Cochabamba, Bolivia

Pics of Cochabamaba are here:
Pics of the mural we did in Bolivia is here:

Cochabamba, Bolivia

After spending a day killing time in Uyuni we took a 10 hour overnight bust to Oruro, where we transferred to a 4 and a half hour bus to Cochabamba, the second biggest city in Bolivia.  I remember meeting a German girl in Argentina who said “the buses in Bolivia are terrible, their old and dirty and the people smell horrible because they wear many layers of clothing they don’t clean and they don’t shower.  And there’s no bathroom on the bus!”  Well, do I our disappointment, she was exactly right.  Erin has problems with the dirtiness, and I struggle with the lack of bathrooms.  So armed with hand sanitizer and an empty wide-mouthed yogurt container we traveled to Cochabamba.  We some how each managed to leave something of value to us on the bus.  The ride down from the altiplano into the mountains of Cochabamba were exquisite.

 

Erik, the founder of the non-profit Sustainable Bolivia who we were about to volunteer for, met us in a plaza and took us back to HQ to meet the people who worked in the office.  They were all very nice and we were glad to be there, but bummed out we had entered such a big city.  Since the size of the town was going to be an issue for us, Erik found us a home in the country suburbs.  Apparently it’s the vacation home of the city’s most famous gynecologist, complete with a gorgeous view of the mountains, a beautifully manicured landscape and a cactus that was a gift from Yasser Arafat.

 

Sounds good?  Well, it was a mixed blessing.  The ride to the home was over 30 minutes through ugly traffic.  We were in a suburb of Cochabamba, called Apote.  In some ways it was great to be off the beaten track, literally – you had to walk along two large fields to get to our home.  We had a kitchen and were finally able to cook for ourselves.  At the same time, we were secluded, not learning Spanish, and still feeling stuck half-satisfied and half-disappointed.  The house was filthy, so after going into town to buy a broom and mop and cleaning supplies we spent Saturday night and most of Sunday cleaning it.  We realized that maybe we made the wrong decision to come when we found ourselves waiting over an hour in the plaza to meet the guys from the office to take us to the women’s and children’s shelter we were going to volunteer at.  Apparently all the local trufi’s (cars that run like local bus lines and charge $0.20 per ride) went on strike that day and blocked the roads with their cars so no one could get by.  I hear this is common.  So we hired a taxi part of the way and walked the rest of the way to the location of the next mural.  It was when we saw the condition of the shelter and the wall did our knees weaken and our stomachs feel queasy. 

This place felt was falling apart.  The condition of the wall was in horrible shape, I mean absolutely unworkably terrible – with holes, plaster coating in parts, old paint, dirty, with a muddy and uneven yard in front of it.  Maybe with a team of 10 strong adults could we prep this wall in a week to be painted.  The twenty 7 to 10 year old kids were running around without adult supervision, screaming and throwing rocks, and the bathrooms were full of hundreds of mosquitoes and feces.  This place is part of an umbrella organization called Infante, who takes in women and children from domestic abuse.  After talking with some of the women who run the place we realized that they really need some help and we agreed to take on the project.  The next morning Erin and I met a woman from Sustainable Bolivia who took us to “La Cancha,” South America’s largest market.  It’s miles long.  After a few hours we had all the supplies we needed to scrub the wall and do some minor construction.  We were ready for the following day.  We arrived and started scrubbing the wall in vain.  The children were barely making a difference, partly because of their size and partly because they could barely focus on one task for more than 5 minutes.  I had created a huge mound of trash after chiseling a ton of plaster off the wall, and when I asked where to put it all one of the adults told me to just dump in the flooded garden that a previous volunteer had created (not a good sign).  We decided to stop what we were doing, make a circle and explain that what we were doing to get them to focus.  They just couldn’t contain themselves and after much time and frustration we had to pull them aside and lecture them in our bad Spanish about respect.  There were barely any adults to help us and after a few hours we left in frustration to re-evaluate our situation.  I forgot to mention that we arrived during the end of the rainy season, and our first night we discovered 5 leaks in the house.  One of the leaks was right between where we pushed our two single beds together.  So we put the thin mattresses in the living room to sleep next to each other.  The house was poorly made, with many holes in the walls, allowing many mosquitoes in each night.  I had to sleep with insect repellent and ear plugs and still woke up covered in bites.

  

We originally were planning to volunteer for one or two months, but quickly realized this was not the opportunity for us.  A big part of our excitement of volunteering was to get to know the people and learn Spanish.  Many people of Bolivia are extremely reserved, conservative and traditional.  Trying to have conversations with people who either are curt or ignore you when you talk to them can be quite a challenge, especially for us who are sensitive, polite, and excited to meet people.  We decided to change our plans to two weeks, complete a smaller mural, and get the hell out of there.  This way we were able to complete our commitments and be in integrity with Sustainable Bolivia and Infante.

