The lowlands of Bolivia were incredible. I felt like I was back in Uganda (malaria pills included)... or at home for an Alabama summer. For the first two days of our trip we were in a town called Ascension de Guarayos and stayed in an adorable hotel with loads of hammocks and a few parrots. The town exemplifies my vision of / perfectly illustrates my affection for the developing world – wandering dirt roads lit by a star-crowded sky, drinking 15 cent beer while watching little kids play shoeless soccer, jumping into rivers to cool/clean off, wearing the same t-shirt and shorts for days without worrying because the smells around you are overpowering. Due to a lack of formal entertainment, our group did a lot of bonding... our bonding sessions usually start with intense discussion (do you believe in god? What’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever made?) and end in nudity (usually in the form of skinny dipping).
One day in Ascension de Guarayos, we waded through a river to visit a small, isolated, self-sufficient community. During rainy season, the river gets so full that most people can’t leave the community for months at a time… which makes it difficult when there’s a need for a hospital. The model of the village seemed like an Israeli kibbutz to me- the community is completely self-reliant and the people take care of each other. However, they’re starting to get development advice from the outside- the most recent advice is that they should switch all of their crops to corn so that they can profit off of biodiesel… then they’d be able to buy more things like computers. I hope that doesn’t happen. We have enough homogenous crop fields, biodeisel is a stupid idea, and if other crops disappear, goodbye to self-sufficiency and hello to malnutrition. Rural development models of orgs like World Bank should embrace the idea of a kibbutz… but then we’d have socialism, god forbid.
Ascension de Guarayos
The next day we drove to Santa Cruz – 6 hours of itchy mosquito bites and suffocating heat… not to mention the diarrhea that most of us had from lunch with the community. Santa Cruz’s climate, industry, indigenous groups, and population separate it from the rest of Bolivia and its people violently call for autonomy from the rest of the country. We had been learning about autonomy and the political happenings of Santa Cruz, but I didn’t really understand it until a conversation I had with a creepy old man in the plaza during our last day. I was sitting in the main plaza with a friend, when an old man approached me and started talking to me in broken English. He grew up in Italy and when he was 35 his father gave him ten million dollars. He spent all, yes ALL, of the money traveling the world. He landed in Bolivia and has been here since. He had some interesting perspectives of the country and Evo Morales, “Santa Cruz gives everyone eat because all money is produced here… we give to all of poor because Evo Morales makes cocaine in Cochabamba, we give food to people in the factories and Evo cocaine to Venezuela.” He continued talking about how all of Bolivia was communist except, of course, Santa Cruz.. Then, he started bashing Indios (indig people). I asked how he could tell if someone was an Indio and he replied, “all of the one who are ugly are Indios. Very ugly people.” He went on to tell me that Indios eat each other, they are “false people,” and that if an Indio sat next to us on this bench he would have waved his hands and said, “go away Indio!” Then, I pointed to a black Brazilian who was walking by and asked what he’d do if that person sat next to us. “Of course, it’s ok. No hay racismo (there isn’t racisim) en Santa Cruz.” In class, we’d watched videos of indigenous people being beat up in the streets and riots for autonomy, but I didn’t really understand the situation until then. After telling me that Indios steal, he said that there were no thieves in Santa Cruz because everyone there is rich.
That same day, I went to a photo exhibit sponsored by USAID. The photos were examples of poor public health in the lowlands. They were taken by Bolivians and had written descriptions near them. After the exhibit, there were diagrams of “good development” that were made by the Santa Cruz government in collaboration with USAID. To me it seemed like exploitative propaganda for autonomy. The weirdest thing about the whole Santa Cruz mess is that the U.S. is on their side.
But that’s why I like this country so much… outside of Santa Cruz, Bolivia doesn’t care about U.S. support. They spray paint over USAID signs, tear up roads sponsored by the U.S., and when the U.S. announced that if Evo Morales was elected they’d stop supporting Bolivia, his rankings in Bolivia went up by 40 percent. USAID’s political agenda is SO visible here.. it kind of makes me sad to be part of our country. Coming here after Uganda (which is intensely dependent on foreign aid – especially from mama US) is so refreshing. People are passionate about maintaining their culture and strongly stand against globalization. It’s just such a different experience than I had in Uganda where everything (even beer ads, “Nile, the beer of progress”) was about development and moving forward and globalization.
Anyways, during one of our days in Santa Cruz we went to the sand dunes. We drove our bus there and got stuck in the sand over 5 times. We’d drive, get stuck, get out and push the bus (if pushing wasn’t enough we’d crawl underneath to dig), get back in the bus, drive a few feet, get stuck again, start the process over. It was a good teamwork exercise? It was one of the funniest situations I’ve been part of. The last (and worst) time we got stuck probably lasted for at least an hour of pushing and digging. Finally, our director’s wife (the hare krishna one/my favorite person ever!) started doing reiki on the bus as we were pushing. (Side note: when ever she notices that one of us is lagging or feeling ill, she does reiki on us. Reiki consists of transmitting good energy through one’s hands… I think.) Astoundingly, she was able to transmit her energy to the bus and soon after she started doing her reiki, the bus started moving and we were able to push it out of the sand. After everything, our director admitted that buses had gotten stuck there on many previous SIT excursions. Oh Bolivia…
Lupe transmitting her energy to the bus.....
When we returned to Cochabamba, I had a fever so my mom made me stay in bed all weekend. She made me gargle manzanilla and she cut up raw potatoes and placed them in my arm-pits and on my stomach. She said I couldn’t take them off until they were brown because the brown meant that they’d soaked up the fever… She’s a nurse. It was weird, but I’m lucky to be living with someone who takes such good care of me.
