I was in the countryside over the week conducting surveys

20 July 2011

When houses cease to be just pueblos (formations of mud) and begin to be places where families live-

The Doña with kids in the front yard who imagine that they are owners of a store,

The young mother with three kids jumping on the bed and one on the way...

I can walk out in the morning now and see the effort in the boy's eyes as he tries hard to peddle on his rusty bike to school.

I can see on women's' faces the places where wrinkles form not because they always work in the fields or outside with their children, but because when they laugh from their bellies they smile and squish their noses while gathered together discussing who is considered the "leader" of the household.

12 July 2011


I am starting to really like you, Bolivia.

at a hostel in Salar de Uyuni

1 July 2011

I've made a friend. A little girl wearing a purple jacket is reaching for my hand so that I may give her more Pringles. Her mom is telling her to come inside to eat.

So yesterday we took a bus and then a train and arrived in Uyuni last night. I thought Bolivians exaggerate the cold, but after being here, I realize that they weren't overemphasizing the the frigid weather of the Salar. The temperature on the train dropped significantly as were coming upon the town. Luckily, Pepe's mom lent me a huge, insulated, rapper-style jacket.

When we got to the town the four of us plopped our backpacks in our hostel rooms and headed out in search for a bar. The town was deserted. Imagine the movie "Silent Hill." Okay. Good. We walked around until we saw this colored discoball outside of a doorway. We walked in and sat down next to the propane heater. We were the only ones at the bar and shared a Huari together. That night was freezing. Either from my cold or the altitude or the cold, I woke up a few times gasping for air. I decided then that I wasn't going to change my clothes. (I slept in the same outfit for days.) In the morning we found some alpaca legwarmers, gloves, and a sweater. Afterward, we (along with a Brit and 2 Brazilians) squeezed into the Toyota SUV and drove to the salt hotel, the salt flats, artisan stores, until finally making it here.

It's been somewhat a fantasy of mine to be among llamas and wild alpaca...and here I am! This hostel has a stone-fence enclosing a handful of llamas. Not knowing what to do until dinner, we took out our cameras and walked around the hostel. You can see "wild" (or unreleased) animals - donkeys, llamas, and there are also flamingos and small birds. After Ana and I took some shots of randomly placed llama carcasses, I began exploring alone. This "town" (maybe 6 houses? a church?) has these stone-walls all over the place. At first, the walls didn't appear to have a specific layout, but after entering more and more rectangles I realized that I was lost in some planned out property maze. I guess this trip has been my closest experience with actually living in a "third-world" country. The houses here are made out of mud and those that have been abandoned still show the previous tenants' presence: rusty cans, bones, feathers, and remnants of pottery. I couldn't imagine living in this cold like this longer than a few days. Bolivia certainly has many, many contrasts.

Well now that the group has returned back to the hostel, I can give the little girl's mom her pen back and see what's next on the agenda.

ciao!

guess where I'm going tomorrow...

30 June 2011


Bolivia has the most unimaginable sights.

la casa

29 June 2011

el micro (the small bus comes up the hill to pick me up)
the chofer of the micro

I am listening to "Junip" while sitting in the kitchen. The family's maid, Vinceta (a 15 year old indigenous girl who lives in the house), is making lunch. Last night I came home early from work because I wasn't feeling that well. I boiled water on the stove (the only way you can drink water) to make tea and watched Animal Planet with her. The episode was about monkeys then it was about tigers. I woke up today with a head-cold and slept in.

Life here seems easier because there isn't much excess. Like everywhere else in the world besides the United States, Bolivians are very conscious of energy use and make sure to turn off and unplug appliances and lights that are not in use. Pepe's family is well-off financially but they aren't replacing household items just to have the newest trends. His mom prefers to still go to the market than to go to the emerging Western style grocery stores (where I bought my black beans for dinner the other night). The refrigerator is the size of the one that I had in my tiny apartment. They don't have snack food. They have fruit and bread on the table always, but they don't have chips, cookies, or random foods for munching. I'm so used to having back-up everything - kitchen gadgets, leftovers, etc.

When I tell my friends in the U.S. about our maid, they are shocked. And I guess when I first studied abroad in Mexico, I was shocked too. It seemed strange that I had studied colonialism and the domination of the indigenous civilizations by the conquistadors as something that was in the past, but it was still very reminiscent in present times. Maybe it's only strange because in Latin America you have your own locals working as maids. I mean, shouldn't it be as strange in the U.S. when families hire Mexican maids/nannies? I talked to Pepe about this and he said that offering Vinceta a position as a maid in his house was giving her a better life than she would have had. Still, she's not going to school...but she does love Animal Planet. A good idea would be to set up a local school for maids to come to at non-maid hours of the day. Also, she listens to her headset a lot - having educational lessons that they can listen to while they work could be something as well. Ah, the International Development student in me. The more I travel, the more I hope to not just accept the way things are. It's an unsettling feeling.



Lunch is ready.

chapare y chit chats

27 June 2011

On Thursday I journeyed to Villa Tunari in Chapare for the weekend. It was remarkable to: trek the jungle, repel for my first time (and down a waterfall to boot), enter a bat cave, dodge bats in a bat cave, listen to blind birds squeal, dance at the small town's discoteca, and do the whole group thing in a hostel. It was only a 3-4 hour trip outside of the city, yet the climate and terrain changed drastically. I could just feel the moisture returning to my lips while on the bus getting there.

La transición:

In recent decades, the Chapare province has become a haven for illegal cultivation of the coca plant, which can be used to produce cocaine. This is due to Bolivian drug law, which until recently only permitted the Yungas region to legally grow coca, despite Chapare being a historical area for growth due to its fertility. For this reason, Chapare has been a primary target for coca eradication in recent years, with frequent and heated clashes between the Drug Enforcement Administration and Bolivian cocaleros. The law has since been changed by a deal that was struck between Evo Morales (a former coca activist and current President) and former President Carlos Mesa.
-from Wikipedia

Eli: Evo is all into coca cultivation, why doesn't he tell the DEA to F off?
Pepe: That's wrong (referring to the Wikipedia page). The DEA is no longer in Bolivia. The American government was using the DEA to have military power in Bolivia.
Me: Why would we want a military presence in Bolivia? Afraid of the Socialist movement?
Pepe: It's anti-imperialism. He (Evo) doesn't like anything that relates to the U.S. The U.S. just wants to be here.
Me: But the U.S. has been neglecting Latin American interests for like fifteen years, why Bolivia?
Eli: Yeah, the U.S. doesn't have much strategic interest here.
Pepe: That is what everyone says. But after the DEA left, there have been more drug trafficking cases, so right now the drug trafficking has risen like 400% and it's a big problem.
Me: So maybe the DEA should be here.
Eli: Well I feel that creates conflict here too, I mean you look at Mexico with the U.S. involvement 35 thousand people have still been killed.
Pepe: You know what's been happening in Bolivia, they found some Mexican guys here, so you can see everything connecting. But before, you couldn't see Colombians or Mexicans, but now it's more international, more dangerous.
Eli: Yeah, like any industry where you can multiply your profits, why stop it?
Pepe: In the past few years, they built around 100 buildings and no one can explain the construction because we're in an economic crisis. Everyone is saying it's money laundering.

I should do my research. It seems that no one really knows what's going on. Feel free to chime in.

...and then we ate my American meal with my Bolivian family...black bean burgers and fries!