Mollie Adventures

The Great Alpha Beta War of 2011

2011-12-08T05:31:00.001-08:00

Since I moved in with my partner, things have been great. I like living with him, I love him even more than I did before and I'm grateful to have our home together to keep functioning while I'm bored.

We've had significant problem since joining households; my dog isn't happy with the new pack dynamics.

Suddenly, she's aggressive and confrontational when she had never been before. She still listens to my partner, no problem, but she'll harass and ignore me in turns until I want to lock her in the bathroom or something (which, for the record, I never do).

It's been suggested that the problem is that in our previous life, there were two of us and she was ok with accepting me as the alpha leader of our little pack. Now that the pack has expanded, she's not quite sure which of us is number 2 and which is the lowliest member of our pack. Having clearly accepted mister as the boss, she's fighting me for the second-in-command spot.

We'll just have to see how this all shakes out, I'm working on some training exercises with her to try and reestablish dominance and hopefully it will help. So far, it just seems to make her nervous.

Adventures in Unemployment

2011-12-08T05:17:00.001-08:00

I have a friend who spent her period of unemployment calling it her "funemployment" and had parties and things to celebrate it.

I'm not really up to planning parties these days, but I am doing my best to enjoy the flexibility I have in my life right now to go where I want and do what I want, even if that means sitting on the couch listening to Billie Holiday and knitting.

Insecurity creeps in, certainly, but I do my best to remember that I have been a productive member of humanity and will be again. Baking, cooking, cleaning, stuff like this help me feel like I'm accomplishing little things. Thinking about the future, about next year at school, my thesis and life after that also help me feel productive.

I'm volunteering. Secretly, I'm not a very good volunteer. If people aren't clear with me about where I should be and when, I tend to not show up. I know those that coordinate volunteers don't want to do that because a volunteer doesn't have to listen to them, but I wish they would more often with me. helping out at the meditation center is great, though. It puts me in the meditation center to begin with, which exponentially increases the likelihood that I'll practice. The work they ask me to do isn't complicated or taxing, it's all completely manageable and, frankly, it's nice to be given permission to dust a staircase and just do only that for a while.

Anyway, life isn't terribly interesting right now, I'm mostly just keeping on and that's ok.

Moving In

2011-10-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

I'm finishing up the process of moving in with my partner. It's scary and wonderful and exciting and natural, all at the same time.

We've been together a month and a half short of a year, when I was making my decision to take a leave of absence from school, he asked if I would move in. At first I said I wouldn't, that I didn't think we should rush something like that just because of life circumstance and we were planning on it in a few months anyway. But life circumstance and love prevailed and when we discussed it again we agreed that the time was right.

Moving out of my old place was stressful, my landlords are sort of aggressive and I was not feeling like I wanted to deal with them more than I had to. Moving in, though, was really lovely. Integrating stuff, setting up an office space, even making a trip to Ikea were all things that made me feel connected to my partner and settled in myself and in Boston.

Learning to live with a partner is a new thing for me. I'm excited and nervous about it, but I'm also optimistic that this is the right thing and a good thing.

Leave of Absence

2011-10-07T09:32:00.000-07:00

I made it back from Thailand in (more or less) one piece. One battered and weary piece, but whole nonetheless.

I spent a couple of weeks in Seattle with my family. I kept thinking I just needed a few more days of rest to be able to conquer the world, my report write-up, and my thesis. Just a few turned into quite a few. I just never shook the emotional and physical fatigue of the work in Thailand. But I knew I'd go back to Boston and I'd be fine.

I returned to Boston and got ready to start a new school year. My partner and I had a great time settling him into his new apartment and going camping. I was still tired, but I was sure I'd get started on the semester and I'd be fine.

I started the semester. I tried to start the semester. I laid out detailed plans for finishing my thesis. I chose courses I was excited about. I spent time in the library. I was going to be fine.

Then one morning I woke up and realized that I didn't know what I was doing anymore. I had been so sure that I wanted to go back and do this work once I graduated. I wanted to go back to Thailand and work on the border. I knew something about livelihoods and income generation programs, so that was what I was going to do. I had known it would be fine.

Now, though, I'm realizing that I'm deeply disturbed by what I learned this time around. What I learned about people, the aid industry, and myself. I don't want to do that work anymore. I don't think I *can* do it ethically. I'm not sure it's possible to do ethically. I'm only just beginning to pick apart the issues of privilege involved and it bothers me. It bothers me that it took going back after a break for me to really see what I already knew was there and that no one else seems to be calling attention to these issues.

There is something that feels very wrong about people like me, young, clueless, without language skills or necessarily strong backgrounds in what we're in a country to "help" with, being paid multiple times what a local person would make and getting to ride around in trucks, live in big houses, have cable tv, and complain about the lack of peanut butter. It's absurd, really. And no one seems to be thinking about this or pointing it out. That simulation I did back in April scared me, and now I see why a bit better. All of those people, students at Harvard, Tufts, and MIT, will have no problem getting one of these jobs. And they're fucking clueless. I don't want to be a part of an industry that perpetuates such blatant privilege. I can't do that.

A leave of absence for my own sanity was necessary. I'm going to take this year to reflect and reevaluate. I will go back to school next Fall, but I'll go with either a much more open mind about what I might do or a plan that feels sustainable and manageable to me. While I'm scared, I'm also excited about what the future might hold. It will be fine.

You won't see what you don't want to see

2011-07-25T01:52:00.000-07:00

I'm struggling right now with this issue of people not seeing what they don't want to see.

Here in Thailand, a reasearch project was just completed that tells us a lot about the nature of sexual violence in camp. Who it happens to, how, when, why...all of these things. It's been hard to read and talk about as well as very important. My own work has been meant to build on this and expand on our understanding of how livelihoods factors both contribute to sexual and domestic violence as well as how it might mitigate risk.

I have asked more than 30 people about violence and women and I have heard rape come up twice, domestic violence described as "arguing in the family" and that's about it. People just don't have answers to the questions. Whether they don't think about these things the way that I'm presenting them, or if they don't want to tell someone they don't know about them is something I'm unsure of. It has been frustrating, anyway.

Just the other day I became drawn into a situation in the US. Someone reached out in general for help with a sexual assault issue, and I reached back. Am I a social worker? No. Do I know more about sexual violence than the average person? Yes.

A bizarre...I actually shouldn't call it bizarre because it happens all the time, so...disturbing situation was described to me in which a young girl has clearly been assaulted and wound up in the hospital as a result, but her guardians have offered a "she fell down the stairs"-style excuse. What disturbs me is that I wasn't asked for resources, or what to do, I was asked if it made any sense that she would have "fallen down the stairs."

In case no one is paying attention, that's ABSURD.

I offered my opinion on whether it was likely that things had happened the way the guardians said they did, and a slew of resources, I woke up today and, clearly, nothing has been done. I'm jumping out of my skin in frustration and anger. That's a little girl! Who has been hurt! And everyone around her who could possibly help her is content to accept a ridiculous explanation in place of doing something difficult. No one has stepped up in what has certainly been more than 48 hours and said "hey, that's not ok and I don't believe you so I'm going to make a fuss until someone starts paying attention." That little girl is powerless, she may not even understand what's happened to her. She knows it was scary and hurt her, she knows that the adults responsible for her well-being are lying about it. She knows that she's supposed to be ashamed of what happened because no one's giving her space to be hurt and scared and to talk about what's happened, if she's ready. Everyone's too busy covering their own asses or "processing" the experience for themselves.

I say SHAME on everyone involved.

Both of these things reinforce something I have come to believe, that people won't see the ugly or uncomfortable or even heinous things if they don't *have* to. People are really content on some level to turn away and pretend something isn't happening. People are hesitant to name bad things and make them real by talking about them.

I don't know what to say to end this post...I suppose that anyone concerned about any kind of wrong in the world is fighting an uphill battle because people don't even see the hard stuff. And not because it's not there to see, but because they just don't want to.

David Sedaris on Eating in China

2011-07-18T02:56:00.000-07:00

A friend just sent me this little piece of writing and I really really like it. David Sedaris comments on his experience of China, particularly eating. I love this because it's *true* because there are moments when what I see around me squicks me so bad, I don't know how I'll ever eat again.

There is a certain conscious separation that my mind needs to make sometimes to be able to eat without thinking about where the food, dishes or chef has been and what they might have been doing before food arrives in from of me. I'm not alone in this.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jul/15/david-sedaris-chinese-food-chicken-toenails

Enjoy

Hurt. Forgiveness. Letting Go.

2011-07-11T02:01:00.000-07:00

The Buddha always told his disciples not to waste their time and energy in metaphysical speculation. Whenever he was asked a metaphysical question, he remained silent. Instead, he directed his disciples toward practical efforts. Questioned one day about the problem of the infinity of the world, the Buddha said, "Whether the world is finite or infinite, limited or unlimited, the problem of your liberation remains the same." Another time he said, "Suppose a man is struck by a poisoned arrow and the doctor wishes to take out the arrow immediately. Suppose the man does not want the arrow removed until he knows who shot it, his age, his parents, and why he shot it. What would happen? If he were to wait until all these questions have been answered, the man might die first." Life is so short. It must not be spent in endless metaphysical speculation that does not bring us any closer to the truth.

- Thich Nhat Hanh, in Zen Keys

For a while now, it's been sort of fascinating to see how quickly all of the work I've done on myself, all of the tools in my emotional toolbox and all of my practice of yoga and meditation goes straight out the window when I'm hurt. My descent into a nasty spiral of suffering is quick and without, it feels, any opportunity to grab onto a lifeline or tool that might mitigate my emotional crash and burn.

I was just hurt really badly. I'm still reeling from the shock. Lots of history, disagreement, miscommunication, misunderstanding and broken promises stacked on top of the painful event itself to leave me trapped in pain, shock and confusion. Having the carpet ripped out from under you is never pleasant, and this time it was made worse than usual by the fact that I had partly expected it, or at least something like it to happen, and that it was so much worse than I'd imagined.

The other party deserves credit for not lying once he was called out on it. But it was clear from how bad the situation is that he had no intention from the beginning of coming clean. That hurts too.

I feel hurt, humiliated, angry, betrayed. Part of me wants to slash and burn everything to the ground and walk away.

Like in Buddha's parable, I want so much to know the why, how, when, etc. Even though I'm aware that it may not be productive to ask. And though we've already started trying to heal this mess, I have so many moments when I feel thrown right back into the worst of it, where I don't know if there's ground underneath me, or if there has ever been, or if there ever will be again. Honestly, when that happens, I want to drag everyone in there with me, punishing the wrongdoers and anyone I might think is in any way complicit.

I'm trying to be aware of these feelings, and I hope awareness will help me act rather than react, to make conscious choices about how I want to move forward, for myself as much as and probably more than anyone else. *This* is a practice. This is possibly the hardest thing to which I've tried to bring self-awareness and all of the practices that make up my life. I'm asking myself what to do. Asking questions like "What *is* the yoga practice for coming away from betrayal?" and "What principles can I use to sort this out?" Mostly, though, while I try to keep everything on a reflective and intentional level, mostly all I'm looking for is how to feel better. I'm aware of that too. The thing that sucks most about that is that I know that feeling better, without those moments of remembering that feel like getting punched in the stomach or having the room flip upside down, is a long way away.

I know that the way to get over hurt is to lean into it, to go through it, or it never stops. I'm so screwed.

Work and Compassion Fatigue

2011-07-09T02:36:00.000-07:00

A lot of people tell me I'm amazing for what I do. I'm not. I'm dreadfully human.

Work is hard. With the project what I do all day is wander around a refugee camp, complete with the mud and garbage and everything else, usually in the rain this time of year, and with very little idea of what can be done for anyone. I ask people to talk with me and we sit down and talk for a while, I ask questions and they talk. They tell me awful things, missing children, rape, corruption, hopelessness, or worse, faith in something that won't happen for the vast majority. I listen and write, ask thoughtful follow-up questions, and maintain my composure even when I want to get up and walk away. And when one interview is done, I go and find another one.

I suppose it's not surprising that, difficulties with my translator aside, I've hit a wall pretty quickly in terms of what I'm able to absorb. I'm not sure, with reflection, what it is that gets to me so badly. Is it being faced with so much difficulty? Is it being unable to do *anything* while interacting with people who believe I can and will do something? Whatever it is, parts of me have started shutting down. I've found myself dissociating during interviews so that I've relied a few times very heavily on notes I don't remember writing and recordings that I listen to later. I've been unable to get out of bed a few times.

I'm not sure that this means that I'm not cut out for any of this, I do think that the pace at which I've been trying to work is the problem as well as the desire to do serious and good work for the organization, for school and, more than anything, for the people I'm talking to.

Thailand is Amazing

2011-07-06T03:46:00.000-07:00

There's something about the heat and humidity that makes everything sort of surreal. The rain is hard and lasts for days, but when it stops the streets are clear in a matter of minutes. Where does it all go? Creatures grow bigger than in the states, too. Huge beetles, dragonflies, butterflies seem like they're out of a storybook. And it's so green, I'm from Washington State and I've never seen such green!

There are some challenging things about Thailand. The language is really hard, something like 66 letters in the alphabet render it unreadable to me (I can recognize and pronounce exactly 1 letter) and the tones make it difficult to pick up even a few phrases. Add to that the fact that no one expects a white girl to speak any Thai, and even what I know I can say pretty well gets ignored most of the time.

Names are tricky, too. Most every Thai has a formal name and a nickname. Nicknames are in no way related to the formal name. It's not like Kate for Katherine, or Meg for Margaret. It's like Golf for Pongsakorn or DiNi for Thibhyana. No way to know, looking at one, what the other might be. This is especially funny when you get an email with 4 Thais CCed and you're told to contact one of them, using their nickname, for whatever your question is. You have no choice but to reply all, because there's no way to know who Noi is out of the list of names.

Cycling's an adventure too. There are loose rules governing roadways, but it's not unusual to have someone come up the wrong side of the street on their motorbike or to have someone parked literally in the middle of the road. At first, this irritated me, but now I think of it as an adventure. I know that I need to pay attention and be aggressive without doing anything stupid, and I know that I'll see some crazy stuff, and that's just how it is!

Those things are extremely random. But they are little things I like about Thailand. I suppose those are some of the things that make it feel like an exotic adventure.

Oh, Thailand.

Camp!

2011-06-08T03:02:00.000-07:00

Today was my first day in camp. It was incredible how wonderfully familiar so many things were, the thatched roofs on little bamboo homes, bumpy roads and NGO signs everywhere. The smells of cheroots and betel nut took me right back to 2 years ago. The taste of Karen food and white rice almost made me tear up. The familiarity of everything, in spite of the newness, is almost more disorientating than a completely new and different experience would be. Words in Karen and Burmese that I didn't remember have started coming back, and I don't know how to feel about all of it. Mostly content, I think. Sort of unsettled also.

I'm excited and intimidated to be beginning this work, this project I have ahead of me. I know it's all a learning experience, and I also know that it won't all go according to plan. Right now that feels exciting, I'm pretty sure it won't when things start going wrong.

Whoa! It flushes?: Arriving in Mae Sot

2011-06-06T22:48:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Mae Sot yesterday and this place has changed.

There used to be maybe 3 restaurants that had gringo food, a 7-11, a small supermarket which was very new when I arrived and...I think that was about it in terms of big city-type conveniences. Now there are at least 4 7-11's, a KFC, and more gringo-serving restaurants than I would have ever expected. There's also a new bar called "Expat Bar." If that isn't telling, I don't know what is.

My new place is very different from anywhere I've lived in Thailand. It's an apartment in a concrete building across the street from a small market and maybe 15 minutes biking to the city center. I have wifi, aircon, a tv with cable (3 english channels!) and a flushing toilet. I've never lived with a flushing toilet in this country! I don't know what to do with myself, it feels like all of the things that made life interesting, challenging and fun are missing from my experience this time around. I suppose that just means that I'm going to have a whole new experience, which is just fine.

