Bolivia - First Glimpses (by Neil)

“There is another world, but is in this one.” - W. B. Yeats

Bolivia es bueno. The transition from Syria has brought us to a culture a world (well a half-world) away.

Woman here display hair and legs and belly-buttons and cleavage all of which can be seen from the vantage of my wi-fi connected park bench. Of course we have also changed hemispheres so we have jumped from the cold of winter to the sun-burning skies of Bolivia.
The weather here in Sucre has been sublime – hard to imagine better – as we have blue skies now with cotton candy clouds. Yvette and I have been here one week and stayed at a sweet little guest house with vibrant paint colors, a charming host family, a great little communal kitchen, a fascinated throughput of travelers, and a well stocked library of pirated movies (as far as I can tell there are no others available…) I really enjoyed Doubt and found it thought provoking.

Last week I did 5 hours of Spanish lessons a day – an hour of individual lessons at 7 a.m., and then a 4 hour group class from 8:30 – 12:30. This next week I’m planning to cut back a bit and do 3 hours a day of individual lessons. Yvette, whose Spanish is far superior to mine, is also doing 3 hours a day of individual lessons and so that adds structure to our mornings.
The only thing to complain about has been that my bed (our room has two singles) is rather cup shaped and morning finds my back urging me to move towards vertical – which is good in that it has moved me to explore the city early in the morning and be up around 5:30 a.m… This morning I had studied my Spanish, drawn a picture, read a novella, and explored the Mercado campesino before Yvette managed to rouse herself.

The village market here is amazing for its breadth of offerings and geographic coverage… block upon block of potatoes, onions, mountains of bananas and plantains, baskets of grapes from the vineyards lined and covered with grape leaves, piles of melons, rows upon rows of carcasses and meats and cuts and innards, flower stalls, bountiful juice stands, corn and maize…. I bought some bright pink and yellow colored potatoes and purple fingerlings to cook up for lunch with some green beans and onions.

Our big news of the week is that we have rented a house here for the next 3 months. We traipsed the streets yesterday and navigated the local phone system – pop into a stall at an internet or phone store and make your local call (dial 0 first if it is a cell phone number – starts with 7). Our initially halting Spanish monologue became quite polished by the end: “We saw your ad in the paper for an apartment? We are Americans? Is it still available? Is it furnished? Can we see it? When can we see it? Thanks! See you at 4:30 this afternoon.” We looked at 10 houses and found a cute furnished apartment of a lawyer (formerly a judge) who is moving to Santa Cruz to practice corporate law. She is fluent in English and was fair and helpful in answering all our questions. $250/month is hard to beat (although we looked at ones that were as little as $70/month) for a cute place in a UNESCO World Heritage city – 4 blocks from the city center.

For some reason this last paragraph is being written at 4:30 a.m. having just watched Million Dollar Baby… I think I like Clint Eastwood better with each new movie he is involved in. The epilogue to our day yesterday was a funeral service at the Sucre Cemetary with hundreds of people in attendance and a mariachi band (or at least that style of dress and instruments) playing and singing funeral dirges – as the procession made its way from the gates of the cemetery to the vaulted crypt. We watched as they slid the coffin into the cement cubicle – 10’ off the ground – and cemented a coverplate over the front and plastered and stenciled the deceased’s name and filled the niche to overflowing with flowers. We both cried a few tears contemplating the sting of mortality and the loss of love ones – and the fear, as Yvette eloquently said, not of death, but that we might not live well enough. Because we don’t say it enough – to those friends and family who read this – we love you and all the quirks, memories, awkward moments, foibles, laughter, and richness you have made with us. We aren’t great at keeping in touch, especially when we are separated geographically, but we are often reflective and few hours pass by that things in our exotic other place here in Bolivia don’t remind us of loved ones or memories. Just yesterday we thought of Brian K and his guitar, of TJ and Susan and the Costa Rican Beach, of Debbie and Carlos and their beautiful family, of Lisa and her organized vacations, of Alan and Jane and their experience at Berkeley, of Sydney and her embracing of Common Ground, of Linda and John and their thoughtful engagement through travel, of Becky, of backpackers, of January birthdays – sorry Wayne, of Mari and Aiden, of our parents, of so many others… I like the quote I began this entry with, that I lifted from the front of True Confessions of a Part-Time Indian, I think this world contains many worlds – and we are blessed to be here – talking politics, feeding pigeons, pondering llama fetuses, visiting lunar landscapes, buying flowers, eating chocolate, negotiating for humintas, renting a house, watching babies be swaddled with packing straps into a papoose… The similarities in our humanity and sadly our inhumanity are much greater than the differences. We look forward to seeing all of you and know that we don’t have to travel far to live, to love, to grow. Vida mis amigos simpaticos. Hasta pronto.