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.

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.

The Dead Souls Arrive

This was a headline on the Saturday noon news. The day of the dead (November 2nd) has brought a great festival to all the cemeteries of Santa Cruz this weekend. Some, like my friends Irene and Idonlina, have traveled to their home towns to velar (to accompany) their loved ones who have passed on.
According to the teacher who teaches the sewing classes at our house, it’s also a dangerous time of the year, because people tend to die around that time. Last week she had the flu and she said her mom got especially worried and began lighting candles and praying for her.
There must be some kind of truth to this theory. On Sunday morning (the day of the dead) 4 people were buried in the cemetery beside our house, among them a neighbor of ours. I never actually met the woman, she was 93 and apparently never came out of her room. Both her daughter and her granddaughter participate in the sewing class, so we participated in the mass and the burial. This being the second time I’ve participated in a burial, I know that like many things in Bolivia, it involves sitting and waiting. As I sit I think about that moment when life as I know it will be no more, or even harder, of the time I may very well have to live whenever my own mama dies or my husband, or my friends, that space in time when your insides ache with memories.
On Sunday I took a stroll through our cemetery and found a hundred or so families, united. Depending where they come from, some have simple rice bread or empanadas, while others have huge spreads of doll-shaped breads, fruits or dishes of home-cooked meals. Some families had a quiet stillness about them. Only a few, like the 4 families whose loved ones so recently passed away, were actually crying.
I stopped by to chat with a friend, whose sister immediately put a glass of chicha (a traditional corn drink) and an empanada in my hand. “Oh yeah, he told me, “you just missed the band, it came over and we were dancing for awhile”. I looked over and sure enough there was a five-piece brass band making its way through the crowds of people. This same type of band often accompanies a funeral procession here.
This day is something I admire so much about this culture. When in North America do we ever take time away from our routines to think about those we have lost? We have one week of mourning (if that) and then all the rest of the grieving process is an individual one. I long for a space like this one to tend to those memories of people who have moved on from this world; a place to cry, a place to dance, a place to eat, and a place to share with others.

Sacrament and Sacrifice

We spent the last week preparing for the big anniversary party at the parish where we work. As I’ve mentioned before, birthdays are a very big deal here, and anniversaries are really just like birthdays, since they are birthdays of groups and beloved places. Our biggest participation included a traditional dance with the confirmation class. During many festivities here, groups of young people (and occasionally older people) get together and choose from a WIDE variety of traditional dances of Bolivia. Last year, we danced a “carnivalito” with our youth group (a bouncy dance from the eastern lowlands). This year the group was convinced it wanted to dance Tinku, a fascinating dance derived from a fighting ritual in the department of Potosi. This ritual takes place during different festivals, but especially over the 3rd and 4th of May, the celebration of the holy cross. While some say it was once a way of settling debts between tribes so as to prevent all-out war, the main idea is to spill blood as a sacrifice so that there may be a good harvest.
Because dancing is a requirement in every public school in Bolivia (yearly festivals are held in the schools where classes are graded on the dance they present), almost everyone has some knowledge of how the dance should go. Because of this, there are very specific steps that have developed and depending on the song in the genre, the choreography is different. For example, someone brought a CD with 15 Tinku songs, and as each song would begin, the women would begin dancing what they remembered seeing of that song. Unfortunately for us, everyone remembered about one quarter of the steps to each one. Much time was spent correcting each other and speculating what should go in the blanks. After 6 practices of such interactions, the last night before the dance, one of the boys brought two friends who were experts in Tinku. They divided us up between men and women, we worked for two hours (this dance is INCREDIBLY strenuous…I have thoughts of opening up a tinku studio someday…it could be a great weight-reducing system) and at the end, we had it together. The following day we met up (an hour later than we had said) on “balivian” street, which is known to everyone in santa cruz as the place to go to rent costumes. Having been given specific instructions by the expert, Raul, we went from shop to shop asking “do you have 8 costumes in fuchsia?” “will you give us at least 3 feathers for our hats?” “will you give us two sashes instead of just one?” “ do you have pants to fit a 6ft tall gringo?” After about a half hour of searching, we found our place. For about $3 USD each we were ready to go.
The night of the party was full of enthusiastic young people, all dressed up, practicing some last minute moves. Our dance went well, and at that last minute someone showed up with a fire-work like apparatus that emitted orange smoke. Unfortuntely, they set it off right under my feet which made breathing a bit of a challenge, but in the end the crowd LOVED the performance, which somehow made all the preparation worth it.
Stepping back from it, I find myself becoming introspective. What a strange way of celebrating church, with sequins, ribbons, smoke bombs and dances representing sacrifices made to mother earth. It’s definitely a stretch from my early Christian years in a little old country church in PA. But as I sat in mass and watched as small children came dancing in with bright green and white dresses and straw hats, the beautiful thing is that people are offering who they are to God…all that they are. So often in the evangelical church, members are encouraged to leave behind all that is culturally relavant to them, to take up the plain black suit, the white dress, and follow Jesus (well, Jesus’ North American Missionaries anyway). My life here is composed of such moments of walking (and dancing) beside Bolivians and then stepping back, trying to figure out which lens to look through, how to toss these questions around and to act in a way that my life is a more perfect offering…
There are a lot more fascinating things to learn about Tinku. The following are two you-tube clips. The first is a report on the actual ritual in Potosi and the second is of the dance (it’s not quite as good as we were, but it’ll do☺).
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=sTSTojpCZhs
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=kesJ3BM-TLM

