words words words...

on sunday i got a quechua lesson.
this is easy to do in sucre, you just hang out in the central plaza and wait for the shoe shine kids.

i find a chico, named sasa, who's about six or seven, and start reviewing the basics with him. he's happy to help. he takes my pen and notebook, and after questioning whether i really want to use a pink pen ("porque no?", i say) he writes the quechua for "how are you", "i'm good", "i'm bad", "my name is...".
i've asked other kids the same things but the answers vary a little so i´m asking again.
his hands are covered in black polish. black all over the pink pen and black all over the paper.
you can smell it, and i feel bad for these kids, who are kids, and breathe this all day.

soon there's four or five kids hanging around. they cram themselves onto the seat beside me and lean on my arm and talk to each other and talk to me.

after a few minutes hugo shows up, he's probably fifteen or sixteen. he corrects sasa´s errors and offers me a little spanish/quechua book, and then launches into a detailed explanation of the indigenous cultures of bolivia.
he teaches me a few other things. while he's talking, sasa takes the idle pen from my hand and puts the lid back on so it won't dry out.

i learn that the word for feliz, happy, is "kusi", and the word for araña, spider, is "kusi kusi"
i laugh and reflect on this.
i reflect a little on the fact that i´m being taught quechua through spanish, which i was taught in french.
porque no.

after fifteen or twenty minutes i give hugo the equivalent of 3$ CDN for the book and lesson, which he seems to be really happy with, and some change to sasa.
hugo wants to know if i have a boyfriend in montreal.
i tell him i do.
he says next time i see him we should take a picture of us together and i say that sounds good to me.

malt plant, how i miss you.

Gender? ...What Gender?

I'm telling a friend that i'm tired; he stops me.
"Cansada. Eres cansada."
Riiiight, cansado for boys, cansada for girls.
This isn't the first time someone has called me on speaking as though i'm a man.
I'm not doing it on purpose, but i sort of like the fact that clear definitions of gender are as instinctively unimportant to me while speaking spanish as they are in most other contexts.
However, it seems to bother everyone else. The same conversation happened with one of the mothers who lives in our house, and she seemed sort of embarrassed for me, that i'd made this mistake.

Bolivia isn't as progressive with gender roles as North America. (not that north america is perfect either)
It's subtle, but women aren't treated (nor taught to act) as um, equally, as men. Gender roles are more separated and women are more likely to be excluded from "serious" things. Or maybe they're not as likely to be raised to participate in serious things. I see this a little in my office.
It's all really subtle, but it's there.

People frequently call me "Mamamita", which means more or less "little mama".
This generally comes from guys, but also from older people. I guess it's generally just a term of endearment.
I find it kind of disturbing that people who don't know my name refer to me instead by my reproductive capacities.
If you ever wanna hit on me in a way that will make you never want to touch you, just remind me that i'm capable of bearing your children.

Anyway, so i don't know if the language is the innocent product of a macho society, or if the language is serving to reinforce that machismo, but either way it's a symbol and a reminder of the still-less-important state of women here, and so it kinda bothers me.
I can claim that i'm not deliberately talking like a man, but i can't claim to have made the effort to start talking like a mamamita.

Maybe i'll start saying i'm cansadoa?

I am pursuing something almost invisible to human observation.

I buy a coffee for five Bolivianos and set a fifty, the equivalent of 6 $CDN, on the coffeeshop counter. I apologize for not having anything smaller. The girl working there runs next door to get change. Change is always a problem in Bolivia.

I think I’m here to make change. Here where I am now and here in general. There are times when this inspires me, and there are times when I wonder where the change is and whether it actually has anything to do with me.

I walk to work, passing women on the streets with hordes of dirty kids. Well trained kids; the mother gives a sign and a three year old follows me asking for change. Smart kids; after all, as a foreigner I’ve got more spare change than most people do. If I wanted money I’d also be asking someone I considered to be rich. If it’s not too far buried in the bottom of my purse I give them some.

