Posts
It’s warm and sunny here on the east coast, a big change from the cool winter Arctic breezes of Santa Cruz. It’s nice to experience at least a week of summer, and I’m glad that the Memorial Day vacationers have good weather to enjoy.
We drove directly from the airport down to Delaware, to visit some relatives. The trees are green and vibrant and leafy. It made me want to get out into nature. But I’ll have to save that for next weekend.
This weekend we went to visit relatives at an assisted living facility, basically a nursing home. It’s a good facility, with kind, attentive staff (many foreign born), nice facilities, activities, and decent food. But two very important things were missing – autonomy and dignity.
While in many cases it’s for their own safety, residents are treated like children, or zoo animals, with rules about what they can and can not have, what they are allowed to do and when. For some, it’s necessary. But for others, especially those who are independent and have lived a vibrant life, it can only feel suffocating and demeaning.
My own grandparents lived in such a facility and they were equally unhappy. It was just bearable as long as they were both alive. But once my grandfather passed away, my grandmother found it miserable. Worst of all, for her, was the high-school like atmosphere, where she wasn’t allowed to sit at the same table with “the cool ladies,” and the lack of people who shared her interests.
While the residents never mention it, I think the worst aspect of all must be being surrounded by aging, suffering, and dying. Of watching your friends and neighbors die off around you, a constant reminder of what’s to come. No matter how bad off I am, I’d rather live with a family, with people of various ages, so that I could at least partake in or watch their lives, to have something to focus on besides death.
Another challenge is how one can continue to feel meaningful, a useful part of society, in such a place. As part of a family, an elderly person can watch young children, can bake a pie, can tell a story, can fix something that’s broken – little things that contribute to the household and make them feel like they have relevance. Without relevance, it seems hard to find the self-esteem and motivation to go on. In this facility, the best one can do is to become part of a committee – such as the garden committee. It allows one to achieve something and to have a goal.
“But we have too many helpers here,” said Robert, a former active gardener, and a former member of the committee. “I’d like to be able to do something myself.”
I don’t spend too much time in such facilities. But I’ve yet to meet someone who is really happy to be living there. It makes me sad that our culture is set up with a focus only on the nuclear family, that the ties don’t bind across generations like they do in other countries. It makes me sad that the elderly are treated as something to take care of, rather than respected and included in familial life. It makes me sad that many people don’t have the funds to live in such a nice facility, or to have the regular home care they might need to live with their families. It makes me sad that people who are lucky enough to have lived long lives, spend their final years in sadness and loneliness.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
When it Rains, You're Stuck
Lately I’ve been using the taxis from a five star hotel near my house. For my most common destinations, they charge me the same price as other radio taxis (those you call, and are more secure than taxis caught off the street). Plus, it’s convenient to be able to walk out and get a taxi whenever I need one, since I never know how long it will take a radio taxi to arrive.
I also find that these are the only taxi drivers I feel completely comfortable with. The cars tend to be in better condition. But much more importantly, they are calm, professional, reliable and they all know each other. One of them couldn’t do anything wrong and get away with it. With any other drivers, even the radio taxis, I feel a certain caution and nervousness, as though at any minute the driver could pull something. None have yet, and the majority are good, honest people. But there have been enough cases of bad taxis that the typical local understands the need to be careful and is quick to offer tips. Only in these hotel taxis can I relax and do without that nervous caution.
I woke up at 5 a.m. this morning to a powerful rainstorm. When I left for work, it was still raining lightly. I commented to the driver on how little traffic there was.
“Yes, most people live on the outskirts of the city. And when it rains, they have a hard time leaving their homes because of the muddy roads.”
He told me that he himself lives on the outskirts, and had a hard time getting out this morning. The roads are truly terrible, made of dirt and dust. Even a little bit of water can turn them into a muddy soup. I’ve driven on some of them and each time, I’m amazed at how vehicles, buses and pedestrians make their way through.
I asked him whether the government was making any progress in paving some of these roads. It seems a shame to prevent people from getting to work whenever it rains, especially since those who tend to live in these areas tend to be people who need the income.
“No,” he said. “They just fill the holes in the road. Our area is very low-lying. A while ago, they whole place was flooded.”
During the day, I had a hard time getting a cab off the street, with one of them trying to charge me 50 percent more because of the water. I approached one at the same time as a man and the frustration I felt when he jumped in made me feel like I was in New York City.
In the evening, I couldn’t get a ride at all. The radio-mobile company I usually use didn’t answer the phone. I caught a ride with a coworker to a supermarket, where there are always taxis. Tonight, there weren’t. I called the company and was told they didn’t have any taxis available.
I stood there for quite a while, with no luck. When I saw a hotel taxi approach, I jumped on it, but the passenger had asked the driver to wait for him. I asked the driver if he could call another hotel taxi to come get me. Several minutes later, I finally had a ride.
The driver told me that taxis don’t want to work when it’s raining, both because of the muddy roads, but also because the puddles make it difficult to see holes in the road. He told me how he took someone to a city market in the rain and his tire was damaged when he hit a hole that was underwater.
“But we work regardless of the weather,” he said. “And we only work with a limited clientele – people from the hotel and people who live in the surrounding condominiums. That way, it’s safer for us. We have less problems and it’s better for the passengers as well. They can trust us. If anyone ever forgets something in the car, they know they’ll get it back.”
He told me he’s been working as a taxi driver for the past six months. Before that, he worked as a police officer. He told me he earned about $120 a month and worked 10 hour days. But he didn’t like that he frequently had to travel to the site of disturbances, so he couldn’t have lunch with his family. Plus, he didn’t like the danger and the fighting.
I asked what the most frequent problem was.
“Protests,” he said, without pause. I asked him if it was true that police don’t have the right to prevent protestors from blocking roads.
“Yes,” he said. “Because this is a democracy and people have the right to express themselves in public. As long as they aren’t damaging anything, they have the right to organize.”
“But why can’t they organize in a park?” I asked. “Don’t other people have the right to use public roads and to be able to get to work and lead their lives?”
He agreed, but didn’t seem to think much could be done. “Just this morning, the college students were protesting at the airport and disturbing flights,” he said.
When I asked Oscar why the government just can’t pass a law prohibiting blocking transportation routes and give the police the power to break them up, he answered, “Because this is a government that came into power through blocking streets.”
I also find that these are the only taxi drivers I feel completely comfortable with. The cars tend to be in better condition. But much more importantly, they are calm, professional, reliable and they all know each other. One of them couldn’t do anything wrong and get away with it. With any other drivers, even the radio taxis, I feel a certain caution and nervousness, as though at any minute the driver could pull something. None have yet, and the majority are good, honest people. But there have been enough cases of bad taxis that the typical local understands the need to be careful and is quick to offer tips. Only in these hotel taxis can I relax and do without that nervous caution.
I woke up at 5 a.m. this morning to a powerful rainstorm. When I left for work, it was still raining lightly. I commented to the driver on how little traffic there was.
“Yes, most people live on the outskirts of the city. And when it rains, they have a hard time leaving their homes because of the muddy roads.”
He told me that he himself lives on the outskirts, and had a hard time getting out this morning. The roads are truly terrible, made of dirt and dust. Even a little bit of water can turn them into a muddy soup. I’ve driven on some of them and each time, I’m amazed at how vehicles, buses and pedestrians make their way through.
I asked him whether the government was making any progress in paving some of these roads. It seems a shame to prevent people from getting to work whenever it rains, especially since those who tend to live in these areas tend to be people who need the income.
“No,” he said. “They just fill the holes in the road. Our area is very low-lying. A while ago, they whole place was flooded.”
During the day, I had a hard time getting a cab off the street, with one of them trying to charge me 50 percent more because of the water. I approached one at the same time as a man and the frustration I felt when he jumped in made me feel like I was in New York City.
In the evening, I couldn’t get a ride at all. The radio-mobile company I usually use didn’t answer the phone. I caught a ride with a coworker to a supermarket, where there are always taxis. Tonight, there weren’t. I called the company and was told they didn’t have any taxis available.
I stood there for quite a while, with no luck. When I saw a hotel taxi approach, I jumped on it, but the passenger had asked the driver to wait for him. I asked the driver if he could call another hotel taxi to come get me. Several minutes later, I finally had a ride.
The driver told me that taxis don’t want to work when it’s raining, both because of the muddy roads, but also because the puddles make it difficult to see holes in the road. He told me how he took someone to a city market in the rain and his tire was damaged when he hit a hole that was underwater.
“But we work regardless of the weather,” he said. “And we only work with a limited clientele – people from the hotel and people who live in the surrounding condominiums. That way, it’s safer for us. We have less problems and it’s better for the passengers as well. They can trust us. If anyone ever forgets something in the car, they know they’ll get it back.”
He told me he’s been working as a taxi driver for the past six months. Before that, he worked as a police officer. He told me he earned about $120 a month and worked 10 hour days. But he didn’t like that he frequently had to travel to the site of disturbances, so he couldn’t have lunch with his family. Plus, he didn’t like the danger and the fighting.
I asked what the most frequent problem was.
“Protests,” he said, without pause. I asked him if it was true that police don’t have the right to prevent protestors from blocking roads.
“Yes,” he said. “Because this is a democracy and people have the right to express themselves in public. As long as they aren’t damaging anything, they have the right to organize.”
“But why can’t they organize in a park?” I asked. “Don’t other people have the right to use public roads and to be able to get to work and lead their lives?”
He agreed, but didn’t seem to think much could be done. “Just this morning, the college students were protesting at the airport and disturbing flights,” he said.
When I asked Oscar why the government just can’t pass a law prohibiting blocking transportation routes and give the police the power to break them up, he answered, “Because this is a government that came into power through blocking streets.”
Saturday, May 19, 2007
San Javier
This weekend I made my second excursion from Santa Cruz. Granted, not much for two months in Bolivia, but I'm getting there. I so enjoyed my time in Samaipata, experiencing the peaceful calm of small town life, and the invigorating freshness of mountain air, that I set a goal to travel at least twice a month.
San Javier is a town within the Mission Circuit, a series of towns and villages with beautiful and historic Jesuit churches that were named UNESCO World Heritage Sites. If I had more time, I'd take a week or so and make a loop of the towns. That would be the easiest way of doing it. But since I don't have that much time, I figured I'd spend a weekend in one town, and later, a weekend or two in others.
I chose to go to San Javier first because it's the closest to Santa Cruz, about 4 hours away. I left on a bed-bus (with reclining seats and leg rests) at 8 p.m. and arrived by midnight, giving me the whole weekend here.
I was the only passenger on the bus that got off here. And I have to admit that disembarking in an unknown place at midnight did make me nervous. Especially when I found out that no one from the hotel had come to meet me, as promised. I had no choice but to walk through the town in the still of the night to try to find my hotel. Except for on the main road, where shops sold local cheeses, baked goods and drinks to passengers and truck drivers, there wasn't a soul on the street. I reached the plaza and found it empty, dark, and forbidding. I saw the names of other hotels, but everything looked boarded up for the night, with thick wooden doors.
I couldn't find the hotel on my first try, so I went back to the main road to ask for directions, then tried again. I was very thankful when I arrived, was let in, and received my very own room and bed. I felt much more relaxed and safe.
My hotel, the Gran Hotel Reposo Del Guerrero, is simple but nice. Rooms are arranged around an attractive patio, filled with chairs, hammocks, trees, plants and wildflowers. I have my own bathroom, A/C, and more importantly in the current cold weather, nice blankets - all for $10 a night. Unfortunately for such a nice place, I think I'm the only guest here.
Most people visit the churches on a tour. And therefore, many tourists just pass by - take a look at the church and move on. I knew there might not be a whole lot to fill a weekend, but I brought books and a mini-computer and looked forward to some down time. However, I ended up finding plenty of interesting things today.
I started my day visiting the local San Javier cheese factory. I was hoping to watch the process. They wouldn't let me inside, but they did sell me fresh cheese and yogurt, produced from the milk of four local dairies.
It felt nice to walk through town - to watch the families zoom past on motorcycles, up to three people aboard, to see the beautiful thatched roofs, that fit as neatly as a hat, to see the green, tree-dotted plains and the blue hills rising up in the distance. A friendliness and a slowness moved through the air, and I immediately felt the difference. I could walk here without looking over my shoulder, I could pause to watch the toddler in the cowboy hat run across the field, or the woman giving a man in a haircut in a single-chair beauty shop.
I went to the church, not really expecting much but an excuse to spend a weekend here, to say that I saw something. I've done all the great churches of Europe and considered myself churched-out. So this church must really be remarkable, because I was impressed and awestruck.
Approaching it from the square, I thought the carved pillars of faded wood, the pitched wooden roof, the heavy brown doors, and the the ivory carvings and brown fretwork were beautiful. Like the other buildings on the center square, surrounding the ample green park, the church took up an entire block. A covered walkway ran along the face of it, making it look like a long cow shed, but a much fancier one than the building opposite or diagonal it. A wooden belltower rose up from the interior grounds, with four bells visible from the center square. So far it was nice, but nothing amazing.
It was when I walked into the attached museum, which led into the church and its property, that I realized this was something special. The carved wooden museum pieces - the sacrificial cross, the old bells, the statues, were filled with an aura of age and beauty. They had been so much more lovingly than the gilded materials in many church. It was real artistic creation and it showed.
In the grounds, I walked under wooden porticos with carved wooden columns on one side, beautiful carvings and paintings along the church exterior on the other. The chapel was a wonder unto itself. Five carved scenes, framed in gold, surrounded a golden carved Jesus. The long and wide nave was a maze of carved and painted wooden boards and columns. No board, no surface, were spared the artist's hand, not even the upper boards of the roof. Everything was carved and painting. Except for the gold frames, nothing shone or glittered. The beauty was more gentle, natural, loving.
Carved cherubs with wings smiled down from the walls, over full-body carvings of saints. Two young boys went through the pews with rags, racing each other to clean the fastest, driving along the pews as though in an Indy-500 race.
Besides the beauty of the churches, another aspect that has made the mission circuit famous is the baroque music the Jesuits taught to the locals and carried on by youth musical groups. It's a little seen phenomenon when young village natives become masterful violinists or operatic singers. From what I'd heard, the quality is very good and these groups travel widely.
The mission circuit holds a two-week music festival in the summer (that would be six months from now) and they put on concerts over three weekends in the winter. I was disappointed to hear that I'd just missed one of those concert weekends. The next would be in early July and I hoped I could return.
As I exited the other side of the church and strolled the grounds, I suddenly heard a sharp, beautiful melody. Was someone playing a tape of this music? I approached the sound - the choralic ah, hah, hahs, the operatic arias, the smooth orchestral notes. I glanced into a dusty screened window and saw it was live, a group was practicing. I felt so lucky to come across this, I sat on the grass until the practice was over, enjoying the beautiful melodies.
They disbanded with members still calling out operatic notes, with violinists walking around while still practicing chords. As I'd heard, they were young, about high school age, average looking boys and girls, with jackets and backpacks. Yet they spent their Saturday mornings practicing in a dark church room and had the ability to produce a breathtaking sound.
I stopped by the Buen Ganadero for lunch, a recommended local restaurant. For less than four dollars, I had fresh squeezed peach juice, a giant, tender cut of beef, two fried eggs, french fries, salad and rice. It was enough to last me for the entire day.
During my afternoon stroll, I found the soccer field, where motorcycles were abandoned in a group, their owners in the stalls watching the game. I found a small tourist office, where there was a museum about the Yarituses. This religious group existed before the Jesuits. They dress in masks and costumes and dance in honor of Piyo. When the Jesuits arrived, they allowed them to continue dancing, as long as they danced in honor of San Pedro and Pablo.
The woman told me that every June 29th and 30th, they dance from the church to the Apostle's Rock, a large rock a few blocks away that she suggested I visit. So I walked toward it in the afternoon, and what did I happen to see, but a group of Yarituses, in costume, dancing in a circle in front of the rock and in front of a giant, iron cow.
I happened across the opening ceremony for a new art gallery that is located within a rock, a small, subterranean, artsy place that is meant to expand San Javier's cultural offerings. The area is actually more of a rock forest than one single, imposing rock, and I walked along a path surrounded by giant boulders and trees.
