Thanksgiving Day in the US

I went to a rural development conference today at a fancy hotel/conference center in Quillacollo, a town just outside Cochabamba. At first I was a little bitter and sickened by the expensive private vehicles with one passenger each pulling into the conference center, and the obvious luxury of the hotel. But once I got to the room our conference was in, I found a room full of indigenous farming folk, speaking Quechua and chewing coca. It smelled like sweat, BO and coca breath. These are my kind of people.
A lot of the conference was in Quechua, which I do not understand, yet. But I felt lucky to be there, definitely the only English speaker and only foreigner. The other attendees were all local government and community leaders, peppered with other NGO workers. I hopefully will get to go to another one of these after working in the field and learning some Quechua.
Lunch was awesome. I was a little timid about loading my plate, but afterward I noticed that everyone piled their plates until they formed a half-sphere mound of food. The salads were left mysteriously untouched. Not a salad eating group. I don't suppose laboring farmers anywhere eat much salad.
While I was at the conference, I had to figure out how to get my official criminal record faxed from the US to the Bolivian Archbishop's office to keep the ball rolling with my visa situation. My parents helped out with the faxing, but then I had to get it translated to English and notarized so the Bolivian government would accept it. For this reason I had to leave early and go to the Archbishop's office. When I got there, the secretary said that I must have very bad luck, because she left the keys to the fax office in her other pants. I asked if there was any other way into the office and she said there were keys in the Archbishop's personal office and the window was open. So I climbed out the window of another office, walked along the edge of the roof as it bent and creaked under my weight and climbed in the Archbishop's window. The keys were there, but there were none that opened the office. Translation will happen tomorrow. Hopefully.

I am now on the patio of Café Yerba Buena, where I will be working tomorrow night. I took this picture before anyone got here, but now the tables are pretty full of German volunteers, English teachers and Bolivian craft vendors. Spanish hip hop is playing.
It's way past bed time. I'll probably pay for a cab at this point.

Fun Facts for Breakfast

21 Nov.

I got woken up for breakfast at 9:00 am with a critical, “Diego?! Are you sleeping? Come eat breakfast! You must eat breakfast! Still sleeping, Deigo.”

It’s so much better in Spanish, “Diego?! Sigues dormido? Ven a desayunar! Tienes que desayunar! Se dormió este Diego.” I love waking up in Bolivia.

Desayunar is the verb, ‘to eat breakfast.’ It means exactly the same thing, though, which in English is actually a verb, too. To break the fast, break-fast. Ayunar is ‘to fast,’ so des-ayunar is to un-fast. I like etymology. There’s a lot of ‘ ’ in this one. Watch out.

I stayed out till 4 am last night, so I was a little sluggish getting to the kitchen.

I heard some great stuff, though, over breakfast. After an annoying lecture on safety, how dangerous it is to ride in unmarked cabs, how thieves are everywhere looking for easy cash and not to answer the door if someone knocks or rings unexpectedly, I learned about evil rainbows, cursed lightning and lightning rocks, and bad spirits that wander the hills at certain hours of the night. Evil rainbows appear sometimes when there are sun showers, which are fairly common during the rainy season here.

Apparently, evil rainbows have all the same colors, but actually touch the ground. The place where they touch down are natural springs of bad water. The water has a salty, sulfur smell and will kill you or any animal if ingested. Also, if you go seeking the sulfery launch spot of evil rainbows, you can here a swooshing noise that will come toward you with a dull flash of color. If this reaches you, forget it, cause that’s it for you. Wearing colorful clothes attracts the rainbow assault, wearing black makes you invisible to it. Doña Celia, as a little girl, went chasing rainbows because she was curious about the legend, even though she had seen and heard of animals dying from it, she wanted to see the rainbow touch down at the bad water. She was wearing a red shawl at the time, but had a black sweater with her. She said that she found the spot, smelled the sulfur, heard the swoosh and saw the flash and ran. She threw on the black sweater and hid beneath a Moye tree.

