I’m writing from a hostel in La Paz, where we are staying for a day and a half in between excursions. We are fresh off a six-day stay in the small, rural town of Tomata, where we helped the community build a greenhouse. Good news- I have wifi right now! I added pictures to the previous posts and will include more in this post, which I’m sure will be long.
Before I get into the greenhouse stuff, let me go back to the three days between my last post and our trip to Tomata. Last Friday we took a day trip to Tiwanaku, the oldest ruins in the Americas. I admit that the significance and mystique of the ruins were probably lost on me; however, it was cool to think about how these people transported 100-ton rocks and carved intricate details into them. Below are pictures from Tiwanaku and the nearby Pumapunku.
The next day was a big one- an excursion planned and led entirely by the students. We chose to travel to the Valle de las Ánimas (Valley of the Spirits) just south of La Paz. Our travel there consisted of a teleférico ride, a hour long bus ride, and then a mile walk uphill through gorgeous scenery. Rain almost ruined our day, but we found a little isolated hotel/restaurant where we waited it out. When the weather cleared up, we took a short hike to a lookout and spent some time there. Then we caught transportation back, went to an Italian place for dinner in La Paz (a nice treat), and took the teleférico back to El Alto. A very long day, but probably one of the best so far. We were all proud of how well we managed with the instructors taking the back seat.
Here is me at the lookout at Valle de las Ánimas.
Sunday was election day. Elections are a lot different here. Most importantly, voting is mandatory for all eligible citizens. Without a paper that you receive at the polls, you cannot make transactions at the bank. Of course, there are some acceptable excuses for not voting, and worst comes to worst, you can pay a fine and get back your banking privileges. Another bold (yet unenforceable) law is that drinking is illegal the day before and the day of elections, the idea being that people shouldn’t be drunk when they vote. If a law like that were passed in the U.S., I can only imagine the outrage that would ensue over the infringement of personal liberties. Election day is always on a weekend so that almost no one has to work, and the streets are all abuzz with activity with people selling stuff everywhere like a giant market.
Now a little bit about the election itself. This recent vote was not to elect leaders, but rather a referendum in five of the nine departments to see if they would be granted autonomy in certain spheres (justice, education, health, etc.). So basically a question of states’ rights. Interestingly, the idea of states’ rights has its strongest support on the left in Bolivia, which is the opposite of the U.S. This makes sense because the indigenous peoples in tiny, rural, socialist/communist villages feel the most detached from the national government and even associate autonomy with modern-day decolonization. At any rate, the referendum was defeated handily in all five departments, supposedly because it was rushed on the people and the details of the proposed changes were not well understood.
OK, that’s all for the politics for now. Sunday evening we put together a thank-you ceremony for our homestay families in El Alto. Such formal ceremonies of gratitude are the norm in Bolivia. We baked cookies and a chocolate cake, made guacamole, bought chips and soda, and decorated the room with balloons colored to match both countries’ flags. All the families came, and we chatted and laughed and all said thank you. It was a really nice get together to say goodbye. Here is a picture with my entire homestay family.
Monday was our travel day into Tomata, a town so tiny and isolated that I’ve heard it’s not on Wikipedia. The drive through the barren, rolling hills of the Altiplano was beautiful, and I think I may be getting numb to such incredible vistas. By the way, the Altiplano is not “plano” (flat) by any means compared to the plains of the U.S. I guess having the Andes just a hundred miles away changes your perspective.
We stayed in Huallatiri, one of the four pueblos within Tomata, on the floor of their one-room school. The coolest part of our experience was that most of the community members had never seen foreigners, let alone white and black foreigners, in their lives. It’s a very special feeling to know that we may be the only U.S. citizens these people will ever meet; you have to see yourself as a sort of ambassador for the country. Right after we arrived, we met with all of the community members (maybe 30 of them) in the school, and they were clearly fascinated by how we looked and by our every action. At night, two kids stayed at our window for at least a half hour just watching us. Here are pictures of the community and the schoolhouse we stayed in.
Building the greenhouse was hard work, but the entire community came out to work with us. Even the frailest old cholita women in their long, traditional skirts got their hands dirty. The community members were generally stronger, tougher, and more experienced than us, and it quickly became clear that they could have done the job without us. That’s not to say that our efforts were meaningless, though. Our contribution was tangible and much appreciated by the community. The jobs I did over the four days of work included hacking out trenches in the ground for the foundation, delivering water from a nearby creek to make muddy cement, mixing this cement with my bare feet, spreading cement on the adobe bricks, loading adobe onto wheelbarrows to be transported to the construction site, and laying bricks. That sounds like a lot, but we took plenty of breaks, and my body never felt overwhelmed. Here is Asia, Manny, and I mixing cement.
One of the most memorable moments at work was on the very last day when we had to tear up the hard ground inside the greenhouse to make soil. Several of our group members were taking turns with one pick while the women from the community shared another pick. A sort of race to the back wall emerged, and the cholitas were putting up a great fight. They kept on making fun of us for being skinny and telling us to eat more chuño (a form of potato). Great fun. I’m proud to say we won the race by a hair.
We finished the greenhouse later that afternoon by putting on the plastic roof and holding it in place together until it was secured. Then we had an official commemoration ceremony inside the greenhouse with the community, which was really special. We were just as grateful to them for the experience as they were for the help with the project. I was excited to hear all the chatter about planting lettuce, tomato, and broccoli in the greenhouse, vegetables that have never been in these people’s diets before. Here is everyone holding up the roof as we finished the project.
It would be a big mistake if I told you about the greenhouse without describing life in general in Huallatiri. Living conditions were humble, but never uncomfortable. We went to the bathroom in an outhouse and used baby wipes and handfuls of water instead of showers. Our source of drinking water was a little spring a five minute walk away from the schoolhouse where we stayed. The water tasted a little like pond, but we purified it and it was safe. As I write this description, I realize that you may be getting an impression of Huallatiri that I didn’t intend. Never during my time there did I think of the community as “poor.” The lifestyle is certainly less comfortable than we are accustomed to, but this the life these people know, the culture that has surrounded them since birth. A homeless person in New York gets to see thousands of people a day with greater privileges, but in Huallatiri there is no such experience. All they know is that they have enough food to eat and water to drink; they have a tight knit community to plant and harvest potatoes and quinoa together; they have family and friends to play fútbol with; they have folklore music and dance together every day. Sounds like a pretty rich life to me. Even though there are millions or billions of people with more comfort and convenience in their lives, even though the lifestyle in Huallatiri is way more physically demanding than average, even though life expectancy is maybe 20-30 years lower than in the U.S., I do not feel bad for these people- they are only poor by the narrowest possible definition of the word.
Our next adventure is a big hike in the Andes that may get us above 17,000 feet. Pictures should be amazing!
Abrazos,
Jacob
Jacob in Bolivia 