A rainy day

this photo is of the closing party for a sewing class we hosted in our house that I was going to write about (as well as the new priest (top right hand corner) I´m excited to begin working with, but I¨ve been inspired by something more urgent.

I¨ve been doing some thinking lately about what it is that could sum up the Bolivian experience....in a country where 32 different languages are spoken and the Andes Mountains cut through the landscape...creating historical cultural differences..what is there that unites everyone. For me, it´s come down to something very simple.

Every day in Bolivia is so very fragile.

I´ve lived here almost two years now, and in a way I feel like I´ve taken about 10 years worth of risks I would´ve taken had I been in the U.S. Which is funny, because I am someone whose housing is payed for...who has a consistent food budget every month, who gets $75 on top of that to spend on whatever I want...so I am still not taking anywhere near the risks of my neighbors who face questions like, ´will I be able to get to work?¨¨Will I get fired if I show up late?¨¨Even if I arrive on time and leave on time, will they decide not to pay me anyway?¨¨Will the price of bread have risen again?¨ And many other questions that make up a daily fight to survive. The one thing that I can perceive that Bolivians have going for them in all of this is that everyone else around them (except for two north american volunteers and a few brasilian nuns)is balanced on the edge of this same abyss.
This morning, I have found a perfect example to illustrate this point. It is pouring down rain. We are waiting a twenty mintues for a micro along with six other people. One shows up with space for maybe two...we all manage to squeeze on. Three blocks later, a young kid with a rake (???) jumps off and another six grown people manage to make thier way on to the bus. Just as we arrive at a HUGE lake that once was a paved street, we stop to pick up a crowd of two mothers with babies and an elderly woman, short, round, and covered in plastic bags. I exchange a worried glance with the woman whose head is resting in my armpit, ¨no deberían subir¨she whispered (they shouldn´t even try it)...the two moms make it on..the elderly woman puts her hands out to take hold of the door. Everyone in the micro takes a deep breath. Even if she can manage to grab ahold of something on the bus, with one quick turn she could fall out. The bus driver begins to move on.
¨NOOO POR FAVOR!!¨ The woman screams...she then begins wailing in quechua..and the bus stops again. Now, my experience here tells me there are potentially two situations that could warrant such desparate behavior. 1. This woman is having a medical emergency and needs to get to the hospital. or 2. It is her co-madre´s birthday and they are out of coca-cola at her corner store. Whatever the woman´s situation, she begins to try to pull herself up onto the first step. All of the sudden, a woman points to chris and says, ¨you there, move further back...the old lady needs to get on¨. We all shuffle around, a few onlookers on the street give the woman a boost and a young girl of about ten years old gets behind her to protect her from the threat of falling out. We turn the corner and begin our cruise through the river. About five minutes later, I look to the front to find a crowd of young people...someone has given the woman thier very-valuable seat (if you are sitting down, not only are you safe from the risk of someone resting thier head in your armpit, you are safe from people sticking thier hands in your pocket and stealing your wallet or your cellphone).
It took us a record-long time to get to the office this morning...an hour and a half from door step to door step (instead of the normal 45 minutes)...but oh what a story to share with all of you.