I'm going to start Thai lessons later this week. I never studied Thai when I lived here before and I really should have. I learned plenty to get by, but it would be fantastic to be more competent. I am a little torn, though. Given that I work with Burmese it would be so useful to learn that as well, or even instead. I know that I'll have opportunity to practice both and in two months I can't learn much of either, let alone both.

Seeing old friends and feeling as though things are very familiar is helping me feel grounded, though it's definitely strange to have been gone so long and then come back like this. Everything's changed and nothing's changed.

3 people I adore and used to have some great times with back in Umphang. (DotCom! Karaoke! Chuckles!) are going back to Umphang today for meetings. The plan is for a karaoke reunion. I'm so jealous! If only I weren't starting work today I would be on my way back to the place I called home to drink some Hong Tong and sing some Cher. Oh well, another opportunity will present itself, I think.

I hate people

2011-06-05T09:10:00.000-07:00

I hate meeting new people. I get nervous, which makes me tired, and then I can't switch on and be as charming as I want to be.

Coming back, I have to meet a lot of people. I don't have anything against anyone, I'm just nervous to be here, to feel so much pressure to make a good impression and to have to network.

I don't like to talk like this, but I wish I were more interesting and interested, I wish I weren't so tired, I wish I were more engaging and less awkward. I wish I was someone that people liked quickly.

That's all.

Note: It occurred to me while I was thinking about this little post that the problem probably isn't that I hate people, but that I'm not really ok with myself. *sigh* Back to the mat.

Back in the Big Mango

2011-06-03T01:38:00.001-07:00

I've returned to Thailand. After two and a half years away, I've come back. I want to say I've come back home, but I don't quite know if that's appropriate.

Landed in Bangkok last night around 1:00 a.m. and as soon as I stepped off the plane onto the gangway, I felt the uniquely Southeast Asian heat and humidity and, more than anything, *smelled* Thailand.

The familiarity I feel being here again is an incredible gift. To find myself comfortable and happy in such a beautiful country is something that I'm feeling very grateful for. The guesthouse is the same, perhaps a little different (free wifi!) but mostly the same. I even tripped on the same stair that I sprained my ankle on almost 4 years ago. I was checked in last night by the girl who checked me in when I last passed through Bangkok. The market nearby is the same, today I bought cheap DVDs from the same woman I bought them from 3 years ago.

Over the next few days, I'll see friends who live in Bangkok now, people I shared my life in Umphang with. I'm so excited to see them and also afraid. Maybe I've missed them more than they've missed me. Maybe too much has changed since we were last together. Maybe, though, we'll hug and smile and eat together and gossip about the people we know and about what's happened. Maybe we still love each other like we did.

I move to Mae Sot on Monday. I'm nervous. Mae Sot was (and I'm sure still is) and expat clusterf**k of pretty incredible proportions. When I lived in Umphang, it felt a world away, too fast and full to be comfortable. I'd feel overwhelmed walking into the coffee shop to see so many expats and such a sleek shop in the middle of that border town. It felt so distant from my peaceful life and small community in Umphang. Now I have to live there. Perhaps with being there, rather than passing through, it will feel less overwhelming and I'll find some sense of community.

I had a moment last night while I was falling asleep. A moment of anxiety. So many people I knew and loved aren't here anymore. What if what I loved about Thailand was the people I knew? What if Thailand doesn't want me back? What if it doesn't resonate as my spiritual home like it did before? What on earth am I *doing* here?

That moment has mostly passed. Of course, I'm apprehensive about moving somewhere I've not lived before and meeting new people as I start with a new organization, but I'm confident that, one way or another, I'll find my rhythm and space to place my feet on the ground.

Thinking about Veganism

2010-10-12T10:02:00.001-07:00

I became vegetarian about 2 1/2 years ago while living in Thailand. I'd known for a long time that whenever I did take a good look at the impact of my eating habits, I would probably wind up turning veg or would face some sort of crisis around food. It happened.

I was working with Burmese refugees and it occurred to me that I cared a lot about human suffering, but was that it? I gave all of my self every day to working for people and being an advocate. I saw, though, that compassion doesn't choose a cause, compassion is a way of being in the world. Acting mindfully toward other living beings, people and animals; caring for the environment; looking after myself. All of it is intertwined. When I reflected on this one day I realized that I needed to stop eating meat.

Imperfectly the journey began, and it's gotten easier and easier to avoid meat and happily eat everything else the world has to offer.

Just a few days ago I finished "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer. When I started the book, I expected to learn something but I didn't expect to feel driven to change myself. I am, after all, already a vegetarian, right? SO wrong.

I've "slipped" occasionally over the past two years and eaten meat. I've done it to be polite, just because I had a craving, or genuinely by accident. Until very recently I ate eggs and some dairy products. Even as I've been cutting dairy and eggs out of my cooking and grocery shopping, I never ever think twice about it when I'm eating out.

As I sat in bed, with my dog curled up next to me, and read about factory farming I was compelled to turn away from the page in horror and disgust. I knew what the reality is, but I never really made myself look at it. I've been protecting myself from committing to real lifestyle changes that matter. I've done this because it's inconvenient to deviate so much from the norm.

Honestly, now I'm confused. Even staunch advocates discuss the option of being a "selective omnivore" or of doing what you think you can. Do they say that to be inclusive? To avoid alienating people who might make some changes but would be intimidated or alienated by a hardline approach? What is my responsibility? I suppose that's between me and my conscience.

What we eat is an animal welfare issue, a human rights issue, a public health issue, and an environmental issue. I'm not sure that there is any limit to my responsibility. The choices I make matter. If only so that I can sleep at night.

Now, though I'm wondering how much I can do? How far can I go? I think I can give up eggs and dairy for the most part. I can avoid buying animal products for clothing...I think. But what about grain farming practices that are abusive to the ecosystem and farmers? Does that matter? Should I give up soy? How do I make these decisions?

And it's still inconvenient. And that's the truth.

The Grad Student Yogi

2010-10-08T08:35:00.001-07:00

Graduate school is throwing my yoga practice for a loop. Which is to say, really, that it's throwing my life into total, patas arriba confusion.

I see my life as my practice. Yoga, Buddhism, Meditation, whatever lens I'm applying in the moment (and they're all the same at the end of the day) provide frameworks for how I try to approach every moment in my life. Walking the dog. Doing the dishes. Studying. Going to class. having feelings. Studying. Eating. Studying. Everything I do I try to do with mindfulness and compassion.

Grad school makes this hard.

Feeling like I'm just barely keeping my head above water all the time has created a situation in which it's very hard for me to hold myself and my struggle with compassion. It's also led to my constantly questioning whether it is really a good idea to "do your best and let it be." How do I know when I'm doing my best? How much sleep or yoga practice or whatever else do I need to miss for my work to be hard enough? And what if it isn't enough?

I suppose, though, I can perhaps shift my practice a little by taking a wider view of my situation. As my Laura taught me, I can pull my perspective back to a broader view of the situation and hold everything with compassion including how hard it is to be kind to myself.

Tim Wise at Tufts

2010-10-01T09:10:00.000-07:00

Tim Wise came to speak at school this week and it was awesome.

Coming at a time when I've been grappling with issues of nebulous-but-definitely-there sexism it was very moving/upsetting/comforting to hear him speak.

Wise is an anti-racism writer who I have never actually read. That's not true, I've read articles, but I've never read any of his books. Now I'm going to.

He spoke articulately about institutionalized racism and touched on gender inequity. What I took from his talk is the importance of being aware, upset, informing ourselves, and taking action...What's important?

NOT MAKING EXCUSES AND REFUSING TO PASS THE BUCK

He said that guilt is something we feel because of something we've done, and responsibility is something we take because of the kind of person we are.

Fuck yes, Tim Wise. Preach it.

I came away comforted, knowing now that all of my discomfort around gender issues at Fletcher is completely valid and founded. I was reminded that people like to pretend that these things don't happen and that they don't like to take responsibility. I was inspired because it was confirmed for me that my anger and my desire to create change is a sign of my own character and nothing more or less.

Grad School Begins

2010-09-27T08:48:00.000-07:00

I'm now in my fourth week of my graduate program here in Boston. I'm here to work toward my Master's degree in Law and Diplomacy, which is an absurd way of saying international affairs.

Being on track to work my way back to Thailand, to my purpose, to living my goals and personal mission is wonderful. Knowing that studying subjects like Corporate Finance and Quantitative Methods will make me more able to contribute to work in my field of choice is incredibly motivating. I'm focused on my goals and a summer internship back in Thailand and I feel very empowered and on track.

I'm also learning a lot outside of the classroom. My biggest lesson so far has been one I certainly didn't anticipate and have been very reluctant to learn. Institutional Sexism is alive and well and I had no idea that it could have an impact on my own life and ability to thrive.

I grew up in a family full of powerful, educated, and working women. My great aunts were all educated up through college during the Great Depression. One of my grandmothers had her Bachelor's degree and the other had a couple more years schooling than her husband. My aunts all completed college and two of them are high-powered business executives. As a CEO, my grandfather hired and promoted amazing women who were fixtures of my childhood. My mother raised us four kids alone and did an awesome job.

My education was, I see now, very skewed in favor of gender equity and God help you if you didn't watch your language around issues of identity and sexuality. An all-girls high school (second best school in the state of Washington) prepared me for an education at one of the most liberal and gay-friendly colleges in the United States, Sarah Lawrence College.

Coming from all of that, I went into the world with an open mind and heart. I saw people as people and understood issues around gender and inequality as difficult and culturally contextual. Gender inequity is ubiquitous and, somehow, while I've lived through some very serious events that never would have happened if it weren't for rampant sexism present in society today, most of MY world was still safe and liberal. I surrounded myself with informed liberals who watched their language and were hyper-aware of inclusivity and political correctness.

Then I started grad school.

Now, I'm in a place that's supposed to be a relatively liberal, globally-minded institution for higher education and the training of the soon-to-be practitioners of international policy, law, and business. This horrifies me. People here often don't watch their language. Most seem to be blissfully unaware of the fact that they're being exclusive when they are. Political correctness...it seems that people here think that they are so evolved that they are beyond a need for it. Women who are in the top fraction of a fraction of education and privilege in the world giggle and defer to the guys because they're "at the time and place in my life to be looking to meet someone."

The Gender Equity Group spent all of last year on a major research project on gender inequity at Fletcher. Now they have this significant piece of research that they don't seem to want to do anything with because they don't want to damage the school's reputation and, by extension, the value of their degrees.

I'm angry and frustrated. I'm tired. I'm sad. I feel overwhelmed and I don't know what to do. This is not at all the community of learning I was looking forward to and if I weren't such a fighter and a believer in acting on principle I would leave this place today.

Too, I have my eyes on the goal of going home to Thailand and the people I love there. In the moments I most want to leave I look at the ring my beautiful staff members gave to me as a going-away present and I remember why I'm here at all.

Yogatastic!

2010-05-19T11:46:00.000-07:00

I feel like it's time to revive this thing. So here I am.

It's been a complicated time since I moved back to Seattle from Thailand. As my very wonderful friend puts it, I've spent a lot of time taking myself apart and putting myself back together again. I feel like it's been a productive use of my time.

I'll be starting grad school at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in September. Despite a few moments of panic and uncertainty about moving for the...seventh time in eight years and starting school again I am feeling really excited about the move and the program.

Right now, the biggest thing on my mind is yoga. I started practicing the January after I returned from Thailand and have made my way to the Samarya Center (www.samaryacenter.org) pretty regularly since then. At first I was all about the Ashtanga primary series but have since branched out, mostly because I don't always want to get up at 6 am for an early class.

I turned to yoga originally because of my desire to find a substitute or complement to the buddhist teachings I'd had easy access to in Thailand. I hadn't found a sangha I liked in Seattle so yoga seemed the next logical step. I couldn't have done better than Samarya. They care as much about "big yoga" as asana and are so consistent in emphasizing embracing your own process that I feel there has been a profound shift in myself over the past year and a bit.

Now, I'm preparing to leave for their two-week yoga teacher training retreat on Friday and I'm a little terrified and a little excited and a little wondering why I signed on for this. I'm very excited by the prospect of being taught to teach yoga effectively. Service in any form is something that lights me up from the inside so I'm just beside myself at the idea of being able to offer something like yoga to others.

I don't know how this whole thing is going to go down, but I'm hopeful and actually really pleased to watch myself adopt a beginner's mind attitude.

I suppose this leads me to reflect on how this last year or so has been for me. When I observe myself now, I see that I'm probably less reactive than I used to be. I also obsess less. I let things go more. But none of this comes naturally. That has probably been the hardest lesson of the two or so years I've been a meditator and the year I've been practicing yoga. All of these things that are supposed to come to you when you take on these disciplines don't just happen. You sometimes watch yourself WANT to react and WANT to judge sometimes and learn to watch those urges pass rather than act on them. You don't stop having the feelings, you just stop having to let the world know about them impulsively. I've had a hard year, so often I watch myself get really really angry or upset or frustrated and sometimes I just let it out, but sometimes I observe the feeling until it passes or I talk about it rather than yell in traffic.

There is a way to have compassion for yourself. I didn't learn that growing up and I have to remind myself regularly now that I'm 25 and can take care of myself. But it is such a relief to be on my own side when I'm not feeling awesome. And it makes me a much more giving and compassionate person.

If I have one practice for today I think I would like it to be to remember to be aware of my self-judgment and compassionate for all of my inner workings.

Peace.

The Chili Bomb Diaries: Seattle Summer and Time to Go

2008-09-20T22:50:00.000-07:00

So.

I went home to Seattle for two weeks in July. It was a great chance for me to come off of all of the stress of work and everything that happened in the beginning of the month with the layoffs. Of course, going back to the US and back home has its own special kind of stress. Here just going to Mae Sot and walking into the coffee shop over-stimulates me, so Seattle feels like a major shock to my delicate system.

Wonderful news was that I was in town for a friend from high school’s wedding. I hadn’t seen her or a bunch of other people who were there for a long long time, so it was great to go and catch up and it was really fun to get dressed up. I never get to dress up. I was very happy for her and she looked fantastic and she had a gorgeous wedding outside on a lovely, cool, Seattle summer day. Who could want more?

Going back to Thailand was a little frightening. I didn’t know what the dynamic would be like with so few people left in town and I wasn’t sure how I would feel about everything. Turns out, everything was very quiet and, as much as I love Umphang, and as much I thought I wouldn’t be ready to leave it, it became apparent in the first few weeks back from the states that it’s just about time to go. There’s been so much change, but far more importantly, I’ve done what I set out to do. I got the program up and running. I created teams of staff in each camp, I piloted programs, I built offices. And, given my experience and skill set, I think it’s actually probably much better for someone new to come in with a fresh perspective and new energy and carry the ball forward. I’m sad to go. I adore everyone else here, I adore people here in Umphang and I’m going to hate to leave them, but I don’t really see what would be achieved by my staying much longer. I’m going to have to go eventually and now is a very natural time in the development of my program for me to pass the torch.

So, at the end of Ocotber, I will be moving on. First to meditate for 3 weeks in a monastery in Chiang Mai, to learn to deal with my rage, as a friend here used to say (though I’m pretty sure she had no rage whatsoever) then on to Laos and Vietnam for two weeks before going home for the holidays and then on to a new adventure. This life is hard sometimes but also a grand adventure.

In a way, I wish I could stay. I’ve learned so much, and surely that could be useful especially as livelihoods become more important on the border as donors get exhausted and people start looking for ways to close down the camps. Livelihoods will be essential! I’m sure every organization will prioritize them or at least start to think about them more seriously in the next few years, but I could go crazy here waiting for that to happen and it’s more important that I keep learning. I’m more useful to the world that way, I think.

Anyway, I’m sad but it’s time. This is difficult but it’s life.

And with that…until next time,

Mollie

The Chili Bomb Diaries: Grants End, China, Trouble in Paradise

2008-07-02T22:20:00.000-07:00

Lordy it’s been ages since I wrote anything much about what I’ve been up to. In the time since my last post I’ve completed the grant period, gone to China and seen some crazy things happen here at ARC.