There are two kinds of lightning; lightning that burns, that has fire in it, and “dry” lightening that doesn’t burn, but is actually rock falling from the sky. If you inspect places where dry lightning falls, you will see that something has embedded itself in the ground, and if you dig it up, you’ll find a super heavy little rock. And if you grind the rock against another one, the dust is blood red when dampened. These rocks are no good to mess around with. Shaman and witch doctors use them for creepy stuff.

It seems that dry lightning and evil rainbows only every occur “en el cerro” or “in the hills” also meaning in the wilderness. Evil spirits wander these parts, too. You can feel them and hear them following you, you can hear them talk, too, but you’ll never understand exactly what they’re saying. If you turn around when they are following you, they can enter you. You get really afraid and run an immediate fever. If you don’t have someone to give you the right smoke and herb treatment, you can get very sick and die. So you tell them to get lost without turning around, and light a cigarette. Black tobacco is better and it’s not necessary to smoke it, just light it and pass it around you as you walk. Evil spirits can’t stand tobacco smoke. This is something I learned in the jungle, too. I was given serious lectures on always having tobacco when I go out alone in the jungle. Doña Celia said she’d buy me some Astoria cigarettes, which are the same ones they smoke in the jungle. They are pure black tobacco, filterless, pretty stinkin’ hard core. They are the same ones they use for ritual offerings in the native traditions here. I guess good spirits like tobacco.

Of course, having a Bible with you and spending 15-30 minutes sitting reading the Bible, any part of it, is good protection from any of these lurking dangers. Fill-up with the Good Spirit and the bad ones can’t touch you.
I’m so glad to be back in Bolivia.
Why does this stuff resonate with me, while Western reason and medicine feel so contrived and blind? Probably, like always, it’s both/and, not either/or.
I can’t wait to get out to Aramasí for real, stay there a week or more and get the feel for the place, the people, the rhythm, atmosphere.

Last night is another story. Result is: I spent too much money, I’m not hung over, and I know that I can go out late without getting sucked into careless, self-destructive behavior. I feel like I was protected from what could happen, but I also felt distant from what other people were experiencing. I was glad to be out, glad to see a bunch of old friends, totally content without feeling the urge to jump into the “joda.” Joder is a bad word, a verb, loosely translated to f#ck, but not really in the same tone. The ‘j’ is a hard ‘h’ sound. It’s used sometimes like, ‘get lost.’ But ‘joda,’ the noun form of the word means something like orgy, in the old sense. It is used mostly in a positive way, but also can mean ‘too much.’ It’s something like ‘chingada’ in Mexican Spanish. If I tried to put my own English definition to it, it would be ‘reckless indulgence at night with alcohol, music, and dancing in a spontaneous coed group.’ ‘Joda’ says it better.
I’m very glad to have been at a Joda without needing to drink deeply of it.
I paid for the first round at a snooty new club called “Hooligans” because I only had a 100 bs. bill (my last one) and never really got reimbursed. That’s the price I paid for going out. I think I got off pretty easy considering how all my friends are feeling this morning.

Oh, and I got a job for tonight working at a café called Yerba Buena (which is their name for spearmint) because they are hosting two birthday parties. Hopefully I’ll make some good tips and crash in town so I don’t have to pay the taxi ride.

I’ll see if I can take more pics. Too much text in these last two.

A Productive Day

20 Nov.

I feel like I did a lot of important things today.

I picked out and organized geographically the pictures that need to be printed and distributed.

Cleaned my pen drive of a pesky virus so the pictures would all fit on it.

Watched The Mouskateers with Alejandra (the 6 year old daughter of the caretaker).

Made up rules with Alejandra as we played a game with incomplete sets of checkers and Clue.

Stayed around La Morada till lunch so I could appreciate Doña Celia’s awesome Sopa de Maní (a creamy peanut soup) made from scratch. I ate two bowls with plenty of llajwua (a tomato based freshly ground ((with a big round rock)) spicy sauce whose active ingredients are locoto and quilquiña) and thin crunchy french fries, like witch fingers.

