¿Y ahora, qué?

¨The problem with our president is that he has no education,¨says my hostess, above the clink of silverware on china. This is my first salad in 10 days that doesn´t require a side dish of immodium. I´m entranced with the lettuce. I utter some kind of vague ¨please go on¨ sound. ¨He´s an intelligent man, but he only finished fourth grade. And he doesn´t listen to people with expertise. He just wants to listen to the people.¨

I steal a glance at Rosa´s face as she clears away soup bowls, but I can´t even detect a shadow of emotion. Her long braids fall across her arm.

¨What do you think of the proposed changes to the constitution?¨ I ask.

¨Rosita, get out the dishes for dessert,¨ my hostess chirps, and, without a pause, ¨You can´t get a job in the government anymore if you aren´t of native descent.¨

My hosts have good reason to resent this reordering of society: their son, unable to secure a post in the current government, is now working in Africa.

¨What do you think of Bolivia after six years?¨ I am asked.

¨I love it. It´s the place I keep coming back to, because of ...¨

¨It´s gotten dangerous. With my bad knee, I don´t go out much anymore. If someone tries to rob me, I can´t run.¨ We´ve entered a favorite morsel of conversation of the affluent, a safe haven in a world of unpredictable responses. I calculate: invective toward thieves can easily carry us through the lunch unless I choose to intercept.



Of course, those with resources are not the only ones to dwell on robbery and theft (ratero). In many marketplaces and communities, you will find thieves hung in effigy. The sentiment took a particularly potent turn on the day of my arrival: people from the lakeside town of Achacachi caught a band of thieves. They rounded up the eleven culprits, beat them severely, and then corraled them in a bus and set fire to it. Two died before the flames were extinguished. ¨Community justice,¨ the nightly news called it.



¨That´s not community justice,¨ my friend from Achacachi, Cleto, protests. He tells a story of an affair in a community near his own. The wife, with community officials in tow, surround the house of the clandestine couple and fish the husband out from under the bed. ¨You´ve hurt your family and your community,¨ they tell him, ¨You´ve beaten your wife, and now she doesn´t want you back.¨ They run the husband and his lover out of town. Although Aymaran society has its many flaws, I am reminded of something I heard years ago: ¨In the perfect society, exile is the worst of all possible punishments.¨



Back at the lunch table, rain is pouring outside in a pristine garden. I´ve asked my hosts to call a taxi for me. They are imparting last words of wisdom, ¨Don´t let them charge you more than 12 bolivanos. Don´t talk about anything but the weather to the driver. If he asks if you like our president, say yes.¨



_______________



I´ll take you back to the beginning of this trip. Your arrival at the airport could not be a better point of reentry into Bolivia. ¨Your flight doesn´t leave until 7:45 PM,¨ you are told, ¨And you have a visa, right?¨ It´s 10 AM. You´ve arrived (with about 5 hours of sleep in 48 hours) for a 12:00 flight. ¨Visa?¨ you croak, ¨I need a visa?¨




Subtlely, the laws of the land (at least your destination) start creeping back. ¨Y ahora, ¿qué?¨ people respond to almost any obstacle here (And now what?) It is at once a declaration of resignation to the new rules of the game, a refocusing of energy toward resolution, and a plea for guidance.



_______________________


Fast forward a week. You´ve made it to La Paz and you´ve finished your lunch. You´ll travel an hour upward in a series of taxis and buses into the commercial district (La Ceja - literally, the eyebrow) above La Paz, somewhere between 13,000-14,000 feet in altitude. In route you´ve passed billboards pushing cell phones and vegetable oil. Increasingly, they also provide political and public health messages: ¨Evo, you didn´t abandon us and the people won´t abandon you¨ or ¨If you love your family, don´t hurt them.¨

Now in La Ceja, you´re surrounded by buses whose callers who hang out the windows of old vans (minis) chanting their destinations, like hundreds of auctioneers, their sales are punctuated by horns and the roll and slam of bus doors. Weatherworn police blow their whistles and try to herd the mass of buses forward in a losing battle against the congestion. The air is thick with the smell of ripe mangos, onions, potatoes, fish. Sidewalks are filled with vendors and buyers, so you dodge pedestrians and cars in the cobbled streets. You will (literally) rub shoulders with buses as you slip across an intersection. If you are taller than 5´4´´, you also learn to duck in cadence to as to avoid running into the poles that hold up the awnings of stands.