As usual, darkness fell by 6:30 and I was back in my room by then. I heard the church bells chime at 7, a light, melodic sound that carried across the village. But I decided to wait until the next morning to see part of a mass. I like the quiet and the isolation that falls in small towns at darkness, giving me nothing to do but read, write and sleep. It's very calming and relaxing.
San Javier is a town within the Mission Circuit, a series of towns and villages with beautiful and historic Jesuit churches that were named UNESCO World Heritage Sites. If I had more time, I'd take a week or so and make a loop of the towns. That would be the easiest way of doing it. But since I don't have that much time, I figured I'd spend a weekend in one town, and later, a weekend or two in others.
I chose to go to San Javier first because it's the closest to Santa Cruz, about 4 hours away. I left on a bed-bus (with reclining seats and leg rests) at 8 p.m. and arrived by midnight, giving me the whole weekend here.
I was the only passenger on the bus that got off here. And I have to admit that disembarking in an unknown place at midnight did make me nervous. Especially when I found out that no one from the hotel had come to meet me, as promised. I had no choice but to walk through the town in the still of the night to try to find my hotel. Except for on the main road, where shops sold local cheeses, baked goods and drinks to passengers and truck drivers, there wasn't a soul on the street. I reached the plaza and found it empty, dark, and forbidding. I saw the names of other hotels, but everything looked boarded up for the night, with thick wooden doors.
I couldn't find the hotel on my first try, so I went back to the main road to ask for directions, then tried again. I was very thankful when I arrived, was let in, and received my very own room and bed. I felt much more relaxed and safe.
My hotel, the Gran Hotel Reposo Del Guerrero, is simple but nice. Rooms are arranged around an attractive patio, filled with chairs, hammocks, trees, plants and wildflowers. I have my own bathroom, A/C, and more importantly in the current cold weather, nice blankets - all for $10 a night. Unfortunately for such a nice place, I think I'm the only guest here.
Most people visit the churches on a tour. And therefore, many tourists just pass by - take a look at the church and move on. I knew there might not be a whole lot to fill a weekend, but I brought books and a mini-computer and looked forward to some down time. However, I ended up finding plenty of interesting things today.
I started my day visiting the local San Javier cheese factory. I was hoping to watch the process. They wouldn't let me inside, but they did sell me fresh cheese and yogurt, produced from the milk of four local dairies.
It felt nice to walk through town - to watch the families zoom past on motorcycles, up to three people aboard, to see the beautiful thatched roofs, that fit as neatly as a hat, to see the green, tree-dotted plains and the blue hills rising up in the distance. A friendliness and a slowness moved through the air, and I immediately felt the difference. I could walk here without looking over my shoulder, I could pause to watch the toddler in the cowboy hat run across the field, or the woman giving a man in a haircut in a single-chair beauty shop.
I went to the church, not really expecting much but an excuse to spend a weekend here, to say that I saw something. I've done all the great churches of Europe and considered myself churched-out. So this church must really be remarkable, because I was impressed and awestruck.
Approaching it from the square, I thought the carved pillars of faded wood, the pitched wooden roof, the heavy brown doors, and the the ivory carvings and brown fretwork were beautiful. Like the other buildings on the center square, surrounding the ample green park, the church took up an entire block. A covered walkway ran along the face of it, making it look like a long cow shed, but a much fancier one than the building opposite or diagonal it. A wooden belltower rose up from the interior grounds, with four bells visible from the center square. So far it was nice, but nothing amazing.
It was when I walked into the attached museum, which led into the church and its property, that I realized this was something special. The carved wooden museum pieces - the sacrificial cross, the old bells, the statues, were filled with an aura of age and beauty. They had been so much more lovingly than the gilded materials in many church. It was real artistic creation and it showed.
In the grounds, I walked under wooden porticos with carved wooden columns on one side, beautiful carvings and paintings along the church exterior on the other. The chapel was a wonder unto itself. Five carved scenes, framed in gold, surrounded a golden carved Jesus. The long and wide nave was a maze of carved and painted wooden boards and columns. No board, no surface, were spared the artist's hand, not even the upper boards of the roof. Everything was carved and painting. Except for the gold frames, nothing shone or glittered. The beauty was more gentle, natural, loving.
Carved cherubs with wings smiled down from the walls, over full-body carvings of saints. Two young boys went through the pews with rags, racing each other to clean the fastest, driving along the pews as though in an Indy-500 race.
Besides the beauty of the churches, another aspect that has made the mission circuit famous is the baroque music the Jesuits taught to the locals and carried on by youth musical groups. It's a little seen phenomenon when young village natives become masterful violinists or operatic singers. From what I'd heard, the quality is very good and these groups travel widely.
The mission circuit holds a two-week music festival in the summer (that would be six months from now) and they put on concerts over three weekends in the winter. I was disappointed to hear that I'd just missed one of those concert weekends. The next would be in early July and I hoped I could return.
As I exited the other side of the church and strolled the grounds, I suddenly heard a sharp, beautiful melody. Was someone playing a tape of this music? I approached the sound - the choralic ah, hah, hahs, the operatic arias, the smooth orchestral notes. I glanced into a dusty screened window and saw it was live, a group was practicing. I felt so lucky to come across this, I sat on the grass until the practice was over, enjoying the beautiful melodies.
They disbanded with members still calling out operatic notes, with violinists walking around while still practicing chords. As I'd heard, they were young, about high school age, average looking boys and girls, with jackets and backpacks. Yet they spent their Saturday mornings practicing in a dark church room and had the ability to produce a breathtaking sound.
I stopped by the Buen Ganadero for lunch, a recommended local restaurant. For less than four dollars, I had fresh squeezed peach juice, a giant, tender cut of beef, two fried eggs, french fries, salad and rice. It was enough to last me for the entire day.
During my afternoon stroll, I found the soccer field, where motorcycles were abandoned in a group, their owners in the stalls watching the game. I found a small tourist office, where there was a museum about the Yarituses. This religious group existed before the Jesuits. They dress in masks and costumes and dance in honor of Piyo. When the Jesuits arrived, they allowed them to continue dancing, as long as they danced in honor of San Pedro and Pablo.
The woman told me that every June 29th and 30th, they dance from the church to the Apostle's Rock, a large rock a few blocks away that she suggested I visit. So I walked toward it in the afternoon, and what did I happen to see, but a group of Yarituses, in costume, dancing in a circle in front of the rock and in front of a giant, iron cow.
I happened across the opening ceremony for a new art gallery that is located within a rock, a small, subterranean, artsy place that is meant to expand San Javier's cultural offerings. The area is actually more of a rock forest than one single, imposing rock, and I walked along a path surrounded by giant boulders and trees.
As usual, darkness fell by 6:30 and I was back in my room by then. I heard the church bells chime at 7, a light, melodic sound that carried across the village. But I decided to wait until the next morning to see part of a mass. I like the quiet and the isolation that falls in small towns at darkness, giving me nothing to do but read, write and sleep. It's very calming and relaxing.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Weekend in Samaipata
Yesterday, together with several colleagues, I made my first weekend excursion out of Santa Cruz. We came to the town I'd heard most about, Samaipata. It's a mountain hideaway, snuggled amidst tropical green hills, with a cool, fresh air and an enveloping scent of flowers, ferns, pines and herbs. It's also very quiet. One feels the night when the blackness falls here, which led me to bed early. And thus, I appreciated the morning, the fresh greenness, the sound of the birds and the crickets, even more.
I shared a station wagon with three other passengers, 2 male and one female. As we began to drive out of town, it felt good to be heading somewhere new. And it was nice to be with people other than my colleagues, to hear about some different topics and opinions.
The passengers were an interesting enough bunch. The man in front was from La Paz. He is in town to check the radiation levels emitted from cell phone towers, to make sure they aren't harmful to human health.
"In reality, they never reach even half the level of the limits set by the FCC," he said. "The bigger problem is holding the phone up to your head. They should ban that."
The other two passengers got into an impassioned discussion about societal problems.
"The most important thing is liberty," said the man.
"Yes," agreed the woman. "Democracy. We should help the poor with education and health. Because a person with a bit of education can defend himself. Instead of spending money on stupid things, like sheets and paintings, we should spend money on schools, hospitals and churches. The churches helpas well, because a person without values, who isn't afraid of anything, isn't good for society."
"That's the most serious," said the man. "We live in Santa Cruz, where we live well, and we forget that the rest of the country lives in a different world."
"But Santa Cruz as well used to be without water and light," argued back the woman. "But who brought those things. The village did it itself." She complained about how the local rich take their money and spend it in Europe and the States. She thinks it should stay here, to help the local economy. "What do Europeans do?" she asked. "They collect taxes and invest it in their country. We also have brains, but we have bad customs and habits. We need to do this ourselves. Everyone who has the ability has the obligation to teach, educate, help."
Shortly after she left the taxi, the man threw a plastic bag with the remnants of his snack onto the mountain ride, a nice example of a bad habit.
The drive was beautiful. Leaving Santa Cruz, we saw women selling stalks of sugar cane, and little baggies of peeled, individual-sized pieces. Fifteen minutes outside of the city, it already felt open, more free, greener. Donkeys pulled carts on the side of the road, a man rode an umbrelled bicycle with a canister in front filled with a local drink for sale, and white geese waded along the mudded, wet brown roads. As we traveled further, I had vast, wild views of tropical green trees. As the road became smaller, the trees came closer and we entered a countryside of green field, green trees, and green misty mountains. Small village cemetaries were marked by a tall, colorful oval of flowers atop each white tomb.
We made our way into the mountains and I suddenly felt myself back in Kyrgyzstan - the windy roads following rivers below, the sheer rock faces emerging from mountains, and portions of road that just disappeared into the canyon below. We were stopped by an avalanche, which caused us to pause for close to two hours while they cleared the roads.
"I don't know what we are waiting for," the radio tower guy said. "The rocks will continue falling. It's like a lottery."
We saw several falls during our wait. During the first one, a rather large boulder rolled down the hill and across the road. It could have done quite a bit of damage to whatever might have been in its path. Most the others were small rocks. But no one knew when another large fall could come. We watched two motorcycles risk it. They got across OK, but several rocks fell behind them. The rest waited until the crane cleared the way. Then a parade of vehicles came through, one by one. Giant trucks and buses wavering on the rough road, then picking up speed and gunning across as fast as they could.
"I've been to Samaipata 11 times and this is the first time I've come across an avalanche," my colleague Maria said. It made it all the more an adventure.
The rest of the journey was along a windy road, through thick greenery and a gorgeous landscape of red soil, rolling mountains, and cliffside white homes with red tiled roofs, fronds, flowers, cacti and trees. We crossed a bridge over a sheer rock waterfall, and within a couple of kilometers, were in the small town of Samaipata. The central square is the prettiest I've seen, dense with flowers, greenery, stone arches and sculpture. It has a speaker's corner, modeled after London's Hyde Park. When one stands on the circular platform and speaks, you can hear your voice amplified. The central streets are made of cobblestone, making it sound like we were driving over a washboard.
We stayed at an organic farm called La Vispera. It has a spectacular setting on a hillside, the air rich with the heady scent of lavender and tropical flowers. I had a gorgeous little cabana called the Sweet. I could look out at pink bouganvillea, at cacti, rhubarb, herbs, and all kinds of tropical flowers - blue, yellow, red, white - that I didn't recognize. They also serve organic, vegetarian food at their cafe. Only problem was the service. They say their food is slow. But when my pancakes didn't appear after an hour and 45 minutes, I had to leave. I'd forgotten my camera in the taxi and had to go try to find it before the driver returned to Santa Cruz (luckily, I got it back). They said they'd leave the pancakes for me and I could have them for dinner. When I returned at dinner, no one knew where the pancakes were. The kitchen had already closed, at six. I asked if I could have something simple and cold, like bread and cheese, because I had nothing to eat. Nope, the kitchen closes at six. So I was unhappy to spend much of the afternoon and evening hungry.
This town has a serious fixation on the healthy. The sugar is brown, the tea is herbal, the bread is wheat, and meat can be hard to find. When I sought out lunch in town, I went to a place that I heard had good hamburgers.
"Would you like a vegetarian or meat burger?" the waitress asked me.
"Meat."
The hamburger came accompanied by lettuce, grated carrots and grated beets. I was so hungry I didn't notice at first, but it soon became apparent that my burger was greenish and the texture soft. It looked like I'd gotten vegetarian - like it or not. There is lots of great, homemade stuff for sale here - from herbs and herbal teas to cheeses, sliced ham, chutnies, james and marmelades.
While some of my colleagues went to visit some nearby ruins, I stayed on the farm to participate in an outdoor yoga class, to walked up to the golden throne (a thrown made of rock under a flowered arch up high on the hillside), and to listen to the crickets and watch the butterflies, sip lemon-orange herbal tea, and enjoy the tranquility.
I shared a station wagon with three other passengers, 2 male and one female. As we began to drive out of town, it felt good to be heading somewhere new. And it was nice to be with people other than my colleagues, to hear about some different topics and opinions.
The passengers were an interesting enough bunch. The man in front was from La Paz. He is in town to check the radiation levels emitted from cell phone towers, to make sure they aren't harmful to human health.
"In reality, they never reach even half the level of the limits set by the FCC," he said. "The bigger problem is holding the phone up to your head. They should ban that."
The other two passengers got into an impassioned discussion about societal problems.
"The most important thing is liberty," said the man.
"Yes," agreed the woman. "Democracy. We should help the poor with education and health. Because a person with a bit of education can defend himself. Instead of spending money on stupid things, like sheets and paintings, we should spend money on schools, hospitals and churches. The churches helpas well, because a person without values, who isn't afraid of anything, isn't good for society."
"That's the most serious," said the man. "We live in Santa Cruz, where we live well, and we forget that the rest of the country lives in a different world."
"But Santa Cruz as well used to be without water and light," argued back the woman. "But who brought those things. The village did it itself." She complained about how the local rich take their money and spend it in Europe and the States. She thinks it should stay here, to help the local economy. "What do Europeans do?" she asked. "They collect taxes and invest it in their country. We also have brains, but we have bad customs and habits. We need to do this ourselves. Everyone who has the ability has the obligation to teach, educate, help."
Shortly after she left the taxi, the man threw a plastic bag with the remnants of his snack onto the mountain ride, a nice example of a bad habit.
The drive was beautiful. Leaving Santa Cruz, we saw women selling stalks of sugar cane, and little baggies of peeled, individual-sized pieces. Fifteen minutes outside of the city, it already felt open, more free, greener. Donkeys pulled carts on the side of the road, a man rode an umbrelled bicycle with a canister in front filled with a local drink for sale, and white geese waded along the mudded, wet brown roads. As we traveled further, I had vast, wild views of tropical green trees. As the road became smaller, the trees came closer and we entered a countryside of green field, green trees, and green misty mountains. Small village cemetaries were marked by a tall, colorful oval of flowers atop each white tomb.
We made our way into the mountains and I suddenly felt myself back in Kyrgyzstan - the windy roads following rivers below, the sheer rock faces emerging from mountains, and portions of road that just disappeared into the canyon below. We were stopped by an avalanche, which caused us to pause for close to two hours while they cleared the roads.
"I don't know what we are waiting for," the radio tower guy said. "The rocks will continue falling. It's like a lottery."
We saw several falls during our wait. During the first one, a rather large boulder rolled down the hill and across the road. It could have done quite a bit of damage to whatever might have been in its path. Most the others were small rocks. But no one knew when another large fall could come. We watched two motorcycles risk it. They got across OK, but several rocks fell behind them. The rest waited until the crane cleared the way. Then a parade of vehicles came through, one by one. Giant trucks and buses wavering on the rough road, then picking up speed and gunning across as fast as they could.
"I've been to Samaipata 11 times and this is the first time I've come across an avalanche," my colleague Maria said. It made it all the more an adventure.
The rest of the journey was along a windy road, through thick greenery and a gorgeous landscape of red soil, rolling mountains, and cliffside white homes with red tiled roofs, fronds, flowers, cacti and trees. We crossed a bridge over a sheer rock waterfall, and within a couple of kilometers, were in the small town of Samaipata. The central square is the prettiest I've seen, dense with flowers, greenery, stone arches and sculpture. It has a speaker's corner, modeled after London's Hyde Park. When one stands on the circular platform and speaks, you can hear your voice amplified. The central streets are made of cobblestone, making it sound like we were driving over a washboard.
