I found mementos from past trips, pairs of underwear I´d thought were lost, and stacks of pictures from high school and earlier. As fun as it was to look through the old correspondence and take stock of my material situation, there was something even more satisfying about putting it all in a box and leaving it behind. Although I´m not planning on becoming a forest-dwelling ascetic any time soon, my recent move to Bolivia with two backpacks gave a similar thrill of feeling like I´m really flying solo. Until a few days ago I maintained the relaxed "OK, I´m on my own" mentality but recently I´ve felt a slight tilt toward, "Oh shit, I´m on my own."

I landed in La Paz at 7:00 am on Tuesday morning and by 12:00 I was working at The Spitting Llama Bookstore and Outfitter learning the Spanish words for various camping implements, negotiating prices with suppliers, and navigating our surprisingly unintuitive bookkeeping system. For the next year I will be working in/managing(?) the bookstore, organizing a community outreach project, and helping produce a weekly podcast on Bolivian news, politics, and culture. Although I´m going to be working a lot, I´m hoping that this experience will give me a unique perspective on Bolivian life and a better understanding of global tourism and cultural exchange.

Because I´ll be living here for the next year I´m envisioning this blog as less of a travelogue and more of a record of observations and thoughts about the experience. I also hope that the trajectory of my perspective will slowly progress from the, "Oh shit" mentality to something maybe more akin to, "Oh my goodness." Or maybe even, "What was the big deal? Thinking I´m on my own is just a naïve vanity trip anyway."