Snippets

Life is passing by in intense bursts here in Bolivia.

Yesterday I hopefully successfully negotiated with the national GSE coordinator our need for more rest. I told him that our typical schedule of leaving our hosts at 9:00 a.m. and not returning until midnight was making us weary, not to mention leaving us little time to share with our hosts. In spite of my best abilities to be gracious in this respect, the word seemingly arrived back to the club that coordinated our weekend excursion that they were somehow to blame and that we were unhappy with them. Hopefully, feathers weren’t too ruffled. Smiles seemed to return to all faces quickly.

Speaking of our hosts, mine is Marlene de Gionnotti. Marlene is a delightful single mom with two boys. She was educated at Southern Mississippi and is a successful businesswoman. Her house is gorgeous, twice as big as mine, with tasteful decorations throughout. Like many Latina women, she wears lots of jewelry and speaks in an exuberant, rapid-fire way. She is attentive to my every need and I like her very much. It will be difficult saying goodbye in a couple of days.

Every day, the sights and sounds of this exotic place flood the senses.

We were given a walk-through of a public market by a woman named Nina, whose German father settled in Bolivia. Outdoor markets are seemingly ubiquitous in Central and South America. It was a smorgasbord of colors and smells, with everything imaginable being sold. I envisioned many of the garment sellers obtained their merchandise from the black market, with endless racks of t-shirts, sandals, trousers, and linens. Food vendors sold fruits, many of which I’d never seen before, vegetables, grains from large burlap bags, and spices. Our guide bought a small plastic bag full of coca, gathered by hand from a large burlap bag. The entire area is overlain with an endless quilt of tarps and canopies. The meat vendors are nearby, situated indoors where the meats can be refrigerated, but regardless there are flies everywhere. Nina spoke with resignation about the fact that because these vendors were unregistered, they didn’t issue sales receipts and didn’t pay taxes. Her own business was a day-care and educational center for children 1 to 4 years old, and she lamented that legitimate businesses like hers were required to pay taxes, around 15%.

Coca is the plant from which cocaine is made. The people of Bolivia drink tea made from it, and it has a medicinal quality, curing intestinal problems. The peasants also place leaves between their cheek and gum, where it has a mild numbing effect. There is a huge black market in the harvesting and exportation of coca. The cocaine trade kills people and topples governments. I am trying to learn more about it.

At one point, Marlene, her kids, and her friend JuanPablo, and I were parked downtown. Nearby, someone had left their car in a spaced marked for no parking. The proprietress whose access had been blocked told JuanPablo that the last time someone left their car there, she slashed all the tires. He convinced her that that punishment was a bit harsh, so this time she agreed to slash only the front two. It was the most severe sign of hostility I'd seen where most people react to minor traffic indiscretions with resignation and nonchalance.

I went for a run/walk yesterday morning in Marlene’s neighborhood. This is a gated community that is surrounded by a concrete wall. The houses look like they would be right at home in an upscale neighborhood in Los Angeles. The sun was already hot as businessmen, carrying the daily newspaper, entered their cars for the morning commute. Maids swept sidewalks and watered outdoor flowers, many of which looked like familiar indoor plants back home. The weather is consistently warm throughout the year here, with the only seasonable variation being more rain in the summer from November until January. To me, this consistency is strange, given my life-long experience living where daily and seasonally variable weather is a fact of life. Here, today is pretty much the same as yesterday and pretty much the same as will be tomorrow, forever. Unnerving.

Almost every evening, we attend a Rotary Club meeting where we are featured speakers. We give much the same presentation each time, primarily about ourselves: our families, occupations, and interest. Our hosts seem genuinely pleased that we have chosen to visit with them in their country and we always receive a cordial environment. The one last evening seemed particularly informal and fun. Our team tries to split amongst the crowd so each of us can meet someone in the group. Invariably, I am able to find someone who speaks English, which helps in communicating more than just the most basic information. However, even when I don’t, I still do my best to make conversation. Every sentence I utter has mistakes. For example, yesterday I tried to ask a woman at lunch if she had children. Apparently my phrasing was such that I asked her if she made babies. I am generally undeterred and I would rather make a fool of myself than sit silently, as I don’t mind being laughed at. Embarrassment at my age is not an inhibiting factor. Rotary sent us her to interact with our hosts and I do so at every opportunity.

At the meeting last night, I sat between Ever (my host over the weekend on our trip to Samiapata) and a man with a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Vanderbilt who worked for a company that manages a 300-mile long natural gas feeding Bolivian energy to Brazil. We talked about what a benefit to our lives membership in Rotary has been, not only for the charitable work done locally and around the world but in the exchange of goodwill in situations like GSE. I told him that joining Rotary was one of the best things I’d ever done, and he concurred.

I was given a ride home after the meeting by another man, Alejandro, also a good English speaker, who told me that the government had murdered three people they said were terrorists a year earlier in the hotel where we had just met. This man was moved to Santa Cruz by his parents when he was young, leaving his hometown of Potosi. Potosi was once one of the richest towns in all of South America, being the heart of mining country, for tin, gold, and silver. It had electricity and other amenities before most of the country. Now, like many coal mining towns in Appalachia, Potosi was faced with diminishing population, poverty, and despair. Alejandro told me that the most intelligent and motivated people left the Potosi area long ago, seeking better opportunities. How similar was his story to what I’ve been told by the people of the coal regions of Appalachia!

Staying healthy and keeping my team healthy is a constant concern. Anne has had digestion problems and she skipped the meeting, so Judah made her presentation for her. I have diarrhea myself this morning and I have two huge insect bites on my side. Tamsen and Doug are sunburned from our walk on Sunday at the archeological site in Samiapata. Judah, who lived for a time in Mexico, seems right at home. We are told that staying healthy becomes an even greater concern as we leave cosmopolitan Santa Cruz and head into higher elevations, where cities are supplied with drinking water of questionable quality, where the sun is particularly intense, and where breathing is more difficult. We are told to eat light meals and limit our exercise for a few days as we acclimate. Light headaches are common for people as they reach high altitudes and I hope to not suffer from more serious migraines that I get sometimes.

Being here is enormously challenging but at least if we can stay healthy, it will be worth every minute.

Michael