I walk alongside indigenous women, shorter than me, fancy skirts and tops and men’s dress hats, two long swinging braids. An indigenous lady watches me pass as she leans against a wall and spins wool, by hand, in a way that looks automatic and almost idle. I pass very old ladies, occasionally very old men, who sit on the sidewalk and ask for change. I can see their cataracts, sparse teeth.

On my way through the central plaza, Edwin catches me. He sells gum. He’s probably seven or eight. I’ve already got a couple of half-finished packs of gum floating around my purse. I tell him, “Lo siento, chico, no neccesito… proxima vez..” He skips along beside me for three blocks, smiling, telling me the capital city of every country he knows. I ask him about Canada, but he doesn’t know that one yet. He finds out I speak French (mas o menos) and tells me everything he knows how to say in French. Finally, he asks if I know about the swimming pool, and that it’s only five bolivianos an hour. “Cinco, no es mucho!” I say. He says in the most genuine way that he really wants to go. I laugh and finally buy some more gum. I’m impressed by his smoothness, but also sorry in a way that he’s had to become such a good salesman at his age.

I feel like giving people spare change is a band-aid solution for a problem that needs more serious attention. There should be more social aid. There should be old age pension. But big solutions take time, and in the meantime the little ones can help.

I work in an office. I work, as a volunteer, with computers. I’m here because I want to somehow improve people’s quality of life, or their rights, or their education or skills, or something, but what I actually do is build websites and do graphic design. On a good day. On a bad day I help the boss reinstall her msn messenger, or listen to the office assistant play online games, or do nothing at all because the internet connection’s down.

Hopefully the websites will attract more volunteers and funding, which will help the organization offer medical services to people who can’t afford them. Last year they did about twenty pacemaker implants, for free. This is something that usually costs something like a thousand US dollars here.

So I’m not doing nothing, but I also feel like I’m not doing anything very direct.

On fridays there’s dinners at Ñanta, my roommate’s org, a resource center for kids like Edwin who work on the streets. The outside gate is locked after six, and while we wait for someone to come and unlock it kids accumulate on the other side like an ocean. They crash off the gate, laughing, chasing each other, playing soccer with something that doesn’t sound like a ball. A can, maybe. Finally Vayu, a volunteer from Argentina comes and unlocks the gate from the inside. The noise level increases even more. The gate explodes open and a crowd of kids whirls out after Vayu, laughing, he’s laughing, he kisses our cheeks and runs off ahead of them. We’re laughing, we close the gate and go up the stairs to the center.

There are kids everywhere. I find it somehow reassuring that the kid personality types are the same here as anywhere else: you get the bad-asses that you have to keep an eye on, but that secretly want your attention, the eager helpful ones, the curious ones, the shy ones that will smile beautifully if you make faces at them. They all want to know your name. They all want to know where you’re from.

Evie, who’s older, maybe fifteen, offers me a platano. I split it with him. He wants to know what I have on my mp3 player so I show him how to work it and leave it with him for the evening. The kids have cooked supper; an American guy who volunteers at Ñanta is teaching cooking classes. There’s just enough food for everyone. I’ve already eaten, so I don’t take much. Several kids see that I don’t have much food and offer me some of theirs. While we eat, the boss and another guy are swarming around with cameras like proud mothers. They joke around with us, tease us good naturedly about anything they can, laugh at everything.

The noise at the center is constant. The kids are always excited to an extreme. The mess is undefeatable. The kitchen smells terrible. The walls are grimy. The windows are broken. We wash dishes. There’s water, actually mud, all over the floor. We look under the sink and see that there’s a piece of the pipe missing. Most of the water from the sink is falling into where the pipe reappears, the rest is leaking out onto the floor. We play with it a bit to try and fix it, but it seems like it’s been like that for a while. We go back to washing, squeegee the floor like usual when we’re done.

Despite the chaos, I feel like Ñanta is a beautiful, reassuring place. I’m not exactly sure why but I feel more like I’m being involved in positive change at Ñanta than at my own org. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I learn a lot by hanging out with those kids, and that the people that work there are really positive. You know that thing people always say about needing to get yourself sorted before you can help other people. And all the international cooperation rhetoric about volunteering being a learning exchange. (not just the north telling the south how to do things.) Maybe it’s also because I’m spending time with the people who benefit from that org, as opposed to spending time with a computer.