Duller things first. Miraculously, the ARC Micro Enterprise Development Team managed to finish the grant period successfully, meeting all of our objectives for the grant period. I wasn’t so sure we could do it when I became coordinator back in January, but some great staff hires and a lot of hard work later, we did it! We now have our offices and programs up and running full steam ahead in all 3 camps of operation. And the last coordinator said it couldn’t be done. Eat your heart out!

Exhausted, I planned a trip, a sort of reward for myself in June, once all of the reporting for the grant year was finished. I went to Beijing for a week to visit my college roommate and lovely friend Mallory who has been living and working in China for two years.

She’s awesome. Also, I was going to CHINA. This was also awesome. It was like winning the lottery twice, good friend and new travel adventure all at once.

First thing was to get my visa. If you read back over the postings on this blog from my time in Bolivia, you will see that I love bureaucracy. A LOT. The Chinese consulate in Bangkok and the visa process was no exception to any other bureaucratic circus EXCEPT that this one involved a footrace. Really. It was great. Like you do for most bureaucratic nightmares, I prepared by getting my forms in order (using the form off of THEIR website) and going early to wait in what I presumed was a line in front of the building before it opened. When 8:30 came, the building opened, and instead of proceeding down the hall and up the stairs to the second floor in a generally non-violent, non-confrontational mass, everyone took off running. Well, I’m American, and naturally competitive, and a jogger to boot, so I took off running with everyone and, though caught off guard by the whole thing and in spite of wearing heels, came in 6th out of about 30 people. Thank God, because I still had to wait half an hour. This waiting was a mixed blessing, though, because the form from the Chinese consular services webpage was incorrect and I had to fill out new forms then and there. When I got up to the service window I discovered that I needed my two forms, two passport photos, my passport, and, something that, like the correct application form, had not been listed on the website, verification of a hotel reservation in China. I cried, I complained, I pleaded with the poor girl who was very uncomfortable with my emotional outburst, but she sent me out onto the streets of Bangkok to figure it out anyway. I found an internet café, made a reservation at the Beijing Hilton, printed out the confirmation, and went back. No problem. Later that afternoon I repeated the race, this time coming in second to pick up my passport (yay me!). Then I went back to the internet café and cancelled my reservation at the Hilton. No harm, no foul.

China itself was fantastic! Mallory collected me at the airport and it was so great to see her. It had been ages and ages, since our graduation, in fact, and we’d both had a lot to share and catch up on. For me, it was also so very cool to be on her turf, to be in a new cultural environment where she could show me the ropes, feed me the food, and also, where we could just hang out.
One of our first adventures was to the Wall. You know, the Great One. It was big. I never understood about the wall. I thought you went and walked up to it and took a couple of pictures and whatever. Apparently, you hike it. I wasn’t really clear about this until we were doing it. We had the option of doing a little bit of it and then backtracking or going a full 30 towers. I can quit. I mean, I’m not a quitter or anything but I know when to say when. But this was very cool and we did, towards the middle, decide to complete the whole hike. I’m glad we did, though I was exhausted by the end of it.

The awesome thing about being a tourist somewhere when you know someone who actually knows something about the place you are, is that you get to see and do stuff you might not otherwise. The Wall was a great example of this. Mallory knew where to go that wasn’t very touristy and where had parts of the wall that had been restored and parts that hadn’t. It was perfect.

Mallory also fed me a lot. Like, a lot. It was really really wonderful.

We saw other stuff, like the Temple of Heaven, and I did some adventuring on my own to the Forbidden Palace and Tiananmen Square, etc. Mal took me shopping for pearls (oooooh!) and for souvenirs, but after Thailand, I found bargaining really stressful. But I think the parks in Beijing will stand out as my favorite thing. People go to parks to do all sorts of things, practice ballroom dancing, play chess and card games, practice calligraphy, anything. And you can go and sit and watch and it’s great. I really loved it. We saw another SLC grad while in Beijing and this was fantastic and really, the whole thing was just a lovefest. I also discovered my new favorite thing, Arrested Development, but that’s a whole other story. I could go on forever.

Mallory was very good at humoring me, martinis, green tea, pizza, hummus, directions in Chinese to whichever place, she was very accommodating and kind about whatever my little heart desired.

The gearing up for the Olympics was pretty incredible, though. There were big countdown clocks everywhere. Apparently, the government has put a huge effort into a propaganda campaign trying to get people to behave in specific ways that are intended to be more accommodating to foreign visitors. People are supposed to do things like not spit and stand in line. In one bizarre incident, Mallory and I saw a bunch of Chinese tourists at the Temple of Heaven discuss how they should make a line for something and then make a line and then yell at someone who tried to cut the line about how they had made a line. Mallory said that a year ago that never would have happened.

Back to Thailand was nice, each time I leave and go home to Umphang it feels more like home. Though this time it wasn’t long before some serious rumblings came up. It was a lot of turmoil, but basically one of our grants got cut and my two housemates and closest friends, supports and…family here in Thailand got laid off. They, some of our administrative staff (who I ADORE) and a portion of our camp staff all, it was announced one terrible day, would be going within a month. This was just very very harsh. Once I see my Katebug off I will go home to Seattle for a couple of weeks to make sure the family knows how I am still and I will return to figure out life in Umphang again. I’m not sure how you can do this work and live in this kind of isolation without support, though. I will do my best to negotiate it.

I suppose this is the nature of this work, people come and go a lot. It’s just the way of things. I think this feels really harsh because it was unexpected. No one knew it was coming so no one is prepared for it. Emotions are running high and those of us (very few of us) staying have no emotional contingency plan in case of our confidantes and friends being sent away.

Anyway, the show will go on one way or another. And that’s all from me for now.

LOVE!

The Chili Bomb Diaries: Camp Economies and Cambodia

2008-04-19T07:25:00.000-07:00

It’s been ages, I know. I actually don’t remember the last time I wrote one of these. Maybe right after Christmas? Things have been overwhelming and busy and the pressure has been enormous, so after work the last thing I want is to sit down and write something. Usually I just flake out in front of the tv with my housemates. It’s not productive but it feels necessary.

So strange. I’m eating something the secretary gave me which appears to be two cheese crackers with pineapple jelly in between. The way Thai food blends flavors still sometimes makes me stop and reflect. There are no barriers, no faux pas in mixing the four primary tastes of Thai cooking: salty, sour, sweet, and spicy. You can have a sweet and spicy; a sour and salty; sour, sweet and spicy or perhaps the most difficult for a western palate to adjust to, salty and sweet. Not like Kettle Korn salty and sweet, I mean like fish sauce and sugar. Together. Most powerfully in desserts. Frequently with corn. No combination scares me off now but I still have moments when I stop and examine my food, reflecting on the potential marketability for a product or dish in the states. Usually there is no hope.

Work has been going along. Our program is growing so quickly I can’t believe it. We’ve introduced 2 new projects a month for the last 4 months and they’ve been working! This is either the result of hard work on the part of a lot of people or sheer dumb luck on mine. Probably, it’s a mixture of the two. My staff has doubled in the last two months and I’m very happy with the results. Still, the life stories accumulate. Last month I had a woman in my training who has been a refugee in Thailand since the year I was born. This put my work into perspective. One of my new staff is fascinating, she was a bank manager in Rangoon and left to escape the regime with her husband. She is incredible and brings so much to the program because she understands what we’re trying to do and also can think about the context in ways that I can’t. I don’t know how I survived without her.

We now have Yarn Banks in all 3 camps and they are booming beyond our capacity at this point. Through the banks we lend thread for weaving to whoever needs it. They have 2 months to repay and get access to high-quality thread at a low price. Community banking is more complicated with serious trust issues impeding progress. People just aren’t used to putting their money anywhere but in their homes so it’s proving difficult to get people to try it. Business skills training continues at a rate of one training a month and the cross-section of participants is always fascinating. High school kids, business people from Burma, and housewives all congregate to learn about record keeping and how to set a price.

The differences between the 3 camps I work in still blow my mind. In the largest there’s a full-fledged economy complete with the social stratification according to wealth found in the rest of the world. In the second largest the Muslim community dominates the markets. In the Muslim section there is an entire street with shops and restaurants. It looks like any small town in Thailand. The smallest camp, however, has one noodle shop run by an NGO and only a few small scattered shops.

Given that my job is to find ways to empower people economically, I feel very overwhelmed sometimes especially in this time of resettlement. People who have been here for years and years have been living on rations for years and years without really having to work. This is as it should be, but as we gear up for ever larger numbers of people resettling to third countries the situation can feel desperate. People who haven’t worked in years are going to have to make their way in America or Australia or Canada. They are going to have to find apartments and learn English and figure out what to do with their kids during the day. In camp, four babies means four rations. In the states four babies means four mouths to feed and, in the US, four plane tickets to repay to the government after resettlement. Resettlement also reduces people’s interest in contributing to camp life. So many are just waiting to go that they don’t want to work or start to participate in any kind of program, even though they will probably be waiting for months if they get to go at all. As a result, recruiting staff and participants is a very frustrating business these days.

This past weekend was Songkran, a big water festival in Thailand. I took advantage of the 4 day weekend to go to Cambodia. I spent two days wandering around Angkor Wat and the temples around Siem Reap in the kind of heat that is unknown to most Seattleites. One day in Phnom Penh finished up the adventure on a dark note with the primary purpose of the stop being the Tuol Sleng prison museum which documents the Cambodian genocide. It may have just been the heat that made me feel ill, but the experience was horrific. It was frightening. Unlike Nazi concentration camps, which are located out of major urban centers, this place is a converted high school right in the middle of Phnom Penh. It’s complete with the kind of white and orange- checked flooring you’d expect to find in a high school. And I’m not sure what else to say about it, except, maybe, that what I finally learned while walking through that space was that this didn’t happen very long ago. We learn about the holocaust all through our educations in the states, but don’t hear much about other cases of atrocity on a large scale. Even right now, the word genocide gets thrown around in the news all the time and, of course, everyone thinks it’s terrible and should be stopped but how many of us stop to think about what it really means?

Being here, I’m amazed by the variety of hells that exist on earth and the way the world keeps turning in spite of them.

On that uplifting note, I’m going to call this email finished. It’s been a long time since a lot of you have heard from me. I plan to launch a full-scale attack on my address book soon to touch base, but be patient!

The Chili Bomb Diaries: Back to Work, as the Boss

2008-02-17T07:22:00.000-08:00

It’s been ages, I hope everyone had pleasant holidays and that the new year, two months old as it is now, has been excellent.

I did go home for three weeks over Christmas. It was restful once I got past the jetlag but my first few days were rough and involved a lot of random naps and a complete meltdown in the linens department of the Bon Marche. I didn’t get to see everyone I wanted to, and I’m very sorry for that but I did get some good quality time with a few and that was really wonderful. I went back for arguably my first proper visit to Holy Names and spoke about my last couple of years’ work to Sister Mary Annette’s seniors. I felt old. One class used a YouTube video for prayer. I don’t know what to say about that.

Anyway, I’ve been back in Thailand for just over a month now and it’s been intense. I moved houses and now live with two great friends and a puppy named for Martha Stewart. It’s very homey and healthy to live outside of the office. The move was prompted by an unfortunate incident with the largest spider I’ve ever seen outside of a zoo. It was huge and hairy and brown and FAST like lightning. I found it hanging on one of my shirts. Horrifying. I couldn’t stay in that house and moved with the guarantee that my new housemates would deal with any beasts found in my living space.

Work has been crazy. The situation here has been becoming increasingly difficult in the months that I’ve been here as more and more Burmese new arrivals are coming into the camps, changing demographics drastically. The ethnic tensions can be fierce, though they rarely become violent, and while they are frustrating to work with, it’s not difficult to understand why the Karen majority feels threatened by the rising numbers of Burmese when the Burmese military is what put them in the camps in the first place.

I’ve been working like a nutcase, the big boss wants to restructure the program completely and this has taken a lot of time and energy. Blah.

Tons of people have been leaving Umphang, which has really changed dynamics. It recently occurred to me that, come March, there will be three of us who have been here for more than 6 months…I’ve become the old guard faster than I expected.

So, basically that’s it. Work work work and challenges galore. I hope everyone out there is happy and healthy. Drop me an email if you get a chance!

The Chili Bomb Diaries: Winter Arrives

2007-11-28T03:14:00.000-08:00

Dear all,

So, this edition of the Chili Bomb Diaries is late late late in coming and I apologize. Things have been very busy over here. My supervisor got fired for…not doing good things and I’ve essentially taken over his job. It’s been an amazing opportunity to take on a lot of responsibility and to do things they wouldn’t have let me do otherwise. I’m running two of our largest programs and overseeing construction of our new offices in two camps. I am currently master trainer for our business skills course and have been left for a month to take care of our two larger camps while my other supervisor travels down south to pilot a new program. It’s all very exciting, very stressful, and very exhausting. As another coordinator described a week here, “it’s like getting hit by a truck. It happens fast but it knocks you flat.” Unfortunately, I won’t get hired permanently because they need to hire local Thai staff for the position. Part of this is budget, part political but I’m satisfied that this experience has turned into an unexpected learning opportunity.

Special apologies to all who requested extra information about the situation in Myanmar. It’s still in progress. Mostly, I hate to send out something that isn’t very good or complete but information is so hard to find here. I will try to get something off this week so you can at least have a bit of infos.

To update on the situation along the border, essentially the influx of refugees everyone braced themselves for never came. There was an initial minor rush of a few hundred which was really people who were already illegally in Thailand using the violence in Myanmar as an opportunity to legitimately claim refugee status. But, really, who can blame them? The reason there hasn’t been a wave of people at the border is because it’s been closed by the military in Myanmar. People want to leave, but they can’t. It is anticipated that refugee numbers will grow when things become more relaxed in the future. Things have actually been eerily quiet. Information is slow to get out and people are worried about their families. Myanmar is still very much cut off and at least those of us working along the border know very little about what’s going on.

Someone asked me something a few weeks ago about camp and I thought I would describe camp life a little bit to give you all an idea of how things work here. I had no idea before I arrived how things were structured and it’s sort of interesting how camps are set up. Most of the camps here have been around for more than a decade and they are very much established like towns. Camps are divided into sections. Each section elects a section leader every year and the whole camp elects a camp leader, like a mayor, every year. They make all kinds of decisions about camp governance and discipline.

Different NGOs take care of different needs. The one I work with takes care of reproductive health, births, and children under 5 years old. So training of midwives and growth monitoring and vaccinations of little people are all taken care of by ARC. We also do community health education and vaccinations of new arrivals. Our water and sanitation program is responsible for all water provision and construction and maintenance of toilets and waste management. The gender-based violence program deals with rape and abuse cases in camp. AMI runs the in-camp hospital and does referrals to out of camp local hospitals when necessary. TBBC provides food, clothing, home construction, and other life necessity rations to most camp residents. That NGO also builds and maintains roads and bridges in camp. UNHCR takes responsibility for legal issues and liaising with the Royal Thai government in issues of protection. They also take responsibility for coordination of efforts along the border and for resettlement. HI works with the handicapped. ZOA runs the schools. Other groups, like my program within ARC, or COERR, ZOA, JRS all provide non-essential but still important programs like vocational training, income generation, supplementary feeding programs, and other trainings for in-camp organizations. Within camp there are camp-based organizations which run tons of programs and services for camp residents like child protection and the Karen Women’s Organization and the Burma Women’s Union. Camps are really like towns, there is a morning market and an all day Muslim market, there are coffee shops and restaurants, tailors and karaoke spots. Churches and monasteries. Schools for all children and classes in English and computers for adults.
The weather’s gotten colder. I never knew and didn’t really believe that Thailand would get cold, but it does. Nights are freezing and one of our camps is just brutal even in the middle of the day. Apparently, there may even be snow at some point. I have to wear most of my clothes. I figure, it doesn’t really matter. It’ll only last a couple of weeks. Of course, all of the Thais are running around in down parkas and ski masks.