We stayed at an organic farm called La Vispera. It has a spectacular setting on a hillside, the air rich with the heady scent of lavender and tropical flowers. I had a gorgeous little cabana called the Sweet. I could look out at pink bouganvillea, at cacti, rhubarb, herbs, and all kinds of tropical flowers - blue, yellow, red, white - that I didn't recognize. They also serve organic, vegetarian food at their cafe. Only problem was the service. They say their food is slow. But when my pancakes didn't appear after an hour and 45 minutes, I had to leave. I'd forgotten my camera in the taxi and had to go try to find it before the driver returned to Santa Cruz (luckily, I got it back). They said they'd leave the pancakes for me and I could have them for dinner. When I returned at dinner, no one knew where the pancakes were. The kitchen had already closed, at six. I asked if I could have something simple and cold, like bread and cheese, because I had nothing to eat. Nope, the kitchen closes at six. So I was unhappy to spend much of the afternoon and evening hungry.
This town has a serious fixation on the healthy. The sugar is brown, the tea is herbal, the bread is wheat, and meat can be hard to find. When I sought out lunch in town, I went to a place that I heard had good hamburgers.
"Would you like a vegetarian or meat burger?" the waitress asked me.
"Meat."
The hamburger came accompanied by lettuce, grated carrots and grated beets. I was so hungry I didn't notice at first, but it soon became apparent that my burger was greenish and the texture soft. It looked like I'd gotten vegetarian - like it or not. There is lots of great, homemade stuff for sale here - from herbs and herbal teas to cheeses, sliced ham, chutnies, james and marmelades.
While some of my colleagues went to visit some nearby ruins, I stayed on the farm to participate in an outdoor yoga class, to walked up to the golden throne (a thrown made of rock under a flowered arch up high on the hillside), and to listen to the crickets and watch the butterflies, sip lemon-orange herbal tea, and enjoy the tranquility.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Life In Santa Cruz
Last week we had what could be considered cold weather in Santa Cruz, rainy, windy and chilly. It’s called the Sur, a series of winds that comes up from the Argentinian pampas, following cold chills in that region by about three days.
I haven’t been out of a 20 mile radius of Santa Cruz, which leads me to believe sometimes that I’m just in an isolated, developed and rather sophisticated Latin American city. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that I’m actually not too far from Argentina. Nor am I too far from the Amazonian jungle.
I get reminders every so often, such as this Sunday, when I walked a few blocks to the grocery store. On the way, I passed by several beautiful, exotic (to me) birds, with rich brown or yellow breasts. A type of lizard I’d never seen before scurried under a fence. Even more surprisingly, in my upscale neighborhood, was the horned bull sauntering casually down the residential street, no owner in sight.
At such times I place myself – yes, I’m in the center of South America. But it still doesn’t seem entirely real as I move daily between my home, my office, and my daily activity.
Yesterday, I was reading an article in a local paper during Spanish class and I passed over a mention that Bolivian President, Evo Morales, didn’t finish primary education and has trouble reading.
“Is that true?” I asked my Spanish teacher, Oscar.
“Yes,” he said.
“Why doesn’t he learn?” I asked.
“Because he has power.”
“But precisely because he has power, he could get a good teacher and learn.”
“That’s why you think and what I think. But he doesn’t seem to care.”
“Isn’t it embarrassing?” I asked.
“Yes, especially when he represents our country overseas. It’s very shameful.”
He told me that in his opinion, Morales’ greatest weakest is the way he foments confrontation between the rich and the poor. “One can sense that he just hates rich people. And you know, a lot of people in Santa Cruz have money. So the people here feel like he just wants to take away what they have and give it to the poor. This gives more support to the idea of independence for Santa Cruz.”
Oscar believes that the greatest problem in Bolivia is the focus on keeping up with the Jones and the lack of thought, intellectual inquiry and new ideas. He seems quite troubled about this. He gave me an article to read that said all 36 universities in Bolivia are underdeveloped, lack research capabilities, and don’t get involved into social debate. He has set a goal for himself to study how Harvard and Oxford became world-class universities. “What do you need to do to get brilliant people to come out of there?” he asked.
Another local problem he told me about is the second hand clothing that comes from the U.S. I’m not sure how it is gathered or shipped on the US side, but tons of used clothing are shipped here every year. It’s sold cheaply on the local market, from one to two dollars per item, and is a good way for many families to get decent quality and low-cost clothing. But at the same time, because it’s so cheap, it prevents the Bolivian textile industry from developing. It can’t compete with the low prices.
So, according to Luis, President Evo Morales recently banned any more imports of used clothing. This caused the many families who earn their livings running used clothing shops to hit the streets in protest. And those who are linked to the local textile industry protested as well, in opposition.
There is always something to fight about.
I haven’t been out of a 20 mile radius of Santa Cruz, which leads me to believe sometimes that I’m just in an isolated, developed and rather sophisticated Latin American city. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that I’m actually not too far from Argentina. Nor am I too far from the Amazonian jungle.
I get reminders every so often, such as this Sunday, when I walked a few blocks to the grocery store. On the way, I passed by several beautiful, exotic (to me) birds, with rich brown or yellow breasts. A type of lizard I’d never seen before scurried under a fence. Even more surprisingly, in my upscale neighborhood, was the horned bull sauntering casually down the residential street, no owner in sight.
At such times I place myself – yes, I’m in the center of South America. But it still doesn’t seem entirely real as I move daily between my home, my office, and my daily activity.
Yesterday, I was reading an article in a local paper during Spanish class and I passed over a mention that Bolivian President, Evo Morales, didn’t finish primary education and has trouble reading.
“Is that true?” I asked my Spanish teacher, Oscar.
“Yes,” he said.
“Why doesn’t he learn?” I asked.
“Because he has power.”
“But precisely because he has power, he could get a good teacher and learn.”
“That’s why you think and what I think. But he doesn’t seem to care.”
“Isn’t it embarrassing?” I asked.
“Yes, especially when he represents our country overseas. It’s very shameful.”
He told me that in his opinion, Morales’ greatest weakest is the way he foments confrontation between the rich and the poor. “One can sense that he just hates rich people. And you know, a lot of people in Santa Cruz have money. So the people here feel like he just wants to take away what they have and give it to the poor. This gives more support to the idea of independence for Santa Cruz.”
Oscar believes that the greatest problem in Bolivia is the focus on keeping up with the Jones and the lack of thought, intellectual inquiry and new ideas. He seems quite troubled about this. He gave me an article to read that said all 36 universities in Bolivia are underdeveloped, lack research capabilities, and don’t get involved into social debate. He has set a goal for himself to study how Harvard and Oxford became world-class universities. “What do you need to do to get brilliant people to come out of there?” he asked.
Another local problem he told me about is the second hand clothing that comes from the U.S. I’m not sure how it is gathered or shipped on the US side, but tons of used clothing are shipped here every year. It’s sold cheaply on the local market, from one to two dollars per item, and is a good way for many families to get decent quality and low-cost clothing. But at the same time, because it’s so cheap, it prevents the Bolivian textile industry from developing. It can’t compete with the low prices.
So, according to Luis, President Evo Morales recently banned any more imports of used clothing. This caused the many families who earn their livings running used clothing shops to hit the streets in protest. And those who are linked to the local textile industry protested as well, in opposition.
There is always something to fight about.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Tear Gas in the Most Unexpected Places
The other night I went to a yoga class in the center of town. It’s a calming, peaceful experience, during which students lie on mats and the teacher moves on light feet while chanting om.
During this class, I had an especially hard time concentrating. First was the car alarm, that seemed to go off for a good twenty minutes. Then came the repeated sound of shots. No one else seemed to notice.
After class, we descended down to the first floor, into the courtyard of the building.
“Do you smell gas?” my colleague Maria asked me. Another student put her hand over her mouth. I did smell something.
When we opened the locked, heavy wooden door, leading out onto the street, we saw people filing past. Almost all of them held cloths against their mouths. Clearly, something was in the air we shouldn’t be breathing.
We walked across the street to the parking lot where Maria had left her car. The parking lot managers sat outside under a small awning, watching TV. It was a couple, who looked dirty and ragged from poverty, and two small toddlers. All of them, including the children were holding cloths to their mouths.
“What’s going on?” we asked. They told us there had been a protest and the police had used tear gas.
I later found out that it was students from the Rene Montero state university who were protesting. A nearby private university had started to build a new building on a piece of land that Rene Montero university claims belongs to it. The private university shows documents proving they bought it legally. Rene Montero says its not true.
During the construction of this building, the students were constantly interfering and trying to prevent its progress. Bit by bit, they finished it, and now want to put the
building into use.
“And so last night was the biggest protest of all,” said Oscar, my Spanish teacher.
“But tear gas is dangerous, isn’t it?” I asked. “And so many people who weren’t involved in the protest were breathing it in (including me).”
“Yes, it’s very dangerous. But what else can you do when people are getting violent. There aren’t many other good ways to disperse people.” He scratched his head for a minute. “Except in Chile. You know, there they use high powered water cannons there.”
In my short time here in Bolivia, I can see that violent protests are common. Passengers whose plane didn’t fly took over the local airport, then a travel agency. Road blockages are considered a common event. In other areas of the country, considered much more troublesome than Santa Cruz, protests and blockages disrupt work and trade. Before I came, one of our employees in Cochabamba lost his eye by being in the wrong place at the wrong time during one of these disturbances. The protestors, when shown are TV, are generally yelling and gesturing angrily, regardless of whether it’s a young man or an older woman.
I asked Oscar why there is such a tendency for anger and violence in the protests here. I respect that people stand up for what they think is right. But why can’t they do it peacefully?
He thought for a moment, then offered his analysis. “First it has to do with the fact that people here are really misused and mistreated. Those who have power have been very corrupt and have taken a lot from the powerless. There is a great resentment of the rich by the poor. Then there is the heat. When it’s so hot, people sweat, they become uncomfortable, and they get angry more easily. There is the traffic, which also frustrates people and makes them angry. And there is a lot of racism between the cambas (those from the east – more European) and the collyas (those from the mountains - Indian). They don’t like each other because they are different. All these things together can make people get upset easily.”
During this class, I had an especially hard time concentrating. First was the car alarm, that seemed to go off for a good twenty minutes. Then came the repeated sound of shots. No one else seemed to notice.
After class, we descended down to the first floor, into the courtyard of the building.
“Do you smell gas?” my colleague Maria asked me. Another student put her hand over her mouth. I did smell something.
When we opened the locked, heavy wooden door, leading out onto the street, we saw people filing past. Almost all of them held cloths against their mouths. Clearly, something was in the air we shouldn’t be breathing.
We walked across the street to the parking lot where Maria had left her car. The parking lot managers sat outside under a small awning, watching TV. It was a couple, who looked dirty and ragged from poverty, and two small toddlers. All of them, including the children were holding cloths to their mouths.
“What’s going on?” we asked. They told us there had been a protest and the police had used tear gas.
I later found out that it was students from the Rene Montero state university who were protesting. A nearby private university had started to build a new building on a piece of land that Rene Montero university claims belongs to it. The private university shows documents proving they bought it legally. Rene Montero says its not true.
During the construction of this building, the students were constantly interfering and trying to prevent its progress. Bit by bit, they finished it, and now want to put the
building into use.
“And so last night was the biggest protest of all,” said Oscar, my Spanish teacher.
“But tear gas is dangerous, isn’t it?” I asked. “And so many people who weren’t involved in the protest were breathing it in (including me).”
“Yes, it’s very dangerous. But what else can you do when people are getting violent. There aren’t many other good ways to disperse people.” He scratched his head for a minute. “Except in Chile. You know, there they use high powered water cannons there.”
In my short time here in Bolivia, I can see that violent protests are common. Passengers whose plane didn’t fly took over the local airport, then a travel agency. Road blockages are considered a common event. In other areas of the country, considered much more troublesome than Santa Cruz, protests and blockages disrupt work and trade. Before I came, one of our employees in Cochabamba lost his eye by being in the wrong place at the wrong time during one of these disturbances. The protestors, when shown are TV, are generally yelling and gesturing angrily, regardless of whether it’s a young man or an older woman.
I asked Oscar why there is such a tendency for anger and violence in the protests here. I respect that people stand up for what they think is right. But why can’t they do it peacefully?
He thought for a moment, then offered his analysis. “First it has to do with the fact that people here are really misused and mistreated. Those who have power have been very corrupt and have taken a lot from the powerless. There is a great resentment of the rich by the poor. Then there is the heat. When it’s so hot, people sweat, they become uncomfortable, and they get angry more easily. There is the traffic, which also frustrates people and makes them angry. And there is a lot of racism between the cambas (those from the east – more European) and the collyas (those from the mountains - Indian). They don’t like each other because they are different. All these things together can make people get upset easily.”
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Where the Action Is
Last night the office hosted a karaoke contest among its female employees. It rented out an entire disco club and the employees from throughout the city gathered there at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night.
It wasn’t too far from my house. We drove down San Martin avenue in Equipetrol, which is the hang out place for upper class youth. I had known this, and seen it. But never had I seen so many people gathered as I did late on Saturday night.
The street was lined with SUVs and trucks parked on either side of the street. A steady stream of vehicles moved slowly down the street, checking out the scene, deciding where it might be worth it to stop.
Many vehicles had large stereo systems installed in the back. Young women in tight, low-cut tank tops and high heels and muscular young men sat on the hoods, in the trunks, or rested against the sides. Jewelry, make-up and colorful clothing glittered under the streetlamps. Some couples embraced, or French-kissed, in public. Some danced. Most held a bottle of beer.
Among these crowds of privileged youth walked an Indian woman, her braided hair covered with a hat, a colorful striped cloth tying a bundle to her back. It was such a contrast between the traditional Indian woman and the carefree modern youth, such as could be seen in any cosmopolitan city. Other lower-income entrepreneurs roam the crowds, selling snacks, drinks, and cigarettes.
The karaoke concert was nicely organized, and for a work function, was a fun way to spend an evening. We listened to quite a bit of mediocre singing, as well as a few people with talent. It was scheduled to begin at 11. My colleague, Maria, is very timely, especially for Bolivia. We arrived by 10:30 and the place was virtually empty. It started a little after 11:30.
Today I decided to join in the custom of eating Sunday lunch out. I walked through an area where I thought I could find some restaurants. Almost everything, except the supermarket, a few kiosks, and some restaurants, is closed on Sundays and the streets were almost deserted. But I quickly realized how to find a place to eat – look for large numbers of SUVs concentrated in one area.
This signal led me to several options. I ended up choosing a steakhouse, where they advertised the best meat in the world (and Oscar, my Spanish teacher, told me they had especially good meat, backing up their claim). It was an attractive, classy restaurant, packed to the rafters, the staff buzzing professionally around, the owner (who looked Argentinean) monitoring the action.
Their specialty was grilled meat, which was served with a plate of green salad, rice, French fries, fried yucca, bread, spiced mayonnaise and salsa. I’d guess the average patron spends about $8 there, which is definitely higher end. Yet every table was full. I looked around at the patrons, the comfortable, middle and upper class families, enjoying their nice meal while their “employee” had the day off. Such families exist everywhere. But what is remarkable here is that there are so many of them. And that these differences in lifestyle seem to be taken as a matter of course (although, not by the President, Evo Morales).
In Kyrgyzstan I felt it much easier to integrate into various aspects of society. I lived in an apartment with normal people – students as well as families and professionals – across the street from a brothel. Sometimes I ate at the upper end restaurants. Other times I went to little holes in the wall. And it didn’t really make a difference either way. I walked, biked, took the buses and taxis, and was fine however I chose to travel.
Here, because of the differences in income, and because of the safety threat, I feel much more of the need to segregate myself with the middle and upper classes. I live in a condo with 24 hour security, when I need a car I order a taxi by phone that picks me up by name, and I even hired an “employee” to clean and cook a few times a week. The best I do at integration is taking the bus to work in the morning. But it’s dangerous to walk, it’s dangerous to take a taxi off the street, and it’s dangerous to stroll into unknown neighborhoods carrying anything of value.
This I find unfortunate. As much as I like the weather and people, I don’t like the segregation of the population and the inability to move freely.
This week I spoke to a Bosnian/German colleague here, who is interested in working in Colombia. I asked whether she was concerned about the security situation there and she told me she liked the people a lot.
“Yes, you have to be careful and you have to go from place to place in a car, but it’s not so bad once you get used to it.”