But the thing with change is you never really know for sure when you’re making it. It takes the combination of you and so many other people, and it takes time, and chances are that you won’t even be there when your efforts come to fruition.

So I think what this means is that you´ve got to do everything, really absolutely everything, the best you can because you’re not going to know what’s going to have an effect and what’s not. Right down to smiling at strangers and just generally being nice… people are sometimes strongly affected by the simplest things.

Also, you’ve gotta do these things in good faith. You can’t expect to be rewarded with seeing the results. You really have to do good things out of a simple desire to do good things, and with no desire for recognition.

So I guess I’ll keep doing all the small things I can, big things if I get the chance, and keep learning as much as I can about everything here. My approach in Canada is the same as it is in Bolivia. I don’t really know for sure, but I think this is a path to positive change.

comments please! (because i´m still working on this)

Democracy and Social Change in Bolivia

If you explore the streets of Sucre, you may come across some surprisingly well-made political propaganda. Videos about recent political events in Sucre, valorizing the protests against the government, themed around the glorious fight for democracy in this righteous city. Nicely embroidered jackets and professionally printed shirts with slogans about the movement to make Sucre the capital city. Backpacks for schoolchildren bearing the same. I walk behind them on the way to work, wondering if twenty years from now those kids will be proud or ashamed to have sported those backpacks.

The fact is, everyone in Sucre supports the capital movement and opposes Evo Morales and MAS. But this isn't true of all of Bolivia. There's a lot of support for the government, but it's coming from other places: the poor, the indigenous, the campesinos, to name a few. Basically, most groups which have been historically oppressed or disempowered support Morales. As for the opposition, look to the former sources of power; the people whose monopolies on power are presently being threatened: the upper classes, the business elite, the pro-capitalists and the resource-rich western departments. [1]

Of course, the divisions aren't really that clean. Sucre isn't exactly in the west, more like the middle, and not everyone here is rich, and yet there is an overwhelming opposition to the government.

I was discussing this with another volunteer here, and he wanted to know how I'd explain this.

"Do you really think everyone in Sucre’s being duped?" he asked me.

Maybe duped is a strong word? And to look at it another way, is there any country, anywhere, where the marketing campaigns of the various political forces don't have any effect on their target audiences? If so, i'd like to know about it.

So, what is the Sucre Capital Plena movement? If it's a genuine reflection of the desires of the everyday, average people of Sucre, then where is all the money coming from? Are cab drivers, waiters, shoe shiners paying for the fancy embroidered jackets and t-shirts? If the movement has grown naturally out of the situation here, why is all the logic behind the movement so strange? The other day a man told me the capital should be moved from La Paz (800,000) to Sucre (one third the size) because La Paz doesn't produce anything. I wish I'd asked him where he learned that.

I'm regularly told that various actions of the government are illegal, but from what i understand none of them are. The tactics taken by the opposition, however, are very dangerous in the sense that they're seriously undermining the democratic process in Bolivia. Rather than engaging in parliamentary debate, opposition members refuse to participate in the political process at all. Opposition mobs surround government buildings to threaten and attack government members as they try to enter. Opposition members publicly deliver racist and sexist insults to MAS members. According to a MAS member, opposition party PODEMOS leader Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga, "had asked people to not recognize the law."[2] Strange things to hear from a group that accuses the government of acting illegally.

Many analysts understand the Sucre Capital Plena movement as the latest in a long string of underhanded and undemocratic attempts by the opposition to undermine the acting abilities of the present government.[3] Morales himself has said that the issue of the capital is an attempt to destroy the assembly.[4] Admittedly, the capital movement has existed for a long time, more or less since the capital left Sucre a hundred years ago, but it mysteriously got a lot stronger last summer, when other attempts to disrupt government action had failed or proved insufficient.

