50 years

MCC is celebrating its 50th year here in Bolivia. Last week there were about 30 people visiting on their way to Mennonite world Conference which is happening this week in Paraguay. On Thursday here in the plan we hosted a roup of 17 people who were wanting to check out some MCC projects. This group was a mix of folks from the Argentinian Mennonite Church, some North American ex MCC volunteers and one Cochabambina (from Cochabamba, Bolivia).
Friday there was a “cultural night” complete with churrasco (steaks on the grill; a favorite treat here in Santa Cruz) as well as two folkloric dances brought by the youth group and the natural medicine workers from here in plan 3 mil.
Saturday was the big day with a program and lunch at “Eventos Mary” a local which, whenever I would mention it to any Bolivian, the reaction was raised eyebrows and the exclamation, “wow, it an EVENT then”. Two people from our neighborhood gave speeches; Mauricio about the popular libraries program and the Friday afternoon ladies who presented a wall hanging whose blocks were made in class (I was the teacher that day). I was quite proud of both speeches, as there were 300 plus guests, it was a bit of an intimidating crowd.
Also in the program, there was a slide show with images from each decade that MCC has been in Bolivia. It has been interesting to step back and look in broad strokes, at the history and development of Bolivia and MCCs program here. I’ve really been learning a lot about how one needs to understand the history of a place (or institution) in order to really get down to understanding the present, and to know how to create a vision for moving forward. I personally am left with a sense of gratitude for those who support MCC and those who have given me the opportunity to be a part of this dynamic program.

La Hermana, La Licensiada y La Turista Gringa

These three titles have one thing in common, they are all names by which I have been referred this month. They are all titles assumed basically by the color of my skin, and they all have some truth to them. But there is a difference in the way people approach me that depends on which of these labels I receive.
The first two have been part of a debate in MCC for awhile now. I realized that in my neighborhood, people call me “hermana” (sister).but when other folks from MCC visit, they are called “la Licensiada” (basically, “the professional”, The title indicates you have a bachelor’s degree). Sometimes I even feel a bit envious, because people tend to take licensiadas more seriously, they tend to be more prepared for a meeting, and they tend to listen to what the licensiada says. These are all things I have apparently forfeited when I chose to come and live in the same community where we work…that’s another key to being called the licensiada…you always come from some place nicer to impart wisdom to the poor, you ALWAYS have more power than the crowd to which you are bestowing wisdom.
For the first time in the two and a half years I’ve been here, I went to a different neighborhood this month to give a talk on family economy. I worked carefully to include people in the workshop, taking a few pointers from the principles of popular education, where everyone needs to teach something as well as learn something in such workshops. Just as I had anticipated, my friend who invited me gave me a grandiose introduction (“she’s worked with all kinds of microenterprise businesses, and she’s graciously agreed to come here, so let’s take advantage of her expertise”). Of course, folks referred to me as “licensiada” in this setting. There was a certain distance between me and the other participants that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with. As the evening went on though, and we shared a few jokes together (one of them having to do with an unfortunate mistake in my grammar), I found that people began to open up to me.
The third term was donned during Chris and I’s recent journey to Bolivia’s capital, La Paz, for a little vacation (see photos below). Situated in the heart of the Andes Mountains, La Paz is one of the highest cities in the world and is home to an indigeous group that predates the incas (whose name is tiawanaku whose language is aymara). There are many distinctions to made between lowland culture and highland culture. Perhaps one of the most obvious as an outsider is that highlanders don’t necessarily get excited about the opportunity to interact with foreigners (lowlanders on the other hand, will quickly invite you to their house, feed you yummy cheese bread and make you president of whatever group they are a part of). Needless to say, the first few days in the highlands were a bit of a culture shock, as we heard a few unpleasant comments in the street specific to our presence. After a few days though, we began to settle in and ask people questions about their own lives. I found that in some situation, you had to ask the same question twice in order for people to really take you seriously. We had a lot of good conversations with people who are trying to make a living farming, knitting, selling tourist maps and sometimes all of the three.
Upon further reflection, I find that all of these titles have their limitations and their advantages. I think as an outsider I will always have to understand that people hold certain assumptions about me and my life as a white person. But there will always be an opportunity within that interaction to get beyond the assumptions that each of us bring and do our best to connect more deeply as human beings.
The gringo tourists, standing by the waters of Lake Titicaka
the view from our hotel room, close to sunrise
a view of the city of La Paz and the highest mountain, Ilumani
an ancient statue of a tiawanaku priest