Took a nap.

Visited the Villa, told jokes, remembered names, danced a bit, generally, made adorable little
Bolivian kids laugh.

Asked around until I got a key to the old storage shed and found a motorcycle buried under wheelbarrows, paint buckets, broken pick axes, and other broken things that no longer resemble what they used to be.

Unburied it, moved it outside, cleaned it and stowed it under a piece of roof at the back of Casa Copacabana.

Also found and unburied a classic blue women’s road bike, inflated the tires, oiled the chain, tuned the gears and breaks and let all the guys in the Villa ride it around the soccer court.

Climbed on the soccer/basketball goals and did pull-ups and skin-the-cats with the guys.

Taught the guys to play hacky sack. Some were pretty good. They liked it I think, but just because I was there. They had real trouble staying in a circle and passing to each other. I didn’t realize hacky sack could teach such important lessons in geometry, cooperation and encouragement.

Road the bike down cobblestone hills, along a sweet smooth flat road and up some of a steep hill. Walked the rest of it. I could really get in good shape if I keep this up.

I hope these are things I will do regularly. But I feel like I’m going to get really busy next week. Lord, save me from busy.

Cochabamba

Thursday already. I have been sick almost a whole week. But I am feeling much better today, however I’m not taking any chances. I already had a warm cup of vitamin C powder from camu-camu pulp and a trimate with lemon juice from the tree outside the window.

My mornings have been leisurely, spent at the dining room table reading proverbs, drinking tea and talking with Donña Celia, the caretaker, and Alejandra, her 6 year old daughter. Donña Celia have been sharing our life stories, testimonies, struggles and faith. We’ve gotten so we talk over each other sometimes, it’s very Latino, I like it. I love that I’m becoming more Latino as I spend time here, speaking Spanish (or Castellano, as they call it), with my old Bolivian friends.
I have been busy in the afternoons running around to collect, copy, and deliver various papers with various signatures and stamps at various prices to various places around the city. I have medical, legal, ecclesiastical, Bolivian and international political documentation to complete, and each document seems to necessitate three trips before it is satisfied. I have a hilarious guide, however, Consuelo. She works in the Archbishop’s office and has connections all over. But her connections do not work in their office every day, so we have to plan our trips strategically so we can pay to have my process expedited. I love Bolivia. Everything must be photocopied and kept in pristine condition.
-looks like I get to go work with Manuel Vargas after all.
Manuel Vargas is the husband of Paula Vargas, the director of Assosociación Amistad Bolivia. Manuel is the head of a project called Las Cuencas de la LLave, which is a holistic development project based on water management. I had a brain numbing morning with him, reading through his project documents and presentations. It is exactly in the vein of what I studied at SIT and will serve me well in forming my own project in Aramasí. Boring stuff, but when I actually get to do it (called implementation in development terminology), hopefully it will pay off.
I had a wonderful adventure getting out to Manuel's office, however. I got to sprint down city streets chasing a micro, their name for mini shuttle buses, jumped over the hood of a car and swung up onto a moving bus. His office is outside of Cocha, in a town called Vinto.
I returned to Cochabamba in time for a meeting with Consuelo and befriended a Colombian nun, Hermana Juana. Consuelo, Hermana Juana our catholic chauffeur and I then road tripped to the Laguna Lalai where the office of the Bolivian anti-crime force headquarters are, FELC (can't remember the acronym).
Hi-light of the day was waiting at the FELC station. I got to talk to Hermana Juana, who was really nice, and really old. And a young couple walked in with a little girl, the little girl managed the four steps down into the station, but got distracted by the ceiling and began to follow her gaze around in a spiral trying to figure out all the elements above her. She lost her balance and fell directly at me. I caught her mid-fall, startling her, and for the rest of my wait she was timidly trying to figure me out. I like unlikely encounters with people I'd never otherwise meet.
Hermana Juana invited me to visit her school/home on the ride back to Cocha and I thought that I should accept, although I really just wanted a nap. Her driver took us deep into Tiquipaya, a very fertile very indigenous zone of Cocha. She showed me around her school which was incrdibly beautiful and lush, even though I know her feet had been hurting. Then I was invited into the patio of he nunery, or whatever it's called. I was interviewed over tea and empanadas by mother superior and an 85 year old retired Italian nun (she was still a nun, just not working at the school). Then I walked probably 4 miles on cobblestone hills back to my room in La Morada.
Now I'm in Casablanca, the cafe I used to work in downtown, using free wi-fi, drinking Bolivian red table wine and there is not an open seat except the one across from me.
Holy molly! There's more. So much has happened. I went to the movies with Roxana, my goddaughter, really just my friend now, it was wild. Every single seat was filled and people were sitting in the isles and on the stairs. And the show after ours had lines around the block both ways! The movie of choice was 2012, and the audience participation made it the best movie I've ever seen in the theater. Everyone was gasping, screaming, discussing the exciting parts, it was awesome. We got balcony seats, which are more expensive, but it was two for one night. One of the kids from the Villa, Ramiro, who had some serious problems and got kicked out was there and he was totally cool, has a cute graphic designer girlfriend. We all went out afterwords and had some green beer at an Irish themed cafe. I introduced them to The Clash.
Ok, that's enough for now. There's more. But I feel like this is enough.

