John Steinbeck is one of my favorite authors (East of Eden is in the running for my favorite book of all time). Naturally, I was delighted to find in the MCC library a book by him that I had not yet read called Tortilla Flat. The book is a delightful tail of Mexican/Spanish/American vagabonds who live on the outskirts of the town of Monterrey California. Each chapter is almost like a short story in of itself where the 4 main characters scavange, cheat and steal and sit around making up virtuous justifications for such actions. All the characters are quite loveable which allows the reader to really identify with them, and personally had me thinking thoughts of how free they were to own virtually nothing and even more biblical thoughts like not storing treasures on earth, just worrying about today etc.
The very ironic thing is that on Friday we traveled to Montero to meet with “women without limits” (see second blog entry) and on our way home, stopped to get something to eat. It was a very normally chaotic scene as we sat down, including a man who dropped his change and was scrambling under our table to pick it up. We helped him gather his change only to find a minute later that my bag was missing. He was, like my lovable friends in tortilla flat, a robber, working to distract us while another person ever so carefully slid my bag out from the bench where it was placed beside me.
The good news is, ever since Chris got pick-pocketed on the bus a year ago, I no longer keep any money in any of the bags I carry. The bad news is, Tortilla Flat and the 30 pages I still had to read in it WERE in the bag. Here the only access we have to good old US classics are the MCC library, so they all take on a whole new value for us. A value which doesn’t translate to anyone who doesn’t read in English. So I suppose I could’ve searched the city’s garbage cans; or perhaps it lit someone’s fire that night for cooking…
It’s interesting to me the emotions one experiences when something is stolen. No matter what gets lost, you feel angry, violated, vengeful and maybe just a little bit stupid (had I only REALIZED he was trying to trick us!!!) But what stays with me is the question of what causes people to steal. I’m convinced it’s not simply laziness or the lack of initiative of finding an honest job. I see young people in Bolivia growing up in a place without hope. They watch their parents work 12 hour days 6 days a week, and it only earns them enough, in some cases, to stay alive. They might buy a piece of land, build a house or even buy a car taking out a loan, but all is very easily lost if that person gets sick or has an accient. There isn’t a whole lot of work that keeps one very motivated to be honest. Especially whenever you see friends or family members getting rich quickly by doing easier, more illegal things. All this leaves me with the determination to continue working with young people (frustrating as it may be) as well as a very lame satisfaction that I had no money in my bag. And it leaves the robbers with some bad luck (I’m sure they thought they’d get a lot from the gringa) and with the perpetual challenge of making a living in Bolivia.