I guess if you are OK with moving from one sheltered space to another, it’s true, it is OK. You can work, go to the gym, go shopping, visit your friends, and take vacations, all in safe, upper-end places. But for someone who wants to move and breathe and interact with one’s surroundings, to have a symbiotic relationship, it’s hard to consider it living.
It wasn’t too far from my house. We drove down San Martin avenue in Equipetrol, which is the hang out place for upper class youth. I had known this, and seen it. But never had I seen so many people gathered as I did late on Saturday night.
The street was lined with SUVs and trucks parked on either side of the street. A steady stream of vehicles moved slowly down the street, checking out the scene, deciding where it might be worth it to stop.
Many vehicles had large stereo systems installed in the back. Young women in tight, low-cut tank tops and high heels and muscular young men sat on the hoods, in the trunks, or rested against the sides. Jewelry, make-up and colorful clothing glittered under the streetlamps. Some couples embraced, or French-kissed, in public. Some danced. Most held a bottle of beer.
Among these crowds of privileged youth walked an Indian woman, her braided hair covered with a hat, a colorful striped cloth tying a bundle to her back. It was such a contrast between the traditional Indian woman and the carefree modern youth, such as could be seen in any cosmopolitan city. Other lower-income entrepreneurs roam the crowds, selling snacks, drinks, and cigarettes.
The karaoke concert was nicely organized, and for a work function, was a fun way to spend an evening. We listened to quite a bit of mediocre singing, as well as a few people with talent. It was scheduled to begin at 11. My colleague, Maria, is very timely, especially for Bolivia. We arrived by 10:30 and the place was virtually empty. It started a little after 11:30.
Today I decided to join in the custom of eating Sunday lunch out. I walked through an area where I thought I could find some restaurants. Almost everything, except the supermarket, a few kiosks, and some restaurants, is closed on Sundays and the streets were almost deserted. But I quickly realized how to find a place to eat – look for large numbers of SUVs concentrated in one area.
This signal led me to several options. I ended up choosing a steakhouse, where they advertised the best meat in the world (and Oscar, my Spanish teacher, told me they had especially good meat, backing up their claim). It was an attractive, classy restaurant, packed to the rafters, the staff buzzing professionally around, the owner (who looked Argentinean) monitoring the action.
Their specialty was grilled meat, which was served with a plate of green salad, rice, French fries, fried yucca, bread, spiced mayonnaise and salsa. I’d guess the average patron spends about $8 there, which is definitely higher end. Yet every table was full. I looked around at the patrons, the comfortable, middle and upper class families, enjoying their nice meal while their “employee” had the day off. Such families exist everywhere. But what is remarkable here is that there are so many of them. And that these differences in lifestyle seem to be taken as a matter of course (although, not by the President, Evo Morales).
In Kyrgyzstan I felt it much easier to integrate into various aspects of society. I lived in an apartment with normal people – students as well as families and professionals – across the street from a brothel. Sometimes I ate at the upper end restaurants. Other times I went to little holes in the wall. And it didn’t really make a difference either way. I walked, biked, took the buses and taxis, and was fine however I chose to travel.
Here, because of the differences in income, and because of the safety threat, I feel much more of the need to segregate myself with the middle and upper classes. I live in a condo with 24 hour security, when I need a car I order a taxi by phone that picks me up by name, and I even hired an “employee” to clean and cook a few times a week. The best I do at integration is taking the bus to work in the morning. But it’s dangerous to walk, it’s dangerous to take a taxi off the street, and it’s dangerous to stroll into unknown neighborhoods carrying anything of value.
This I find unfortunate. As much as I like the weather and people, I don’t like the segregation of the population and the inability to move freely.
This week I spoke to a Bosnian/German colleague here, who is interested in working in Colombia. I asked whether she was concerned about the security situation there and she told me she liked the people a lot.
“Yes, you have to be careful and you have to go from place to place in a car, but it’s not so bad once you get used to it.”
I guess if you are OK with moving from one sheltered space to another, it’s true, it is OK. You can work, go to the gym, go shopping, visit your friends, and take vacations, all in safe, upper-end places. But for someone who wants to move and breathe and interact with one’s surroundings, to have a symbiotic relationship, it’s hard to consider it living.
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Sergio's Fifth Birthday Party
Yesterday afternoon, Oscar’s wife Rosario and her two children stopped by my apartment to drop off an invitation to Sergio’s fifth birthday party. The invitation read 4:30 this afternoon.
I arrived at 4:40, thinking I was late. But barely anyone was there. I later found out that other people’s invitations read 3:30. Yet many didn’t show up until five.
Oscar and his family rent an attractive house, surrounded by flowering trees and enclosed with a large black gate. In the back of the house is another building with three separate doors. These seem to be rooms, or apartments, that other families live in.
The theme of the party was cars. I think there was a movie about cars recently, because everything had the same logo – the folded cardboard gift boxes, the sticks put into the gelatin cups and the soda bottles, the Congratulations Sergio poster on the wall and the pull-string bell piñata.
They had a two-man DJ ensemble, who blasted children’s music so loud as to rock the eardrums and make conversing very difficult. Nevertheless, I was able to meet an interesting woman from Cuba and her Bolivian husband. They left Cuba a few years ago due to the worsening economic conditions there. She is an English teacher and has a sister in Miami. But she found it impossible to speak any English when she went to see her sister in Miami. “It’s a purely Spanish city,” she said.
We talked about the importance of the family in Bolivian life and about the way the work culture supports strong families here.
“In the US, the work culture drives families apart,” she said, and I agreed. “It becomes normal for children to leave at 17 or 18 and the parents end up alone, just seeing their children at Christmas or holidays,” she said. “And the majority of them end up in a nursing home. But not here. Here, old people remain a part of their families until the very end.”
I told her how delayed childbearing can make it difficult for some middle-aged people to take care of both children and elderly parents. They told me that here, people have children much earlier, age 21 or 22 on average, but frequently at 15 or 16.
I surprised that the lack of having an abortion option probably played a role.
“Yes,” she said, and her husband nodded. “It’s really a debate here. There are cases of young girls who are violated and are forced to bear the children. There was recently a case of a 12-year-old who was raped. And during all the time they spent going to court, she eventually carried the child to term. They delivered it by C-section, but still. Someone of that age doesn’t have the capacity to be a mother.”
She told me that the numbers of unwanted children are high – that many families continue to have one child after another after another. That children are abandoned, mistreated, and many turn into criminals. She said that birth control is available, but the lack of education and a culture of using it mean it is not very effective.
What I find most troubling is the lack of options for women who are victims of violence. The other day in the newspaper I read an article about some neighbors who found a woman in their neighborhood. She was about 30 years old and seemed to have been drugged and violated. What if she should become pregnant?
As if suffering the violent act wasn’t enough, can any lawmakers or religious leaders with a conscious truly believe she must continue to be reminded of the horror for another nine months, or twenty years?
Back to the birthday party, where the upper-middle-class children in attendance seemed to have been wanted, we were served muffins, donuts and sodas as we tried to shout to each other over the music. The adults sat in a semi-circle around the patio, while the children sat in the center on small red, blue and yellow chairs. The boys sat separately from the girls.
When the festivities began, the DJ led the children in games – a dance contest, hot balloon, musical chairs. One girl, when she was eliminated in hot balloon (the equivalent of hot potato) ran to her mother crying. Sergio blew out the candle on his cake, then everyone was served a slice of cake with an empanada and another soda.
Finally, the piñata was brought out. Unlike Nicaragua, where they still have artistically made paper-mache piñatas, broken with a bat and blindfold variety (which I prefer), here the piñata was a commercialized paper bell with a bunch of strings. The children gathered under the bell. Rather than take turns at pulling the strings, the birthday boy was able to yank them all at once, guaranteeing that the piñata burst apart on the first try.
“Don’t look up at the piñata!” the DJ told the kids. “Look down!” As though children could look away from candy.
The bell burst and toys and sweets rained down in a cloud of dust and confetti. After the children gathered their treasures, they then swept the dust and confetti into piles with their hands and threw it in each other’s faces.
Each child was given a gift box. I wondered whether that was an American import. And while Sergio received gifts from everyone who came, he didn’t open any of them during the party.
It was a nice way to spend an afternoon and a rewarding little peak into local life.
I arrived at 4:40, thinking I was late. But barely anyone was there. I later found out that other people’s invitations read 3:30. Yet many didn’t show up until five.
Oscar and his family rent an attractive house, surrounded by flowering trees and enclosed with a large black gate. In the back of the house is another building with three separate doors. These seem to be rooms, or apartments, that other families live in.
The theme of the party was cars. I think there was a movie about cars recently, because everything had the same logo – the folded cardboard gift boxes, the sticks put into the gelatin cups and the soda bottles, the Congratulations Sergio poster on the wall and the pull-string bell piñata.
They had a two-man DJ ensemble, who blasted children’s music so loud as to rock the eardrums and make conversing very difficult. Nevertheless, I was able to meet an interesting woman from Cuba and her Bolivian husband. They left Cuba a few years ago due to the worsening economic conditions there. She is an English teacher and has a sister in Miami. But she found it impossible to speak any English when she went to see her sister in Miami. “It’s a purely Spanish city,” she said.
We talked about the importance of the family in Bolivian life and about the way the work culture supports strong families here.
“In the US, the work culture drives families apart,” she said, and I agreed. “It becomes normal for children to leave at 17 or 18 and the parents end up alone, just seeing their children at Christmas or holidays,” she said. “And the majority of them end up in a nursing home. But not here. Here, old people remain a part of their families until the very end.”
I told her how delayed childbearing can make it difficult for some middle-aged people to take care of both children and elderly parents. They told me that here, people have children much earlier, age 21 or 22 on average, but frequently at 15 or 16.
I surprised that the lack of having an abortion option probably played a role.
“Yes,” she said, and her husband nodded. “It’s really a debate here. There are cases of young girls who are violated and are forced to bear the children. There was recently a case of a 12-year-old who was raped. And during all the time they spent going to court, she eventually carried the child to term. They delivered it by C-section, but still. Someone of that age doesn’t have the capacity to be a mother.”
She told me that the numbers of unwanted children are high – that many families continue to have one child after another after another. That children are abandoned, mistreated, and many turn into criminals. She said that birth control is available, but the lack of education and a culture of using it mean it is not very effective.
What I find most troubling is the lack of options for women who are victims of violence. The other day in the newspaper I read an article about some neighbors who found a woman in their neighborhood. She was about 30 years old and seemed to have been drugged and violated. What if she should become pregnant?
As if suffering the violent act wasn’t enough, can any lawmakers or religious leaders with a conscious truly believe she must continue to be reminded of the horror for another nine months, or twenty years?
Back to the birthday party, where the upper-middle-class children in attendance seemed to have been wanted, we were served muffins, donuts and sodas as we tried to shout to each other over the music. The adults sat in a semi-circle around the patio, while the children sat in the center on small red, blue and yellow chairs. The boys sat separately from the girls.
When the festivities began, the DJ led the children in games – a dance contest, hot balloon, musical chairs. One girl, when she was eliminated in hot balloon (the equivalent of hot potato) ran to her mother crying. Sergio blew out the candle on his cake, then everyone was served a slice of cake with an empanada and another soda.
Finally, the piñata was brought out. Unlike Nicaragua, where they still have artistically made paper-mache piñatas, broken with a bat and blindfold variety (which I prefer), here the piñata was a commercialized paper bell with a bunch of strings. The children gathered under the bell. Rather than take turns at pulling the strings, the birthday boy was able to yank them all at once, guaranteeing that the piñata burst apart on the first try.
“Don’t look up at the piñata!” the DJ told the kids. “Look down!” As though children could look away from candy.
The bell burst and toys and sweets rained down in a cloud of dust and confetti. After the children gathered their treasures, they then swept the dust and confetti into piles with their hands and threw it in each other’s faces.
Each child was given a gift box. I wondered whether that was an American import. And while Sergio received gifts from everyone who came, he didn’t open any of them during the party.
It was a nice way to spend an afternoon and a rewarding little peak into local life.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
A Slow Afternoon
This has been a welcome, but very slow weekend for me. My big activity for the day was to go see a Bolivian movie, The Andes Don’t Believe in God.
I took a taxi to the Cine Center, a large and modern theater, with an admission price of just over $2 before 4 p.m.
The movie was about the mining life, the mix of immigrants, the local vibe, and the women in the southern town of Uyuni in the 1920s. This is a place I would like very much to visit. There are some salt flats nearby that I hear are incredibly beautiful.
The movie was good. Best of all was the immersion in Spanish and the fact that I was able to understand almost everything.
After the movie, I decided to walk around and try to find some lunch. The neighborhood was filled with small but attractive, upper-middle-class gated houses. There were barely any people on the street. And this made me feel unsafe. I had thought about walking all the way to the center of town, but I felt I stuck out as a single woman walking alone and I didn’t want to take the risk. So when I found a populated area near a park, I decided to stop.
I had a delicious buffet lunch for under $2, I listened to a five man band of guitars, accordion and trumpets play pleasant, upbeat music, and I watched a clown make flowers, swords, and bears holding onto a heart for tips. As long as I was within the fenced in area of the restaurant, busy with family diners coming through the turnstile, taking their plate, and filling it with salads, rice, beans, and stewed meats and chickens, it was fine. But leaving that area alone made me feel unsafe. I didn’t like having to call for a taxi and wait for it, nor the feeling that exploring alone here isn’t a very good idea.
Before coming, I expected to feel some anti-Americanism in a country led by someone friends with Hugo Chavez. I have to say I don’t feel that at all. Like in most places of the world, people think Bush is an idiot. I attended a comedy show called The Chaplin Show and several of the skits portrayed humorous meetings between Evo Morales and Bush. But they seem to be OK with American as a country and a people, aside from its politics.
While the majority of Bolivians looking to make money immigrate to Spain, there is also substantial contact with the U.S. One woman I spent time with last week told me her mother immigrated illegally to the Arlington, VA area, where there is an entire street of Bolivians. She has spent the last six years caring for an elderly woman and is now in the process of becoming legal. She combs the woman’s hair and puts make-up on for her. Now the woman is in her final stages and is receiving morphine shots. This Bolivian loves her so much that she calls her daughter daily, crying at how hard it is to watch her die.
It seems to me to be a mutually beneficial situation. The family probably would have had trouble finding an American to care for this woman 24 hours a day with such quality concern for $3,000 a month. And for this 50-year old Bolivian woman, who was considered too old to work in Bolivia, it not only gave her a place to live and a job in America, the work made her feel useful and gave her a new purpose in life.
Since many of the shops were closed, I headed back to my new apartment after lunch. My taxi driver said it was common for businesses to be closed on Saturday afternoons.
“The movement occurs in the evenings,” he said.
Not for me. I’m spending my evening listening to cello music, reading and writing, and enjoying my pretty new surroundings.
I took a taxi to the Cine Center, a large and modern theater, with an admission price of just over $2 before 4 p.m.
The movie was about the mining life, the mix of immigrants, the local vibe, and the women in the southern town of Uyuni in the 1920s. This is a place I would like very much to visit. There are some salt flats nearby that I hear are incredibly beautiful.
The movie was good. Best of all was the immersion in Spanish and the fact that I was able to understand almost everything.
After the movie, I decided to walk around and try to find some lunch. The neighborhood was filled with small but attractive, upper-middle-class gated houses. There were barely any people on the street. And this made me feel unsafe. I had thought about walking all the way to the center of town, but I felt I stuck out as a single woman walking alone and I didn’t want to take the risk. So when I found a populated area near a park, I decided to stop.
I had a delicious buffet lunch for under $2, I listened to a five man band of guitars, accordion and trumpets play pleasant, upbeat music, and I watched a clown make flowers, swords, and bears holding onto a heart for tips. As long as I was within the fenced in area of the restaurant, busy with family diners coming through the turnstile, taking their plate, and filling it with salads, rice, beans, and stewed meats and chickens, it was fine. But leaving that area alone made me feel unsafe. I didn’t like having to call for a taxi and wait for it, nor the feeling that exploring alone here isn’t a very good idea.
Before coming, I expected to feel some anti-Americanism in a country led by someone friends with Hugo Chavez. I have to say I don’t feel that at all. Like in most places of the world, people think Bush is an idiot. I attended a comedy show called The Chaplin Show and several of the skits portrayed humorous meetings between Evo Morales and Bush. But they seem to be OK with American as a country and a people, aside from its politics.