I hope all of you had a beautiful Thanksgiving. We actually did quite well here in Umphang. Someone had the foresight to buy cranberry sauce in Bangkok so the Americans among us divided up the traditional dishes and put together a stellar holiday. I got the pumpkin pie, being the only person who knew how to make one from an actual pumpkin. It was a bit awkward for me, given that it was very labor intensive and I actually really dislike pumpkin pie but Thanksgiving isn’t right without it, so there it was. Our Thai staff really appreciated that the whole point of the holiday was the food and it was really nice to share with first-timers. We even had that whole bustle and busyness in the kitchen before eating that felt like a holiday. I was in a good mood for days.

This last weekend was Loy Kratong, a Thai festival where everyone makes (or buys) little boats made from banana tree trunks and banana leaves, beautifully decorated with flowers and candles and incense. Then, after dark you go down to the river and send them off to say thank you or I’m sorry to the water goddess, depends who you ask. Jum and Som taught me how to put mine together and I felt a bit like a kindergartener but it came out fine and was a really nice way to spend an afternoon. That night after we all sent our floaty things off down the river there was this huge parade of beauty queens and a beauty contest. One of our very own coordinators competed. She was the first foreigner in the history of the contest to compete and was the crowd favorite by far. She learned her self-introduction and it went something like “Hello, my name is Alanna. I work for ARC. I’m from America. I like living in Umphang. I like vegetarian Pad See Eew and tofu salad. Thank you.” Her talent was singing Country Roads karaoke style. AMAZING. I got most of it on tape.

So with that happy thought I will leave you. I feel like this edition is a little disorganized but it’s hard to focus these days. I’m off to the southern camp for a two-week long business skills training next week after the King’s birthday and then I’ll be in Seattle for Christmas, which is too exciting! Can’t wait to see the family and anyone else who might be around in the brief window of time I’ll have to get over jet-lag before going back to work. I hope all of you out there are happy and healthy and that Thanksgiving was wonderful and that you are all gearing up for a great Holiday season. Updates! I love updates!

LOVE!

Mollie

The Chili Bomb Diaries: Karaoke Time is Good Time

2007-10-04T03:13:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends and Loves,

As I come to the end of my first two months in Thailand, I’ve settled in enough to report a little more thoroughly on life and times.

Working in camp is rough but really a great experience. To get to camp we pile into ancient trucks and go bumping and winding for at least an hour and a half. I call it the Indiana Jones Truck Ride of Death. It can be pretty brutal and a lot of people get sick. Depending on the driver it can be a terrifying ride or just a painful one. I find them rather adventurous myself. Camp itself is such an interesting place. All kinds of people from Myanmar/Burma live there. The majority is Karen but there are actually a lot of different ethnic groups and religions in camp, a lot of languages, cultures, and types of traditional dress. In each camp there is a Muslim Market, a couple of Christian Churches, and meeting spaces of all kinds. There are little shops and restaurants and schools and the list goes on.

The job that I do in microenterprise development is so interesting because there is this very small economy in camp but we’re so limited by the Thai government as to what we can do to help them grow or to help new ones start. It’s a huge challenge to come up with programs that can address the needs of camp residents and meet the constraints of working within the camp and within Thai law. It’s also really difficult to encourage growth of income generation projects when people’s basic needs are being met by NGOs and when many of the more ambitious leave camp illegally to work elsewhere. Challenges galore! It’s really nice to have business meetings with camp organizations sitting barefoot on a mat while eating cookies and drinking hot chocolate and coffee. Usually when we have these meetings we, the NGO workers, offer to pay for the refreshments and usually we do. I didn’t think about it much until last week when a woman on the leadership board for the Karen Women’s Organization insisted we let her pay. She said that she may not have much but that it was her honor to invite us to coffee. It made me think back to the last time I saw some contention over a dinner bill in the states and how interesting it is to see where true generosity is found.

Outside of camp life is good. I live out in a rice paddy and I have a trusty orange bike that gets me around town. It’s very odd living with my housemates. I really didn’t envision myself at the age of 23 living with two forty-something Thais but that’s life. Generally it’s ok, sometimes they sort of parent me and, really, I can’t see what business it is of theirs whether I go for a run at 6am or 4pm on a Sunday. Why hassle me? We do get along well though and have a lot of fun doing weird things. They’re sort of teaching me to cook in this really passive aggressive way, (“oh, you’re going to use that sauce?” or “I would have put in more sugar, but that’s just me”) but the important thing is that I’m slowly learning to cook. Other people who work with ARC are really great and we have our own special fun as best we can. Usually this means karaoke on Saturday nights. Another thing I never saw for myself, karaoke, but it is so much more fun than I ever knew.

Food is excellent. A lot of you expressed concern about the whole chili bomb thing. I would like you all to know that training is going well and when I cook for myself I usually put 4 or 5 chilis in a dish now. My housemate Nuntiya is encouraging me on my quest to up the tolerance for spicy things and we’re hopeful that by December I’ll be touching a 4-star (her scale) rating.

So, before I end this chronicle there is something I would like to share with you all. I’m sure many of you have heard about the recent protests by monks in Myanmar and the violence and oppression that erupted in response. People have been killed, beaten, imprisoned and the internet in the country was even shut off to cut off the population. First of all, I’m nowhere near the actual events taking place. I am safely off in a Thai village a long way away even from the refugee camps that I work in. Second, these protests are directly related to the work that I’m doing. This week alone has seen a spike in refugee arrivals to camps all along the border and tension has been high besides. The people that I serve in camp are people who have left Myanmar because of the military dictatorship that the monks are marching against. Most of them are ethnic minorities who have been forced by the military to work or resettle, they have been raped, tortured, imprisoned, and have had family members killed in addition to countless other human rights abuses. They have been driven from their homes and into Thailand many still have family and friends back home.

Everyone I work with everyday has a story to tell. The three brothers who do our written translation work in Nu Po camp spent more than 25 years in prison between them for student activism. Popo spent two years in prison after her husband died because of his political activism. Tain Taw in Ban Don Yang camp had to leave with his wife because of his work as a journalist. Zapo has been in Nu Po for 11 years. He left Myanmar with his parents when he was 13 after his mother and father were forced to work for the military carrying arms and his whole village was forced to relocate twice in four years. These stories remain largely untold and I feel it’s important that I share with you some of what I see here.

I don’t mean to get preachy but this is a very intense situation. I’m safe but a lot of people aren’t. I encourage you all to take the time to read an article if you see a headline and ask me if you would like more information. A few people have asked me already and I’m putting together some information slowly but surely. Don’t worry, I’ll only send it to people who ask for it.

So with this chronicle, I send you all much love from the “land of the free.” Keep happy and healthy and let me know what you’re up to when you get the chance.

LOVE like a chili bomb!

Mollie

The Chili Bomb Diaries: Arriving

2007-08-28T03:05:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends and Loves,

Greetings from the land of Thai! I arrived here on August 5th and have been on a crazy ride ever since. Apologies to those I was unable to spend time with while stateside, I wound up spending a lot of my time up north with the family and taking a trip to Montana to kidnap my sister so time in the great city of Seattle was actually quite limited. Until I return email email email is the way forward!

This new series of emails will be called The Chili Bomb Diaries in celebration of this most dangerous feature of Thai cuisine. As there are no llamas in Thailand, it would be inappropriate to continue with the Llama Chronicles, though it saddens me to have put them to rest. A few other things were taken under consideration for the title of these emails, but the chili bomb has won. Chili bombs are what Thais call the pieces of tiny chili peppers that hide in most foods. Some people love them, most people fish them out. If you miss one and wind up eating it, this is called a chili bomb because of the shock and awe that takes place in your mouth. Hilarity all around. As always, if anyone would like to be removed from the mailing list just let me know. I will most definitely understand.

As some of you know, I’m working with the American Refugee Committee International (www.arc.org) in Thailand for 6 months. This is an incredible humanitarian relief organization that works with refugees and displaced persons all over the world. It is an honor for me to have this opportunity. I arrived here very much in the dark about my living and working situation, I knew I was hired to work on microenterprise development programs and to work in refugee camps on the Thai-Burma border and that my organization would house and transport me but other than that, I essentially planned on arriving in Bangkok and hoped someone would come and get me! Everything from pick-up to meetings in Bangkok went very well and I have sincerely enjoyed the experience.

I’m starting out in Sangklaburi province in the south, a 5 hour drive from Bangkok, where we work in one camp. Here I’ll be until next week until moving up to my permanent home in Umphang in Tak province, 2 days drive from Bangkok, where we operate in two camps. We work with people who have left Myanmar because of human rights abuses, the majority are of the Karen ethnic group. There are several camps along the border, ARC works with 3.
I’ve only been out to one of the camps a few times. The road to get there is CRAZY bumpy and windy and I have bruises all over my arms from getting tossed around the truck cab. The camp itself is very green and closely built, which is what you would expect from 4,000 people living close in together. Winding paths run all over camp and bamboo bridges cross the rivers. To get to our Livelihoods center we cross four of varying stability. People are very nice and very interesting and interested and the camp itself is a fascinating community of people. Some have been there for a decade, some for just a few months. Camp economy is also fascinating, but I won’t bore you all.

My coworkers are hilarious, actually, factually hilarious so my living and working will at least be fun. I don’t know how much work we’ll get done but oh well. That’s life sometimes. They’ve been very good to me, feeding me, looking after me, and nicknaming me! Normally (no offense intended to anyone, I love my name!) my name is really difficult in other languages because there isn’t an easy equivalent. People just think it’s weird. Germans hated my name and it was so awkward in Bolivia, but HERE! Mollie has become Mali, which is very cute and also means jasmine, which makes me very happy.

It’s very warm and very humid and we’re getting into the peak of rainy season. It just pours most of the day and is just…wet. Something I love here is that you don’t wear shoes in the house or office (which is the incidentally the same thing for ARC) it makes everything feel very relaxed and cozy to me. Everyone I work with has been very kind and welcoming so far and my initial projects are both interesting and not too frightening so there’s hope!

What else…food is SPICY (chili-bomb!). I like spice, I really do, but this stuff HURTS. Yesterday I had some frog on rice in the market (we’re doing a frog-raising project so I figured I should know what we were trying to feed everyone) and it was good, chewy, the bones crunched a little sickeningly, but above all it was so hot! It was the kind of spicy that sneaks up on you, so you eat a whole bunch and then all of a sudden you just hurt. Upside is that I’m sure that by the time I come home in 6 months I will have taste buds of steel.

Anyway, I have wasted way too much of everyone’s time with a lot of silly, random blather. The long and short of it is that I’m enjoying this new adventure very much.

I’m still working out email access (may have to rely on rigging up the office internet afterhours) but once I’ve got it all figured out there will be no stopping me! Hope everyone is well and much love to all!

LOVE!

Mollie

The Llama Chronicles: Farewell Edition

2007-06-16T13:54:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

This will be my last llama chronicle as I´ll be arriving in Seattle on Thursday after three days of traveling to get there.

There isn´t too much interesting at this point, I´ve finished my work and passed the torch to a couple of new volunteers, I´m in the midst of a ton of goodbyes, and the house is slowly getting cleaned out in preparation for my departure on Monday night.

I´ve spent this last few weeks getting some travel in, I spent a week in La Paz exploring museums and bundling up against the terrible, freezing cold. With the altitude and the fact that La Paz is just a series of hills and staircases, it was a rough week but I saw some great art and interesting museums. The Coca Museum is tiny but fascinating and they have a whole museum about the loss of the coastline to Chile. It was great.

That trip was followed by a week in Santa Cruz where heat and humidity reigned. I took an expedition from Santa Cruz out to a couple of the Jesuit missions of Chiquitos. I only made it as far as San Javier and Concepción, but I´m told that they´re the important ones anyway. There were beautiful and very very strange, these enormous church complexes out in the middle of a bunch of cow towns six hours out of Santa Cruz. I took a bunch of pictures, but I don´t think anything can really capture what it´s like to walk down a dirt road in a tiny town, turn a corner and see one of these things after hours of seeing nothing but cows and haciendas from a bus. It´s very impressive.

I´m sad to be leaving Bolivia, to live for nine months anywhere makes that place important to you forever, I suppose and I´ve learned and grown so much during my time here that it´s hard to get ready to leave it behind. BUT I am so so very excited to come home, drink out of the tap, see people I haven´t seen in so very long and enjoy my family before I´m off for the next adventure. I hope to see those of you who are in Seattle while I´m home. I´ll be around until the very first days of August and I plan on enjoying every bit of my time home. Come enjoy it with me!

So, much love to all of you. Thank you for reading the chronicles, and who knows, there may be a Thailand series as well...

LOVE!

Mollie

Mollieisms: Woo-Hoo!

2007-05-21T07:48:00.000-07:00

May 16, 2007, NY Times

Rhett, Scarlett and Friends Prepare for Yet Another Encore

By MOTOKO RICH

It’s taken 12 years, three authors and one rejected manuscript, but tomorrow will be another day when “Rhett Butler’s People,” the second sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind,” is published this fall.

Less a conventional sequel than a retelling from Rhett Butler’s point of view, the new book, to be published by St. Martin’s Press in November, is written by Donald McCaig, a former advertising copywriter turned Virginia sheep farmer who has written well-reviewed novels about the Civil War.

The book, at a little over 400 pages, will be a slip of a novel compared with the original, which ran more than a thousand pages. “Rhett Butler’s People” covers the period from 1843 to 1874, nearly two decades more than are chronicled in “Gone With the Wind.” Readers will learn more about Rhett Butler’s childhood on a rice plantation; his relationship with Belle Watling, the brothel madam; and his experiences as a blockade runner in Charleston, S.C.

Most of all, readers will get inside Rhett’s head as he meets and courts Scarlett O’Hara in one of the most famous love affairs of all time.

With the publication of “Rhett Butler’s People,” St. Martin’s will at last have the chance to begin recouping the $4.5 million advance it agreed to pay the Mitchell estate for the right to publish a second sequel. The publisher has high hopes for the book’s commercial prospects, with an anticipated first print run of more than a million copies.

But the new book is also, in some senses, a bid for redemption by the estate of Margaret Mitchell, who died in 1949 and steadfastly refused to write a sequel to “Gone With the Wind” herself. When Alexandra Ripley’s “Scarlett,” the first sequel, was published in 1991, it was a blockbuster best seller — it has sold more than six million copies to date worldwide — but suffered a critical drubbing. (Five years ago Ms. Mitchell’s estate unsuccessfully tried to block publication of “The Wind Done Gone,” Alice Randall’s unauthorized parody told from the perspective of a slave whose mother, Mammy, was Scarlett’s nanny.)

This time around, the lawyers who manage the business affairs of the Mitchell estate aimed higher. “What we were most interested in was a product of high literary quality,” said Paul Anderson Jr., one of three lawyers who advises the estate, held in trust for the benefit of Ms. Mitchell’s two nephews. “We were looking for something not to make a quick buck, but something that would be lasting.”

The search for the right author was an epic saga of its own. It began in 1995, when the estate commissioned Emma Tennant, an English novelist who had written a well-regarded sequel to Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” to write a sequel to the sequel of “Gone With the Wind.”

Ms. Tennant’s contract specified that she retain Ms. Mitchell’s tone, vision and characters. It also forbade Ms. Tennant from including “acts or references to incest, miscegenation, or sex between two people of the same sex.”

When Ms. Tennant submitted a 575-page manuscript, entitled “Tara,” it picked up where Ms. Ripley, who had set much of “Scarlett” in Ireland, left off, returning Scarlett to Georgia.

Unfortunately, the lawyers for the estate and editors at St. Martin’s thought it was too British in sensibility. They fired Ms. Tennant and legally prohibited her from ever publishing her manuscript.

Stranded without an author, the estate and St. Martin’s next approached Pat Conroy, the Southern novelist best known for “The Prince of Tides,” who had written an introduction to the 60th-anniversary edition of “Gone With the Wind.”