On the other hand, maybe residents of Sucre were growing dissatisfied with government actions and genuinely started to believe that moving the capital to Sucre would give them more say over policy. I'm not sure how realistic this is, logically, but the point is that maybe it is at least partly a genuine popular reaction.

Either way, it seems like in Sucre the location of the capital has eclipsed a lot of other issues. In the name of moving the government back here, Sucreans seem to be willing to sacrifice recent government initiatives like increased health care and education, and a much needed old age pension. Say what you will about some of Morales' other policies; these things are necessary. Weighing these issues against the capital movement, I consider my friend's question once more. I guess I'd rather believe people have been duped than believe they want to deny the basic needs of their fellow citizens over an issue like this.

As a Canadian, the way politics plays out in Bolivia surprises me. Everyone has an opinion about politics. Everyone is involved. Many social groups are mobilizing very actively and very visibly for their rights. There are frequent protests with firecrackers and even dynamite. There are roadblocks. Sometimes whole cities shuts down. People get injured and sometimes killed. In November of last year the rioting in Sucre got so intense that the government and police fled the city. The citizens broke into government offices and destroyed everything they could find. Coming from a political society that´s lukewarm at best and generally responds to a problem by writing letters, I’m pleased to finally see people taking direct action to improve their quality of life. But I’m hesitant to say that such extremes are a positive thing. Perhaps the intensity, the enthusiasm, is a product of novelty: democracy is a newer game in Bolivia than in Canada. Maybe people are so involved because they’ve wanted a say in their governance for a long time and are ecstatic to finally get it. Maybe this also explains the way some people have gotten behind causes that actually aren’t so good; it takes time to learn to think critically about the movements and issues presented to you, and maybe not all of Bolivia is there yet. Maybe this is why everyone is so dissatisfied with Morales when he’s offering more positive change than I would even dream of asking of any Canadian Prime Minister. Maybe Bolivians are still hopeful enough about the effectiveness of democracy as it exists that they genuinely think they can get everything to work exactly the way they want it to.

There are a few lessons I´ll take home from this experience. Seeing the way politics work in Bolivia has reminded me that public participation in politics through protesting and public organizing is an important part of the political process. Likewise, the ability to form alliances between interest groups is crucial to creating a strong presence. The strength of Morales’ support base lies in the solidarity of the groups he represents. The strength of the opposition is in their own solidarity. I’ve also been reminded of the political stagnation caused by firmly established parties in electoral politics. I believe that the constant change of parties, of the groups that constitute those parties, of the platforms of those parties, increases the chances that people will actually consider the issues being presented in an election rather than voting mechanically for the usual colour, and that the relative infancy of the parties and democratic system means a wider range of issues could be addressed by the system. The diversity of political interests here is partly due to the fact that a routine has not yet been established. We need only look to American politics for the opposite example, the upcoming election notwithstanding.

Finally, I feel that having strongly opposed forces at play in politics is healthy for the political process, as a wider range of interests are being represented. In Bolivia, we see the business elite, the white, the rich, and the powerful on one hand, and the poor, the indigenous, the workers and farmers on the other. In Canada, we have the business elite, the white, the rich and the powerful on one hand versus the slightly less conservative business elite, white, rich and powerful on the other, and frankly if I had to say one of these two countries was representing the needs and desires of its population in parliament, I wouldn’t give that award to Canada. While it´s true that Canada’s government has “accomplished” a lot more than Bolivia´s in the last four or five months, I think the question needs to be asked whether any of the things the government of Canada has accomplished are in fact in the best interests of the majority of Canadians.

In the end, when I start to understand another culture I realize we have a lot to learn from each other. In this case, I think Canadians have more to learn about genuine political participation and representation than they might realize. Bolivians, I hope, will learn to think more critically about the movements they support, and in an ideal world both will learn to expand their political actions beyond their own personal interests and have some consideration for the needs of the people around them.