el dia de la madre

I know it’s been forever since I’ve posted something. But rather than going back and trying to explain all those amazing experiences we’ve had in the last two months (including two trips to Cochabamba and a visit from my mom and aunt!), I’m going to write about something that’s currently taking up a good chunk of my time.
Mother’s Day is uniquely celebrated on May 27th in Bolivia. It commemorates a date back in colonial times when the men of Cochabamba went off to war, leaving the city vulnerable to attack. When the Spanish came to take over, they met a front of angry women who somewhat successfully fended them off. I can tell you that the furvor of this holiday still exists, though not through armed weapons and a war with the Spanish so much as dances, poems, bright decorations, flashy adornments and many other things that have the power to carry deep sentiment. At a youth group retreat this weekend, one girl shared that we should be conscious of this date and the deep strength of a mother’s love being perhaps the strongest force on earth (a fifteen year old girl said this), and that even if we as youth don’t show it, we should at least come to recognize it and have a quiet reverence for our mothers. This particular girl’s mother has a drinking problem (or so I’ve been told), and so she spends a lot of time at her aunts’ house.
What’s slightly peculiar to outsiders (ie the sisters and I), is that every woman is celebrated during this months’ activities. When I am put into a mothers’ raffle or invited to sit at a mothers’ table I try to say, “but I’m not a mother,” it seems to be a mute point…”well you’re a mother-to-be” they tell me. So I suppose I might call it instead of mothers’ day, it’s kind of like womanliness day, in a very positive sense…a celebration of the inner strength and determination of every woman to work hard to keep those around her alive, with full bellies, and thriving.
The other interesting this about this date is that I look around and the people orchestrating all of this almost all women. Teachers organize school events, women in offices remind the men of the date and make helpful suggestions of how the program should work, mothers work overtime in the month of May to pay for children’s’ costumes and for dried goods to make gift baskets. Men, especially men who work out in the country side, rarely leave enough money with their wives for extra things such as these. In one of the women’s’ groups where I participate, we often tell stories about our friends (don’t tell anyone, but I kind of suspect that sometimes we’re telling stories about ourselves but use friends as pseudonyms). Anyway, one of the worst dia de la madre stories I’ve heard about a friend is that a few of her children sent her money from Spain for Mothers’ Day and she dreamt up what she would spend it on. On Mothers’ Day night, her youngest son came home (drunk as the story goes) with a grand mariachi show to serenade her for mothers’ day…. After the show the son came to her and asked, could you lend me some money to pay the mariachis so they can go home? My friend Lynn posed the question yesterday, Is Mothers’ Day here just a bandaid for machista culture that every other day treats women like crap? It’s definitely a point worth considering. Though for what it’s worth, I’m also in agreement with my young buddy, a mothers’ love is a force so powerful, it’s something I certainly feel like celebrating.

international women's day

(this was an article I wrote for an international womens' day presentation (on March 9th))
The women are the heartbeat of our neighborhood in Plan 3 mil. They are the schoolboard, the neighborhood watch, the nurses, the teachers, and the mentors. Many work during the day and still maintain their households single-handedly. They sell food in the markets, carting vegetables all over the city. They wash clothing by hand for hours on end, They wake up at 3am in order to make empanadas to sell outside of schools before class begins. The wage of a woman is roughly one fourth of that of a man. They dedicate their lives to keep their households and the neighborhood running. Because of a great migration to Spain and other countries, many women have become in charge of children that have been left behind as well. And yet with so many challenges, these women are some of the most joyful people I know.
There are many people who fit this discription, but woman who stands out to me is Marisol. She is about 30 years old, her household is made up of her husband and her father, 5 children, plus she’s raising her 2 year-old blind niece (her brother’s been in Spain since before the girl was born). I met her in a nutrition group for mothers and their babies. Since then she’s participated in several courses (some given in collaboration with MCC) oriented towards creating small businesses. She has been selling painted handbags for about a year now, and I help her calculate her costs and profits. What strikes me most about her is her courage. She searches for the truth in a situation and speaks to it, breaking through politics or cultural norms which entangle the majority. Once she told me that she heard her neighbor beating his pregnant wife and she said her head shot up over their fence and without thinking she yelled, “if you really want to fight someone, let me find someone your own size.” Her husband got mad at her and said that the man could’ve gone after her and she shouldn’t interfere. She assured him it didn’t matter, that at least she had stopped him. Of all the women I know, she is the one of the only ones who attempts to negotiate with her husband about how much money he spends on alcohol, asking him how many years ago he supposes they could’ve finished their house if he had spent that money on construction materials. I admire her so much and I wonder whether she is conscious of what a gift she really is to those around her, what she does for all of us to give us hope that we too might be so sincere. Recently in reading John Paul Lederach’s book, The Moral Imagination, I found an excerpt that explains so much about the women to which I’m referring. Lederach’s term for this is “voicewalker,” and I will close with an excerpt that defines it.

“ I have known a lot of voicewalkers in my life. They rarely stand out immediately. You come to recognize them after awhile more than from first impressions. Lives don’t speak in one-time conversations. They speak over time. You may notice them first for the things they don’t confuse. They don’t confuse their job or activities with who they are as people. They don’t confuse getting credit with success, or recognition with self-woth. They don’t confuse criticism for an enemy. They don’t confuse truth with social or political power. They don’t confuse their work with saving the world. They don’t confuse guilt with motivation.
Then you amy notice something that is not so easy to put a finger on: It is not so much what they do as who they are that makes a difference. They listen in a way that their own agenda does not seem to be in the way. They respond more from love than fear. They laugh at themselves. They cry with others’ pain, but never take over their journey. They know when to say no and have the courage to do it. They work hard but are rarely too busy. Their life speaks. (Ledarach, The Moral Imagination p.167)

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.