While the majority of Bolivians looking to make money immigrate to Spain, there is also substantial contact with the U.S. One woman I spent time with last week told me her mother immigrated illegally to the Arlington, VA area, where there is an entire street of Bolivians. She has spent the last six years caring for an elderly woman and is now in the process of becoming legal. She combs the woman’s hair and puts make-up on for her. Now the woman is in her final stages and is receiving morphine shots. This Bolivian loves her so much that she calls her daughter daily, crying at how hard it is to watch her die.
It seems to me to be a mutually beneficial situation. The family probably would have had trouble finding an American to care for this woman 24 hours a day with such quality concern for $3,000 a month. And for this 50-year old Bolivian woman, who was considered too old to work in Bolivia, it not only gave her a place to live and a job in America, the work made her feel useful and gave her a new purpose in life.
Since many of the shops were closed, I headed back to my new apartment after lunch. My taxi driver said it was common for businesses to be closed on Saturday afternoons.
“The movement occurs in the evenings,” he said.
Not for me. I’m spending my evening listening to cello music, reading and writing, and enjoying my pretty new surroundings.
Friday, April 06, 2007
Good Friday
Today is Good Friday, a national holiday in Bolivia. Virtually the entire city shut down. When I went out to try to find some food, the only option I found was a nearby hotel. All the cafes and shops were shut. Very little traffic moved on the streets. Many businesses had dogs sitting in their front windows, ready to bark at any intruders.
I read in the newspaper told about a university student who was attacked in a taxi just a few days ago, and right in my neighborhood. After she got in, the taxi drove a bit, then three others jumped in with her. She was seriously beaten.
It’s definitely been difficult for me to take taxis since my bad experience in Nicaragua. I was told I’d have a car and driver here, but that didn’t emerge. I was told to take radio taxis, as those are linked to a call center and it’s a check on their viability. But even to get a cell phone so I could call a radio taxi was a struggle.
I’ve felt some pressure as if I’m being overcautious, or over demanding. And sometimes it’s a pain to have to wait 10-15 for a radio taxi to come when one is ready to go right away. I’ve been here almost two weeks and haven’t had any bad experiences yet. That leads me to relax and feel like everything is OK.
It’s tempting to try to ignore the signs that danger is present, even though the gates and grills in front of every store and home, the guard dogs, and the 24-hour guards on the street give another picture. But this article reminded me that it only takes one incident, and that it can happen, even in the place that everyone is telling me is so safe. So I’ll continue taking precautions.
I’m currently reading The Plumed Serpent, by DH Lawrence. In it, Kate, an Irish woman, is in Mexico, during the Revolutionary times. She often finds it scary and doesn’t like living with fear. Her friend Cipriano tells her, “..there must be a bit of fear, and a bit of horror in your life…The bit of horror is like the sesame seed in the nougat, it gives the sharp wild flavour. It is good to have it there.”
I feel that little fear, the little horror, in the back of my mind here. I suppose it does give life a more sharp, wild flavor. But if I had a choice, I think I’d prefer to live without it. It causes people to construct prisons around themselves – to lock themselves into their secure homes, secure vehicles, and secure gathering places. It keeps them from interacting, from walking, from mixing with the full array of life around them.
I moved from my hotel into a condominium today. It’s a really cute, furnished place, in a Mexican style, that looks out onto a swimming pool. I like it a lot and despite the fact that it’s on the first floor, the security seems to be pretty good. Yet, it’s still a little scary to be alone. And it’s also strange to get used to having a whole three rooms to myself when I’ve spent the last two weeks in a single room.
I read in the newspaper told about a university student who was attacked in a taxi just a few days ago, and right in my neighborhood. After she got in, the taxi drove a bit, then three others jumped in with her. She was seriously beaten.
It’s definitely been difficult for me to take taxis since my bad experience in Nicaragua. I was told I’d have a car and driver here, but that didn’t emerge. I was told to take radio taxis, as those are linked to a call center and it’s a check on their viability. But even to get a cell phone so I could call a radio taxi was a struggle.
I’ve felt some pressure as if I’m being overcautious, or over demanding. And sometimes it’s a pain to have to wait 10-15 for a radio taxi to come when one is ready to go right away. I’ve been here almost two weeks and haven’t had any bad experiences yet. That leads me to relax and feel like everything is OK.
It’s tempting to try to ignore the signs that danger is present, even though the gates and grills in front of every store and home, the guard dogs, and the 24-hour guards on the street give another picture. But this article reminded me that it only takes one incident, and that it can happen, even in the place that everyone is telling me is so safe. So I’ll continue taking precautions.
I’m currently reading The Plumed Serpent, by DH Lawrence. In it, Kate, an Irish woman, is in Mexico, during the Revolutionary times. She often finds it scary and doesn’t like living with fear. Her friend Cipriano tells her, “..there must be a bit of fear, and a bit of horror in your life…The bit of horror is like the sesame seed in the nougat, it gives the sharp wild flavour. It is good to have it there.”
I feel that little fear, the little horror, in the back of my mind here. I suppose it does give life a more sharp, wild flavor. But if I had a choice, I think I’d prefer to live without it. It causes people to construct prisons around themselves – to lock themselves into their secure homes, secure vehicles, and secure gathering places. It keeps them from interacting, from walking, from mixing with the full array of life around them.
I moved from my hotel into a condominium today. It’s a really cute, furnished place, in a Mexican style, that looks out onto a swimming pool. I like it a lot and despite the fact that it’s on the first floor, the security seems to be pretty good. Yet, it’s still a little scary to be alone. And it’s also strange to get used to having a whole three rooms to myself when I’ve spent the last two weeks in a single room.
Monday, April 02, 2007
My first roadblock
One week in Bolivia and I came across my first road block, a popular means of protest in this part of the world.
I was in a taxi on my way to work when the driver and I saw that traffic was suddenly going against us, despite the fact that the lanes only went one way. He was intelligent and didn’t try to go further, asking me to walk the short distance that remained to work. Other cars tried to go around the oncoming traffic. But as I saw while walking, they ended up just reaching the road block, and having to turn around with more difficulty.
The roadblock was just a little bit down from my office. I didn’t come too close. Last time I messed around with a roadblock in Ecuador, my mom and I were held by the protestors. The fireworks, which sounded like a gun, scared me off as did the story of a manager in Cochabamba who recently lost an eye by being at the wrong place during a civil disturbance.
I could see that tires were placed across the road, as were Bolivian flags. There didn’t seem to be so many people – about ten on either side of the road. Yet these few people were able to force hundreds of cars to turn around on the major thoroughfare leading to the airport.
When I asked what was going on, one person said it was the passengers from LAB airlines, who are still stuck at the airport and haven’t gotten their money back. I was amazed how disgruntled airline passengers, many of them not from this area, could organize a roadblock.
The more believable story, told to me by several others, is that the blockers are from a nearby barrio and are protesting the lack of a stoplight. There is a high school on one side of the road. Being a major causeway, the traffic moves quickly and there is no safe way to cross. Recently, a woman was hit and killed.
That seemed to me to be an understandable reason for a protest. But what I didn’t understand was how so few people could inconvenience so many without consequence.
“Couldn’t the police move them?” I asked my colleague Maria.
“Yes, but they will take at least an hour to arrive,” she said. “People here don’t have much respect for public officials.”
“But they seem to have respect for the blockaders. No one complained. Everyone, including giant trucks, turned around.”
“Yes, that’s true. Sometimes passing cars even cheer the blockaders.”
I wondered why the blockade wasn’t used very often as a means of protest in the States. I figured people might be afraid of going to jail. I asked Maria if they didn’t have the same fear here.
“If they are brought to jail, it’s just for an hour or so. Then they are let go,” she said.
For about an hour, no traffic at all passed the office. We wondered if we’d be stuck there. But by 10:30, the road was open again. By the time I went out for lunch, it was hard to even tell where the blockage had been. Most locals seemed pretty inured to it, but I found it scary.
Today, during my Spanish lesson, Oscar read me an article about the Canadian Mennonites, who are marking the 50th anniversary of their arrival in Santa Cruz. They live in a village called Pailas, about 30 kilometers from Santa Cruz.
These Mennonites are more modern than others. They can wear modern clothing and they have cars, tractors, and electrical appliances. They are very light-skinned, with many blonds and blue or green eyes – quite a contrast to the rest of the population. They came to Santa Cruz from Paraguay, where they had been limited to growing peanuts and cotton. Here they had greater options in agriculture. Currently they specialize in corn, soy, sorghum and dairy farms.
Their young study German, math, Spanish and the Bible for six months per year. Girls graduate at age 12, boys at 14. They believe the greatest lessons are taught by the land. Oscar told me they have a reputation for being very hard workers.
Another coworker today told me a about a very interesting opportunity for locals here. When I asked how he spent his weekend, he told me he was looking for a new house to live in. But the catch is this. He will pay the owner $2500 upfront to live in his house. He will live there 12-18 months. At the end of the period, the owner returns the $2500 to him and he moves on. During that time, he can save more money in order to be able to buy his own house.
In effect, he is giving a loan to the home owner, with the interest being the ability to live in his property for free. I don’t know why someone with a spare house wouldn’t just apply for a loan and put the house as collateral. But it’s certainty a nice opportunity for a forward-thinking young man like my colleague.
I was in a taxi on my way to work when the driver and I saw that traffic was suddenly going against us, despite the fact that the lanes only went one way. He was intelligent and didn’t try to go further, asking me to walk the short distance that remained to work. Other cars tried to go around the oncoming traffic. But as I saw while walking, they ended up just reaching the road block, and having to turn around with more difficulty.
The roadblock was just a little bit down from my office. I didn’t come too close. Last time I messed around with a roadblock in Ecuador, my mom and I were held by the protestors. The fireworks, which sounded like a gun, scared me off as did the story of a manager in Cochabamba who recently lost an eye by being at the wrong place during a civil disturbance.
I could see that tires were placed across the road, as were Bolivian flags. There didn’t seem to be so many people – about ten on either side of the road. Yet these few people were able to force hundreds of cars to turn around on the major thoroughfare leading to the airport.
When I asked what was going on, one person said it was the passengers from LAB airlines, who are still stuck at the airport and haven’t gotten their money back. I was amazed how disgruntled airline passengers, many of them not from this area, could organize a roadblock.
The more believable story, told to me by several others, is that the blockers are from a nearby barrio and are protesting the lack of a stoplight. There is a high school on one side of the road. Being a major causeway, the traffic moves quickly and there is no safe way to cross. Recently, a woman was hit and killed.
That seemed to me to be an understandable reason for a protest. But what I didn’t understand was how so few people could inconvenience so many without consequence.
“Couldn’t the police move them?” I asked my colleague Maria.
“Yes, but they will take at least an hour to arrive,” she said. “People here don’t have much respect for public officials.”
“But they seem to have respect for the blockaders. No one complained. Everyone, including giant trucks, turned around.”
“Yes, that’s true. Sometimes passing cars even cheer the blockaders.”
I wondered why the blockade wasn’t used very often as a means of protest in the States. I figured people might be afraid of going to jail. I asked Maria if they didn’t have the same fear here.
“If they are brought to jail, it’s just for an hour or so. Then they are let go,” she said.
For about an hour, no traffic at all passed the office. We wondered if we’d be stuck there. But by 10:30, the road was open again. By the time I went out for lunch, it was hard to even tell where the blockage had been. Most locals seemed pretty inured to it, but I found it scary.
Today, during my Spanish lesson, Oscar read me an article about the Canadian Mennonites, who are marking the 50th anniversary of their arrival in Santa Cruz. They live in a village called Pailas, about 30 kilometers from Santa Cruz.
These Mennonites are more modern than others. They can wear modern clothing and they have cars, tractors, and electrical appliances. They are very light-skinned, with many blonds and blue or green eyes – quite a contrast to the rest of the population. They came to Santa Cruz from Paraguay, where they had been limited to growing peanuts and cotton. Here they had greater options in agriculture. Currently they specialize in corn, soy, sorghum and dairy farms.
Their young study German, math, Spanish and the Bible for six months per year. Girls graduate at age 12, boys at 14. They believe the greatest lessons are taught by the land. Oscar told me they have a reputation for being very hard workers.
Another coworker today told me a about a very interesting opportunity for locals here. When I asked how he spent his weekend, he told me he was looking for a new house to live in. But the catch is this. He will pay the owner $2500 upfront to live in his house. He will live there 12-18 months. At the end of the period, the owner returns the $2500 to him and he moves on. During that time, he can save more money in order to be able to buy his own house.
In effect, he is giving a loan to the home owner, with the interest being the ability to live in his property for free. I don’t know why someone with a spare house wouldn’t just apply for a loan and put the house as collateral. But it’s certainty a nice opportunity for a forward-thinking young man like my colleague.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
A Weekend with Local Company
I had expected to spend this weekend alone. I didn’t mind that idea since I looked forward to having a few days to try to get things in order, post-move. But my friendly Bolivian acquaintances made sure I had something to do each day.
Yesterday, my colleague Maria invited me out to lunch. She took me to Alexander Café. It’s her favorite place and I think it will soon become mine as well. Owned by an American in La Paz, it’s a chain café, featuring salads, sandwichs, wraps, fruit drinks, muffins, brownies, and desserts, as well as the best coffee in the city. I had an Asian chicken salad, a strawberry yogurt shake and a whole wheat muffin – a California-style wholesome meal.
Maria, a slender, attractive, single woman with a bright smile and a positive attitude, has worked for the the past five years. Originally from Cochabamba, she worked in La Paz for several years before moving to Santa Cruz.
“La Paz is not a pretty city,” she said, “but it’s a comfortable place to live. The cost of living is low, one can walk everywhere, and cafes and restaurants are on every corner.”
I told her that I liked the atmosphere in the bank and in the country. She said it was largely due to the importance of family in Bolivian culture. She described how when the bank moved its headquarters from La Paz to Santa Cruz, many headquarters staff had to be transferred to Santa Cruz.
“There was a whole process, that took about a year – of helping people to find housing, to sign up for kindergartens. One weekend they even flew everyone and their families to Santa Cruz to allow them to check it out and make sure they’d be comfortable living there.”
I saw the family atmosphere this afternoon. I spent the afternoon with my Spanish teacher Oscar, his wife Rosario, and sons Sergio (5) and Mario (9 months). After they picked me up, we went out for lunch at one of their favorite cafes The Corner That Everyone Should Know. The unassuming exterior led into a pleasant courtyard filled with chairs and a small restaurant. Almost every table was full – young tables, families, and families with children.
“Every Sunday, families like to go out for lunch,” Rosario told me. “It’s the day of rest.” She also explained that household employees work from Monday through Saturday. So Sunday is the only day there is no one to cook for them.
“Do most families have household help?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“But the employees don’t have anyone helping them.”
“No. That’s why they have Sundays off.”
This is just one of the indicators that sets Santa Cruz off from the rest of Bolivia – the fact that the average citizen has a housekeeper.
Oscar and Rosario are solidly middle-class, but far from rich. Oscar earns $8 an hour teaching English and Spanish. Rosario is an accountant. They rent their home and they drive a small car with no radio, clock, or glass in the side mirrors (one was stolen, the other smashed).
After enjoying our plates of grilled fish with French fries, rice and salad, we headed for our main destination, a butterfly park. To get there, we had to drive past the wealthy suburb of Urubo. We traveled on a smooth, well-maintained road, lined by brick walls with wire toppings, much like a jail wall. I asked what these walls were for.
“It’s because it’s a closed community,” Rosario told me.
I had wondered what Rosario would be like. Oscar had told me she wanted to marry him after one year of dating, but that he wasn’t interested. She continued to date him, but was sad to not have his commitment. He finally did marry her because she was pregnant. She was only 21 at the time. When I asked why she was in such a hurry, Oscar said, “Because she didn’t want to lose such an interesting guy.”
He is an interesting guy. And very nice. But his short height, his pot belly, his former immaturity and reliance on his mother, and most notably, his shrunken left arm and hand, apparently a birth defect, could make it hard for him to find a partner.