Santa Cruz Flair and Hand Spun Wool

The other day in my crocheting class, our chatter turned for a moment to the political situation in Bolivia, sparked by the sounds of firecrackers getting closer and closer. “The Masistas are gathering, they have a cabildo tonight (town meeting)…they must be figuring out what to destroy next.” I’m usually very quiet during these times, but today for some odd reason (maybe my anger at how much the news manipulates the story according to its political leaning), I decided to offer my opinion, “but why would the masistas wreck their own market,” I said, “it’s got to be the cruzenistas…I think they want the military to come in so they have an excuse to have an armed conflict.” My friend (who’s from a small town near the boarder of Brasil) looked at me and said, “look at me…do you think I want a war???” (identifying herself among the cruzenistas….) another woman (who came to Santa Cruz from the Beni, a department just north of santa cruz) spoke “the highlanders should be thankful for what Santa Cruz has given them…a place to live and earn a living….” The teacher piped up, “well, I don’t think it’s that simple, for example I’m from Sucre but I’ve lived in Santa Cruz ten years…I don’t consider myself colla or camba (highlander or lowlander), and there are people from Santa Cruz living in Sucre. I think we’re all just a mix but the media tries to divide us more than we are in real life.” A woman responded, “yes, but when we go to other places, we don’t act like this….” Meanwhile, everyone was working away at their crocheting project, this week a hair tie made with a glitzy synthetic string imported from Brasil, except for me…I’d forgotten to bring elastic, so I took advantage of the fact that there’s a woman who knows how to spin wool…I bought some in Cochabamba last year, but when I tried to knit with it, it was lacking one more process to be knittable. This woman (a highlander) was the only one who hasn’t spoken by now….and as the yarn slips so smoothly between her fingers I asked her, “did you grow up with sheep?” And she answered in a very quiet voice, “yes, my mother had sheep.” As the conversation drifted on to the big Miss pageant coming up, I realized the tension of the country and how its imbedded in each person and the fear of the other…of who will throw the first stone…
Towards the end of the meeting, my friend from valle grande (western santa cruz) commented, “wow, Lindsey, you learned the trick!” I said, “yeah, it’s really easy, do you want to try it??” She looked at me smiling and told me no…that she wouldn’t want to mess it up.
I know that tonight Santa Cruz is full of these interactions…highlanders and lowlanders together..full of opportunity to be open to the other, or to continue with the rage provoked by images on the news (showing the same clip from three days ago).
A note for those who haven´t read much about Bolivia in the last few weeks, there is a good bit of conflict going on which I am trying to wrap my head around and am not quite confident enough to write about. If you´d like to read more on it though, here are two places I like to go:
www.democracyctr.org
www.ain-bolivia.org

Padrinos Americanos

The other day I was at my friends house making saltenas when her younger sister came rushing in and said, " oh, I have to get my letter written today." I assumed she was talking about doing some kind of transaction with the government, applying for a birth certificate, getting a vaccine card etc. But when she sat down to write it, she pulled out a picture of an elderly north american couple. Ah yes, I thought, it's a letter to her "padrinos americanos" (american godparents). We as northamericans understand this system under a different title. " For only 30 cents a day you too can make a difference in a young child's life...sponser a child today." All my life I grew up watching these comercals with images of young kids with swollen bellies being attended by white doctors...and now I am so blessed to see things from the other side....among struggling families fighting to stay alive and live with dignity...looking to the north from where this charity comes.
One day I was part of a conversation where two women were talking about the different benefits offered between two different padrino organizations....one only gives medical care and tutor help with homework, whereas the other one gives periodic food donations to the families. And at one point in the conversation one of them turned to me and said curiously, "why do north americans want to be godparents to our children...don't they have enough children of their own to help?" I was caught in a rather difficult place. How do you describe a land where people have enough money to take care of their families plus enough to give away to someone you don't know...a place where all your neighbors also have thier needs met and don't have to come and ask you to borrow money or food...a place where charity is a concept of having to look in far far away places to look for suffering. Such a thing doesn't exist here in Bolivia, and so I did my best to explain the good intentions of people with extra money and a conscious mind.
In the meantime, daniela's sister writes under the shade of the mango tree, about her school work, about her second child on the way, about the springtime (which in santa cruz means very hot and windy wheather), and she includes a picture of a "traditional" santa cruz scene, a man in a straw hat working in a field of sugar cane. And I am breathing into the gap of two very different worlds.

