At this moment I am happy to announce that I have survived my last carnival in Bolivia (or so I think). Of all the traditions I’ve come accustomed to, carnival is probably my least favorite. Of all the MCCers, both Bolivians and foreigners, the only people I’ve been able to perceive that they truly enjoy this crazy time are twentyish year old North American boys, participating in MCCs one year program for young adults. What I saw the first year with a few mischievous boys was confirmed this year in Caleb, whose imgages I’m borrowing because I wasn’t up for the paint fight.
Since the great majority of Bolivian MCCers are part of the evangelical church and not the catholic church, this means they are expected to attend church camps designed especially for youth to avoid all that carnival entails. Unfortunately the mosquitos (this has been a particularly bad year for dengue fever) hour long lines for food and for the bathroom can discourage even the most pious of churchgoer.
The activities of carnival are varied depending on which part of the country and family customs. In Santa Cruz, events began Saturday afternoon with a big parade of comparsas, groups of people who have matching outfits (the most common in Santa Cruz is a disposable-like brightly colored robe). If you go out on Saturday afternoon or Sunday, you are likely to get hit with a waterballoon or a bucket of water. Monday turns a little dirtier with paints. In the meantime, there are block parties with lots and lots of dancing and drinking into the night. I predict most members of wealthy comparsas are drunk from Saturday afternoon through Tuesday night. Tuesday brings balloons the nastiest of things, including motor oil, urine, or dirty water fished out of the gutters., as well as drunk and angry people. I am told that in other cities, it is much less lawless than Santa Cruz.
Our first year we spent in the Baptist camp. The second we happily traveled out of Santa Cruz to the quaint town of Buena Vista, about an hour and a half north of the city. We had plans this year to go out to a farm of some friends, but the rains filled up the four places where we had to cross a river on the way, and so we stayed at home. We hid out for the most part, had a few meal exchanges with the nuns. We had another plan to go to another friend’s farm close by one morning to drink “ambrosia” which is made by milking the cow into a cup, squirting in some alcohol purely for sterilizing purposes (wink wink) and drinking it up in one gulp. I’ve never seen this process, but I’m told it’s just lovely. Unfortunately we couldn’t find affordable transportation to take us the 13km to the farm. In the end, this event turned into a churrasco (BBQ) at the persons’ local home. Apparently one of the four cows was giving birth and the calf’s head was too big, so, as they say here, we made her into meat. There was a strange mix of sadness and joy at the pile of meat cooking up on the coals. The festive drink, since we couldn’t have a cow to milk at our disposure, became sucumbe, which is made by boiling milk, cinnamon, sugar and vanilla, then adding a few raw eggs and beating the mixture until it foams, then serving it with grape alcohol (similar to pisco). The men of the party, who I’m told arrived drunk to the party, began telling terrible jokes and I began calculating how many rounds of sucumbe I would need in order to find them funny. Meanwhile the ladies would every once in awhile come along with a bucket of water and pour it over your head. I indulged in the pouring once, but I didn’t have a ton of satisfaction since no one ran away from me and there was no competition. Ultimately, I decided to sit there soberly and wait for the moment when I thought we could escape without being totally rude. Carnival is a bit of a mystery to me. Why do people like it? Why don’t I like it? I’m not sure if I’ll ever know for sure, but I found it very interesting what my drunk friend Walter told me, “ you have to take this moment to be happy, because who knows if you’re going to wake up tomorrow.” He went on to tell stories of young people in the neighborhood, dying suddenly for different reasons. The whole conccpt of carnaval is doing everything you like doing that God wouldn’t want you to, in order to repent on Ash Wednesday. Walter’s idea of a good time that God doesn’t approve of is getting sloshed and telling dirty jokes …what do I enjoy doing that God doesn’t want me to enjoy? Envying peoples’ care packages of dark chocolate, demanding cheap prices for clothing, reveling in my enemies’ downfall. It’s all so abstract and circumstantial I’m not sure how I’d fit it into three days of revelry. I don’t really have a good conclusion for all of this, but this quote from Thomas Merton kind of touches at a truth I think I´m looking for with these questions.

¨The basic and most fundamental problem of the spiritual life is this acceptance of our hidden and dark self, with which we tend to identify all the evil that is in us. We must learn by discernment to separate the evil growth of our actions from the good ground of the soul. And we must prepare that ground so that a new life can grow up from it within us, beyond our knowledge and beyond our conscious control. The sacred attitude is, then, one of reverence, awe and silence before the mystery that begins to take place within us when we become aware of our innermost self. In silence, hope, expectation, and unknowing, the man of faith abandons himself to the divine will: not as an arbitrary and magic power whose decrees must be spelled out from cryptic ciphers, but as to the stream of reality and life itself. The sacred attitude is, then, one of deep and fundamental respect for the real in whatever new form it may present itself.¨

Thomas Merton. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. William H. Shannon, editor (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003): 55.

