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
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Thursday, October 4, 2007
The Chili Bomb Diaries: Karaoke Time is Good Time
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
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
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
The Chili Bomb Diaries: Arriving
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
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
Saturday, June 16, 2007
The Llama Chronicles: Farewell Edition
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
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
Monday, May 21, 2007
Mollieisms: Woo-Hoo!
Rhett, Scarlett and Friends Prepare for Yet Another Encore
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.”
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Llama Chronicles: The Lost Edition, Oruro, Tarija, Tupiza Trip
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.
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.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Llama Chronicles: Projects and Ferias
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 ha
ppened 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
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 ha
ppened 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
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Reflections on Bolivia: Culture Shock
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.
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.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Mollieisms: The Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games
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.
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.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
The Llama Chronicles: Bunnies and Matzoh
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.
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
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
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
The Llama Chronicles: Carnaval
"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
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
Monday, February 26, 2007
Reflections on Bolivia: The Postal System
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.
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
Pasanaku: Microlending as complement or bastardization?
Working in
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
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
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
[1] Women as economic center
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