Early thoughts from Hotel Davina, La Paz

Wow, my first blog post. I wrote the following at 5:30 this morning after sending my parents off to the airport with Willy, our persistent taxi driver. I've caught a vicious cold and I'm sure it has affected the tone of this post.

This Blog exists because of my friends who have missed me when I disappeared and expressed interest in reading about what I am up to in Bolivia.

The purpose of this blog is to reveal the glory of God in Christ Jesus.

In holy fear I will record only the honest truth.

I am relieved to give-up self-promotion and self-inflation as the accepted way of finding employment, moving ahead, being a respectable adult. I am terrified of the unflattering details that will appear on these pages, but they will all show how God is at work in the world despite and through our weaknesses.

My heart is sick from trying to talk how I am supposed to talk, write what I am supposed to write and live up to false expectations of someone who I am not.

I am fortunate to have this opportunity to break away from these oppressors and I thank the board of Mission Amistad and the people of Aramasí for bringing me back to Bolivia and my parents, of course, for their support.

I have not even met José, the agronomist, yet. I have seen pictures and heard that he is a jolly man with a sense of humor and a fierce handshake, even with women. He brews his own fertilizer from scratch, I don’t know if he chews coca, but I am very excited to live and work with him and most of all learn about how to grow plants on the rugged rocky slopes of Tapakari.

Aramasí is a town in Tapacarí, which is the poorest and most inhospitable region of Cochabamba, the central most department of Bolivia. There are virtually no paved roads and the vast majority of the people speak only Quechua, a language older than the Inca. You should look it up, it's pretty interesting stuff.

I am going to Aramasí because of a Catholic hermit-monk Father William Wilson, or Padre Willy, who traveled to the little village to be alone and pray amongst the poor. Kind of a contradiction as he soon discovered. The village people percieved him to be a 'padre' or someone assigned by the Catholic Church to help them. They brought him their sick and wounded, domestic issues, demon-possessed, etc. This did not give him much time to pray, so he convinced some people in the states to donate money for a health clinic and went about setting it up so he could get back to praying. In the process, he saw the government orphanages in Cochabamba and generally became intimate with the plight of the poor and marginalized in the this area. He was given some land from a Catholic orphanage to build his own for children not eligible for adoption, met and married a nun, moved back to the states and started Mission Amistad. This story is a cursory version of the original, but you can look that up too, if you want at
http://www.amistadmission.org/html/our_history.html
I guess hypertext is not automatic. Nope, got it.

I've gotta get up and check out of the hotel. Here we go, the downward spiral from 3 star hotel to the streets of La Paz, 8 hour night bus ride to Father Willy's apartment in Cocha, to cleaned out storage room in Aramasí...

Here're some pics from our recent visit with the NPPC team: