We done got robbed...

The day after Christmas we were at the bus station waiting to return to our site. Mark left for about two minutes to check which bus we’d be on and to get some food. A man sitting next to me asked me a question, and I wasn’t sure whether he was speaking Spanish or English or Quechua, or just mumbling. I asked him to repeat himself several times and finally said I couldn’t understand him. He got up and walked away and I got a bad feeling. So I checked our luggage and noticed that Mark’s backpack was gone. I was hoping that he’d been wearing it but when he returned it was clearly not so. The guy who was asking me questions was just distracting me so another guy could swipe Mark’s bag. I was so mad- I’d never really felt like I could punch someone until that day. I ran around the terminal looking for the guy and of course didn’t find him. We filed a police report and I got to look through a digital mug-shot collection, where I may have identified the dude. Unfortunately, they didn’t know where he lived or how to contact him. Luckily, we have insurance, so the cost of the items stolen would be replaced. What is lost forever are 3 months worth of pictures on our camera and about half of Mark’s wardrobe and personal things. Mark was really good about it, as I felt bad that I’d been the one in charge of our things. I guess the lesson we learned is that we may be safe and known in our site, but that in Tarija we’re just a couple more gringo tourists. So we’ve cranked up our travel security and smarts to avoid future losses, such as camouflaging our gringo backpacks in colorful plastic bags that all Bolivians use to travel.

I finally attached legs to the worm bin, after searching for a way to pre-drill holes into the hardwood so that I could tighten screws all the way by hand. The last step was to collect enough shredded paper (2.5 kg or about 5.5 lbs) to compose the bedding that the worms will live in and eat, along with food scraps from the kitchen. I had shredded about 1 kg by hand, and then I discovered that the PC office in Tarija has an electric paper shredder. The shredding advanced much faster with the help of this wonderful tool. When I got back to our site with everything ready but the worms, I found that our neighbor had moved the bin, thus bending some of the legs that were already a little unstable. At first I was pissed, but then I realized it was good that this weakness was discovered prior to adding another 10-15kg of mass into the top-heavy bin. So I’ll have to redesign the legs, maybe using large PVC pipe. Perhaps the bin will have to be floor-bound for the first round of worms, but I’m concerned that it might leave the bin more vulnerable to unwanted bugs.

I broke my first guitar string ever-and replaced it!

I’ve been able to integrate a little better into our community by attending birthday parties. The first one I went to was for Alan, the grandson of our landlady, who was turning 3 years old. I was invited to help “motivate” the kids at the party by our neighbor Eugenia. At first, she was trying to get me to dress up as a clown, which was way out of my comfort zone. Eventually I got her to compromise for me bringing our Frisbee and my watercolor set to give the kids temporary tattoos. When we got there, we hosted a kids dancing contest. Originally, we were going to award prizes to the best dancers, but once we started handing out the prizes, those who didn’t win started getting upset. Especially Alan’s older brother, Erik. I took some short videos on our camera and played them back for the kids, who were in complete awe. Then I started giving tattoos. The kids loved them… it was hard to get them to stand in line, and many were demanding more than one picture. The boys’ favorite tattoo was a spider on its web and the girls preferred butterflies and flowers. Dinner was served- a plate of potatoes, corn on the cob and chicken, then we sang Happy Birthday in English and Spanish and Alan cut the cake. It seems to be custom here for the birthday person to take the first bite directly from the cake, no hands. As you can imagine this often leads to the birthday person´s face being slammed into the cake, even if done gently. The last party of Alan´s party was the piñata. I was a little disappointed that there was no blindfold or baseball bat, only a string in the bottom that opened up the thing to greedy little hands below. It also seemed that the kids took as much joy in the confetti that came out as they did with the candy and toys. Little did I know that after all the kids left, the adults would keep partying. Pitchers of ¨chuflay¨ (clear soda and singani or pure alcohol) were brought out and there were only about 5 adults to drink them. I got some of them to play with the frisbee, but that became a lost cause after a short period of time.

There isn’t a recycling program in our site, so we’ve been stockpiling cans that we’ve used in cooking. One day after working on the worm bin and gathering up bent nails left over from hammering, I realized that the nails made a pretty sound when they clinked together. So I took some cans and lids and nails and made them into this wind chime.

A new project that I´ve just started involves another volunteer, Alana, who lives to the south of Tarija where it becomes semi-tropical. Here is a picture of what it looks like when you get off the bus there.
The project is to paint a mural of a map of Bolivia at the local primary school in Alana´s site. So far we´ve covered up the orange brick surface with two coats of white primer and we´ve painted the outline of each of Bolivia´s 9 departments. I´ll go back in a few weeks to help her color in each state, add labels and state flags to each department, and help the students place their handprints on the wall as well. The high school in our site has requested a world map and south america map in addition to the map of Bolivia, so I´m looking forward to doing lots of painting!

Here´s Mark with two of our landlady´s dogs, Oso and Benjamin (from left to right).

Both of the dogs are very friendly and will follow us around town if they have nothing better to do.

Here are all three of our landlady´s dogs, hanging out on a gravel pile in front of her house. Bruno is on the left, Oso in the middle, and Benjamin on the right.
Here are the last pictures I´d uploaded right before our camera was stolen. The pictures show my herb garden back in November. I´ve been able to find plants of basil, oregano, rosemary, two types of lavender, mint, strawberry, celery, and swiss chard. I´m also using my new skills to grow cilantro and basil using a seed bed and later transplanting the small plants to larger containers. I´m going to try broccoli next, since it is not sold in our town.

Here´s the garden now, with the cat included for scale. I recently planted some California poppies- would it break the law to pick them here?

Christmas was a little strange here. We were invited to view the contestants in a holiday decoration contest in our site, which turned out to be funded by the local cement factory. There were only 4 participants, all of whom were administrators at the factory. The decorations were provided by the factory as well as the prizes- a flat screen TV and a DVD player. One of the participants was really excited to meet Mark and I and brought us into his house for us to see his fossil collection. At first we thought he wanted to have us buy them, but no. He was just really into his fossils. He had even drawn a picture of a dinosaur and framed it to hang over his cabinet of fossils.

On Christmas Eve, we were treated to an american style dinner at a local 5-star hotel courtesy of Winston´s mom and brothers. Winston is a Tarija volunteer who will be done with his service in April. His family brought cranberry sauce, stuffing, country ham, festive holiday music, santa hats, and even put together a little gift bag of chocolates for each of us. That night at midnight, the city erupted with fireworks as if it were the 4th of July. The next day, Mark and I hiked up to a set of local waterfalls and spent the day at the river. I was feeling pretty homesick, crying a lot, so we might have had more fun otherwise. I slipped on a rock and got the nastiest goose egg bruise I´ve ever had on my shin.

In order to process the melancholy I was feeling, I started to ponder ¨What makes Christmas Christmas?¨ For me, the answers were: family, fireplaces, wind up toys, homecoming, cold weather, football, and singing silent night by candlelight. Few of these things were available to me, so no wonder I didn´t feel too good.

New Year´s was a lot better for me. I decided to spend it in our site, rather than in our regional city, to see how our town would celebrate. It really paid off, because I was included in many festivities. It started by attending a service at the Assembly of God Church that´s pretty active in our town. I wasn´t sure what to expect, but it ended up being quite entertaining. They had organized skits performed by little kids to convey which actions will send you to hell, such as dancing to the wrong music or reading the wrong literature. There was a rock band (that was pretty bad) that took more time setting up their sound equipment than actually playing. My favorites were the break-dancing teenagers and the toddlers dancing and rapping to reggaetón music. Around 11pm I left to meet up with our landlady and her family to pass into 2008. I had made some cookies to share, and I got to try a tasty pork soup called picana which was outstanding. Alan, the boy whose birthday I´d attended, turned out to be her grandson, so I got to hang out with him, too. We toasted the new year with some apple cider at midnight. The next day, she had invited me to have lunch with her, which I figured was a New Year´s Day activity. About an hour before she was due to come get me, the girl who I´ve been teaching Engligh to next door, Adonia, came by to invite me to eat chicharrón with her family. Chicharrón is a slow roasted pork very similar to Mexico´s tasty carnitas. After a big plate there, I invited Adonia over to our place to hear some of our music, and the landlady showed up. I did have the heart to tell her I´d just eaten, so I went with her. The lunch turned out to be the 60th birthday party of a lady named Martha. We ate chancho al horno, which is yet another pork plate, simple and baked. It was good, but I felt as though I´d consumed an entire pig in the last 18 hours. There was a cake and lots of dancing. I ended up losing my voice because one had to scream to be heard over the loud music. After about 8 hours of this, I convinced my landlady that I couldn´t take any more and was allowed to leave.

On January 13th, our landlady invited us to have lunch with her and her daughters in the common area connected to our room. It actually turned out to be her birthday party which went on for a while with lots of dancing and sharing of food and drinks.

The most recent birthday party I´ve been to was for Alan´s older brother, Erik. It was pretty standard compared to the others except that once the adult part of the party started, the gate blocking the only exit was locked. I asked the hostess to open the gate for me when I was ready to leave, and she refused. She told me I needed to dance more. There were several Bolivians who were equally annoyed by this and we devised a plan to climb a ladder to the roof to escape if need be. I danced for a while, keeping an eye on the gate. Eventually a group of people left and I snuck out with them. By then I´d been there for about 8 hours.

One day I was sitting on our front step drawing as school was getting out. A group of school children passed by and only one boy had the courage to approach me and ask what I was doing. Once I showed him how I was drawing he asked if I could draw on his hand. He liked the spiderweb design I'd been sketching. As I began to draw on his hand, a group of about 15 children swarmed around me to see and eventually began to demand their own "tatoos." After adorning the students with spiderwebs, rats, hearts, and even my own initials, they eventually went home. A few weeks later, I ran into that first boy at a birthday party in town where I had brought my set of watercolors to give the kids tatoos. He introduced himself as Jaxel (pronounced Hacksel) and I gave him a new tatoo with a spider on the web this time. Shortly after the party, I was informed that Jaxel's mom had recently died in a bus accident and that he lived with his grandmother. He soon figured out where we live and now comes by on a weekly basis to refresh his tatoo. He turned 8 last week and I bought him his own set of watercolors so that he can practice too. I've been working with Jaxel to be more polite- saying "por favor" and "gracias." During school vacation, not many kids were around for him to play with and so my husband and I would play american football with him in the street or let him ask questions about the strange stuff in our room. It soon became clear that he was testing our limits on what we'd let him do (he would ask how much our things cost, or he'd come by 3-4 times a day and bang on the door until we opened it). We realized that we had a great opportunity to clarify our boundaries as practice for being parents some day, as well as providing a stable adult presence in Jaxel's life. Although I was uncomfortable at first, I practiced telling him no when appropriate and have continued to work on his manners by demonstrating and reinforcing them. If I haven't affected anyone else in our community, I'm sure that my relationship with Jaxel will be memorable for both of us.

Salta has become a pretty decent hunter. He has caught at least two birds, a huge moth, two mice, and a guinea pig. Unfortunately, he´d rather play with his prey instead of mercifully dispatching them. We usually end up having to take the victim away and let it go while locking the cat inside until he forgets what happened.

Mark and I made homemade tortillas for the first time, which was easy but a little time consuming. Salta, of course, was very helpful. Here he´s sitting on top of our water filter.

The weekend of February 2-3 was Carnaval in Bolivia. The Friday prior to Carnaval is ¨Comadres Day¨ when women get together and party. A friend of our 3rd year volunteer hooked us up with a comadres group called the Sanroqueñas. We got to wear bright pink shirts and we bought baskets full of colorful decorations, fruit, and bread. The baskets are traditionally exchanged between pairs of women who then become comadres by dancing all night long together. Here we are (Julia, Salta, and me) prior to starting the fiesta. Julia is about to finish her service but has decided to stay on as a PCVL/volunteer support person for another 6 months or so.

We paraded from the Church of San Roque down to the avenida in a snakelike fashion, dancing in pairs. We sang along with the band accompanying us... Somos, somos, somos, Sanroqueñas somos. Plata que tenemos, Plata que gastamos. This loosely translates to ¨We are the sanroqueñas. Money that we have, we spend.¨ There was a variation used that said, ¨Money that we have, we drink away.¨ Once we reached the avenida we danced the traditional Cueca dance which is done in pairs and reminds me a bit of the do-si-do from middle school PE square dancing. Each person waves a scarf in the air and it´s pretty fun. It was a little tricky because we couldn´t hear the music very well. Eventually down the parade route, the crowd seemed to be getting bored, so I entertained them by throwing grapes and pieces of bread from my basket at them and occasionally breaking into the running man or the sprinkler dance, both of which were big hits. When the parade ended, the sky opened up so we hunted down a taxi to get back to the starting place to claim a warm meal and drinks that we´d paid for. Unfortunately we would have had to wait in line standing in a flooded raquetball court to get them so we gave up and ordered pizza instead.

One of the most fun parts of Carnaval is the water-play. A little strange for a country where people deal with drought and water pollution, but ridiculously satisfying. During the period of several weeks before and after Carnaval, one can expect to be splashed with buckets of water or hit with water balloons or spray foam in any public place. The volunteers who were in Tarija for Carnaval decided to take advantage of our 3rd year´s 5th story apartment to take revenge for any attacks we´d fallen victim to in the past. Here´s a short, low-resolution video summary of what took place.

(Video coming soon!)