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.