He has come to love and appreciate Rosario and told me repeatedly that “She’s a very good woman.” She looked similar a woman who one could imagine would overlook physical shortcoming. She herself was slender and pleasant, but rather plain, with a wide mouth and large teeth. But I could easily feel the tranquility radiating from her that Oscar had described. She seemed simple, kind, caring and good. I liked her.
And Oscar clearly loved his children. He had told me that their running to greet him when he comes home in the evening is one of the things that makes him happiest. Throughout the day, he held them, kissed them, talked to them, called the baby his king, his world.
After the series of fancy lots, we drove down a rough road, so dusty and sandy it was like driving on a beach. As motorcycles, 4-wheelers and large trucks and 4x4s passed us, they raised clouds of dust so dense we couldn’t see a thing.
After a couple of miles of this, we reached Guembe Biocenter, a park on 83 hectares of land. Admission cost $7.50 for adults, quite steep by Bolivian standards. I worried it was more than Oscar and Rosario expected. We were assigned a young man as a guide, who would lead us through the park.
First he brought us to butterfly laboratory, where we saw the stages of butterfly development – first the eggs on a leaf (visible through a magnifying glass), then the larvae, the cocoons, and the butterflies breaking free. Once they broke free, they were moved to the butterfly museum. They say it’s the largest butterfly museum in the world. I’ve only been to one other – on the Canadian side of Niagara falls. I’d have to say the Canadian one was better – with a denser population of butterflies and better visibility. But this is Bolivia after all and it was still quite impressive, especially since they only use local butterflies.
Inside the netted viewing area was a 120 meter observation deck that we could climb and look out over the dense tropical greenery. The butterflies lived between 24 hours and 8-9 months, with an average of four weeks.
From there, we saw a couple of orchid plants, and a symmetric stone structure, where the property owner practices yoga, considering it a center of energy.
They had a series of small pools as well as a lagoon, where one could kayak. I hadn’t brought my swimsuit, since Oscar thought it would be too cold. Although by the afternoon, it was blazing hot. Unable to swim, I took a quick spin on a kayak and spent some time reading. In the afternoon, we took a horse and buggy ride through the forest. The buggy was equipped with incredibly soft seats that absorbed the shock of the rapid trot.
We ended up spending the day there, not leaving until almost six. It was the first time for both Oscar and Rosario to visit that place and they seemed to enjoy themselves. They invited me to their home for evening tea, an invitation I appreciated. But since I still had some things to do in the evening, I asked whether I might be able to take them up on it another time.
All in all, I spent a pleasant weekend with very nice people. I think I could get used to living here.
Yesterday, my colleague Maria invited me out to lunch. She took me to Alexander Café. It’s her favorite place and I think it will soon become mine as well. Owned by an American in La Paz, it’s a chain café, featuring salads, sandwichs, wraps, fruit drinks, muffins, brownies, and desserts, as well as the best coffee in the city. I had an Asian chicken salad, a strawberry yogurt shake and a whole wheat muffin – a California-style wholesome meal.
Maria, a slender, attractive, single woman with a bright smile and a positive attitude, has worked for the the past five years. Originally from Cochabamba, she worked in La Paz for several years before moving to Santa Cruz.
“La Paz is not a pretty city,” she said, “but it’s a comfortable place to live. The cost of living is low, one can walk everywhere, and cafes and restaurants are on every corner.”
I told her that I liked the atmosphere in the bank and in the country. She said it was largely due to the importance of family in Bolivian culture. She described how when the bank moved its headquarters from La Paz to Santa Cruz, many headquarters staff had to be transferred to Santa Cruz.
“There was a whole process, that took about a year – of helping people to find housing, to sign up for kindergartens. One weekend they even flew everyone and their families to Santa Cruz to allow them to check it out and make sure they’d be comfortable living there.”
I saw the family atmosphere this afternoon. I spent the afternoon with my Spanish teacher Oscar, his wife Rosario, and sons Sergio (5) and Mario (9 months). After they picked me up, we went out for lunch at one of their favorite cafes The Corner That Everyone Should Know. The unassuming exterior led into a pleasant courtyard filled with chairs and a small restaurant. Almost every table was full – young tables, families, and families with children.
“Every Sunday, families like to go out for lunch,” Rosario told me. “It’s the day of rest.” She also explained that household employees work from Monday through Saturday. So Sunday is the only day there is no one to cook for them.
“Do most families have household help?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“But the employees don’t have anyone helping them.”
“No. That’s why they have Sundays off.”
This is just one of the indicators that sets Santa Cruz off from the rest of Bolivia – the fact that the average citizen has a housekeeper.
Oscar and Rosario are solidly middle-class, but far from rich. Oscar earns $8 an hour teaching English and Spanish. Rosario is an accountant. They rent their home and they drive a small car with no radio, clock, or glass in the side mirrors (one was stolen, the other smashed).
After enjoying our plates of grilled fish with French fries, rice and salad, we headed for our main destination, a butterfly park. To get there, we had to drive past the wealthy suburb of Urubo. We traveled on a smooth, well-maintained road, lined by brick walls with wire toppings, much like a jail wall. I asked what these walls were for.
“It’s because it’s a closed community,” Rosario told me.
I had wondered what Rosario would be like. Oscar had told me she wanted to marry him after one year of dating, but that he wasn’t interested. She continued to date him, but was sad to not have his commitment. He finally did marry her because she was pregnant. She was only 21 at the time. When I asked why she was in such a hurry, Oscar said, “Because she didn’t want to lose such an interesting guy.”
He is an interesting guy. And very nice. But his short height, his pot belly, his former immaturity and reliance on his mother, and most notably, his shrunken left arm and hand, apparently a birth defect, could make it hard for him to find a partner.
He has come to love and appreciate Rosario and told me repeatedly that “She’s a very good woman.” She looked similar a woman who one could imagine would overlook physical shortcoming. She herself was slender and pleasant, but rather plain, with a wide mouth and large teeth. But I could easily feel the tranquility radiating from her that Oscar had described. She seemed simple, kind, caring and good. I liked her.
And Oscar clearly loved his children. He had told me that their running to greet him when he comes home in the evening is one of the things that makes him happiest. Throughout the day, he held them, kissed them, talked to them, called the baby his king, his world.
After the series of fancy lots, we drove down a rough road, so dusty and sandy it was like driving on a beach. As motorcycles, 4-wheelers and large trucks and 4x4s passed us, they raised clouds of dust so dense we couldn’t see a thing.
After a couple of miles of this, we reached Guembe Biocenter, a park on 83 hectares of land. Admission cost $7.50 for adults, quite steep by Bolivian standards. I worried it was more than Oscar and Rosario expected. We were assigned a young man as a guide, who would lead us through the park.
First he brought us to butterfly laboratory, where we saw the stages of butterfly development – first the eggs on a leaf (visible through a magnifying glass), then the larvae, the cocoons, and the butterflies breaking free. Once they broke free, they were moved to the butterfly museum. They say it’s the largest butterfly museum in the world. I’ve only been to one other – on the Canadian side of Niagara falls. I’d have to say the Canadian one was better – with a denser population of butterflies and better visibility. But this is Bolivia after all and it was still quite impressive, especially since they only use local butterflies.
Inside the netted viewing area was a 120 meter observation deck that we could climb and look out over the dense tropical greenery. The butterflies lived between 24 hours and 8-9 months, with an average of four weeks.
From there, we saw a couple of orchid plants, and a symmetric stone structure, where the property owner practices yoga, considering it a center of energy.
They had a series of small pools as well as a lagoon, where one could kayak. I hadn’t brought my swimsuit, since Oscar thought it would be too cold. Although by the afternoon, it was blazing hot. Unable to swim, I took a quick spin on a kayak and spent some time reading. In the afternoon, we took a horse and buggy ride through the forest. The buggy was equipped with incredibly soft seats that absorbed the shock of the rapid trot.
We ended up spending the day there, not leaving until almost six. It was the first time for both Oscar and Rosario to visit that place and they seemed to enjoy themselves. They invited me to their home for evening tea, an invitation I appreciated. But since I still had some things to do in the evening, I asked whether I might be able to take them up on it another time.
All in all, I spent a pleasant weekend with very nice people. I think I could get used to living here.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Orientation
My Spanish teacher, Oscar, didn’t have time to prepare my lesson for this morning, having stayed up too late for the comedy club performance. So rather than reschedule the lesson, we decided to have a mobile lesson.
He started out by showing me the Montsenor, the café district, where locals like to go out for a couple of coffee. We stopped by an Italian café for a morning drink and pastry. While there, I saw a Mennonite man walk by, dressed in dark navy, neat overalls and a straw hat.
Oscar told me there are Mennonites here from the United States, Mexico, Germany and Canada. I asked about their relations with the local population.
“They used to be very closed and kept themselves separate,” he said. “They couldn’t marry Bolivians. But now there are two types. The conservatives continue as before. The revelados can marry Bolivians. They still maintain the clothing, but the spouse doesn’t have to.”
He also told me about some Japanese colonies near Santa Cruz, where almost the entire population is Japanese. His sister married one of these Japanese men. I’d like to visit one of the villages, as a Japanese world in the middle of Bolivia sounds pretty surreal to me.
We drove around town and Oscar helped me to orient myself a bit more. Santa Cruz is divided into rings. Ring 2 wraps around the center, ring three around ring two, and so on. Each ring is divided into different neighborhoods.
He told me that my neighborhood is called Equipetrol, which is known as a wealthy area. It was the first wealthy barrio in Santa Cruz. Now it’s known as a popular street hangout for young people. On Thursday through Saturday nights, they park trucks along the road and drink beer, blasting music from oversized speakers. It’s the kind of low-cost, 1980s, means of meeting other young people that I saw around the Minneapolis lakes growing up.
We drove across the Pirai river, which separates las Colinas del Urubo, the very wealthiest part of Santa Cruz, from the rest of town. Brown water flowed only through a very narrow part of the wide, brown bed. Oscar said that from December to February, it rained daily and the river was swollen. But now they are expecting a drought to follow and the water has largely dried up.
From the bridge, we could see the fancy white homes with red tiles of Urubo. I asked who lived there and Oscar said mostly owners or employees of petroleum and gas companies, cattle owners and large farmers.
We saw some residents biking on quality mountain bikes and a group of young people driving an open-air 4-wheel vehicle, for the fun of it.
“There are very large class differences here,” Oscar said. “We have both very rich and very poor.”
As we drove down the streets lined by the large-leaved chapeo tree and mango trees, Oscar pointed out to me a few of his favorite restaurants. Then we stopped by the zoo. The zoo has quite a good collection of tropical birds – 150 species and almost 1000 birds. Though the conditions for many are very side – small, square wire cages.
The macaws – the endangered blue-throated macaw, and the rainbow colored scarlet macaw, among others – screeched around us. Their sound couldn’t be contained in the little cages. They needed the vast expanse of a dense jungle to call across and to drown their desperate sounds.
I had to remember that while Santa Cruz is a sunny, plains town, we are actually quite close to the Amazon. Some of the animals were saw were purely fantastic, as though they’d come from a unique world of their own.
The quiet, black and white toucans, with huge, bright yellow beaks, tinged with red, were so perfectly groomed as to appear fake. The harpy eagle looked like a combination of an owl and an eagle, with huge claws of spun golden-brown threads. The Andean Condor was a larger than life-size bird in the vulture family. And my favorite of all was the sloth, a freaky looking creature with a small head, a runted tail, and long arms with strong, curved claws. It looks like a very primitive ape, or an ancient antecedent to the human. Due to its snail’s pace of movement, it was allowed to roam freely on the zoo grounds. Watching this creature move, one slow stretch at a time, disgusting and beautiful and captivating all at once, was the most fascinating thing I’ve seen in Santa Cruz so far.
In the evening, we ate at one of the nicest restaurants in Santa Cruz, el Candelabro. A combination French-sushi-piano bar place, we ate on finely covered tables by candlelight. This was a place where one could feast on gazpacho, grilled seafood, and chocolate cheesecake, the entrees served under platters that resembled medieval caps of armor. A group of waiters gathered around the table to reveal the entrees to the diners all at once, so there could be a collective exhale of awe. Again, not a scene I expected to encounter in Bolivia.
He started out by showing me the Montsenor, the café district, where locals like to go out for a couple of coffee. We stopped by an Italian café for a morning drink and pastry. While there, I saw a Mennonite man walk by, dressed in dark navy, neat overalls and a straw hat.
Oscar told me there are Mennonites here from the United States, Mexico, Germany and Canada. I asked about their relations with the local population.
“They used to be very closed and kept themselves separate,” he said. “They couldn’t marry Bolivians. But now there are two types. The conservatives continue as before. The revelados can marry Bolivians. They still maintain the clothing, but the spouse doesn’t have to.”
He also told me about some Japanese colonies near Santa Cruz, where almost the entire population is Japanese. His sister married one of these Japanese men. I’d like to visit one of the villages, as a Japanese world in the middle of Bolivia sounds pretty surreal to me.
We drove around town and Oscar helped me to orient myself a bit more. Santa Cruz is divided into rings. Ring 2 wraps around the center, ring three around ring two, and so on. Each ring is divided into different neighborhoods.
He told me that my neighborhood is called Equipetrol, which is known as a wealthy area. It was the first wealthy barrio in Santa Cruz. Now it’s known as a popular street hangout for young people. On Thursday through Saturday nights, they park trucks along the road and drink beer, blasting music from oversized speakers. It’s the kind of low-cost, 1980s, means of meeting other young people that I saw around the Minneapolis lakes growing up.
We drove across the Pirai river, which separates las Colinas del Urubo, the very wealthiest part of Santa Cruz, from the rest of town. Brown water flowed only through a very narrow part of the wide, brown bed. Oscar said that from December to February, it rained daily and the river was swollen. But now they are expecting a drought to follow and the water has largely dried up.
From the bridge, we could see the fancy white homes with red tiles of Urubo. I asked who lived there and Oscar said mostly owners or employees of petroleum and gas companies, cattle owners and large farmers.
We saw some residents biking on quality mountain bikes and a group of young people driving an open-air 4-wheel vehicle, for the fun of it.
“There are very large class differences here,” Oscar said. “We have both very rich and very poor.”
As we drove down the streets lined by the large-leaved chapeo tree and mango trees, Oscar pointed out to me a few of his favorite restaurants. Then we stopped by the zoo. The zoo has quite a good collection of tropical birds – 150 species and almost 1000 birds. Though the conditions for many are very side – small, square wire cages.
The macaws – the endangered blue-throated macaw, and the rainbow colored scarlet macaw, among others – screeched around us. Their sound couldn’t be contained in the little cages. They needed the vast expanse of a dense jungle to call across and to drown their desperate sounds.
I had to remember that while Santa Cruz is a sunny, plains town, we are actually quite close to the Amazon. Some of the animals were saw were purely fantastic, as though they’d come from a unique world of their own.
The quiet, black and white toucans, with huge, bright yellow beaks, tinged with red, were so perfectly groomed as to appear fake. The harpy eagle looked like a combination of an owl and an eagle, with huge claws of spun golden-brown threads. The Andean Condor was a larger than life-size bird in the vulture family. And my favorite of all was the sloth, a freaky looking creature with a small head, a runted tail, and long arms with strong, curved claws. It looks like a very primitive ape, or an ancient antecedent to the human. Due to its snail’s pace of movement, it was allowed to roam freely on the zoo grounds. Watching this creature move, one slow stretch at a time, disgusting and beautiful and captivating all at once, was the most fascinating thing I’ve seen in Santa Cruz so far.
In the evening, we ate at one of the nicest restaurants in Santa Cruz, el Candelabro. A combination French-sushi-piano bar place, we ate on finely covered tables by candlelight. This was a place where one could feast on gazpacho, grilled seafood, and chocolate cheesecake, the entrees served under platters that resembled medieval caps of armor. A group of waiters gathered around the table to reveal the entrees to the diners all at once, so there could be a collective exhale of awe. Again, not a scene I expected to encounter in Bolivia.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
a day in the life
I spent the first part of the day in a busy, lower-income part of the city called Ramada. The office was surrounded by small shops – selling stationary, glass display cases, party supplies, snacks. Buses, taxis and cars filled the street in a noisy congestion. At 9 in the morning, one man sold cups of red gelatin through the windows of the micro buses to passengers.