Thorny contract talks ensued. Concerned that the estate’s lawyers would impinge on his authorial freedom, Mr. Conroy joked publicly that he would open his sequel with this line: “After they made love, Rhett turned to Ashley Wilkes and said, ‘Ashley, have I ever told you that my grandmother was black?’ ”

Mr. Anderson, who was not involved in negotiations with Mr. Conroy but whose father was, said the estate never would have put editorial constraints on Mr. Conroy. “Everyone understood that there would be nothing in a contract with him that would prohibit him from including miscegenation or homosexuality, if that’s what he wanted to put in there,” he said. “He, after all, is an artist.”

Mr. Conroy remembers the negotiations differently. In an interview he said the estate’s lawyers never stopped trying to prohibit him from including miscegenation or homosexuality, or from killing off Scarlett O’Hara. In the end, Mr. Conroy said, he pulled out of talks with the estate because he did not believe he would be given true editorial freedom.

With nothing to show after four years, St. Martin’s publisher, Sally Richardson, and executive editor, Hope Dellon, began searching for a new writer. Finding a promising candidate proved difficult.

Finally, Ms. Dellon walked into a bookstore and found a copy of “Jacob’s Ladder,” a Civil War novel by Mr. McCaig.

She liked what she read, and called Mr. McCaig, who said he had never even read “Gone With the Wind.” Once he did, he was intrigued. Right from the start, he said, he knew he wanted to tell the story from Rhett Butler’s point of view, against the backdrop of the Civil War.

“The Civil War has a tremendous moral and emotional force,” Mr. McCaig said in a telephone interview. “You take the Civil War out of it and have the epic love story and everything else is kind of ‘oh dear.’ ”

Mr. McCaig took on the commission, he said, out of “six parts hubris and four parts poverty.” He declined to disclose how much the estate was paying him.

He spent six years researching and writing, digging in historical archives and going out in a skiff in Charleston Harbor to re-enact Rhett’s efforts to get through naval blockades, nearly running aground on a breakwater one night.

His wife, Anne, produced 100 pages of meticulous chapter outlines for “Gone With the Wind,” so that Mr. McCaig would be able to follow the original’s timeline as he wrote.

He delivered chapters to his editors as he finished them. Occasionally the lawyers for the Mitchell estate would be invited to weigh in as well.

“It was a rocky road,” Mr. McCaig said. “There were a lot of people involved and a lot of different needs. It’s a much more complex environment than most novels are written in.”

Mr. Anderson said the estate’s lawyers, having learned from their experiences with Ms. Tennant and Mr. Conroy, tried not to interfere with the content of the novel too much. Bowing to changing mores, Mr. McCaig’s contract acknowledged the necessity of “modernizing the treatment of the sensitive areas of race and sex to reflect the changes in public attitudes during the period of more than 60 years since the publication of the original novel.”

In the end Mr. McCaig included a minor interracial affair and one suggestion of closeted homosexuality (not Ashley Wilkes’s). More controversial, though, were sprinklings of a racial epithet within various characters’ dialogue, a point that concerned the estate’s lawyers.

“It’s an issue that we thought should be considered,” Mr. Anderson said. “It’s an explosive term from a social point of view.”

Mr. McCaig pointed out that the use of the word was historically accurate, and that it cropped up in “Gone With the Wind.” The word made it into the final manuscript.

Mr. McCaig declined to reveal much about the plot of “Rhett Butler’s People,” but he did say it opened with a duel between Rhett and Belle Watling’s brother, Shadrach, an episode that is referred to briefly in “Gone With the Wind.” He also acknowledged an important plot line concerning a child, possibly the son of Rhett and Belle. And an excerpt from a scene released by St. Martin’s shows the teenage Rhett being punished by his father and sent to work for Belle’s father as a laborer on the rice plantation where Rhett grew up.

Following up on a follow-up inevitably has its challenges. “I’m almost certain that there’s going to be people who really have a bone to pick with ‘Gone With the Wind’ who are going to take it out on this,” Mr. McCaig said. “There’s going to be adoring fans who find places where I distorted the true meaning of the original. And there’s going to be some people who think it’s a pretty good book.”

Llama Chronicles: The Lost Edition, Oruro, Tarija, Tupiza Trip

2007-05-20T08:04:00.001-07:00

Oh No,

I have just realized that in all of my everything I never completed or sent a Chronicle about my post-New Year´s trip to Oruro, Tarija and Tupiza, undertaken with my lovely friend and program coordinator, Kris. I´m gonna do my best to finish and post this so that the memories and photos are shared and as little joy as possible is lost.

After New Year´s Kris and I embarked on a two-week adventure down to the Southwest of Bolivia. Our first stop, as a major transportation hub, was Oruro. We decided to spend some time wandering this city, because first of all, why not and second of all, we badly misjudged the train system from Oruro to Tupiza and got stuck. Oruro is cold and ugly and boring. It is worth visiting for Carnaval but not much else, sadly. We escaped as quickly as we could and got ourselves on a 15 hour bus to Tarija, figuring that this way we could take the train back from Tupiza. We made an error and took the cheap bus. It was FREEZING. It was so cold that I put on all of my clothing. ALL of my clothing, including 2 pairs of jeans. Fortunately, we went at night, so it wasn´t until we had just a few hours left that we were aware of how dirty the thing was. I mean, vomit.

Tarija itself was lovely lovely, still in shock over our horrendous ride in, we were very happy to spend a several days in the city. There was a strong wine and sitting-around-a-plaza-in-the-evening culture which was wonderful. Tarija is Bolivia´s wine-growing region and home to the world´s highest vineyards. Bolivians contend that their best wines contend with those of Chile and Argentina. I don´t know about that but wine country is beautiful.

After exploring for a day or so, we went on a tour of the bodegas, including wine tasting, and of the surrounding area. We had a very sweet tour guide and took a walk through the bodega of La Concepción and taking a look at some incredible views. After, we went to a wine tasting at Casa Vieja. Bolivian´s are very fond of sweet things and these wines were DULCE for the most part. It was not so enjoyable but the space for the tasting was really brightly decorated and fun.

We continued on to explore some of the surrounding sights, best of which by far, was this swimming hole with waterfalls in San Jacinto. It was beautiful and the next day Kris and I took ourselves a bottle of wine, a bunch of olives and spent most of the day there. Fabulous.

We also took a drive out to walk through some woods. I don´t remember why this seemed like a good idea, but it was beautiful. We had been warned to buy some coca to bribe the gatekeeper because of the guarddogs. When we got there, we had all forgotten the coca, the gatekeeper was nowhere to be found, and the guarddogs were a little chihuahua thing and a mommy dog with her puppies. Not so fearsome. Once we were well along the way on this path, the heavens opened up and it began to pour and pour, all of us made a mad dash back to the car, but there was no use, we were soaked through. It was awesome.

The bus ride to Tupiza was actually worse than the ride to Tarija, it was long and terrifying with every turn threatening to tip us over off the side of the mountains we were winding through. At one point the driver had us get out to walk. We were only too glad to comply with the request. We did eventually arrive in a place that seemed to belong more the southwest of the United States than to the Bolivia we knew. It was hot and dry with crazy colorful rock formations. We stayed in a cute hotel and arranged for a guided day trip. This was incredible. While I had been a vocal proponent of taking a four day horse adventure to check out the trail of Butch and Sundance, the day trip, known as the Triathalon, was definitely the greatest thing that ever happened. Basically, you spend the day in jeeps, on foot, on mountain bikes and on horses exploring the area. It's beautiful and so fun to adventure in so many different ways. The highlight of the whole thing was the end, when our guide drove us up to the top of a big big hill and set us off down the way on our bikes, riding into a beautiful view of rainbow rock formations. I would recommend this to anyone who gets anywhere near Tupiza.

When we finished in Tupiza (and after a typically Bolivian bureaucratic nightmare to get tickets) we took the train up to Oruro. the ride was long but lovely. Trains are a supreme method of travel. Interestingly, they served a full almuerzo for about 20 bolivianos, a huge platter of rice and vegetables and half a chicken. It was sort of strange to me, being more accustomed to either not being fed or the strange efficiency of airline meals.

Returning home was a bit complicated because there were major conflicts in Cochabamba (riots, fights, burnings) and we got stuck in Oruro for a couple of days until the buses were running again. I won't say that I was unhappy about this, any vacation is a good vacation as far as I'm concerned.

And that was it. It was a great trip, and stands as a major highlight in all of my Bolivia meanderings.

Llama Chronicles: Projects and Ferias

2007-05-19T09:22:00.000-07:00

Hello,

So I've done it. I've set a date to come home. I'll be back in Seattle on the 21st of June (assuming no problems) after a whole lot of travelling to get there. Mark your calendars! I will be in Seattle until the 4th of August, when I will depart for my next adventure. I am so excited to come back and I can't wait to see people and eat sushi. On the agenda for my time home is a trip to see my sisterling Pepper in Montana, which is too exciting, we're going to make t-shirts, and also a lot of time up north with my lovely grandparents and...lots of other stuff. Lots of vaccinations, lots of love, lots of events to be settled.

Life here is good. It feels like it's simultaneously gotten busier and also slower. My project launch got messed up by factors beyond my control, but I've been here long enough now that I've just rolled with it and it happened rather suddenly (or so it felt) on the 16th and 17th. I´m so relieved to have that done. I was so nervous that something would go wrong but in the end, I just spent all day running around buying food while the workshop participants happily...participated. (Photos: Team-building activity with balloons and work in groups)

I will be finishing work this week and after I am taking 2 weeks to do the last 2 things on my Bolivia list. I´m going to go run around the Jesuit missions of Chiquitos, outside of Santa Cruz and also, the Salar de Uyuni, which is an enormous salt lake that you go driving over in 4 day treks to these islands out in the middle of all the white. Or maybe I´ll go to the Yungas instead of one of those things...I don´t really know but Bolivia is my oyster. I´m really glad that I decided to take the time to do that before coming home.

I went a couple of weekends ago to a festival/fair thing that was billed as "La Feria Internacional," so International Fair, I guess. It wasn't very international but it was very interesting. There were moments when it felt like it might be something you would see in the states, but something was just sort of...off. Every major Bolivian company, airline, the electric company, mayonaise brands, were there with enormous elaborate spaces set up. Every single one had at least 2 girls with their hair straightened and their makeup perfect in ridiculous dresses in company colors. The highlight was finding a coffee booth that actually had a proper bar and smelled like America. Seriously exciting. There were rides and tons of food. Almost all of the food, sadly, was Bolivian BBQ, which means meat off the grill and not much more. My group at at one and ordered an ENORMOUS platter of meat and french fries. It was stupendous. The whole thing was right over the top and a little overwhelming. Oh progress.

I was nasty sick with what I had been told was an amoeba that would clear up on its own. It didn't seem to want to go and proved unpredictable. I am feeling better and can eat again. Yay! I´m amazed that something took me down that badly this far into my time here, but I suppose that amoebas know no bounds.

I have submitted to my ego and my desire to keep an archive, so I started a blog. Mostly it's just the Chronicles posted and a couple of links to relevant sites and my photos, which have also finally gone up on Flickr. You can find the blog, if so inclined, at http://www.mollieadventures.blogspot.com/ and my photos are linked there or are on Flickr under mollieadventures. The photos are more exciting.

I must make a plea to you all. I have lost my Shon. I know. It´s terrible. But Shontranae´s email no longer functions and I can´t find her. It kills me, so if anyone knows an email for her, send it along!

Ok, I hope you all are well and I´ll see lots of you when I´m back in Seattle, which is too too exciting. Know that I´m thinking of you and write me!

LOVE!

Mollie

Reflections on Bolivia: Culture Shock

2007-04-17T14:13:00.000-07:00

Now that I´ve got my next step figured out and I´m sort of beginning to look towards the end of all this I´m trying to pick apart my experiences and how I´ve changed. I suppose all of this will be much more evident once I´m back in the US, back home, and can see the experience in the context of my reality before I left. If that makes sense.

Culture shock is such a strange experience and so so dangerous. There´s the initial bit which seems harsh, but isn´t anything to what´s gonna come. The food´s weird and you like it or you don´t, jet lag, language issues, altitude and weather, figuring out how to interact with the people you´re now living and working with. All of this, for me, has always been vaguely exciting and wonderful. Even when it sucked and I had diarrhea like crazy and didn´t understand how water stuff worked, it was all just an adventure, something I knew I would adjust to. This happened here, in Berlin, in Oxford, and it will happen again in Thailand. This is the easy part.

The real culture shock, what I think of when I think of culture shock, comes later and slowly but surely and makes life really hard. It comes when things stop being novel and you speak enough of the language to get yourself around. When you´re settled with your family and the differences stop being interesting and you have to start reconciling them to your own boundries, cuz like it or don´t we all have boundries that can be stretched but cannot be ignored. It comes when the stomach cramps continue after 3 months and you start to get sick of finding hairs and rocks and bugs and eggshells in your food. it comes when you´re tired of reporting your whereabouts and when you´ve had enough of missing what´s going on around you. It comes when you have laughed at yourself one too many times.

Here, my lowest point was after New Year´s when a member of my family had taken advantage of me, work was not going well, and I had just about had enough of so many things that were hard to stomach like lack of concern for safety, cruelty to the poor and to animals, machismo, and the postal system. I wrote frantic emails trying to find some sort of insight, some game plan to make everything less difficult. I got the support I needed and made it past that point but nothing´s easy.

Reverse culture shock is something I´ve never really experienced. A friend of mine had a wicked time after her junior year abroad and I just didn´t get it. This time, I have a feeling it will be different.

Having lived in England for a year, I think I learned some really important things about living in a cross-cultural environment. Oxford was deceptive, at first. We speak the same language, the food´s not THAT different and on the whole I understood what was happening around me. So I thought. It is exactly because the languages are essentially the same that I missed the fact that we could say the same things but mean something completely different. That social interactions were subtly different, that expectations were not the same. I loved Oxford, but that was a slow and gentle lesson in what it is to live outside of your home culture.

So much change has taken place in me in these months in Cochabamba. I´ve learned so much, language, about microcredit, about being an outsider and about my own boundries. I´m interested and a little scared to see what happens when I go back home.

Mollieisms: The Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games

2007-04-13T15:06:00.000-07:00

A winner of an article. Today from the NY Times. There´s so much going on here, I don´t even know where to start.

I love love love the idea of anyone calling Spielberg the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games, that is just too amazing for words. I love a Chinese official (Zhai Jun) referring to anyone boycotting the 2008 games as "either ignorant or ill-natured." I love the idea of pressuring China to take action in the Darfur situation by getting them where it hurts, their Olympics. I love even more that it appears to be working.

Oh Hollywood, oh China, oh Mia Farrow...whatever works to create action in the Darfur situation I´m all for and this is incredible. What though, I wonder, would we do without the Olympics?

This, truly, is diplomacy at its finest.

Darfur Collides with Olympics, and China Yields
By HELENE COOPER
Published: April 13, 2007
The New York Times

WASHINGTON, April 12 — For the past two years, China has protected the Sudanese government as the United States and Britain have pushed for United Nations Security Council sanctions against Sudan for the violence in Darfur.

But in the past week, strange things have happened. A senior Chinese official, Zhai Jun, traveled to Sudan to push the Sudanese government to accept a United Nations peacekeeping force. Mr. Zhai even went all the way to Darfur and toured three refugee camps, a rare event for a high-ranking official from China, which has extensive business and oil ties to Sudan and generally avoids telling other countries how to conduct their internal affairs.

So what gives? Credit goes to Hollywood — Mia Farrow and Steven Spielberg in particular. Just when it seemed safe to buy a plane ticket to Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games, nongovernmental organizations and other groups appear to have scored a surprising success in an effort to link the Olympics, which the Chinese government holds very dear, to the killings in Darfur, which, until recently, Beijing had not seemed too concerned about.