Tortilla Flat

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.

making licorice?

After spending the past year and a half in Bolivia, I was surprised to find out that upon going back to the states, one of the most shocking things to me was food. There tended to be a lot more of it (and a lot more of people I passed on the streets as well) than I remembered and it seemed strange to me that try as I might, I just couldn´t manage to avoid corn syrup... it´s in EVERYTHING. So, I´m indulging my curiousity right now by reading ¨the omnivore´s dilemma¨ which talks a bit about the history of processed food and the strange empidemic of diet that US dwellers face today. In the meantime, however, I needed to bring back something for our beloved youth group here in Santa Cruz, so I decided to share with them part of a carepackage put together by a sunday school class at Chris´church. The treat, as you can tell by the picture, was a pack of twizzlers. ¨It´s something typical from our country,¨I told them as I indicated the directions for making a straw out of it. One of the nuns (actually from Argentina) piped up and said, ¨It´s really yummy and I like it because it´s not super-sweet. How do you make it?¨ I replied by simply laughing hard. Her comment helped me realize the reason for my reverse culture shock. All the typical treats here (and in Argentina I presume) are made by grandmothers, aunts, uncles and tend to be very tediously done and thus special. But long ago (afterall, licorice is an old fashioned candy as I understand it) we stopped making our special treats and have begun to rely on companies and laboratories to pump out all our sweet goodness. And since it´s chemically altered and mass produced, it´s cheap enough that we don´t even have to have a special occasion to eat it!
After laughing, I explained how it´s really just a bunch of chemicals and I don´t really know how they make it and it´s kind of a sad part of my country. Luckily, my mom still makes apple dumplings and monster cookies whenever I come home, and I do at least see and remember that part of life (though I must confess that Christmas is not the same for me without that crochetted boot filled with christmas tree peppermint nougats ($2 per bag at the dollar store)

micros

A strange thing has happened here. Of all of the interesting social movements going on in Bolivia, Santa Cruz has not exactly been at the forefront of any of them. But last week, we experienced a bit of a peoples’ uprising here in our neighborhood. It started when micro bus drivers decided to try once again to raise the price of riding the micro (one of several attempts in the past few months) from 1.5bs to 2bs (about .20 to .28).
On Tuesday Chris and I went out to the bus stop and found one of our friends Julia waiting there as well. We watched as a bus approaching us turned around in the middle of the street and let everyone off. I just figured it was a mecanical problem with the micro, but since Julia has a TV and we don’t, she knew better. She had seen on the news that they were going to try to raise the price. So we waited a few minutes while everyone from further down the road came walking up to the final stop of the buses. We then saw a micro going down a different street and circling around further down the road. The tactic, we believed, was not to pick up a crowd of people all at once. We decided to try a different micro line and as we walked away, we met up with a 53 (the line we had been waiting for) on a side street. I tried flagging it down and the driver yelled “where are you going? To the center? It’s 2bs per person. If you want to pay that, get in, if not, let me go.” Chris and I both looked at Julia, who just scoffed and kept walking. “They’ll never win.” Julia told us as we walked away. “ Everyone knows a micro driver is still making money on us all.”
(I suppose I have failed you all for not having written about micros before, because, even on a normal day, it’s never a dull experience. There are seats for about 20 and during peak hours (6-8am and 6-8pm) it’s nothing to have 50 people sitting, standing, plastered to the windows and each other, just trying to get to work. The general rule is that mothers with babies, very pregnant women and old ladies are supposed to get seats, but there’s a bit of a reputation for young men (who are commuting to and from 12 hour work days in most cases) to not be so courteous. There is also a rule that kids who don’t pay the full fair shouldn’t occupy a seat if a full-fare payer is standing up..again, they tend to hide in the back and wait for someone to call them out. Anyway, some of my favorite stories come from micro riding experiences).
Some drivers own their own micros, while other rent them. Apparently you have to pay between $100-$300 US to get into an associacion of drivers and once you’re in, you pay dues. According to Julia, her friend owns a micro and the man who rents it even after rent and all the other costs, can still make between 200 and 400bs a day ($27-54 US). The upper end being about a month’s wage for a maid. There is plenty of justification for a micro driver earning so much. There are plenty of risks involved, penalties to be paid if you’re late, and LONG days (sometimes up to 14 hrs), but you can understand how people are refusing to pay more money. Chris and I find ourselves a bit in the middle. We could easily pay the higher fare. If Julia weren’t with us, it’s hard to say what we would’ve done. But for now, it makes the most sense to support our friends whose economy is already too tightly stretched.

