El Campo

I just got back from a week-long stay in a rural village in the mountains outside Cochabamba. My week was characterized by perpetual confusion... I was placed with an old senile woman. At first I didn’t realize she was senile – most of the families in the village speak Quechua and only minimal Spanish, so our communication was limited anyway. I thought that when she’d randomly start running down a hill, or throwing sticks at the animals, it could have been a cultural thing? Someone was sent to check on us everyday and I realized she was little un-normal when the person sounded over-concerned about my living situation and said that if I wanted, I could eat meals/seek refuge with her son’s family who lived next door to us. But after lots of quality time together it ended up being great… senile old women are my favorite kind.

Our room

At the school

My days were like such: wake up around 6, eat a huge bowl of potatoes shortly thereafter, let the sheep out of the pen, do something with my old woman, eat another huge bowl of potatoes maybe mixed with noodles, sew rows of potato plants, eat another huge bowl of potatoes maybe with rice, put the sheep in the pen, in bed my 6:30. I didn’t shower or change clothes for 6 days.

My favorite thing about the week was planting time... super hard work - my legs and back are still aching. But my little old woman worked like a machine in the fields. Every once in awhile we would take breaks together – we’d sit on the hillside and she’d chat with me in Quechua and laugh at me as I nodded my head.



My least favorite part of the week was mealtime. Before we left, our directors told us that eating is really important in the village – if you finish everything the families will be super impressed and will talk about it for weeks. I was doing really well in the beginning, but one can handle only so many potatoes. Each time I’d finish my overloaded bowl, I’d be so relieved to be done, but then my bowl would be filled again! Unbearable.



The village was BEAUTIFUL. The animals we owned included sheep, cows, chickens, pigs, and dogs. Our main crops were potatoes and fava beans. It rained three days while we were there and was always too cold. I slept with 5 blankets (I could barely roll over there was so much weight on me) and in the morning my toes would still be numb. My woman’s son, who lived next door, had a family of eight children. My friend from the program, Karina, was staying with them and it was nice to have her nearby. For some reason, the family didn’t want me to sleep alone with the woman so the son made different kids sleep with us each night. They were cute. Instigated by the one video they own, Stuart Little, the kids asked, “Can animals in the United States talk?” One of the older girls, 10 yrs, treated me like her doll – most mornings she dressed me as a Cholita, in a skirt and three different layers of tops, and braided my hair.


More about my senile old woman and her greatness - She introduced me to everyone as her friend from Argentina and each time I’d correct her she’d nod her head and laugh; she would wake up several times in the middle of the night and start talking; she would run down hills for no reason, and I’d follow her; she often tried to accompany me when I’d go to the bathroom aka squat behind the house; sometimes in the middle of the day she’d turn to me and demand “dormite!” – you sleep! I went with her to the market one day... When we got there, we sat behind a huge shoe vendor for about 20 minutes. I kept asking what we were doing and all she would say was, “sit, sit!” Finally, a nicely dressed lady showed up with a stack of papers (an identity card application) and took us to a formal government building. We ended up waiting for a while and leaving with a denial to an identity card because my woman’s birth and marriage date didn’t match up. My question is how this was all arranged – how did my senile old woman find this random lady to fill out paper work… and did she just suggest, “meet me behind the shoe vendor?” The market had like 15 different shoe vendors! The experience pretty much sums up my time in the village – never understanding/knowing what was happening and following the old woman around everywhere despite my confusion.


It was overall an interesting week and I’m glad to have had the experience. The village was so different from all of the other parts of Bolivia I’ve seen, and it was cool to experience real indigenous culture before it disappears.