 

The first week was incredibly trying and tiring.  Each day we wrestled with commuting to the shelter, the children’s bad behavior, leaving exhausted and heading to the internet café for hours to research where to go next only to come home to strange neighbors.  It seems as though this tough experience was the straw the broke the camels back for our escalating disappointment in South America.  It’s such a big continent and getting around and dealing with all the cultural differences, on top of being travel worn, really took a lot out of us.  Erin and I started to not get along as well, and we weren’t taking good care of each other.  We were feeling home sick, anxious about our travels, and all around fed up.  Tough times!

 

We had an important conversation one morning where we realized how much we loved each other, and all the lessons learned and good things that we had in this experience.  By Bolivia standards we had a really nice place.  We cooked for ourselves with olive oil instead of the typical veggie oil.  We had peace and quiet much of the time there, and were even able to host a BBQ with the folks from Sustainable Bolivia.  The walk to and from the road where we picked up the Trufi was really beautiful.  We started to fall in love with some of the kids who lived at the shelter, especially the 2 year old Helen and her 4 year old brother Willy.

 

After our first week we were getting the hang of this place and were starting to enjoy it.  We took a lot of time to notice and appreciate how privileged and lucky we are.  Bolivia is remarkably poor and dirty, and to be able to have so much is such a blessing.  Then we discovered the Cine Center, a mall like complex with fast internet and movies in English.  The gods were smiling on us.  The mural was starting to look good, and we were getting in the swing of things with the children.  I had to barricade myself with tables and chairs to keep the children not painting at a distance, even though they wouldn’t stop complaining and asking to paint.  This was really hard for me, because my Spanish isn’t so great.  I had to keep telling them that they could paint if they were respectful, tranquil and didn’t keep asking me to paint (“Yo quiero pintar!” – in a whiney voice).  After seeing what angels the kids could be when they were actually painting, we realized that what these kids need is structure, discipline and love.  It was sad to see them not getting it.  But we saw that we were making a difference, and that was all we could ask for.  Be the end of week two we were a little sad to leave, but not that much.  The 9’ x 8’ mural, only 5 half days of actual painting, came to completion.  I designed it to accommodate 7 and 8 year olds to paint: two children dreaming in the mountains in a star filled night of their dreams of the future.  Erin and I spent the first few days having them draw their dreams of what they wanted to do or be in the future.  Later they were able to paint them inside their dream bubble.  To celebrate, on our last night we tried to have a fire in our fireplace, but the wood that was there was extremely hard to start…so we used candles.  We got a bit carried away, and by we I mean I, and burned all the candle at once.  The fire got so hot and big that the fireplace started falling apart!

 

Infante, Sustainable Bolivia and Erin and I were incredibly proud of what we were able to accomplish in such a short time.  We left on great terms after a nice but awkward meeting with the women of Infante to thank us for our efforts. 

  

On our way to trek the Andes

The next day we took an 8 hour bus to La Paz, to head towards the beautifully famed town of Sorata.  I must go in at length about the two bus rides because they left such strong impressions on us.  The bus to La Paz was challenging, and it was mostly because of the boy who worked on the bus who deals with tickets and luggage.  Like every bus in Central and South America there’s a TV mounted and speakers over all of our heads.  Early on during the bus ride the boy who worked on the bus put on an old war movie and when I asked him if he could put on the subtitles he completely ignored me.  I waited till he came back to ask him again, except this time I tapped him on the shoulder and asked.  Again, he completely ignored me.  I was feeling pretty agitated, so when the movie was over and he put on The Patriot, I stood up and asked a third time.  Again, he tried to ignore me, except this time he couldn’t shut the compartment for the DVD player because me hand was there blocking it.  I think this might have been one of the most socially awkward moments of both of our lives.  Here we are, standing on the bus, and I’m forcing this boy to deal with me who is just trying so hard to ignore me, yet he can’t.  After saying he didn’t understand what I was asking, even though I know he did, I was probably pretty scary to deal with.  I’m 6’1 and big and he’s significantly smaller and younger.  Yet at the same time, he was being extremely rude and disrespectful by walking away every time I had a question.  So I finally let it go and went back to my seat steaming about how ridiculous and unsociable Bolivians are, and that all the bad racist stereotypes I heard in Chile and Argentina are true.  Obviously, like all cultures, they are just different and I don’t understand them completely, but it was a hard bus ride sitting there with my anger and being unable to appropriately express it to the subject of it’s source.  Later, Erin tried to ask the bus driver if he could put on the subtitles, only to receive the rude response “We’re in Bolivia, there isn’t English.”  They didn’t even get that we just wanted Spanish subtitles so we can read what we couldn’t hear.  Later, when the boy was putting on the 3^rd movie Erin asked if he would put on a movie that didn’t have so much violence, since the first two were war movies.  He put on Rambo.  Except this time he forgot to lock the compartment and Erin got out of her seat, took the movie out of the player and put on Alive, after announcing to the bus “No mas violencia!”  When the bus finally took a break on the side of the road there was a big sign that read “Prohibito orinar aqui” (Do not pee here!).  Yet the whole tiny town stunk of urine.  When we stop to take breaks hoards of women selling food run on the bus for 2 minutes trying to sell us whatever they have to offer.