fun with pictures

without further adeu, a collage of photos.
our new dog princesa, for a princess, she's not all that fotogenic, but she has plenty of other princess like qualities:)
Luna in her favorite sleeping spot, on the other side of the window is where we sleep, so you can see how it's prime real estate for a protective dog
a little look at the rainy season, the road outside of our house
our mango tree, some basil and LOTS of weeds Luna, all grown up

salteñas

Just as I had the idea of sharing with you one of the sweetest things 20 cents can buy in Santa Cruz, I got an email from my sister and my niece who are looking for more pictures of our house and dogs, and less of food. So, in the interests of pleasing all parties, I will include a few photos here that are not part of today’s blog theme: a little thing folks here like to call salteñas.
Salteñas, I believe are something unique to Bolivia. They are a cute little meat pocket made with a beautiful color of dough, full of potatoes, peas, meat and broth. Each reigon has their own style of making them. Santa Cruz salteñas are especially juicy and full. MCC likes to initiate new volunteers by serving salteñas the first day you arrive. There is a serious trick to eating Santa Cruz salteñas without getting the juice all over you, which involves carefully biting off the tip and draining out as much juice as possible through the tiny hole. After we eat salteñas at MCC, you can sure tell a difference (as if you couldn’t already) between a native cruzeno pro and a novice by the little stains we sport for the rest of the day.
In Chris and I’s neighborhood, we have a woman who at just about 7:45 every morning passes by our house offering salteñas. Luckily, I believe hers are more of a style of Potosi (a city about 24 hrs. west of here); much dryer. There is a tiny bit of gravy you need to be careful with at the very bottom, but it’s quite manageable. They are smaller than the ones you buy in the center of town, but at 25 cents a piece, (the ones downtown are about 75 cents) they are more affordable as well…which means we find ourselves getting them about 3 or 4 mornings per week.