The clientele was varied. In contrast to the areas I’ve been spending time so far, here I saw women with dark, lined faces and long black braids, dressed in pleated skirts and aprons. They sat next to a white man and a Hispanic woman, a couple, applying for a debit card. A little girl sat the desk with her mother. Her tiny face so pensive and patient, I felt I could almost see her mind developing.
The staff were young, professional and seemed comfortable and capable. But the air smelt of flour and sex, of the dust of life that collected on the customer’s clothing.
I spent the day with Vanessa, an experienced customer service representative. She had a glamorous photo of herself copied across her computer screen, in 15 repetitions.
Despite what seemed to be an unusually strong interest in herself, she interacted well with the various clients. One middle aged woman came in looking for funding to get a refrigeration storage space at the slaughterhouse where she works. This simple woman carried a cell phone, a sign of the increased access the poor have to technology. She told me she sells trip, heart, and cattle innards.
“Before, we used to give those things away,” she said. “But in the past 30 years, they have become popular.” She works in the largest slaughterhouse in Santa Cruz, the same one that supplies meat for Burger King hamburgers.
“Yes,” Vanessa concurred. “Those parts are really delicious. We’ll have to invite you to try some.”
I feel the strong emphasis on meat here, which makes me feel like I’m in a cowboy-like atmosphere. The love of meat is really no different than in Siberia or in Kyrgyzstan. However, there seem to be less vegetables available here. Inside of the ubiquitous tomato and cucumber salad served in Kyrgyzstan, here the meat usually comes with potatoes, dehydrated potatoes, and rice – a huge carbohydrate collection. Even the beans, the nice source of fiber so common in other parts of central and south America, are virtually absent here.
I think there are vegetables available in the market. But since I don’t have access to a kitchen, I eat all my meals out. I usually balance it with a full lunch (since that is the main meal of the day here) and a chef salad or soup in the evening from my hotel.
Vanessa took me with her to lunch at a local café. We watched the local news on television. The 309 passengers on the LAB flight to Spain that had still not departed were rioting at the Santa Cruz airport. They were originally told that LAB couldn’t find the funds for jet fuel. Three LAB managers were brought to jail for corruption for diverting the funds collected for this flight. In the meantime, the passengers, stuck at the airport, were going to miss the April 1st deadline for entering Spain without a visa.
A former Miss Bolivia (a single mother of an 11 month old daughter) was arrested for trafficking cocaine and was said to be an addict. And a car accident resulted in two serious injuries. The TV camera showed one of the men being removed from the car, his face streaming blood.
“Poor guy,” Vanessa said.
I instinctively turned my face away from the TV. “How can they show that on TV?” I asked. “How would you feel if you were dying and the world watched.”
“They don’t follow the laws,” she said. But then went on to tell me how she watched the entire video of Americans being beheaded in Afghanistan a few years ago. “It’s quite a process,” she said. “And the sounds they make, it’s just awful. They take a knife and slice all the way through the head, then they put the head on the stomach of the victim.”
“Didn’t you have nightmares after watching that?” I asked. I myself found the still photos just before death, knowing what would happen imminently, disturbing enough.
“No, but I had a real headache, from the extent of the cruelty,” she said.
Vanessa is one of 8 daughters in a family with 8,000 hectares of land. She hates the current government.
“It’s a socialist government that wants everything under its control,” she said. “It’s the worst that could have happened to our country. He wants to get rid of the rich.”
Her dream is to inherit her father’s land, raise cattle and grow the cattle feed. “I don’t make much in the bank,” she said. “But I’m working in order to learn, so that someday I can establish something for myself.”
**
Most employees here have two hour lunch breaks, and the majority go home. The importance of family is clear and I think it works out to be a very nice schedule to allow people to balance work and family. They go to work or school for a few hours in the morning, spend a quality lunchtime together, then go back for several more hours, and then have the evening together. In this way, I think people are more refreshed for the two periods of time they spend at work, and since they are able to see their families throughout the day – in the morning, afternoon, and evening, as well as weekends, there is less conflict in balancing work with family, even with only 3 weeks annual vacation.
In the late afternoon, most employees provide their workers with a snack. The day before yesterday, they brought me a square of yucca with some slivers of meat. Yesterday it was a yogurt and a small package of cookies. This is another tradition that makes the work day pass with more ease and comfort.
I suppose it’s still a matter of learning the local products, but I’m glad to be eating out so much now. Because what I’ve seen in the small supermarket near my hotel and the stalls I’ve gone by, doesn’t appeal to me at all. There are the standard junk-food products – the sodas, the Pringles, and the candies. Chocolate cereal flakes seem to be common as is gelatin. Then there are the local products – the fried plantains that are so greasy they are almost see through, the yogurt in weak packaging that somehow scares me, the juice made from mystery fruits and questionable hygiene, the fried empanadas with a mystery surprise inside. They seem to like sweets, and there are a lot of rolls and cookies, but those I’ve tried so far are pretty dry and not very sweet.
While none of the groceries appeal to me particularly, I do like the entrees they are able to prepare from them. One afternoon, I had lunch with some colleagues at a popular local restaurant, La Casa de la Camba. There, a man dressed in white and wearing a sombrero directed our car into the parking space. And all the servers were similarly dressed in the style of horsemen from the pampas. There we had fried yucca with a tasty, green hot sauce, greasy rice with duck and plantain, chicken, beef and rice with milk and cheese (like rice pudding, but without the sugar).
**
I learned quite a bit more about the city and the country where I’m living. Bolivia is divided into nine departments, the equivalent of states and Santa Cruz is one of these. The rainy season, which continues through April, has been strong this year and a department to the north, Beni, suffered serious floods. During the rainy season, the countryside fills with water, roads are ruined, and entire areas become very difficult to access. The rumor is that this year, the combination of El Nino and La Nina will bring drought after the rain, so farmers are collecting water in tanks and the city of Santa Cruz is relying on its wells.
Bolivia used to be driven by mining. But the main industries in Santa Cruz today are wood, petroleum, agriculture and cattle. There is also a large hill full of iron being exploited by an Indian enterprise, Jindu. It is the most expensive city in Bolivia and the most dangerous. Cochabamba had been developing into the eastern capital of Bolivia, but due to constant political problems and protests, companies started to move to Santa Cruz instead. At the same time, many people migrated to the area for the fertile soil.
“The very rapid growth in Santa Cruz has made development disorganized,” my Spanish teacher Oscar told me. “Five years ago there were three rings. Now there are seven.”
He told me there has also be a large increase in street children in the past few years. These kids sniff shoe glue and are called chuferos. One afternoon we drove past a group of women and children seated on a median. Police circled around them, trying to convince them to move.
Maria told me they were chuferos. They wanted to stay there in order to rob from people to get money for the glue. She said the parents gave the glue to their children.
“I’ve even seen a mother giving her baby glue,” she said. “If the children are high, they don’t feel hunger.”
**
There are two statues in the city that have grabbed my attention. The giant white Christ, with arms outspread in the middle of a rotunda, is a focal reference point. What stands behind him is north, and in front of him is south.
In addition, there is a giant statue of liberty on top of the New York Mall. It’s strange to be driving through a city and suddenly seeing the pointed crown of this icon.
I learned how people who are paid salaries, have to save their receipts for all their purchases in a month, which is subtracted from what they owe.
“Why can’t there just be a simple tax?” I asked my colleague Maria. To avoid people getting fake receipts, one is asked for their last name and ID number every time they buy anything. It’s quite time consuming to repeatedly give that information and then save all the slips.
“They started out with a tax that was simply a percentage of income. But people protested and made blockades,” she said.
So rather than have all my purchases go to naught, I give Maria’s name and ID number every time I make a purchase. And much to her gratitude, I hand her my pile of slips.
The clientele was varied. In contrast to the areas I’ve been spending time so far, here I saw women with dark, lined faces and long black braids, dressed in pleated skirts and aprons. They sat next to a white man and a Hispanic woman, a couple, applying for a debit card. A little girl sat the desk with her mother. Her tiny face so pensive and patient, I felt I could almost see her mind developing.
The staff were young, professional and seemed comfortable and capable. But the air smelt of flour and sex, of the dust of life that collected on the customer’s clothing.
I spent the day with Vanessa, an experienced customer service representative. She had a glamorous photo of herself copied across her computer screen, in 15 repetitions.
Despite what seemed to be an unusually strong interest in herself, she interacted well with the various clients. One middle aged woman came in looking for funding to get a refrigeration storage space at the slaughterhouse where she works. This simple woman carried a cell phone, a sign of the increased access the poor have to technology. She told me she sells trip, heart, and cattle innards.
“Before, we used to give those things away,” she said. “But in the past 30 years, they have become popular.” She works in the largest slaughterhouse in Santa Cruz, the same one that supplies meat for Burger King hamburgers.
“Yes,” Vanessa concurred. “Those parts are really delicious. We’ll have to invite you to try some.”
I feel the strong emphasis on meat here, which makes me feel like I’m in a cowboy-like atmosphere. The love of meat is really no different than in Siberia or in Kyrgyzstan. However, there seem to be less vegetables available here. Inside of the ubiquitous tomato and cucumber salad served in Kyrgyzstan, here the meat usually comes with potatoes, dehydrated potatoes, and rice – a huge carbohydrate collection. Even the beans, the nice source of fiber so common in other parts of central and south America, are virtually absent here.
I think there are vegetables available in the market. But since I don’t have access to a kitchen, I eat all my meals out. I usually balance it with a full lunch (since that is the main meal of the day here) and a chef salad or soup in the evening from my hotel.
Vanessa took me with her to lunch at a local café. We watched the local news on television. The 309 passengers on the LAB flight to Spain that had still not departed were rioting at the Santa Cruz airport. They were originally told that LAB couldn’t find the funds for jet fuel. Three LAB managers were brought to jail for corruption for diverting the funds collected for this flight. In the meantime, the passengers, stuck at the airport, were going to miss the April 1st deadline for entering Spain without a visa.
A former Miss Bolivia (a single mother of an 11 month old daughter) was arrested for trafficking cocaine and was said to be an addict. And a car accident resulted in two serious injuries. The TV camera showed one of the men being removed from the car, his face streaming blood.
“Poor guy,” Vanessa said.
I instinctively turned my face away from the TV. “How can they show that on TV?” I asked. “How would you feel if you were dying and the world watched.”
“They don’t follow the laws,” she said. But then went on to tell me how she watched the entire video of Americans being beheaded in Afghanistan a few years ago. “It’s quite a process,” she said. “And the sounds they make, it’s just awful. They take a knife and slice all the way through the head, then they put the head on the stomach of the victim.”
“Didn’t you have nightmares after watching that?” I asked. I myself found the still photos just before death, knowing what would happen imminently, disturbing enough.
“No, but I had a real headache, from the extent of the cruelty,” she said.
Vanessa is one of 8 daughters in a family with 8,000 hectares of land. She hates the current government.
“It’s a socialist government that wants everything under its control,” she said. “It’s the worst that could have happened to our country. He wants to get rid of the rich.”
Her dream is to inherit her father’s land, raise cattle and grow the cattle feed. “I don’t make much in the bank,” she said. “But I’m working in order to learn, so that someday I can establish something for myself.”
**
Most employees here have two hour lunch breaks, and the majority go home. The importance of family is clear and I think it works out to be a very nice schedule to allow people to balance work and family. They go to work or school for a few hours in the morning, spend a quality lunchtime together, then go back for several more hours, and then have the evening together. In this way, I think people are more refreshed for the two periods of time they spend at work, and since they are able to see their families throughout the day – in the morning, afternoon, and evening, as well as weekends, there is less conflict in balancing work with family, even with only 3 weeks annual vacation.
In the late afternoon, most employees provide their workers with a snack. The day before yesterday, they brought me a square of yucca with some slivers of meat. Yesterday it was a yogurt and a small package of cookies. This is another tradition that makes the work day pass with more ease and comfort.
I suppose it’s still a matter of learning the local products, but I’m glad to be eating out so much now. Because what I’ve seen in the small supermarket near my hotel and the stalls I’ve gone by, doesn’t appeal to me at all. There are the standard junk-food products – the sodas, the Pringles, and the candies. Chocolate cereal flakes seem to be common as is gelatin. Then there are the local products – the fried plantains that are so greasy they are almost see through, the yogurt in weak packaging that somehow scares me, the juice made from mystery fruits and questionable hygiene, the fried empanadas with a mystery surprise inside. They seem to like sweets, and there are a lot of rolls and cookies, but those I’ve tried so far are pretty dry and not very sweet.
While none of the groceries appeal to me particularly, I do like the entrees they are able to prepare from them. One afternoon, I had lunch with some colleagues at a popular local restaurant, La Casa de la Camba. There, a man dressed in white and wearing a sombrero directed our car into the parking space. And all the servers were similarly dressed in the style of horsemen from the pampas. There we had fried yucca with a tasty, green hot sauce, greasy rice with duck and plantain, chicken, beef and rice with milk and cheese (like rice pudding, but without the sugar).
**
I learned quite a bit more about the city and the country where I’m living. Bolivia is divided into nine departments, the equivalent of states and Santa Cruz is one of these. The rainy season, which continues through April, has been strong this year and a department to the north, Beni, suffered serious floods. During the rainy season, the countryside fills with water, roads are ruined, and entire areas become very difficult to access. The rumor is that this year, the combination of El Nino and La Nina will bring drought after the rain, so farmers are collecting water in tanks and the city of Santa Cruz is relying on its wells.
Bolivia used to be driven by mining. But the main industries in Santa Cruz today are wood, petroleum, agriculture and cattle. There is also a large hill full of iron being exploited by an Indian enterprise, Jindu. It is the most expensive city in Bolivia and the most dangerous. Cochabamba had been developing into the eastern capital of Bolivia, but due to constant political problems and protests, companies started to move to Santa Cruz instead. At the same time, many people migrated to the area for the fertile soil.
“The very rapid growth in Santa Cruz has made development disorganized,” my Spanish teacher Oscar told me. “Five years ago there were three rings. Now there are seven.”
He told me there has also be a large increase in street children in the past few years. These kids sniff shoe glue and are called chuferos. One afternoon we drove past a group of women and children seated on a median. Police circled around them, trying to convince them to move.
Maria told me they were chuferos. They wanted to stay there in order to rob from people to get money for the glue. She said the parents gave the glue to their children.
“I’ve even seen a mother giving her baby glue,” she said. “If the children are high, they don’t feel hunger.”
**
There are two statues in the city that have grabbed my attention. The giant white Christ, with arms outspread in the middle of a rotunda, is a focal reference point. What stands behind him is north, and in front of him is south.
In addition, there is a giant statue of liberty on top of the New York Mall. It’s strange to be driving through a city and suddenly seeing the pointed crown of this icon.
I learned how people who are paid salaries, have to save their receipts for all their purchases in a month, which is subtracted from what they owe.
“Why can’t there just be a simple tax?” I asked my colleague Maria. To avoid people getting fake receipts, one is asked for their last name and ID number every time they buy anything. It’s quite time consuming to repeatedly give that information and then save all the slips.
“They started out with a tax that was simply a percentage of income. But people protested and made blockades,” she said.
So rather than have all my purchases go to naught, I give Maria’s name and ID number every time I make a purchase. And much to her gratitude, I hand her my pile of slips.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
first day in Santa Cruz
Today we passed by the Miss Universe/Miss World office, a nice house surrounded by greenery. The daily local paper contained a two page color spread about the Miss Paraguay competition. Beauty pageants here seem to be considered worthy news – whether they are local, regional, national or international.
I had the chance to move some more through the city today. I noted a lot of fancy, gated condominiums and a lot of SUVs – Nissan, Suzuki, SSR, needed for the dirt roads that surround the city borders. The license plates are white with bright blue letters – Bolivia written above the numbers. Those without cars travel in micros – small buses in between the size of a mini-van and a full-size bus. The fare is 1.5 bolivianos, or less than 25 cents.
I was taken to one of these gated condominiums today. The three-bedroom condo, on the seventh floor, was supposed to be my new home. Not only were there already three people living in this condo, but I was led to a small room with two twin beds and told I’d be sharing it with someone else. That would be four women sharing one bathroom and not a corner of private space to myself. While I wanted to be flexible and was ready to agree to sharing an apartment, I’m too old to share a room for a period of several months. So I moved back into my hotel.