Ms. Farrow, a good-will ambassador for the United Nations Children’s Fund, has played a crucial role, starting a campaign last month to label the Games in Beijing the “Genocide Olympics” and calling on corporate sponsors and even Mr. Spielberg, who is an artistic adviser to China for the Games, to publicly exhort China to do something about Darfur. In a March 28 op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal, she warned Mr. Spielberg that he could “go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games,” a reference to a German filmmaker who made Nazi propaganda films.

Four days later, Mr. Spielberg sent a letter to President Hu Jintao of China, condemning the killings in Darfur and asking the Chinese government to use its influence in the region “to bring an end to the human suffering there,” according to Mr. Spielberg’s spokesman, Marvin Levy.

China soon dispatched Mr. Zhai to Darfur, a turnaround that served as a classic study of how a pressure campaign, aimed to strike Beijing in a vulnerable spot at a vulnerable time, could accomplish what years of diplomacy could not.

Groups focusing on many issues, including Tibet and human rights, have called for boycotts of the Games next year. But none of those issues have packed the punch of Darfur, where at least 200,000 people — some say as many as 400,000 — mostly non-Arab men, women and children, have died and 2.5 million have been displaced, as government-backed Arab militias called the janjaweed have attacked the local population.

President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan has repeatedly refused American, African and European demands that he allow a United Nations peacekeeping force to supplement an underequipped and besieged African Union force of 7,000 soldiers who have been trying, with dwindling success, to restore order in the Darfur region.

“Whatever ingredient went into the decision for him to go, I’m so pleased that he went,” Ms. Farrow said in a phone interview about Mr. Zhai’s trip. She called the response from Beijing “extraordinary.”

In describing Mr. Spielberg’s decision to write to the Chinese leader, the filmmaker’s spokesman said that while Mr. Spielberg “certainly has been aware of the situation in Darfur” it was “only recently that he became aware of China’s involvement there.”

During a news conference on Wednesday, Mr. Zhai called activists who want to boycott the Games “either ignorant or ill natured.” But he added, “We suggest the Sudan side show flexibility and accept” the United Nations peacekeepers.

During closed-door diplomatic meetings, Chinese officials have said they do not want any of their Darfur overtures linked to the Olympics, American and European officials said.

In an e-mail message on Thursday, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington warned anew against such a linkage. “If someone wants to pin Olympic Games and Darfur issue together to raise his/her fame, he/she is playing a futile trick,” the spokesman, Chu Maoming, wrote.

National pride in China has been surging over the coming Olympics, with a gigantic clock in Tiananmen Square counting down the minutes to the Games, and Olympic souvenir stores sprouting all over with the “One World, One Dream” Beijing Olympics motto.

In public, Bush administration officials have been relatively restrained in welcoming China’s new diplomatic zeal.

“We have indications at this point that the Chinese are now taking even a more aggressive role than they have in the past,” Andrew S. Natsios, the Bush administration’s special envoy to Sudan, told a Senate panel on Wednesday. “I think they may be the crucial actors.”

J. Stephen Morrison, a Sudan expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he had been warning Chinese officials that Darfur and the Olympics could collide, to no avail.

“I’ve been talking to them and telling them this is coming, this is coming,” Mr. Morrison said. “I told them, there’s an infrastructure out there, they need to feed the beast, and you’re in their sight.” Before, he said, “they kind of shrugged.”

But there is growing concern inside China that Darfur is hurting Beijing’s image.

“Their equity is to be seen as an ethical, rising global power — that’s their goal,” Mr. Morrison said. “Their goal is not to get in bed with every sleazy government that comes up with a little oil.”

It remains unclear if the Hollywood campaign will work — China has not agreed to sanctions yet. But there is also plenty of time between now and the opening ceremony of the Olympics Games in Beijing next year, and more plans are afoot in the activist camp.

On Feb. 10, in an open letter on his Web site addressed to “Darfur activists and advocates,” (translations of the letter are available in Chinese, Arabic, Swahili, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and Italian, according to the Web site), a Darfur activist, Eric Reeves, promised what he called the “full-scale launch of a large, organized campaign to highlight China’s complicity in the Darfur genocide.”

“It’s time now, to begin shaming China — demanding that if the Beijing government is going to host the Summer Olympic Games of 2008, they must be responsible partners,” Mr. Reeves wrote.

One possibility that activists are weighing: trying to get Olympic athletes to carry a replica of the Olympic torch from Darfur to the Chinese border.

The Llama Chronicles: Bunnies and Matzoh

2007-04-10T13:42:00.000-07:00

Happy late Easter to all!

I was not nearly as exciting this holiday as I have been for past holidays.

In Bolivia, Semana Santa is a big deal and involves a lot of exciting stuff. Thursday night everyone visits twelve churches and eats a mountain of api (sweet hot drink made from maize, it´s purple and white, very pretty) and pasteles (fried dough with cheese inside and powdered sugar on top). Friday, there are twelve traditional dishes which get cooked up in a frenzy that takes almost all day and then are eaten to the point of making people sick. Saturday there are these processions all over the place, the one I saw was in Villa Tunari in the Chapare, everyone walks a few minutes and then stops and the priest does a station of the cross and everyone starts walking again. Full band, very loud. Then there´s SUNDAY itself. Actually, not much in particular seems to happen on Sunday, roast lamb is traditional for lunch and I suppose people sometimes go to church, but I was out and about Sunday and not much of anything seemed to have been happening. I guess everyone had feasted and prayed and processed themselves out. All of these things happen and I did exactly none of them. My largest Bolivian experience during all of this was being denied a beer in a restuarant because serving alcohol was prohibido. Oops.

I did, however, run away to the jungle for a day with my friend Meghan, we swam and ate fish, and slept and got eaten alive by mosquitos. No creatures jumped on my head and I only got a little sunburned. It was a great get away for a night.

On Sunday I went to visit my Bolivian family and was force fed salteñas for a couple of hours. It was very nice to see them. Then off with my housemate Steve to the Shermans´ easter egg hunt party. I can´t remember if I´ve talked about the Shermans before. Becky and Joe are a lovely couple with two lovely children who are in Cochabamba as Maryknoll missioners. We are connected by a sort of family relationship and they have taken amazing care of me since I got here, from taking me to lunch during my first week here, to Halloween, to sending me to Steve when I was about to go crazy with the family, and most recently, inviting me for Easter at their house. It was a great event with more gringos than I ever see in one place and lots of little kids running around. Bonus was that Becky´s aunt and mom were in visiting and it was lovely to see her mom again having met her before right before I left the states.

On Monday night some friends of mine had a Seder, which was really exciting for me, Catholic girl that I am. As the youngest of the group I got to open the door for Elijah and participated in the non-jewish contingent's plot to steal the matzoh, the plot was successful. Thank you to everyone who educated me up through high school, I was very helpful describing the plagues. The event was great and my friends did a great job setting it up. Bolivia is not the easiest place on earth to try to put together a Jewish holiday.

In other news, the looming problem of my future was solved last week when I got hired by the American Refugee Committee to work with their brand new microenterprise development program with women and youth in camps along the Thai-Myanmar border. Now I will be home in early July and off again for a whole new adventure at the beginning of August. If anyone knows anyone in Thailand or, you know, anything about Thailand, let me know. I can find it on a map and I like pad thai but that´s about it in the way of my knowledge. An extra-big thank you to those who were pulling for me and offering support in the way of references, prayers, and happy thoughts.

So, yes, I hope you all had great Easters with lots of joy and chocolate and everything else. I hope everyone is doing well. I miss you all, and that´s true because I reviewed my email list yesterday. Write when you can and know someone in Bolivia is thinking of you!

LOVE!

Mollie

The Llama Chronicles: Carnaval

2007-03-21T13:33:00.000-07:00

"Every year the skirts get shorter and the crowds get bigger." - My carnaval buddy Lorenzo on the state of affairs for Oruro´s Carnaval.

So it´s been a long time. I´m sorry. I´m even late reporting on the biggest event of the Bolivian year, Carnaval. Sorry. Before I get into the carnaval stuff, in a nutshell, the family got too crazy for me (my abuela actually tried to forbid me to do things, I mean, really?) and I moved. I am now living in a lovely house in the neighborhood of Cala Cala with a very nice guy who is working on his PhD at Cornell in soil sciences. He needed someone in the house because his wife and two babies just went back to the US and he´s always out in the campo doing research. Someone´s gotta be in the house. I really enjoy my new neighborhood. The streets are paved, there are no cows, and my stomach trouble has ended. Imagine that. I have a very nice neighbor, Doña Betty, who drags me into her house for coffee and cookies whenever she sees me in the street and the shop owners two houses down take good care of me, keep an eye out when they know I´m alone, that sort of thing.

I still see the old family. I went for back to school open house a few weeks ago and for a parade that little Ciria was dancing in (it was very awkward for me though, there was blackface...) and after Carnaval went to ch´alla the new house so I´ve sort of got the best of all worlds going. It´s been really good for me though to be able to have some control over my life again, I was pretty miserable in the old situation.

At work, I finally have a project and I won´t bore you all but I´m excited about it and have been working hard trying to make it come together.

The latest big event was Carnaval. A weekend in February iin Oruro was what is considered the biggest event in Bolivia and in terms of carnavals, the second largest in South America (Rio´s being first). This year, more than 600,000 people were expecte to turn up and more than 50,000 to dance in this incredible parade which was declared one of Mankind's Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Hertitage of Humanity by the UNESCO in 2001.

I went with a huge group on Friday night, soon as we arived we went out to see the bands playing morenadas and to see the parade route. The route is 3 kilometers long and culminates in a plaza where the dancing is the best. We rented seats in bleachers along a plaza and the next mroning were there early to start the event. We all had to get our ponchos along the way, a central feature of carnaval and the weeks surrounding it all over Bolivia are the water balloon fights which get a little out of hand at Carnaval itself. 25 cents gets you 20 balloons and on top of this, they sell this awful espuma-foam stuff which is I suppose air and soap for the most part but it gets in your eyes and burns like crazy. When we arrived at 9, the parade was already in full swing. It ran that Saturday from 7 am to...well, I stayed until 4 am and I´m not sure when it actually finished.

The dance groups are enormous, the outfits are outrageous and the music is LOUD. The whole day was just spent dancing and singing and watching this incredible spectacle go by. I discovered a quick love for the caporales in particular. They wear these bells on their boots and make such a racket, it´s unbelievable. These women, too, I don´t know how they do it, dancing 3k in huge platform heels, but somehow they manage. At night, I suppose the crowds somewhere along the route must have gotten out of hand because waves of tear gas would float by and everyone would be paused in their partying to cough and cough. Seemed strange and extreme to me, to use tear gas but I suppose...I´ve learned not to worry too much about those things. The postal system doesn´t make any sense either.

I won, I will have it known, for most hours spent at the parade. I just couldn´t get enough and frankly, I don´t really understand what everyone else´s problem was. I mean, go big or go home.

Sunday, back again to do it all over, just in case you missed something...Saturday, the parade runs all the way through so that the diabladas in the middle, which depict all sorts of devils and things as well as the Archangel Gabriel leading humanity, feature the angel being chased down by the demons. Sunday, the whole thing happens again, but in reverse so that this time the Archangel is coming after hell. It was all fabulous. Both times.

So more than enough on Carnaval...otherwise I´m back in Cochabamba, working away, seeing a lot of movies, and trying to put off braving the market for a new pair fo jeans. I came with 4 pairs of pants and through simple wear and tear I´m down to 2. My house is covered with baggies of dirt and roots because Steve is in harvest time, but I like it. It´s quirky. It´s beginning to get cold at night and it is exciting to sense a season change! I baked a purple sweet potato pie a while ago. The potatoes are different which made for a strange color but it tasted fine. And...yeah, I´m pretty content and getting along just fine. Everyone else who was here with FSD left last week and I am now alone with the coordinators, which is ok but strange. Their leaving in March used to seem so far away.

I hope everyone on the receiving end of this epic is doing well. I miss you and home and I would love updates on how everyone is doing, where you are, how´s life and the weather and stuff. I live for your emails and I send you all lots of love!

LOVE!

Mollie

Reflections on Bolivia: The Postal System

2007-02-26T08:20:00.000-08:00

Bolivia is not the easiest place on earth to live. It probably isn´t as hard as some may think but it isn´t easy. Some things get sort of frustrating sometimes. Generally, once I´ve figured something out and know how it works and what to expect my frustration goes away and life goes on.

There is one exception to this: The Bolvian Postal System.

What soviet hole this system climbed out of, I´ll never know. Allow me to describe the process (description assumes a box over 2 kilos).

First, you get a little slip of paper in the mail, for me, it is delivered by my wonderful and talented country director, Mauricio. Then you go to the post office. At the post office you wait in line at the counter. Once you push your way to the front (there are no lines in Bolivia, only things that look like lines but do not function in the same way) a lady fills out a stack of forms in triplicate, or something silly, finds another form hiding in a huge pile, and you pay her 5 bolivianos, presumably for all that hard work filling out forms. Then she gives you some of the forms and a receipt (handwritten, not a speedy process) and you go wait in the line for the customs lady. Once you make it to the customs lady, she types some stuff into her computer and tells you how much the tax on your box will be. Mine have cost between 86 and 174 bolivianos and as far as I can tell, it´s a secret formula based on weight and the value amount the sender writes on the shipment slip. Then she gives you your forms back and some new forms and sends you to the bank to pay the tax. This is to avoid corruption. You walk 4 or 5 blocks to the bank and wait in one of their lines, thankfully facilitated by little slips with waiting numbers. When you get up to the window, you wait for the infomation to come through the computer system. When it does you pay your tax and get some more forms. Then you walk back to the post office. You wait in line for the customs lady again and when you get to her, she takes some of your forms, prints out 4 new forms, stamps and signs all of them, you sign all of them, she keeps one copy and gives you three. Then you go wait in the other line at the desk you started at. You wait for everyone in front of you to get their forms and then you present your pile of forms to the person behind the desk. They stamp some and sign some, take some and give you some. Then they search through a pile of slips to retrieve the slip you gave them to start with and go into the back room to begin what I can only assume is an incredibly complicated and difficult search for your package. This takes a long long time. Finally they reappear and your package is liberated. I always feel, at this point, like a prisoner suddenly freed must feel. I´m confused and don´t want to accept my liberty. I don´t quite believe that it´s mine.

This process has never, ever taken me less than 2 hours.

The first time I went was just after New Years and my Christmas boxes from mom had just arrived. I had no idea what I was in for. When the customs lady told me I had to go to the bank, I was already so frustrated and confused that I burst into tears and babbled along in spanish about how I just wanted my package and I didn´t want to go to the bank. She has treated me very gently since then.

My worst moment came when the woman behind the last counter told me I had missed a stamp on one of my forms and I would have to go and talk to the customs lady again. The line was enormous and she was late back from lunch. I leaned up over the counter (I am very tall in Bolivia) and said "La unica cosa que quiero es liberar mi maldita correo." (the only thing I want is to liberate my ****** mail). She gave it to me.

Moral of the story: Don´t send boxes heavier than 2 kilos.

Reflections on Bolivia: Pasanaku

2007-02-26T07:54:00.000-08:00

Pasanaku: Microlending as complement or bastardization?

Working in Bolivia with Pro Mujer, a women’s microcredit and integrated services organization, I have seen and learned a lot I never could have learned sitting in a library back in the U.S.

Before my arrival all of my knowledge of microfinance was theoretical, gleaned from books and articles, all written or at least translated into English. These things focused on those hot topics of microfinance so readily found everywhere these days in the wake of the UN´s Year of Microcredit and the Gates Foundation’s recent commitment to support the field. Discussion abounds over its success as a tool for women’s development, as a sustainable development measure, the tension between profit-driven and purely do-gooder projects, and above all, Muhammad Yunus as the godfather of all of this great poverty alleviation and his Nobel Prize.

The first thing I learned when I arrived and began working was something I don’t recall ever reading in any one of the articles or books that I had used for research the year before while developing a year-long class project. It was something utterly logical and though initially surprising, essentially necessary to a group lending model where the fate of the group is tied to that of the individual. That great epiphany was this: that microfinance involves fistfights.