Housing

I went to see my friend Doña Beti (doña (pronounced don-ya) is the name that goes before every woman’s name to show respect) about making me a cake for my buddy’s birthday. (she is pictured here on the far right side).But here in Bolivia, just like in many fine countries in the world, conversation kind of wanders around what you came for, and you tend to go to it for awhile and then talk about other stuff, then come back (often at the gringos promptingJ). Anyway, in the midst of the meandering, it came up that Dona Beti is moving. Which is a sad thing, because she’s one of the crucial social hubs in the barrio and she keeps things moving, and even though she’s only moving about six blocks away, it will really change things. I asked her why and she said she’s been renting this place and has found another place to live “casero” (which means the shack or whatever is on the property is not suitable enough to actually charge rent, so you make an agreement with the owner to take care of the property, usually for one year at a time for no cost).
She then talked about looking into buying a lot here, and she said there are some in the next neighborhood over (which is less developed than ours and has more open spaces) for $3500. At first I thought she was talking about bolivianos (which would still be $500 or so), but she actually meant dollars. She said they would probably give it to her on credit. She said her friend bought one awhile back for $100. With the arrival of several thousands of people to Santa Cruz each year, housing prices have sky-rocketed. My friend whose grandparents live just off the first ring in the center of the city told me their house is worth $100,000. I’m sure her grandparents settled there when there was nothing but forest beyond the first ring and probably everything including the construction of the house cost less than $100. In the 1960s when MCC was setting up its office, everyone told them they were out in the middle of nowhere and that people would never be able to find it (just between the 1st and 2nd ring). Now, their property is right smack in the middle of it all (and with five buildings on it and a nice piece of yard in the middle, I’m sure it’s worth several hundred thousand dollars now)..
Of course this means good things for people like Loida’s grandparents and MCC and other visionary folks who were able to buy up early and could cash out now. But for Doña Beti, who has lived and worked in this neighborhood for the past twenty years, the dream of owning her own place is just slipping out of grasp. The really crazy thing for me to think about is that during the three years that Chris and I are here in Bolivia, I’ve calculated that all the money we have saved and smartly (with the advice of my brother-in-law/financial advisor) invested will make us about half of what it costs to buy one of those lots. We get paid just for being rich. My first reaction to that is the easiest “well, could we give her all we’re going to make on the interest.” Which would leave us still rich, having dona beti still paying a lifetime of payments on her place, a whole neighborhood in line for another one of our generous donations and a system that still makes rich richer and poor poorer. We have got to think of something better. Any ideas?

Reproductive Rights?

The photo is of Ana Maria, one of the mom’s in the nutrition group we work with. She is posed with her fifth child, the only girl. Ana Maria is always looking for money. Her kids walk around with mismatched flip-flops and snotty noses. Her husband works harvesting wood and comes home about twice a month and leaves her with about $6 USD until he comes back the next time. Sister Benedicta, one of the nuns who works at the chapel who sponsers the program, apparently would often bring up birth control in her visits to Maria when she had four children, proposing that perhaps four was enough. One of Ana Maria’s sons died last year of a flu that just wouldn’t go away. And before the sister could get her a date with a doctor to discuss some kind of birth control, Ana Maria was once again pregnant. This time sister benedicta was not going to let it happen again. She went and visited with Ana Maria in the hospital and talked with the nurses, who handed over some papers with a date to come back for an IUD.
But it still wasn’t quite so easy. The doctor had operated on a hernia that Ana Maria had aquired during her pregnancy, and according to Ana Maria, just tied her tubes while he was at it, so in her opinion, she didn’t need to get an IUD. Benedicta just assumed that she was lying because she was afraid of the IUD, so I went one day and visited her. “Oh, I’ve had one before,” she said, “it’s just that it gave me really bad cramps and I couldn’t go to my monthly check-ups because we lived out in the country. The doctor told me he tied my tubes, I don’t know why I’d need an IUD also.” The sister was not convinced. Her papers said come back in a month for the IUD, nothing else appeared in the care instructions. It is rumored that in order to do tube tying, the doctor must get the signature of the woman’s husband (which never happened). So, they took a trip to the doctor’s office to get the story. Apparently the doctor, upon hearing about Ana Maria’s life, took advantage of the fact that he was so close in the hernia surgery and just tied her all up at once. “And the papers, you ask”. Well, apparently the nurses filled them out upon talking with the Sister, unaware of what the doctor had already done.
I’m sure this story is not all that rare here, and in other places in the world. We tend to think about poverty and overpopulation being an issue of lack of access and bad information. But here, three blocks away from my sand filled street, there is a clinic that puts in IUDs for free. It seems though, there are problems in the administration, because I have heard horror stories of IUDs here, in one case a baby born with a T imprinted on his face (which I cannot confirm)! Anyway, I wonder what we should do when a mother is well informed of her options and still wants to continue having children. In the long run, I think the doctor did Ana Maria a favor. But in such a shady process of just using the power he had as a surgeon to decide the future of Ana Maria and her family, I’m not convinced it was the right thing. When it comes to a person’s will over their life, I don’t think it matters if it’s a doctor a nun or a northamerican volunteer with the best intentions, it isn’t our job to decide the fate of others.