In my first blog entry, I referred to El Alto as a ¨slum,¨ as it is commonly referred to in tour books and travel entries. That cavelier use of the word has been grating at me ever since. At first glance, the choice of word is adequate: effective sewage systems have yet to reach many areas of the ever expanding city; tap water is by no means potable; trash piles up in dry river beds between zones; packs of half wild dogs chase after a bitch in heat; children rarely or never play outside unattended for safety reasons; many streets remain unpaved. On a Saturday afternoon like today, you´ll find people sleeping off a drinking spell on the sidewalk of certain areas.

But here´s the thing: this is the place where you can start with next to nothing and create a life. Houses are always under construction, half-finished second stories serving as a testiment to ambitions for the future. Earthy saaviness prevails here: adobe bricks absorb the heat of the sun by day, to the extent that I´ve sometimes been convinced that there must be a space heater somewhere. Behind expressionless steel doors lie sunny courtyards where water heats in the sun for use in bathing and washing clothes. Here you will also note the pride that people take in their surroundings: vendors sweeping trash and dust off the sidewalks, plazas being re-imagined and rebuilt, reluctant saplings and grass coaxed into growth in the medians. Children in uniforms heading off to school. This is home - a good home, at that - to many people.


To be continued...

Of toilet paper and other sundries

To explore a world of meaning, toilet paper is as good a place to start as any. In Bolivia, you will find ubiquitous pink rolls, the cheapest option. They serve the obvious purpose, and they also double (quintuple?) as kleenex, paper towels, napkins, and a nutritional supplement for youngsters. I don´t know if it´s possible for paper to have lead in it, but there`s something utterly irresistable to small children about these rolls, rivaling even the culinary allure of playdoh. I`ve witnessed some impressive slights of hand on the part of dexterous toddlers evading the watchful eyes of their parents.

Toilet paper serves at least a few other social purposes. It helpfully indicates areas that have been ¨rezoned¨as public restrooms. It is also a symbol of commonalities or differences in economic status and understanding. Tourists and the upper class carry about packets of kleenex and stock their bathrooms with soft, white toilet paper, the cost of which, during cold season, could rival a working class family`s daily budget for food. (Incidentally, children seem to have no interest whatsoever in the consumption of white toilet paper.)

On a bus ride back from Río Abajo, Zenobia and I are portioning out of the last of her overtaxed pink roll. The stifling air of the bus is a soporific; at least half of the 18 passengers inside the (12 person) van are sound asleep. It would appear that even the half dozen stowaway flies are dozing as well, and I can only hope that the 4 or 5 people perched on the roof are immune to the allure of sleep. Sleep seems to come even more forcefully with the rocky road, stream crossings, and steep rises and drops that would tax even a four wheel drive. We dodge trucks and sheep herds in small towns where parked cars hug the adobe walls of houses like teenagers with their ears pressed against doors, hoping to catch fragments of conversations. We each have a sweaty, sleeping child in our laps, exhausted from the day`s travel and exploration.

In Huaricana, we have visited my friend`s elderly father (Emilio), who apologizes profusely for the state of his house. He just bought this house, he explains. He has plans for it: he will paint over the graffiti on the walls, replace the rotting wooden floors, plant some trees inside the small, bare courtyard. I find it hard to get across to him that most people in the U.S. would travel long distances to catch a glimpse of the world that he sees outside of his window every day. Steep, burgundy-stained canyon walls surround this village. Snow-covered Mount Illimani glares from just beyond the peaks of these mountains (hills, Bolivians would insist). Peaches, figs, bananas, pac´aya, and pears grow naturally in these parts, and the valley cascades downward in a patchwork of lush flower and vegetable patches. These are fed, not by the putrid waters of the river that created (and was destroyed by) La Paz, far to our left as we descend, but by pristine waters flowing from the mountains to our right. Each patch is tended by hand by farmers armed with an instrument that looks like a pick on one side and a hoe on the other. They dig open the openings of elaborately dug channels to let water flow through the patch.