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[1] http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/14659

[2] http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/14619

[3] http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/14659

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/14621

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/14620

[4] http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/14619

cochabamba may be my favourite place in bolivia so far.

granted, it doesn´t have as many fascinating geographical qualities as a lot of other parts of bolivia, but it has something much more near and dear to me: political diversity.

cara and i got on the bus around six in the evening. it was supposed to be a bus cama, which is something you can almost sleep on, but it turned out to be a normal bus. no matter now.
half an hour into the trip my mother called me with a letter from mcgill. i was surprised to hear from her in the middle of nowhere because international calls rarely reach me, even in sucre.
it was a rejection. i don´t mind about mcgill but this means i won´t be living in montreal anymore.
montreal is like a home and a mother to me.
my thoughts were diverted from this pretty quickly: we stopped for twenty minutes, the interior light was on, and looking across the aisle i cringed as i saw a cockroach on someone's bag.
ugh, i thought, someone brought a cockroach onto the bus..
but no, actually cockroaches were part of the package.. they were everywhere. i got bored and took pictures of them. one particularly brave one lingered on cara's seat to finish eating a crumb of some kind while she loomed over it menacingly. finally it picked up the crumb and disappeared over the edge of the seat.
they weren´t very big cockroaches, at least there´s that.
we slept on the bus, sort of.
i put my shoes back on at four thirty in the morning waiting for the inevitable crunch, but apparently no cockroaches had crawled into them.
we got into cochabamba at five in the morning, asked a police officer for directions to the hotel. he followed us there to make sure we got there. there were big piles of garbage on street corners, with dogs having ecstatic dinner parties in them.
we talked to the guy at the desk, talked him into giving us this half night for free if we paid for the next night, talked down the price of the next night, and then crawled into bed to sleep for a few hours.

cochabamba is beautiful by day.
it´s a bigger city, more diverse, more alive.
i wandered alone, found breakfast, found cien años de soledad which is the book i most want to read in spanish right now (well, now i am reading it. slowly.)
wandered the streets. there was grafitti.
to be more specific, there was beautiful, positive, socially aware grafitti. as opposed to sucre´s graffiti, which is generally negative and revolves around themes of delivering schoolyard insults at evo morales.
i met up with cara, eric, josee, francois. we went for breakfast again (for their benefit, not mine, although i had an ice cream) and then francois and i went to an antifascist art show.
it was a really nice expo, not only was the art interesting but there were a bunch of local artists there (poets, jewelry, books, photos...) and everyone coming in to see it seemed really interesting.
it was a really refreshing environment to be in.
there we learned about a theatre festival that was going on, and decided to check that out later in the day.
we bought our return bus tickets. we ate. we got to the theatre place five minutes late and they said we´d missed the start but there was another one at nine thirty.
we bought tickets. we wandered and found some kind of outdoor fundraiser with live music. we wandered and had a drink and played checkers. we went back to the theatre.
the piece we saw circulated around themes of racism and hypocrisy in public participation in politics in bolivia. it was stark and simple and direct, really well done. it offerred a really nice critique of the greed and ill will behind politics right now.
the next day eric and josee and francois went to climb the world´s tallest christ. cara and i discovered the world´s tallest stork phonebooth.
i found an anarchist journal written in cochabamba, really professional. i was really impressed. i photographed a few stencils.
i stopped in a park to read news that had been posted by the tinku red, an info centre for the left, it was the mainstream news, but it was replete with critiques written in red pen. i was really impressed. i watched a crowd of people, pretty diverse people, reading these deliciously critical interpretations of the mainstream news and felt more hopeful about bolivian politics than i have for a while.
the bus back to sucre actually was a bus-cama, and didn´t have cockroaches. i managed to sleep on it and came home happy.

About those photos: Tubing and Waterfalls..

I have the good luck to know Ademar, who works as a tour guide here and knows about lots of cool stuff in Bolivia.
Isabelle, Marie-Eve, Ademar, two of his friends, and I, went on an adventure three weeks ago:
drove out to the campos, camped on beaches, explored pueblos, little towns, went tubing, went to an old incan site with lots of pottery and fossils just lying around, climbed canyons, followed a river and climbed lots of waterfalls... climbed more waterfalls than i can count, actually.
The pictures tell the story, take a look!
(click the thumbnail slideshows for bigger versions with explanations)