muito gostoso

Two days after we arrived from Peru, we embarked on yet another journey to a South American neighbor of Bolivia. This time on a 20 hour bus ride to Brasil. With 11 other members of our communitey, we journeyed through the night along the Jesuit mission towns of San Javier, Concepcion, San Ignacio, San Matias, until finally crossing the boarder of Brasil to the large town of Caceres.
The town is part of the province of Matto Grosso, whose capital, Cuiaba about a hundred years ago was the destination of four nuns of The Immaculate Conception of Emilie, an order dedicated to serving the poor and specifically, the sick. In our neighborhood, that takes the form of a natural medicine clinic where exams, massages and herbs are provided to all those who need treatment. Those who can pay do, and those who can’t are also served.
The reason for the pilgrimage was to learn a little more about the history of these holy ladies in South America (we stayed at a retreat center of the order) as well as to meet with a Jesuit Priest who helped found the examining technique applied in our natural medicine clinic. He provided for us a workshop revealing his latest research in the treatment of diabetes and HIV. He says he has cured people of HIV, but has to do so quietly because the pharmaceutical companies charging Brazilians $350 a month for the medicine to slow down the virus don’t want to learn about a cure.
The trip also included an excursion to the Paraguay River, a soda on a house-boat like restaurant sitting on the water, a night of exchange between a Dancing Troupe dedicated to preserving the dances of Matto Grosso and the Bolivians (and for good measure Chris and I offered a performance of The Long Black Veil and Amazing Grace), Mass in the Cathedral followed by an impromptu performance of Capuera in the plaza.
Such good times were had by all that I don’t think the breaking down of the bus on the way home and the five hour delay really phased anyone (ok, I was pretty annoyed), but we successfully negotiated with the driver to hire a different bus so that we didn’t have to spend the night in the small town where the engine breathed its last breath. We did have to pay a bit extra, but in the words of an Irishman making his way from the boarder to Santa Cruz, “ that was the best half Euro I ever spent.”
ps. the title of the blog is one of the few phrases I learned in portuguese, meaning ¨very pleasing¨..I´d tell the cook each time I was fed.

Peru

I had a very unique opportunity at the beginning of January to participate in a Suzuki Festival in Lima, Peru. The first week included a philosophy class and the second a training for how to teach the first book for violin. It was so exciting just being around musicians from all over Latin America. Also, for a girl who rarely gets the chance to hear live (classical) music, I was absolutely dazzeled by the almost nightly concerts.
I’m really interested in this method of teaching; and many concepts can be applied to different aspects of life. The basic idea is that children should learn music like they learn their first language, by listening and mirroring…we tend to think of music as something you either do or don’t have a gift for, but according to Dr. Suzuki’s research, children’s success rate of learning their mother-tongue (unless there is a physical limitation) is 100 percent, even very difficult tonal languages. And therefore, talent for music is taught, just like talent for speaking a language is taught. People are “tone-deaf” because their mother was tone deaf or because they weren’t exposed to music enough as a child.
There is so much that can be said about my two weeks studying the suzuki method, but one concept I’ve taken and really enjoyed thinking over is that being a good teacher is about dissecting problems into little doable steps, which in the end helps students perservere through difficult situations.
During a three day break in between classes, we had the opportunity to travel to a province to the south of Lima called Ica (the more famous town in the province is Pisco, where the famous drink comes from). Also, Ica was the province most affected by a large earthquake last year which left many towns devastated with little resources for redevelopment. We had the priveledge of visiting an organization called “construyendo Peru.” (building Peru) where groups of women in neighborhoods would organize themselves and through a grant from construyendo peru, the women would be paid a stipend and they work to build sidewalks, plazas and green areas in their neighborhoods. One sad thing is that since we are white, many people we would visit thought we had money to fund their projects, and it was difficult telling them we had nothing but ideas to contribute. As we were leaving one sight where we had been received with food and pisco, as I leaned over to tell one participant good-bye she whispered in my ear, “never forget the women.”
Having these two different experiences was important for me. The Suzuki festival was held in a private school in a rich part of the capitol city, where mothers came bustling in with SUV keys in their hands, speaking to the teachers in English, as their children pulled out their violins. There were two groups of children who participated from orphanages, one close to the city and one from a province far from Lima. (this is a picture of the students from the province Huancavelica in traditional dress) Still, it left me with the feeling that we have so much work to do. There are so many children that aren’t able to have this gift of music in their lives. Dr. Suzuki left us with the lovely philosophy that “every child can,” I suppose it is the work of the next generation to figure out how to really put that into practice.

End of the Year highlights

I know I'm about four months behind on blogging, so here are some images from the end of last year.

.there was a dance contest at 12:30 on a very hot day at the Parish anniversary party. My partner was persistent though, and we actually ended up winning.
This is one of my favorites. Alvaro's Graduation. He is one of 10 chidren (in the middle somewhere) and we were asked to be his padrinos of photography at his graduation.

THis is one of my favorite people in Bolivia. Her name is Benedicta. She is amazing. She works with the chapel and has a very beautiful inner strength. She washes our clothes for us (since we can't' seem to fathom spending half a day per week washing them ourselves) and she stays at our house and feeds our dogs whenever we're gone.
This one was taken at our friend Zulma's wedding, when I worked despartely to learn the wedding march in 3 days on violin. This is my first backless Christmas dress by the way.