Huaricana is still an oasis from a growing presentiment that water shortages (and ensuing water struggles) are impending in Bolivia. Those closest to the earth are the first to sound the alarm. ¨The wells are going dry,¨ one friend tells me of his village. ¨People go to get water at 3 AM. At 4 AM, it`s too late.¨ ¨The earth is dry,¨ I am told, over and over again. ¨Why?¨ I ask. ¨The water isn`t coming down off the hills like it used to,¨ Salomè tells me. Is this a phase, or is it a sign of things to come? ¨The land is changing,¨ they answer.

I believe their intuition of the land and climate, just as I`ve come to trust their instant recognition of thieves and bad food. ¨That man has the face of a thief,¨ my co-worker once told me as we were boarding a bus (in perfect foreshadowing). ¨Not this salchipapa stand,¨ I would be warned, or, ¨It`s better to buy fish from the other street.¨

If ever you should share a drink in Bolivia, you will offer the first taste back to the earth (ch`allar), a tradition rooted in pre-Incan wisdom about the relationship between people and the earth that they inhabit. In a land of tremendous ingenuity and natural richness, it brings me sadness to know that it may in the end be the indescriminate consumption of resources in another hemisphere that disrupts the long-standing balance between these people and their land.

Waking up in the city of peace

This, my first entre into the world of blogging, is driven by the realization that I´ll never remember to share with you all the stories that I intended to store away for our next encounter. It is also a fight against the reality that the forcefulness and abundance of our experiences is inevitably distilled down to a few sterilized parcels to be unwrapped upon solicitation, passed around the table, and repackaged like Christmas ornaments for the next occasion.

Thus, I can´t promise a comprehensive account of my travels, or for that matter, any great revelations (despite what the blog name might suggest-- though thank you, Marc, for the impressive sounding title to my vagrancy). Feel free to partake of my ramblings as you wish, pass it on to whomever might take interest, and share your musings as you see fit.

So, this blog starts in La Paz, Bolivia. Rather than apologize for my utter lack of organization in putting this together a month ago, prior to the Northeastern road trip, I´m going to insist that this is a literary device and promise to share some morsels in flashback.

To live in the altiplano is to engage in a continual war with the cold, even now, at the end of spring. It lurks in the cracks between bricks, nestles in the concrete floors, and penetrates as a biting wind. Those with least refuge from it (people living in rural villages or El Alto - the ever expanding "slum" perched on the edges of La Paz´s jagged scar) guard with religious ferocity against its siege. To let precious body heat escape is paramount to treachery, and I´ve been fussed at many times for opening a jacket in the midst of a brisque hike or a game of soccor. Expectant mothers in the villages where I worked refused to take advantage of free hospital delivery; one of the top reasons they inevitably shared with me was the coldness of the delivery rooms. My friends here have no idea what temperature it is outside (I have yet to meet anyone with a temperature gauge of any kind), but they know exactly how the wind is blowing and whether the night will be particularly brutal. If ever you should sleep in El Alto, you will sleep under the weight of dozens of blankets, the deepest sleep you will have felt since the womb.

Here I am woken by the curious giggles of Katy (my godchild, now 4 years old) and her more timid sidekick, Erika (age 2). Katy is intrepid and insatiable. She memorizes my crude translations of Goodnight Gorilla and the Three Bears within a day and starts "reading" the books to her sister. She commandeers the 50 piece puzzle that I brought for another young friend and has put it together at least a dozen times (more, if you consider that Erika steadily and patiently destroys her work as she goes). On the bumpy road down to Zona Sur last night, Katy insists on endless games of Thumb War and Rock, Scissors, Paper (though she doesn´t understand the strategic disadvantage of choosing scissors every time).

Today I ventured out into the city for the first time. For a while I tag along behind a friend who is intent on finding a business card holder amongst the hundreds of tiny (and understocked, at least when it comes to business card holders) shops. We criss-cross the busy market street in a game of Frogger, as I try to remember how to not get run over. (More on Rules of the Road another time). Two dozen shops, one irritable attendant, and one illegal parking job later, we return home with her prize.

This afternoon I ascended to the city center, where a rush of memories come back. I´m starting to remember the names of city districts, buildings (which everyone seems to know better than street names), street slang. The hills are steeper than I remember them, and - still short of breath - I cannot breeze through the crowds of vendors, tourists, and migrants as quickly as I once could. Yes this place - with its crooked cobbled streets, chorus of bus callers, crush of vendors, and the persistant taste of hope wafting through the air - still feels like home.