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.

Potosi and Sucre - Excursion #1

Potosi is an old colonial mining town and the highest (altitude) populated city in the world. The mines were once rich in minerals and the city used to back most of Bolivia’s industry. Side note: at one point, it was more densely populated than Paris. Now, the mines stand only as a reminder of brutal colonialism. Aside from the freezing cold and the mountainous backdrop, the architecture gave it a quaint Mediterranean feel.

Potosi

There are a lot of issues with child miners and mining unions and fair working hours, etc… the working conditions for miners are horrendous (The Devil’s Miner – put it on your documentary list). We got to enter the mines and climb for a few hours. I was a little unprepared and our guide kept making fun of me during scary steep climbs by pointing out that 10 yr olds do this everyday. I also breathed in lots of asbestos.

Cerro Rico - a once mining mountain in Potosi

El Tio - the miners worship this god with coca leaves, cigarettes, and alcohol in return for safety and minerals

Rooftop cafe in Potosi

The same day, we went to a school for miners’ children. Most children of miners start working in the mines when they’re young, and breaking out of the cycle is hard. We went to the school to play with the children and, in my opinion, it turned out to be pretty inappropriate. We entered in the middle of a teacher’s lecture and interrupted his class to announce that we were going to take the kids out to play. We started with silly games and soon the kids were out of control. Watching the teacher watch his class running around, hitting each other, misbehaving, and knowing that he could do nothing about it was sad. No matter how many years he’s taught, no matter how hard he’s worked to discipline his class and gain their respect, he can say nothing to a group of Americans who come in for a day to play with the children, except thank us for “helping.”

Potosi has a really strong history of colonialism and racism and exploitation of indigenous people and, to me, walking into that classroom and assuming authority over the children was reinforcing the power structures that are so historically saturated in the society. Yes, the kids were THRILLED to be playing with us, which is great, but what does that say about their skewed views of their positions? By “giving up our time” to play with them, how are we contributing to their oppression? I mentioned this to a friend and his response was that we were helpful - we were giving the teachers a break. Were we giving them a break by stealing their accountability and authority and allowing their classes to go wild instead of being educated?

It was only a few hours at a school, and I’m definitely over-reacting - I guess I’ve become sensitive to issues concerning “helping” and race and my role when the two collide. In eleventh grade I co-directed a one-week day camp at my private high school for students in inner-city Birmingham public schools. The kids, all African American, had mostly white, mostly VERY privileged counselors. In an already racially sensitive city, how did this contribute to the way these kids see themselves? Since then, encountering high school missionary groups in Africa, working with kids in transitional housing in downtown DC, and being viewed as a “white angel” in Kampala have steepened my awareness of how I affect the people around me. I think it’s most important for me to understand and admit that what I’m doing is mostly for my own self-development. To label myself as someone who is “helping” is dangerous, disempowering, and destructive to communities I’m involved with.

There’s not much to say about Sucre, a colonial, racist town with beautiful architecture and tasty chocolate. Sucre sparked an interesting explosion within our group. It’s racist undertones brought up a lot of issues about how we, as a group, are relating to each other and are relating to other Bolivians.

Pretty graveyard in Sucre

On a lighter note, Rosh Hashana was pretty classic. I went to synagogue with people in my program, but sat alone because of the questionable mechitza. There were more or less 40 people at services. I sat next to a woman who complained the whole time… Every time someone walked in, she would explain how they were related to everyone else in the synagogue, what their professions were, and how they were annoying. Eg, “that’s the baby… granddaughter of…. Who works as a secretary for…. The baby is always crying. Always.” Or, “those are the women who come to synagogue just to chat. They sit in the back and chat the whole time.” Afterwards we did Kiddush with the congregation… and substituted shots of whiskey for wine.
p.s. in Bolivia challah is spelled "jala"

Before the holiday, I had mentioned something to my “parents” about it. When I got home after spinning class on the first night of Rosh Hashana, my “mom” was running around and lighting candles, saying that we have to get ready. I was confused until my 14 yr old brother ran through saying “hoy es el dia de los judeos!” Translation: today is the day of the jews! Our aunt came over and my mom prepared a fancy dinner table and served the honey cake that I made with ham and cheese sandwiches. So cute.

Rosh Hashana dinner

The last weaving class that I went to was in a different location to those I’d been going to, in an isolated town 45 minutes outside of cochabamba. Class was at this woman’s house.. basically a small artists colony with drunk/drugged people constantly passing through. The house owner was a white woman who had grown her hair long, dyed it black, braided it, and dressed like a cholita (traditional indig woman). As she was weaving, her blond children were running around and at some point during the session a band was formed on the front porch. Very weird.