If you stop to think for a moment, though, of course it does. When you collect together 20-35 women, who may or may not know each other and make them all accountable for each other there are going to be fireworks when someone turns up short for the third time in two months, or brings in a false bill, or doesn’t show up at all. All these things I’ve seen happen, all things that are common, all things that are understandable given the high-risk financial realities of most of these women. But these women are all in the boat together and group cohesion is essential to success. The original idea, that women from a community, from a family even, would go in on this loan venture together, was great. A confianza already exists there and probably a precedent for helping each other out when the need arises. Perhaps though, as the field of microfinance grows and the reality strays from this model, trouble begins and debt rises.

There is a very old system of group monetary support. Explained to me as culturally Andean, in use since forever and continuing today, the tradition of pasanaku is so well ingrained that it is apparently a failure-free system of group support and lending. Pasanaku means “passes between us” in a combination of Quechua and Castellano and is common today in both rural and urban areas. It is actually identical to group arrangements with different names (su su, tontin, etc.) that exist throughout the world. Known generically as Rotating Saving and Credit Associations (ROSCA´s) these traditional arrangements actually served as a partial model for Mohammad Yunus as he was developing the first microcredit project in Bangladesh in the 1970´s. Perhaps the Andean model is identical; perhaps the cultural values and traditions it is built upon are distinct. Either way, the impact of microlending on this traditional arrangement as perceived by participants and observers with various agendas, is interesting. Is it a growth out of the old system or bastardization?

A group of people, usually women,[1] gather together and arrange out a schedule of turns where each month a new member comes up as the group beneficiary. Every month the group gathers and every member puts in the same amount, be it 10 bolivianos or 10 dollars, whatever it is it is an amount agreed upon at the beginning. That month’s beneficiary takes home the pot to use for whatever she pleases; she can use it to augment her business, pay tuition for her children, or throw a party, anything that she wants. At the end of the cycle, once every woman has had her turn benefiting from the pot, the group is finished and can disband or decide to go for another round. It can add new members or say goodbye to old ones, change the monthly payment amount or the payment period but all only in between cycles.

Supposedly, default in pasanaku is virtually nonexistent because women all benefit the same and pay the same and because the group is developed out of such a tight, already existing community. It is built on a spirit still very alive in rural indigenous Andean communities of taking turns to help community members. Rotational support systems exist to help build houses, water systems, and for work in the fields. The idea is that as individuals or individual families the same work cannot be accomplished as can be with community groups. It’s a sort of profoundly culturally ingrained “pay it forward” arrangement.

In Cochabamba, I have heard lamented repeatedly the loss of this communal spirit. The idea that urban migration and organizations like Pro Mujer have created a much more individualistic mindset and contributed to the diminishing existence of community assistance and teamwork is often expressed by cultural advocates and borrowers themselves.

I am left to wonder, does a microcredit group lending model build off of the culture of pasanaku or does it break it down?

On the one hand, in its purest form, a Latin-American group lending model should be a sort of extension of pasanaku. Women come together periodically to make payments, to meet with each other, and the obligation only lasts as long as the cycle. The differences are that instead of meeting for each other, the women meet for Pro Mujer, and they do not make decisions for the group (i.e. Amount of payment, meeting intervals), and they pay interest, a lot of interest. Ideally, members of a group know each other, are from the same neighbourhood or community, and are at times involved in the same business. Low default rates in microfinance in these group lending projects are meant to be attributable to social pressure, to the obligation to the group above all else. As little or nothing is offered up in the way of collateral and the worst punishment the lending organization can visit upon a borrower in default is the refusal to lend in the future, group pressure is essential to ensuring good repayment rates. And it is successfully sufficient across the globe. At Pro Mujer, it has been repeatedly observed that group cohesion and confianza is directly related to successful repayment. The groups that go on to borrow cycle after cycle contain friends, family members, and neighbours who have relationships with each other beyond the loan group.

However, as the organization grows, it appears to get farther and farther away from the “purest” form of the group lending model. More and more groups are composed solely or primarily of strangers who have not formed the group themselves. The need to maintain participant minimums in some groups leads to the recruitment of random outsiders into already formed and cohered groups. Loan officers trying to achieve or maintain their group minimums will create associations out of interested individuals rather than interested groups. These things do not necessarily lead to default but, when the chips are down, do lead to greater conflict, greater reluctance to cover for other group members, and better fistfights.

It is worth pointing out, though, that in a pasanaku group a woman is not necessarily any more than peripherally connected to the group she may join. Suggesting, then, that the way groups are formed and augmented in microloan organizations is not necessarily completely beyond the pattern of the traditional loan group.

So, are these two things, pasanaku and microcredit complementary or contradictory? Julieta Zurita, an advocate for bilingual education and teacher of Quechua (with a cultural-awareness bent) told me during a discussion of Pro Mujer and its services that she feels that organizations like these take rural migrants farther away from their culture of community assistance and makes them more individualistic because they don’t need their community to get a loan; they can act that much more independently. Also, she feels that the pressure on the group generated by the organization leads to an unhealthy amount of pressure by the group on the individual. Instead of uniting women in a spirit of help and group support, it divides them and brings them to a point of holding a woman accountable to her portion without looking beyond the group need to individual circumstances as they would have before. These are valid critiques…

I am left to wonder, though, if pasanaku and community support is sufficient as a credit tool and has been such a powerful, pervasive force in Andean life, how does one account for the huge success of microcredit? Projects abound, everyone participates, and women that once would have been involved in pasanaku now take out loans with organizations like Pro Mujer. Not infrequently, women are involved in both microcredit and pasanaku simultaneously.

Women as head of economic life in Bolivia and heart of indigenous identity

[1] Women as economic center

The Llama Chronicles: Christmas Edition

2006-12-26T13:24:00.000-08:00

Hello the people,

¡Feliz Navidad y Prospero Año Nuevo!

Hope everyonés holiday was lovely lovely and that you didńt miss me too much. I had a very
weird Christmas, first of all it was summer,second of all, Ím more like an aunt here than a kid so
my role shifted from participant in the arguments over who gets to play with the new toy
first to mediator of such arguments. It́s just good that my little kid Spanish is stupendous so I can
successfully intervene without the focus of the conflict shifting to how bad my spanish is...

I did find a cd by a very cheesy guy Miguel Luis or Luis Miguel, cańt remember which, who does
Christmas songs in Spanish with a swing band. Incredible. Learned Santa Claus is coming to
Town in Spanish to the delight of young and old alike.

We did big celebrating Chirstmas Eve, getting started with hot chocolate and panetón (think
fruitcake but less icky) around 8, moving on to presents which was quite the event. After
presents we spent an hour playing with the playstation-esque thing that Dayana got
(they cost $10 in the market here. INCREDIBLE!) because the duck hunting game was just too
fun. My abuelo kicked everyonés butt. Then we got in the car and went down to Plaza Colon to
look at lights and for the girls to play some, there were pony rides and bouncy castles and other
carnival stuff which Ciria, bless her little 6 year old heart, found thrilling beyond all reason. Then
on to the other grandparentś house for dinner, which started at midnight and was huge, more
presents for the kids and the playing and chatting continued on until 2 in the am. It was fun,
lots of family, lots of love, some tears over sharing presents (hey, it was MY hat and I dońt have
to share if I dońt want to) and it was basically all very new. I spent a lot of it doing that thing I
have to do a lot, watching confused until I get what´s going on and can participate.

Christmas day was all eating and visiting family and neighbors and being visited and playing.
Turns out I can put together a play kitchen faster than anyone. Points for me! I got a makeover
from Ciria who was eager to use her new makeup set and between you all and me, blue and violet
are not my colors...when they are applied to my cheeks. It was pretty comical but to her credit
she did it in the dark, by christmas lights only. I got to talk to my family in the states all through
their christmas dinner which was lovely and made everything better. Next year I will be the
heart of the christmas joy, just watch.

I am also writing now to let you all know that I did it. I really did. I found the llamas. There are
pictures to prove it and I will send them along assoon as I find a computer that will let me upload
them. My mission iscomplete, which is really too bad because I have MONTHS left here.

I need a new project and I am open to suggestions. The last few weeks before Christmas have
been spent traveling, which wasn´t as adventure-y as I expected. First, I spent 5 days traveling
to Copacabana and Isla del Sol with Danielle Kravetz (for SLC people) which was part for fun and
part to cross overinto Peru to get our passports stamped. Lake Titicaca is the highest
navigable lake in the world and I could feel it. I forgot how icky altitude exhaustion is but that
difference of 4,000 feet between Cochabamba and the lake was plenty. It didn´́t help that
Danielle and I kept choosing these ambitious hill-climbing hikes but that́s not the point.

I dońt want to talk about Peru, it was a disaster and not even a funny one but the chicken was
good. Copacabana is lovely and touristy and by the water, which I miss a lot when Ím in Cocha.
It́s Boliviás major pilgirmmage site for the Virgen of Copacabana, the Cathedral is the focal point
of the town and there is this hill, that looks less painful than it is, that has the stations of the cross
all the way to the top where you have altars of the seven sorrowful mysteries and forthe Virgin
herself along with incredible views.

Isla del Sol, howeveris the center of joy in the universe. To the Incas it was the birthplace of the
sun and it is incredible, covered with ancient terracing. The only downside is that you step off the
boat and have to haul yourself up these awful ancient Incan stairs, which you cańt appreciate
until you come back down, to get to the top of the island where they hide all of the hostals and
llamas. The hostal, though, was charming and the views incredible. It came complete with
resident llama and lots of donkeys who make hilarious noises about every half hour. At night,
because of the altitude and the darkness of the island and surrounding lake, the stars are
incredible. Previously hopeless with the whole astronomy thing, I could find constellations and
saw stars I didńt know existed. I wish I could have spent more time but Cochabamba and a group
trip were waiting so I only got one night under those bright Bolivian stars.

Back home a day and off again, this time to Sucre which is the official though not active captial of
Bolivia (I really cańt explain, I dońt get it either) and Potosi, which used to be the richest city in
the world and a major silver-mining center. Sucre is very white, they have a law that dictates
that everyone in certain areas of the city must whitewash their buildings once a year to preserve
the reputation of the city. Tons of Spanish colonial architecture and a really bizarre park with a
kid́s speedway and pony rides and a lagoon and a small eiffel tower. It also had this incredible
musuem of indigenous textiles of the jálqa and tarabuco quechua-speaking groups, I was a fan.
Potosi was high and cold and gray and seriously needs to look into some sidewalk expansion.

Cerro Rico looms over the city. Once it was the source of an incredible amount of wealth, which
mostly benefitted the Spanish, now it is still mined but is considerably less bountiful. It was a
strange contrast, the poverty of the city and the people in it and the remnants of its legacy as the
richest city in the world. Amazing architecture, often poorly maintained surrounded by
delapidatd buildings. On our final day, we took a tour into the mines of Cerro Rico. This was an
adventure. First of all Bolivia doesńt do seatbelts and really doesńt do safety codes. We got all
dressed up in these bright orange uniforms and headlamps and piled into a van and started a
harrowing journey up the mountain in the rain. I tell you, every ride at Disneyland, every
rollercoaster, every roadtrip with my biological father did nothing to prepare me for this ascent.
It fell somewhere between thrilling and horrifying but I lived to write the email, so I guess it́s all
fine. Our guide stopped off with us near the top to set off an explosion of nitroglycerine and
fertilizer and it was pretty strange, watching him running with the burning fuse to drop the
package off. The boom echoed off the surrounding mountains and I cannot believe that they do
that inside the mine. Unbelieveable.

Yes, so there you have it. More Bolivia joy than anyone could ever need. That is my Christmas
gift to you all.

I hope you all did have beautiful holidays and that your vacations (or not) continue to be great
fun and everyone has a HAPPY NEW YEAR! Lots of love from here and the llamas!

LOVE!

Mollie

The Llama Chronicles: Monkeys and Todos Santos

2006-12-08T13:08:00.000-08:00

Oh, friends and loves,

It´s been very long and a lot has happened. I´ve been busy, I´ve been lazy, and this has
definitely been one of those emails that I have avoided for so long I have come to dread
writing it. But the time has come and I miss you all and I know you miss me so I´m
going to do my best.

Shortly after my last epic edition, I took a weekend trip to the Chapare, a region of
the Cochabamba department known for jungly things and a hot climate as well as for harshly
suppressed coca growing. I had two missions for the trip. The first was to eat fish.
They have rivers and fish and I miss both lots. The second was to see monkeys. Oh me
and my ill-conceived ideas for animal adventures...It was hot and humid and I was smelly and
sweaty the whole time but I took incredible hikes with my wonderful wonderful travel
buddy Abby and ate beautiful fish and the whole thing was a little surreal for me
because for me the jungly things had always existed exclusively on tv and in national
geographic but there I was with bugs I didn´t know really existed outside of the zoo
and everything.

As for the monkey mission...Abby and I went to this national park
which serves as a refuge and rehab center for illegally domesticated exotic animals
like monkeys and it´s supposed to be great because you go and you can play with really
chill wildlife and take great hikes. So we go, we walk into the park, are on our
first trail on the way ON THE WAY to the monkey playground and something grabs me by
the wrist so I turn around to see what weirdo is trying to get my attention on this
trail in Bolivia and its a monkey, who proceeds to climb up my back and sit on my
head. I shouted something and Abby turns around and sees this and doesn´t know what
to do and all I can think is "what do you do when you have a monkey on your head?"
Fortunately, as I was pondering my options, it took off into the jungle relieving me
of the need to make a decision about what to do. That was not all for my head in
Chapare, however. Sitting in a restaurant that night, with roosters and dogs and cats
wandering around, I feel something land on my head, but when I ran my hands through
my hair I didn´t turn up anything so I let it go. Three mintues later, Abby´s face
contorts with horror and she says "it´s not a spider."
Honestly, that was the best thing she could have said
because I caught sight of something bright green and
defintiely in my hair out of the corner of my eye. Up
and out of my chair, knocked it off my head and it
turned out to be a tree frog. I must have the nicest-
smelling hair EVER.

The week after that came Todos Santos on November 2. Back in grade school I knew of
Día de los Muertos but never really got it. Don´t really know what the deal is
everywhere else, but here in Bolivia, it was amazing. The day before, starting around
lunchtime, I went with my abuela and Karina my "mom" (she´s 28) and the little girls
around the neighborhood. In families where someone has passed away in the last three
years, they set up an altar for the person in their living room or patio decorated
with food, flowers, pictures, and bread. The idea is, as it was explained to me, that
the person´s soul is tempted back to join the family by the food. Neighbors, like us,
come around to visit with the family and the soul of the departed and are obligated
to pray for the soul of the dead. The customary prayers are 10 Our Fathers, 10 Hail
Marys, and 10 Glory Bes for each soul, usually it´s one departed but at one house
there were 8...that´s a lot of praying. I didn´t know my prayers in castellano so I
said mine in english which was a great novelty. The family of the departed thanks you
and compensates you for your prayers (and this is where it´s like a strange trick or
treating) with a small glass of wine and a plate of bread and cookies. You take a bag
and collect bread as you go to eat for the next two weeks. You drink a lot of wine
and a lot of chicha, this maize beer which is really not delicious. If you are close
friends of the family you sometimes get fed too. I had a stomach infection and I was
hurting, but I ate two full meals, two soups and drank more wine and chicha than I
ever wanted to see in my life. Day two of Todos Santos is more of the same, some
revisiting of the homes of close friends and then around noon, the altars come down.
We were at our closest neighbor´s house. They fed us and then we and some other
neighbors took down the altar by dividing up the bread and flowers and things on it
and turning the tables it was set up on upside down. this is to confuse the soul so
that it will go back to the cemetary when the family goes later that afternoon. The
family of the deceased cannot participate in taking down the altar so they make
themselves busy passing out what´s left of the wine and chicha. Apparently, you have
to finish what´s left in the house, and because this is Bolivia, we made our offerings
at the four corners of the altar to Pachamama before drinking every glass or gourd.
The floor was such a mess when we left...After all of this we went to the cemetary to
clean and decorate the tomb of Kari´s grandfather. Man, I´ve never seen a cemetary so
full or so like a party. I mean, mariachis! If I had thought the chicha and trick or
treating/bread collecting activities were over I was very wrong. We visited I don´t know
how many graves to pray and collect our baked goods. It was amazing. It was very
intense and I was very very sick but it was also very very cool and I loved having
the opportunity to participate.
(Photos below: Todos Santos with the familia...extended)
Oh man, what next? This is way too long already so quick rundown. There´s been a first-
grade graduation, a stomach infection, I climbed to Jesus, got chased by a pug while
taking my morning run, ate llama, haven´t seen one though, love of my world Abby left
for the states, was very sad for a while, figured out how to get happy again though I
still miss her crazy, all the presidents of Latin America are here for a meeting, the house flooded,
the parents are building a new part of the house which is noisy and messy, Christmas
is coming, work is good, am trying to develop a project, am learning quechua, saw the
longest parade EVER (12 hours), made a Bolivian thanksgiving - lacked sweet potato,
included chicken, AND...I think that´s all that´s happened here...I think. Dunno, it´s
hard to say.