I drove into the center of town today. On the way, we passed the National American University, a Mexican art shop, an architectural art shop, and a whole street of photo shops across from a park. “Help us keep our high school clean,” and “Don’t write or publicize on these walls,” was written right next to “Without a future” scrawled on the wall. We drove past banks guarded by men with guns. I watched a Japanese-looking man get out of an SUV and six young women in colored skirts buy fruit juices from cups being sold atop a cooler.
I spent the day with Cynthia, a young married woman who finished the university in 2001. She was trained as a production engineer and wanted to work in a factory. After applying for several months with no results, she began to become depressed.
“Our society is pretty macho and they only wanted men,” she said. “There are hundreds of men working there and they worry that having a woman would cause them to feel disrespected.”
She saw a listing advertising an opening as an assistant to a regional manager and applied. Among the 120 candidates, she was selected for the job. Two years later she became an analyst, then a manager.
“A lot depends on one’s personality,” she said. “I know that you could put me with any group in a factory and I’d be respected, but they don’t give me the chance to show it.”
She invited me to her house for the two-hour lunch break. Every day, she goes home to eat a meal prepared by her mother. She and her husband live in an annex just behind her parent’s home. We had a traditional local dish made of spiced rice with shredded meat, fried egg and plantain, followed by a small dish of gelatin and a glass of lemonade.
She told me that her employer had recently sent her to Ghana to improve her English. I asked how she liked it. “It was an unforgettable experience of course,” she said. “But was so poor. People here always complain about poverty, but when I got there, I felt we didn’t have any poverty at all.” She told me that the minimum monthly salary is 500 bolivianos ($63) but that the average, lower medium class earned 1000-1500 ($125-200).
In the afternoon I had a Spanish lesson with my teacher, Oscar. Oscar is short, with a friendly, genuine smile, a pot belly and a stunted arm and hand. He is married with two sons, five years old and eight months old. Seeing his children run to him when he gets home makes him happiest. Rush hour traffic and politicians make him most upset.
He told me he lived with his mother until the age of 28, going from being dependent on his mother to being dependent on his wife. Nevertheless, he believes that the man is the head of the family and women can only present their opinions on important decisions. By law, women are named A B de C after marriage, the C being the man’s last name and the de meaning “property of.”
He dated his wife for three years and after the first year, she was ready for marriage. He, however, resisted, until she was pregnant, another thing he says he’s not proud of. However, marriage and children seem to have been good for him, teaching him how to be responsible. He now praises his wife and his face lights up when talking about his sons. He reads books like “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” and “The Cash Flow” and takes copious notes. He’s trying hard and working hard to be a responsible, successful person in all areas of his life, and this topic is a major part of our class.
I like him and find him a great person from whom to learn about the local life and culture. He frequently brings up the difference between La Paz (cold and rocky) and Santa Cruz (warm and tropical). He believes that climate influences personality and culture.
“The youth here aren’t interested in books or learning,” he said, with great disappointment. As a person who loves to teach, he likes people who want to learn. “They just want toys and to have fun. This attribute is specific to Santa Cruz.”
I had the chance to move some more through the city today. I noted a lot of fancy, gated condominiums and a lot of SUVs – Nissan, Suzuki, SSR, needed for the dirt roads that surround the city borders. The license plates are white with bright blue letters – Bolivia written above the numbers. Those without cars travel in micros – small buses in between the size of a mini-van and a full-size bus. The fare is 1.5 bolivianos, or less than 25 cents.
I was taken to one of these gated condominiums today. The three-bedroom condo, on the seventh floor, was supposed to be my new home. Not only were there already three people living in this condo, but I was led to a small room with two twin beds and told I’d be sharing it with someone else. That would be four women sharing one bathroom and not a corner of private space to myself. While I wanted to be flexible and was ready to agree to sharing an apartment, I’m too old to share a room for a period of several months. So I moved back into my hotel.
I drove into the center of town today. On the way, we passed the National American University, a Mexican art shop, an architectural art shop, and a whole street of photo shops across from a park. “Help us keep our high school clean,” and “Don’t write or publicize on these walls,” was written right next to “Without a future” scrawled on the wall. We drove past banks guarded by men with guns. I watched a Japanese-looking man get out of an SUV and six young women in colored skirts buy fruit juices from cups being sold atop a cooler.
I spent the day with Cynthia, a young married woman who finished the university in 2001. She was trained as a production engineer and wanted to work in a factory. After applying for several months with no results, she began to become depressed.
“Our society is pretty macho and they only wanted men,” she said. “There are hundreds of men working there and they worry that having a woman would cause them to feel disrespected.”
She saw a listing advertising an opening as an assistant to a regional manager and applied. Among the 120 candidates, she was selected for the job. Two years later she became an analyst, then a manager.
“A lot depends on one’s personality,” she said. “I know that you could put me with any group in a factory and I’d be respected, but they don’t give me the chance to show it.”
She invited me to her house for the two-hour lunch break. Every day, she goes home to eat a meal prepared by her mother. She and her husband live in an annex just behind her parent’s home. We had a traditional local dish made of spiced rice with shredded meat, fried egg and plantain, followed by a small dish of gelatin and a glass of lemonade.
She told me that her employer had recently sent her to Ghana to improve her English. I asked how she liked it. “It was an unforgettable experience of course,” she said. “But was so poor. People here always complain about poverty, but when I got there, I felt we didn’t have any poverty at all.” She told me that the minimum monthly salary is 500 bolivianos ($63) but that the average, lower medium class earned 1000-1500 ($125-200).
In the afternoon I had a Spanish lesson with my teacher, Oscar. Oscar is short, with a friendly, genuine smile, a pot belly and a stunted arm and hand. He is married with two sons, five years old and eight months old. Seeing his children run to him when he gets home makes him happiest. Rush hour traffic and politicians make him most upset.
He told me he lived with his mother until the age of 28, going from being dependent on his mother to being dependent on his wife. Nevertheless, he believes that the man is the head of the family and women can only present their opinions on important decisions. By law, women are named A B de C after marriage, the C being the man’s last name and the de meaning “property of.”
He dated his wife for three years and after the first year, she was ready for marriage. He, however, resisted, until she was pregnant, another thing he says he’s not proud of. However, marriage and children seem to have been good for him, teaching him how to be responsible. He now praises his wife and his face lights up when talking about his sons. He reads books like “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” and “The Cash Flow” and takes copious notes. He’s trying hard and working hard to be a responsible, successful person in all areas of his life, and this topic is a major part of our class.
I like him and find him a great person from whom to learn about the local life and culture. He frequently brings up the difference between La Paz (cold and rocky) and Santa Cruz (warm and tropical). He believes that climate influences personality and culture.
“The youth here aren’t interested in books or learning,” he said, with great disappointment. As a person who loves to teach, he likes people who want to learn. “They just want toys and to have fun. This attribute is specific to Santa Cruz.”
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Arrival in Bolivia
On my American Airlines flight from Miami, most of the passengers looked Hispanic, but well-off. I don’t think I saw any Indians, who are said to make up 80% of the Bolivian population.
After flying through the night, the plane first landed in La Paz, then continued on to Santa Cruz. Taking off from La Paz, I saw basic adobe or brick houses, much simpler and more poor than in Quito. Then I looked out over desolate, sparsely populated mountain peaks, snowcapped in the highest areas. Clouds settled among them, the peaks rising like islands and peninsulas in an ocean.
The most beautiful flight I’ve ever taken was from Bishkek to Osh, Kyrgyzstan. In a country with 90% mountains, the view of the peaks from the sky was spectacular. Bolivia is similarly impressive.
While moving from Kyrgyzstan to Bolivia is truly jumping across the world, I realized that the two countries do have their similarities. Both are land-locked, poor, highly mountainous, and hold a similar number of inhabitants.
For the first time I became excited. It was hard to leave my new husband after three weeks of marriage, my friends and my family. But looking out over the harsh scenery reminded me that travel to the remote and exotic, coming to know foreign lands, is my passion.
Forty minutes later, I looked out over a flat, green terrain with many agricultural plots, brown rivers snaking through the land. I saw a city along a river. It spread out in a large flat mass, like a stain, then dribbled out into villages.
Memories of my short visit to La Paz, five years earlier, caused me stress. I recall extreme altitude sickness, a lack of roads, and my rental car catching fire in an isolated neighborhood. But thoughts of Santa Cruz inspired ideas of romance. Santa Cruz de la Sierra rolled nicely off my tongue. The airport code, VVI, stood for Viru Viru International. That also sounded exotic to me. The greenness, from the air, looked clean, the roads appeared well-tended, the trees thick and bushy. I looked out over banana trees with uplifted fronds and saw sheep or cattle being led across a field, like a small colony of lice. Unlike La Paz, from the air Santa Cruz seemed calm, clean and prosperous.
We landed near a flat field, from where I could see a few billboards, street signs, and buses. The airport staff were friendly. Women, dressed in civilian clothing, served as the passport stampers.
A man named Eduardo picked me up and drove me the 15 minutes into town. He told me Santa Cruz is an important agricultural center. I could see the influence in the number of farm machinery shops we passed along the way – as well as Nissan, Toyota and Suzuki dealerships. Quite a lot of pickups and SUVs drove along the main road – a sign not only off driving country roads, but of wealth.
Eduardo tells me that Santa Cruz is different from anywhere else in Bolivia, that most of the population is descended from Europeans and other foreigners. He himself comes from German ancestors, who came to Bolivia to escape World War I. And it’s green. “I don’t like La Paz,” he said, “because it’s so barren. They don’t have any of this vegetation,” he said, pointing at the green around us, even as we entered the city.
Eduardo told me that drugs made the fortunes in this city. He said the height was in the 1980s and most of the drugs were grown to the U.S. “But now, due to US help, it has been reduced,” he said. “People used to carry around drugs like anything else. Not any more.”
He took me to a fast-food fried chicken joint for lunch (fast food seems prevalent here, as it was in Nicaragua), then to my hotel. At first I thought I was in for luxury when we came to the Royal Lodge Hotel and I saw four stars in the comfortable lobby. But once one leaves the lobby, it becomes dim and shabby. I had to leave my first room due to water dripping constantly from the air conditioner. The second was more comfortable, but 1970s comforters in bright red, orange and yellow covered the beds and the other furniture seems similarly aged. Yet, the stain-glassed window of a fish on the bathroom door, and the balcony step looking out over a small pool are both pleasant.
I looked through one of the two local newspapers, the El Deber, to see what makes up the news. A color photo of Miss Bolivia, Jessica Jordan, covered the first page of the society section. And she had another whole page to herself inside the insert. The beauty pageant news included the information of who won the Miss USA contest, a young woman born in Panama. I doubt I’d come across that easily in a US newspaper. But here, it appeared in color and took up a quarter page.
The obituaries announced “The person who was Luis Mario Roman Justinario,” a baby boy, or other names, “has stopped existing.” The baby’s father’s employer, Weitnauer Bolivia printed their condolences on a subsequent page.
I saw lots of medical ads, promoting assistance with impotence, rheumatism, plastic surgery, and dermatology, among other medical specialties.
In my brief car journeys across town, the city appeared to be flat, open, and relatively safe. I entertained thoughts of buying a bicycle and biking to work. But when I relayed my experience of being attacked in a taxi to Eduardo, he told me that two years ago he was mugged in mid-day. One attacker put a gun to his stomach, the other a knife to his side and they threatened to kill him. Other people on the street could see what was happening, but they didn’t do anything for fear of being attacked next themselves. He gave up his wallet and cell phone.
“But still, compared to Nicaragua or El Salvador, where they went through civil wars, it’s better here. The violence is more randomized, rather than being institutionalized.”
I hope so, because Santa Cruz is my new home and I’d like to be able to feel safe here.
After flying through the night, the plane first landed in La Paz, then continued on to Santa Cruz. Taking off from La Paz, I saw basic adobe or brick houses, much simpler and more poor than in Quito. Then I looked out over desolate, sparsely populated mountain peaks, snowcapped in the highest areas. Clouds settled among them, the peaks rising like islands and peninsulas in an ocean.
The most beautiful flight I’ve ever taken was from Bishkek to Osh, Kyrgyzstan. In a country with 90% mountains, the view of the peaks from the sky was spectacular. Bolivia is similarly impressive.
While moving from Kyrgyzstan to Bolivia is truly jumping across the world, I realized that the two countries do have their similarities. Both are land-locked, poor, highly mountainous, and hold a similar number of inhabitants.
For the first time I became excited. It was hard to leave my new husband after three weeks of marriage, my friends and my family. But looking out over the harsh scenery reminded me that travel to the remote and exotic, coming to know foreign lands, is my passion.
Forty minutes later, I looked out over a flat, green terrain with many agricultural plots, brown rivers snaking through the land. I saw a city along a river. It spread out in a large flat mass, like a stain, then dribbled out into villages.
Memories of my short visit to La Paz, five years earlier, caused me stress. I recall extreme altitude sickness, a lack of roads, and my rental car catching fire in an isolated neighborhood. But thoughts of Santa Cruz inspired ideas of romance. Santa Cruz de la Sierra rolled nicely off my tongue. The airport code, VVI, stood for Viru Viru International. That also sounded exotic to me. The greenness, from the air, looked clean, the roads appeared well-tended, the trees thick and bushy. I looked out over banana trees with uplifted fronds and saw sheep or cattle being led across a field, like a small colony of lice. Unlike La Paz, from the air Santa Cruz seemed calm, clean and prosperous.
We landed near a flat field, from where I could see a few billboards, street signs, and buses. The airport staff were friendly. Women, dressed in civilian clothing, served as the passport stampers.
A man named Eduardo picked me up and drove me the 15 minutes into town. He told me Santa Cruz is an important agricultural center. I could see the influence in the number of farm machinery shops we passed along the way – as well as Nissan, Toyota and Suzuki dealerships. Quite a lot of pickups and SUVs drove along the main road – a sign not only off driving country roads, but of wealth.
Eduardo tells me that Santa Cruz is different from anywhere else in Bolivia, that most of the population is descended from Europeans and other foreigners. He himself comes from German ancestors, who came to Bolivia to escape World War I. And it’s green. “I don’t like La Paz,” he said, “because it’s so barren. They don’t have any of this vegetation,” he said, pointing at the green around us, even as we entered the city.
Eduardo told me that drugs made the fortunes in this city. He said the height was in the 1980s and most of the drugs were grown to the U.S. “But now, due to US help, it has been reduced,” he said. “People used to carry around drugs like anything else. Not any more.”
He took me to a fast-food fried chicken joint for lunch (fast food seems prevalent here, as it was in Nicaragua), then to my hotel. At first I thought I was in for luxury when we came to the Royal Lodge Hotel and I saw four stars in the comfortable lobby. But once one leaves the lobby, it becomes dim and shabby. I had to leave my first room due to water dripping constantly from the air conditioner. The second was more comfortable, but 1970s comforters in bright red, orange and yellow covered the beds and the other furniture seems similarly aged. Yet, the stain-glassed window of a fish on the bathroom door, and the balcony step looking out over a small pool are both pleasant.
I looked through one of the two local newspapers, the El Deber, to see what makes up the news. A color photo of Miss Bolivia, Jessica Jordan, covered the first page of the society section. And she had another whole page to herself inside the insert. The beauty pageant news included the information of who won the Miss USA contest, a young woman born in Panama. I doubt I’d come across that easily in a US newspaper. But here, it appeared in color and took up a quarter page.
The obituaries announced “The person who was Luis Mario Roman Justinario,” a baby boy, or other names, “has stopped existing.” The baby’s father’s employer, Weitnauer Bolivia printed their condolences on a subsequent page.
I saw lots of medical ads, promoting assistance with impotence, rheumatism, plastic surgery, and dermatology, among other medical specialties.
In my brief car journeys across town, the city appeared to be flat, open, and relatively safe. I entertained thoughts of buying a bicycle and biking to work. But when I relayed my experience of being attacked in a taxi to Eduardo, he told me that two years ago he was mugged in mid-day. One attacker put a gun to his stomach, the other a knife to his side and they threatened to kill him. Other people on the street could see what was happening, but they didn’t do anything for fear of being attacked next themselves. He gave up his wallet and cell phone.
“But still, compared to Nicaragua or El Salvador, where they went through civil wars, it’s better here. The violence is more randomized, rather than being institutionalized.”
I hope so, because Santa Cruz is my new home and I’d like to be able to feel safe here.
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