The Llama Chronicles: Life Continues

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

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