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.