I don´t know what happened with my Spanish. I was cranky when I was sick because it
was awful and then all of a sudden...it was like I saw the light. Still need practice,
clearly, but I must have eaten something special or I don´t know what because I have
just been talking up a storm the last week and a half. Thank God, too. I was starting
to worry that I would be here ten months, get home, and still be crap.

I´m off to Isla del Sol to take care of my visa with Danielle Kravetz (for you SLC
people) this week and to Sucre and Potosi the week after that. May take off to Chile
and Argentina after Christmas for 2 or 3 weeks...clearly I take my job here very
seriouly...

Anyway, miss all of you, especially with Christmas coming up. I know number one on
all of your wish lists is a ticket to Bolivia to come visit me. I feel like with a
buddy, I could go find the llamas. I just need some support...Hope everyone is well
and I´d love to hear from you all. I´m gonna try to get to my individual emails but I
live for email and those who have tried will vouch for me, if you email me, I will
email back!

I LOVE YOU!

LOVE!

Mollie

Reflections on Bolivia: Indigenous Women: clothing, labels, identity

2006-11-27T14:09:00.000-08:00

There are a few things that have been bothering me since I arrived and especially since I began working with Pro Mujer.

The word “chola” or “cholita” makes my little Seattle native self really uncomfortable. The word refers to an indigenous woman and I understood it to be derogatory but I hear it ALL the time, so frequently that it cannot possibly be as offensive as I thought but I also hear a range of attitudes behind the word. My abuela uses it all the time affectionately, and while she is hardly a compass of the politically correct, she uses it in front of and in direct address to the woman she is referring to. It seems to be affectionate and I haven’t seen anyone take obvious offence. The loan officers at work use it in an offhand way to refer to socias but I haven’t seen them use it in front of their groups.

I asked María Elena about it but there isn’t a clear alternative to the word and it is very much derogatory, or at the very least can be. It’s the worst thing you could call someone but you can also use it without meaning anything by it. That doesn’t mean it’s right to use it but it’s not necessarily a slur every time I hear it. I’m going to make a conscious effort not to use it, but we’ll see how that goes. It’s so common.

Very interestingly, and perhaps disturbingly, I heard somewhere at work, in one of the centros focales though I don’t remember where, “la pollera” used to refer to an indigenous woman. The pollera is a certain type of skirt that some women wear and which visually identifies them as indigenous. How awful and interesting that her clothing should define her. How offensive I found this off-hand statement! When I asked Kari about it, she wasn’t bothered and simply said that it wasn’t common, but it was used.

It’s gotten me thinking about how some women dress in a way that clearly identifies them as indigenous but as far as I can tell, men don’t. At least not in Cochabamba. I’m finally really getting what we talked about in class last year as women being perceived as somehow “more indigenous” than men or as sort of keepers of the identity.

I talked to Kari and asked her about how women come to wear the pollera or don’t. She told me that as children, mothers make the decision for their daughters but as they get older and hit puberty, they make the decision, at least in theory. She said that she knows people who have made the transition and that it is very difficult and complicated for the individual and her family, especially for her relationship with her mother. Also, she pointed out that no one would ever make that decision without speaking excellent Spanish. She also said that being indigenous is easier for men because they don’t have to make choices about external identifiers so they can hold on more easily to their indigenity because it doesn’t result in a) having to make a clothing decision and b) being instantly identified one way or the other.

The Llama Chronicles: Life Continues

2006-10-24T12:55:00.000-07:00

Hola All,

I´m sorry this second email has taken so long. It´s been a rough three weeks but today I started feeling better, a little more settled and like I can get on with life.

Since I last wrote, I saw my first huge South American spider and it actually wasn´t that huge. It was, however, on my bed. Points for that. We got rid of it and that was fine. I´ve also been out bunches to what seems to be the one club in Cochabamba, it´s the one all the locals keep wanting to go to with us, anyway and while it´s fine I have to wonder whether there isn´t more to this city...

Still no llamas, sorrow of my life, but apparently they live at higher altitudes (like 8250 feet isn´t high) so I´m just going to have to venture to La Paz or Oruro to see them, which is fine because I have plans for both. Llamas will be seen, or I wont come back.

What else...I´ve adjusted to the food. Thank God and am actually quite fond of it now. I get crabby around 12:30 if I don´t have piles of food in front of me which I never thought would happen back in my first week here. I still have meals where I wonder how on earth I´m going to get through it without being sick but those are much fewer and far betwen now. Yay! Also discovered salteñas. So wonderful.

The city is really beautiful. When I first stepped off the plane I was definitely a little overwhelmed because it is very different from anywhere I´ve been before. It´s not shiny like Berlin or old and orderly like Oxford, there´s no sea and everything that goes with it like in Croatia, and it definitely isn´t the US. But, once I started really looking at it, I noticed how cool it really is, assymmetry is lovely really and the whole city has this color about it, it´s like a sheen...like a sepia photo but this is like a creamy orangey-pinky color that´s really quite beautiful. Too, once you figure out how to do stuff in the markets and on the streets the idea of a supermarket is a little offensive. The thing that´s still tough for me is the water thing. We don´t have running water all day. We do have a tank but if it runs out we can be water free for hours and hours. Water gets stored in 2 litre pepsi bottles for doing dishes and things but taking showers, brushing teeth, all of these things I have to be so much more mindful than ever before. It´s so far beyond that whole turning off the tap while you´re brushig your teeth thing, it´s interesting and I´m surprised at myself how long ít´s taking me to adjust. The drinking water problem is the hardest though. To me, longtime hardcore fan of Seattle´s finest, this is a shock. You really gotta plan ahead or pay big time (ok, it´s relative) and I´ve been caught out dehydrated more than once.

Cutest thing. I was walking down the Avenida de las Heroinas downtown yesterday and spotted this baby girl who must have been about 10 months old sitting in a cardboard box behind her mother who was running one of the little stalls that are everywhere that sell gum and candy bars. Well, something about it struck me as both absurd and completely practical at the same time and I must have been smiling because she looked at me and started to smile and pull her self forward and up onto her feet in her box to get closer to me. People, after 3 weeks of being either ignored or stared at everywhere in public and at work to have someone smile at me like that was incredible. I can´t even express how amazing it felt. I stopped in my tracks and the two of us just beamed at each other for what must have been half a minute before her mother noticed me and looked at me like I was insane. I just said, "your daughter is beautiful" and went on my way but it made me happy all day.

So, on the work front. As I mentioned in my last email, I was a very unhappy bunny at my job. I was working with a great organization called Centro Cultural Tinku which does a whole lot of things. It runs a school/daycare for kids of low income parents, a restaurant and bakery which supports both the school and a lot of the parents as well as serve as training ground for skills necessary for working in a restaurant or bakery. Very very cool. Absolutely not what I had in mind when I committed myself to 10 months in Bolivia. I had planned on working with a microfinance organization. Preferably Pro Mujer which is an international organization that gives loans specifically to women on a Latin American group lending model AND provides some of the most extensive support and training services in health and business management of any similar organization. I spent 3 weeks making empanadas (seriously) before I went to the program director here and basically said that I didn´t think anyone had actually read my application and I resented the fact that people in the San Francisco office had lied to me (because they did) and I wanted to be moved to Pro Mujer immediately or we would need to talk about terminating my time with FSD in Bolivia prematurely. A weird week followed where I tried to create an unsuccessful compromise which had to be abandoned and today I started at Pro Mujer. What a world of difference. My supervisor is delighted I´ll be here for so long. She´s going to train me up as a supervisor so I´ll deal with loans, capacitation planning and implementation and other stuff and I´ll get to carry out a research project and evaluation which may result in a project depending on what I figure out and resource availablity, etc. the hard part now is that working for real requires a lot more spanish than messing around in a bakery all day, but I´ll just learn faster I suppose.

Life with the family is still an adventure. We´re settling into each other more and more and the fact that my spanish keeps improving makes everything better. We definitely have some issues. One is that the grandparents like to treat me like I´m about 15 in terms of independence and I have never in my life been treated like I was 15 in terms of independence, so this is a problem that we are trying to communicate about. The girls are interesting, the situation is complicated and Dayana is definitely 12 and likes to treat me like I´m stupid. She keeps forgetting that I a) understand more spanish than I speak and b) actually speak a fair amount of spanish so tends to talk about me as though I´m not there, which is offensive. She also seems to think that I can´t make decisions about...whether my window is open or shut, whether I want salt on my food or not, whether I actually need to go to work or not and likes to argue with me about these things that have nothing to do with her. It´s interesting and frusterating. Aside, though from these two things the family is incredible. Karina, the mom of the yonger girl is wonderful wonderful and we chat all the time which is just really great for me because I feel like I have someone here I can talk to who is a part of the culture so I can go ask why and how and what should I do and she has answers that are relevant. She really is lovely. The grandparents, aside from the control issues, are really sweet and fun and funny and the whole situation is great because when I go home I really go home to a family and someone is always there to ask how the day is and to chat and to worry and to play with.

Wow, I do like the sound of my own typing. Sorry all. I promise I´ll write again soon and it will be more interesting, more about, you know, Bolivia and less about my garbage. Again, keep the emails coming. I live for it. I really do. It´s the mot english-y part of my day and I revel in it! Also, I feel cut off and miss you people and would love love love to hear what´s going on in your worlds, seriously, make a dehydrated volunteer´s day!

LOVE!!!!!!!!

Mollie

The Llama Chronicles: Welcome to Cochabamba

2006-10-08T12:40:00.000-07:00

Hola all from the land of Llamas!

This is to be the first of I don´t know how many emails that will chronicle my thrilling adventures here in Cochabamba, Bolivia. As many of you know, and some of you don´t, I´m here for about 10 months to with and organization called Centro Cultural TINKU, which I´m sure I´ll talk more about later, to learn Spanish, and to...well, I don´t really know what else. I suppose my primary goal is to see llamas in their natural habitat. My host family thinks this is hilarious. I think it is perfectly valid.

As it is, this first week has been llama free, but potato-rich and really interesting.

I arrived last Saturday in the morning after 4 flights and too many hours.

In La Paz, I had to transfer to a domestic airline called Aerosur, and what a disaster. I had one hour to get through customs and immigration, pick up my ticket and check in and get myself on the plane to Cochabamba. Actually, everything was fine up until the Aerosur line. This collection of people was not so much a line as a circus, and wasn´t feeling too hot what with the altitude and the sleep deprivation doing a serious number on my body. Fortunately and strangely, during this hour in line I started talking with two academics from Pennsylvania who actually knew one of my professors from Sarah Lawrence quite well. They helped get me through the line and onto the plane and thank God, too, because there was some confusion with my ticket. Apparently Glessner is not a common last name in Bolivia. Can´t imagine why not.

Anyway, I arrived in Cochabamba, got picked up by the program director here and dropped off with my new family, the Vasquez de Colques. They are incredible. The family consists of Don Dario and Doña Guida, the abuelos, their son Vladimir and his wife Karina, their daughter Ciria who is a devilish 5 year old and their niece Dayana who is 12. The house is a a series of rooms around a central patio and I have my own little adobe room which is lovely. The house is located to the north of the city in Barrio Colquiri Norte which is very chill and easy to get to from the city center. I have to say, this family is incredible. They couldn't have and wouldn´t have welcomed me any more warmly if I were actually related and they have made a huge effort to include me and introduce me around to the rest of the wonderful and huge extended family. (Photo: The Vasquez de Colque Women, Karina, Ciria, Me, Doña Guida, and Dayana)

(Photos: kitchen, garden, and my room)

The spanish has been an adventure but I had no opportunity to speak anything else, and I mean AT ALL until Friday, so my ability has just skyrocketed. I still say incredible and stupid things that even shock the kids, but all in all, it´s been pretty wonderful experience to learn this much this quickly.

So...My first week has been a huge learning experience. Lots of things I didn´t really think about are bigger considerations than I expected. For example, I knew that water was an issue here in Cochabamba and that the house would only have water for certain hours out of the day. But knowing and applying that knowledge in daily life is difficult and finding a pattern for simple things like showering has been a small challenge. Too, just having to think ahead more to be able to brush my teeth at night is new and I´m adjusting.

So, my first few days...wow, I´ve done a lot. So...to give you all a taste. On Sunday I went to mass way too early and then tried my first pasteles and api (fried dough with cheese inside covered with powdered sugar and a hot purple and white drink made from ground up maize). Traditional post-mass snacks here but hot juice stuff in the early morning was not my thing given the altitude and the amounts the family´s been feeding me. Monday, I went to La Cancha with Karina and Doña Guida. La Cancha is the big open-air market here which is incredible. You can find anything and everything there and I understand it´s actually the largest of it´s kind in South America. It was really fun and interesting to see all of the potato varieties and the fruits. I didn´t know cassava melon got that big. On Tuesday night I went with Vladi, Karina and the girls to play volleyball with Karina´s family. What this turned out to mean was that about 12 of us piled into a squash court with a net and ran around for an hour and a half trying to keep the ball of the ground, which is, I suppose, essentially volleyball. Apparently there were rules, though I have no clue what they were.

On Wednesday, I began work. For these first few weeks, I´ll go to work in the morning and Spanish lessons with a tutor in the afternoon. I don´t want to say much but at this point, work sucks but my tutor is incredible.

On Friday, I went to a meeting with the rest of the program participants, it was uneventful but after we went out and wound up at a coha Cohas take place the first Friday of every month in Quechua tradition and are a ritual where an offering is made to Pachamama, the earth goddess. People drink chicha, a beverage made from fermented maize and dance and sing and it´s incredible. I was invited to make an offering to Pachamama by dripping agua del fuego at the four corners around the fire . What I didn´t know was that you had to drink what was left in the little cup when you were done and, having never been one for rubbing alcohol, it was pretty rough on me. The dancing and everything was incredible, so fun and everyone was really welcoming and invited all of us to dance and I´d never experienced anything quite like it.

Saturday, I went to lunch with the Shermans, distant friends of the family who are here in Cochabamba as Maryknoll missioners with their two kids, Josh and Celia. It was really nice to meet other extranjeros especially ones who had been here so long. When I got home Karina rushed me out the door for her little cousin´s 8th birthday party. That was the best thing ever. The family is welcoming and kind and patient with my spanish and are so fun and the kids are so interested and love to help me learn and understand and it was just really cool. it´s interesting to see how family interacts here, how different it is and how important is is and how close it is. After that, Vladi and Karina took me to a wedding of a friend of theirs which was also amazing. I´ve still got confetti all over from when I went through the reception line.

Today, more extended family came to visit and I´m a little sick with a nasty stomachache which was bound to happen at some point.

Hope you all are well and an especial congrats to my christy-bug who I havent had a chance to email but will soon! For today, I am done!

llama besos!

Mollie