 

Ranting and Raving:  Bolivia is full of strange sights and idiosyncrasies.  For example, every public bathroom charges you to use it, so people just pee on the road and sidewalks.  Small towns where many buses take rest breaks reek of urine.  There’s never any soap, and I wonder how people aren’t getting so terribly sick…perhaps it’s because as young kids they are playing in the dirt beside the markets where their mom is selling peaches (6 for $0.15).  Almost every restaurant, bus station, mechanic, and many other shops have either half naked or scantily glad pinup girls on the wall.  It’s particularly strange to see this when you walk in a restaurant full of traditionally dressed women without a man in sight and posters of naked women on the wall.  Dogs rule the streets and cars love to just honk and swerve around the dogs, yet pedestrians seem to have less priority.  Bolivia is a honking culture and biased for the driver, not the walker = scary.  People pass regardless of double yellow lines and hairpin turns.  Yesterday I watched a mini van try to pass a bus on a sharp turn to almost get into a head on accident and stopping oncoming traffic.  Flies and bees crawl on everything in the market and the women that sell the items all have some form of a bag or yarn attached to a stick to shake at the flies from landing.  They never use fly swatters, just something to get them to buzz around forever.  There is no trash pick-up, just a garbage truck with a man on the back ringing a bell so that people can chase after him with their trash.  Getting your cooking gas works the same way.  I have never seen a culture more in love with fried chicken.  They can squeeze more people into a car than anywhere else.  Bolivians are also very protective of their rights and protest more than any other country I’ve been in.  Women seem to be the dominant figure, as they seem to be more visible than men.  Every one is selling something (usually peaches), and their neighbors seem to be selling the same thing too.  Need peaches, you are guaranteed to find 3 people next to each other selling them.  Need socks, same thing.  Need anything else, same thing.  I don’t see how the competition works here, but that’s how it is.  All kids wear white lab coats as their school uniform, I feel like I’m at a mad scientist convention.  There are more dentists per capita then any other Latin American country, yet I’ve never seen worse teeth in my life.  Most adults are missing six to all of their teeth, if they aren’t rotting out of their head.  There is no limit to how many people you can pack in a bus, van, or car.  Most men seem to have poorly made tattoos on their left hands or necks.  I think this must have something to do with being in the military.  Babies and just about anything are carried on the backs of women with multi-colored blankets.  All traditional women dress the same: parted hair with pigtails, bowler hat, hoop skirt, sweater and blanket or shawl.  Apparently this was mandated from a Spanish king over 200 years ago and it still persists.  Speaking of persisting, change happens very slowly here, especially in the more conservative and traditional higher altitude towns.  There are many many more of these examples and when you ask for a reason why things are so different, inept, out-dated, etc, you just get “we’re in Bolivia.”

Anyways, after crazy amounts of traffic entering the city we arrived in La Paz (the highest capitol in the world) in the evening, made a complaint to the bus agency (who knows if they care) and learned that we couldn’t get a bus to Sorata until the morning.  We got a room in a hostel near by and explored the town.  We were shocked to find part of it beautiful and interesting.  The man plaza is very cute, with a well lit and stylish old church.  The foot traffic dominates the crazy car traffic surrounding it, and there is no shortage of fried food vendors in the street.  It was really interesting to be in the melting pot of traditional and contemporary culture all clashing and mixing together at the same time.

The next morning we took a cab to the cemetery district where I convinced Erin to get on the small micro bus instead of the larger bus because it left a half hour early.  The cargo van sized bus was jam packed full of almost 20 people and a dog.  I was stuck in one of those folding sits for the 4 hour journey.  At one point the driver stopped on a steep hill to secure the luggage on the roof when all of a sudden the van started jolting backwards.  The woman in the front jumped out of the car, leaving all of us and her daughter in the van jolting backwards.  The guy next to me leapt up to turn the wheel but was too short so I bent over the front seat to help steer.  The van driver got back just in time before it would have been real trouble, but hey “we’re in Bolivia.”  So we took off through the crazy hills of La Paz to encounter some of the worst traffic I have ever seen.  Every non-motorized object seemed to be moving faster than us, including old ladies pushing carts of food and random stray dogs (and there are tons)..  At one point, through the incessant honking and stop and go traffic, our driver went through the median and drove against oncoming traffic.  At this point I was pretty uncomfortably cramped in my little fold out seat.  All of a sudden the door opens in traffic and a man with a bag jumps in the van and sits down where my foot rest is and is facing me with my legs between his.  There was no personal space.  At least not much after we were moving.  Before long we were driving along the snow capped Andes and high planes.  We drove higher and higher until we were right at the foot of the steepest mountains.  Finally, after about 3 hours we started to descend through hairpin switch back roads in deep fog.  It took us an 30 minutes of steep descent before we were below the clouds to see a gorgeous valley nestled in the pitched and green mountains of Sorata.  This year is La Niña and the intense rain cause mud slides all over the road.  If we were in the US the road would either have been closed or there would have been insane amounts of construction going on.  Neither was the case, and we dodged fallen rocks, impromptu rivers crossing the road, steep and pitched drop-offs and large piles of mud and debris.  We finally reached Sorata and couldn’t have been happier to get out of the most uncomfortable and beautiful ride of my life.